I'm entitled to my opinion (orI have a right to my opinion) is an informal fallacy in which someone dismisses arguments against their position by claiming that they have a right to hold their own particular viewpoint.[1][2] The statement exemplifies a red herringorthought-terminating cliché. The fallacy is sometimes presented as "let's agree to disagree".[3] Whether one has a particular entitlement or right is irrelevant to whether one's assertion is true or false. Where an objection to a belief is made, the assertion of the right to an opinion side-steps the usual steps of discourse of either asserting a justification of that belief, or an argument against the validity of the objection.[4] Such an assertion, however, can also be an assertion of one's own freedom from, or a refusal to participate in, the rules of argumentation and logic at hand.[5]
Philosopher Patrick Stokes has described the expression as problematic because it is often used to defend factually indefensible positions or to imply "an equal right to be heard on a matter in which only one of the two parties has the relevant expertise".[6] Further elaborating on Stokes' argument, philosopher David Godden argued that the claim that one is entitled to a view gives rise to certain obligations, such as the obligation to provide reasons for the view and to submit those reasons to contestation; Godden called these the principles of rational entitlement and rational responsibility, and he developed a classroom exercise for teaching these principles.[4]
Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote in his 1930 book The Revolt of the Masses:
The Fascist and Syndicalist species were characterized by the first appearance of a type of man who "did not care to give reasons or even to be right", but who was simply resolved to impose his opinions. That was the novelty: the right not to be right, not to be reasonable: "the reason of unreason."[7]
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