Much easier for me extract from a seriously good book that try
paraphrase everything.

The extracted below is from a really great little book by the New
Zealand Philosopher Jamie Whyte.

His book sells in the USA under the title "Crimes Against Logic" and
not to my surprise it has got a couple of good reviews from American's
on amazon. I loved the book after the first page. Most of my friends
think the guy is just as bad me so no wonder I like the guys thinking.

Jamie is a former philosophy lecturer at Cambridge University in the
UK. His prose is typically English, not so New Zealander by my
judgment.

Extract Starts...

...Jack has offered some opinion - that President Bush invaded Iraq to
steal its oil, let's say - with which his friend Jill disagrees. Jill
offers some reasons why Jack's opinion is wrong and after a few
unsuccessful attempts at answering them, Jack petulantly retorts that
he is entitled to his opinion.

The fallacy lies in Jack's assumption that this retort is somehow a
satisfactory reply to Jill's objections, while, in fact, it is
completely irrelevant. Jack and Jill disagreed about Bush's motivation
for invading Iraq, and Jill gave reasons to believe that Jack was
mistaken. She did not claim that he had no right to this mistaken
view. By pointing out that he is entitled to his view, Jack has simply
changed the subject from the original topic, the reason Iraq was
invaded, to a discussion of his rights. For all it contributes to the
invasion question, he may as well have pointed out that whales are
warm-blooded or that in Spain it rains mainly on the plains.

As with most of our fallacies, once seen, it is obvious. Here is a
simple way of putting it. If the opinions to which we are entitled
might nevertheless be false, the entitlement cannot properly be
invoked to settle a dispute. It adds no new information on the
original matter - it does nothing to show that the opinion in question
is true.

Interpreting the cliché to exclude the possibility of falsity - that
is, to mean that we are entitled to have all our opinions be true -
has two problems. First, it is ridiculous. Second, it does not in fact
make the entitlement to an opinion relevant in deciding who is correct
in any dispute. If Jack has a right to his true opinion then
presumably Jill has a right to hers too. But then, since Jack and Jill
disagree, one of them must be suffering a rights violation - one of
them has a false belief. So, even if we had the right to true beliefs
that would only show that it is a right that is violated all the time,
on precisely those occasions when our opinions are in fact false.

In any dispute, to know whose right to a true belief is being violated
we would first need to work out whose belief is false. That is, we
would need to settle the original dispute - in the case of Jack and
Jill, about President Bush's reason for invading Iraq. And a diversion
on the matter of rights gets no one any closer to answering that
question.
So, even on the strongest, and utterly incredible, interpretation of
our opinion entitlement, it is irrelevant to anything else we might be
debating.

Why then is insisting on one's right to an opinion such a popular
argumentative ploy?

In part, it is encouraged by an ambiguity in the word entitlement. It
has a political or legal interpretation, by which we are all entitled
to any opinion we might have, however groundless. But it also has an
epistemic interpretation, that is, one related to, or concerned with,
truth or knowledge. You are entitled to an opinion, in this epistemic
sense, only when you have good reasons for holding it: evidence, sound
arguments, and so on. Far from being universal, this epistemic
entitlement is the kind you earn. It is like being entitled to boast,
which depends on having done something worth boasting about.

So, the two senses of entitlement could not be further from each
other. Yet it is too tempting to muddle them. The implied argument of
the muddler runs as follows:

1. If someone is entitled to an opinion then her opinion is well-
supported by evidence. (This is precisely what it means to be entitled
to an opinion.)

2. I am entitled to my opinion (as is everyone in a democratic
society).

3. Therefore, my opinion is well-supported by evidence.

This is a beautiful example of the fallacy of equivocation, i.e.,
slipping between different meanings of a word in an argument that
would be valid only if the word were used with the same meaning
throughout.

Once pointed out, it's easy to see that this confusion of the
political with the epistemic notion of entitlement is a mistake. And
though, strictly, that will do for the purposes of this book, I don't
want to leave the matter here. Even if the cliché that we are entitled
to our opinions is not employed in the truly egregious way so far
discussed, it is part of a mindset that increasingly impedes the free
flow of ideas and their robust assessment. Many people seem to feel
that their opinions are somehow sacred, so that everyone else is
obliged to handle them with great care. When confronted with
counterarguments, they do not pause and wonder if they might be wrong
after all. They take offense.

The culture of caution this attitude generates is a serious obstacle
to those who wish to get at the truth. So it is important to strip
away any bogus ideas that support the attitude, such as the idea that
we all have a right to our own opinions...

...End of Extraction

I recommend everyone have at least one copy of this little book in
their homes. I keep a handful of the UK version at home all the time
to give out as birthday and Christmas gifts as and when.

Some of you would have already received a copy a few years back for
Christmas.

http://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Against-Logic-Jamie-Whyte/dp/0071446435/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202779173&sr=8-1

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