Ah, yes I guess I’m sliding between multiple definitions of nonconformity. When I said that polyamory is consciously nonconformist, I mean that in the sense that they adopt a position that is understood that way by their peers, their parents, etc. Nonconformity here is adopting idiosyncratic practices that may be stigmatized, with the intention of opening up new possibilities for living one’s life. When I say the opposite, that polyamory is overly conformist, I mean to challenge that idea—what is usually understood as nonconformity arrives at it’s position not by challenging social norms, but by rejecting the inconsistency of social norms. Where the monogamist has multiple conflicting and overlapping values of commitment and choice and freedom, etc., the polygamist arrives at her position by valorizing a single, unambiguous value and rejecting anything that conflicts with it. The most precise term for this is not nonconformity, it’s fundamentalism.
It’s certainly possible that a given social problem is caused by an inadequate commitment to a single value, but I want to clarify that this is the claim being made, and that I don’t agree, in two ways. First, I contest the idea that having a single unambiguous value to govern human social life is achievable or even desirable, and second, that intimate relationships are improved by introducing more flexibility and choice. I think we are very sensitive to the problems that are created by a lack of choice in relationships, and remarkably blind to the problems that are caused by too much choice. The post attempts to exploit this blindness by asking us rationally justify monogamy, a task that can only be accomplished by appealing to a set of values that are waning. In my view, the fact that we can’t do this convincingly is an apt illustration of the malaise that afflicts society.
...the polygamist arrives at her position by valorizing a single, unambiguous value and rejecting anything that conflicts with it.
Do you have evidence for this? It seems like a product of generalizing from one example, or some similar bias (correspondence bias, perhaps?), to me. I don’t see any reason why someone couldn’t consider multiple conflicting values and determine that polygamy was the best way to satisfy most of them. (I will admit that a higher-than-usual chance that there’s a reason that I’m not aware of, since I’m rather unusual when it comes to how I think about relationships, but as the person making a claim, it’s still your responsibility to provide evidence for that claim.)
The post attempts to exploit this blindness by asking us rationally justify monogamy...
Hm.
I think this is the relevant quote:
This, then, is your exercise: spend five minutes thinking about why your choice of monogamy is preferable to all of the other inhabitants of relationship-style-space, for you.
I don’t know if WrongBot has read enough here to know this—if e hasn’t, you may be right about eir intentions—but in the context of what ‘preferable’ is used to mean here, that quote is not necessarily asking for a rational justification. Preferences are also strongly dependent on values—which are arational, not irrational—so it would be perfectly valid for someone to answer that question with something like “I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships” or “I value my status within my social group, which disapproves of polygamy”, with no further explanation necessary. “I value my time, and thus prefer not to spend it thinking about things like this”, which seems to be your objection, is also valid (though it would be a good idea to clearly specify what ‘like this’ means) - but, not everyone shares that value!
I’m male and I’ve read most of the sequences here, to clear up a couple pieces of uncertainty.
I was asking people to justify their preferences in terms of their values, so, yes, “I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships” is a perfectly valid justification, and there’s nothing irrational about it. Though I might ask for a clarification of what kind of security the person means (Social? Fear of abandonment?), and whether they’ve considered the ways that other kinds of relationships might provide or fail to provide that security. Why do you believe what you believe? That’s the ultimate question I’m asking.
I don’t see any reason why someone couldn’t consider multiple conflicting values and determine that polygamy was the best way to satisfy most of them.
In principle, this is true, but I take the polyamory movement as having been heavily influenced by the 60s counterculture movement and the sexual revolution, influenced philosophically by Romantic poets and Rousseau. One of the major countercultural critiques of mainstream society is hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory values.
Empirically, this has been demonstrated by Jonathan Haidt. Maybe you are already familiar with his work. He proposes 5 moral foundations—Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Respect, Purity/Sacredness—these are different ways of approaching moral questions. He shows that self-described liberals tend to value the first 2 far more than the last 3, where conservatives value them more equally. It’s fairly easy to identify the countercultural critique of society through these categories, by observing that they largely reject notions like respect for authority, religious justifications rooted in purity & sacredness, and loyalty to nation & family, taking these values to be vices rather than virtues and seeing all the evil in the world as a result of them.
Aside from that, the institution of marriage and monogamy is governed by the norms of permanent commitment and connection, admittedly less so than in previous eras. It’s difficult to see how an activist who rejects the culture’s major symbols and practices embodying commitment could not be intending to reject it wholesale, especially when the alternate values of flexibility are emphasized so heavily instead.
You seem to be making the argument that polyamory reminds you of a 60′s political movement and that therefore polyamorous people probably have the same intellectual values as leading thinkers in that movement. I find this nonsensical. I’m polyamorous, and I certainly wish that society in general would view polyamory as an acceptable alternative, but I’m not polyamorous in order to rebel against society, nor do I want to oppose the institution of marriage in any way. Nor do I have anything against commitment: quite to the contrary, I feel rather strongly that I need committed relationships in order to be happy.
So are you saying that I’m wrong to assert that the polyamory subculture has deep philosophical roots in counterculture? Or that those roots influence the presuppositions of people who consciously identify themselves with it?
I should also point out that as the 4th top contributor in a fairly diverse intellectual community outside of the polyamory community, your personal values and opinions are a poor counterexample.
So are you saying that I’m wrong to assert that the polyamory subculture has deep philosophical roots in counterculture? Or that those roots influence the presuppositions of people who consciously identify themselves with it?
I agree that a disproportionate fraction of the people practicing polyamory probably have values that are related to the ones you are discussing. But I don’t think there’s enough evidence to show that an overwhelming majority, or even a simple majority, of polyamorists would have the kinds of values you suggest they have. (The value of “opposing commitment”, in particular, seems very abnormal.) Possibly not even a remarkable minority.
In my experience people become polyamorous via a highly diverse set of routes, and affiliation with counterculture is just one of them. I’d expect there to be at least as many people who came to be polyamorous out of the simple realization that monoamory simply isn’t working for them than people who became polyamorous due to any particular counterculture ties.
I should also point out that as the 4th top contributor in a fairly diverse intellectual community outside of the polyamory community, your personal values and opinions are a poor counterexample.
I’m not sure what you mean. You were making a generalization about polyamorous people, and I gave a counterexample; I don’t know what me being the number four contributor on Less Wrong has to do with it. But if that makes me personally disqualified, I also have many polyamorous friends who are not part of this community and who most definitely also do not fit the profile you’re describing.
Ah-ha. You seem to be conflating polygamy-as-a-lifestyle with polygamy-as-a-political-movement. I know next to nothing about polygamy-as-a-political-movement, and don’t much care to—one can easily adopt polygamy-as-a-lifestyle without it, if that seems to be in one’s best interests.
Regarding the five values, polygamy-as-a-lifestyle seems to me to have the potential to be compatible with all of them, and in some ways it may do a better job of fulfilling one or more of them—including the latter three—depending on how you define the terms.
I’m polyromantic and asexual, and consider my current situation (two major partners and a handful of currently-important other relationships) to be very good in terms of all five, and better at care, respect, and purity/sacredness than most marriages that I’m aware of. (My concept of purity/sacredness is probably nonstandard, though.)
Aside from that, the institution of marriage and monogamy is governed by the norms of permanent commitment and connection, admittedly less so than in previous eras. It’s difficult to see how an activist who rejects the culture’s major symbols and practices embodying commitment could not be intending to reject it wholesale, especially when the alternate values of flexibility are emphasized so heavily instead.
You’re conflating monogamy, marriage, and commitment—and probably conflating sex with those, as well. This is somewhat understandable, since in this culture they’re strongly correlated, but it’s not very accurate in practice. Most kinds of poly relationships that I’m aware of—including mine—involve some kind of commitment; the fact that that commitment doesn’t necessarily take the form of a promise never to have sex with anyone else or an official document doesn’t make the commitment any less real.
One difference that I have with this community is that I take seriously the influence of social context, the history of ideas and the discursive practices that help determine our horizon of meaning. To me, drawing attention to social context in which an idea acquires meaning is not conflating issues, that is the issue. Ignoring or downplaying it means we’re trying to ignore the background in which certain problems become salient, acquire meaning and new choices become a possibilities. That’s just not reality.
I’m not merely pointing to the political movement, but the entire culture of polyamory. What are it’s values, shared beliefs, assumptions, norms, categories and justifications, and how does it posit itself relative to mainstream culture? The fact that you identify yourself as polyromantic probably means you have largely adopted that worldview. And here’s another area where I differ from the individualist bent of this community—even if you personally do not suffer from the ill effects of a particular idea, I claim that you have an ethical duty to consider the effects of promoting an idea if the influence of it’s philosophical presuppositions has a negative impact on society.
I want to point out that, at least so far, you haven’t disputed my contention that the poly subculture holds flexibility as the pre-eminent value, only that you personally don’t.
Ah-ha. You seem to be conflating polygamy-as-a-lifestyle with polygamy-as-a-political-movement. I know next to nothing about polygamy-as-a-political-movement, and don’t much care to—one can easily adopt polygamy-as-a-lifestyle without it, if that seems to be in one’s best interests.
One difference that I have with this community is that I take seriously the influence of social context, the history of ideas and the discursive practices that help determine our horizon of meaning. To me, drawing attention to social context in which an idea acquires meaning is not conflating issues, that is the issue. Ignoring or downplaying it means we’re trying to ignore the background in which certain problems become salient, acquire meaning and new choices become a possibilities. That’s just not reality.
Considering the second of the two to be much more important doesn’t make it not a conflation to collapse the first into it.
That’s a matter of your perspective. You assume that the concepts are ontologically separate to begin with, and are then collapsed, simply because in this case they are made conceptually distinct by being named differently. I disagree, I say the conceptual distinction is artificial, used to avoid the full scope of the issue by ruling certain facts a priori irrelevant without having to consider them.
If two concepts are separable, then considering them to be the same is “ruling certain facts a priori irrelevant”—specifically, whatever facts allow them to be separated. I do not see how it would be possible for the opposite to also be true.
Which facts do you think are being declared irrelevant in the process of looking at polygamy-as-a-lifestyle separately from polygamy-as-a-political-movement?
I don’t consider them to be the same, I think individuals and culture mutually influence each other and interact in complex ways. There are facts that are relevant to the debate that are being disallowed based on a preference for reductionist approaches that I don’t share. This preference wants to consider an individual’s motivations independently of the culture in which he or she is embedded. It’s incorrect to say that I disallow facts that would allow them to be treated separately, I have no problem with that. For example, if it can be shown that the cultural issues have no bearing on the issue. Given that questions about mainstream vs. subculture and conformity vs. nonconformity are deeply connected to this issue, I’m skeptical that this can be done, but I certainly have no objection to you trying.
The specific facts that I think are relevant is the polyamory culture’s connection to counterculture. Ignoring this influence means we’re debating whether polyamory could be logically justified, which is an abstract intellectual exercise that has little relevance to the question of how polyamory is actually justified. I assume that the rationale for this is that if polyamory can be shown to be logically justifiable, it doesn’t matter too much if one gets there by a different route; that it doesn’t matter if you are right for the wrong reasons. I disagree with that, I think it does matter.
The origin of an idea probably has a long term influence, but ideas also get changed as people use them. Not paying attention to the current state of an idea, or the movement which is using it means that you miss a lot.
I’m finding your comments harder and harder to parse. I’m not sure if this is a sign that I need to take a break and come back to this when I’m fresh, or a function of you being evasive, but either way, taking a break seems like a good idea. I’ll come back to this thread tomorrow.
He’s formulating his arguments in a paradigm foreign to this site, one that I would hesitantly identify as post-structuralist. I can mostly follow his arguments, but only because I thought I wanted to major in English in my freshman year of college.
The problem with post-structuralism and other similar paradigms, especially in the context of this site, is that it doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned with truth as rationalists define it; this makes it a particularly poor tool for discovering truth. Very good for circular arguments based on poorly-defined jargon, though.
Interesting. I find that his arguments are clear, but wrong.
I think I have a mental habit of thinking “what might this mean?” and coming up with something—generally something good enough that people think I understand them. It takes quite a bit to get me to think something is nonsense.
Ah, yes I guess I’m sliding between multiple definitions of nonconformity. When I said that polyamory is consciously nonconformist, I mean that in the sense that they adopt a position that is understood that way by their peers, their parents, etc. Nonconformity here is adopting idiosyncratic practices that may be stigmatized, with the intention of opening up new possibilities for living one’s life. When I say the opposite, that polyamory is overly conformist, I mean to challenge that idea—what is usually understood as nonconformity arrives at it’s position not by challenging social norms, but by rejecting the inconsistency of social norms. Where the monogamist has multiple conflicting and overlapping values of commitment and choice and freedom, etc., the polygamist arrives at her position by valorizing a single, unambiguous value and rejecting anything that conflicts with it. The most precise term for this is not nonconformity, it’s fundamentalism.
It’s certainly possible that a given social problem is caused by an inadequate commitment to a single value, but I want to clarify that this is the claim being made, and that I don’t agree, in two ways. First, I contest the idea that having a single unambiguous value to govern human social life is achievable or even desirable, and second, that intimate relationships are improved by introducing more flexibility and choice. I think we are very sensitive to the problems that are created by a lack of choice in relationships, and remarkably blind to the problems that are caused by too much choice. The post attempts to exploit this blindness by asking us rationally justify monogamy, a task that can only be accomplished by appealing to a set of values that are waning. In my view, the fact that we can’t do this convincingly is an apt illustration of the malaise that afflicts society.
Do you have evidence for this? It seems like a product of generalizing from one example, or some similar bias (correspondence bias, perhaps?), to me. I don’t see any reason why someone couldn’t consider multiple conflicting values and determine that polygamy was the best way to satisfy most of them. (I will admit that a higher-than-usual chance that there’s a reason that I’m not aware of, since I’m rather unusual when it comes to how I think about relationships, but as the person making a claim, it’s still your responsibility to provide evidence for that claim.)
Hm.
I think this is the relevant quote:
I don’t know if WrongBot has read enough here to know this—if e hasn’t, you may be right about eir intentions—but in the context of what ‘preferable’ is used to mean here, that quote is not necessarily asking for a rational justification. Preferences are also strongly dependent on values—which are arational, not irrational—so it would be perfectly valid for someone to answer that question with something like “I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships” or “I value my status within my social group, which disapproves of polygamy”, with no further explanation necessary. “I value my time, and thus prefer not to spend it thinking about things like this”, which seems to be your objection, is also valid (though it would be a good idea to clearly specify what ‘like this’ means) - but, not everyone shares that value!
I’m male and I’ve read most of the sequences here, to clear up a couple pieces of uncertainty.
I was asking people to justify their preferences in terms of their values, so, yes, “I value the security that I get from monogamous relationships” is a perfectly valid justification, and there’s nothing irrational about it. Though I might ask for a clarification of what kind of security the person means (Social? Fear of abandonment?), and whether they’ve considered the ways that other kinds of relationships might provide or fail to provide that security. Why do you believe what you believe? That’s the ultimate question I’m asking.
In principle, this is true, but I take the polyamory movement as having been heavily influenced by the 60s counterculture movement and the sexual revolution, influenced philosophically by Romantic poets and Rousseau. One of the major countercultural critiques of mainstream society is hypocritical, inconsistent and contradictory values.
Empirically, this has been demonstrated by Jonathan Haidt. Maybe you are already familiar with his work. He proposes 5 moral foundations—Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Respect, Purity/Sacredness—these are different ways of approaching moral questions. He shows that self-described liberals tend to value the first 2 far more than the last 3, where conservatives value them more equally. It’s fairly easy to identify the countercultural critique of society through these categories, by observing that they largely reject notions like respect for authority, religious justifications rooted in purity & sacredness, and loyalty to nation & family, taking these values to be vices rather than virtues and seeing all the evil in the world as a result of them.
Aside from that, the institution of marriage and monogamy is governed by the norms of permanent commitment and connection, admittedly less so than in previous eras. It’s difficult to see how an activist who rejects the culture’s major symbols and practices embodying commitment could not be intending to reject it wholesale, especially when the alternate values of flexibility are emphasized so heavily instead.
You seem to be making the argument that polyamory reminds you of a 60′s political movement and that therefore polyamorous people probably have the same intellectual values as leading thinkers in that movement. I find this nonsensical. I’m polyamorous, and I certainly wish that society in general would view polyamory as an acceptable alternative, but I’m not polyamorous in order to rebel against society, nor do I want to oppose the institution of marriage in any way. Nor do I have anything against commitment: quite to the contrary, I feel rather strongly that I need committed relationships in order to be happy.
So are you saying that I’m wrong to assert that the polyamory subculture has deep philosophical roots in counterculture? Or that those roots influence the presuppositions of people who consciously identify themselves with it?
I should also point out that as the 4th top contributor in a fairly diverse intellectual community outside of the polyamory community, your personal values and opinions are a poor counterexample.
I agree that a disproportionate fraction of the people practicing polyamory probably have values that are related to the ones you are discussing. But I don’t think there’s enough evidence to show that an overwhelming majority, or even a simple majority, of polyamorists would have the kinds of values you suggest they have. (The value of “opposing commitment”, in particular, seems very abnormal.) Possibly not even a remarkable minority.
In my experience people become polyamorous via a highly diverse set of routes, and affiliation with counterculture is just one of them. I’d expect there to be at least as many people who came to be polyamorous out of the simple realization that monoamory simply isn’t working for them than people who became polyamorous due to any particular counterculture ties.
I’m not sure what you mean. You were making a generalization about polyamorous people, and I gave a counterexample; I don’t know what me being the number four contributor on Less Wrong has to do with it. But if that makes me personally disqualified, I also have many polyamorous friends who are not part of this community and who most definitely also do not fit the profile you’re describing.
Ah-ha. You seem to be conflating polygamy-as-a-lifestyle with polygamy-as-a-political-movement. I know next to nothing about polygamy-as-a-political-movement, and don’t much care to—one can easily adopt polygamy-as-a-lifestyle without it, if that seems to be in one’s best interests.
Regarding the five values, polygamy-as-a-lifestyle seems to me to have the potential to be compatible with all of them, and in some ways it may do a better job of fulfilling one or more of them—including the latter three—depending on how you define the terms.
I’m polyromantic and asexual, and consider my current situation (two major partners and a handful of currently-important other relationships) to be very good in terms of all five, and better at care, respect, and purity/sacredness than most marriages that I’m aware of. (My concept of purity/sacredness is probably nonstandard, though.)
You’re conflating monogamy, marriage, and commitment—and probably conflating sex with those, as well. This is somewhat understandable, since in this culture they’re strongly correlated, but it’s not very accurate in practice. Most kinds of poly relationships that I’m aware of—including mine—involve some kind of commitment; the fact that that commitment doesn’t necessarily take the form of a promise never to have sex with anyone else or an official document doesn’t make the commitment any less real.
One difference that I have with this community is that I take seriously the influence of social context, the history of ideas and the discursive practices that help determine our horizon of meaning. To me, drawing attention to social context in which an idea acquires meaning is not conflating issues, that is the issue. Ignoring or downplaying it means we’re trying to ignore the background in which certain problems become salient, acquire meaning and new choices become a possibilities. That’s just not reality.
I’m not merely pointing to the political movement, but the entire culture of polyamory. What are it’s values, shared beliefs, assumptions, norms, categories and justifications, and how does it posit itself relative to mainstream culture? The fact that you identify yourself as polyromantic probably means you have largely adopted that worldview. And here’s another area where I differ from the individualist bent of this community—even if you personally do not suffer from the ill effects of a particular idea, I claim that you have an ethical duty to consider the effects of promoting an idea if the influence of it’s philosophical presuppositions has a negative impact on society.
I want to point out that, at least so far, you haven’t disputed my contention that the poly subculture holds flexibility as the pre-eminent value, only that you personally don’t.
Considering the second of the two to be much more important doesn’t make it not a conflation to collapse the first into it.
That’s a matter of your perspective. You assume that the concepts are ontologically separate to begin with, and are then collapsed, simply because in this case they are made conceptually distinct by being named differently. I disagree, I say the conceptual distinction is artificial, used to avoid the full scope of the issue by ruling certain facts a priori irrelevant without having to consider them.
If two concepts are separable, then considering them to be the same is “ruling certain facts a priori irrelevant”—specifically, whatever facts allow them to be separated. I do not see how it would be possible for the opposite to also be true.
Which facts do you think are being declared irrelevant in the process of looking at polygamy-as-a-lifestyle separately from polygamy-as-a-political-movement?
I don’t consider them to be the same, I think individuals and culture mutually influence each other and interact in complex ways. There are facts that are relevant to the debate that are being disallowed based on a preference for reductionist approaches that I don’t share. This preference wants to consider an individual’s motivations independently of the culture in which he or she is embedded. It’s incorrect to say that I disallow facts that would allow them to be treated separately, I have no problem with that. For example, if it can be shown that the cultural issues have no bearing on the issue. Given that questions about mainstream vs. subculture and conformity vs. nonconformity are deeply connected to this issue, I’m skeptical that this can be done, but I certainly have no objection to you trying.
The specific facts that I think are relevant is the polyamory culture’s connection to counterculture. Ignoring this influence means we’re debating whether polyamory could be logically justified, which is an abstract intellectual exercise that has little relevance to the question of how polyamory is actually justified. I assume that the rationale for this is that if polyamory can be shown to be logically justifiable, it doesn’t matter too much if one gets there by a different route; that it doesn’t matter if you are right for the wrong reasons. I disagree with that, I think it does matter.
The origin of an idea probably has a long term influence, but ideas also get changed as people use them. Not paying attention to the current state of an idea, or the movement which is using it means that you miss a lot.
Are you implying that the movement has changed its philosophical presuppositions? If so, please provide a citation to back this up.
I’m finding your comments harder and harder to parse. I’m not sure if this is a sign that I need to take a break and come back to this when I’m fresh, or a function of you being evasive, but either way, taking a break seems like a good idea. I’ll come back to this thread tomorrow.
It’s not you. I am unable to parse any of alsomike’s comments.
He’s formulating his arguments in a paradigm foreign to this site, one that I would hesitantly identify as post-structuralist. I can mostly follow his arguments, but only because I thought I wanted to major in English in my freshman year of college.
The problem with post-structuralism and other similar paradigms, especially in the context of this site, is that it doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned with truth as rationalists define it; this makes it a particularly poor tool for discovering truth. Very good for circular arguments based on poorly-defined jargon, though.
Interesting. I find that his arguments are clear, but wrong.
I think I have a mental habit of thinking “what might this mean?” and coming up with something—generally something good enough that people think I understand them. It takes quite a bit to get me to think something is nonsense.