I’m not sure what you are trying to convince me of here. That people who disagree have reasons for disagreeing? Well of course they do, it’s not like they disagree out of spite. The fact that they are right in their minds does not mean that they are in fact right.
And yes, they might have a different definition for should. Doesn’t matter. If you talk to someone who believes that men kissing each other is “just plain wrong”, you’ll inevitably find that they are confused, illogical and inconsistent about their beliefs and are irrational in general. Do you think that just because a statement involves the word “should”, you can’t say that they are wrong?
The question I was trying to answer wasn’t whether they were right, it was whether a rational actor could hold those opinions. That has a lot less to do with factual accuracy and a lot more to do with internal consistency.
As to the correctness of normative claims—well, that’s a fairly subtle question. Deontological claims are often entangled with factual ones (e.g. the existence-of-God thing), so that’s at least one point of grounding, but even from a consequential perspective you need an optimization objective. Rational actors may disagree on exactly what that objective is, and reasonable-sounding objectives often lead to seriously counterintuitive prescriptions in some cases.
The question I was trying to answer wasn’t whether they were right, it was whether a rational actor could hold those opinions. That has a lot less to do with factual accuracy and a lot more to do with internal consistency.
Oh, right, I see what you mean. Sure, people can disagree with each other without either being irrational: All that takes is for them to have different information. For example, one can rationally believe the earth is flat, depending on which time and place one grew up in.
That does not change the fact that these questions have a correct answer though, and it should be pretty clear which the correct answers are in the above examples, even though you can never be 100% certain of course. The point remains that just because a question is political does not mean that all answers are equally valid. False equivalence and all that.
I’m not sure what you are trying to convince me of here. That people who disagree have reasons for disagreeing? Well of course they do, it’s not like they disagree out of spite. The fact that they are right in their minds does not mean that they are in fact right.
And yes, they might have a different definition for should. Doesn’t matter. If you talk to someone who believes that men kissing each other is “just plain wrong”, you’ll inevitably find that they are confused, illogical and inconsistent about their beliefs and are irrational in general. Do you think that just because a statement involves the word “should”, you can’t say that they are wrong?
The question I was trying to answer wasn’t whether they were right, it was whether a rational actor could hold those opinions. That has a lot less to do with factual accuracy and a lot more to do with internal consistency.
As to the correctness of normative claims—well, that’s a fairly subtle question. Deontological claims are often entangled with factual ones (e.g. the existence-of-God thing), so that’s at least one point of grounding, but even from a consequential perspective you need an optimization objective. Rational actors may disagree on exactly what that objective is, and reasonable-sounding objectives often lead to seriously counterintuitive prescriptions in some cases.
Oh, right, I see what you mean. Sure, people can disagree with each other without either being irrational: All that takes is for them to have different information. For example, one can rationally believe the earth is flat, depending on which time and place one grew up in.
That does not change the fact that these questions have a correct answer though, and it should be pretty clear which the correct answers are in the above examples, even though you can never be 100% certain of course. The point remains that just because a question is political does not mean that all answers are equally valid. False equivalence and all that.