Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
Yes. Depends on the context.
Objective
/əbˈdʒɛktɪv/
adjective
(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.
So,remove your feelings and provide the facts I’m requesting so we can get to the objective logical endpoint.
Thanks for clarifying.
The Jew is shooting the Nazi because the Jew believes the Nazi is causing harm to the Jew.
The Nazi is shooting the Jew because the Nazi believes the Jew is causing harm to the Nazi.
Is the Nazi causing the Jew harm beyond the Jew’s personal belief?
Is the Jew causing the Nazi harm beyond the Nazi’s personal belief?
I am not sure what exactly you are asking here. I will clarify that these are two separate scenarios: there are a total of four people.
The Nazi is perforating the Jew’s body with a bullet. There is no question that the Jew is suffering injury from the Nazi’s bullet.
The Jew is perforating the Nazi’s body with a bullet. There is no question that the Nazi is suffering injury from the Jew’s bullet.
Yes, I understand the scenario, but the context of intent changes everything.
Let’s agree that it’s all “physical violence” as defined as: they are both physically damaging each other and causing harm.
But depending on the context of intent that “physical violence” breaks down into two more nuanced types of physical violence: Defensive Violence and Offensive Violence.
Defensive Violence can be logically justified, Offensive Violence cannot.
Edit: If I had answered your question as to what is an objective harmful act, I could have been more specific and clarified Offensive Violence.
Generally speaking, I would agree on your characterization of violence.
However, I am required to suspend my own feelings and opinions on these scenarios. I realized that I cannot actually answer your last question. I can objectively state that both the Nazi and the Jew were injured, but I am forbidden from saying whether either injury constitutes “harm”.
I think I can state that the shooter-Nazi believes his force is defensive, while the injured Jew believes that force was offensive.
I think I can state that the shooter-Jew believes his force is defensive, while the injured Nazi believes that same force was offensive.
Correct, which is why the individual opinion has no bearing on whether something is objective, anything experienced by the individual is purely subjective, it is only with the agreeance of an outside impartial observer that anything can be determined as “real”.
So in the given example neither of their opinions are real without external context. We know from history that that context includes Jew’s trying to survive (defensive violence) and Nazi’s trying to kill them (offensive violence) and thus with this external impartial context we can determine that the morality of harm lies in favour of the Jew’s and that the Nazi’s are objectively morally incorrect.
Now for the mud. That can only be said of the cohesive group identities and their aligned moralities. To make the same determination for each individual person you need to understand their individual context.
The social consciousness understands, as you do, violence bad. But they lack the context and nuanced understanding that comes with asking more specific and just as important questions, which is something that you might have been able to pick up here.
Edit: Almost forgot the core point, going back to the original discussion, I think we can now agree that the morality of violence can be objectively determined with adequate context and removed from the opinions of the perpetrators. As such I believe we can most definitely devise a determinate system for the censorship of harm.
I think you just argued that “objective harm” cannot be “real”, as it’s “realness” is subject to the opinion of an outside impartial observer. I don’t think “impartiality” implies “objectivity”.
While I share your opinion that the context of the holocaust should be considered in these scenarios, I believe that we are both expressly prohibited from inserting our opinions on any issue that would affect the “objective” nature of the harm. I do not believe we can “impartially” impose this external context. I believe that when we try, we cannot consider the harm to be “objective”, but subject to our reasoning and opinion on relying on that context.
I think we run into a similar problem evaluating individual context: the initial harm becomes subject to our opinions rather than objective fact.
No, impartiality is the removal of the emotional response and personal bias, you practiced impartiality earlier, and it is key to objectivity.
Objective harm can only exist if an impartial outside observer determines that you are being harmed, this idea is the core of the legal system, which I think is also a good analogy for where I’m losing you. The legal system deals purely in ‘objective truth’; what can be proven, is, and the limitation of this system is that available evidence is not always aligned with ‘universal truth’.
I think that the point where I’m losing you is that you don’t believe we can develop enough of a nuanced understanding to make the determinations necessary to align the two, and for some things you are most certainly correct, that’s called the grey area, the indeterminable, the land of fuzzy logic and educated best guesstimates.
But that ignores all the things we can objectively determine to be censor worthy; harm that people engage in regularly.
This comes back to why I said bigotry is self harm. A bigot is not harmed by an outside source, not harmed by anyone other than their own perceptions. A bigot still feels hate and anguish and suffering due to incorrect perceptions that are backed up by the consensus of other bigots, but are not backed up by objective reality.
Societies tolerance of bigots starts and ends at their own actions. Wanting to harm co-operation is objectively harming the constructual foundation of society, and harmful to the disenfranchised, and objectively morally incorrect and can be censored should enough of society wish to. But that begins a separate discussion on social consciousness and social obligations and their related morality.