But… if objectification never caused oppression, would you still want to complain about it or think it was wrong? Causally? In that world, what would be the cause of your wish to complain about it or think it was wrong?
My ethical views are based on rights. I think that people have the right to be thought of and spoken about as people, not as objects. Therefore, thinking or speaking of people as objects is a violation of that right. Therefore, under my ethical system, it is wrong, even if it really never went any farther.
I’m happy enough to accept that people should be spoken of as people. But I can’t get my head round the idea that we have a right to the contents of other people’s heads being a certain way.
But what does the word right mean to you? To me, it mostly means “the state does or should guarantee this”. But I’m guessing that can’t be what you have in mind.
Can rights conflict in your understanding of the term? Can you have a right to someone not thinking certain thoughts, while at the same time they have a right to think them anyway?
My use of the word “right” has nothing to do with any political structure. If you have a word that carries less of a poli-sci connotation that otherwise means more or less the same thing (i.e. a fact about a person that imposes obligations on agents that causally interact with that person) then I’ll happily switch to reduce confusion, but I haven’t run across a more suitable word yet.
My ethical theory is not fully developed. I’ve only said this on three or four places on the site, so perhaps you missed it. But my first-pass intuition about that is that while people may not have the right to think objectifying thoughts, they do have the right not to be interfered with in thinking them.
That seems cumbersome, although maybe in lengthy expositions I could get away with saying “moral right” once, footnoting it, and saying just “right” for the rest of it...
But… if violations of rights never caused oppression, would you still want to complain about them or think they were wrong? Causally? In that world, what would be the cause of your wish to complain about them or think they were wrong?
Want to? Maybe not. There are other demands on my time, after all, and it’s already annoying enough being the only person who (locally) catches these things here in the actual world where the objectification is more hazardous. (It was never my ambition to be the feminism police or the token girl on the site, I assure you.) I would still think it was wrong, but you keep emphasizing causality and I’m just not sure why you think that’s an interesting question. I guess for the same cause as the (beginnings of) the development of my ethical theory to start out with, which aren’t even clearly memorable to me.
. . . you keep emphasizing causality and I’m just not sure why you think that’s an interesting question.
This is hard to explain.
What makes it an interesting question for me is your disagreement with my causal explanation of your motivations (that I gave to pjeby, so he would understand your motivations and not dismiss them).
I think you intuited that there are some states of mind that cause oppression of women when they are socially tolerated and approved.
which could be reworded as,
I think the cause of your being motivated to object to objectification is that you intuited that objectification is a state of mind that causes oppression of women when it is socially tolerated and approved.
I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a consequentialist! I can complain about some thing X without necessarily thinking it causes anything bad, and especially without thinking that X is a problem because it causes something bad.
This means,
I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a consequentialist! If I am motivated to think that objectification is a problem generally, and complain about instances of objectification, it does not necessarily mean that I think it causes something bad.
But to counterargue what I had meant, and what I had thought I had said, you would have had to say:
I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a consequentialist! If I am motivated to think that objectification is a problem generally, and complain about instances of objectification, it does not necessarily mean that I ever intuited the emotional association that objectification or toleration of objectification could sometimes cause situations (such as oppression) that I and other women would, reasonably, want to avoid being in.
But if that is true, then how could you be caused to be motivated to think that objectification is a problem generally, and to complain about instances of it?
If the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a problem is that it is a violation of a right, then what was the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a violation of a right? Would you also say:
I think you’re mistaken. I’m not a consequentialist! If I am motivated to think that objectification is a violation of a right, this does not necessarily mean that I ever intuited the emotional association that objectification or toleration of objectification could sometimes cause situations (such as oppression) that I would want to avoid, even though the ways I would want to avoid those situations would be the same ways that I would want to avoid the situations (such as oppression) that could sometimes be caused by other violations of rights or by toleration of other violations of rights.
But if that is true, then how could you be caused to be motivated to think that objectification is a violation of a right?
I think there is human-universal psychological machinery for intuitively learning subtle differences between states of mind in other people that might be advantageous or disadvantageous to oneself or one’s allies, and for negotiating about those states of mind and the behaviors characteristic of those states of mind. “Objectification” and “depersonalization” would be two of these states of mind. I think the cause of your being motivated to think that objectification is bad, and the cause of your being motivated to think that objectification is a violation of a right, is that in your mind this machinery intuitively learned that “objectification” is a state of mind in other people that might be disadvantageous to you or people you cared about, and the machinery made you want to negotiate about objectifying states of mind in other people and the behaviors characteristic of those states of mind. (I think the concepts of “rights” and “dignity” are partly ways to talk about intuitions like that.)
If I am mistaken that this is an essential part of the cause of your motivations, then what is the cause of your motivations? What is the alternative that makes me mistaken?
If the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a problem is that it is a violation of a right, then what was the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a violation of a right?
At that point, I’m relying on intuition.
I hope that answers your question, because I didn’t understand anything you said after that.
Steve was attempting to go half-meta and have you independently come to the conclusion he had reached about where that intuition came from by getting you to look back at the probable sequences of events that had led to the intuition and realize that your position was simply a higher level abstraction of the actual causal process that he was describing, thus allowing him to credibly claim to pjeby and others that your objections to perceived objectification were not entirely silly and thereby resolve the whole gender wars thing via a chain of absurdly long and complex sentences whose veracity is totally overpowered by their inscrutability.
But… if objectification never caused oppression, would you still want to complain about it or think it was wrong? Causally? In that world, what would be the cause of your wish to complain about it or think it was wrong?
My ethical views are based on rights. I think that people have the right to be thought of and spoken about as people, not as objects. Therefore, thinking or speaking of people as objects is a violation of that right. Therefore, under my ethical system, it is wrong, even if it really never went any farther.
I’m happy enough to accept that people should be spoken of as people. But I can’t get my head round the idea that we have a right to the contents of other people’s heads being a certain way.
But what does the word right mean to you? To me, it mostly means “the state does or should guarantee this”. But I’m guessing that can’t be what you have in mind.
Can rights conflict in your understanding of the term? Can you have a right to someone not thinking certain thoughts, while at the same time they have a right to think them anyway?
My use of the word “right” has nothing to do with any political structure. If you have a word that carries less of a poli-sci connotation that otherwise means more or less the same thing (i.e. a fact about a person that imposes obligations on agents that causally interact with that person) then I’ll happily switch to reduce confusion, but I haven’t run across a more suitable word yet.
My ethical theory is not fully developed. I’ve only said this on three or four places on the site, so perhaps you missed it. But my first-pass intuition about that is that while people may not have the right to think objectifying thoughts, they do have the right not to be interfered with in thinking them.
Perhaps “moral right” or somesuch.
That seems cumbersome, although maybe in lengthy expositions I could get away with saying “moral right” once, footnoting it, and saying just “right” for the rest of it...
But… if violations of rights never caused oppression, would you still want to complain about them or think they were wrong? Causally? In that world, what would be the cause of your wish to complain about them or think they were wrong?
Want to? Maybe not. There are other demands on my time, after all, and it’s already annoying enough being the only person who (locally) catches these things here in the actual world where the objectification is more hazardous. (It was never my ambition to be the feminism police or the token girl on the site, I assure you.) I would still think it was wrong, but you keep emphasizing causality and I’m just not sure why you think that’s an interesting question. I guess for the same cause as the (beginnings of) the development of my ethical theory to start out with, which aren’t even clearly memorable to me.
This is hard to explain.
What makes it an interesting question for me is your disagreement with my causal explanation of your motivations (that I gave to pjeby, so he would understand your motivations and not dismiss them).
When I said,
which could be reworded as,
you said, intending it as a counterargument,
This means,
But to counterargue what I had meant, and what I had thought I had said, you would have had to say:
But if that is true, then how could you be caused to be motivated to think that objectification is a problem generally, and to complain about instances of it?
If the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a problem is that it is a violation of a right, then what was the cause of your motivation to think that objectification is a violation of a right? Would you also say:
But if that is true, then how could you be caused to be motivated to think that objectification is a violation of a right?
I think there is human-universal psychological machinery for intuitively learning subtle differences between states of mind in other people that might be advantageous or disadvantageous to oneself or one’s allies, and for negotiating about those states of mind and the behaviors characteristic of those states of mind. “Objectification” and “depersonalization” would be two of these states of mind. I think the cause of your being motivated to think that objectification is bad, and the cause of your being motivated to think that objectification is a violation of a right, is that in your mind this machinery intuitively learned that “objectification” is a state of mind in other people that might be disadvantageous to you or people you cared about, and the machinery made you want to negotiate about objectifying states of mind in other people and the behaviors characteristic of those states of mind. (I think the concepts of “rights” and “dignity” are partly ways to talk about intuitions like that.)
If I am mistaken that this is an essential part of the cause of your motivations, then what is the cause of your motivations? What is the alternative that makes me mistaken?
At that point, I’m relying on intuition.
I hope that answers your question, because I didn’t understand anything you said after that.
Steve was attempting to go half-meta and have you independently come to the conclusion he had reached about where that intuition came from by getting you to look back at the probable sequences of events that had led to the intuition and realize that your position was simply a higher level abstraction of the actual causal process that he was describing, thus allowing him to credibly claim to pjeby and others that your objections to perceived objectification were not entirely silly and thereby resolve the whole gender wars thing via a chain of absurdly long and complex sentences whose veracity is totally overpowered by their inscrutability.
I’m stupid that way too sometimes.