General infallibility is a tempting proposition. Treating an individual’s attitudes and preferences as givens – as matters beyond debate or criticism – might seem to promote human dignity by forcing us to treat all views as equally worthy of respect. But such an outlook is likely, if anything, to have the opposite effect. This is because taking seriously a person’s capacity to make mistakes is critical to taking seriously their capacity for rationality. Only by recognising that people are capable of error can we properly value anyone’s goals or engage in rational debate.
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The term ‘infallibility’ is most often associated with the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility. That form of infallibility applies, obviously enough, only to one person. It is carefully circumscribed in other respects too. Catholics are free to think that the Pope has got it wrong in, say, his choice of attire or when he comments on something in the news. Only when he invokes his authority to lay down the law about religious doctrine does the concept bite. Another familiar form of infallibility, that claimed by totalitarian leaders, is not so limited. The worst tyrants demand not just to be obeyed but to be treated as incapable of error in every deed and saying. To that end, Stalin’s propagandists sought to falsify the historical record – with an airbrush if necessary.
General infallibility is a modern, democratised version of the infallibility traditionally claimed by religious and authoritarian leaders. Although, unlike those other forms of infallibility, it applies to everyone, like papal infallibility it has some bounds. Everyone agrees that errors can occur where others are very immediately affected. No one would suggest that those giving medical advice or, say, forecasting the weather, can never make mistakes. Yet, today, it is a quite prevalent view that it’s wrong to regard others as mistaken in their tastes and purchasing patterns.
Liberalism has long held that each of us should be regarded as, in effect, sovereign – ultimately entitled to choose – in our political, consumer and religious preferences. The doctrine I am highlighting is different. It goes further: it says that each person is not merely sovereign but free from error in those preferences.
Let’s be clear about that difference. The proposition that elections should determine, directly or indirectly, what action the government takes is pretty much inherent in the idea of democracy. But it is not inherent in democracy that elections should end discussion of the policies voted upon. Political liberalism does not justify forestalling debate, nor does it justify the habit that certain politicians have of presenting polling data as if it were an argument in itself for the merits of a position (the ad populum fallacy) – but such an approach makes perfect sense if something like general infallibility holds. Similarly, there is a difference between believing that music and books should be free from censorship on grounds of taste (as liberalism urges) and believing that no one ought to pass comment on anyone else’s taste (as general infallibility implies). The latter opinion finds expression in the view – in a world of online ratings and ‘likes’ – that there is something inherently snobbish about professional arts criticism.
How did the notion of general infallibility arise? One likely source is cultural relativism. This has its origins in the development of anthropology as an organised discipline in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There was then a growing realisation of the problem of ethnocentrism – the tendency of people, anthropologists included, to view other, unfamiliar cultures through the lens of their own – and to misunderstand them as a result. The antidote recommended by the pioneers of modern anthropology such as Franz Boas and William Graham Sumner was essentially a dose of humility. In studying, say, the marriage customs of Samoans you must consider these in the context of Samoan society and not interpose Western conceptions of what marriage involves. Moreover, you must avoid passing moral judgment, since this can only interfere with accurate, dispassionate study. These sensible precautions, now considered basic axioms of the discipline, are purely methodological. They describe how such research should be done but not how the world is, nor what is right or wrong.
Mistaken: Assuming that another person’s opinions are immune from criticism is not a marker of respect. It is, in fact, dehumanising, by Daniel Ward