Hang on, I don’t think that feminism is non-disprovable! If you think I do then you’ve misinterpreted me in a big way.
I don’t agree that feminism is an instrumentally rational theory, I think it’s justifiable (and justified) on moral grounds. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make any predictions about the way the world actually is or will be because it isn’t a science, it’s an ethics, and ethical theories make predictions about how the world should be.
Of course, that makes it harder to disprove but not impossible. If I thought that morals were totally relative and non-disprovable then I’d give up on them altogether and start building a tower-o’-doom do whatever I wanted without thinking hard about whether or not it was right. I really do believe that consequentialism is the way to a correct theory of ethics, and I think that it leads to feminism, given our current situation.
If I thought that morals were totally relative and non-disprovable then I’d give up on them altogether and start building a tower-o’-doom.
I very much doubt it. Analogously, theists subscribing to the divine command theory of ethics who end up losing their faith generally don’t slaughter everyone they know and assemble a giant blasphemous meat-effigy out of the pieces.
Touche. I was speaking for effect: obviously I don’t actually want a tower-o-doom so I wouldn’t build one even if it was morally permissible. On the other hand, if I thought morals were relative, I wouldn’t be able to mount an argument for NOT committing atrocities that didn’t boil down to, ‘please don’t do that’. I think I can mount a better argument than that, so it follows that I think ethical statements are objectively justifiable.
UPDATE: edited the grandparent in response to Nornagest’s accurate criticism.
On the other hand, if I thought morals were relative, I wouldn’t be able to mount an argument for NOT committing atrocities that didn’t boil down to, ‘please don’t do that’.
Do you consider “we prefer nobody do that and are willing to enforce our preferences in that matter against anyone who doesn’t share them” to boil down to “please don’t do that”?
More or less. Both of them are along the lines of ‘don’t do what you want, do what I want instead’. A good moral argument on the other hand should convince the other person to adopt a different set of desires, more along the lines of ‘don’t want what you want, want what I want instead’.
Do you prefer good moral arguments to other methods of altering someone else’s preferences? (Or perhaps I should back up and first ask, do you think there are other methods of altering someone else’s preferences?)
There are other ways of altering people’s preferences, sure. In simple situations where you have the option of argument and think it’ll work I guess I favour moral argument for convincing, since it tends to give the other person more agency. I could give a thorough justification for those opinions but I think we’ve strayed from the topic of conversation a little here.
I really do believe that consequentialism is the way to a correct theory of ethics, and I think that it leads to feminism, given our current situation.
So you believe that encouraging people to act in accordance with feminism will lead to maximizing utility? Because evolutionary psychology/PUA has something to say about this claim.
It’s worth noting that our concepts of feminism probably differ from one another at least slightly—really these days feminism is just an umbrella term for a big splintered tree graph of ideologies and social theories and ethical theories and literary perspectives… Half of the time they disagree with one another, and there’s a lot of variance when it comes to sanity.
But, broadly, yes. None of the terms of my utility function are labeled ‘feminism’, but when I ‘run the numbers’ I find that the function tends to endorse courses of action and social heuristics that are roughly functionally equivalent to some strains of feminism. I have read some of the ev-psych/PUA literature and I found it unconvincing for a variety of specific reasons and some overarching general ones.
That might correlate with utility or happiness, but that’s an empirical question, not a given.
No one is claiming it is.
Edit: The argument is not “evolution has selected us for X, therefore we should do X”. It’s “evolution has selected as for X, therefore humans have property Y, therefore organizing society according to principal Z leads to more efficient utility generation.”
2nd try replying to this, since people worried first was hard to parse:
I think that sexism is mostly folk psychology—false when tested, but not untestable given smart experimenters. Thus, feminism predicts that sexist hypotheses are not the way the world actually is, and that’s empirical.
But, there are a lot of people rallying under flags with “feminism” on them, and they vary widely. So many of them probably just assume the current facts as we know them (good) and so merely claim that under those facts certain things may be wrong, ethically. And you have others who actually believe sexist claims but still want to be called feminist. So maybe tabooing is needed.
I think the empirical claims of feminism are now successful, but they did exist.
I can’t seem to parse this literally. Do you mean that some past empirical claims of feminism are no longer true do the success of the political advocacy of feminism? That seems true (with some controversy on the degree of ‘some’).
I think one problem is what wedrifid says: it is difficult to work out what your comment actually means.
“the empirical claims of feminism are now successful”: what does it mean for an empirical claim to be successful? Is that the same as “true”, or something else?
“but they did exist”: why “but”? what’s the opposition between existing and “being successful”?
I gather that you were disagreeing with Argency’s statement that feminism “doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make any predictions about the way the world actually is or will be” on the grounds that you consider that feminism does (among other things) make claims about how the world is. Fair enough (and for what it’s worth I’d agree), but it seems to me that the obvious diagnosis is that you and Argency disagree about what “feminism” means, in which case merely saying “but it does make empirical claims” doesn’t achieve much.
So: two problems. A statement whose meaning is hard to make sense of, treating a disagreement as one about how the world is when it’s probably actually more about how to use one particular word. I’d guess that whoever downvoted you had one or both of those in mind.
(I’d also say: being downvoted by one person is not particularly strong evidence of anything; don’t get upset about it. But if you find yourself being downvoted a lot, the chances are that either you should change something or else LW just isn’t a good place for you.)
Ah yeah successful should maybe have been accepted, or universal, or maybe claims should have been arguments. Thanks!
I’d also say: being downvoted by one person is not particularly strong evidence of anything; don’t get upset about it.
My first attempt to clarify was downvoted too :(
the obvious diagnosis is that you and Argency disagree about what “feminism” means
… oh. It is a very vague word … I figured they were just underestimating the coherence of opposing arguments, since it’s easy to when the position in question is quite discredited so you don’t encounter them… I’ll try asking them what they meant, good idea.
Hang on, I don’t think that feminism is non-disprovable! If you think I do then you’ve misinterpreted me in a big way.
I don’t agree that feminism is an instrumentally rational theory, I think it’s justifiable (and justified) on moral grounds. It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make any predictions about the way the world actually is or will be because it isn’t a science, it’s an ethics, and ethical theories make predictions about how the world should be.
Of course, that makes it harder to disprove but not impossible. If I thought that morals were totally relative and non-disprovable then I’d give up on them altogether and
start building a tower-o’-doom do whatever I wanted without thinking hard about whether or not it was right. I really do believe that consequentialism is the way to a correct theory of ethics, and I think that it leads to feminism, given our current situation.EDIT: see
strikethroughI very much doubt it. Analogously, theists subscribing to the divine command theory of ethics who end up losing their faith generally don’t slaughter everyone they know and assemble a giant blasphemous meat-effigy out of the pieces.
Touche. I was speaking for effect: obviously I don’t actually want a tower-o-doom so I wouldn’t build one even if it was morally permissible. On the other hand, if I thought morals were relative, I wouldn’t be able to mount an argument for NOT committing atrocities that didn’t boil down to, ‘please don’t do that’. I think I can mount a better argument than that, so it follows that I think ethical statements are objectively justifiable.
UPDATE: edited the grandparent in response to Nornagest’s accurate criticism.
Do you consider “we prefer nobody do that and are willing to enforce our preferences in that matter against anyone who doesn’t share them” to boil down to “please don’t do that”?
More or less. Both of them are along the lines of ‘don’t do what you want, do what I want instead’. A good moral argument on the other hand should convince the other person to adopt a different set of desires, more along the lines of ‘don’t want what you want, want what I want instead’.
OK, fair enough.
Do you prefer good moral arguments to other methods of altering someone else’s preferences? (Or perhaps I should back up and first ask, do you think there are other methods of altering someone else’s preferences?)
There are other ways of altering people’s preferences, sure. In simple situations where you have the option of argument and think it’ll work I guess I favour moral argument for convincing, since it tends to give the other person more agency. I could give a thorough justification for those opinions but I think we’ve strayed from the topic of conversation a little here.
“generally”...?
It sometimes happens.
So you believe that encouraging people to act in accordance with feminism will lead to maximizing utility? Because evolutionary psychology/PUA has something to say about this claim.
It’s worth noting that our concepts of feminism probably differ from one another at least slightly—really these days feminism is just an umbrella term for a big splintered tree graph of ideologies and social theories and ethical theories and literary perspectives… Half of the time they disagree with one another, and there’s a lot of variance when it comes to sanity.
But, broadly, yes. None of the terms of my utility function are labeled ‘feminism’, but when I ‘run the numbers’ I find that the function tends to endorse courses of action and social heuristics that are roughly functionally equivalent to some strains of feminism. I have read some of the ev-psych/PUA literature and I found it unconvincing for a variety of specific reasons and some overarching general ones.
Also, I agree with Prismattic.
Evolution has selected for successful reproduction. That might correlate with utility or happiness, but that’s an empirical question, not a given.
No one is claiming it is.
Edit: The argument is not “evolution has selected us for X, therefore we should do X”. It’s “evolution has selected as for X, therefore humans have property Y, therefore organizing society according to principal Z leads to more efficient utility generation.”
2nd try replying to this, since people worried first was hard to parse:
I think that sexism is mostly folk psychology—false when tested, but not untestable given smart experimenters. Thus, feminism predicts that sexist hypotheses are not the way the world actually is, and that’s empirical.
But, there are a lot of people rallying under flags with “feminism” on them, and they vary widely. So many of them probably just assume the current facts as we know them (good) and so merely claim that under those facts certain things may be wrong, ethically. And you have others who actually believe sexist claims but still want to be called feminist. So maybe tabooing is needed.
I think the empirical claims of feminism are now successful, but they did exist. Sexism, after all, has empirical claims.
I can’t seem to parse this literally. Do you mean that some past empirical claims of feminism are no longer true do the success of the political advocacy of feminism? That seems true (with some controversy on the degree of ‘some’).
For “successful” read “accepted”. (Some are now accepted as historical facts.)
OK I’m downvoted so I must have missed something. Help guys?
I think one problem is what wedrifid says: it is difficult to work out what your comment actually means.
“the empirical claims of feminism are now successful”: what does it mean for an empirical claim to be successful? Is that the same as “true”, or something else?
“but they did exist”: why “but”? what’s the opposition between existing and “being successful”?
I gather that you were disagreeing with Argency’s statement that feminism “doesn’t (or shouldn’t) make any predictions about the way the world actually is or will be” on the grounds that you consider that feminism does (among other things) make claims about how the world is. Fair enough (and for what it’s worth I’d agree), but it seems to me that the obvious diagnosis is that you and Argency disagree about what “feminism” means, in which case merely saying “but it does make empirical claims” doesn’t achieve much.
So: two problems. A statement whose meaning is hard to make sense of, treating a disagreement as one about how the world is when it’s probably actually more about how to use one particular word. I’d guess that whoever downvoted you had one or both of those in mind.
(I’d also say: being downvoted by one person is not particularly strong evidence of anything; don’t get upset about it. But if you find yourself being downvoted a lot, the chances are that either you should change something or else LW just isn’t a good place for you.)
Ah yeah successful should maybe have been accepted, or universal, or maybe claims should have been arguments. Thanks!
My first attempt to clarify was downvoted too :(
… oh. It is a very vague word … I figured they were just underestimating the coherence of opposing arguments, since it’s easy to when the position in question is quite discredited so you don’t encounter them… I’ll try asking them what they meant, good idea.