Opinion and THE LOST ART OF EMPATHY

Opinion: the word is very hard to define; it can be as some would claim a judgment, viewpoint, or statement about matters commonly considered SUBJECTIVE.

In casual use: the term opinion may be the result of a person's perspective, understanding, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. It may refer to unsubstantiated information, in contrast to knowledge and fact.

Collective or Professional Opinions: defined as meeting a higher standard to substantiate the opinion.

Fact: what distinguishes fact from opinion is that facts are verifiable. That is facts can be OBJECTIVELY PROVEN TO HAVE OCCURRED. An example is: "United States of North America was involved in the Vietnam War" versus "United States of North America was right to get involved in the Vietnam War".

Argument: opinion supported by facts becomes an argument, although people may draw opposing opinions from the same set of facts.

Opinions rarely change without presentation of new argument. It can be reasoned that one opinion is better supported by the facts than is another by analysing the supporting arguments.

In economics, other social sciences and philosophy, analysis of social phenomena based on one's own opinion(s) is referred to as normative analysis (what ought to be), as opposed to positive analysis, which is based on scientific observation (what materially is or is empirically demonstrable).

Historically: ancient Greek philosophers articulated the distinction of demonstrated knowledge and opinion.

The Divided Line – (AC) generally taken as representing the visible world. (CE) as the intelligible world.

Today, Plato's analogy of the divided line is a well-known illustration of the distinction between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and belief, in customary terminology of contemporary philosophy. Opinions can be persuasive, but only the assertions they are based on can be said to be true or false.

Scientific opinion: (or scientific consensus) can be compared to public opinion and generally refers to the collection of the opinions of many different scientific organizations and entities and individual scientists in the relevant field. Science however, maybe partial, temporally contingent, conflicting, and uncertain; consequently there may be no accepted consensus for a particular situation. In other circumstances, a particular scientific opinion may be at odds with consensus.

Scientific literacy, also called public understanding of science, Is An Educational Goal concerned with providing the public with the necessary tools to benefit from scientific opinion.

Empathy em·pa·thy (ěm'pə-thē) n: direct identification with, understanding of, and vicarious experience of another person's situation, feelings, and motives. The projection of one's own feelings or emotional state Onto An Object Or An Animal.

Empathy- the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective. You place yourself in their shoes and feel what they are feeling. Empathy- known to increase prosocial (helping) behaviours.

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being's frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another's position.~~Al (Alex-Alexander) D. Girvan.