Some pacifists really do believe that violence should be avoided absolutely, even as a last resort. And that doesn’t even seem to be a paradox, just a strategy with an extreme weakness.
I think the ‘paradox of tolerance’ really is a paradox given that it’s not obvious, for anyone abiding by the principle, how tolerant they should be of intolerance. Of course, any given non-absolute degree or ‘distribution’ of tolerance could be ‘self-consistent’ so it’s not an unavoidable ‘gotcha’ by any means. But the simplest, most literal forms do definitely seem to be paradoxical, unless it’s interpreted entirely personally, e.g. ‘I should tolerate everything and anything.’.
My favorite example – which I think is, in a sense, paradoxical – is the precautionary principle. It’s definitely not obvious that it shouldn’t apply to people adopting the principle itself and, in fact, doing so is one reason why I reject it as a principle. It seems obvious to me that the superior principle is to ‘make the best decisions one can given the information, and attendant uncertainty, available’.
Generally, I suspect that if the above principles, and similar ones, are ‘sharpened’ by modifying them to “integrate critical rejection”, one would arrive at an entirely different (and more sophisticated) principle like, e.g. ‘make the best decisions one can’.
The paradox of unlimited tolerance is that it has unacceptable consequences in allowing the destruction of a tolerant society; same for pacifism if the grounding principles for it are valuing human life and preferring positive-sum outcomes instead of just non-violence being an end in itself.
There obviously can be and are many people arguing for absolute principles (often in bad faith, since they don’t actually hold the principles themselves), which is what makes it so topical.
I agree, on the object level, that principles often are ‘true’ or valuable but with justified exceptions.
But I don’t understand why the best response isn’t just ‘There are justified exceptions to those principles.‘, or ‘I don’t hold that principle to be true or valuable absolutely.’.
I don’t think they’re fallacies.
Some pacifists really do believe that violence should be avoided absolutely, even as a last resort. And that doesn’t even seem to be a paradox, just a strategy with an extreme weakness.
I think the ‘paradox of tolerance’ really is a paradox given that it’s not obvious, for anyone abiding by the principle, how tolerant they should be of intolerance. Of course, any given non-absolute degree or ‘distribution’ of tolerance could be ‘self-consistent’ so it’s not an unavoidable ‘gotcha’ by any means. But the simplest, most literal forms do definitely seem to be paradoxical, unless it’s interpreted entirely personally, e.g. ‘I should tolerate everything and anything.’.
My favorite example – which I think is, in a sense, paradoxical – is the precautionary principle. It’s definitely not obvious that it shouldn’t apply to people adopting the principle itself and, in fact, doing so is one reason why I reject it as a principle. It seems obvious to me that the superior principle is to ‘make the best decisions one can given the information, and attendant uncertainty, available’.
Generally, I suspect that if the above principles, and similar ones, are ‘sharpened’ by modifying them to “integrate critical rejection”, one would arrive at an entirely different (and more sophisticated) principle like, e.g. ‘make the best decisions one can’.
The paradox of unlimited tolerance is that it has unacceptable consequences in allowing the destruction of a tolerant society; same for pacifism if the grounding principles for it are valuing human life and preferring positive-sum outcomes instead of just non-violence being an end in itself.
There obviously can be and are many people arguing for absolute principles (often in bad faith, since they don’t actually hold the principles themselves), which is what makes it so topical.
I agree, on the object level, that principles often are ‘true’ or valuable but with justified exceptions.
But I don’t understand why the best response isn’t just ‘There are justified exceptions to those principles.‘, or ‘I don’t hold that principle to be true or valuable absolutely.’.