Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
14 - Mill and Milquetoast
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Semantic analyses for dyadic deontic logic
- 2 A problem about permission
- 3 Reply to McMichael
- 4 Why ain'cha rich?
- 5 Desire as belief
- 6 Desire as belief II
- 7 Dispositional theories of value
- 8 The trap's dilemma
- 9 Evil for freedom's sake?
- 10 Do we believe in penal substitution?
- 11 Convention: Reply to Jamieson
- 12 Meaning without use: Reply to Hawthorne
- 13 Illusory innocence?
- 14 Mill and Milquetoast
- 15 Academic appointments: Why ignore the advantage of being right?
- 16 Devil's bargains and the real world
- 17 Buy like a MADman, use like a NUT
- 18 The punishment that leaves something to chance
- 19 Scriven on human unpredictability (with Jane S. Richardson)
- Index
Summary
TOLERATION
We are fortunate to live under institutions of toleration. Opinions that many of us deem false and pernicious are nevertheless held, and even imparted to others, with impunity. This is so in part because we hold legal rights to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Not only do these legal rights exist; they enjoy widespread support. Any effort to revoke them would be widely opposed. Those whose opinions were threatened with suppression would find many allies, even among those who most deplored their opinions.
But legal rights are far from the whole story. The institutions of toleration are in large part informal, a matter not of law but of custom, habits of conduct and thought. Even when the law lets us do as we like, many of us do not like to do anything that would make people suffer for the opinions they hold, or hinder their expression of their opinions. We may choose our friends and our casual acquaintances as we please, and we are certainly free to shun those whose opinions we find objectionable; but many of us exercise this freedom half-heartedly, or with a bad conscience, or not at all. An editor or a bookseller has plenty of discretion to assist in the spreading of some opinions and not others, and might weigh many different considerations in deciding what to publish or what to sell; but might very well think it wrong to give any weight at all to whether an author's opinions are true or false, beneficial or dangerous.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy , pp. 159 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999