Courtney asked:

I have this essay assignment in my Philosophy class and I'm not sure how to go about answering the
questions. The questions are:

(1) Are there any mere opinions? (Mere opinions being technically defined as: "A meaningful,
grammatical opinion-like statement that is not a claim but is nonetheless believed to be true.")

(2) Are there any subjective claims? (Subjective claims being technically defined as: "A claim whose
truth or falsity is dependent upon someone's beliefs regarding its truth or falsity.")

My answer toquestion (1) is that certainly there are opinions, in the sense defined. To discover a
person's opinions on a particular subject, you ask, 'Do you believe that...?' It is perfectly possible that
someone will be able confidently to answer that they believe some proposition P, even though they
have never thought about the matter before.

(I was going to give some examples of 'opinions' that P is the case, or that P is not the case, but I'm
sure you could do that yourself!)

Question (2) raises deeper, metaphysical issues. The traditional version of the sense datum theory of
perception is based on the idea that there are certain beliefs which are guaranteed to be true by the
mere fact that we believe them. For example, 'The sky looks blue to me', 'This tomato looks red to
me'. I am not making any claim about whether the sky is clear or overclouded, or whether the tomato
really is ripe or unripe. Nor am I making any claim about how the sky, or the tomato would look to
others. I am simply reporting the subjective state of my own consciousness, a report which by its very
nature cannot be called into question, because I am the sole authority.

I do not accept that there can be a 'subjective claim' in this sense. A simile which I have used with my
students is that a purely subjective judgement or claim would be like 'shooting' an arrow which had
attached to it a 'target' that unfurled wherever the arrow happened to land. 'Truth' implies that your
judgement is successful.You cannot 'succeed' in hitting a target that is already attached to your
arrow.

Geoffrey Klempner