Going Off The Rawls
James A. Lindsay writes at Areo on John W. Rawls' thought experiment vs. moral relativism -- and specifically, "moral and cultural relativists who believe that no one culture possesses the kind of moral perspective needed to judge others and evaluate them ethically."
Except that here's how that sort of thing can work out:
Blindly championing "the oppressed" in general can protect and perpetuate oppression in specific.If you design a world that contains a culture that hurls homosexuals from rooftops in accordance with the alleged will of God and considers this justice, you may very well find yourself a homosexual in that culture (or a concerned ally watching it from afar). If you design a world that favors and protects witch doctors or other forms of primitive medicine alongside others in which modern Western medicine exists, you may tragically come into this world a patient of a treatable cancer condemned to suffer and die unnecessarily from it despite all the magic your people believe in. If you design a world in which brutal dictators cannot be judged to be doing wrongly (so long as they're not acting imperialistically), you may find yourself one of their subjects -- which is to say one of their prisoners. If you design a world in which moral relativism is an ethical imperative, you may find yourself desperate to escape oppression while your freer brothers and sisters in more Enlightened regions argue that your oppression cannot be criticized because it is cultural thus beyond external reproach.
Rawls' thought experiment -- the "original position" -- is summarized just below:
"Imagine you are designing the world and all of its social and cultural landscapes. You are doing so from an original position of assumed equality ('all men/persons are created equal'), giving the thought experiment its name. In this world, according to your designs, some people may be advantaged while others will be relatively disadvantaged, or they will not be. That's up to you. You can make the world however you would like, but there's a catch: before you enter this world, you will be given no foreknowledge of who you will be within it. Rawls called this assumption a veil of ignorance and posited that it is a worthy method of determining the morality of social and political issues. So, if you design a world rife with injustices, you have no way to guarantee that you'll be on the better side of those. Given these constraints, who would design a world that is profoundly unjust? The answer is surely no one who understands the constraints of the thought experiment."
I see in the obviously irrational -- screamingly irrational -- thinking from the moral relativists a sort of secular version of religion.
Look -- if you miss what church offers, you don't have to believe in god. Just go sit there in church. I suspect they'll be glad to have you there and won't ask a lot of questions about whether you believe or not.
via @BretWeinstein
"Really? How did he come up with that "person"? He just made it up, of course. Or he intuited it based on his understanding of humanity.
We are a product of our culture. What if I were born into a gambling culture? Would I really want to guarantee procedural justice? Or would I vote to roll the dice. Maybe I'd get lucky, after all.
Or what if I were from a culture that believed that God preordained everything that happened. I might not even care about what system would be set up. It would not matter, after all; I would be in God's hands."
http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2008/09/experimental-ph.html
Snoopy at March 9, 2018 5:07 AM
Everyone who states that "you can't judge another culture" as a founding principle always makes an exception for Western, and particularly American, culture. And the rationale for the exception is always a tautology: "Western culture is evil, therefore it can be judged." Reason suggests that a founding principle with such a glaring logical hole in it is probably not helpful.
And why should we listen to reason? Because history shows that cultures that don't end up in misery, and eventually oblivion. Political power, no matter how strong, can only impose counter-factual beliefs for a finite time. (The Soviet Union found this out.) In the long run, the physical laws of the universe always win. Reason -- scientific, economic, and philosophical -- is the only system of thinking produced by humans that aligns itself with the physical laws, which makes it the only one that produces success in the long run.
Cousin Dave at March 9, 2018 6:12 AM
The people who come up with these ideas seem to always be saying the same thing: "If everyone just thought and acted like ME, everything would be grand!"
People have been asking the question "Why is there evil in the world?" since dirt was new. To my pea brain, there has never been a satisfactory answer beyond "There just *is*." To find a better answer is to know the mind of God. Good luck with that, and good luck convincing others when you do.
bkmale at March 9, 2018 6:42 AM
Cultures that deny the individual end up that way. The long march of history has been the freeing of the individual from the group, the collective prison.
To the Aztecs, the individual was unimportant, fodder for a brutal sacrifice to the gods for the benefit of the group. And then the Spanish came and overwhelmed them. While not what we today would consider an individual-oriented culture, Catholic Spain respected the individual more so than the Aztec did, and its expeditions to the New World benefited from each individual's efforts on behalf of his own advancement.
The Soviet Union subordinated the individual to society (except those individuals in society with the right connections), leaving it a post-industrial wasteland by the Krushchev years. Innovative ideas and excellence were not hallmarks of the Russian economy in the Soviet years, nor were they prevalent in the years when every peasant existed at the pleasure of the czar.
Only in societies where the individual is free to realize his own best self advance. In individual freedom, scholars, inventors, and industrialists create a better world for the rest of society.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." ~ Adam Smith
And even though our own identity politics are tearing us apart right now, the fact that our culture and society allows individuals to express themselves and their inner longings, however incoherent, will make us a stronger society in the end.
Conan the Grammarian at March 9, 2018 7:49 AM
I've found this to be a useful approach when discussing some of the contemporary events with my kids. "So, some of your classmates think that hate speech should be outlawed. Are they okay with being punished for expressing themselves?" That kind of thing.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at March 9, 2018 8:36 AM
Per Conan: ... the fact that our culture and society allows individuals to express themselves and their inner longings ...
It does now. For cultures and societies generally, I don't think this is an historical default position.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at March 9, 2018 8:40 AM
"Everyone who states that "you can't judge another culture" as a founding principle always makes an exception for Western, and particularly American, culture. And the rationale for the exception is always a tautology: "Western culture is evil, therefore it can be judged." Reason suggests that a founding principle with such a glaring logical hole in it is probably not helpful."
As if "Western" culture was just one element...
From Fred Reed: "Cities have been the heart of the intellectual and artistic in all civilizations, as for example Athens, Rome, Florence, Vienna, New York. By contrast, blacks have destroyed city after American city after American city. Trenton, Camden, Newark, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Flint, St. Louis, New Orleans, Milwaukee. At one time in all of these one could live, walk at will, send one’s children to the schools. Now, no. Violence, crime, racial attacks and illiteracy drive the civilized to remote suburbs. This is not my culture and I see no reason to apologize for it."
Radwaste at March 9, 2018 12:24 PM
Eh, Dave, I see it more as "This is our culture, so we can judge it".
Much like if I go to someone's house and see their dishes piled up in their sink, I'm not gonna lecture them to change it. But the dishes won't be piled up that high in my house.
NicoleK at March 10, 2018 4:02 AM
The progressive person sees the evil in our society (or its imperfections) and hates that imperfection. For other cultures (brown ones, anyway) they make exceptions either out of racism (those africans are doing the best they can) or out of allyship (Moslems are brown therefore we must not criticize them). This of course leads to incoherence and the actual inability to admit the truth--such as homosexuals being executed or honor killings in families or it being legal in much of Africa to beat your wife. They compare the West to perfection rather than to where we used to be, or what is possible, or vs other cultures. This is why they hate the West but don't move to Namibia or North Vietnam--they really hate that life is imperfect and deep down understand that most other places are even worse than here (but can't admit it to anyone, even themselves).
cc at March 10, 2018 8:11 AM
The progressive sees that evil as a fault of society and demands that society be changed.. The conservative sees it as a fault of the individuals in society and asks the individuals to change.
Conan the Grammarian at March 10, 2018 8:23 AM
I find these things easier to understand if you go from small to big rather than big to small. Analyzing a million people you end up with lots of things averaging out and lose information on what is going on.
As part of that how do you get people to do things they don't want to do? For example, my house has no running water. I want faucets that work but today they don't.
1. Fix it yourself. Just don't rely on other people and do things how you want them done. The down side is who has the time to do everything? I could manufacture my own pencils. But to make my own house, paper, pencils, clothes, furniture, food, yada yada yada. No one has the time to do it all as well as when we separate and specialize. It is far faster and cheaper to make ten of one thing than one of ten things.
2. Altruism. Find someone who likes doing what you want done and get them to do it just because they want to. Downside, low supply. There aren't that many people who just like fixing sewers or plumbing for fun. So you may be waiting for forever.
3. Slavery. Go find someone and tell them to fix it or I'll hit you. A very popular choice historically. The down sides are:
a) You have to be stronger than the other guy. Most people aren't.
b) Slaves do crappy work. They don't care about how good of a job they do. After all, there isn't anything in it for them. So any sort of work that requires education or tools aren't an option. Slaves will till a field but they won't make you a computer.
4. Family. Do it because dad wants you to. Do it for your little sister. This is the heart of tribalism. On the upside family and tribe have significant pull on people's hearts. You truly can get people to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do. Unlike with slavery you can trust family members with education and tooling. The downside is most tribes fall into caste structures. Your plumber won't be the best plumber but instead will be the guy who was assigned the job. There isn't much hope for advancement so people only do the minimum needed to keep the family happy. Also family connections are emotional. So all work is very dependent on how everyone is feeling. Drama becomes a central part of life.
5. Greed. Do it and I'll pay you. One downside is you have to have something the worker wants. Namely money. The upside, no drama, no emotions, no violence. Supply changes to fit demand and demand reacts to fit supply. So the work most people want done gets done. It is also the most efficient at motivating people. Why enslave a man when you can just pay him and let him be enslaved by his own desires? One downside that is also an upside, this is a very chaotic system. You may be doing something for all your life and some other guy finds out a better way and drives you out of business. But you also have the option of being that guy who drives everyone else out of business. This tends to be people biggest complaint. They just don't like the unpredictability.
If anyone can find any other options I am all ears. These are the only ones I've found.
Ben at March 10, 2018 8:54 AM
"Eh, Dave, I see it more as 'This is our culture, so we can judge it'."
The people who are doing the criticizing make it clear that they consider themselves to be above that culture. There is no "our".
Cousin Dave at March 12, 2018 7:16 AM
Leave a comment