Can You Understand Your View Without Understanding the Other Side?

When You Can Explain Your Proposal but Not the Objection

Imagine proposing a single form for incoming enquiries at a meeting. Your reason is that collecting the necessary information upfront would reduce follow-up questions. When a colleague objects, you assume they dislike changing a familiar process.

But their central concern is different: if urgent enquiries must wait until a form is completed, responses may be delayed. Calling this a resistance to change leaves that problem unanswered, however clearly you explain your proposal’s benefits.

This is a hypothetical example created by Rantap. Explaining your position fluently is not the same as explaining why it should be preferred to an alternative.

John Stuart Mill’s sentence sharpens the distinction. If you do not understand the opposing side, your knowledge may be incomplete even about the position you support.

Why Did Mill Defend the Freedom to Disagree?

On Liberty was first published in 1859. Chapter II, where this sentence appears, concerns the liberty of thought and discussion. Mill is concerned with more than keeping a meeting agreeable: opinions must be open to discussion and challenge if we are to understand their grounds.

After the quotation, he explains that even plausible reasons for your own view are insufficient if you do not know or cannot answer the reasons on the other side. You then lack grounds for preferring one opinion to the other. In that situation, suspending judgment may be rational.

He also rejects the idea that hearing objections from teachers on your own side, packaged with their answers, is enough. He calls for encountering the most persuasive arguments of people who genuinely believe and seriously defend the opposing view.

An objection cannot do this work if it is merely a token presence. Defeating a weakened version does not show whether your judgment can withstand a difficult challenge.

Fairly understanding an opposing view does not mean every claim has equally good support. Giving an argument a hearing and giving it equal weight after examination are different things. Applying that distinction to the meeting below is Rantap’s modern interpretation.

What Remains to Decide Once You Understand the Objection?

Return to the meeting. You can first make the concern more precise than “my colleague opposes a single form.” You might explain it this way: collecting information is useful, but making a completed form a prerequisite for responding could delay urgent enquiries. You can check with your colleague whether that captures their actual concern.

You can then examine which enquiries are urgent, whether a route exists for responding before the form is completed, and what delays have occurred. If a trial shows delays in urgent cases, there is a reason to revise the proposal by adding an exception route. If a route already addresses that concern and the evidence supports it, you may retain your proposal and explain why. If the evidence is insufficient, you may defer a decision.

This is not an office procedure prescribed by Mill. It is a modern hypothetical application of examining the grounds of your judgment after understanding an objection. Nor must an unverified factual claim be treated as equally established merely because it challenges your view.

Accurately explaining someone’s concern does not mean agreeing with their conclusion. It makes clearer what you accept and what you still need to answer.

Changing your conclusion need not be the only evidence of growth. You may reach the same judgment after examining an objection, but now be able to explain its grounds and the conditions under which it applies. Growth here is less about how often you change your mind than about knowing more precisely what your judgment rests on.