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> I bet most people would claim C(now) > C(slavery) Without defending slavery, the obvious problem with your line of reasoning is that most people (implicitly

> I bet most people would claim C(now) > C(slavery) Without defending slavery, the obvious problem with your line of reasoning is that most people (implicitly most people alive today) are influenced by C(now). Even if you identify a group of values that are relatively constant across cultures (including bygone cultures), the best you can do is say "culture X better conforms to the majority values than culture Y". It's probably worthwhile to be able to make such a statement, but it's still not an objective statement. If you want to make objective statements about morality and cultures, you need to subscribe to a philosophy of moral absolutism, which is antithetical to liberal tradition prior to a few years ago.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
True, but that doesn't help. Whether or not due to influence by C(now), there are very few people currently alive who would not say that C(now) > C(slavery). Those people cannot (validly) also argue that all cultures are equal. Worse, I'd guess that there is a liberal/conservative element here. Liberals are more likely to believe that C(now) > C(slavery); they are also more likely to believe that all cultures are equal.
- weberc2 9y ago
  I think my post agrees with your first paragraph, but your post reads like a rebuke. I disagree that conservatives are more likely to believe that C(slavery) was better than C(now), but I agree that conservatives are more likely to process an absolute morality position (with liberals it seems more complicated--most would say they support moral relativism, but they seem to view other moral systems as fundamentally racist and thus evil, which can't be far from moral absolutism). This is more an elaboration on your point than a correction, I think.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    evil, which can't be far from moral absolutism Why? I can consider something subjectively evil, that is, I can feel a strong moral repulsion without considering that judgment to be universal.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      Definitely. It's veering on absolutism when you try to enforce your subjective morality on everyone else. This was the left's principal criticism of the right only a decade ago, after all.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        No, it's not veering on absolutism. If moral relativism is true, as I believe it is barring evidence showing the opposite, then enforcing one's subjective morality is inevitable. Banning slavery and rape, enforcing property rights, all of that is enforcing subjective morality, since there's no other. But it's not absolutism if one recognizes that the enforcement is based on subjective opinion and not on intrinsic qualities of the actions being banned. Essentially, it's might makes right, and I just happen to be lucky that we opponents to slavery are mightier than its advocates.
        weberc2 9y ago
        That's all well and good, but that wasn't the argument employed against conservatives when conservative values were mainstream; the argument was "you can't enforce your values because it's not fair to folks with different value systems". This argument was generally characterized as "moral relativism". Regardless of terminology, my point is that the left flip flopped as soon as they became the moral majority.
kelnos 9y ago
That might be technically correct (as we know, the best kind of correct), but it's not a useful argument to make, outside of pedantry. You may not be defending slavery, but you are suggesting that we cannot make a definitive statement about whether slavery is good or bad. If we can't do that, then what's the point of practical discussion about the direction of our civilization?
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  Perhaps with the best of intentions, the left seems to be silencing the discussion, or at least attempting to. It's a paradoxical defense of cultural relativism with a morally absolute position (saying x is bad and should be institutionally censored). I don't have an easy way to resolve that dilemma, but sometimes it seems the left is more concerned with appearance than with discussion.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    Yeah, I definitely see that, and it worries me as well. I do believe that the concept of tolerance can go too far, and that simply tolerating intolerant people can actually give you a worse outcome than censoring them. But I'm afraid that the left (of which I consider myself a part) goes too far sometimes. It's taboo to even try to discuss some topics, and people who don't understand and are just trying to learn get slapped down. That's not helping.
    - weberc2 9y ago
      Disclaimer: I'm an Obama-voting moderate liberal (for whatever that's worth), and I'm writing this from my phone in great haste. Please forgive bluntness and typos. One concern I have is that the left is arguing that it should be okay to punch intolerant people ("what's wrong with punching Nazis?"), but they are also happy to use "intolerant" to describe pretty much anyone with whom they disagree (the Christakis/Yale incident and the Google Memo fiasco come to mind, but I see this all over). Anyone who isn't convinced about theories of structural racism or discrimination as the root cause of all disparities are increasingly called intolerant (to your point about people getting slapped down), and it seems like only a shallow victory for liberal thought (people are "accepting" these theories out of fear, and will probably vocally challenge them again when the fear is removed). The left should do the hard work of persuading, and if they fail to persuade huge swaths of the population, perhaps they should step back and examine their theories instead of taking it as evidence that the country is indeed full of Nazis (because only Nazis would disagree, right?) Besides being concerned about abusing a hypothetical "right to punch Nazis", I'm equally concerned that suppressing hate is more likely to have the reverse effect (which probably best explains the uptick we're seeing now, though I can't prove it). It seems like the left had a really good system several years ago, which was to challenge bigoted ideas in open debate. It may not have completely rooted out hate, but that could be because it wasn't practices long enough or well enough or perhaps there is simply some small percent of people who are unreachable with reasoned debate and we reached everyone else (we seem to have done a good job of making these people insignificant, prior to the last couple of years).

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

True, but that doesn't help. Whether or not due to influence by C(now), there are very few people currently alive who would not say that C(now) > C(slavery). Those people cannot (validly) also argue that all cultures are equal. Worse, I'd guess that there is a liberal/conservative element here. Liberals are more likely to believe that C(now) > C(slavery); they are also more likely to believe that all cultures are equal.

weberc2 9y ago
I think my post agrees with your first paragraph, but your post reads like a rebuke. I disagree that conservatives are more likely to believe that C(slavery) was better than C(now), but I agree that conservatives are more likely to process an absolute morality position (with liberals it seems more complicated--most would say they support moral relativism, but they seem to view other moral systems as fundamentally racist and thus evil, which can't be far from moral absolutism). This is more an elaboration on your point than a correction, I think.
- icebraining 9y ago
  evil, which can't be far from moral absolutism Why? I can consider something subjectively evil, that is, I can feel a strong moral repulsion without considering that judgment to be universal.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Definitely. It's veering on absolutism when you try to enforce your subjective morality on everyone else. This was the left's principal criticism of the right only a decade ago, after all.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      No, it's not veering on absolutism. If moral relativism is true, as I believe it is barring evidence showing the opposite, then enforcing one's subjective morality is inevitable. Banning slavery and rape, enforcing property rights, all of that is enforcing subjective morality, since there's no other. But it's not absolutism if one recognizes that the enforcement is based on subjective opinion and not on intrinsic qualities of the actions being banned. Essentially, it's might makes right, and I just happen to be lucky that we opponents to slavery are mightier than its advocates.
      - weberc2 9y ago
        That's all well and good, but that wasn't the argument employed against conservatives when conservative values were mainstream; the argument was "you can't enforce your values because it's not fair to folks with different value systems". This argument was generally characterized as "moral relativism". Regardless of terminology, my point is that the left flip flopped as soon as they became the moral majority.

kelnos 9y ago

That might be technically correct (as we know, the best kind of correct), but it's not a useful argument to make, outside of pedantry. You may not be defending slavery, but you are suggesting that we cannot make a definitive statement about whether slavery is good or bad. If we can't do that, then what's the point of practical discussion about the direction of our civilization?

stinkytaco 9y ago
Perhaps with the best of intentions, the left seems to be silencing the discussion, or at least attempting to. It's a paradoxical defense of cultural relativism with a morally absolute position (saying x is bad and should be institutionally censored). I don't have an easy way to resolve that dilemma, but sometimes it seems the left is more concerned with appearance than with discussion.
- kelnos 9y ago
  Yeah, I definitely see that, and it worries me as well. I do believe that the concept of tolerance can go too far, and that simply tolerating intolerant people can actually give you a worse outcome than censoring them. But I'm afraid that the left (of which I consider myself a part) goes too far sometimes. It's taboo to even try to discuss some topics, and people who don't understand and are just trying to learn get slapped down. That's not helping.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Disclaimer: I'm an Obama-voting moderate liberal (for whatever that's worth), and I'm writing this from my phone in great haste. Please forgive bluntness and typos. One concern I have is that the left is arguing that it should be okay to punch intolerant people ("what's wrong with punching Nazis?"), but they are also happy to use "intolerant" to describe pretty much anyone with whom they disagree (the Christakis/Yale incident and the Google Memo fiasco come to mind, but I see this all over). Anyone who isn't convinced about theories of structural racism or discrimination as the root cause of all disparities are increasingly called intolerant (to your point about people getting slapped down), and it seems like only a shallow victory for liberal thought (people are "accepting" these theories out of fear, and will probably vocally challenge them again when the fear is removed). The left should do the hard work of persuading, and if they fail to persuade huge swaths of the population, perhaps they should step back and examine their theories instead of taking it as evidence that the country is indeed full of Nazis (because only Nazis would disagree, right?) Besides being concerned about abusing a hypothetical "right to punch Nazis", I'm equally concerned that suppressing hate is more likely to have the reverse effect (which probably best explains the uptick we're seeing now, though I can't prove it). It seems like the left had a really good system several years ago, which was to challenge bigoted ideas in open debate. It may not have completely rooted out hate, but that could be because it wasn't practices long enough or well enough or perhaps there is simply some small percent of people who are unreachable with reasoned debate and we reached everyone else (we seem to have done a good job of making these people insignificant, prior to the last couple of years).