What is the difference between attitudes and opinions

I may have an attitude about an object or person, or issue, or whatever but I've never expressed it, never really given it much thought, up until someone asks me or I am forced in some way to access my attitude. So they're not interchangeable, at least not in social science, though in journalism we do exactly that all the time. Why am I going on about this? Well, values and beliefs get mixed up with attitudes and opinions and -- yes -- political knowledge you knew I was going there, right?

In other words, knowledge gets in there too -- either factual knowledge or, and this is important, perceived knowledge. What we think we know. Throw in our tendency to selectively expose ourselves to information we prefer, or to misremember what we read or hear and fit it into our own predispositions -- well, that explains how some people go off on tangents about presidential candidates, how they're sure candidate x is this or candidate y is that. Values, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge real or otherwise , all tied eventually into an opinion, one perhaps yelled out at a rally and people nearby shake their heads in agreement, even if what was yelled was absolute bullshit.

Doesn't matter. It's all a mess up there in the black box, a nest of inconsistencies, facts, values, beliefs, and the end result through some bizarre algebraic formula are the opinions expressed to pollsters. It's a wonder we can walk and chew gum at the same time, or do both while answering a survey question.

Posted by Hollander at AM. Labels: attitudes , attitudes vs. As mentioned, an attitude of this sort is not anything one ordinarily can choose. Thus it might be misleading to speak about "taking an attitude" here; an attitude is rather something I find myself in. It has something to do with how we see and treat things or the perspective in which things make themselves perceived by us. To have an "attitude towards the soul" means that I react to a person's words and behaviour in a way that indicates that he has a soul; I am not of this opinion-I do not interpret his movements and behaviour and then infer that he is indeed a self-conscious being.

Or, to change Wittgenstein's example into something more mundane: I am not of the opinion that a certain chair is my favourite chair; rather, my attitude towards that chair is an attitude towards a favourite chair, and this also means that any similar chair will not do instead. Similarly, I am not of the opinion that "her picture smiles down at me from the wall" ; this is how I regard the picture, it is my attitude towards it PI p. Wittgenstein implies that it is out of order to talk about errors when attitudes are concerned.

Certainly I can make mistakes; I think that there is a person in the room, but it turns out to be a dummy, for instance. But it was not my Einstellung in itself that was an error here. I can not be mistaken in my attitude, though it might turn out to be a mistake that I had that attitude.

How could a belief in God be shown to be wrong, if it really is an Einstellung? Of course it is possible that such an attitude changes; one might fall out of faith, say. But this does not make one's former belief an Irrtum ; there are no independent facts to be mistaken about. We could say that a revision of an attitude does not mean a correction of it. Perhaps the point is clearer if we take the example of the favourite chair, where there is no controversy about the existence of the object of my attitude.

I might buy a new chair which becomes my favourite one, and thus the chair that used to be my favourite is no longer that. However, it would be senseless to say that my former attitude was an error. The line between an opinion and an attitude is not absolute, but clear enough in the sort of cases Wittgenstein envisages.

The " Einstellung comes before the Meinung ", since it is constitutive of the objects we can have opinions about. It is on the basis of an Einstellung that I can even have opinions about something. And if it can be shown that something similar is the case in art, this will consolidate the view that art is something important precisely because it belongs to those things that are distinctive for the human form of life and which can be important and meaningful in people's lives, and which make a life the life of a human being.

So how should the possible analogies between the attitude towards persons and our attitude towards works of art be fleshed out? Obviously, introducing this notion of an attitude in the context of art and aesthetics is not a way to attempt to answer the question "What is art? We can put the analogy between understanding art and understanding people in this way: I am not of the opinion that a painting is marvellous, or that a cathedral is tremendous, or that a play made a great impression on me.

This also means that I do not always have to give further reasons for such judgements-sometimes it is not even possible. Compare this to the "primitive reaction" to a person in pain. Why do you react with shock, concern or distress when you see that someone is badly injured?

Similarly: "Why do you think that cathedral is tremendous? So in a way "it's all in the attitude" LC 35 : if someone really does not consider the building tremendous, there isn't really anything I can do, except to accept that he has a different attitude; "that is 'an end' to the discussion" Moore , During Wittgenstein's lectures Lewy, one of his students, gave the following example: "If my landlady says a picture is lovely and I say it is hideous, we don't contradict each other.

She dusts it carefully, looks at it often, etc. You want to throw it in the fire. A crucial feature of aesthetic reactions which indicates their connection to attitudes is that their revision does not mean a correction.

That is, since an attitude is shown by, for instance, how I react to things, a change in attitude does not mean that my earlier reaction would have been mistaken. A revision of reactions does not undermine my former evaluation; instead, we could say that it is an indication that my attitude has changed Schroeder , So if Lewy came to think of his landlady's picture as lovely, that would not undermine his former judgement that it was hideous; instead his whole attitude would have changed this would also mean that his behaviour changes, and that he himself, in certain important respects, becomes a different person.

According to Wollheim , 91 "it is intrinsic to our attitude towards works of art that we should regard them as works of art, or, to use another terminology, that we should bring them under the concept 'art'". However, in view of what just was said about such attitudes, this perhaps has too theoretical and technical a ring to it. An "attitude towards a work of art" needs not be anything extremely sophisticated. Thus Lewy's landlady's relation to the picture expresses such an attitude, involving notions of respect and value.

Consider also the following example from Wittgenstein's lectures on aesthetics, which in a way repeats the distinction between opinion and attitude:. There are lots of people […] who know a lot about and can talk fluently about dozens of painters. There is another person who has seen very few paintings, but who looks intensely at one or two paintings which make a profound impression on him.

An important feature of Einstellungen is that they are typically directed towards a particular object; Wittgenstein talks about eine Einstellung zu ihm ; zu der Seele; zum Menschen.

My "attitude towards the soul" shows itself in how I regard or treat a particular person, the way I behave in his presence, etc. Winch , says that Wittgenstein's use of the definite article suggests precisely this kind of internal relation between the Einstellung and its object; that is, the Einstellung is characterized by the fact that it is directed to a particular object.

Similarly, an aesthetic attitude is directed towards a particular object, which is seen as valuable "in itself". Thus we can make an analogy between "eine Einstellung zur Seele" and "eine Einstellung zum Kunstwerk ". The possibility of such a relation or attitude towards works of art is crucial to the point art, and thus something our concept of art depends upon.

Abstract B. I Towards the end of the Investigations Wittgenstein talks about the difference between an automaton and a human being, and concludes: My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul [ eine Einstellung zur Seele ].

Wittgenstein does not talk about Einstellungen only here: he also characterizes belief in God as an attitude see also CV : But what is the difference between an attitude and an opinion?

LW 38 The third important context in which Wittgenstein talks about Einstellungen is in connection to the discussion of aspect perception. Wittgenstein uses this term when considering what is involved in seeing a picture as representing something, to contrast seeing with merely knowing or interpreting what it is meant to be: "To me it is an animal pierced by an arrow. II But what is the point Wittgenstein is after?