So to objectify someone is to think of him in a way that doesn’t include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood?
According to this definition, I objectify the bus driver, the cashier at the local Walmart, and just about everybody I interact with on an average day.
To that degree, yes, just as they objectify you as ‘passenger’, or ‘customer’.
But even as we interact as ‘passenger’ and ‘bus driver’, and probably don’t have any desire but to do what we have to do as efficiently as possible, we do generally keep in mind that we are both people with concerns about our respect and we don’t casually devalue each other for playing out the roles we have. There’s still an assumption of basic personhood going on.
But I think that when people start talking about getting sex from a woman with the same degree of respect and mutuality as is required when getting a can of cola from a vending machine, then they’ve gone an extra step on the road to objectification. And adding on a “well that’s what women want too” as an afterthought when questioned about it doesn’t really convince.
I’ll concede that the “pick up artist” is to some extent a role that is played by guys who aren’t necessarily so entirely cynical in reality, but I’m not sure that means it’s non-issue.
OK, well given this clarification, it seems to me just fine to objectify people, and in fact I recommend doing so when what one is trying to do is neutral analysis about the facts of some matter. Objectify your teacher when deciding if school is worth the effort, and objectify your doctor when deciding if medicine is worth the cost.
It’s important to note that neither of those scenarios include interacting with the person being so objectified. Also note the point about the ethical considerations being different in economic transactions, e.g. thomblake’s comment.
What about objectifying a job candidate in an interview? Do you choose the candidate with experience, who will feel dead-ended but perform a better job? You might interpret this as a deliberate stunting of their volition (the sense of objectification I’m using), interfering with their actual goals despite their outward actions.
Any overqualified candidate that gets hired is objectified in an arguably worse way than the target of a PUA, despite the potential mitigations the economic transaction may bring about.
(Edit: Rereading this, I’m worried that I sound confrontational; I don’t mean to be, but I’m not sure how else to edit without becoming too prolix.)
Well, I actually do find this sort of thing ethically objectionable to some level, but defensible on consequentialist grounds because of the social benefits of economic efficiency. So I don’t know that I can give you a satisfying answer.
For what it’s worth, I hold a lot of sales and marketing in even lower regard than PUA silliness.
Maybe this definition is more isomorphic to the “objectification of women” than it first appears. For example, the other day my family was going to get our photograph taken. After about seven pictures were taken, we were lead to another room where a man showed us our photographs in turn so we could decide on the one we liked. It occurred to me that we probably could have operated the computer that did this ourselves, in which case he would have been out of a job. I objectified him, and I’m quite certain he would have been offended if I’d said my thoughts aloud.
So. Objectification is a good thing for the person who does it, but it’s quite normal for the person on the receiving end to be offended.
Are you saying that you don’t? Or that you do, but that this kind of objectification is somehow different from the kind you condemn? If so, what’s the difference?
The major difference is that it’s more socially acceptable. Yes, I realize this is a non-answer. The answer you probably want is “they’re getting paid for it”. There’s no expectation of social relationship between peers.
Furthermore, as I said elsewhere, wanton disregard for the autonomy of such people is still frowned upon in the extreme cases. Noone likes the boss who treats employees like cogs, or the demanding customer who pushes around customer service staff because they know they can.
The answer you probably want is “they’re getting paid for it”.
Well, no. I happened to pick a bus driver and cashier as my examples, but I could just as easily have picked my next door neighbor. I don’t dislike him, but I couldn’t care less about his goals or interests or personality.
Furthermore, as I said elsewhere, wanton disregard for the autonomy of such people is still frowned upon in the extreme cases. Noone likes the boss who treats employees like cogs, or the demanding customer who pushes around customer service staff because they know they can.
Treating people in a certain way goes beyond mere objectification as Alicorn has defined it:
“Thinking of a person in a way that doesn’t include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood.”
I’m still trying to obtain a coherent definition of “objectification” that is both morally reprehensible and independent from any harmful action, such as deceiving a woman to get her into bed or treating one’s employees like cogs.
I’m not sure that it needs to be independent of harmful action. The way I tend to think about it is that thinking of others as tools to one’s own ends, with no regard for their ends, is something that increases the risk of harmful action, which is bad.
The thing is, this risk also depends crucially on context, so on this theory, we would expect the social acceptability of objectification to increase where the risk of leading to harm is lowest. This seems to roughly fit my intuitions at least: objectifying teachers when deciding on what school to attend seems ok (there’s little risk of harm to them, and whatever harm there is seems justified on efficiency grounds); but treating other parties to intimate relationships as simply means to your own ends is bad (because it’s much more likely to end up hurting someone); meanwhile, treating, say waitstaff as simply a means to getting a meal is probably somewhere in between (it increases the chance that you might be a complete ass in the course of your personal interactions, but this may only manifest itself if something goes wrong).
ETA: as additional examples, we could also consider: treating consumers as people whose needs you are trying to fulfil vs. people you just want to get money out of, whether they really want what you’re selling or not; and treating staff as engines to pump out products, vs. actual human beings.
If it helps any, instances of ‘thinking’ that don’t go beyond that will probably not appear on this website. They at least need to go as far as ‘writing’.
See this comment—there are some contexts where treating people as objects is at least socially expected, and arguably fine, and economic transactions are one of them.
So to objectify someone is to think of him in a way that doesn’t include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood?
According to this definition, I objectify the bus driver, the cashier at the local Walmart, and just about everybody I interact with on an average day.
To that degree, yes, just as they objectify you as ‘passenger’, or ‘customer’.
But even as we interact as ‘passenger’ and ‘bus driver’, and probably don’t have any desire but to do what we have to do as efficiently as possible, we do generally keep in mind that we are both people with concerns about our respect and we don’t casually devalue each other for playing out the roles we have. There’s still an assumption of basic personhood going on.
But I think that when people start talking about getting sex from a woman with the same degree of respect and mutuality as is required when getting a can of cola from a vending machine, then they’ve gone an extra step on the road to objectification. And adding on a “well that’s what women want too” as an afterthought when questioned about it doesn’t really convince.
I’ll concede that the “pick up artist” is to some extent a role that is played by guys who aren’t necessarily so entirely cynical in reality, but I’m not sure that means it’s non-issue.
Yes, you probably do.
OK, well given this clarification, it seems to me just fine to objectify people, and in fact I recommend doing so when what one is trying to do is neutral analysis about the facts of some matter. Objectify your teacher when deciding if school is worth the effort, and objectify your doctor when deciding if medicine is worth the cost.
It’s important to note that neither of those scenarios include interacting with the person being so objectified. Also note the point about the ethical considerations being different in economic transactions, e.g. thomblake’s comment.
What about objectifying a job candidate in an interview? Do you choose the candidate with experience, who will feel dead-ended but perform a better job? You might interpret this as a deliberate stunting of their volition (the sense of objectification I’m using), interfering with their actual goals despite their outward actions.
Any overqualified candidate that gets hired is objectified in an arguably worse way than the target of a PUA, despite the potential mitigations the economic transaction may bring about.
(Edit: Rereading this, I’m worried that I sound confrontational; I don’t mean to be, but I’m not sure how else to edit without becoming too prolix.)
Well, I actually do find this sort of thing ethically objectionable to some level, but defensible on consequentialist grounds because of the social benefits of economic efficiency. So I don’t know that I can give you a satisfying answer.
For what it’s worth, I hold a lot of sales and marketing in even lower regard than PUA silliness.
Maybe this definition is more isomorphic to the “objectification of women” than it first appears. For example, the other day my family was going to get our photograph taken. After about seven pictures were taken, we were lead to another room where a man showed us our photographs in turn so we could decide on the one we liked. It occurred to me that we probably could have operated the computer that did this ourselves, in which case he would have been out of a job. I objectified him, and I’m quite certain he would have been offended if I’d said my thoughts aloud.
So. Objectification is a good thing for the person who does it, but it’s quite normal for the person on the receiving end to be offended.
...
Are you saying that you don’t? Or that you do, but that this kind of objectification is somehow different from the kind you condemn? If so, what’s the difference?
The major difference is that it’s more socially acceptable. Yes, I realize this is a non-answer. The answer you probably want is “they’re getting paid for it”. There’s no expectation of social relationship between peers.
Furthermore, as I said elsewhere, wanton disregard for the autonomy of such people is still frowned upon in the extreme cases. Noone likes the boss who treats employees like cogs, or the demanding customer who pushes around customer service staff because they know they can.
Well, no. I happened to pick a bus driver and cashier as my examples, but I could just as easily have picked my next door neighbor. I don’t dislike him, but I couldn’t care less about his goals or interests or personality.
Treating people in a certain way goes beyond mere objectification as Alicorn has defined it: “Thinking of a person in a way that doesn’t include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood.”
I’m still trying to obtain a coherent definition of “objectification” that is both morally reprehensible and independent from any harmful action, such as deceiving a woman to get her into bed or treating one’s employees like cogs.
I’m not sure that it needs to be independent of harmful action. The way I tend to think about it is that thinking of others as tools to one’s own ends, with no regard for their ends, is something that increases the risk of harmful action, which is bad.
The thing is, this risk also depends crucially on context, so on this theory, we would expect the social acceptability of objectification to increase where the risk of leading to harm is lowest. This seems to roughly fit my intuitions at least: objectifying teachers when deciding on what school to attend seems ok (there’s little risk of harm to them, and whatever harm there is seems justified on efficiency grounds); but treating other parties to intimate relationships as simply means to your own ends is bad (because it’s much more likely to end up hurting someone); meanwhile, treating, say waitstaff as simply a means to getting a meal is probably somewhere in between (it increases the chance that you might be a complete ass in the course of your personal interactions, but this may only manifest itself if something goes wrong).
ETA: as additional examples, we could also consider: treating consumers as people whose needs you are trying to fulfil vs. people you just want to get money out of, whether they really want what you’re selling or not; and treating staff as engines to pump out products, vs. actual human beings.
If it helps any, instances of ‘thinking’ that don’t go beyond that will probably not appear on this website. They at least need to go as far as ‘writing’.
disregard for the autonomy of people =/= thinking of someone in a way that doesn’t include respect for his goals, interests, or personhood
I am reading the latter rather literally in much the same way RobinHanson seems to and as I think the author intended.
Sorry, I thought it clear I meant some flavor of “all of the above”, shortened for readability.
See SoullessAutomaton’s comment; he has it right.
See this comment—there are some contexts where treating people as objects is at least socially expected, and arguably fine, and economic transactions are one of them.