I want prostitution legalized. Most people don’t. This is because I don’t think selling sex is immoral. I don’t terminally disvalue it. I could make arguments like “Prostitution would be a lot safer if it was legal,” which are correct. But it would also probably be more common, and I bet some of my opposition thinks that the extra sex-selling is worse than the STDs legalization would get rid of (especially because they would be inflicted upon people who “deserved” it.). So this is a terminal value disagreement.
I suspect a lot of the other political issues where my opponents say “immoral” are basically just terminal value disputes. Gay marriage springs to mind.
Drugs are less of terminal value dispute, because most of the arguing I’ve heard is either “If they are legal, they will be less dangerous,” or “If they are legal, more irrational people will foolishly hurt themselves.”
Economic issues appear at first glance to be mostly factual disputes, but I think the factual arguments people give are rationalizations, and terminal value disputes between fairness and property rights are a big part of them too.
These are just the arguments I hear people talking about today in the US. There are much bigger disputes in the past.
For example, the argument over slavery in the US was basically one over terminal values. Do you care non-negligibly about brown people or not? The people who whipped slaves were probably more familiar with the facts than the abolitionists. Most of them probably thought something like “This is the natural order of things.” or “God approves,” but the natural order and gods approval are not terminal values for a lot of people.
I want prostitution legalized. Most people don’t. This is because I don’t think selling sex is immoral. I don’t terminally disvalue it. I could make arguments like “Prostitution would be a lot safer if it was legal,” which are correct. But it would also probably be more common, and I bet some of my opposition thinks that the extra sex-selling is worse than the STDs legalization would get rid of (especially because they would be inflicted upon people who “deserved” it.). So this is a terminal value disagreement.
I suspect a lot of the other political issues where my opponents say “immoral” are basically just terminal value disputes. Gay marriage springs to mind.
Drugs are less of terminal value dispute, because most of the arguing I’ve heard is either “If they are legal, they will be less dangerous,” or “If they are legal, more irrational people will foolishly hurt themselves.”
Economic issues appear at first glance to be mostly factual disputes, but I think the factual arguments people give are rationalizations, and terminal value disputes between fairness and property rights are a big part of them too.
These are just the arguments I hear people talking about today in the US. There are much bigger disputes in the past.
For example, the argument over slavery in the US was basically one over terminal values. Do you care non-negligibly about brown people or not? The people who whipped slaves were probably more familiar with the facts than the abolitionists. Most of them probably thought something like “This is the natural order of things.” or “God approves,” but the natural order and gods approval are not terminal values for a lot of people.
See the other thread descending from parent where TimS and I discussed a bit. I think we dissolved the “terminal values” thing nicely.