“Evidence against the Holocaust is being suppressed[1]. Therefore people’s belief in the Holocaust is unreliable. And so we cannot justify suppressing Holocaust denial by appealing to the (alleged) fact of the Holocaust having occurred.”
Something is wrong here, it seems to me. Not with the conclusion, mind you, the policy proposal, as it were; that part is all right. But the logic feels odd, don’t you think?
I don’t have a full account, yet, of cases like this, but it seems to me that some of the relevant considerations are as follows. Firstly, we previously undertook a comprehensive project (or multiple such) to determine the truth of the matter, which operated under no such restrictions as we now defend, and came to conclusions which cannot be denied. Secondly, we have people whose belief in the facts of the matter come from personal experience, and are not at all contingent on (nor even alterable by) any evidence we may or may not now present. Thirdly, as the question is one of historical fact, no new evidence may be generated; previously unknown but existing evidence may be uncovered, or currently known evidence may be shown to be misleading or fraudulent, but there is (it seems) no question of experimentation, or similar de novo generation of data.[2]
Now, I do not say that these considerations absolutely refute the given logic. But it seems to me that they seriously undermine its force. Here is a situation where (or so it seems!) we may be quite certain of our conclusions, have no reason to expect anything more than the most infinitesimal (for practical purposes, nil) chance for our understanding of the facts to ever change, and thus may suppress the presentation of any alleged evidence against our current view, while maintaining the rational belief that we are not thereby risking some distortion of our grasp of the facts.
I can think of certain counterarguments (and in any case I do not endorse the conclusion suggested by this line of argument, for somewhat-unrelated reasons), but I am curious to see what you make of this.
Full disclosure: I have quite a few family members who survived the Holocaust (and many more, of course, who did not). I am also strongly opposed to laws against Holocaust denial.
Yes, having strong unfiltered evidence for X can justify suppressing evidence against X. But if suppression is already in effect, and someone doesn’t already have unfiltered evidence, I’m not sure where they’d get any. So the share of voters who can justify suppression will decrease over time.
This doesn’t seem quite right to me.
Consider this example:
“Evidence against the Holocaust is being suppressed[1]. Therefore people’s belief in the Holocaust is unreliable. And so we cannot justify suppressing Holocaust denial by appealing to the (alleged) fact of the Holocaust having occurred.”
Something is wrong here, it seems to me. Not with the conclusion, mind you, the policy proposal, as it were; that part is all right. But the logic feels odd, don’t you think?
I don’t have a full account, yet, of cases like this, but it seems to me that some of the relevant considerations are as follows. Firstly, we previously undertook a comprehensive project (or multiple such) to determine the truth of the matter, which operated under no such restrictions as we now defend, and came to conclusions which cannot be denied. Secondly, we have people whose belief in the facts of the matter come from personal experience, and are not at all contingent on (nor even alterable by) any evidence we may or may not now present. Thirdly, as the question is one of historical fact, no new evidence may be generated; previously unknown but existing evidence may be uncovered, or currently known evidence may be shown to be misleading or fraudulent, but there is (it seems) no question of experimentation, or similar de novo generation of data.[2]
Now, I do not say that these considerations absolutely refute the given logic. But it seems to me that they seriously undermine its force. Here is a situation where (or so it seems!) we may be quite certain of our conclusions, have no reason to expect anything more than the most infinitesimal (for practical purposes, nil) chance for our understanding of the facts to ever change, and thus may suppress the presentation of any alleged evidence against our current view, while maintaining the rational belief that we are not thereby risking some distortion of our grasp of the facts.
I can think of certain counterarguments (and in any case I do not endorse the conclusion suggested by this line of argument, for somewhat-unrelated reasons), but I am curious to see what you make of this.
Full disclosure: I have quite a few family members who survived the Holocaust (and many more, of course, who did not). I am also strongly opposed to laws against Holocaust denial.
If you live in parts of Europe, for example, where there are criminal penalties for Holocaust denial.
Barring, perhaps, the invention of time travel, inter-temporal observation, or similar fantastic technologies.
Yes, having strong unfiltered evidence for X can justify suppressing evidence against X. But if suppression is already in effect, and someone doesn’t already have unfiltered evidence, I’m not sure where they’d get any. So the share of voters who can justify suppression will decrease over time.