Such CA is thought to result in diminished status and power for people in the “appropriated” culture.
I’m having a hard time separating this from the ‘offense’ argument that you’re not including. Like, The Simpsons introduces Apu, who is Indian and works at a convenience store. Written by and voice-acted by white Americans, he’s very much “Indian immigrants as seen from the outside” as opposed to “the self-representation of Indian immigrants”; as a character in a comedy show, he’s often a subject of mockery.
But someone being offended by Apu is what expecting this will lead to diminished status and power for Indian immigrants to America feels like from the inside. That makes me suspect that we should feel similarly about individuals taking offense claims of this category of CA, but I’m curious what makes you consider them separately.
I’m having a hard time separating this from the ‘offense’ argument that you’re not including.
I agree that part of offense is just “what it feels like on the inside to anticipate diminished status”.
Analogously, part of the pain of getting hit by a hammer is just “what it feels like on the inside to get hit by a hammer.”
However, in both cases, neither the pain nor the offense is just passive internal information about an objective external state of affairs. They include such information, but they are more than that. In particular, in both cases, they are also what it feels like to execute a program designed by evolution to change the situation.
Pain, for example, is an inducement to stop any additional hammer blows and to see to the wounds already inflicted. More generally, pain is part of an active program that is interacting with the world, planning responses, anticipating reactions to those responses, and so on. And likewise with offense.
The premise of my distinction between “offense” and “diminished status” is this. I maintain that we can conceptually separate the initial and unavoidable diminished status from the potentialfuture diminished status.
The potential future diminished status depends on how the offendee responds. The emotion of offense is heavily wrapped up in this potential future and in what kinds of responses will influence that future. For that reason, offense necessarily involves the kinds of recursive issues that Katja explores.
In the end, these recursive issues will have to be considered. (They are real, so they should be reflected in our theory in the end.) But it seems like it should be possible to see what initial harm, if any, occurs before the recursion kicks in.
I’m having a hard time separating this from the ‘offense’ argument that you’re not including. Like, The Simpsons introduces Apu, who is Indian and works at a convenience store. Written by and voice-acted by white Americans, he’s very much “Indian immigrants as seen from the outside” as opposed to “the self-representation of Indian immigrants”; as a character in a comedy show, he’s often a subject of mockery.
But someone being offended by Apu is what expecting this will lead to diminished status and power for Indian immigrants to America feels like from the inside. That makes me suspect that we should feel similarly about individuals taking offense claims of this category of CA, but I’m curious what makes you consider them separately.
I agree that part of offense is just “what it feels like on the inside to anticipate diminished status”.
Analogously, part of the pain of getting hit by a hammer is just “what it feels like on the inside to get hit by a hammer.”
However, in both cases, neither the pain nor the offense is just passive internal information about an objective external state of affairs. They include such information, but they are more than that. In particular, in both cases, they are also what it feels like to execute a program designed by evolution to change the situation.
Pain, for example, is an inducement to stop any additional hammer blows and to see to the wounds already inflicted. More generally, pain is part of an active program that is interacting with the world, planning responses, anticipating reactions to those responses, and so on. And likewise with offense.
The premise of my distinction between “offense” and “diminished status” is this. I maintain that we can conceptually separate the initial and unavoidable diminished status from the potential future diminished status.
The potential future diminished status depends on how the offendee responds. The emotion of offense is heavily wrapped up in this potential future and in what kinds of responses will influence that future. For that reason, offense necessarily involves the kinds of recursive issues that Katja explores.
In the end, these recursive issues will have to be considered. (They are real, so they should be reflected in our theory in the end.) But it seems like it should be possible to see what initial harm, if any, occurs before the recursion kicks in.