Do you have to say "I think" when paraphrasing?

@Andrew Van Wagner posted:

I think we must raise taxes.

And we must spend more on health care.

And we must stop invading countries.

Regarding the bold, I would be tempted to paraphrase like this (We "must raise taxes"), since "I think" is implicit in anything that an author writes...it has to be what the author in question thinks. So there are three statements and all three of them (even the ones about health care and invasions) are technically "I think" statements.

Hi, Andrew—If someone has expressed an opinion as an opinion (by saying "I think," "I believe," "In my opinion," etc.), and you are paraphrasing what they have said, then you should paraphrase it as an opinion of his or hers—e.g.:

• Andrew Van Wagner thinks we should raise taxes, increase spending on health care, and cease to invade other countries.

Your opinion that anything anyone writes is nothing but opinion is certainly debateable. The more expertise a person has, and the more scientific the subject matter, the less something that that person says will be mere opinion.

I understand that it's not mere opinion.

My point is that what is the semantic difference on this front between the following three sentences:

I think we must raise taxes.

And we must spend more on health care.

And we must stop invading countries.

Only one is expressed as "I think", but all three are understood to be opinions.

You see "must" and "should" statements ("We must do X!" "We should do Y!") and sometimes these statements have an "I think" appended to them or sometime not, but it's all understood to be opinion.

You can see the statements in my below paraphrase; at least one of them had an "I think" appended to it in the source text so I need to consider changing the paraphrase to relect that:

The fourth big idea is to build a new growth model. Financialization causes slower growth and vice versa too—countries “try to use debt and financial markets as a way to artificially buoy growth, in lieu of a strong economic growth model that would bolster the real economy”. The US “needs a new moonshot goal for economic growth, something that will galvanize the country and create the kinds of productivity gains and innovations that the short-term high of finance never will”; Europe “needs to become a true union” with “a shared fiscal policy and wealth transfers from rich to poor countries”; and China “may be the toughest part of the economic mix in terms of reform”.

The fifth big idea is to change the narrative and empower the makers—we “need to develop a new and more accurate story about the role finance plays in our economy”. We should debate what finance has done wrong, ask what finance can do right, ask how bankers can help business and society, and ask how the markets can start working for all of us. We must understand what happens when finance grows at business’s expense—we should “try to imagine what might happen if it could be put back in service to the economy”.

Every one of those statements in what I just pasted from my piece could be written with "I think" or without "I think"...either way seems to be functionally identical since it's all understood to be opinion...it's all understood to be recommendation.

Where it is understood that what you are paraphrasing is someone's opinion, you do not need to keep reminding your reader that it is the original author's opinion. E.g., if you said, "According to So-and-So," the statement or series of statements following that phrase would be understood to be So-and-so's views.

To clarify, see the below three sentences:

I think we must raise taxes.

And we must spend more on health care.

And we must stop invading countries.

Maybe "I think" applies to all three sentences...in which case I messed up because it's only supposed to apply to the first sentence.

This was how I intended to use the example:

Only one is expressed as "I think", but all three are understood to be opinions.

You see "must" and "should" statements ("We must do X!" "We should do Y!") and sometimes these statements have an "I think" appended to them or sometime not, but it's all understood to be opinion.

Imagine that I wrote this (maybe this is more clear):

I think we must raise taxes. Taxes are important for society and more taxes will help us fund things.

And turning to the different topic of health care, we must spend more on health care.

And turning to the different topic of foreign policy, we must stop invading countries.

Only one is expressed as "I think", but all three are understood to be opinions.

You see "must" and "should" statements ("We must do X!" "We should do Y!") and sometimes these statements have an "I think" appended to them or sometime not, but it's all understood to be opinion.

You keep repeating your question. Maybe you haven't understood my answer.

Let me clarify.

See these three sentences:

I think we must raise taxes because taxes are important for society and more taxes will help us fund things.

And turning to the different topic of health care, we must spend more on health care.

And turning to the different topic of foreign policy, we must stop invading countries.

Clearly only the first sentence is expressed as an opinion, right?

But clearly all three sentences are opinions; they're all in the category of recommendation.

So when paraphrasing do I need to treat the first sentence differently?

Can I just paraphrase like below?

Bob says that we "must raise taxes", that we "spend more on health care", and that we "must stop invading countries"?

This eliminates the "I think" from the equation.

If someone has expressed opinions using "I think," you do not need to use "think" in the paraphrase at all, let alone in every statement to which it applies!

Right; that's what I'm asking.

I thought that maybe I was stepping out of the semantic bounds (and therefore doing an inappropriate and not-OK paraphrase), since I didn't include "I think" in the paraphrase. So that's what was making me nervous.

But then I thought: "Come on; people will use their common sense and recognize that any statement about what we 'must' or 'should' do on the policy front always has an implicit unstated 'I think' attached to it, since it's a policy recommendation, so it's plainly a statement of opinion and not somehow an assertion of fact."

Did you get my comment?

Most people use common sense when reading and writing. Obviously, a bald statement about the way things should be is a statement of opinion—unless you are religious and believe the statement has come from God Himself. Thus, to a Christian, the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is not just God's opinion.

I spoke of "a bald statement of fact" above because human beings are rational and engage in something called argument, wherein reasons are proffered in support of statements in an effort to show that those statements truly reflect the way things are and are not just the opinions of the speaker or writer.

From a grammatical standpoint, you can introduce a series of mere opinions by using, for example, "He thinks/believes/says . . ." followed by a series of "that"-clause complements, subordinated to that matrix verb of opinion. If it is unclear whose statement it is, the reader may assume it is your opinion.

Another way you can introduce a series of opinions with only one clause or phrase of attribution is by using "According to So-and-So. . ." I mentioned this above, but you were so busy repeating your question that you may not have noticed it.

If the person has sought to set his or her opinion above the status of mere opinion by using argumentation, and you feel that reasons that he or she has given for the statement are good enough to raise the opinion into the realm of possible fact, then you say, "So-and-So explains that . . . ."

Even if the argument is bad, you can still say, "So-and-So argues that . . . ."

So you can drop an "I think" during paraphrase? It seems like you can drop the "I think" during paraphrase, given this comment ("Obviously, a bald statement about the way things should be is a statement of opinion") that you made.

I understand how to use "argues" and "explains" and "thinks/believes/says"; I'm curious about whether you can drop "I think" during paraphrase.

I also struggle with the notion "mere" opinion; not sure what the adjective "mere" is supposed to mean...I think that I'm misinterpreting it as something pejorative or diminutive when it's not intended as such.

I guess that a better term might be "unargued opinion"; it's not that there's anything negative about not arguing an opinion (maybe you just lacked time), so it's better than "mere opinion", which sounds like a negative thing.