{
  "id": "a_wnds3li3",
  "oid": 164974,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 164975,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "Believing a view while allowing that it may be wrong",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH03.P005",
      "oid": 43,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH03.P005",
      "exact": "Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view.",
      "start": 205,
      "end": 269,
      "prefix": " view may not be the right one. ",
      "suffix": " We are on the road to producing",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P005#char=205,269"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "Having a view normally means taking it to be true; it need not mean taking oneself to be incapable of error. Chesterton's sentence presses those two attitudes together. An earlier alternative appears in John Stuart Mill's *On Liberty* (first published 1859). In chapter II, §§6–8, Mill makes openness to correction the ground of justified confidence and practical action, and even uses the questioning of Newtonian philosophy as an example. A person can therefore believe a proposition while acknowledging that criticism might overturn it. [Mill, chapter II](https://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Mill/Liberty2.html).\n\nThis comparison limits the reach of Chesterton's street-corner diagnosis: ordinary admission of possible error does not by itself establish the intellectual paralysis he fears. His objection becomes stronger when directed at the chapter's further target, doubt about the validity of thinking altogether. Mill is a philosophical counterexample here, not an identified unnamed opponent or a demonstrated source for this paragraph. The inspected HTML witness labels its text 1869, distinct from the work's first-publication date.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Mill/Liberty2.html",
      "title": "John Stuart Mill, On Liberty",
      "locator": "Chapter II, §§6–8; HTML transcription headed 1869",
      "exact": null
    },
    {
      "url": "https://www.utilitarianism.net/pdf/Chapter_2_Of_the_Liberty_of_Thought_and_Discussion_Utilitarianism_net.pdf",
      "title": "John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, chapter 2",
      "locator": "PDF title leaf dates work 1859; PDF pp. 5–6 reproduce the discussion corresponding to §§6–8",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Mill/Liberty2.html",
      "title": "Mill, chapter II"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "Comparison establishes a distinction, not direct influence or a named historical target."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-03-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P005",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Biblical references",
        "question": "How does the promise to the meek change when Chesterton makes it an assertion about intellectual inheritance?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
        "question": "Does acknowledging possible error necessarily prevent conviction? Compare an explicit earlier defence of corrigible belief."
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:41e685467243fef8c5fdfb00b30eb2ecd9cfdb2e77e3f2f978de82de3fb0c196",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:33:54Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_wnds3li3",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_wnds3li3/r/1",
  "cited_by": [
    {
      "id": "a_mt5b4zsl",
      "revision": 1,
      "title": "What thought and choice need: from scattered virtues to a seamless character",
      "url": "/a/a_mt5b4zsl"
    }
  ]
}