Does utilitarianism or any consequentialism for that matter have a set responce and stand in regard to/or not tolerating the intolerant? Is it something that these philosophies have dealt with much in the past? For example, imagine there was a utilitarian controlled country, how would utilitarians deal with a Holocaust denier who wanted to migrate to this imaginary utilitarian country and teach in a university there? Or say a cult that was rabidly homophobic and aggresively trying to proselytize? Is it better to ignore them in the hope that they will eventually become redundant through their own ilogic, or to try and exclude them for fear of them causing greater harm to a wider proportion of the population through their belief and the spreading of it.

Hey RC,

This relates to what I was saying to Meathead in the other thread - (almost) any questions of utilitarian practice are purely empirical questions. If anyone could prove that banning hate speech would make a given situation worse/better then the principle of utility implies that you should ban/not ban as applies.

In the real world, we don't have the luxury of such proof, so we have to make the best use of data we've got. Inevitably this means utilitarians will disagree with each other on certain political issues, but their disagreement is a factual one - and therefore at least one of them is wrong, or at least has omitted an important factor from their reasoning.

If you want to deal with the real world, you can't just have a government that takes the utilitarian action. If you let a government quiet down any opinion it deems harmful, it will quiet people who are radically opposed to the government, then people who are strongly opposed, then people who are visibly opposed, then people who it suspects are opposed...

If you want to talk about what individual people should do, I figure the best course of action would be to try to convince them to be more tolerant. Doubly so if you're a desire utilitarian.

DanielLC wrote:If you want to talk about what individual people should do, I figure the best course of action would be to try to convince them to be more tolerant. Doubly so if you're a desire utilitarian.

Why doubly so? Anyway DU has a nice and simple solution ot the pseudo-paradox of being intolerant of the intolerant.
People have many and strong reasons to encourage an aversion to intolerance. The focus is on this rather than encouraging a desire for tolerance. In principle they are the same but in practise the focus on an aversion of intolerance over a desire for tolerance neatly solves the pseudo-paradox. Discourage each other from being intolerant and condemn those who and those who support or defend those who are. That is it and the pseudo-paradox disappears.

Now given this remember are there situations where the utilitarian calculus dictates to recommend intolerance over tolerance? Well many of the so-called arguments have now disappeared as there is no issue of being unconditionally tolerant (or culturally relative) which can include the problems of how to deal with those intolerant of oneself and even willing to take action over it. Remember in DU the focus is on condemning intolerance which is the same as and consistent with recommending! tolerance! Still does anything remain? Possibly but then must remember not to resort ot act consequentialism. Anyway I still wonder, any thoughts?