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> all sensible moral systems tell us to treat LGBT individuals with basic dignity 100% agreed. But in context, GP said: > holds abhorrent positions on issues

> all sensible moral systems tell us to treat LGBT individuals with basic dignity 100% agreed. But in context, GP said: > holds abhorrent positions on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights and comments of a similar sentiment appear elsewhere. Yet nowhere do I see it specified what she actually said! Even many of the news articles I could find seem to be guilty of this as well. I did find one which links to some Tweets she made (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-kay-coles-james-removal-employees-letter https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/01/google-ka...). > .@Heritage’s DACA solution is simple: take care of American dreamers first, build the wall, and implement these 3 basic fixes to current policy. So... she approves of the border wall. I don't personally agree, but hey. > The #EqualityAct is anything but equality. This bill would shut down businesses and charities, politicize medicine, endanger parental rights, and open every female bathroom and sports team to biological males. Learn more here: So she is against the EqualityAct and whatever that entails (I don't know anything about it) on the grounds that she doesn't want people who were once male in a female bathroom. Again I don't agree with her, and there are indeed strong arguments against her position, but I don't buy the argument that such views are abhorrent or entirely unreasonable. > Today @heritage will critique gender identity @UN_CSW because powerful nations are pressing for the radical redefining of sex. If they can change the definition of women to include men, they can erase efforts to empower women economically, socially, and politically. Well that's certainly a complicated issue, and one not well suited to a Tweet. But again, agree or disagree with her, I hardly think it's abhorrent or entirely unreasonable. On the whole I probably wouldn't have selected her myself, but this outrage is all beginning to look rather silly to me. I suspected as much when no one quoted her up front though.

woodruffw 8y ago
> But again, agree or disagree with her, I hardly think it's abhorrent or entirely unreasonable. This critically misstates the claim. I don't have to (and don't, in fact) find her "abhorrent" or think that her reasoning is invalid (although it is unsound). I think she's wrong, and that everybody should be on the same page about that. I don't want dawdling on my ethics committees.
- pdonis 8y ago
  > I think she's wrong And that's precisely why she should be on your ethics committee. If the only people you allow on your committee are those you think are "right", you are shutting out precisely the people whose views your committee most needs to hear. If you hear their best arguments, and are able to rebut them, then you can have confidence that their views are indeed wrong. Or if you hear their best arguments, and realize you can't rebut them, then you will have learned something. But if you don't hear their arguments at all, how do you know whether you can rebut them or not? It's like having a trial where only the prosecution gets to speak.
  - woodruffw 8y ago
    > If the only people you allow on your committee are those you think are "right", you are shutting out precisely the people whose views your committee most needs to hear. This is an annoying failure of language, and I'm mostly to blame for it. I mean that she's wrong in an undercutting sense: her position undermines the moral endeavour, rather that offering a valid alternative moral claim. An ethics committee should obviously have people who disagree about the ethicality of a topic -- that's the point, after all. But it's an ethics committee, not a metaethics committee: it assumes that all humans have dignity, and doesn't admit of positions that reject that assumption. Of course, none of this means that we can't debate the metaethical validity of "dignity." In fact, we should! But we shouldn't confuse that debate for ethics, and we especially shouldn't allow metaethical claims to undermine moral argumentation that has already assumed a basic framework.
    - pdonis 8y ago
      > I mean that she's wrong in an undercutting sense: her position undermines the moral endeavour, rather that offering a valid alternative moral claim. This is an ethical claim that you are making, and the board should not prejudge the answer to it. It should hear arguments on both sides. > it assumes that all humans have dignity, and doesn't admit of positions that reject that assumption. And your claim that the views you are excluding "reject the assumption" that all humans have dignity is an ethical claim, to which the board should not prejudge the answer. > none of this means that we can't debate the metaethical validity of "dignity." In fact, we should! But we shouldn't confuse that debate for ethics Meta-ethical debates are ethical debates. You can't prejudge the framework any more than you can prejudge any other ethical question. That's a key reason why all ethical questions are hard.

woodruffw 8y ago

> But again, agree or disagree with her, I hardly think it's abhorrent or entirely unreasonable. This critically misstates the claim. I don't have to (and don't, in fact) find her "abhorrent" or think that her reasoning is invalid (although it is unsound). I think she's wrong, and that everybody should be on the same page about that. I don't want dawdling on my ethics committees.

pdonis 8y ago
> I think she's wrong And that's precisely why she should be on your ethics committee. If the only people you allow on your committee are those you think are "right", you are shutting out precisely the people whose views your committee most needs to hear. If you hear their best arguments, and are able to rebut them, then you can have confidence that their views are indeed wrong. Or if you hear their best arguments, and realize you can't rebut them, then you will have learned something. But if you don't hear their arguments at all, how do you know whether you can rebut them or not? It's like having a trial where only the prosecution gets to speak.
- woodruffw 8y ago
  > If the only people you allow on your committee are those you think are "right", you are shutting out precisely the people whose views your committee most needs to hear. This is an annoying failure of language, and I'm mostly to blame for it. I mean that she's wrong in an undercutting sense: her position undermines the moral endeavour, rather that offering a valid alternative moral claim. An ethics committee should obviously have people who disagree about the ethicality of a topic -- that's the point, after all. But it's an ethics committee, not a metaethics committee: it assumes that all humans have dignity, and doesn't admit of positions that reject that assumption. Of course, none of this means that we can't debate the metaethical validity of "dignity." In fact, we should! But we shouldn't confuse that debate for ethics, and we especially shouldn't allow metaethical claims to undermine moral argumentation that has already assumed a basic framework.
  - pdonis 8y ago
    > I mean that she's wrong in an undercutting sense: her position undermines the moral endeavour, rather that offering a valid alternative moral claim. This is an ethical claim that you are making, and the board should not prejudge the answer to it. It should hear arguments on both sides. > it assumes that all humans have dignity, and doesn't admit of positions that reject that assumption. And your claim that the views you are excluding "reject the assumption" that all humans have dignity is an ethical claim, to which the board should not prejudge the answer. > none of this means that we can't debate the metaethical validity of "dignity." In fact, we should! But we shouldn't confuse that debate for ethics Meta-ethical debates are ethical debates. You can't prejudge the framework any more than you can prejudge any other ethical question. That's a key reason why all ethical questions are hard.