The trouble with toleration

I've been thinking about toleration for a little while now. Aside from looking very strange when written down, it's an odd concept, and I'm not sure what it entails to be tolerant of something. I can imagine two ways of looking at toleration, and I suspect my list is not exhaustive.

I've got this book on skepticism from Savanarola to Bayle, with some discussion on contemporary issues closing the text. The latter figure is introduced as the "father" of toleration. Bayle is also portrayed as a super-skeptic, doubtful of all knowledge claims, no matter how they are justified.

* I admit to an unwholesome love of puns, and while I try to contain myself, some are irresistable. When this occurs, I say, why stop when you're Savanarola.

Popkin (the author of the book) claims Bayle believed that reason contained the seeds of its own demise, as supposedly self-evident propositions are in fact contradictory. It is hard to ascertain if this is in fact the case; Bayle was certainly some sort of skeptic, but the examples that Popkin draws on are firmly entrenched in Catholic theology, which suggests that Bayle may have simply been either criticizing the Church or attempting to use skepticism to clear the way for faith. Bayle's own faith was similarly unusual; while Bayle professed faith, he also thought that faith ran counter to reason. In general, Bayle is a enigmatic figure; to quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "According to just the twentieth-century interpretations, Bayle might have been a positivist, an atheist, a deist, a skeptic, a fideist, a Socinian, a liberal Calvinist, a conservative Calvinist, a libertine, a Judaizing Christian, a Judeo-Christian, or even a secret Jew, a Manichean, an existentialist."

Unquestionably, Bayle spent a lot of time on the topic of toleration. His thoughts on the subject are influenced by his (perhaps tenuous) skepticism. I'll take Popkin's reading of Bayle as given for a moment. Bayle's skepticism entails that we can never be certain of the truth of our beliefs, be they informed by reason or revelation. This means that we must accept that we might be wrong about any and all issues and that we cannot determine the truth of the beliefs of others. In turn, this suggests that we ought to allow individual liberty of conscience in all areas, since everyone else is (in some sense) just as likely to be right as I am.

I think it's fair to identify toleration with Bayle's fallibilism - the idea that we always might be wrong. I don't think that you need to be a skeptic to get this sort of toleration, although I might be wrong. If we list certainty as a necessary condition of knowledge, and we take certainty to mean that a doubt about a given proposition is impossible, then I'd be wrong. However, I don't feel pressed to adopt this account of knowledge. I tend to think that certainty entails only that we do not doubt a given proposition, not that doubt is impossible. This is something like Dretske's relevant alternatives approach; I simply need to overcome those doubts that are relevant to the particular claim, rather than all possible doubts. This means that I can say that I know that p, where p is any proposition, even if I haven't ruled out all possible not-p's, since not all not-p's will be relevant. I can also admit that there might be relevant possibilities that I have mistakenly overlooked. This means I can have both certainty (of a sort) and fallibilism.

However, this account of toleration is missing something. Consider this scenario: you are babysitting for Alice and Bob, the neighborhood brats. Alice has gotten into the pantry and gorged herself on cookies, while Bob has decided to overturn all of the furniture in his bedroom. You've done all you can to control them (this is ex hypothesi), and you've had enough. You call Alice and Bob into the room, and, restraining your temper, say, "I've had about all I can tolerate from you two. I want you to clean up your rooms and go to bed." In this case, the first sentence doesn't mean you are no longer admitting the possibility that you are in error. It means that you aren't going to put up with them any longer.

A good example of this sort of toleration is from South Park. In one episode, entitled "The Death Camp of Tolerance", Mr. Garrison attempts to get fired from his teaching job by emphasizing his homosexuality. He brings in a new TA, Mr. Slave, and in general acts in a manner unbecoming of a schoolteacher. However, rather than fire him, he is offered an award for his courage in coming out of the closet and being open about his sexuality. This upsets him, and at the awards ceremony he loses his cool and declares that tolerating something doesn't mean you have to like it, just put up with it.

There's something to this view. Obviously, this account of toleration and its predecessor aren't mutually exclusive, but they do suggest a different focus. In some cases, someone committed to one account might wind up taking a different course of action than a counterpart committed to the other account. Merriam-Webster lists both, or at least lists something close to both.

It seems to me that toleration is a virtue for members of an open, liberal, pluralist society (or for those who want to live in such a society). I'm not sure how to discern which account better approximates the sort of toleration that we want, although both are probably acceptable. I think, though, it's worth examining what both accounts entail about how we treat others.

One concern which should be dismissed is a supposed contradiction between toleration and dismissing the views of others. I've been told that I am inconsistent when I claim to be tolerant but yet I dismiss fascism out of hand as a system of government. However, neither account of toleration requires me to be tolerant of all possible positions. In the first case, fallibilism, I can admit that I might be wrong without admitting that you might be right, except of course in the special case where there are only two possible positions on a given question. These cases are, I think, rare and also uninteresting. The second account does not require me to put up with everything in order to be tolerant, although it would probably be fair to say that I am intolerant of things I don't put up with. That is, returning to our example, someone who is committed to the second view of toleration exclusively and who refuses to countenance fascism is being intolerant of fascism, but that does not entail that he is intolerant (in general).

If we make this move, we're going to want some criterion for our toleration. It seems to me that if we let the decision of what to tolerate be arbitrary, we really don't have toleration at all. I'd tentatively suggest a criterion like this: we tolerate all and only views that are themselves tolerant under this criterion. Aside from indulging my love of recursion, this criterion lets us exclude both intolerant views and views that tolerate everything. That seems worthwhile, since it lets us avoid charges of relativism.

I want to make it very clear that I'm speaking of toleration as it relates to individuals. There is a genuinely thorny issue when we move to enshrine toleration as a value for society - obviously, in an open society, toleration is to be desired, but it seems like it might go beyond the legitimate bounds of government to make this sort of move. It's perfectly legitimate for me to, say, prevent a fascist from commenting in this blog; he can always get his own and say whatever he wants. It would be unacceptable for the government to do the same. It's possible that you might be able to avoid this issue with a criterion like the one above, but I'm still hesistant.

It seems that the first account of toleration is more useful than the second; it better handles the charge of inconsistency, and I suspect that it engenders a healthy skepticism. Of course, I might be wrong.