I agree, cautiously, mostly, sort of.
It's necessary, of course, to recognize that the degree of likelihood varies from time to time, place to place, person to person. What you accept as very likely and therefore true I may consider unlikely and therefore mere opinion.
This was, for example, the case with slavery, where some people thought it very likely (indeed certain) that African blacks were sub-human and could never be accepted into normal society, which was truth for them, and others thought it very likely (indeed, certain) that they were God's creatures equal to us and deserved an equal place at the table of humanity.
In the scientific world, at one time it was very likely, therefore true, that: the Earth was flat; the Earth was the center of the universe; God created all creatures as they are and they didn't change over time; that the continents stayed still on the face of the earth and didn't wander thousands of miles away; and so on. Even today, there are scientific principles that some scientists consider very likely and therefore true while others think them quite wrongheaded. (The New Republic has just published an article which challenges the "truth" that being fat is in and of itself a health risk; they claim that there are NO studies to show this, and that that this is a wrongheaded theory that conceals the real facts of health. If they're right, something every doctor "knows to be true" will now become false. And I can tell my doctor to quit bugging me to lose weight.)
The problem with your final statement is that it is impossible to know what are truly "reasonable opinions." All the things I cited above as examples of scientific truth were once quite reasonable opinions, but are now viewed (except so far for the issue of weight) to be quite unreasonable.
Even though of necessity one must believe in one's "inner state of conviction" and act on its compulsions, the fact is that an inner state of conviction is by no means a reliable guide to whatever truth may be. |
