A relatively morally privileged position is one which, with respect to a specific change-in-context, can view that change-in-context as a strict pareto improvement. A relatively unprivileged position is one for which that change-in-context is a trade-off between moral values, or a reduction in their moral values (I’m unaware of a good antonym for a pareto improvement).
Infant Annihilator has a song describing a priest having sex with a fetus still in the womb. A religious person who thinks free speech is the devil’s work will find censorship of this song to be a net good; a religious person who thinks free speech is an important value will find censorship of this song to be at best a complicated question.
Depending on whether society censors the song, at least with respect to this specific issue, the relative state of moral privilege may exist with respect to society as a whole.
If somebody shares their moral values with the majority of a society (assuming functional Democracy), they exist in a state of general moral privilege over somebody whose set of moral values conflicts with society.
You haven’t described any pareto improvements. When you say “net good”, you’re acknowledging tradeoffs between agents (and perhaps tradeoffs within agents, but that’s generally resolvable via utility functions).
Casting majority support as privilege doesn’t add anything to the discussion—it’s still just bullying of the minority. And still probably the most stable outcome and a net improvement by utilitarian (flawed) calculations.
I think you may be extrapolating over all people’s preferences, whereas I’m modeling a limited perspective; that is, I’m evaluating the pareto improvement from the set of known-to-the-modeler’s preferences. A privileged moral perspective doesn’t need to be aware of unprivileged moral perspectives; that’s a major component of the basic privilege involved.
I can see why that would be confusing. But I don’t think it is necessarily useful to characterize the behavior as bullying; that definitely can be how it feels, granted. Hrm. “It isn’t that they don’t think you matter, it is that they don’t know you exist.”
A relatively morally privileged position is one which, with respect to a specific change-in-context, can view that change-in-context as a strict pareto improvement. A relatively unprivileged position is one for which that change-in-context is a trade-off between moral values, or a reduction in their moral values (I’m unaware of a good antonym for a pareto improvement).
Infant Annihilator has a song describing a priest having sex with a fetus still in the womb. A religious person who thinks free speech is the devil’s work will find censorship of this song to be a net good; a religious person who thinks free speech is an important value will find censorship of this song to be at best a complicated question.
Depending on whether society censors the song, at least with respect to this specific issue, the relative state of moral privilege may exist with respect to society as a whole.
If somebody shares their moral values with the majority of a society (assuming functional Democracy), they exist in a state of general moral privilege over somebody whose set of moral values conflicts with society.
That first paragraph is so good, it should be in the post.
I think it requires a particular way of modeling the world in order not to be even more confusing, unfortunately; I do like it.
You haven’t described any pareto improvements. When you say “net good”, you’re acknowledging tradeoffs between agents (and perhaps tradeoffs within agents, but that’s generally resolvable via utility functions).
Casting majority support as privilege doesn’t add anything to the discussion—it’s still just bullying of the minority. And still probably the most stable outcome and a net improvement by utilitarian (flawed) calculations.
I think you may be extrapolating over all people’s preferences, whereas I’m modeling a limited perspective; that is, I’m evaluating the pareto improvement from the set of known-to-the-modeler’s preferences. A privileged moral perspective doesn’t need to be aware of unprivileged moral perspectives; that’s a major component of the basic privilege involved.
I can see why that would be confusing. But I don’t think it is necessarily useful to characterize the behavior as bullying; that definitely can be how it feels, granted. Hrm. “It isn’t that they don’t think you matter, it is that they don’t know you exist.”