Re: Hmm - here's a topic to spark off a nice social commentary thread..

In article <44b619f6$1_4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Gray <gray@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

....

I should say that a request to 'justify' one's feelings is dangerously
fuzzy, because it fudges together at least two entirely different
possibilities.

....

(Question for David: is it that your view of the above differs radically
from mine; or is something like condition [1] satisfied by utilitarian
assumptions on your part; or is the reason that you don't object to
similar challenges coming your way something quite different, such as a
matter of taste? Inquiring minds want to know.)

Question for Gray--are you writing on the assumption that at some point
I asked Alma to justify her feelings?

I ask because I didn't--and if you are assuming I am, that provides a
nice example of a point I made recently about people coming into the
middle of a thread and deducing what B must have said by what A, arguing
against B, is saying.

We were discussing dating, and in particular in what sense accepting a
date did or did not imply anything about future sexual behavior,
obligations, etc. Alma described a situation she had been in where she
turned down an invitation because she felt accepting it would imply her
consent to having an affair with the inviter, and that she would feel
"bought and paid for." In discussing the example, I agreed that
accepting would imply her consent and that if she wasn't sure she wanted
the affair she was right to decline the invitation (to a visit to a man
in Canada she was somewhat interested in, who was offering to pay for
the airfare).

But I argued that the reason she was right was not that she would be
"bought and paid for," since the money was going not to her but to the
expenses of getting them together, but rather that having him bear a
sizable expense on the assumption that she wanted an affair when she
wasn't sure she did would be unfair to him. To support that point, I
offered a hypothetical of the identical situation, except with him
flying to where she was, at his own expense. I argued that that
situation was identical in the relevant respects--he was paying a good
deal to arrange to get them together on the assumption that the result
would be an affair--that she wouldn't feel bought and paid for then but
would feel she shouldn't agree unless she intended an affair, and
offered that as evidence that she shouldn't feel bought and paid for in
the actual situation.

Someone, I think Brian, replied that the situations were obviously
different, since Alma felt bought and paid for in the one and not the
other. I responded that I already knew how she did feel, the question
was whether the feelings were justified. At that point Alma reentered
the discussion with the claim that it was outrageous for me to express
an opinion on whether her feelings had been justified (not her words but
the tone of her post).

Now to get back to your question ... .

"But secondly, there is the sort of feeling that you were expressing,
namely a moral intuition concerning whether a particular action would be
good or ill to undertake. "

Actually, that isn't what I was expressing--I agreed with Alma that
accepting the invitation, under the circumstances, would be a bad thing
to do. I was disagreeing with her explanation of why.

And I'm curious where the "you were expressing" comes from, assuming it
was directed at me. Where did I express it? You seem in this post to be
responding, not to anything I said, but to Alma's statement about what I
do or don't get to question.

If "you were expressing" was directed at Alma, of course, my response is
both irrelevant and unnecessary, but then I'm not sure I understand your
post.

(Question for David: is it that your view of the above differs radically
from mine; or is something like condition [1] satisfied by utilitarian
assumptions on your part; or is the reason that you don't object to
similar challenges coming your way something quite different, such as a
matter of taste? Inquiring minds want to know.)

I'm not sure I entirely understand your view, so let me try to summarize
it before responding.

A says "such and such an action would be wrong."

B asks "why do you think that?" B may preface the question with reasons
why the action doesn't seem to him to be wrong.

B's question is a challenge that lies far outside normal civil discourse.

If that's what you are saying, then I disagree. Asking why someone
reaches a moral judgement seems to me a perfectly reasonable and civil
question, even if prefaced by reasons why one would not reach it. The
answer might reveal that A and B are deducing different conclusions from
similar moral views, it might reveal different moral views, either is
potentially interesting and neither is an attack.

As it happens, that wasn't the exchange that occurred in this thread,
since I agreed with Alma about her conclusion but disagreed about her
explanation of why it was correct.

I should add that to me, what counts as "a challenge that lies far
outside normal civil discourse," is responding to an argument about why
a particular response to a situation isn't justified with what amounts
to "Shut up. Who are you to express opinions about whether my responses
are justified?"

ObWriting: I'm not at all sure how useful I find similar inquisitions
even of fictional characters. If I develop one properly, then I can
slide into their shoes and know *how* they feel about a given situation,
and what they're apt to do. Sure, parts of their moral codes (as with
mine) are pretty hard-and-fast and easy to explain. And if I want to, I
can provide justifications (theirs or mine, not necessarily the same)
for why they feel as they do about less clear-cut situations.

I think you are now sliding over from justification to explanation. One
of the ways one might signal that a character was an unreasonable sort,
as in the example I offered and nobody seems to want to respond to, is
by showing him responding to a situation with feelings that you can
explain but that you, and presumably the reader, will consider
unjustified.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
.

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