What the Social Issues Debates Are Missing
From the department of things I have so many conversations about I want to respond to them in bulk on my blog: social issues.
It’s a Presidential election year in the United States, and that means we’re treated to another fun and entertaining Republican Primary, in which Republican hopefuls continue to boast about how conservative they social issues. And of course, social issues doesn’t mean actually important issues like poverty, homelessness, education, and disease — it means finding ways to restrict abortion, same-sex marriage, and nowadays even access to contraception. Whee.
Now of course, people have taken to argue back against these social issues, saying things like:
If you think an abortion is immoral, then don’t get an abortion. It’s that simple.
and:
Claiming that someone else’s same-sex marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone eating a jelly donut because you’re on a diet
Cute, but I think these retorts are part of the problem, and when put back in context reveal a blasé attitude toward the actual claims that social conservatives are making, how wrong these claims are, and how harmful their quest for perceived purity is. And along the way, I’ll go down the social issues rabbit hole and try to point out just how absurd focusing on these social issues are. And no, nothing here is infringing, or even coming close to infringing, religious freedom.
The Objective Nature of the Claims
To understand what’s inaccurate here, let’s explore two related concepts: subjective and objective. Typically, this divide has been made where objective facts are things that are true no matter what people believe (the Earth is round regardless of how many people buy into The Flat Earth Society) and subjective facts are things that are true depending on what people believe (“I like ice cream” only if I actually do hold that belief).
Objective vs. Subjective
Now, I don’t think this is a smart divide, namely because if I like ice cream, than “Peter Hurford likes ice cream” is a true fact regardless of what everyone else believes — it just describes the attitudes of a particular person in a particular time, and thus is objective.
Now I may stop liking ice cream, and then the fact ceases to be true, but that doesn’t make the fact suddenly not objective, just like “England is the world’s most powerful empire” became false without it becoming subjective. Instead I like to speak of all facts as objective facts, and just add that some facts are relative to certain people and/or certain periods of time, so we can express accurate attitudes about how things change.
So this is cool and all, but what does it matter when it comes to social issues?
It’s Like Murder, Not Spinach
The problem is that the responses I mentioned treat a non-relative (objective) issue as a person-relative (subjective) preference. “If you think an abortion is immoral, then don’t get an abortion” only works if it’s just a personal ickiness for abortion, like saying “If you think spinach tastes bad, then don’t eat spinach”. Whereas the attitude is more accurately akin to murder, since these people believe abortion is murder, and “If you think murder is immoral, then don’t murder anyone” just doesn’t make any sense.
While it doesn’t make any sense to say that because you don’t like spinach then all people should be forever banned from eating spinach, it does make sense to say that murder is immoral and all people should be forever banned from murdering everyone! And when people say that abortion is immoral, or that same-sex marriage goes against my religion, they are making a claim in the same vein as the murder one. For social conservatives, same-sex marriage is more than just something they don’t want to do, but something they want seen wiped from all of society. Like murder.
Now, of course I don’t agree with them, not one bit. But admitting the type of claim being made changes the debate on social issues greatly.
The New Way to Approach this Debate
What is it about saying that murder is bad makes us justified in preventing everyone from murdering, everywhere? I’ve begun a long journey talking about morality in “The Meaning of Morality”, which has already spawned two follow-up posts and will probably spawn a few dozen more. But I can truncate all of these conclusions into one uncontroversial answer: murder causes great harm to people and we have a collective interest as a society to see this harm eliminated.
However, I (baselessly) speculate that people want to smooth over this disagreement by claiming a position of relativism where all viewpoints are equal and social conservatives aren’t mistaken about abortion needing to be opposed, but it’s just that this opposition should be personal and kept to themselves. Basically telling them that their gay bashing is cute, but they should do it somewhere else and not make legislation about it, because other people may not agree with them.
So, it’s up to social conservatives to demonstrate that same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception cause a harm to society that is so great we need to use the law to eliminate them. And we respond by demonstrating that their claims are bunk, and that same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception cause no such harm.
In fact, it’s the opposite: it actually turns out that suppressing same-sex marriage, abortion, and birth control causes real harm, we need to do more and turn the tables against social conservatism. And this makes it all the more imperative we combat these socially conservative arguments and put us on the path to a society that cares about the facts and uses them to create a society in which people are happier and better off.
Same-Sex Marriage
So what’s this about wanting to restrict same-sex marriage? As far as I can tell, it comes from two places: (1) the need to uphold a “traditional” and “natural” marriage between a man and a woman and (2) Leviticus 18:22, which says that men “shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”
But none of these matter for anything — while there is an interesting case that homosexuality is completely natural, even it weren’t, there still is no harm that comes out of same-sex marriage. Quite simply, we don’t get our cues from what other animals do in any realm, otherwise we would be running around naked all the time; and we don’t take tradition to be absolute or else we would still be prosecuting women for being witches.
Additionally, claims that homosexuals weaken the sanctity of marriage by divorcing more frequently or by not being aimed at procreation are unsubstantiated, given that one group’s marriage can do nothing to harm another marriage and we let unstable marriages and infertile marriages be created all the time!
It’s clear there is no actual harm in same-sex marriage, so restricting them by creating arbitrary “man and woman” definitions or proclaiming marriage to be a uniquely religious domain only prevents two people who love each other from having their connection validated and getting marriage benefits. By denying them their marriage, you not only deny them rightful benefits, but harm them psychologically and signal a cultural inferiority.
Abortion
Abortion is a much tougher case to crack, but it’s a good start to point out how contradictory it is that people want to see less abortions, yet don’t support birth control, safe-sex education, or welfare, because less funding for those causes more abortions. It seems that many people aren’t interested in less abortions after all.
Numerous people frame the pro-choice case on woman having a right to control their own body, and while this is indeed true, it doesn’t really address the concern that abortion constitues a murder. If those against abortion were indeed correct that abortions were not in any way distinguishable from murder, it wouldn’t matter much how inconvenienced the woman was, unless their life itself was in danger.
Yet, abortion does not actually constitute a murder in any analogous way. No one has so far been able to demonstrate the existence of a soul, let alone that fetuses have been endowed with one, so the only argument is that fetuses eventually become people, yet currently aren’t people. But this doesn’t fly either because any act of not having sex ends up killing a potential person by preventing it from having existed in the first place.
I’m going to have to cut it short there and just say that I agree with Peter Singer on the issue and with what Garren Hochstetler wrote in his comments on the book “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life”. No doubt I haven’t convinced any pro-life people to change their mind here, because it’s a complex issue that requires far more than four paragraphs. But while I’ll revisit the issue later, I still don’t think that social conservatives have proven the harm.
Contraception
Contraception didn’t always use to be a key social issue, but with the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (dreaded socialist evil ObamaCare) mandating that health insurance plans cover contraception, it became a big deal for people who see their being forced to cover contraception as an affront on their religious freedom.
So what’s the issue? As Mitt Romney writes in the Washington Examiner:
The Obama Administration [...is] impos[ing] a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away [...by] forc[ing] Roman Catholic hospitals, charities, and universities to purchase health insurance for their employees that includes coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization, in violation of their religious principles.
Romney is wrong.
This Isn’t Unique
Romney acts like this is an infringement like we’ve never seen before, and it only happened under Obama because he’s sooo radical. Romney is wrong… this case isn’t unique and appears to just be an issue-of-the-day to rally voter support.
28 states already have state laws mandating the coverage of contraception and five of those states do not include any exception for religious institutions.
Many Catholic hospitals and colleges already provide contraception coverage (PDF). And like all other laws of its kind, it does contain restrictions for houses of worship.
In fact, the law is so un-unique that saw its origin under George W. Bush, where the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act required that all companies which provide prescription drugs must also provide birth control.
This is Popular
Romney also acts like this bill is universally repudiated by the entire population, or at least the entire population of Catholics. But Romney is wrong again.
Taken to the polls, the anti-contraception consensus falls through, even among Catholics: A Public Policy Poll found that 58% of all Catholics, and 62% of all Catholic women, agree employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception.
Catholic Women don’t use birth control any less than non-Catholic women.
And just to prove how widespread not-following-all-Catholic-teachings is, Republican candidates themselves go against much of the Catholic Church’s teachings on war and caring for the poor.
This is Legal and Constitutional
Romney makes a big deal about how this bill is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. He even calls his position unassailable and cites Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC (2011) in his favor as saying the bill is an unconstitutional violation of freedom of religion. Romney is wrong again.
The case he cited has nothing to do with contraception, but rather only prevents schools from firing teachers for religious reasons. Instead, we can look to Oregon Employment Division v. Smith where the state was allowed to enforce drug laws against those who used drugs for religious ceremonial reasons, despite claims to religious freedom.
Furthermore, the religious freedom excuse crumbles more genrally because, as Alonzo Fyfe notes, there are many ways in which we do restrict religious freedom: we don’t let Scientologists deny coverage for psychological treatment, we don’t let Seventh Day Adventists deny coverage for blood transfusions, we don’t let Muslim or Jewish hospitals segregate their patients on the basis of gender, and we don’t let Christian hospitals deny care to gay people or deny gay people visitation rights. Freedom of religion does not mean freedom to deny care to people, and it does not mean freedom to harm.
You Aren’t Paying for Sluts
Lastly, despite Rush Limbuagh’s misogynistic tirade culminating with a request that all people on birth control publish videos of the sex they have (and less you accuse me of partisanship, Bill Maher was misogynist too), framing this as you being forced to pay financially for someone else’s sexual promiscuity is ridiculous in so many ways…
You as a taxpayer don’t actually pay anything. This is only between health providers and those who provide health services, and the schools and hospitals will be the ones paying those rates, though they may pass costs on in the form of higher tuition. None of your taxpayer money will be going to fund any form of contraception whatsoever.
Even if your taxpayer money were going to fund contraception, you still have no room for complaint because our taxpayer money goes to fund all sorts of things we don’t like, such as massive wars. Our appeal here is through the democratic process and open debate, not in refusing to pay money.
This isn’t at all about sexual promiscuity — birth control is used for many other things than controlling pregnancy such as medical disorders, and just a short visit to kidshealth.org shows that you use the same amount of pills no matter how much sex you have.
Even if it were about sexual promiscuity, it doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing at all harmful about safe sex. Get over it.
Followed up in Much Ado About Gay Marriage, Part I
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 14 Mar 2012 in All, Constitutional Law, Naturalism, Political Commentary. 34 Comments.
14 Mar 2012, 12:29 pm
The contraception issue, conjoined with abortion, is interesting.
I have to think most anti-abortionists who fail to favor criminalizing the pill (at least for women who are sexually active) are being inconsistent, since its known that the pill actually fails to prevent fertilization in some instances, and then can prevent implantation – which means, in their minds, a human being is killed.
We don’t know exactly how often it happens, but even if its relatively rare (say 1 out of 10,000 times sex is had while on the pill), given number women in the world who are on the pill, and the number instances of sex that adds up too, the safe bet is that lots and lots of people are being killed in this manner.
So there’s an opportunity to rustle up some serious cognitive dissonance in these people’s minds by bringing this up. How they reconcile these issues might be interesting.
Do they then decide the pill should be outlawed, a move that seems draconian even by many of those on the side of pro-life? If not, will they feel forced to confront the possibility that they really aren’t treating embryos as full human persons, and will this affect their beliefs about the legality of abortion (I’m sure way too optimistic)?
But in any case, it would be interesting to watch.
15 Mar 2012, 4:28 am
It’s definitely fair to say that the pill is killing a potential person, and I agree that sets up an interesting dilemma. But it’s the same dilemma I think that is set up by refraining from having sex.
But many “anti-abortion” / “pro-life” people I know just say that a fertilized egg is a person entitled to Constitutional legal rights, and thus there is no problem with contraception, since it prevents this fertilization and thus there is no “person” created to be harmed…
15 Mar 2012, 9:13 am
Imho, you are giving too much scope here. Beliefs are not objective, even if they are honest *and* justifiable true. Beliefs may be objective in the trivial sense that they correspond to neural patterns in our brains, which exist no matter what people think, but that is not interesting and anyway it is not what you’re talking about. The meaning we assign to beliefs like ‘the earth is round’ can be true (ie, can fit the best evidence/model we got about the subject) but they all are denizens of the map not of the territory. Asserting more than this is just guessing and, quite probably, is a categorization error (which is also a guess, but a simpler one, that I would bet on).
About the rest of the post, I see with increasing worry that these type of posts are necessary in the American society (I’m Portuguese). The type of ‘reasoning’ you and many others are fighting seems to me like we are all entering into the Twilight Zone.
Anyway, let me congratulate you for your posts herein. Keep’em coming :-)
15 Mar 2012, 11:12 am
Peter,
Anti-abortion proponents like to say that once an egg and sperm are joined, it can now be considered a distinct entity, in its own right, separate from the mother. So from that vantage point, there’s a big difference between preventing conception, doing something to stop pregnancy after conception occurs.
The pill *usually* stops conception – but doesn’t always. And when it doesn’t prevent conception, it often prevents the embryo from attaching to the wall of the uterus, resulting in a spontaneous abortion (aka. a miscarriage).
So that’s the difference I see in our dilemmas.
Refraining from sex always stops conception, which is the morally significant event, for the pro-lifer.
15 Mar 2012, 12:10 pm
If it weren’t for a flawed interpretation of the account of Onan then, Condoms/Femidoms would be fine.
15 Mar 2012, 4:04 pm
If abortion isn’t murder because the foetus isn’t a person, neither is newborn infanticide, when personhood hasn’t yet obtained because of the absence of experience. Also note that if a third party kills a foetus intentionally, I think most jurisdictions do consider it murder.
I suppose it’s impolitic to say, but I think the moral premise behind abortion rights is that the absolute right of the mother to body ownership trumps the right of the foetus to life. To think otherwise, even under the best circumstances, wherein the woman intended to become pregnant, is to subject the mother to a form of involuntary servitude. It is intolerable to some of us to tell the mother she must allow the foetus a home in her body once she invited it in–like contracts of enslavement (of the mother), which can’t be enforced.
It’s one right against another, and I don’t think there’s any “rational” basis for choosing one or another. (A good illustration of the nonexistence of objective morality.) I go with the mother because, frankly, I just don’t give a fig about the foetus, which I refuse to endow with rights against another based on its occupying space in that other’s body. But that’s just a sentiment concerning how I’d prefer the world to be; nobody need agree with me.
15 Mar 2012, 4:42 pm
Stephen Diamond:
Even if that follows, that does not mean that killing a newborn is ok. Personhood is not a necessary condition to define wrong killings (it is also wrong to kill many other mammals). Also, personhood is not a binary property, it is a fuzzy concept, which we cannot really pinpoint, that builds over time. So, an arbitrary frontier is necessary. But placing it at nine months just does not make sense socially (nobody defends killing newborn babies, that’s just a red herring). Placing it at time zero is just too conservative because we need to consider the conflicting interests of a full grown person: the mother. So we ask proper experts — medics, not priests — based on relevant evidence not in ancient myths, what a reasonable frontier should be. And we should stick with that.
Btw, did you know that at the time of Thomas Aquinas, the Church considered that the soul only entered the body when the fetus started to move? That was about 16 weeks of gestation (later than most modern abortion policies). Only after, when the first microscopes appeared, with really bad quality, some thought that they saw a little homunculus just after conception. Eventually the Church changed its stance on abortion (it was a time when the Church seemed to follow at least some scientific evidence…) and stick to it until today. You can check some of this at http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist_c.htm
16 Mar 2012, 11:47 am
I actually wrote my senior paper in favor of abortion and IIRC, the Church didn’t completely oppose abortion until around 1948 or something. Funnily enough, the Catholic Church was once totally okay with abortion because ensoulment (time period when fetus is endowed with soul by God) didn’t occur until quickening (when the fetus begins to move). Now Catholics are the leading demographic for the pro-life philosophy… it’s like reaction formation or something with these people, I swear.
There are actually two separate theological perspectives on this: creationism and traducianism. Creationism maintains that God directly creates and inserts the soul into the fetus. Traducianism maintains that while God directly created the soul, human beings bring the soul into the human by their own actions (i.e., procreation). A creationist could, in theory, morally justify abortion because no one really knows when God endows the fetus with a soul. This is what the Church used to hold. The Church has now changed to a traducianist paradigm, hence “life begins at conception.”
What I find most disturbing is that the property of having a soul determines moral status and, in a sense, value. Okay, so we can permit and justify any suffering as long as any entities suffering do not contain souls? What a terrible way to think about morality.
16 Mar 2012, 12:00 pm
“What I find most disturbing is that the property of having a soul determines moral status and, in a sense, value. Okay, so we can permit and justify any suffering as long as any entities suffering do not contain souls? What a terrible way to think about morality”
Once knew a Christian whose Dog got a medically manageable disease (with an increase longevity and quality of life), they said they wouldn’t bother treating it as at the end of the day their dog was soulless and it didn’t matter if she died. The cruelty struck me as much as the appalling logic.
16 Mar 2012, 5:35 pm
Seriously, you think this? That there’s some consensus among medical people on where rights begin. Even that medical people have anything special to say on the subject?
Medical experts were invoked by the Supreme Court of the United States for evidence on viability, which is a good example of substituting an irrelevant easy question for the hard one. The “agreement” on abortion is a political compromise, not a reasoned decision. But of course, there’s no such thing, when it comes to making “moral” decision.
16 Mar 2012, 6:12 pm
Stephen R. Diamond: The final word always come from legislators but they need (or should ask for) evidence to make more adequate decisions. At least in Portugal, the deadline for a legal abortion (up to 12 weeks) was partly based on medical evidence that until that time the fetus does not feel pain. That was useful scientific information to make a legal decision. Don’t you agree?
“What’s that supposed to mean?” What I tried to say in the sentence just after that: no one defends the killing of newborns. Placing the limit at nine months would not solve anything.
17 Mar 2012, 9:38 pm
What’s a soul? As far as I can tell, it’s “consciousness” made immortal, and a standard secular reason for worrying less about animal than human suffering is that the latter is conscious. Perhaps the difference is that those who deny “consciousness” to animals can manifest some doubt or can conclude the concept is vague, whereas “soul” is unequivocal.
18 Mar 2012, 1:37 am
In the particular persons case it was not based on studies of animal nociception, language use , tool use, neurochemistry etc. but that the Vatican had decided so.
Personally I don’t see consciousness as a binary system. I think there is a very graduated scale as a rough guide from humans, to dolphins, to pigs, to rats, to reptiles, to fish, to sponges etc etc etc. All be it getting ridiculously low towards the basic forms of life, something like the problems of defining a beard (how many hairs remain and it’s not a beard? Nobody says a single hair is a beard), the demarcation zone is fuzzy.
18 Mar 2012, 4:28 pm
But if you think the Vatican delivers truth, the failing isn’t “moral.” (Like it would be if the soul were something people didn’t otherwise recognize as “morally” crucial, i.e. “consciousness.”)
Consciousness has two senses, which are often popularly conflated. It means something like deeper knowledge or insight (“consciousness raising”; “false consciousness”); or it can mean phenomenal experience, i.e., the existence of qualia.
To my mind, the first is a continuum, but it is greatly enhanced in humans because of our possessing language. But the second is the primary focus when moral distinctions are made in comparing humans to other animals, and it doesn’t exist for any species.
18 Mar 2012, 11:06 pm
“But if you think the Vatican delivers truth, the failing isn’t “moral.””
Ummm…I’m lost. Knowingly allowing the suffering and early death of a pet, when the alternatives are easy and affordable can’t be moral, right? People have a duty of care to pets in the USA?
“But the second is the primary focus when moral distinctions are made in comparing humans to other animals”
It depends on what you construe as moral, certainly you get instances of self sacrifice, among dogs for unknown dogs. Monkeys are at least prone to similar things to our vices. I heard of a study where monkeys where taught the concept of money, as well as for buying food they were reported to engage in activities not entirely unlike gambling and prostitution.
19 Mar 2012, 1:59 am
In case you thought I was tripping:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/magazine/05FREAK.html?pagewanted=all
19 Mar 2012, 1:58 pm
Sorry, I was very unclear. I had thought your point wasn’t that not treating the dog was cruel; for what little its worth, my sentiments agree. Rather, I thought your point was that not treating the dog specifically because the dog lacked a soul was cruel. I don’t think that reasoning is inherently crueler than not treating the dog because the dog lacked consciousness. A soul is deemed a rather vital possession, although some of the vampire movies seem to treat it more like a non-functional appendage.
Also, my point wasn’t that animals lack all “moral” sense. Rather, that people who distinguish animals from people, based on the claim that the latter have a moral significance that animals lack, often base that distinction as to “moral” worth on the possession of consciousness by humans and not by animals. I think that _reasoning_ is unsound, as I don’t think such things like qualia exist, whether for man or for dog.
19 Mar 2012, 2:13 pm
Joao Pedro Neto,
I have to agree that the pain studies are relevant. Interesting that pain didn’t figure in U.S. court decisions (to my knowledge; I’m not an expert in this area.)
I misunderstood your other point because you said newborns are a red herring, whereas it doesn’t seem a distraction if you use it as grounds for an argument that a 9-month abortion is a no go.
The question, from my perspective, is whether balancing the interests of the foetus, the sensibilities of the public, and the interests of the mother, leads to a society I’d prefer more or less than one where the interests of the mother over-ride all until the new organism is outside her body. I’m no libertarian, but I think one place the government doesn’t belong is inside a person’s body; and, I think the principle is important enough to completely over-ride the interest of the foetus in life or even the foetus’s pain. This is, for me, more an argument about political sociology than ethics.
19 Mar 2012, 5:20 pm
Yes, I agree. That seems a sensible position to have, especially because it is possible to balance all three perspectives and still obtain a reasonable solution.
Cheers,
20 Mar 2012, 12:25 am
@Stephen R Diamond,
I see, yes I think the “no soul” justification is badly reasoned, but the whole act was cruel in any case.
I would guess that the whole tendency of humans to reject the idea of animal “souls”, “consciousness”, or “qualia”, comes from an inherent specieism, and the fact we want to eat them guilt free.
Having said this I am not a vegetarian, bacon is a vice of mine.
21 Mar 2012, 3:00 am
Joao Pedro Neto,
If I read you correctly, you seem to think that a law that balances all the significant interests is always better than a law based on a single interest. But I think laws based on a single predominant interest have their place. For example, in the United States, almost all prior restraints on free speech are unconstitutional, regardless of the other interests that are thereby offended. Such bright-line principles serve to underscore a society’s fundamental principles. I think absolute bodily autonomy is as much a basic principle–really, a more fundamental principle–than even free speech.
[Some democratic countries restrict speech more than does the U.S.: it's partly a matter of different historical traditions. But a society that tells a woman she must carry a foetus that she no longer welcomes inside her body--such a society is deeply oppressive (unless illegal abortions are readily available on the black market). But, again, that's a subjective assessment; but the point about the usefulness of bright-line principles does aspire to objectivity.]
21 Mar 2012, 5:23 am
Stephen,
I also think that fundamental rights lie on a different level (and the right not to be offended is not one of them). In fact, I see them above legislation (I try to follow Hayek’s different use of ‘Law’ and ‘Legislation’). They are even above the constitution which cites them but do not create them. Ideally, they should only be limited when they conflict with each other. But if they are not violated, I think in general it is best to have balanced legislation than legislation promoting social conflict in order to force a certain perspective (even if it is mine :-).
Another interesting discussion is what are those fundamental rights. I have a tentative list but I’m afraid this is also a complex problem.
21 Mar 2012, 1:25 pm
Mr. Diamond,
This is unrelated to this thread, but I responded to one of your more recent accusations here. Since you present yourself as a paragon of rationality and intellectual honesty, I’m very interested in hearing your response.
21 Mar 2012, 3:50 pm
I’m avoiding your blog, cl. I consider you a fraud. I think you’ve only gotten away from it over the years because most of your “adversaries,” unlike you, are young, naive, and inexperienced. I’m avoiding “engaging with you”; in that light, I’m certainly not interested in your assessment of my rationality and honesty. [You’re an ingrate. After I bent over backwards to try to confer some intelligible meaning on your utterances and now-repudiated diagrams, you exploit my generosity and accuse me of not having understood your gibberish. My fault: should have just told you you’re an idiot who makes no sense from the start.)
I don’t consider myself a paragon of honesty and rationality. Perhaps you think I’m an Less Wrongian because I’ve emphasized Bayes or something. (Less Wrongians tend to have that self-image, unless they’re cynical Robin Hansonians–from whose blog, incidentally, I’ve recently been banned.) Like everyone, I’m rational about some things and not others. I am notably intellectually honest in only one respect: I’m unusually good at comprehending positions I disagree with. You are notably dishonest intellectually (although my calling you a liar wasn’t warranted). You’re also manipulative. We don’t know if you’re a he, she, or it, because letting people guess helps you manipulate them. You got some earnest people to participate in a debate; you’re disruptive efforts–when your reply fell far short of Peter’s–by inciting a judge’s resignation through your juvenile narcissism, was despicable by my lights. But I can’t say people weren’t warned. Your blog’s title reveals that you see yourself involved in a mental war–not a reasonable discussion.
I say this to expose you, not to engage or enlighten you.
21 Mar 2012, 3:59 pm
I don’t currently have a comment policy, but if I make any sort of policy, this kind of stuff wouldn’t be allowed by it. For the purposes of this discussion, I care only about the three social issues I mentioned and the greater scope of the debate. I don’t care about whether cl is a fraud or not, or whatever axes one or more of you may have to grind against each other.
So please stop this commentary here and take it up on a comment board where it’s relevant. If it must be done on my site, do it in one of the discussions about the Cl – Peter debate. There’s already a “Stephen thinks Cl is a fraud” discussion in both of them!
Let’s get this back on topic. While I’ve been unusually busy this week with my “real” work, I do indeed hope to get to some substantive responding to all the on-topic stuff here and in other threads. As well as write more essays.
21 Mar 2012, 4:00 pm
It’s fine if you wish to avoid my blog. In fact, I prefer that, since you’re not a very kind person and you go off the rails with venom when angry. Why not take accountability here? Or on your own blog? That’s all I’m interested in here, is getting to the truth regarding what you accused me of. You call me a “fraud” and “dishonest” and an “ingrate” and a whole slew of other accusations, and that’s fine—after all, you simply confirm the Scriptures that say the world will hate Christians—but why expose yourself?
Again, I dare you to face that comment honestly. I’m asking you to take responsibility for your accusations. Will you? Or will you simply continue your departure from rationality and pile up more? If not, I trust that the impartial observer can make up their own mind.
21 Mar 2012, 4:01 pm
No problem Peter. I posted my last comment before seeing yours. Consider it done.
21 Mar 2012, 4:04 pm
Also, I want to make it very clear that I personally wish to continue discussing with Cl, even if other people don’t. He is still very much welcome on this blog. Same goes for Stephen. Individually, you’re both insightful people I have a lot to learn from.
21 Mar 2012, 4:07 pm
Also, Peter, I’m sorry if I bummed you out at all. I didn’t mean to.
21 Mar 2012, 4:28 pm
Peter,
Regarding the OP, there’s much I could say, but I’ll start here:
I’ll hoist you by your own petard here. Isn’t it up to you to demonstrate this? Can you show me how suppressing abortion “causes” real “harm,” and can you define both “cause” and “harm” clearly before the outset of your response? If you can’t show this alleged harm, or don’t, doesn’t that put you in the same camp as the conservatives you criticize?
BTW, I like how you’ve denoted text in blockquotes. It makes things much easier to read (for me at least). Although I’m not the biggest fan of yellow (objective claim).
21 Mar 2012, 6:46 pm
Peter,
You’re wrong to condemn both sides. As a simple matter of self defence, I’m entitled to a response to cl’s off-topic “paragon of rationality” slur. Do you contend I should have ignored it? Replied more moderately, perhaps? The first isn’t fair; the second intrudes on my expression. If I’m entitled to a response to an off-topic slur, I can make it on my own terms.
I didn’t initiate this diversion, and I take offense at your remonstrances, which ignore who the instigator was.
I understand you have no personal interest in who’s right regarding the substance of the diversion. So what? If you have a discussion, it’s not just about you. You should be capable of taking congnizance of other posters’ legitimate interests in defending ourselves against off-topic innuendo.
21 Mar 2012, 7:05 pm
Again, so what concerning what you care about? Where did you get this Robin Hansonian idea that commenters are restricted to what you consider relevant? To your credit, you aren’t enforcing this misconception, but you really should reconsider it. Obviously, if issues about cl kept arising, it would be a problem, but to say on one mention that’s its outside the purview, based on your interests (and sense of relevance), becomes ridiculous except as posturing and signaling. If I’m an insightful person, then the fact that I consider cl a fraud should be relevant to you, even if you end up dismissing it: since the question of whether cl is a fraud is relevant, even if not dispositive. (Aumann, etc.)
14 Jul 2012, 12:44 am
It’s about time I got back to some of the comments going on here:
I’d still disagree. I think that, relative to you, my preferences exist in the territory; they are “out there” for you to discover, and you can be meaningfully incorrect about them, regardless of your personal beliefs.
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Haha, indeed. It scares me a bit too, sometimes.
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Thanks! Encouragement like this means a lot to me.
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Right, that makes sense from a pro-lifer standpoint, but it’s not the kind of thing I value, and I would argue against such ideas, like I do here.
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What now?
15 Jul 2012, 2:27 pm
Dear Peter,
Sometimes the distance of these arguments lies in the different subtle ways we understand and use the same words. Let me try to resume my position (sorry for the long comment)
I tend to gravitate around “The Map is not the Territory” in this Ontology/Epistemology discussion. I understand ‘Territory’ as the event generator, aka Reality. We are only able to measure events indirectly using our senses and tech (events with no effects are non-existent for all purposes). The ‘Map’ is a tangled web of shared and private beliefs that we, Humanity, build and maintain for centuries. The ‘Map’ is the meaning generator.
The terms Objective/Subjective, imo, only make sense in the Map. Objective beliefs are those not dependent of personal states, and those dependent are subjective (this is more like a spectrum than a boolean feature, but let’s keep it simple). Beliefs not dependent of private or social features (even if they are known just because of specific historical contexts) and which are known using logic/evidence/reason are objective (like Math or Science in the broad sense). This does not mean that objective beliefs are ‘true’ because humans can be mistaken (insufficient models, noisy data, errors in reasoning, etc.) but they are not dependent of persons X’s or Y’s state of mind. That’s why I think that your liking of ice-cream is subjective. That is a private belief that would not exist if Peter Hurford wouldn’t exist. It depends of your current mind state. Say, natural selection or the Central Limit Theorem do not depend on any person’s mind.
But even map denizens like scientific models are just that: maps. They are not true or false, just more or less adequate to the known relevant evidence and current knowledge. In a sense, every belief belongs to the Territory — human beliefs are composed of certain neuro-electric impulses, and those are measurable events not beliefs — but that is a trivial fact and not that interesting in this discussion (even if it is important, because it protects this ontological model against the charge of duality). The meaning of those impulses (you liking ice-cream) only makes sense in the Map. Without Humans — the keepers and makers of the Human Map — the only thing that would exist would be the physical phenomena that we label and inject with meaning. Without a ‘Map’ there would be no stars, no colors or sounds, no art, philosophy or love. There would only exist ‘stuff’ (for lack of a better word).
Cheers,