I thought you were going to go the other direction here—one man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.
In other words, if we tolerate Catholics, we should tolerate holders of other opinions that we find equally outrageous and offensive—explicit racists, for instance. Here “tolerate” means something less than “agree with” but more than “refrain from throwing in jail”—it means we should associate with them, offer them jobs they’re otherwise qualified for, etc.
There has to be some mechanism for sharing a society with people whose opinions seem truly horrible to us. We seem to do this naturally when it comes to religion, perhaps because we have a three-hundred-year-old tradition of religious toleration. But toleration more broadly is a difficult thing and it’s not always obvious how far it should be taken.
For instance, for all I said above, I probably would not date someone whose beliefs bothered me (and yes, this includes devout Catholics.)
Anti-discrimination employment law seems to be geared towards preventing institutional discrimination against marginalised groups, rather than preventing individuals from exercising their personal preferences. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to view it as legislation that helps negotiate peace between warring factions of equal status.
I think—correct me if I’m wrong—that outside of anti-discrimination law there’s also a commonly-held notion of voluntary toleration. Being an intolerant person seems to be held to be a bad thing, within certain bounds. We frown on some kinds of intolerant personal preferences—if I refused to ride in an elevator with foreigners, you might think I was pretty creepy. (But what if I refused to ride in an elevator with people who refused to ride in elevators with foreigners?)
I agree its quite clear that tolerance in some form has become a value of most Western societies and its quite easy to argue that citizens that value tolerance to some extent make a society more pleasant to live in and perhaps even more economically successfully.
However like many of our values tolerance on the borders clashes with other values.
There has to be some mechanism for sharing a society with people whose opinions seem truly horrible to us.
This is something very important. Too many people confuse tolerance as meaning being nice to people I like but bother some other misled ignorant soul. Tolerance as something useful to society is being civil and fullfining obligations set down by the social contract with people you don’t like but that otherwise fulfil their obligations.
Voted up for an important topic.
I thought you were going to go the other direction here—one man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens.
In other words, if we tolerate Catholics, we should tolerate holders of other opinions that we find equally outrageous and offensive—explicit racists, for instance. Here “tolerate” means something less than “agree with” but more than “refrain from throwing in jail”—it means we should associate with them, offer them jobs they’re otherwise qualified for, etc.
There has to be some mechanism for sharing a society with people whose opinions seem truly horrible to us. We seem to do this naturally when it comes to religion, perhaps because we have a three-hundred-year-old tradition of religious toleration. But toleration more broadly is a difficult thing and it’s not always obvious how far it should be taken.
For instance, for all I said above, I probably would not date someone whose beliefs bothered me (and yes, this includes devout Catholics.)
Anti-discrimination employment law seems to be geared towards preventing institutional discrimination against marginalised groups, rather than preventing individuals from exercising their personal preferences. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to view it as legislation that helps negotiate peace between warring factions of equal status.
I think—correct me if I’m wrong—that outside of anti-discrimination law there’s also a commonly-held notion of voluntary toleration. Being an intolerant person seems to be held to be a bad thing, within certain bounds. We frown on some kinds of intolerant personal preferences—if I refused to ride in an elevator with foreigners, you might think I was pretty creepy. (But what if I refused to ride in an elevator with people who refused to ride in elevators with foreigners?)
I agree its quite clear that tolerance in some form has become a value of most Western societies and its quite easy to argue that citizens that value tolerance to some extent make a society more pleasant to live in and perhaps even more economically successfully.
However like many of our values tolerance on the borders clashes with other values.
This is something very important. Too many people confuse tolerance as meaning being nice to people I like but bother some other misled ignorant soul. Tolerance as something useful to society is being civil and fullfining obligations set down by the social contract with people you don’t like but that otherwise fulfil their obligations.