Thoughts on Those Who are Unvaccinated

People who are deceived and manipulated are indeed people we need to pity, and have empathy for.

But I've met some people who are not manipulated. They are invincibly ignorant (in the philosophical sense, rather than the Catholic sense.) Some people deliberately refuse to countenance evidence, not because they are being unfairly influenced, but because they are intellectually proud/lacking intellectual humility. They cannot countenance the possibility that the things they believe in could be wrong. They embrace a theory of truth which is based on *coherence* rather than *correspondence* to reality. As long as a statement fits in with their existing set of beliefs, and doesn't contradict any of them, they view it as true. There is never any concern that the beliefs be measured against what is real, to see if their belief(s) correspond to it.

Then there are those people who refuse to countenance evidence because they have given up on truth in its classic sense. That is, they think truth is a matter of whatever works for them, so why bother with evidence and argument? All that matters is "what I want, and whether a belief helps me get it." Truth thus becomes relative to the individual. These are the people who say, "I'm doing fine without any vaccine. It's working for me to avoid it; but if it works for you to get it, then by all means go for it. What's good/true for you is good/true for you; what's good/true for me is good/true for me."

Both these kind of people take their beliefs to be constitutive of reality, rather than conforming to it. Tragedy comes when reality doesn't conform to their beliefs, and they are faced with the consequences. IMO, we should not prevent them from facing those consequences. To do so is to violate the freedom they so loudly wish to safeguard.