I tried it recently. It worked. Problem, contrarian in the back row? :troll:

  • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    It's a (supposed) paradox in the following sense:

    1. All viewpoints should be tolerated in society
    2. Intolerant views should be tolerated in society.
    3. If you tolerate intolerant views, sometimes society will collapse into intolerance as those views become prevalent.
    4. Therefore, tolerance is self-undermining.

    This is dumb because (1) is just false. You don't have to give a fancy theoretical reason distinguishing between moral and social facts: just reject the premise.

    • mittens [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is dumb because (1) is just false.

      I'm not an expert on Karl Popper, but the whole point of the paradox is that he was trying to reconcile the supposed western freedoms of expression (the so-called open societies) with the fact that it leads to its own contradiction: free speech with no restrictions leads to people freely expressing their freedom-repressing ideas. Some sort of exception needs to be made so this conceptual framework resists scrutiny. So-called closed societies like Cuba or whatever don't have this issue, indeed, they perform the labor of censor. It's just not a good theory of justice at all.

    • Dolores [love/loves]
      ·
      2 years ago

      but 3 & 4 already problematize absolute tolerance? how does one read through those points and come away with the idea society should be tolerant of nazis? :jesse-wtf:

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I’m so confused because I knew all of this but still don’t understand how that can be used to further anyone’s ideology but ours.

      The whole reason you bring up the paradox of tolerance is to tell liberals “No, we can’t allow the fascists to speak, we need to beat the shit out of them because if you don’t they’ll break everything”

      How do you read this and come away with the conclusion “we must have absolute tolerance”?

      • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The worry is that if you're committed to all those premises, you have to come up with a way to reject the conclusion. That's what this clever move about distinguishing moral problems and social is supposed to be doing.

        The more common liberal move is to reject (3), and say that the best ideas will meeting necessarily win out in the end. This is indicative of an extreme :brainworms: infestation, so at least the argument given in the picture is a little better than that.

        Just being worried about this is a symptom of liberalism, though. You don't need a fancy argument; you can just say that fascist ideas shouldn't be tolerated. The end.