3.2 STATIC ATTITUDES

Moralities can be plural, and yet we can remain committed to our own values. What, then, are we to make of those committed to other morali­ties? Gibbard suggests that there are three possibilities: We can strive to ignore them, we can seek to coerce them into accepting our values, or we can endeavor to work out some means of accommodating the differences.

3.2.1 Ignoring

There is a range of situations in which we might want to simply ignore a group with a morality different from our own. Most benign - at least in the short term - are cases in which groups have relatively little to do with one another. Gibbard calls this “isolation,” writing that “groups are isolated on a topic if they can disagree on it without much loss - as they count losses” [1990, p. 235]. Whether this is possible depends on how much and what kinds of interaction groups have with one another. Rela­tions between European nations and China prior to the Opium War (1839-1842) provide an interesting example of isolation. There were certain kinds of interactions between these groups. Narrowly defined commercial transactions took place in restricted areas; a few diplomatic missions were received in Beijing; small numbers of missionaries were allowed to teach and translate. The diplomatic missions were treated pri­marily as curiosities on both sides. European traders were willing to abide by the limits put on their commerce; significant engagement with one another’s values was not necessary.

Isolation, then, is ignoring another group when it is easy to do so. Sometimes it is much harder to ignore another, but it may nonetheless seem like the only choice. Consider two groups, one with dramatically less power than the other. Good examples might be the relations between Americans of the nineteenth century’s westward expansion, on the one hand, and various native American nations, on the other. In some cases the latter tried to settle - often with limited success - for some manner of accommodation with the former’s values. In others cases, though, native Americans sought simply to ignore those with whom they would not accommodate and whom they had not the power to repress. Ignoring was not completely passive, of course; it often involved great costs associated with relocation. In the end, it was not a viable strategy, given the extent of the white men’s ambitions.

The long-term success of ignoring others depends on multiple factors, many of them associated with the dynamics of power, as both of the pre­ceding examples suggest. It may have been the obvious strategy for China prior to the Opium War, but the different fates of China and Japan in the hundred years since then suggest that isolation can turn into more costly ignoring almost without one realizing it.

3.2.2 Repressing

If we do not (or cannot) ignore others, and yet we persist in judging dif­ferently from them, then we must choose whether to attempt repression or to seek some kind of accommodation.

Gibbard argues that “repression is always a bad. It shifts the basis of normative discussion, and it subverts a valuable kind of respect we may have for each other” [1990, p. 237]. Gibbard believes that discussion over moral and other norms normally takes place in an atmosphere free of threats, wherein each participant is free to say whatever he or she would like. When repression is threatened, normative discussion loses this autonomy, which is a cost to all involved. He also maintains that it is “part of our discursive nature” to value respecting others, in the sense of being willing to “treat others in ways they themselves find legitimate” [1990, p. 238].

What should we make of these claims? First, note that Gibbard has not asserted that repression is always wrong, nor that it is always worse than some other, non-repressive alternative. As the example of native Americans showed, people may find that, in certain circumstances, repressing others is their best option. Still, Gibbard insists, repression is never without cost even to the repressors - not to mention the repressees: it “shifts the basis of normative discussion” and “subverts a valuable kind of respect.” The latter claim Gibbard ties explicitly to our “nature” in a way I find problematic.^[48] He takes an unsupported leap from his observation that all humans engage in discussion of norms to the con­clusion that all people must value discussions which “treat others in ways [these others] themselves find legitimate.” This ignores Gibbard’s own insight, discussed in greater detail later, that groups sometimes refuse to accord others the status of potentially competent normative judges.

We cannot conclude from our “natures” that normative discussions ought to be carried out in an atmosphere of egalitarian respect. Gibbard’s assertion that such discussions are “normally” carried on free from threats also deserves closer scrutiny. Coercion comes in many vari­eties. Power imbalances are surely a common feature of normative encounters, and it can often be difficult to disentangle what is voluntary and what is not, what is held illegitimate and what is not. Consider Chinese endeavors to gain access to favorable trading relations with various developed nations. Supposing for a moment that the Chinese can be thought of as a single group and that they have distinctly dif­ferent notions of human rights than do the developed nations, can we not imagine them voluntarily agreeing to being treated in a way they find illegitimate - to being repressed - because the costs of not being able to trade would be still greater? What attitude ought members of developed countries have toward such a result? They may well think it inferior to a voluntary and non-repressive agreement, perhaps in part because it strikes them as lacking in the kind of respect with which Gibbard is concerned. But this seems to be only a contingent possibility and not one, to return to the theme of the previous paragraph, that can have roots in our natures.

I have been disagreeing with Gibbard’s assertion that repression must always be a bad, but I certainly agree that it will typically have costs. It may of course undermine the sort of respect that Gibbard emphasized, supposing that we value such respect. Depending on how we go about coercing the others, it will probably have other costs as well, though these will vary with power relations, among other things. Other groups may come to fear that they, too, will be repressed, leading to long-term problems for us. Repression may also sit very uncomfortably alongside simultaneous engagement with the same group on normative issues. I will discuss engagement below, and then turn in the final section of the chapter to more detailed consideration of which strategies can be pursued together - and why we might prefer some combinations to others.

3.2.3 Accommodating

If we cannot or will not live apart, and cannot or will not repress the other, some form of accommodation must be reached. This is true even if we also pursue a policy of engagement which aims at reaching consensus. We must have a means for dealing with current differences, whatever the long-term prognosis. In English the best-known words for describing accommodation are “tolerance” and “toleration,” and in Europe and the United States the most famous cases of tolerance concern religion. While most scholars agree on the historical causes of religious toleration, there is widespread disagreement on the proper scope and meaning of toleration today. This disagreement is readily explicable when one realizes that there are good reasons for viewing practices that could well be called toleration from both broad and narrow perspectives, as we will see. I will follow Gibbard’s lead - though differing with him significantly on the specifics - by distinguishing accom­modation, as a broad phenomenon, from tolerance, which will be defined more narrowly.

In order for the relationship between two groups to count as accom­modation, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, they must significantly and persistently disagree with one another. Second, they must nonethe­less prefer to interact in accord with norms of accommodation, rather than try to repress one another. In the typical case, both sides will com­promise to arrive at shared norms of accommodation, but I see no reason why this is essential. If only one side finds that it must commit to a new, inferior (from its perspective) set of values in order to get by, this is still accommodation rather than repression as long as the side that compro­mised did so willingly, as a result of a process it found legitimate. The difference between such an accommodation and the voluntary agree­ment to be repressed that I discussed earlier is slight but significant. In both cases, it likely will be the less powerful side that changes its values; the difference is over whether the compromiser has any genuine com­mitment to the new values. In the case of an accommodation they do: They see the accommodation as a legitimate basis on which to interact. In the case of repression, they do not, and presumably will ignore the new values whenever they can get away with it. I do not claim that this distinction is always clear in the real world, particularly because groups are never as unified as my discussion in these paragraphs has been assuming.

One of the most interesting forms that norms of accommodation can take is a set of thin values on which there is (or appears to be) mutual agreement, despite disagreement at the level of thick values. As I dis­cussed in the book’s Introduction, thin values are moral and political commitments that have shed most of their ties to specific moral tradi­tions, languages, and histories. It is hoped that different groups can agree on certain thin values, despite disagreeing on the thicker reasons why one ought to be committed to those values. I also explained in the In­troduction that there are two different ways in which thin values can be derived. One approach, which I found problematic for several reasons, is to look for lowest-common-denominator values. The alternative is to build a thin set of values out of a specific thick morality. I found Rawls’s specific implementation of this strategy to be unconvincing, but con­cluded that it held more promise than the lowest-common-denominator option. We can now see that two or more groups’ arriving at a shared set of thin values is a particular case of the more general phenomenon of accommodation. If we and they, in consultation with one another, arrive at a set of values on which we are willing to agree, and on the basis of which we can fruitfully interact, then we have constructed thin values to serve as our norms of accommodation.

I noted in the Introduction that dealing with one another based upon thin values - and more generally based on norms of accommodation - should in most cases be understood as a second-best solution: better than repression or isolation, but worse than arriving at a thicker consensus. I do not base this claim on any confidence in or commitment to One Truth on which all moral discussion must ultimately converge; I do not even hold that we must imagine the possibility of such a Truth for our discus­sions to make sense. Instead, we should view accommodations as second- bests for two more pragmatic reasons. First, if without any coercion from us, they arrive at thick values which more closely approximate our own, despite their different historical, cultural, and other experiences, that should give us added confidence in the viability of our own values - not enough to overcome our long-term fallibilist attitude, but a comfort nonetheless. Second, to the extent that their thick values move away from ours, they may cease to feel justified in endorsing the thin norms of accommodation. Accommodation relies, recall, on each group’s inter­nal sense that accommodation is better than the alternatives. If the ways they evaluate those alternatives change, then the grounds for the accom­modation may fall away. Merely thin agreement, in short, is more fragile than robust consensus.

These considerations push us toward finding a thick enough moral consensus to sustain rich interactions over the long term, but I want to note that a consensus which falls short of full agreement may be ade­quate, and may in fact be preferable to full agreement for other, equally pragmatic reasons. Complete unanimity might be tedious; it might cause us to lose out on chances for learning from different perspectives and different experiences. I am comfortable allowing for such possibilities since I have offered pragmatic reasons why I believe we will tend to find accommodations to be second-best, rather than metaphysical reasons why we have to do so.

Gibbard identifies two types of accommodation, modus vivendi and toleration. On Gibbard’s telling, the two have much in common: They both represent groups seeking agreement on second-best norms in order to avoid paying the costs associated with failure to agree. In both cases, the costs one avoids through accommodation may include losses in war, expenses of policing repression, and lost cooperation [Gibbard 1990, p. 244]. It is avoiding these costs that motivates a modus vivendi. As we have already seen, Gibbard also believes that repression is costly because of the lost mutual respect it entails. When one’s motivation for accom­modation begins to center on restoring such mutual respect, Gibbard argues, then genuine toleration becomes possible:

The initial pressures [toward accommodation] may be those of a modus vivendi, and those pressures may continue to help sustain the arrangement. Part of the reward of accommodation, though, is this kind of mutual respect. In time it may seem enough to justify the accommodation. Groups then have achieved toleration. [1990, pp. 244-5]

Toleration, we might say, comes from seeing moral value in the accom­modation, rather than just an avoidance of harms. The qualifications I have already made about Gibbard’s understanding of respect still hold; I cannot agree with him that this is something we must all value. Still, it does seem like a value many moralities today endorse, and thus a likely motive for accommodation.

The distinction we see in Gibbard between a positive, moral motiva­tion for accommodation and a negative, prudential motivation is mir­rored in an essay by Bernard Williams. He argues that to the extent someone values individual autonomy, toleration will also be valuable to that person, since only by letting others make their own choices does one respect their autonomy. He emphasizes, though, that this positive evalu­ation of tolerance is based on the acceptance of other substantive values (like autonomy); toleration does not “rise above the battle of values” [Williams 1996, p. 25]. He elaborates:

The people whom the liberal is particularly required to tolerate are precisely those who are unlikely to share the liberal’s view of the good of autonomy, which is the basis of the toleration, to the extent that this expresses a value. The liberal has not, in this representation of toleration, given them a reason to value toleration if they do not already share his other values. [ibid.]

Williams, in other words, understands more clearly than Gibbard the possibility of someone’s not seeing positive value in tolerance. Williams takes comfort, though, in the fact that there are motivations for what he calls the “practice of toleration” other than actually finding toleration to be a value. In particular, he suggests that the “practice of toleration” can be “underlaid by... an understood balance of power” [Williams 1996, p. 22]. By this he means a “Hobbesian equilibrium, under which the accep­tance of one group by the other is the best that either of them can get” [ibid., p. 21]. A “practice of toleration” undergirded by such an equilib­rium is thus much the same as Gibbard’s modus vivendi.

Of the static attitudes surveyed in this section, accommodation is obvi­ously the most attractive, given the difficulty or undesirability of achiev­ing isolation in the contemporary world. In most situations it will not make sense to settle solely on one of these static strategies, however. Values change, sometimes as a result of conscious efforts and sometimes as collateral effects of economic, social, or other sorts of processes. To the extent that it is possible to influence the direction of these changes, we ought to endeavor to do so, lest we end up in situations less desirable (from our perspectives) than the current moment. I call active efforts to influence the values of others engagement, and I now turn to a discus­sion of the types and logics of engagement.