Live and Let Live: A Critique of Intellectual Tolerance

Description

Tolerance - desired by many and often demanded: By UNESCO, by the Pope, by Angela Merkel and Barack Obama. But what exactly does it mean to be tolerant? Does tolerance imply rejection? Or is tolerance merely the opposite of dogmatism? And how does a tolerant attitude differ from an indifferent one? Dominik Balg, starting from a well-founded explication of the concept of tolerance, subjects a tolerant attitude as an intellectual attitude toward conflicting opinions to a detailed critique and discusses the plausibility of general tolerance claims in specific domains such as politics, religion, or ethics. He considers possible alternatives to a tolerant attitude and presents with intellectual open-mindedness and humility two substantial attitudes that can be clearly distinguished from a tolerant attitude and - in contrast to tolerance - can also be easily demanded on a general level. - With a foreword by Thomas Grundmann. This book is a translation of the original German 1st edition Leben und leben lassen by Dominik Balg, published by J.B. Metzler, an imprint of Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2020. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors. Foreword Acknowledgements Contents 1: Introduction 2: What Does It Mean to Be Epistemically Tolerant? 2.1 A Conception of Epistemic Tolerance 2.2 Why We Need a Conception of Epistemic Tolerance 3: Tolerance and Relativism 3.1 Truth Relativism 3.2 Epistemic Relativism 4: Should We Be Tolerant? 4.1 Two Dimensions of Epistemic Adequacy 4.2 Is a Tolerant Attitude Epistemically Rational? 4.2.1 The First Argument for the Epistemic Irrationality of a Tolerant Attitude 4.2.2 First-Order Reasons, Second-Order Reasons and Defeaters 4.2.3 The Second Argument for the Epistemic Irrationality of a Tolerant Attitude 4.2.4 The Third Argument for the Epistemic Irrationality of a Tolerant Attitude 4.2.5 Conclusion 4.3 Is a Tolerant Attitude Instrumentally Rational? 4.3.1 The Modification of False Beliefs 4.3.2 The Toleration of Equally Justified Beliefs 4.3.3 Conclusion 5: General Tolerance Requirements 6: Tolerance, Open-Mindedness and Humility 7: Final Evaluation and Outlook Bibliography