Tolerance of views you do not agree with.

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I was just pondering this the other day and thought I'd do some philosophising with you guys.

I heard someone on the radio say something to the effect of "I think they are wrong, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion". I hear these kind of statement a lot. I started thinking about how most people seem to hold a lot of convictions, or at least very strong opinions that would be very difficult (if not impossible) to change. These people may also talk about the importance of tolerance, and respecting other people's opinions or beliefs which differ from their own.

Now, the issue I have with this is: Why are these people tolerant of others' views, if they truly believe such views are wrong? Why would you be tolerant and accepting of something that is so clearly (in your mind) wrong?

Or, from another angle: Why are these opinions so strongly held, if the person is also open and accepting of others having different opinions? Wouldn't a tolerant stance, in effect, weaken the conviction?

Personally, I rarely hold convictions, or even strong opinions. I am open to having my ideas challenged, and to change my views on things. So I think, with this in mind, it makes sense for me to be tolerant of other people's views. Because I acknowledge that they might actually be correct. But when it comes to the one or two convictions that I do have, I do honestly believe those who have certain other beliefs are "wrong", and I don't actually have much tolerance for them. I don't generally openly admit this to people, but that is because I'm fairly timid by nature and not comfortable with conflict. Not because I am tolerant and accepting.

Does anyone else agree that tolerating views you genuinely believe are wrong is a bit silly? Like, if someone said they truly believed unicorns existed, while you truly believed that that is nonsense. Would you be accepting of this person's belief? Would you tell them it's okay for them to believe in unicorns? Why or why not?

Because, without tolerance, civilisation crumbles.

Just look at Iran vs Iraq, they fought over the interpretation of the same religion.

How many people died pointless deaths because some sociopathic idiots with inferiority complexes and too much testosterone - couldn't just agree to disagree?

Okay, yeah, I see how that works on a grand scale. I guess I never really thought of "agreeing to disagree" as being the same thing as "it's fine for people to have different opinions". I see "agreeing to disagree" as being a state of acknowledging that arguing about it is going nowhere so you have to stop arguing or things will go bad. The view I'm talking about is not even trying to debate it in the first place but just accepting that people believe different things and that that is okay (even if those things are wrong).

I can see the point of trying to argue that unicorns do not exist, but realising the other person is not backing down so you "agree to disagree". But I think it would be worth having the discussion first.


Maybe "tolerate" wasn't the best choice of word. I can't think of a better one though.

Last edited by yellowtamarin on 16 Mar 2013, 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sometimes it is a matter of convenience. Like, if someone strongly believed in unicorns, then it would be night-impossible to convince him otherwise, and thus a waste of time that may lead to arguments and fighting. Believing in unicorns is, in the end, rather harmless, but sometimes the difference in opinions leads to different, conflicting ways to do things, and being tolerant would get more difficult.

In your example, I would probably question that person about his belief, see where it comes from, try to convince him until I either reach a consensus, find a core value we fundamentally disagree in, or give up in his reasoning capabilities. In any of those cases, I can then drop the issue.

EDIT: I started writing this post before you posted yours, and yes, I agree with that.

1) There is such a thing as reciprocity. If I tolerate others, then I can expect others to tolerate me.

2) Belief in the free market of ideas is itsself a creed. If you believe in the free exchange of ideas than you have to tolerate all those imbecils who believe stupid stuff because its a tenet of your creed. Just like you may crave pork but dietary restrictions are a tenet of your religous creed-so you abstain from eating pork.

Nowadays, the concept of tolerance has been perverted. It used to mean you are willing to put up with something you don't like going on. In the modern media, it means you are 100% in favor of the social agendas they are pushing propaganda for, or else you are considered a racist, sexist, homophobe, bigot, 1%, or committing "hate speech" (which has no legal definition in the US).

The concept of tolerance can be examined from several different angles.

The perhaps most famous philosophical writing on tolerance is A Letter Concerning Toleration from 1689 by English philosopher John Locke.

Writing from a Christian perspective, Locke's fundamental message was that salvation could not be achieved by earthly authorities, but only by God, and so it would be pointless to force people to convert to specific religious beliefs.

Of course, Locke's letter also included this nasty passage (which makes the "No atheists in foxholes" argument look like a compliment)
"Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist."

Hmm... Locke should probably read This.

A more recent argument was made by Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartaya Sen, who proposed the Liberal Paradox in 1970.

Essentially, he reached the conclusion that it would not be possible to have a society that was both (1) efficient and (2) based on individual freedom if individuals couldn't mind their own damn business.

And so they are. But people are not entitled to their own facts.

ruveyn

Well said.

What about the sectarian terrorist attacks that occur most days in Pakistan and Iraq?

Thing is, for most Westerners, there looks very, very little difference between Sunni and Shia, especially when it comes to individual freedom.

Oh, there's a big difference between Sunni & Shia. Who's Mohammad's true heir, the Caliphs or Mohammad's descendants? Who guides Muslims? It's just like the Pope/Antipope nonsense. Of course, there are no Caliphs anymore, but you can swap that out with "secular leader" or something.

The sectarian violence is happening because Muslim extremists have no sense of tolerance. What Ichinin was talkin about, what's happening in Pakistan, Afghanistan, frankly all over the Arabic-speaking world, is due to an absence of tolerance. Western society, as it is now, was built on hundreds of years of humanist tradition. The Middle East is what happens when you build your society on a religion.

It was just one example. I could go on with Northern Ireland, North/South Korea, Burundi and other places where people hate and kill eachother because some antisocial dickhead wants/claims power.

"tolerance" to me means "failure to actively protest or resist".

every one views the world from a different angle, and that is also literally true.
i know you are talking about opinions and attitudes, but they can be figuratively compared with visual view points.

i once had an electric jolt of a realization when i was 19 as i was driving over the sydney harbour bridge when i realized that never in my life would anyone else ever see the world from my point of view. people heading in the opposite direction had different things in their view field than i did. i was thinking in a visual sense, and i suddenly realized that no one's eyes would ever be in the exact same place as my eyes and looking at the exact same thing from my perspective at any point in my life. i realized that whoever i would ever talk to in my whole life would not see the exact same thing as i was seeing as i spoke to them. that caused me major confusion and it was the closest i ever came to a mental breakdown.

i tried to resolve this problem by thinking about having my head placed next to another persons head and pointing at a distant object like e.g: "the third window from the left hand side of the top floor in a building", but even then i realized that due to the parallax effect, even those few inches of difference from our focal points would mean we would not see precisely the same thing.

then i extended my idea to pointing at a distant star where the parallax effect would not be perceptible by either of us if we suddenly exchanged viewpoints, and i realized (thereby amplifying my confusion) that their idea of what they were looking at would certainly not be an exact replica of my own idea because they would have lived a different life than me, and moreover, they would have lived their different lives with different brains than i have.

my feeling of utterly desolate intellectual isolation that sprang from my jolt of realization as i drove over the bridge eroded over time, and my quandary was never solved by any enlightened solution, and it was from that time i lost my faith in ever really being in the same place mentally as anyone else.

time has worn the jagged peaks of my serious disappointment down to simple bulbous mounds of indifference, and now i do not even consider the motives of people who have vastly different views than me. i still recognize views i agree with, but i do not internalize them or spend much time celebrating them.

_____________________

on a more superficial level, i can say that there is no use in protesting about attitudes that i do not agree with because those attitudes are locked in brains that are contained within skulls that i have no x-ray vision to penetrate.
there are 7 billion voices declaring 7 billion attitudes, and all those voices in unison simply equate to white noise.

when i listen to the cheers and other vocal utterances from a crowd of 50,000 football fans who all vie to shout over everyone else to be heard in their hysterical eminences, i hear the futility of their attempts to be heard singularly over the rest of the crowd, and it sounds like pink or white noise to me.

too many colors blended together makes only a shade of grey.

if every one on earth was told to shout their most important beliefs at a predetermined moment, then when that moment came, all one would hear is a deafening "shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" which is kind of ironic.

Being tolerant of a different view is NOT about agreeing with the view itself. It's about recognizing that others don't think the same way that you do. That others have opinions that are not the same as yours. Moreover, it's a matter of principal. If you wouldn't want to be attacked or silenced for expressing your own opinion, then in good conscience, how can you fail to respect the right of someone else to express their view?

Yup - sometimes it's to do with religion, sometimes it's not.

Wether or not I'm tolerant of a belief, and the level of tolerance/intolerance I have, depends on how at odds said belief is with my own convictions, and how bound and determined the other person in on carrying out those beliefs.

I could tolerate someone who believed in unicorns. It is not what I believe, and I don't understand why someone would believe such a thing, but it's not really at odds with anything I hold near and dear.

However if there was someone who believed that there was nothing wrong with, to use an extreme example, torturing children to death, and was bound and determined to act on that belief, I would oppose them, violently if necessary.

Not every belief should be tolerated.

If someone announces that they hold a belief contrary to mine, then barring exhaustion, suspicion of baiting, or past experiences proving discussion futile, I will generally at least debate with them.