ON BEING OPINIONATED

By Peter Davies
Contact the author by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

No doctor would like to be regarded as opinionated, but most of us rather like to be asked for our opinion. We like to be considered to be knowledgeable, as expert in our field. This creates an immediate problem for many of us, of how to appear knowledgeable, whilst remaining modest, and not opinionated. This is difficult, as like most other humans, we are actually full of opinions. Indeed it is worse for doctors as we do actually know rather a lot to start with.

And, whether we like it or not, we cannot not have opinions. Just as we cannot not communicate, we cannot not receive information, reflect on it and evaluate its meaning. As the French philosopher of our existential embodiment, Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains, there is no possibility of pure perception for a human being. Anything that comes into our awareness does so only because it has meaning for us. This implies that anything we perceive has already undergone a process of evaluation, selection of frames of meaning and reference, and that we have already formed some opinion of it even at the most basic levels of information processing.

In short even our basic perceptions and observations are actually opinions about the world. They are preloaded with meaning for us.

If this is so, why do we have so much difficulty with the idea of holding opinions? Why as medical students and doctors are we taught that we have to earn the right to our opinions?

Have you ever been accused of having "notions"? One teacher at Leeds told medical students that they were "earthworms", bestowing a lowly stature on them. However from a Darwinian perspective the earthworm may be less complex than humans but its genes are just as successful as ours. And if survival is the criterion of validity why shouldn't the earthworm tell us what it thinks. As Seamus Heaney writes, "We are earthworms of the earth, and all that has gone through us is what will be our trace." What has been through you and what kind of trace are you leaving?

The question about having and holding opinions becomes not whether we do, or do not, have opinions, but how can we learn to live peacefully with them. How can we separate out a well formed opinion from an ill formed one? The classic response is to separate out "knowledge" from "opinion" and advise more knowledge and less opinion.

But this view assumes that knowledge is somehow neutral, and opinion free, so that I could share your reality, and perceive the same things as you do in the same way. I cannot do this for you, and you cannot do this for me. The delusion that we could do this is called "Objectivity." As one teacher put it to me "We need to isolate the object of study so that we can subject it to objective examination!" Magnificent, but the epistemology is flawed.

We do not, and cannot, deal objectively with the objective world. We deal with re-presentations of the objective world, and these re-presentations have been filtered through our sense organs by the classic triad of deletions, generalisations, and distortions in our subjective brains so that what appears to us as real is edited highlights, rather than nature in all its glory. If you doubt this are you aware of the smells your dog can navigate by or the ultraviolet markings on flowers that insects can see? And yet are these things not as much a part of the objective natural world as those things we actually perceive ourselves?

Our representational map of reality is rich, but far from complete.

And that brings me back to the holding of opinions. We need the spirit of John Locke who said, "Where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all he holds... who can say he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions?"

We need to acknowledge that we do hold opinions, not to inflict them on others, but to acknowledge them to ourselves, and so make real for us the part they play in forming our maps of reality. We need to learn to tread the golden mean between holding in mind our own opinions, whilst staying open to the opinions of others. I need to be able to share in your opinions and your map of reality, precisely because it will enrich my own, and correct some of my blind spots.

So next time you have an opinion to voice, say it. It may not be right. It may not be well formed. But with the spirit of Richard Feynman accept that, "If I am wrong, I hope I will be wrong for an interesting reason."

In this essay I have tried to entertain and educate you and I think I have succeeded, but that is my opinion.

What is yours? Whatever it is, I hope you will form it for an interesting reason.

Other hoolet online articles by Peter Davies can be found at:
hoolet edition 48 - Three Theories
hoolet edition 46 - Whinging
hoolet edition 44 - Cons In The Consulting Room
hoolet edition 41 - Who are we kidding on confidentiality?
hoolet edition 40 - First, let's kill the bureaucrats
hoolet edition 38 - Waking up from the medical matrix: Reality and its representation in medicine
hoolet edition 36 - Festina lente
hoolet edition 35 - Determinants or Prerequisites?
hoolet edition 34 - Propulsion Systems in Medicine
hoolet edition 32 - Time to give MRCGP away?
hoolet edition 31 - Proper work for a doctor
hoolet edition 30 - The Intruder
hoolet edition 29 - Edging towards the truth: Does it make any sense at all?
hoolet edition 28 - Thoughts from the Dark Forest
hoolet edition 27 - The Vision Splendid

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.