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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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I think I'd settle for having actual, preferably objective reasons for one's argument to indicate a reasoned position. If someone says I believe the moon landing didn't happen because of the direction of the shadows, then that's a reasoned position in this sense I'm talking about. After all, we can reason ourselves into incorrect beliefs.
The function of drumming up counter-arguments against your own argument is to identify weaknesses. Merely asking the question of, "How are shadows expected to work on the moon anyway?" suggests that one's disbelief in the moon landing may be taking something for granted.
The difference between a reasonable person and someone driven by emotion is how they handle the discrepancy between their incorrectly reasoned argument and reasoned counter-arguments. Basically, the reasonable person must consider the counter argument, or at least not reject it out of hand.
On the other hand, as Hume said, reason is driven by emotions. So, the difference between the two may be an illusion to begin with.
I perhaps worded the title a little poorly. I'm effectively arguing for steelmanning: if you have a view on a certain topic and thus disagree with the view of someone else, then for the very least you should be capable of repeating back to them their own argument in a way that they agree with. This way you're demonstrating that you actually understood what they said rather than disagreeing with the strawman version of their argument. If one is uncapable of presenting in an honest way any such opposing views to that of their own then there's a good likelihood that they actually haven't considered alternative views but instead landed on it for mostly emotional and intuitive reasons.
This mostly applies to topics of which there is a significant amount of disagreement about as well as fringe views going against the mainstream. Such consideration is less important when talking about facts that there's a broad consensus on.
An example would be a person opposing a political movement but when asked to list some of the stated goals of said movement they then fail to do so. How can one oppose something they don't even understand?
this is a much better wording of your position. i appreciate the clarification because the first time round just lead a lot of folks astray.