How tolerant?

Appiah, in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Issues of Our Time), talks about universality with differences. In his view, there can be universals along with local differences. How far does that go? Are there some practices and behaviors that it is acceptable to be intolerant of? Honor killing? Too much fossil fuel consumption? This also gets into individual rights, but I'll deal with that separately. Are there universal values? Appiah says that it's more important to agree on the "what" of values, and less on the "why". I think that's an acceptable stage in the evolution of common values. Here's an interesting passage on tolerance.

Some relativists confuse two different senses in which judgments can be subjective. The view that moral judgments express desires means that they are, in one sense, subjective. Which judgments you will agree to depends on what desires you have, which is a feature of you. But, in this sense, factual judgments are subjective also. Which ones you will accept depends on what beliefs you have, which is similarly a feature of you. From the fact that beliefs are subjective in this way, therefore, it does not follow that they are subjective in the sense that you are entitled to make any judgments you like. Indeed, to go from the first claim to the second is to make one of the moves from "is" to "ought" that furrowed Hume's brow. It's to commit the naturalistic fallacy. So even on the Positivist view there is no route from the subjectivity of value judgments to a defense of toleration. Toleration is just another value.

Not every cultural practice is acceptable in light of human rights. Tolerating all differences on cultural grounds is not cosmopolitanism. This gets into centuries-old, deep philosophical controversies, but I'll keep working on it. It intersects individual rights which I'll get into later.