No I basically agree that such people are doing silly tribal partisanship and in some sense “not actually thinking about it”. I’m not sure if our disagreement is semantics or theory of mind, but I think that whatever pejoratives we throw at that kind of cognition, it still outputs real conclusions that people really believe.
“This person’s politics mark them as morally unqualified to work in this career” is an argument people sometimes make, and whatever is going on in their heads seems closer to sincere belief than “I am playing a Machiavellian power game in which I say whatever it takes to secure political advantage by getting this guy fired”.
Cool, yeah, then I think we are just arguing semantics. I was intending to include that in this second sentence:
Or if so, I would strongly suspect the perceived reprehensibility of it would be downstream of a rationalization, not actually thinking about it.
I think people’s rationalization can result in things pretty reasonably described as “sincere belief” so I don’t disagree. I just also think it reflects badly on you if you end up doing that. Hence my belief “I don’t really see a strong case for his views on these things being morally reprehensible in any substantial magnitude”.
No I basically agree that such people are doing silly tribal partisanship and in some sense “not actually thinking about it”. I’m not sure if our disagreement is semantics or theory of mind, but I think that whatever pejoratives we throw at that kind of cognition, it still outputs real conclusions that people really believe.
“This person’s politics mark them as morally unqualified to work in this career” is an argument people sometimes make, and whatever is going on in their heads seems closer to sincere belief than “I am playing a Machiavellian power game in which I say whatever it takes to secure political advantage by getting this guy fired”.
Cool, yeah, then I think we are just arguing semantics. I was intending to include that in this second sentence:
I think people’s rationalization can result in things pretty reasonably described as “sincere belief” so I don’t disagree. I just also think it reflects badly on you if you end up doing that. Hence my belief “I don’t really see a strong case for his views on these things being morally reprehensible in any substantial magnitude”.