Disagreement of Opinion Is Necessary to Thinking

Let’s understand why disagreement of opinion is necessary to thinking. There is an area of philosophical investigation which is called dialectic. Dialectic consists of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You construct an argument about some topic, which is your thesis. But this argument might be questioned by specialists who might bring a new evidence or theory. The truth is that these specialists derive their opinions from very different points of view and sometimes disagree greatly with each other about the knowledge that they are supposed to have. Beyond that, often our views turn out to be self-contradictory. This disagreement of opinion is called the antithesis. And thinking over the puzzle that disagreement gave us we may come up with another answer. Therefore, to solve the problem, we are driven to another view of the phenomenon. That’s the synthesis.

Is that so? Fact is the synthesis might be still unsatisfactory, because a lot of reasons. And if you are honest with yourself you can’t go away without accomplishing the work. To move closer to reality, if you care for it, you should enlarge your horizon to include the new findings. Never mind: you are in a life-long journey.

Let’s see the illustration of these steps:

1- Affirmation or thesis:…

2- But there is some objection which is…

3- Therefore, we are driven to the view that…

BUT this synthesis is still unsatisfactory, because…

HENCE, we are driven to enlarge our universe to include…

Now let’s imagine you are writing about evolution. How to construct great arguments You defend, for instance, the idea that blind force is responsible for evolution. This is what Aristotle taught as an internal spontaneity. This thought nullifies the biblical idea of creation by God. As a modern evolutionist, you seemingly deny the God of Bible as being the first cause. Surely, there is no place for God in evolution. To do so, you speak of primitive molecules, but do not try to account for how or when these came to exist.

Well, this is a mere supposition. If you claim complex derived from gradual modification from earlier and simpler forms, that vast material universes (cosmic or organic), you deny the law of nature which states that nothing reproduces anything greater than itself. That’s a possible antithesis. Therefore, you should write a synthesis that includes an explanation on the law of improvement. For instance, how can you possibly demonstrate that intelligence could not have come from one or any number of molecules of unintelligence? These are simple ideas. I hope you think on that.