Political disputes are usually terminal value disputes, and pretending otherwise leads to confusion of facts and preferences.
Wow, what? No.
We are nowhere near the point where the only thing left to argue about in politics is terminal values. There are so many strict Pareto improvements available in the world that can’t possibly be true.
Modify it and say “instrumental values”, then maybe. That leaves a lot of room for the usual mechanisms of human stupidity to produce contradictory results, even with identical terminal values.
I’d say a more accurate characterization of political disputes is people failing at the is-ought distinction: how much of the controversy aroud racism, feminism, authoritarianism, etc is derived from the naturalistic fallacy and disagreeing with the facts because of supposed moral implications? (hint: nearly all of it.)
I want prostitution legalized. Most people don’t. This is because I don’t think selling sex is immoral. I don’t terminally disvalue it. I could make arguments like “Prostitution would be a lot safer if it was legal,” which are correct. But it would also probably be more common, and I bet some of my opposition thinks that the extra sex-selling is worse than the STDs legalization would get rid of (especially because they would be inflicted upon people who “deserved” it.). So this is a terminal value disagreement.
I suspect a lot of the other political issues where my opponents say “immoral” are basically just terminal value disputes. Gay marriage springs to mind.
Drugs are less of terminal value dispute, because most of the arguing I’ve heard is either “If they are legal, they will be less dangerous,” or “If they are legal, more irrational people will foolishly hurt themselves.”
Economic issues appear at first glance to be mostly factual disputes, but I think the factual arguments people give are rationalizations, and terminal value disputes between fairness and property rights are a big part of them too.
These are just the arguments I hear people talking about today in the US. There are much bigger disputes in the past.
For example, the argument over slavery in the US was basically one over terminal values. Do you care non-negligibly about brown people or not? The people who whipped slaves were probably more familiar with the facts than the abolitionists. Most of them probably thought something like “This is the natural order of things.” or “God approves,” but the natural order and gods approval are not terminal values for a lot of people.
What counts as an improvement is a question of terminal values. If all we cared about was money, selling babies ought to be legal. (btw, the second author is a federal appeals court judge in Chicago—it’s probably only essays like this that prevented him from being a Supreme Court justice).
Failing the is-ought distinction is a predictable effect of failing to realize that one is having a terminal value dispute.
What counts as an improvement is a question of terminal values.
Yes, but Pareto improvements are things that everybody can agree are better. Maybe we can relax this to “most people”, because I’m sure there’s some jerk somewhere with the “terminal value” of “all change is very bad”.
As for valuing money, why are you bringing it up in a discussion of terminal values?
Failing the is-ought distinction is a predictable effect of failing to realize that one is having a terminal value dispute.
Explain. I don’t see it.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s coherent to talk about humans having non-negotiable terminal values at all.
A year ago, I was anti-authoritarian, practically an anarchist. I had a strong negative reaction to anything approaching infringement of liberty, exertion of authority, etc. I saw people saying they wanted strong leadership and a stronger state and more rule of law, and I was disgusted. How could people be so evil? Surely this was just plain incompatible values.
Then something interesting happened. I encountered non-straw arguments for why more authority and some infringement of people’s autonomy is sometimes for the better. I changed my mind.
Where are the terminal values in all of this?
I think rather than terminal values, which imply non-negotiability, we should talk about a moral dynamic created already in motion (as explained in EY’s metaethics sequence). This accounts for some things being changeable with moral argument.
With this in mind, I can maybe see where you are coming from with the “politics is about terminal values” thing, but I’d say instead “politics is often about moral disagreements, so you should find the source and argue about morality instead.”
This may not be a good assesment of how you are using it, but I think “fundamental terminal value differences” is often used as an excuse to stop thinking about moral questions that you really should be thinking about.
Political disputes are usually about moral disagreements is an improvement over what I said.
If my meta-ethics is right, that assertion and my original are isomorphic. And if your metaethics is right, my assertion risks being very misleading.
This may not be a good assesment of how you are using it, but I think “fundamental terminal value differences” is often used as an excuse to stop thinking about moral questions that you really should be thinking about.
Absolutely. This is one of the central lessons my sentence was intended to impart.
Failing the is-ought distinction is a predictable effect of failing to realize that one is having a terminal value dispute.
Explain. I don’t see it.
On reflection, I think I was over-hasty here. Failing to notice that a political dispute arises out of a moral dispute tends to cause people to treat moral propositions as facts—to gain political advantage (aka mindkiller). But “is-ought confusion” is usually used as the label for treating facts as moral conclusions. Since that doesn’t function as naturally for political advantage, it probably isn’t as direct a consequence of artificial divide of politics & morals.
I would actually go the other way and argue that most cases of what seem like terminal value disputes are actually disputes about hermeneutics and intersubjective truths if you scratch far enough.
“The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations.”—from ‘The Jargon File’
Don’t get too stressed about it—I do believe in intractable value conflicts—that should naturally affect your interpretation of my statements. But nyan_sandwich correctly noted that this commitment of mine is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.
Political disputes are usually terminal value disputes, and pretending otherwise leads to confusion of facts and preferences.
Alternatively, something about hidden complexity of wishes and its relevance to defining legal and moral obligations.
Wow, what? No.
We are nowhere near the point where the only thing left to argue about in politics is terminal values. There are so many strict Pareto improvements available in the world that can’t possibly be true.
Modify it and say “instrumental values”, then maybe. That leaves a lot of room for the usual mechanisms of human stupidity to produce contradictory results, even with identical terminal values.
I’d say a more accurate characterization of political disputes is people failing at the is-ought distinction: how much of the controversy aroud racism, feminism, authoritarianism, etc is derived from the naturalistic fallacy and disagreeing with the facts because of supposed moral implications? (hint: nearly all of it.)
I want prostitution legalized. Most people don’t. This is because I don’t think selling sex is immoral. I don’t terminally disvalue it. I could make arguments like “Prostitution would be a lot safer if it was legal,” which are correct. But it would also probably be more common, and I bet some of my opposition thinks that the extra sex-selling is worse than the STDs legalization would get rid of (especially because they would be inflicted upon people who “deserved” it.). So this is a terminal value disagreement.
I suspect a lot of the other political issues where my opponents say “immoral” are basically just terminal value disputes. Gay marriage springs to mind.
Drugs are less of terminal value dispute, because most of the arguing I’ve heard is either “If they are legal, they will be less dangerous,” or “If they are legal, more irrational people will foolishly hurt themselves.”
Economic issues appear at first glance to be mostly factual disputes, but I think the factual arguments people give are rationalizations, and terminal value disputes between fairness and property rights are a big part of them too.
These are just the arguments I hear people talking about today in the US. There are much bigger disputes in the past.
For example, the argument over slavery in the US was basically one over terminal values. Do you care non-negligibly about brown people or not? The people who whipped slaves were probably more familiar with the facts than the abolitionists. Most of them probably thought something like “This is the natural order of things.” or “God approves,” but the natural order and gods approval are not terminal values for a lot of people.
See the other thread descending from parent where TimS and I discussed a bit. I think we dissolved the “terminal values” thing nicely.
What counts as an improvement is a question of terminal values. If all we cared about was money, selling babies ought to be legal. (btw, the second author is a federal appeals court judge in Chicago—it’s probably only essays like this that prevented him from being a Supreme Court justice).
Failing the is-ought distinction is a predictable effect of failing to realize that one is having a terminal value dispute.
Yes, but Pareto improvements are things that everybody can agree are better. Maybe we can relax this to “most people”, because I’m sure there’s some jerk somewhere with the “terminal value” of “all change is very bad”.
As for valuing money, why are you bringing it up in a discussion of terminal values?
Explain. I don’t see it.
I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s coherent to talk about humans having non-negotiable terminal values at all.
A year ago, I was anti-authoritarian, practically an anarchist. I had a strong negative reaction to anything approaching infringement of liberty, exertion of authority, etc. I saw people saying they wanted strong leadership and a stronger state and more rule of law, and I was disgusted. How could people be so evil? Surely this was just plain incompatible values.
Then something interesting happened. I encountered non-straw arguments for why more authority and some infringement of people’s autonomy is sometimes for the better. I changed my mind.
Where are the terminal values in all of this?
I think rather than terminal values, which imply non-negotiability, we should talk about a moral dynamic created already in motion (as explained in EY’s metaethics sequence). This accounts for some things being changeable with moral argument.
With this in mind, I can maybe see where you are coming from with the “politics is about terminal values” thing, but I’d say instead “politics is often about moral disagreements, so you should find the source and argue about morality instead.”
This may not be a good assesment of how you are using it, but I think “fundamental terminal value differences” is often used as an excuse to stop thinking about moral questions that you really should be thinking about.
Political disputes are usually about moral disagreements is an improvement over what I said.
If my meta-ethics is right, that assertion and my original are isomorphic. And if your metaethics is right, my assertion risks being very misleading.
Absolutely. This is one of the central lessons my sentence was intended to impart.
On reflection, I think I was over-hasty here. Failing to notice that a political dispute arises out of a moral dispute tends to cause people to treat moral propositions as facts—to gain political advantage (aka mindkiller). But “is-ought confusion” is usually used as the label for treating facts as moral conclusions. Since that doesn’t function as naturally for political advantage, it probably isn’t as direct a consequence of artificial divide of politics & morals.
I would actually go the other way and argue that most cases of what seem like terminal value disputes are actually disputes about hermeneutics and intersubjective truths if you scratch far enough.
That might help with some modern political issues but for most of history political disputes are usually about political power.
I would rephrase the first part like this:
“The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy war most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations.”—from ‘The Jargon File’
Hahaha no. Seriously, you want to try and defend that claim?
EDIT: Waitasecond. Did you mean disputes about what our terminal values are? Because if so, that doesn’t seem to have come across very well.
I meant that most political disputes are actually about moral disagreement.
So I can improve in the future, what did you think I meant?
Conflicting terminal values. Kinda embarrassed now; I must be more charitable in future.
Don’t get too stressed about it—I do believe in intractable value conflicts—that should naturally affect your interpretation of my statements. But nyan_sandwich correctly noted that this commitment of mine is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.
I’m afraid I was primed by a similar … discussion … I was having in meatspace :(