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

David Friedman wrote:

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

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


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(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.

Huh? I've been following this thread all the way down, and I've just re-read your summary of it -- which is quite in accordance with my own recollection. Indeed one of the curious aspects of this discussion is that your moral intuitions and Alma's on this subject seemed, for the most part, extremely similar.

Now, having stated that you didn't challenge Alma to justify her feelings, you recount the following:

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).

Technically I suppose you are telling Brian that you were challenging the justification of Alma's feelings, rather than making that challenge directly to her. But since you are doing so effectively in her presence, this seems to me a distinction without a significant difference. I am puzzled as to why you feel misrepresented here.

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.

Ah, I think I understand. It's the 'bought and paid for' feeling behind Alma's decision that you're challenging, so (because you agree with her action) you don't feel that this is challenging her moral intuition itself.

Supposing she had not said that she would feel 'bought and paid for', but only that she would feel 'dirty' or 'squicky' if she had accepted the offer. Would you have thought it courteous to question the justification of that?

In each case, the moral intuition is manifest as a feeling (which might or might not, under some circumstances, be overriden by conscious consideration of other factors or principles; as when one 'holds one's nose' to carry out some action which one considers repugnant but right). I think you are taking a description of 'what it feels like' and treating it as a rational argument for 'why it should/should not be done'. The waters are further muddied by the fact that -- at least in my experience -- the line between describing one's feelings and rationalising them is apt to be a bit fine.

To take a rational argument for a course of action and challenge an apparent flaw in the logic is clearly civil. To question whether 'what it feels like' to someone is justified seems... rather more personal and confrontational. Plainly this wasn't your intent, but I thought that pretty much went without saying anyway. Do I take it that you feel that you are doing the former, whereas Alma's response and my post seem to berate you for the latter?



(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.

No, it isn't.

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?"

An argument about what ought to be done in a given situation is potentially reasonable, though not always appropriate. I don't expect a blizzard of Monday-morning quarterbacking every time I recount any action that other people might have done differently, for instance; and presumably neither do you. But this exchange took place in the context of a discussion about the ethics and assumptions of dating, so that would hardly be a fair complaint to raise here. So we're back to the question of why some opinions about other people's responses raise very different reactions from others.

An argument which takes any form similar to:

X: "I did A because I felt B."
Y: "And so would I do A, but I don't think you were justified in feeling B. Surely the correct thing to feel would be C, because ..."

is likely to be received less than favourably -- quite rightly IMO.

Now, I think what is happening is that you are instead seeing the conversation as more like:

X: "I did A because I would have felt bad otherwise, reasoning that B."
Y: "And so would I do A, but I don't think that B is correct, reasoning that not-B but C, because... But C would be just as good a reason for me to feel bad as B would have been, and I presume that you feel similarly?"

which clearly targets disputed facts or reasoning, rather than character or moral intuition.

Unfortunately in conversation, the 'clearly' does not necessarily apply. Worse, since the first form of argument is an obvious pusher of hot-buttons, any looseness in either writing *or reading* is liable to default to it and depress the big red DO NOT PRESS mushroom -- a real problem you have noticed and complained of both here and in other threads.

I think the likeliest way to preserve civility all round is to make the distinction as clear as possible. But this is hardly useful advice, since no-one here is likely to be writing cloudily on purpose to begin with. There is the further problem that once hackles on one or both sides begin to rise, red mist begins to obscure even prospects that ought to be moderately clear. Perhaps after enough turns around the mulberry bush, the only useful thing to do is make one's excuses and turn to a more productive conversation -- and not revisit the previous topic unless necessity compels or a reasonable time has gone by.

In this case, maybe sticking my oar in was a less than helpful contribution. I hope not...

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.

Yes; I am going off at a tangent somewhat. But what can't be explained can't be justified, at least not by argument. Also, as I've suggested above, I don't think the distinction between the two is always at all clear-cut.

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.

It's an obvious option, and often I think used with greater or lesser sophistication. Some of my less reasonable characters borrow heavily from me in 'going off on one' mode, so that I know pretty much to a nicety how they feel.

I don't *tell* them that, of course. They would hit me with big dead wet fish a lot. Or at least feel like doing so...


Cheers,

.

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