A Community of Inquirers
In this lightly-moderated blog anyone can post their observations on any issue amenable to rational discourse, these in turn are open to comment from anyone who cares to intervene:
For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson
Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: DO NOT BLOCK THE WAY OF INQUIRY.
Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations… yet there is no positive sin against logic in trying any theory which may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown themselves the most addicted.
C.S. Peirce. First Rule of Logic (1899).
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Nor will opinions contrary to those commonly received be suppressed:
In America the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Inside those limits, the writer is free; but unhappiness awaits him if he dares to leave them.
Alexis De Tocqueville
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still…
The worst offence of this kind which can be committed by a polemic, is to stigmatize those who hold the contrary opinion as bad and immoral men. To calumny of this sort, those who hold any unpopular opinion are peculiarly exposed…
John Stuart Mill. On Liberty, Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.
Qu’est-ce que la tolérance? C’est l’apanage de l’humanité. Nous sommes tous pétris de faiblesses et d’erreurs; pardonnons-nous réciproquement nos sottises, c’est la première loi de la nature.
(What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly, that is the first law of nature.)
Voltaire. Dictionnaire Philosophique.
However, intolerance will be shown to argumentum ad personam 1 attacks, and “noise” filters will be applied to vacuous posts!
NOTES:
Argumentum ad personam:
The Ultimate Stratagem (XXXVIII). A last trick is to become personal, insulting, rude, as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand, and that you are going to come off worst. It consists in passing from the subject of dispute, as from a lost game, to the disputant himself, and in some way attacking his person. It may be called the argumentum ad personam, to distinguish it from the argumentum ad hominem, which passes from the objective discussion of the subject pure and simple to the statements or admissions which your opponent has made in regard to it. But in becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack to his person, by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. It is an appeal from the virtues of the intellect to the virtues of the body, or to mere animalism. This is a very popular trick, because every one is able to carry it into effect; and so it is of frequent application.
Arthur Schopenhauer. Die Kunst, Recht zu behalten – The Art Of Controversy.