So, I’ll emphasize that the point that you quote was tangential to this, and had to do with the implications of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information.
But, to answer your question: I don’t endorse murder as an appropriate response to offense.
Why not? Well, one simple reason is that I would rather live in a culture where people offend one another without recourse than a culture where people kill one another without sanction over idiosyncratic grounds for offense, were those the only choices (which, of course, they aren’t).
That said, if you could convince me that no, actually, we’d all be better off if we established the cultural convention that killing people for drawing offensive cartoons was acceptable, I would (reluctantly) change my position. I can’t imagine how you could actually convince me of that in the real world, though.
Moreover, it seems to me that this sort of consequentialist reasoning for what is and is not an appropriate response is entirely consistent with Yvain’s post, and I don’t expect that he will disagree with my conclusion. (Though I’d be interested if he did.)
And, just to be clear about this, the difference between physical and psychological harm that you started out arguing the importance of is completely orthogonal to my reasoning here. If instead of killing A, the hypothetical muslims put A in a sensory-deprivation tank until A goes irreversibly mad, my answer doesn’t significantly change. (Does yours?)
Digressing a little… note that when the grounds for offense are sufficiently endorsed by the mainstream culture, we have a way of no longer calling it “murder”… or, if we do, we create special categories to distinguish it from, you know, real murder. For example, there exist municipalities where, if I walk in on my wife having sex with another man and kill him in response, this is considered different from if I walk in on my wife serving ice cream and kill him in response… and this is completely independent of my personal feelings about sex and ice cream.
Conversely, when an act offends enough of us, or offends powerful enough individuals, we often criminalize it… whereupon we respond to it by deputizing state agents to forcibly restrain the person and deprive them of safety, comfort, and liberty (and, in extreme cases, life).
All of which is to say that this business of responding to “merely psychological” offenses with “physical” retaliation is not solely the province of putative extremists from a different culture than my own. Not that you were stating otherwise, but I often find it helpful to explicitly remind myself of that.
So, I’ll emphasize that the point that you quote was tangential to this, and had to do with the implications of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information.
But, to answer your question: I don’t endorse murder as an appropriate response to offense.
Why not? Well, one simple reason is that I would rather live in a culture where people offend one another without recourse than a culture where people kill one another without sanction over idiosyncratic grounds for offense, were those the only choices (which, of course, they aren’t).
That said, if you could convince me that no, actually, we’d all be better off if we established the cultural convention that killing people for drawing offensive cartoons was acceptable, I would (reluctantly) change my position. I can’t imagine how you could actually convince me of that in the real world, though.
Moreover, it seems to me that this sort of consequentialist reasoning for what is and is not an appropriate response is entirely consistent with Yvain’s post, and I don’t expect that he will disagree with my conclusion. (Though I’d be interested if he did.)
And, just to be clear about this, the difference between physical and psychological harm that you started out arguing the importance of is completely orthogonal to my reasoning here. If instead of killing A, the hypothetical muslims put A in a sensory-deprivation tank until A goes irreversibly mad, my answer doesn’t significantly change. (Does yours?)
Digressing a little… note that when the grounds for offense are sufficiently endorsed by the mainstream culture, we have a way of no longer calling it “murder”… or, if we do, we create special categories to distinguish it from, you know, real murder. For example, there exist municipalities where, if I walk in on my wife having sex with another man and kill him in response, this is considered different from if I walk in on my wife serving ice cream and kill him in response… and this is completely independent of my personal feelings about sex and ice cream.
Conversely, when an act offends enough of us, or offends powerful enough individuals, we often criminalize it… whereupon we respond to it by deputizing state agents to forcibly restrain the person and deprive them of safety, comfort, and liberty (and, in extreme cases, life).
All of which is to say that this business of responding to “merely psychological” offenses with “physical” retaliation is not solely the province of putative extremists from a different culture than my own. Not that you were stating otherwise, but I often find it helpful to explicitly remind myself of that.