I have room for some degree of moral relativism; I think that there are some areas and situations in which one person thinks X is good and another person thinks X is bad and both of them are roughly equally justified.
(I struggled to think of an example on the spot—maybe circumcision-by-default? I’m super duper clear on circumcision-by-default being harmful and bad but I’m not inclined to demonize people who circumcise their kids.)
But when the point is “the oppressors’ values were being satisfied, when they were in a position to oppress—you’re now making them sadder and making their lives worse by preventing them from having unlimited autocratic power over their women”
(which is something I interpreted you to be saying, as a part of your point)
I do not validate that sadness as being morally relevant. I can acknowledge that the improvement was not a pareto improvement in that, yes, there was a loser, but that person’s loss was not something they “should” have had a claim to in the first place; them treating it as a loss is setting the zero point in an illegitimate place.
Morality may not be fully objective, but neither is it fully subjective; you can in fact just straightforwardly look at a situation and often see that something is objectively wrong, simply by starting with something like “treat all sentient agents as moral patients.”
(I might be using words oddly or slightly wrongly; apologies if so.)
My understanding of the phrase “moral patient” is that it means “an entity that’s morally relevant.” So for the median human, a cow is not in practice a moral patient, but for a vegan or ethical vegetarian or Hindu, it definitely is.
One way that a person can argue for things like slavery or patriarchy is by either insinuating or outright claiming that the oppressed person is less of a moral patient than the oppressor; a sort of utility-monster-adjacent situation where the suffering of the losing party is outweighed by the gain of the winning party.
That’s how one might get from “sure, the male oppressors lost something when the women started getting basic human rights” (which is true) to “and we should care about, or have sympathy for, their loss” (which is false, because their loss was of territory they should not have had control over in the first place, because it required treating other sentient agents as not moral patients).
So what I meant by “treat all sentient agents as moral patients” is something like “start from a baseline wherein every sentient agent is clustered in the same order of magnitude, in terms of what amount of dignity and care and autonomy our society should support them having, and enforce via its norms.”
If you start from a baseline where women and men are not substantially different in how much goodness they deserve, then it’s impossible to feel all that sad about the males in Taliban-controlled society losing their tyrannical power over women.
Does this imply that sub-sentient agents are fractional moral patients?
Your elaboration mostly makes sense, the issue seems to be who gets to define ‘sentient agents’?
For example, there might be extremists that feel justified in their views that cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc., are ‘full moral patients’ in the sense your describing because of their minority views of what counts as ‘sentient agents’.
(And if they adopt Taliban methods one day, might be too large of a group to meaningfully suppress without frightful implications.)
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
I think I’m not super interested in carrying this conversation further; I mainly wanted to say “if you meant that we should feel sympathetic to the Taliban because they now have less power over their victims, idgaf,” with a subpoint of “if you didn’t mean to say that, you might want to clarify, because it sounded like you meant to say that.”
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
No? My comment wouldn’t make sense if by ‘sentient’ I thought you really meant ‘sapient’.
Since the category of “cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc.,” includes animals that are not usually considered sapient by anyone, at least on LW.
EDIT: And I’m usually quite picky about clarifying ambiguity, as you might have guessed from the comment chain, so I would have asked about it if there was confusion.
Okay well in that case I have no idea what you might possibly mean by “sub-sentient agents” unless you’re asking about, like, slime mold.
I’m finding this thread exhausting and anti-rewarding (since it’s entirely one-way, with you putting in zero effort to clarify whatever the heck it was you were saying); please don’t reply further.
I have room for some degree of moral relativism; I think that there are some areas and situations in which one person thinks X is good and another person thinks X is bad and both of them are roughly equally justified.
(I struggled to think of an example on the spot—maybe circumcision-by-default? I’m super duper clear on circumcision-by-default being harmful and bad but I’m not inclined to demonize people who circumcise their kids.)
But when the point is “the oppressors’ values were being satisfied, when they were in a position to oppress—you’re now making them sadder and making their lives worse by preventing them from having unlimited autocratic power over their women”
(which is something I interpreted you to be saying, as a part of your point)
I do not validate that sadness as being morally relevant. I can acknowledge that the improvement was not a pareto improvement in that, yes, there was a loser, but that person’s loss was not something they “should” have had a claim to in the first place; them treating it as a loss is setting the zero point in an illegitimate place.
Morality may not be fully objective, but neither is it fully subjective; you can in fact just straightforwardly look at a situation and often see that something is objectively wrong, simply by starting with something like “treat all sentient agents as moral patients.”
What does treat all “sentient agents as moral patients” mean?
I tried doing a verbatim search but your comment is the only recorded instance according to Google.
(I might be using words oddly or slightly wrongly; apologies if so.)
My understanding of the phrase “moral patient” is that it means “an entity that’s morally relevant.” So for the median human, a cow is not in practice a moral patient, but for a vegan or ethical vegetarian or Hindu, it definitely is.
One way that a person can argue for things like slavery or patriarchy is by either insinuating or outright claiming that the oppressed person is less of a moral patient than the oppressor; a sort of utility-monster-adjacent situation where the suffering of the losing party is outweighed by the gain of the winning party.
That’s how one might get from “sure, the male oppressors lost something when the women started getting basic human rights” (which is true) to “and we should care about, or have sympathy for, their loss” (which is false, because their loss was of territory they should not have had control over in the first place, because it required treating other sentient agents as not moral patients).
So what I meant by “treat all sentient agents as moral patients” is something like “start from a baseline wherein every sentient agent is clustered in the same order of magnitude, in terms of what amount of dignity and care and autonomy our society should support them having, and enforce via its norms.”
If you start from a baseline where women and men are not substantially different in how much goodness they deserve, then it’s impossible to feel all that sad about the males in Taliban-controlled society losing their tyrannical power over women.
Does this imply that sub-sentient agents are fractional moral patients?
Your elaboration mostly makes sense, the issue seems to be who gets to define ‘sentient agents’?
For example, there might be extremists that feel justified in their views that cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc., are ‘full moral patients’ in the sense your describing because of their minority views of what counts as ‘sentient agents’.
(And if they adopt Taliban methods one day, might be too large of a group to meaningfully suppress without frightful implications.)
I think that you are reading me as meaning, by the word “sentient,” “sapient.”
I meant “sentient.”
I think I’m not super interested in carrying this conversation further; I mainly wanted to say “if you meant that we should feel sympathetic to the Taliban because they now have less power over their victims, idgaf,” with a subpoint of “if you didn’t mean to say that, you might want to clarify, because it sounded like you meant to say that.”
I think that goal has been achieved.
No? My comment wouldn’t make sense if by ‘sentient’ I thought you really meant ‘sapient’.
Since the category of “cows, cats, dogs, whales, etc.,” includes animals that are not usually considered sapient by anyone, at least on LW.
EDIT: And I’m usually quite picky about clarifying ambiguity, as you might have guessed from the comment chain, so I would have asked about it if there was confusion.
Okay well in that case I have no idea what you might possibly mean by “sub-sentient agents” unless you’re asking about, like, slime mold.
I’m finding this thread exhausting and anti-rewarding (since it’s entirely one-way, with you putting in zero effort to clarify whatever the heck it was you were saying); please don’t reply further.