This is a good question, Henry, and while I thank you for it, I am not sure of the answer, though 'fallacy of accident' is in the ball park as I explain below. You don't tell me what you mean by 'civic tolerance,' or how the principle of civic tolerance should read, and without a statement of the principle, it is hard to have a disciplined discussion. So let me extract a principle from the following UNESCO paragraph:
Tolerance is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication, and freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Tolerance is harmony in difference. It is not only a moral duty, it is also a political and legal requirement. Tolerance, the virtue that makes peace possible, contributes to the replacement of the culture of war by a culture of peace.
PT. It is morally obligatory, and ought everywhere to be legally obligatory, that everyone respect, accept, and appreciate the diversity of the world's cultures, forms of expression, and ways of being human.
No doubt there are other, and better, ways of formulating a principle of toleration, but (PT) seems close to what many if not most mean by the principle nowadays.
You speak of the 'consistent' application of some such principle as (PT). By that you mean the application of the principle to all cases without exception. You perceive, as I do, that a consistent application of (PT) and like principles would lead to disaster. For then Jews would be morally obliged to tolerate the false beliefs and murderous practices of Muslim fanatics whose repeatedly stated aim is to wipe them off the face of the earth. They would have to tolerate, accept, respect, and appreciate (!) a "way of being human" that is inhuman and incompatible with their very existence. Similar obnoxious consequences can be generated ad libitum.
The framers of the UNESCO document will of course not draw these morally obnoxious conclusions. But then they simply fail to perceive the logical consequences of their own logically inept statement. It is obvious to me and to you that a toleration worth having and promoting is a toleration subject to certain limitations. Surely, one cannot and must not tolerate those who refuse to accept some suitably formulated version of the good old classically liberal principle of toleration. One must act intolerantly toward them. Perpetrators of terrorist acts, for example, should be apprehended, tried, convicted, and incarcerated if not executed. Such intolerance is necessary so that a political climate can be maintained in which a tolerance worth having can flourish. So if you really value toleration, you must be prepared to be intolerant on occasion.
Further down in the document we read that ". . . one's views are not to
be imposed on others." But then one's views about the moral and legal obligatoriness of toleration ought not be imposed on others. In particular, the classically liberal views of the West concerning the importance and value of toleration ought not be imposed on illiberal Muslim societies. And yet we do condemn the "ways of being human" in these societies, as articulated in Sharia. By what right do we do this if all must be tolerated? Clearly, the UNESCO framers do think they have the right to impose some views on others. So even they recognize, however dimly and implicitly, that there must be some limits on toleration.
It is worth dwelling on the logical ineptitude of ". . . one's views are not to be imposed on others." This is an example of self-vitiating sentential self-reference. For if one's view are not to be imposed on others, then the very view that one's views are not to be imposed on others is not to be imposed on others. It follows that one must tolerate, and is in no position to oppose, those who maintain the view that some views are to be imposed on others.
The truth of the matter is that those who value toleration and are serious about it must legally enforce it, and this means using the power of the State, or of some international body, against those who would destroy the political climate within which alone toleration can flourish. Thus the authorities at Emory University should have dealt harshly with those who shouted down David Horowitz recently, and would have, had they not abdicated their authority. A toleration rightly understood, a toleration worth promoting, does not extend to the toleration of intolerant thugs who, taking the name of free speech in vain, violate the free speech rights of others.
There is a sort of incoherence in (PT), though its exact nature is hard to describe. (PT) implies that we are morally obliged to tolerate those who would put us to the sword for being infidels; but it also implies that the jihadis are morally obliged to tolerate us and our resistance to being put to the sword. But I don't have a handy label for this mode of incoherence.
The main thing, though, is that toleration, though a high value, has limits, and one is a damned fool if one doesn't appreciate this fact. Indeed one can accuse the one who fails to appreciate this of having committed the fallacy of accident. One commits this fallacy if one applies a general rule to cases whose special features render the rule inapplicable.
So maybe 'fallacy of accident' answers your question.
What you really seem to object to is not the principle itself but that the principle is not applied uniformly in practice. If it ought to be legally obligatory to be tolerant, then Muslim intolerance ought to be illegal. Yet in practice this consequence is ignored by the people who seem most enamored of the principle.
Rather than any sort of fallacy, I think that this just another example of leftist mendacity. Their own true principles are so corrupt and immoral that they cannot say them honestly. So instead they endorse genuinely good principles but twist them to evil ends. The idea that women should be treated equally under the law is a good principle, but this has been twisted to allow women to commit infanticide in the form of partial-birth abortion. The principle of helping the poor is a good principle, but this has been twisted to allow the state to take one man's property at gun point and give it to another man. The principle of racial equality is a good principle but it has been twisted into state-enforce special privileges for one race over another.
I think that PT, or something every close to it, is a good principle as long as it is not twisted by leftists in order to further their own immoral ends.
Of course I am for toleration (tolerance) properly understood, but I am definitely against (PT) and like principles. Henry is right to suspect some sort of mistake in the reasoning behind (PT), a recurrent sort of mistake, and one that deserves an identificatory label. I suggest that it is the fallacy of accident. There are principles that are sound when applied to most cases, but not when extended to all.
"Respect the right to free speech!" That's a good rough and ready principle, but it is obviously open to exceptions, which would have to be listed in a proper formulation. You have no right to free speech in a situation in which your speech consists in shouting down a scheduled speaker who is legitimately exercising his right to free speech.
Distinguish the spirit and the letter of (PT). I think we agree about the spirt, but my point has to do with the letter, i.e., the exact formulation. As formulated, (PT) is a disaster and is self-defeating.
Bill,
Thank you for spending the time to compose that well-considered answer to my question. You have captured exactly my perception of the problem, in particular the logical aspect of it. I did not have a specific definition of civic tolerance in mind, but the UN definition illustrates the problem very well. There seems to be an inability on the part of many to conceptualize how there might be limits to these sorts of principle, I imagine because to allow for limits would seem to be admitting that the principle is not absolute.
I would like to say a bit more, but I am still thinking about how to say it. Also, my comment account seems to have been disabled, probably because a cookie or something got lost when I did a security overhaul of my computer recently.
The inapplicability of PT stems from PT itself. It’s too inclusive, and this is the heart of Mr. Verheggen’s concern. For instance: PT and a Sharia-abiding Muslim cannot co-exist since the Sharia, by definition, is exclusive. Sharia boils down to doctrine, and Islamic doctrine is essentially exclusive; e.g. the doctrine Allah is the only God excludes Vishnu, Ahura-Mazda, and any other deity. Once PT is applied its application would include exclusivist doctrines, doctrines that would ultimately use PT to undermine PT. Thus, if PT were applied down to the letter its applicability could undermine itself, hence the fallacy of accident. This also applies to your example on freedom. If freedom were a principle towards “anything goes…” that would include the freedom to negate freedom. Enough said.
I agree that the Lefties take good principles, pluck them from context, sling them down and dance upon them. However, that stems from misunderstanding of the principles not the principles themselves. I’ll save that for another discussion.
sincerely, MP
couldn't one relate PT to the Retorsion discussions you were having some time back? That is, isn't "you must not impose your views on others" logically coherent but performatively incoherent, in that one cannot assert it as a moral principle without breaking the moral principle it asserts?
Michael,
Good comment. Consider this formulation
1. No view may be imposed on others.
Since (1) is a 'view,' it follows that (1) may not be imposed on others. So (1) is an example of a self-vitiating proposition to use a term I employed in an earlier recent post. It is not self-refuting -- its truth does not entail its falsehood -- but it is self-weakening. But it is not clear to me that it involves a performative inconsistency as does
2. I am not thinking now.
The thoughr expressed by (2) cannot be performed or enacted consistently with (2)'s being true. But it doesn't follow that (2) is false or self-contradictory. Same with
3. I do not exist.
Any tokening of (3) is inconsistent with (3)'s truth; but it does not follow that (3) is false or self-contradictory.
I agree with your response to Dave.