(I see you’ve been downvoted. It wasn’t by me. I very seldom both downvote someone and bother to argue with them.)
Criminal organizations murdering thousands of people are not something very bad?
No, that isn’t what I said nor what I meant. The thing that might or might not be very bad is doing business with such a criminal organization, not the existence or the activities of the organization (which uncontroversially are almost certainly very bad things).
All these people could use marginal analysis to argue that whatever harm they are doing is negligible and doesn’t outweigh their gains.
Could they? I mean, obviously anyone can argue anything, but what’s relevant here is whether they could actually demonstrate that their benefit outweighs the marginal harm done. For that to be true in the case of a paedophile visiting a child prostitute, for instance, the relevant question would be: Has the paedophile’s extra pleasure exceeded the child’s extra suffering?
For this to be a successful instance of your argument, you need to show two things: (1) that the paedophile’s extra pleasure really does outweigh the child’s extra suffering, and then (2) that despite that what s/he does is a bad thing. It seems to me that #1 is going to be extremely difficult, to say the least. (Which is why almost everyone is opposed to the prostitution of children.) And if #1 is wrong then #2 doesn’t arise. (And the easier question of whether what the paedophile does is a bad thing simpliciter is irrelevant to our argument here, because if #1 is wrong then this isn’t an instance that an argument like James’s could justify.)
Choosing the sexual abuse of children as the instance to work on here, by the way, is probably an effective rhetorical move in many places because it makes it difficult for someone to disagree with you without looking like an advocate for sexually abusing children. On LW, however, the audience is sufficiently clear-thinking that I am not worried that many people will jump to that wrong conclusion, which means you just get to look like someone who’s trying to pull a sleazy rhetorical move. Which is probably why you’re getting downvoted. A more productive (and, on LW, probably more effective) approach is to avoid such hot-button topics rather than embracing them—or (if they’re genuinely essential to the argument you’re making) to distinguish clearly between asking “why doesn’t your argument justify X?” and insinuating that your discussion partner actually does approve of X.
(I see you’ve been downvoted. It wasn’t by me. I very seldom both downvote someone and bother to argue with them.)
I don’t care about votes, anyway.
No, that isn’t what I said nor what I meant. The thing that might or might not be very bad is doing business with such a criminal organization, not the existence or the activities of the organization (which uncontroversially are almost certainly very bad things).
These organizations can only exist as long as there are people doing business with them.
Could they? I mean, obviously anyone can argue anything, but what’s relevant here is whether they could actually demonstrate that their benefit outweighs the marginal harm done. For that to be true in the case of a paedophile visiting a child prostitute, for instance, the relevant question would be: Has the paedophile’s extra pleasure exceeded the child’s extra suffering?
Well, the paedophile could argue that the child hooker in the streets of Bangkok is going to remain an hooker whether he visits him/her or not. After all, he is only displacing another customer, who, as far as he knows, could treat the child prostitute worse than he would. Even there is no other customer on that particular day, the life of the child prostitute isn’t going to become noticeably different on the margin. Does this make the visiting the child prostitute morally justifiable?
On LW, however, the audience is sufficiently clear-thinking that I am not worried that many people will jump to that wrong conclusion, which means you just get to look like someone who’s trying to pull a sleazy rhetorical move. Which is probably why you’re getting downvoted.
I think you have an over optimistic opinion of the audience here. People just tend to up-vote things that confirm their beliefs and down-vote things that challenge them.
A more productive (and, on LW, probably more effective) approach is to avoid such hot-button topics rather than embracing them—or (if they’re genuinely essential to the argument you’re making) to distinguish clearly between asking “why doesn’t your argument justify X?” and insinuating that your discussion partner actually does approve of X.
I didn’t insinuate that people who are making “marginal ethics” arguments here are paedophiles who visit child prostitutes. I made a reductio ad absurdum argument to show that marginal ethics can lead to absurd ethical positions, at least in the opinion of those who believe that visiting child prostitutes is immoral.
(I see you’ve been downvoted. It wasn’t by me. I very seldom both downvote someone and bother to argue with them.)
No, that isn’t what I said nor what I meant. The thing that might or might not be very bad is doing business with such a criminal organization, not the existence or the activities of the organization (which uncontroversially are almost certainly very bad things).
Could they? I mean, obviously anyone can argue anything, but what’s relevant here is whether they could actually demonstrate that their benefit outweighs the marginal harm done. For that to be true in the case of a paedophile visiting a child prostitute, for instance, the relevant question would be: Has the paedophile’s extra pleasure exceeded the child’s extra suffering?
For this to be a successful instance of your argument, you need to show two things: (1) that the paedophile’s extra pleasure really does outweigh the child’s extra suffering, and then (2) that despite that what s/he does is a bad thing. It seems to me that #1 is going to be extremely difficult, to say the least. (Which is why almost everyone is opposed to the prostitution of children.) And if #1 is wrong then #2 doesn’t arise. (And the easier question of whether what the paedophile does is a bad thing simpliciter is irrelevant to our argument here, because if #1 is wrong then this isn’t an instance that an argument like James’s could justify.)
Choosing the sexual abuse of children as the instance to work on here, by the way, is probably an effective rhetorical move in many places because it makes it difficult for someone to disagree with you without looking like an advocate for sexually abusing children. On LW, however, the audience is sufficiently clear-thinking that I am not worried that many people will jump to that wrong conclusion, which means you just get to look like someone who’s trying to pull a sleazy rhetorical move. Which is probably why you’re getting downvoted. A more productive (and, on LW, probably more effective) approach is to avoid such hot-button topics rather than embracing them—or (if they’re genuinely essential to the argument you’re making) to distinguish clearly between asking “why doesn’t your argument justify X?” and insinuating that your discussion partner actually does approve of X.
I don’t care about votes, anyway.
These organizations can only exist as long as there are people doing business with them.
Well, the paedophile could argue that the child hooker in the streets of Bangkok is going to remain an hooker whether he visits him/her or not. After all, he is only displacing another customer, who, as far as he knows, could treat the child prostitute worse than he would. Even there is no other customer on that particular day, the life of the child prostitute isn’t going to become noticeably different on the margin.
Does this make the visiting the child prostitute morally justifiable?
I think you have an over optimistic opinion of the audience here. People just tend to up-vote things that confirm their beliefs and down-vote things that challenge them.
I didn’t insinuate that people who are making “marginal ethics” arguments here are paedophiles who visit child prostitutes. I made a reductio ad absurdum argument to show that marginal ethics can lead to absurd ethical positions, at least in the opinion of those who believe that visiting child prostitutes is immoral.