People object to a doctrine of acceptance as implying non-action, but this objection is a form of the is-ought error. Accepting that the boat currently has a leak does not imply a commitment to sinking.
It would still be interesting to find the answer to an empirical question whether people accepting that the boat has a leak are more likely or less likely to do something about it.
It seems you could apply this in reverse for non-acceptance as well. Thinking that its not ok for the boat to leak does not imply a belief that the boat is not leaking. (often this is the argument of people who think a doctrine of non-acceptance is implying not seeing clearly).
I’m not familiar with a “doctrine of acceptance”, and a quick search talks only about contract law. Do you have a description of what exactly you’re objecting to? It would be instructive (but probably not doable here, as it’s likely political topics that provide good examples) to dissect the cases that the doctrine comprises. My suspicion is that the formulation as a doctrine is cover for certain positions, rather than being a useful generalization.
To the boat analogy, “acceptance” can mean either “acknowledgement that water is entering the hull”, or one of the contradictory bundles of beliefs “water is entering and that’s OK” or “water is entering and we must do X about it”, with a bunch of different Xs. Beware motte-and-bailey in such arguments.
For political arguments, you also have to factor in that “accept” means “give power to your opponents”. When you find yourself in situations where https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers applies, you need to work on the next level of epistemic agreement (agreeing that you’re looking for cruxes and shared truth agreement on individual points) before you can expect any agreement on object-level statements.
People object to a doctrine of acceptance as implying non-action, but this objection is a form of the is-ought error. Accepting that the boat currently has a leak does not imply a commitment to sinking.
It would still be interesting to find the answer to an empirical question whether people accepting that the boat has a leak are more likely or less likely to do something about it.
It seems you could apply this in reverse for non-acceptance as well. Thinking that its not ok for the boat to leak does not imply a belief that the boat is not leaking. (often this is the argument of people who think a doctrine of non-acceptance is implying not seeing clearly).
I’m not familiar with a “doctrine of acceptance”, and a quick search talks only about contract law. Do you have a description of what exactly you’re objecting to? It would be instructive (but probably not doable here, as it’s likely political topics that provide good examples) to dissect the cases that the doctrine comprises. My suspicion is that the formulation as a doctrine is cover for certain positions, rather than being a useful generalization.
To the boat analogy, “acceptance” can mean either “acknowledgement that water is entering the hull”, or one of the contradictory bundles of beliefs “water is entering and that’s OK” or “water is entering and we must do X about it”, with a bunch of different Xs. Beware motte-and-bailey in such arguments.
For political arguments, you also have to factor in that “accept” means “give power to your opponents”. When you find yourself in situations where https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers applies, you need to work on the next level of epistemic agreement (agreeing that you’re looking for cruxes and shared truth agreement on individual points) before you can expect any agreement on object-level statements.