Here’s why you don’t have the right to believe whatever you want

[OLDMAN]

I feel I need to expand on my reply to you, Underseer:

My defense of the "right" to an unsavory belief is wholly on principle. I don't mean for a moment to say that potentially harmful beliefs should be "tolerated" as in "we ought not do anything about it." I don't celebrate false beliefs, or even defend beliefs themselves - only a person's right to hold them.

My difference of opinion with you, or so I believe, lies in exactly what ought to be done about the fact of people holding potentially harmful beliefs.

I am not promoting blind, apathetic tolerance of bad ideas, but tolerance as a civil constraint. I very much support free speech - as a means of promoting good ideas and heaping censure on bad ones.

It's one thing to say that one does not have the right to their beliefs; it's quite another to try and back that up by any kind of practicable legal means.

In case none of this is coming across: I do not approve of someone sticking their fingers in their ears or intentionally blinding themselves to facts any more than you do.

What world do you live on? Most of the people on this planet can and do believe damn near anything they want.....flat earth, flying saucers, three-headed gods, and on and on it goes. Very few of us do not subscribe to beliefs, but a system of determining what appears to be the theory that is best supported by facts.

 

[fromderinside]

Yet, in line with Pinker in "The Ancestors Tale", people where people do change IAC with pressure from elites to adapt, generally, some position other than the one they held on some group issue. Seems to me that there are at least two imperatives at work here. One is that any individual may believe andy damn thing she wishs and that any individual can be moved to bring their beliefs in line with strongly held social values.

Social values it seems are beliefs adopted by te many which may or may not serve common need. I say this to include situations such as that of Hitler's Germany where social values were turned toward specific groups, much like they are being pressured now, toward more selfish purposes lending to state control. Now it is clear there is a relation between one's individual mores and the group's social sense of with what's right.

It is not to say that one cannot believe whatever one wants to believe, one can, it is that to get along one adopts beliefs IAC with pressure from social demand. What one can believe is molded by what one needs to get along.

I'm not sure that such mechanisms are for the general good. Rather one has agency yet one subsumes that agency for some sense that one will be better off if one doesn't make waves.

 

[WAB]

I feel I need to expand on my reply to you, Underseer:

My defense of the "right" to an unsavory belief is wholly on principle. I don't mean for a moment to say that potentially harmful beliefs should be "tolerated" as in "we ought not do anything about it." I don't celebrate false beliefs, or even defend beliefs themselves - only a person's right to hold them.

My difference of opinion with you, or so I believe, lies in exactly what ought to be done about the fact of people holding potentially harmful beliefs.

I am not promoting blind, apathetic tolerance of bad ideas, but tolerance as a civil constraint. I very much support free speech - as a means of promoting good ideas and heaping censure on bad ones.

It's one thing to say that one does not have the right to their beliefs; it's quite another to try and back that up by any kind of practicable legal means.

In case none of this is coming across: I do not approve of someone sticking their fingers in their ears or intentionally blinding themselves to facts any more than you do.

What world do you live on? Most of the people on this planet can and do believe damn near anything they want.....flat earth, flying saucers, three-headed gods, and on and on it goes. Very few of us do not subscribe to beliefs, but a system of determining what appears to be the theory that is best supported by facts.

How is what you wrote very much different than what I wrote? We all have beliefs, can believe whatever we want, and there ain't jack squat anyone can do about it, right?

The OP argues that people DO NOT have the right to believe whatever they want. I argue that they most certainly do. This says nothing, nada, about the content or the value of those beliefs.

 

[Copernicus]

My approach to the OP is similar to that of a few others here--that the expression "I have a right to my belief" should not be taken too literally. It is not a claim of a legal right or even a moral right. Normally, it is just a way of saying that one has no obligation to refute a counterargument, especially when the other person is dominating the discussion unfairly or too obtuse to argue with. It's another way of saying "We'll just have to agree to disagree."

I'm not totally unsympathetic to people who walk away from arguments, particularly when the arguments get repetitious. It isn't just that the person claiming the "right to an opinion" is the unreasonable one. Sometimes it is just impossible to get the other person to listen to one's own side of the argument or to make an honest effort to understand a different point of view.

 

[Lion IRC]

phands has abandoned his Op because his attempt to justify thought control - here of all places - just can't cut it.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité
The liberty referred to here is free will, free thought.

Je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire.
Seriously phands? You're siding with Torquemada over Voltaire?

“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
― Christopher Hitchens

 

[Jobar]

I think DeNicola is saying that beliefs unavoidably shape our actions, and thus wrong beliefs always will lead to wrong actions of some sort. We individuals, and society in general, police deeds, not thoughts, yes. But if it can be shown that some ideas and beliefs are sufficiently poisonous- that some beliefs lead to terrible actions- then it seems society should act to suppress those beliefs.

Beliefs are conscious things. What leads to beliefs may underlie behavior but the relation is neither causal nor onto. So to claim beliefs shape behavior just can't be supported.

Mmm... I agree that beliefs do not *always and unavoidably* shape behavior. But I would say there's a strong tendency for that to happen.

In post 13 I mentioned Germany's laws against expressing support for Nazi policies and ideals. Given the amount of death, destruction, and awfulness which Germany and the whole world suffered as a result of Nazism, I tend to agree with the German lawmakers who put expressing Nazi ideas in the 'shouting fire in a crowded theater' category. IOW I don't support Voltaire's maxim on freedom of expression unreservedly; there are words and ideas so poisonous, so monstrous, that we ought to forbid them if it's in our power.

As always, the real bitch is deciding where we should draw our lines.