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Is it difficult to know "general opinion"?

Or can it be measured well somehow?

I have had this problem of thinking that, when I get another person agree with me that I "possibly" hit a general opinion, yet I could not generalize the general opinion of few to "broad general opinions". Thus, if one wished to demonstrate general opinions, how would one do it?

Nat
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mavavilj
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    General opinions are fictions of rhetoric, so added [tag:rhetoric], as is consistent with the general opinion on this topic. – Nat Mar 13 '20 at 11:47
  • @GeoffreyThomas Epistemology? Philosophy of Science? Philosophy of Measurement? – mavavilj Mar 13 '20 at 12:24
  • @GeoffreyThomas That's also a possible answer. – mavavilj Mar 13 '20 at 13:37
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    If "general opinion" means majority opinion in some population it is routinely measured by pollsters, and, more accurately, by public referenda. Of course, the number of issues on which polls are conducted, let alone referenda organized, is very limited. On the rest, the best one can do is make educated guesses. – Conifold Mar 13 '20 at 22:42
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    you are asking for opinions on opinions.... – Swami Vishwananda Mar 14 '20 at 07:03
  • @SwamiVishwananda I'm trying to gauge for, what people may refer to if they justify based on "it's true, because it's the general opinion". Such as: democracy. – mavavilj Jan 09 '21 at 18:17

1 Answers1

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There are a few different ways of approaching this question:

  1. General opinion as population norms, usually assessed through polling, surveys, or other statistical tools.
  2. General opinion as cultural standards, usually assessed through inspection of 'texts': religious or legal documents; institutional structures; adages, maxims, or other expressed commonalities
  3. General opinion as performative act, assessed through the persuasiveness of utterances of particularly speakers
  4. General opinion as rational expression, usually assessed through argumentation.

How one generalizes from local agreement to a universal agreement depends on the mode once is using. Apply statistical methods for generalization in the first case, assert the universality of norms in the second, rest on one's persuasive power as a general principle in the third, and embrace the universality of abstract reasoning in the fourth.

My sense is you're asking about the last case — a matter of convincing someone through reasoning — and the logic here is that if you can convince one person of a claim through reasoning, then you ought to be able to convince any reasonable person of the same claim through the same reasoning. A convincing rational argument should be convincing regardless of who is speaking or who is listening, so it's 'safe' to assume that one can generalize such a claim.

Ted Wrigley
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