If pressed, we often can’t say why we think what we think. And we get stubborn when pressed to back up our precious opinions though, in many cases opinions are what people have because they don’t know, don’t understand or decide to ignore some of the facts. The nature of our public debate doesn’t help. Most discussions of serious issues are framed by the left/right arguments, but they rarely get down to the level of first principles, in which people are forced to examine the philosophical assumptions underlying their opinions.
