The “deep moral dimension” generally applies to group memberships that aren’t (perceived to be) chosen: sex, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion to a lesser extent.
This is not an accurate description of the present situation. To take the most blatant example, every country discriminates between its own citizens and foreigners, and also between foreigners from different countries (some can visit freely, while others need hard to get visas). This state of affairs is considered completely normal and uncontroversial, even though it involves a tremendous amount of discrimination based on group memberships that are a mere accident of birth.
Thus, there are clearly some additional factors involved in the moralization of other forms of discrimination, and the fascinating question is what exactly they are. The question is especially puzzling considering that religion is, in most cases, much easier to change than nationality, and yet the former makes your above list, while the latter doesn’t—so the story about choice vs. accident of birth definitely doesn’t hold water.
I’m also puzzled by your mention of class. Discrimination by class is definitely not a morally sensitive issue nowadays the way sex or race is. On the contrary, success in life is nowadays measured mostly by one’s ability to distance and insulate oneself from the lower classes by being able to afford living in low-class-free neighborhoods and joining higher social circles. Even when it comes to you personally, I can’t imagine that you would have exactly the same reaction when approached by a homeless panhandler and by someone decent-looking.
Discrimination by class is definitely not a morally sensitive issue nowadays the way sex or race is. On the contrary, success in life is nowadays measured mostly by one’s ability to distance and insulate oneself from the lower classes
Without disagreeing much with your comment, I have to point out that this is a non sequitur. Moral sensitivity has nothing to do with (ordinary) actions. Among countries where the second sentence is true, there are both ones where the first is true and ones where the first is false. I don’t know so much about countries where the second sentence is false.
As to religion, in places where people care about it enough to discriminate, changing it will probably alienate one’s family, so it is very costly to change, although technically possible. Also, in many places, religion is a codeword for ethnic groups, so it can’t be changed (eg, Catholics in US 1850-1950).
You’re right that my comment was imprecise, in that I didn’t specify to which societies it applies. I had in mind the modern Western societies, and especially the English-speaking countries. In other places, things can indeed be very different with regards to all the mentioned issues.
However, regarding your comment:
Moral sensitivity has nothing to do with (ordinary) actions.
That’s not really true. People are indeed apt to enthusiastically extol moral principles in the abstract while at the same them violating them whenever compliance would be too costly. However, even when such violations are rampant, these acts are still different from those that don’t involve any such hypocritical violations, or those that violate only weaker and less significant principles.
And in practice, when we observe people’s acts and attitudes that involve their feeling of superiority over lower classes and their desire to distance themselves from them, it looks quite different from analogous behaviors with respect to e.g. race or sex. The latter sorts of statements and acts normally involve far more caution, evasion, obfuscation, and rationalization. To take a concrete example, few people would see any problem with recommending a house by saying that it’s located in “a nice middle-class neighborhood”—but imagine the shocked reactions if someone praised it by talking about the ethnic/racial composition of the neighborhood loudly and explicitly, even if the former description might in practice serve as (among other things) a codeword for the latter.
WrongBot:
This is not an accurate description of the present situation. To take the most blatant example, every country discriminates between its own citizens and foreigners, and also between foreigners from different countries (some can visit freely, while others need hard to get visas). This state of affairs is considered completely normal and uncontroversial, even though it involves a tremendous amount of discrimination based on group memberships that are a mere accident of birth.
Thus, there are clearly some additional factors involved in the moralization of other forms of discrimination, and the fascinating question is what exactly they are. The question is especially puzzling considering that religion is, in most cases, much easier to change than nationality, and yet the former makes your above list, while the latter doesn’t—so the story about choice vs. accident of birth definitely doesn’t hold water.
I’m also puzzled by your mention of class. Discrimination by class is definitely not a morally sensitive issue nowadays the way sex or race is. On the contrary, success in life is nowadays measured mostly by one’s ability to distance and insulate oneself from the lower classes by being able to afford living in low-class-free neighborhoods and joining higher social circles. Even when it comes to you personally, I can’t imagine that you would have exactly the same reaction when approached by a homeless panhandler and by someone decent-looking.
Without disagreeing much with your comment, I have to point out that this is a non sequitur. Moral sensitivity has nothing to do with (ordinary) actions. Among countries where the second sentence is true, there are both ones where the first is true and ones where the first is false. I don’t know so much about countries where the second sentence is false.
As to religion, in places where people care about it enough to discriminate, changing it will probably alienate one’s family, so it is very costly to change, although technically possible. Also, in many places, religion is a codeword for ethnic groups, so it can’t be changed (eg, Catholics in US 1850-1950).
You’re right that my comment was imprecise, in that I didn’t specify to which societies it applies. I had in mind the modern Western societies, and especially the English-speaking countries. In other places, things can indeed be very different with regards to all the mentioned issues.
However, regarding your comment:
That’s not really true. People are indeed apt to enthusiastically extol moral principles in the abstract while at the same them violating them whenever compliance would be too costly. However, even when such violations are rampant, these acts are still different from those that don’t involve any such hypocritical violations, or those that violate only weaker and less significant principles.
And in practice, when we observe people’s acts and attitudes that involve their feeling of superiority over lower classes and their desire to distance themselves from them, it looks quite different from analogous behaviors with respect to e.g. race or sex. The latter sorts of statements and acts normally involve far more caution, evasion, obfuscation, and rationalization. To take a concrete example, few people would see any problem with recommending a house by saying that it’s located in “a nice middle-class neighborhood”—but imagine the shocked reactions if someone praised it by talking about the ethnic/racial composition of the neighborhood loudly and explicitly, even if the former description might in practice serve as (among other things) a codeword for the latter.