In today’s episode of the Telos Press Podcast, David Pan talks with Tomáš Sobek about his article “Tolerance as Suppressed Disapproval,” from Telos 199 (Summer 2022). An excerpt of the article appears here. In their conversation they discuss the difference between a moral norm and tolerance as well as the consequences of this difference for understanding tolerance; tolerance as a second-order attitude that involves a suppression of disapproval; how excessive tolerance can be wrong; the difference between positive and negative liberalism; and whether negative liberalism is opposed to or destructive of moral norms. If your university has an online subscription to Telos, you can read the full article at the Telos Online website. For non-subscribers, learn how your university can begin a subscription to Telos at our library recommendation page. Print copies of Telos 199 are available for purchase in our online store.
Tolerance as Suppressed Disapproval
Tomáš Sobek
In this text, I am going to deal with the concept of tolerance. This concept plays a central role in the tradition of liberal thinking. But it is used in literature rather loosely, which has the potential to cause misunderstandings. I will work within the semantic framework of expressivism. I’m not saying that this particular metaethical theory is necessary to understand the concept of tolerance. The main thesis of my text is that tolerance is a second-order attitude. To tolerate X means to suppress one’s own disapproval of X. This thesis is metaethically neutral. The reader can accept it no matter what metaethical theory he holds. Even a moral realist, moral error theorist, or moral constructivist can admit that tolerance is suppressed disapproval. However, expressivism is very suitable for my purpose because it analyzes the meanings of moral sentences in terms of practical attitudes. This semantic framework helps me to test my language intuitions about the concept of tolerance.
Tolerance can be understood as a practical attitude but also as a virtue. To understand tolerance means to understand the function that it fulfills in moral thinking and moral practice. People need to look for the right balance between strict and benevolent attitudes to an action that they condemn as wrong. If someone considers X undesirable, he has a choice to either tolerate X or not to tolerate it. Tolerance is based on the ability of an individual to self-control, to endure, and to forbear. I think that tolerance is a second-order attitude. To tolerate X means to suppress one’s own negative attitude to X. Some authors who write about expressivism assume (by stipulation) that tolerance of X is inconsistent with disapproval of X. If they are right, then the sentences of the type “X is wrong, but I tolerate X” can be interpreted as instances of the so-called Moore’s paradox. But these sentences are perfectly coherent. My approach has a surprising and maybe counterintuitive consequence. We usually say that tolerance is a liberal virtue. However, my analysis of the concept of tolerance shows that substantive liberal thinking provides a rather narrow space for tolerance. This paradoxical consequence can be resolved by distinguishing positive and negative liberalism. You can be a liberal person by virtue of your liberal views and/or by virtue of your tolerance.
Expressivism and Moore’s Paradox
Expressivism is a metaethical theory based on the thesis that the main semantic function of moral utterances is not the representation of moral facts but rather the expression of mental states. So, e.g., a speaker by the claim “abortion is wrong” does not describe the state of affairs that abortion is wrong but rather expresses his negative attitude to abortion. The speaker expresses his moral disapproval of abortion. Expressivists traditionally think that the mental states that we express by using moral sentences have a different nature than mental states that we express by using ordinary descriptive sentences. The speaker by the claim “it is raining” expresses his belief that it is raining. Descriptive beliefs as cognitive states have a function to represent facts of the external world. If they are true, they represent the world as it really is. As opposed to that, a negative attitude to abortion is a practical (conative, affective, noncognitive, motivational, desire-like) attitude. If someone disapproves of abortion, then his or her negative attitude motivates him or her not to undergo an abortion (pregnant woman), not to carry out an abortion (physician), not to encourage others to undergo abortions, and also to criticize abortion, to engage in a political fight against abortion, and so on.
Expressivists claim that speakers do not use moral sentences primarily to describe the world but rather to express their practical attitudes. Persons communicate their practical attitudes to one another, which allows them mutual coordination and sharing of their life plans.[1] If expressivists are right, then we can expect that competent language users are sensitive to the fact that moral utterances serve as expressions of practical attitudes.[2] But Jack Woods formulated a very interesting argument against expressivism that is based on Moore’s paradox. The claim “It is raining, but I don’t believe it” is logically consistent. It is logically possible that it is raining and at the same time the speaker believes that it is not. However, this claim is incoherent in a different way. The speaker by the claim “It is raining” expresses the belief that it is raining. He implicitly commits himself to this belief.[3] And thus it is absurd if someone says “It is raining, but I don’t believe it.” The addressees of the utterance are then confused about what is actually asserted.
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1. Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 68–69; Alan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), p. 72.
2. Sarah Z. Raskoff argues that this presumption is false. See Sarah Z. Raskoff, “Getting Expressivism Out of the Woods,” Ergo 5, no. 36 (2018): 947–69.
3. Jack Woods, “A Commitment-Theoretic Account of Moore’s Paradox,” in Pragmatics, Truth and Underspecification, ed. Ken P. Turner and Laurence K. Horn (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 326–27.
