I ask this as a genuine question- Do you need to hear this from people when they speak? Why?
I confess it's always seemed redundant to me. Of course what I say is just my viewpoint, and what you say is your viewpoint. And of course you have permission to form your own viewpoint.
I guess I'm really asking, do people feel they need to have permission to form their own view? I can't recall ever feeling that I didn't have that freedom, no matter how definitive the person's view sounded. I literally never even consider that possibility.
Need? No. This isn't about the receivers in this situation. Other people aren't waiting for your permissions, and they don't need to be told that your opinion is your opinion. This is about the way the sender communicates their own internal understanding of their belief/knowledge states.
If other people never hear someone linguistically marking their belief states with reliability indicators (even when their statements clearly need them by common phrasing norms), then the listeners will have much less reason to believe the speaker uses any reliability metrics internally, and that is just sloppy thinking. This is, I believe, the reasoning behind listeners believing that speakers who never use something like "I think" are "know it all's" who take their own opinions as gospel. If you want people to know your internal knowledge representations carry proper markers of fallibility, communicate that part of the representations in your words. That is the common norm, and other people aren't mind readers to know you mean different.
Also, listeners can make good use of reliability markers from speakers, and so would like them. Such markers can communicate helpful information (close or distant source, checked validity or not, fits well with other knowns or not, reasoning from one person or checked over by many), so why leave them out? Inclusion costs so little, and omission risks unnecessary confusion.
This is basic communication practice; if you don't mean to communicate to others that you consider yourself very certain on some matter, then you shouldn't send the type of messages to others that you know they will interpret as you saying you are very certain on some matter.
> Of course what I say is just my viewpoint, and what you say is your viewpoint.
Yes, but many people do not recognize this part. After they speak their mind they will carry on as if those statements are an absolute fact.
When they recognize that they are voicing an opinion it signals to me, whether I agree or disagree, that they a likely to be the sort of person with whom constructive debate might be possible.
I confess it's always seemed redundant to me. Of course what I say is just my viewpoint, and what you say is your viewpoint. And of course you have permission to form your own viewpoint.
I guess I'm really asking, do people feel they need to have permission to form their own view? I can't recall ever feeling that I didn't have that freedom, no matter how definitive the person's view sounded. I literally never even consider that possibility.