Hobbes' Choice wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:58 pm
Bias is your opinion, without it you have no opinion at all.
Not true.
Bias means "prejudice" in a particular direction, i.e. "judging without adequate evidence, before the matter can be known." It is not the case that all opinions are mere prejudice. To imagine that would be to imply there's no difference between warranted judgments and unwarranted ones. There may be those whose "opinion" is never more than "bias"; but if so, these are disingenuous people, not reasonable people.
...there is such a thing as a perfectly balanced view...
Nobody who knows anything about epistemology thinks that "perfectly" is attainable outside of a closed system like maths. But it does not follow that if a thing cannot be done "perfectly" it cannot be done "adequately," "fairly," "justly," or "well." One must weigh the "opinion" based on the warrant offered for it.
Meanwhile "balanced" is not a virtue, unless we already know that the issue in question is resolved accurately by balance, not by judgment in favour of one side or another. So we need a balanced" view of how much medicine to give a sick person...proper dosage already being known to be a matter of "balance." But we don't need a "balanced" view of whether or not to smoke while pumping petrol. That's an all-or-nothing question. So the middle is not always the right place.
In short, "bias" is not a necessary feature of belief, nor a reason to disbelieve in any possibility of fair judgments; and the absence of "balance" tells us nothing in some questions.