Comments on: Democracy and Civil Disobedience http://www.lawsocietyblog.com/archives/288 Notes from the intersection of law, society, technology, economics, and culture Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:38:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: Richard http://www.lawsocietyblog.com/archives/288#comment-4846 Richard Tue, 17 Oct 2006 12:41:41 +0000 http://www.lawsocietyblog.com/archives/288#comment-4846 "<i>In effect it is the claim that prevailing views on all issues are likely to be correct, so long as those prevailing views are sufficiently resistent to criticism. But throughout history many of the views that were the most deeply entrenched and resistent to criticism have been ones that we now consider obviously wrong</i>" I'm not sure what the counterargument here is meant to be. Obviously mainstream views CAN be wrong, I wouldn't dream of denying that. I'm merely claiming that an unconvincing radical minority is EVEN MORE likely to be wrong. Pointing to a couple of examples of past mainstream mistakes doesn't speak to this comparative probabilistic question at all. (Just think of all the mistaken vigilantes I could point to in response!) (It's also worth noting that my past post was mainly focused on <b>un</b>civil disobedience. I'm sympathetic to most of Patrick's comments, except the claim that my post was "not well thought-out"!) In any case, I develop and explore the epistemic argument in further detail <a href="http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2006/10/epistemic-argument-against-vigilantism.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>... “In effect it is the claim that prevailing views on all issues are likely to be correct, so long as those prevailing views are sufficiently resistent to criticism. But throughout history many of the views that were the most deeply entrenched and resistent to criticism have been ones that we now consider obviously wrong”

I’m not sure what the counterargument here is meant to be. Obviously mainstream views CAN be wrong, I wouldn’t dream of denying that. I’m merely claiming that an unconvincing radical minority is EVEN MORE likely to be wrong. Pointing to a couple of examples of past mainstream mistakes doesn’t speak to this comparative probabilistic question at all. (Just think of all the mistaken vigilantes I could point to in response!)

(It’s also worth noting that my past post was mainly focused on uncivil disobedience. I’m sympathetic to most of Patrick’s comments, except the claim that my post was “not well thought-out”!)

In any case, I develop and explore the epistemic argument in further detail here…

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