Opinions harm people because it encourages extreme and unconventional behaviors in society

The argument

This argument holds that opinions, considered as a class, have done more damage than good, and that their capacity to cause harm is reason to deny them value. The general claim comes first: opinions have caused a lot of trouble. They have started fights, created unfit government leaders, and divided societies. Each of those is presented as an effect that requires an opinion to be held and spread before it can occur — a conflict needs a position to fight over, an unfit leader needs supporters persuaded of something, and a division needs a line for people to fall on either side of. The example given is Adolf Hitler, offered as a leader who let their opinion ruin lives. The argument notes that his anti-Semitic views existed before his time, and that Jewish people had been oppressed for their race and culture before the Second World War. The point being made concerns continuity: the views were already circulating as opinion, and what a leader supplied was the power to act on them, which is why the opinion rather than the individual is treated as the origin of the harm. The same reasoning is then applied to the present. Today's society is severed by racism, sexism, and classism — divisions the argument traces to opposing opinions that set them in motion, and which persist for as long as the opinions do. The conclusion follows from that causal claim: if it wasn't for the opposing opinions that started these problems, the world would be a better place. Because opinions encourage extreme and unconventional behaviours in society, this argument holds that individual opinions are not of value.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is no way to stop anyone from having harmful opinions. Opinions are justified by the individual often without proof or facts. No one can control what another person thinks.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Not all opinions create prejudice.