On "Tolerance"
Offline In the following writing, I intend to show what appears to be a serious flaw in just one frequent articulation of what some in the past have meant by the word "tolerance". I've not seen it used egregiously in these forums, but modern (rather postmodern) construals of the term appear regularly in popular rejoinders to more conservative initiatives in social theory.
Consider the following proposals:
1) It is better to impose a moral view upon society even if it is done so involuntarily against some of its members who may disagree with the view in question.
To counter an alternative:
2) It is better to not impose a moral view upon others involuntarily precisely because they may not hold to that view as true.
I argue that in any case, proposition (1) must win out. If there should arise a disagreement between proponents of each view, those of the second should give in to the first, since it is not within their code of ethics to impose their moral view involuntarily against even their opponents.
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I like the argument, but I have one problem with it - in which types of disagreemen will the former win? In a democratic disagreement, the later could win simply by a greater number of votes.
And this dispute also assumes that "better" is juged by morals. Why not decide based upon logistics?
From Alan
FTT Website Designer
Hi, Alan. =)
Wherever these two options are the only available alternatives. Yet it seems one must either believe that there are occasions when some moral viewpoint ought to be imposed upon society even if it is done so against some of its members who may disagree with that view, or that there is no occasion in which imposing a moral viewpoint upon an unwilling people is justified. I'm not confident there's any real middle ground.
Understood, but "winning" even by democratic process merely pushes the question one step further, since it is said to simply award one group the legal sanction to impose their view upon their opponents, and so it still remains that option (2) in this case is not a defensible position to take. I'd hardly expect many members in this forum to agree that outlawing same-sex unions on the basis of majority vote is an acceptable outcome, but the only way one could protest that would be by abandoning a very common yet faulty concept of "tolerance".
I'm not too clear on what you mean by logistics; do you mean mere efficiency or social/political expediency?
At any rate, I'm not sure how changing the standard by which one assesses the value of some thing is going to make much difference in the outcome of this argument. We can substitute whatever rule of measure you'd like to conduct our value assessments, but however one wishes to ground what makes a thing a "better" option, it still remains that option (2) as a matter of logical consequence will lack the philosophical backbone to withstand opposition. If you agree with me that ineffectual approaches to implementing social policy are undesirable, this should suffice to secure the claim that (2) as a definition of "tolerance" is better avoided than embraced as a viable alternative.