Ideas - The line between reasonable and unacceptable bias

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

This podcast is about testing the limits of fairness. It's about taking to heart the meaning behind "Beyond the Pale" — a phrase referring to ideas that are so outrageous it's impossible to deal with them in reasonable terms. Follow IDEAS producer Tom Howell as he covers uncomfortable terrain. When the time for ‘open-mindedness’ stops and prejudices become — possibly — a good thing. *This is the final episode in a series tackling the implications of bias. It originally aired on on June 8, 2022.Guests in this episode:Eduardo Mendieta is a philosophy professor at Pennsylvania State University. He edited the final book by Richard Rorty, Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism.Barbara Kay is a columnist at The National Post and The Epoch Times.Misha Glouberman is co-author (with Sheila Heti) of The Chairs Are Where the People Go. He runs a negotiation course called How to Talk to People About Things.Rahim Mohamed is a freelance writer and college instructor at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. His opinion columns are published in the online newsletter, The Line.Anne-Marie Pham is an executive director of the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion.Michael Bacon is a political theorist at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Pragmatism: An Introduction.Martin Zibauer is from the Cosburn Park Lawn Bowling Club in Toronto, Ontario.

Hi, everyone. Lisa LaFlam here. Carry the Fire, a podcast from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, is back with 10 new episodes. Subscribe and share to help create a world free from the fear of cancer. This is a CBC podcast. We want people to have fun. This is something that needed to be condemned. So, J.K. Rowling is... Although we don't, if I'm right, need a theory of rationality.

We do need a narrative of thatcheration. When I do presentations about bias, I often use my own experiences. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. Concepts are, as Wittgenstein taught us, uses of words. The consequences of not dealing with bias. I've been around long enough to see ugly left-wing smear campaigns against Supreme Court nominees. Well, I'm very anti-boles sidesism. But the core values thing, you see, I was sort of nodding, and I was saying,

What's the difference between bias sounds like a bad word, but core value sounds like a good thing. Today, the third in a series of documentaries about bias. I suppose you can use bias how if you like. I think the question is, what is your goal? I suppose you can use bias however you like. Oh, I think it's inevitably negative. I want them to feel uncomfortable. We go now to uncomfortable terrain, where trying to be fair seems inappropriate.

When the time for open-mindedness stops and prejudices become possibly a good thing. When you go beyond the wall of protection. This was beyond the pale. So beyond the pale. So outrageous. That's where I would draw line. Can you take me on a little bit of a tour if you don't mind of the pale for you? Ideas producer Tom Howell continues to tackle the meanings and implications of bias

in pursuit of how to be more fair-minded. They are withdrawing from future presidential debates. Echoing Trump, they said the commission that has hosted the debate for over 34 years is biased. They are going to fly there. Hello again, Martin. Hi, Tom. How are you? I'm well. Lovely to be back.

What have I found you in the middle of doing? So it's our season opener today. It's our opening day. We're just setting up the greens right now. We've got some volunteers putting out mats and rakes and jazz. I return on a totally clear, sunny day to Toronto's Cosburn Park Lawn Bowling Club. We're getting the clubhouse ready. We're expecting about about probably 60 to 70 of our members are going to show up today, along with some local politicians. Communications Chair Martin Zeebauer is preparing for a party.

We're expecting the mayor, councillors, MPs, etc. Exciting day. It is. We have a lot of new members coming today. So we'll be giving them an introduction to lawn bowling and kind of showing them the ropes. What rules do they need to follow other than the central rules of the game in order to be welcome as members? I mean, we want people to treat the clubhouse as if it's a national park. So, you know, don't leave junk here and don't take something away.

If I were to join your club, can you give me an example of anything that would get me kicked out? It's rarely one thing. We did have an incident where someone threatened another member, so that was just, you're out. Like with violence? Yeah, essentially. I mean, it was implied and it was just, that's it. No. Why?

Why is that not something you can have at your club? Well, the club is here for everyone, so it's for everyone to enjoy. And if one member is making it an unpleasant experience for other members, well, it's a clear choice of who should be here and who shouldn't. Now I noticed around the club, around the beautiful greens, there is a fence. Why do you have a fence around the club? Well, there are lots of people in the neighborhood who have dogs, and we love dogs, but we don't really want them walking on our greens. It's just not the right spot for dog walkers.

We've also had occasionally golfers come in and do, like, I guess, like driving on the greens, which obviously is not good for them. I love it. The fence is there to keep the golfers out. Exactly. We have a sort of love-hate relationship with golfers. The rules of this club are as clear as the territorial boundary marked by the four-meter-tall fence.

The fence separates the order within from the wild chaos of Canada's largest city without. There's the mayor. Are you ready? Oh! On the spot, I'm not here. John Torrey! John Torrey is the mayor of Toronto. He's come to demonstrate his own ability

to follow this club's rules and play the game. I was told that you were a lawn bowling champion. No, no, no, I vote exactly twice. If I were a more politically useful, active citizen, I might seize my chance to accost Mayor Tori. Call me biased, but I think this man has steadfastly failed to fix the city's chronic shortage of public toilets. And far too many of those that do exist are locked.

shut. Now here's the man responsible, six feet away, checking the bias of his lawn bowl. If you don't know what I mean, see earlier episode. One side is just a little bit thicker than the other, and that's what gives the bowls their bias. Anyway, apologies to all those needing a public toilet, but to the mayor, I take the opportunity to say nothing. There you know, the mayor's up now, he's going. Oh, the mayor, okay.

Frankly, it doesn't seem like the time or the place. Instead, I join in a polite lawn bull clap, along with everyone else, and I leave the mayor bee. On route to the exit, I make sure not to play the slightest bit of golf as I go. Time and place, politeness and rudeness, vital gears in our political machinery. Now, if Vladimir Putin had been at the bowl in, Club today, even I might have said something. In fact, I might have kicked him in the shins and pushed his face into the dirt. I sense we're in a time and place when you can say you'd like to do that.

Some would go even further. What decent person in the end doesn't want to see Putin rendered incapable of inflicting similar violence on others. There's still a line, though. It's hard to tell where it is, but there's always a line. This reminds me of a line from a lecture from Adorno. Eduardo Mandjeta, philosopher, alive, speaking about Teodor O'Dorno, also a philosopher, dead. He's trying to make sense. This is in the 50s, where he returned to Germany and begins to lecture in Frankfurt. He says he was really struck by this line from one of the guys that tried to kill Hitler. And he says, there's a point where you just cannot tolerate it anymore and you have to do something.

And Adorno elaborates on this phrase where things become so outrageous and intolerable that you have to do something. So beyond the pale is when whatever you're saying no longer is comprehensible. And you have decided to shred the fabric of the world that we share by the outrageous things that you're doing or saying. And so that's how I hear that expression. That phrase we just heard, beyond the pale. It's an old but still popular idiom. Let's be clear. The attacks against Jenny Morrison have been beyond the pale.

Creepy, sexist and utterly unhinged abuse. It speaks to a common desire for a clear boundary between what's acceptable and what's not. A pale used to mean a fence post and by extension a fence. an earthwork deep and thereon and on top of it a pile a wheyle point

a very pointy fence this meaning lives on in the modern construction term paling fence When building the piling fence There's two different widths of timber And we have the verb impale Which still means stick a fence post through someone

The phrase beyond the pale Means literally beyond the boundary fence Beyond the Pail At least in that very medieval sense meant within and without. Within, we take care and we share a world. Yeah. So I'm going to quote a very ancient thinker, Heracitus, who only wrote operisms because he's very ancient like, I don't know, 600 BC. And he said, the people should defend the laws of the city as they defend the walls of the city.

And so defending walls and the laws were for Heraclitus, the condition of possibility of being together. And so when someone goes beyond the pale, they have ceased to want to defend the walls, and that's the laws. and they are going out on their own. And we have every right to impale them. No, no, no. Okay, maybe not, maybe not. I could tell from Eduardo's reaction that impaling people who disagree with you

is still not in vogue today at American universities, contrary to the impression I'd got from some people. And I might be revealing my biases here, but I think that is a good thing. However, with each step of progress, we walk into a new pile of problems. By not impaling people, you run the risk of finding yourself stuck

in conversations with them, even after they didn't listen to you properly the first time. Democratic epistemic credibility requires that we revise our beliefs. We're trying to create a world together in which we are exchanging reasons, arguments, beliefs. When someone goes beyond the pale, they have refused that. They have refused to listen. to take into account, to revise their own beliefs in light of what you and I have engaged in. At this level of abstraction, concepts like truth, rationality, and maturity are up for grabs. There's a connection between the concept of bias, the concept of beyond the pale, and the whole purpose of having concepts in general.

Concepts are, as Wittgenstein taught us, uses of words. Philosophers have long wanted to understand. concepts, but the point is to change them, so is to make them serve our purposes better. That's Richard Rorty, also an American philosopher, dead, but still my personal hero. Sometimes when I feel his tone of voice isn't doing him any favors, I make my wife Linda read Rorty's lines for him. Philosophers have long wanted to understand concepts, but the point is to change them, so as to make them serve our purposes better.

The point with concepts is not to understand them, but to change them. As aphorisms go, this can be a hard sell to many people. It's a line from the book Eduardo just finished editing, pragmatism as anti-authoritarianism. A posthumous publication, it's Richard Rorty's final book. It's so wonderful. I read it so many times already because I did all of the annotations. Rorty, when he says pragmatism as anti-authority or anti-authoritarianism,

He says what pragmatism is trying to argue is that there's only horizontal epistemic authority, not vertical, meaning a scientist or the church or et cetera, some higher authority that tells us what we ought to believe. We grant each other epistemical authority and not a God or nature or history or geist. we empower each other as epistemic agents. And in order to do that, we have to take care of each other's freedom, and then we get truth as a bonus. And so the point beyond the pale is when you refuse to grant epistemic authority to your peers, to your fellow citizens.

Does that make sense? let's say that my frenemy, Barbara, let's call her Barbara, let's say that there are ways in which she considers me beyond the pale in her terms. She does not, as you say, want to grant me epistemic authority, because I am so ridiculous and so stubborn and so unwilling to play the game of reason with her. Now, I would say the same thing about Barbara. Where does this land us in the terms that you are describing about? Do we just have an unproductive thing where we both call each other beyond the pale and walk away? Or are we trying to keep the conversation going somehow? Well, that's a good...

Rorty would say, let's keep the conversation going. But at some point when someone begins to talk gibberish and adduce evidence that, that is not within the standards of a community of discourse. Then you say, look, I'm sorry, this, Barbara, you're making no sense. There is no credible authority out there that holds this claim or set of beliefs as worthy of our public society, our science, and so on and so forth. I'm sorry I'm going to have to no longer be your friend. When you want to step into our epistemic community

where we give reasons that makes sense, then I'm willing to talk to you. But right now, you're not making any sense. Back to the lawn bowling club where Mayor John Torrey was throwing out the first lawn bowl of the season on Saturday. And it's like the most civilized, you know, gathering. Oh, it's wonderful. I have one down the street.

They all dress in white and it's like Edwardian. You think you're, you know, back in Edwardian times. It's lovely. Barbara and I have some things in common and something's not. In this respect, at least, we stand in for any random pair of people forced to share a country together. Can you introduce me to yourself and to your coffee mug? Oh, this I'm talking, you mean I'm talking to Tom Howell now and I'm talking to... Well, they know who I am, but you're popping up, so you have to say who you are.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not getting this. Like, I am... Hello, I'm Barbara Kay and, you know, whatever I want to say. Oh, okay, so I'm Barbara Kaye, and this, I'm holding up a coffee mug. Is that what you're... Yeah. And I'm holding up a coffee mug.

And on this coffee mug is called My Political Journey. The image on Barbara's mug shows a series of lines representing the political spectrum at different moments over recent decades. And the point is, there's a stick figure whom, never budges, but is labeled increasingly right-wing as time goes by and the political spectrum leaps wildly off to the left. It's dragged the centre so far to the left that I am now right of center. In a sense, you could say that's my journey, because I'm quite old. Those who were liberal in 1950 are now the conservatives, not the far right, but we are the conservatives of 2021. Or indeed, 2022 when we recorded this interview. There are people,

in my coterie of friends who consider my affection for Barbara Kay distasteful. She's been a prominent opinion columnist in Canada for the past 20 years, and as you're about to hear, she publishes views that are described as ghoulish. Ghoulish hate speech, or you are a phobic person, or you are unfit, you know, to walk amongst, you know, virtuous people. Barbara reports being told on Twitter that people who believe what I believe should quote, die in a grease fire. I think that's beyond the pale. I think that's beyond the pale to tell people that disagree with you that they should die in a grease fire. All right.

Barbara and I met as warring panelists on a comedy news quiz seven years ago. Back then, she was generally considered within the pale of conservative voices broadcastable on public radio. Her more recent takes on residential schools, indigenous cultures, and trans people, appear to have put her beyond. She still maintains her opinion columns in what I would call right-wing publications like the National Post and what I would call fringe publications like the Epoch Times. So let all of that serve as a heads up to any listeners who find viewpoints expressed in those publications to be physically or emotionally harmful. I'll now give you a quick tour of the topics from an hour-long exchange between me and Barbara so you know where to place us within

or beyond your own boundaries. First topic, Canadian author Jordan Peterson. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It reminded me of something that Jordan Peterson said once. The difference between progressives and conservatives, if you say to a conservative, what is so totally beyond the pale on the right, like you're a conservative, so what would be beyond the pale in your opinion? And you would immediately say Auschwitz.

but if you say to a leftist what's totally beyond the pale on the left they'd have a hard time answering you golegs they won't say that I'm a leftist I just say gulags no you're not you're not a typical leftist at all okay we move on to Marxism well yeah I mean I am against

Marxists because they do believe it's okay to break eggs if you want to have a you know you can make an omelet you've got to break some eggs and it's the egg breaking that I get very nervous about. I mean, the problem with that analogy is that you do have to break. I mean, if you want omelets, it depends on much you want omelets. Barbara also brought up her reviews on trans people. You're not allowed to say it's an affliction. Right. Well, I mean, you are allowed. You just get to... No, you're not. No, I mean, you are literally not allowed. No. If I said on Twitter, I think it's sad when children are afflicted with gender dysphoria. I mean, a few months ago,

I would have been thrown off Twitter. Right. I mean, you're not sent to jail. Well, You keep an opinion column. Yeah, except that who's going to publish my opinion column. I've been lucky so far. Israel and the Palestinian, actually, I might not play you that bit. And I'm going to leap over our chat about Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, too. I have tried before to get Barbara to read the report, and no luck yet, but we discuss it at length anyway, along with the latest investigations into gravesites. And then Barbara tells me where people with what she calls progressive politics,

go beyond the pale for her? The one thing that you can say about the far left, that is the kiss of death for me and for everybody to the right of them is they hate their country. They express hatred of their country. They say this is a country that is systemically racist. It's a country that hates this and hates that. White people, blah, blah, blah, blah. What if someone was to say this country is systemically racist and I love it?

It's my favorite country. The only people that say that are wearing little vich... Wait, you say your country's systemic racist and you love it anyways? You say that? Sure. I mean, maybe we're defining, maybe we're referring to different things there, but I mean... You think the institutions, when I say systemic, there's a difference between there's a lot of racist in this country. But the institutions in our country, the politicians in our country, every single person and authority in this country, every legal person, every political person, every political person, every

name any person you want, each of them will say they deplore racism. And in their institutions, they do not have a policy of racism in their institution. Oh, the CBC is systemically racist. I don't mind saying that. How can you say such a thing? I mean, it just is. Things are. I mean, but I think to me it's... Wait, wait. How can you say such a thing? To me, I'm talking about something normal. Please tell me what you mean by systemically racist then.

Oh, I would love to. And the country would love to hear, I'm sure. But I mean, I mean a pretty banal thing. I mean just, you know, there are all kinds of reasons why, for instance, people like me tend to, people with my skin color and so on tend to get into, you know, have nice jobs and get up there. Oh, Tom. Oh, Tom. Oh, Tom. I'm so disappointed. What have I done? You believe in equity. You think that unless an institution reflects the demographic makeup of a country proportionately, the only reason that that wouldn't be. happening is because of systemic racism? Well, that is broader than what I said.

An institution could include the lawn bowling club. I went to the lawn bowling club, found it to be almost entirely white. And I was neither surprised, nor particularly shocked, nor felt the need to go around telling them that they were systemically racist, no. Because this is an old tradition, but lawn bowling is not a tradition in India or the Caribbean or Africa or okay? What I'm saying is the proposition you used to some of my beliefs. would imply that I should be shot by the lawn bowling institution.

But I am not. So I'm suggesting that therefore, perhaps your summary of my position is inaccurate. Maybe I don't believe that all institutions should contrive to replicate the demographic profile. But why do we have to talk about lawn bowling? We don't have to talk about lawn bowling. But we do always seem to have to talk about words, though. Like how people use the word Marxist to mean almost anyone from Karl Marx himself, who actually denied he was one,

to a typical PhD student in sociology today. Along the same lines, I'll hear friends, matter-of-factly using a phrase like systemic racism to refer to specific biases in a company's policies which diminish people's chances of promotion and influence as a result of their race, or increasingly, people just use the phrase to wave their hands at the entire system of interlocking

far too numerous to name causes of unfair outcomes and many other meanings in between. Some people, when put on the spot, might improvise an even less helpful definition. There are all kinds of reasons why people like me have nice jobs. One way to avoid getting sidetracked into fights over whether people are using their words correctly is to take the advice of philosophical pragmatists. Philosophers have long wanted to understand concepts, but the point is to change them so as to make them serve our purposes better.

As dangerous as it sounds, the pragmatist's hope is that being open to changing uses of words might send us towards the more important questions. What are you trying to do? What's your goal in that conversation? You're listening to a documentary called Beyond the Pale on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at C. You can also hear ideas on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nala Ayed. Hi everyone. Lisa LaFlam here. Carry the Fire, a podcast from the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, is back with 10 new episodes. Subscribe and share to help create a world free from the fear of cancer.

This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship, with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining, and cultural enrichment, on board, and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at viking.com. The notion of bias still carries some of its original metaphorical meaning. The image of a line veering away from the straight axis, a diagonal or curving trajectory. We might imagine a biased result as missing the mark because somewhere along the way, an ideal, straight, direct line of inquiry was pulled to one side.

Something got skewed. The image of a skewed line only makes sense if you picture it against the background of a fixed space. For example, in political terms, to be biased to the left means you have to imagine space in the center and to the right. So in fact, when we picture a bias visually like this, we don't only imagine a single curving line. There's a context. There's a time and place.

And if there's a central point to this space, there must also be a boundary. This method of thinking about bias quickly gets very, very abstract. Our minds prefer simpler physical images, like a spiky wooden fence built around an area of land controlled by a medieval fortress. That image gave us the expression beyond the pale. Beyond the pale, at least in that very medieval sense, meant within and without. We have every right to impale them. No, no, no. Okay, maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. Mr. Tom Howell is on a tour of other people's pale or boundary fence.

He's asking what the concept implies about having fair, open-minded public discourse in Canada right now. At this level of abstraction, concepts like truth, rationality, and maturity are up for grads. The only thing that matters is which way of reshaping them will in the long run make them more useful for democratic politics. The question of whether people are beyond the pale is exactly one of those questions. that I would untangle. Here's Misha Globerman. Like, if you're just thinking, do I want to talk to that person on my own,

Tom and that person, that's a really separate question from, do I want to give that person a platform on my show? Which is a very different question. Misha runs an adult education class I once took many years ago. It's called How to Talk to People About Things. One of the subtopics is whether to talk to people about things. I think most of us err on the side of not having conversations

too often. I think most of us make the mistake of not having the conversation we should have, more often than we make the mistake of having the conversation we shouldn't have. The other thing that I'll say is that the question of like, should I have conversation X? If you're having that question in your head, it's probably a binary question that you want to unravel because the question might not be, should I have conversation X? The question might be, what's the best conversation to have in this situation? So it might not be yes or no on conversation X. It might be something else. Misha describes two possible goals of a difficult conversation, and they can be conflicting goals. One is a quest to understand each other better.

The other is a quest to achieve a tolerable mode of coexisting. Those are two goals that you can work on together as opposed to the goal of like, I may change your mind and show you that you're wrong. And the thing I really want to emphasize is neither of those involves releasing my conviction. Like I'm not saying, I don't know, maybe you're right, maybe I'm right. Like I can say, no, no, I'm 100%. You know, I'm totally convinced. Like, you know, I feel really strongly on my point of view.

And I can still be curious about why you see things the way you do. And I can still hope that you and I can get along even though we see things differently. There's a way you can hold on to your convictions without having to come to the conclusion that like, and everyone who disagrees with me just sucks. My personal inclination, it's not one that I advocate for for everybody, but my personal inclination is to think that there's generally some value in finding some empathy for the folks on the other side, no matter how broken or repugnant those beliefs are. that understanding how humans might come to those beliefs is interesting and valuable.

There are people who disagree with me on that point and I wouldn't want to press too hard on it. I think that's what I think. But that's what I think. And again, that's not the same as saying that the views are okay. Can I articulate in a sentence why what you're saying is dangerous and why what you're saying poses a tangible harm to an identifiable group? That's where I would draw a line. This is Rahim Mohammed. I've been reading his opinion pieces in a Canadian commentary magazine called The Line.

He teaches a course on political ideologies at Center College, Kentucky. And one person who goes beyond the pale for Rahim is the author of the Harry Potter series, specifically for her views on transgendered people. So J.K. Rowling is, you know, propagating this myth that there are men out there in wigs that are just, you know, waiting in women's bathrooms that are waiting in rape crisis centers to prey on, on cisgendered women. And I think, you know, tropes like that one, in very clear, very demonstrable ways pose a risk of physical harm or perpetuate a risk of physical harm against members of the trans community. You know, it's difficult to think of a more marginalized community

in society than the trans community in terms of the community's risk of being the victim of physical violence. Rahim grew up in Kamloops, BC. For the record, he identifies himself as a James Moore conservative. So someone I really admire is James Moore, who was Heritage Minister under Stephen Harper. It's no longer adequate in Canadian public life to not be racist. You have to be anti-racist. I want my prime minister to be hated by people who hate people because of the color of their skin,

because of their religion, because of their sexual orientation. I want people who hold those views to despise my prime minister. I want them to feel uncomfortable. And he expresses a very compassionate and thoughtful and inclusive conservatism. He's a strong proponent of things like official bilingualism. He's a strong proponent of things like funding for the arts. So I think I'm something that you would call an orange tory. in that conservatives are a viable option, the NDP is a viable option.

I wouldn't vote liberal, especially not under Justin Trudeau. Rahim's job as a college professor requires that he presents the topic of political ideologies in a fair and non-partisan way. In general terms, he feels able to do this. The big three are liberalism, conservatism, and socialism. But when it comes to specific people and specific ideas... I mean, look, I was a Muslim non-national living in the United States. And, you know, one of the things that Donald Trump said over the course of the political, of the 2016 campaign,

is that he would place an immediate ban on Muslims entering the United States. And that's not something I can detach myself from. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. People who look like me were targeted by that rhetoric. I can point to a number of ways in which Donald Trump's rhetoric has made me feel less safe here in the United States. You know, when I'm talking about Trump, I'm not going to do so in an even-handed way because the stakes are too high for me. For Rahim, the danger test works pretty well to define when you're allowed to stop being open to a person's views.

It's led him to not exactly cancel, but preemptively dismiss the voices of Jordan Peterson. It's got to be that they believe their own press. And that's so interesting because they bought the press and paid them to tell them what they wanted to hear. And now they believe it and justify their policy as a consequence of that. American conservatives J.D. Vance and Marjorie Taylor Green. Why is this true? We're going to start speaking the truth more loudly. Universities are so committed to some of the most preposterous dishonesties in the world

instead of committed to the truth. We're going to take our country back. I can clearly and succinctly explain why Marjorie Taylor Green spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines, why that is dangerous. And as it turns out, this Canadian conservative, is ready to cut off almost all the U.S. conservatives with political power today. The Republican Party, I think it quite uniquely, even among conservative parties in sort of Western Europe, North America, New Zealand, Australia, has quite uniformly moved to dangerous terrain,

trafficking in very dangerous position. So one clear example is on Twitter. There's a lot of discussion about homosexual teachers, gay or lesbian teachers, and people on the Republican side, even mainstream Republicans, are using the term groomer to refer to people who want to, you know, talk about homosexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity to elementary and middle school children. That term has a fraught history, you know, all the way back to at one point homosexuals weren't allowed to teach in the United States because of the blanket assumption that homosexuals were somehow all pedophiles. So speech like that is becoming shockingly mainstream within the Republican Party and we need to call it out. I can't see much difference between the

bigot's reaction to me and my reactions to him. I don't see why the term reason is not as much up for grabs as the term academic freedom or morality or pervert. What the bigot and I do, and I think should do, when told that we have violated a presupposition of communication, is to haggle about the meanings of the terms used in stating the purported presupposition, terms like true, argument, reason, communication, domination, and so on. This haggling will, with luck, eventually turn into a mutually profitable conversation about our respective utopias, our respective ideas about what an ideal society or university empowering an ideally competent audience would look like. But this conversation is a very important audience would look like. But this conversation

is not likely to end with the bigots reluctant admission that he has entangled himself in a contradiction. Even if I should, by a miracle, succeed in convincing him of the worth of my utopia, his reaction will be to regret his own previous lack of curiosity and imagination, rather than to regret his failure to spot his own presuppositions. Circumstances and people dictate. A clear and succinct rule for when someone's going beyond the pale is not as useful as it sounds, according to Michael Bacon. I teach political theory at Royal Holloway,

which is a college in the University of London. You end up in a situation where you start narrowing the scope of permissible speech considerably. Depending on who you're talking to or might be debating and where that debate might take place, what's acceptable, what's sensible, whether or wants to debate at all opens up. but at the same time, pretty much everyone does regard some views as being beyond the pale. Some ideas are pernicious, harmful, even evil, and as such, we shouldn't tolerate them. But identifying those views is no easy thing.

There's no straightforward way of doing it, and thus no simple answer to the question of how we should treat people who hold those views. So you're in Canada where people are more reasonable? I'm in the United States where apparently half of the country has lost their mind and it's very hard and very disheartening. I'm willing to be informed, persuaded out of certain truths. Truth is not found, truth is made. Truth is what has social efficacy. Pragmatists like me can't figure out how to tell whether we're understanding a justification as just a justification for us or as a justification period.

This strikes me as like trying to tell whether I think of my scalpel or my computer as a good tool for the task at hand or a good tool, period. One reason not to debate, I think, would be another sort of pragmatist idea of fallibilism. We are creatures who are imperfect. And sometimes not debating, I think it's a good thing. If one is not in a position to do it in a, seem to be, knowledgeable way. So if we turn to the example of Holocaust deniers, say, I wouldn't take it by myself to debate whether the Holocaust denier,

because I don't know enough. I know with certainty the Holocaust happened. You know, I know that as much as I know that my name, is Michael and that we're conversing in English. But how do I know it? I know it not through any firsthand evidence, but listening to what historians tell me, listening to the testimony of survivors, watching documentaries, but that's a rely on a lot of authority there. Well-earned authority, authority, which I have not one shadow of doubt in expecting,

believing, but I'm just not well-versed in that. So some forms of debate, perhaps, some issues are just not mine to engage with. Michael Bacon mentioned the word pragmatist just then. Like Eduardo Mendietta, who we heard from before, Michael is a fan of philosophical pragmatism and the work of Richard Rorty. I think on Rorty's own understanding of pragmatism, I think it's fair to say, actually, one can't be open-minded. Because from day one, we are the products of external forces,

parents, most obviously, family, society and underlying socioeconomic relations. So we come from day one with minds that are not opened, but that are angled. We can change our minds, raw to himself, change his mind in the light of some criticisms from those he respected philosophically. He's tweaked his account of pregnantism along the way. And I would say certainly and desirably he changes political views a bit. He, in the last decade of his life, became more leftist. But that's, that was it. He was never himself in danger of being so overminded that he just loses, loses brains. And I also think on his own precepts, none of us can be just because of how we're brought up from the get-go.

And the same, it's on the same vein. That's why relativism is sort of non-issue. There are no relatives out there really in the sense that we all think our views are better than alternatives otherwise we wouldn't hold them we certainly don't think they're no better than alternatives are there is there a good pragmatist's retort that I can give when someone let's just say hypothetically accuses me working in public radio of just shamelessly taking taxpayers money and using it to inflict my pinko liberal values and biases on the general public I'm sure no one's ever said that to you I want to be ready But yeah, yeah, my first thought would be to say that you've nothing to be ashamed of.

If someone accuses you of that, and in my line of work, too, I've occasionally been called out by a sort of astute, conservative student for spotting my biases as they would regard them. I would regard them as being well-founded presumptions, but they regard them as biases. But I think the more appropriate answer would be to point, which I imagine is true, that on your show you do interview people from a different variety of different perspectives ideologically. So even though you yourself may have political commitments, and obviously we all of us do, so long as you're being fair in terms of how these different few points are represented on your show to an extent,

at least you can avoid the accusation of bias. And the great thing, of course, if you do have on your show different points of view, different political perspectives, you are, I think, entirely desirably reaffirming your liberalism anyway because it's an impeccably liberal position to be aspiring to what's sometimes called the marketplace of ideas by doing that. So just by dint of you having these people on the show, you've won. I'd say, though, if you now get sacked, please accept my apologies. Okay, right, thanks.

But you used the word fair. We just had a conversation about how it's essentially impossible. to be open-minded. And obviously, we're using open-minded and fair in slightly different ways, but the word sounds so similar to me. So how do I know I'm being fair? Doesn't that put us back where we just were? I think fairness, I push, in this context, no further than giving different points of view and airing. The BBC, which I'm a huge fan, does have people from the major parties on. And that, I think, is all you need to do. What else could be fairness? in this in some of the broadcasting.

So major political parties represent the political spectrum that a country needs to worry about. Like they've done the work for us in the sense of defining the political spectrum. Yeah. And you then, I don't think you're getting at there, it then raises the question of what counts of the boundaries. So in British case, it's the main parties,

smaller parties. Don't get that invitation to come in. So in that sense, BBC acts. as a gatekeeper. But there are questions there about, you know, what's beyond the pale. So you wouldn't get a Holocaust denier on the BBC. If you found that you were living in a country where a large enough percentage of the population

supportive views that you consider to be beyond the pale, are you going to abandon a bunch of your other habits up to this point and say, no longer, can we say that all views from all political parties should be represented in a public discussion? in that extreme and horrible circumstance, I think I would. You're right. I think the British system is designed to avoid that because you get these kind of parties

that are broad churches. And so the hope is that sort of sense prevails and you get a sort of fudge compromise. I mean, for all I know, there may well be members of the Conservative Party with very extreme dodgy views. but that could be true of labor as well. But they're sort of kept in check but the dynamics of the party process. Well, I might have thought the same would be true in the United States, but seemingly

not. All right, well, let's hope you don't have to sacrifice all your nice, reasonable views. I suppose at a certain point, you just take to the barricades and you don't care about whether you're being biased or not. Yeah, I'll probably just keep them and jump on an airplane and Canada sounds nice. Oh, yeah, yeah, we'll see what we can do.

In non-philosophical context, the point of contrasting truth and justification is simply to remind oneself that there may be objections or a shift in the vocabulary used for describing the objects under discussion, which have not occurred to any of the audiences to whom the belief in question has so far been justified. Using a word can be like taking an old-fashioned general-purpose tool and hoping it will do a specific job in a new circumstance. and its words' astounding ability to take on new work in this way that sometimes has us forgetting they weren't made only for the particular job. We've heard the saying, you can't teach old dogs new tricks. The biggest drawback is when people think that they cannot change, then they will not change. Okay, so that is not true for humans. We can certainly learn new tricks.

I am Anne Marie Pham. I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Center for Diversity and Inclusion. And we're a national charity with the vision of creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive society and workplace across Canada. How's it going? It's going really well. This is basically formed when we make generalizations about individuals, about groups of people. And this generalization leads to stereotypes. And stereotypes can lead to microaggressions and misunderstanding and all the way to discrimination and harassment.

So when we hear about someone saying like, all those people they are or all you are and suddenly we jump into a statement about them, then we need to take a step back and almost. go outside of our own body and ask ourselves, well, is what I heard 100% true 100% of the time? And if it is, then it's a fact. But if it's not, then it's a stereotype and it's a bias. One key technique is to practice open-mindedness. And open-mindedness is really about the idea that we have to shift, paradigm. We have to assume that we don't have all the answers. And I think the biggest thing

when we're talking about diversity and inclusion and biases is to make a little bit more time in our daily schedule to question things. Are there ever signs or something that just tells you like, this isn't going to work with this person? Unfortunately, yes. What tells you that? What tells you that this person is beyond the bail? You can tell when they're close-minded. You know, when you're trying to explain a situation and then they jump in before you're done, they are challenging you, they are questioning your lived experience because they haven't experienced it themselves. They are debating your point of view as opposed to having that active listening to add to their point of view. And essentially they are saying phrases like,

oh, that's the way things have always been done or you have to do it this way because I'm the boss, then you know that it might be pretty hard to change these individuals. And then you have to think about different strategies. Are there people that this person respects? And maybe you can relay the message through that person. It might be more effective than you talking to that person directly. Are there other groups that can create the change in parallel to what you're trying to do at this end. How do you build the critical mass so that it's not just you but other people building the change? And worst case scenario, listen, if it doesn't work and they are so influential, you always have the option of walking away and going somewhere else. As humans, we have our own

failings. We know what we know, but we don't know what we don't know. And when we have a conversation with another person, it's important to give them the benefit of the doubt and not always assume that we have all the answers. So really biases start with ourselves. That's so important just to reiterate over and over again. If each and every one of us can be a little bit more humble, a little bit more curious, then I think we can solve more problems in this world without resolving to conflict. Thank you very much, Emery. welcome. Thank you for inviting me. Openness to new tricks.

There are times when a person coming toward you with a new trick is best kept the other side of a well-built and very pointy fence, especially, I'm told, if that person is carrying a golf club. Determining which are those times might mean asking who goes there or what sort of person are you, but those are secondary questions. The point is to work out. what the person might do and make some guesses about how that fits in with what you'd like.

Misha Globerman said it's better to focus on the goal of conversations instead of asking, is Conversation X a good idea or not? Similarly, whether to break an egg or not depends on a project or a purpose, perhaps the intensity of one's desire for an omelette. Much the same can be said of words like bias or fairness or beyond the pale. We often ask, what does it mean? or is that really the right term? The invitation from pragmatists is to focus our attention on different questions,

like, what can I do with that? And hope the answer might be something useful, something you'll find you want or like, something you can join other people in doing, and perhaps something that hasn't been done before. If we abandoned the idea of philosophy, which manages to be both politically neutral and politically relevant, we could start asking the question,

Given that we want to be ever more inclusivist, what should the public rhetoric of our society be like? You are listening to Beyond the Pale by Ideas producer Tom Howell. It's part three of his series on the meanings of bias. You can go to our website, cbc.ca.ca slash ideas, for more information on the speakers, or to hear parts one and two. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuzel, senior producer, Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.