The Problems of Motives and Research
Commentary
We live in an age of suspicion to a degree that I don’t remember from my youth—though I admit that my memory is fallible, and I may be mistaken in this. Perhaps we are no more suspicious of the motives of those with whom we disagree than ever we were, and we always thought that those who disagreed with us were not merely wrong, but evil.
Whatever the case may be, it’s now difficult to discuss anything contentious without the discussion swiftly descending into an examination of the motives of the opponents, as if the truth of what anyone said were dependent on his reasons for saying it: reasons which are themselves usually a matter of conjecture rather than of ascertainable truth….