Things like this seem like they’re infinitely recursive:
An important factor that doesn’t seem to go much remarked upon, but which to my mind is crucial, is, well, how the person being influenced feels about it!
How the person feels about it is of course a function of what the existing norms of interaction are. But Sniffnoy is trying to define a norm that takes how the other person feels into account. This seems like the kind of generalization you get if you aren’t willing to use concepts like “local norms” as an intermediate abstraction.
If you are willing to use that abstraction, then the thing is to start thinking about whether they’re unjust enough to rebel against, or just enough to cooperate with, or something else. This heuristic should satisfy the Categorical Imperative, but there’s a range of local norms that can be just, and a different range that are unjust, such that the object-level correct decision in an otherwise identical interaction will often be different depending on context.
I’m very confused how the categorical imperative is supposed to be relevant here. I don’t see how the bit you’ve highlighted relates to it at all.
I think you’ve misread what I’m saying. I am not trying to define that as a norm. I am pointing it out as an important consideration, not a definition.
More generally, I’m not trying to define anything as a norm. As I stated above, what I’m trying to do is not define new norms—certainly not from any sort of first principles—but to make some tiny initial progress towards making explicit the norms that already exist. Which, as you say, vary, but I can at least speak to what I’ve seen. The numbered points above are, as I said, considerations that I think need to be accounted for, and I think failing to account for those points is a big reason previous attempts have failed and ended up somewhere near “classical liberal” or “nerd”, neither of which is at all close to the actual norms anywhere.
Things like this seem like they’re infinitely recursive:
How the person feels about it is of course a function of what the existing norms of interaction are. But Sniffnoy is trying to define a norm that takes how the other person feels into account. This seems like the kind of generalization you get if you aren’t willing to use concepts like “local norms” as an intermediate abstraction.
If you are willing to use that abstraction, then the thing is to start thinking about whether they’re unjust enough to rebel against, or just enough to cooperate with, or something else. This heuristic should satisfy the Categorical Imperative, but there’s a range of local norms that can be just, and a different range that are unjust, such that the object-level correct decision in an otherwise identical interaction will often be different depending on context.
I’m very confused how the categorical imperative is supposed to be relevant here. I don’t see how the bit you’ve highlighted relates to it at all.
I think you’ve misread what I’m saying. I am not trying to define that as a norm. I am pointing it out as an important consideration, not a definition.
More generally, I’m not trying to define anything as a norm. As I stated above, what I’m trying to do is not define new norms—certainly not from any sort of first principles—but to make some tiny initial progress towards making explicit the norms that already exist. Which, as you say, vary, but I can at least speak to what I’ve seen. The numbered points above are, as I said, considerations that I think need to be accounted for, and I think failing to account for those points is a big reason previous attempts have failed and ended up somewhere near “classical liberal” or “nerd”, neither of which is at all close to the actual norms anywhere.