I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
(Note: the following all tracks how I personally use the word Betrayal. Notably, others might use the word differently. But, the fact that people use words differently is a related, important point)
Betrayal is a meaning that people assign to actions, and only really has meaning insofar as people assign it. It exists in social reality, personal subjective experience, and interpersonal subjective experience. It is not objective fact about reality, except insofar as personal subjective experiences are part of reality.
If Alice and Bob have an explicit agreement that they are monogamous, and that cheating is an act of betrayal, and then Alice has sex with Carl, there are three concrete facts of the matter: Alice had sex outside the relationship, Alice took an action that both parties agreed they would not do, and furthermore agreed was a betrayal. In this case it’s all pretty clear cut.
But, often (I would expect most of the time), instead it’s more like people have a bunch of implicit expectations, some of which they don’t understand themselves.
Suppose Alice is spending a lot of time with Carl. Is that a betrayal?
Suppose Alice is not spending much time with Carl, but feels attraction to him that she’s deliberately cultivating. Is that a betrayal? What if she’s not deliberately cultivating it, but neither trying to squish it? What if she tries to squish it, but sort of halfheartedly?
Suppose Alice and Bob have been on one date, and not discussed monogamy. Bob has sex with Charlotte. Is that betrayal? Is it betrayal after the second, third, or 10th date?
Suppose Alice watches a movie that Bob had been looking forward to seeing together. Is that a betrayal?
You might say “betrayal has a specific meaning, and it applies in [whichever those cases you think it applies to]”. But I am quite confident people will not agree on which is which.
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed. And if Alice tells Bob he is being unreasonable… maybe she’s right, but nonetheless there’s going to a nagging pit in his stomach that is going to poison the relationship, and trying to reason his way out of those feelings is not going to work most of the time. (I’m not sure whether you’re claiming it works that way for you, but I am claiming fairly strongly it doesn’t work that way for many (and probably most) people).
Even in the most explicit first case, “betrayal” still lives entirely in social reality, perception, and assigned meaning. There’s an alternate Alice and Bob who still agreed to be monogamous, and nonetheless… don’t find themselves caring that much about the breaking of the agreement, and who reserve the word “betrayal” for things they care more about. (You may or may not want to be in a relationship with them, but that’s a fact about you and your own sense of what betrayal means and what things you assign it to, not a fact about objective external reality)
One can say such things as you have said, about almost anything. A tree, after all, is only a meaning that people assign to certain collections of molecules (or quarks, or waves in the configuration space, etc.). Democritus: “By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.”
And we can ask these kinds of questions, too: is a palm a tree? Is a bonsai tree a tree? There are difficulties in categorizing; what of it? We know all about this.
Alice and Bob, we may imagine, agreed to various things. Some of the agreements were explicit; some, implicit, or assumed. Some of them were inherited from a larger social context. Perhaps Bob thought that an agreement existed, but Alice had no such notion. Perhaps Alice only claims this. We can investigate this; we can ask Alice, and ask Bob, what was said, and what was expected; we may believe their answers, or not. Bob (or Alice) may claim that any reasonable person would understand that such-and-such agreement had taken place; Alice (or Bob) may disagree; we may agree with the one, or with the other. Alice, or Bob, may come to see that they were wrong, and the other was right; or, they may not. Perhaps Bob concludes that Alice really didn’t think any obligation obtained, but also that Alice is so unreasonable and weird a person that she cannot be trusted, despite a lack of malice. And so on, and so forth. And, supposing that we do conclude that some betrayal has occurred, we (or Bob) may judge it to be relatively mild, and well within the bounds of what may be atoned for, and forgiven… or, instead, something terrible, from which a relationship cannot recover. There is a range of possibilities.
Nevertheless, we are still talking about what happened—about obligations, expectations, agreements, intent, responsibility, and actions taken—and not about how everyone currently feels about it!
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed.
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it. My suspicion is that, in such cases, I would say: “Bob has some issues to work through, if he has such irrational feelings”. Labeling feelings as ‘irrational’ isn’t something to do lightly; but if, indeed, the label applies, then the problem is of a very different kind, and should absolutely not be conflated with the question of what are the facts of the matter.
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it.
In my experience, this kind of a thing tends to come up when there has been no explicit agreement about something, but previous experience implies a particular thing, and the other person knows that this matters for the other.
For example, say that Alice is Bob’s aging mother who is lonely in her old days. Bob has explicitly promised to visit her every week. Over time, this has ended up usually meaning twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Now one week it happens that Bob visits on Tuesday, as normal, and doesn’t say anything about any changes to the normal schedule. Then on Thursday, when Alice asks what kind of dinner Bob would want to have on Friday, Bob says “oh, I’m not coming this Friday, I’ll see you next Tuesday”.
In this situation, Alice might on an intellectual level think that there was no betrayal. The explicit agreement was for Bob to visit once a week, and he never promised anything else. It just kind of happened that Bob ended up visiting more regularly, but he never made a promise to visit every Friday. Nor did he on Tuesday say that he would visit next Friday. Alice just kind of ended up assuming that he would, like usual.
On the other hand, she may still feel betrayed, in that she had expected Bob to visit on Friday. In particular, there may be a feeling that Bob should have known that based on him having visited on every Friday for the last six weeks, Alice would expect him to visit the coming Friday as well. Alice may feel that Bob should have understood his mother well enough to know that unless Bob specifically says that he will not be coming, Alice will plan her week under the assumption that he is coming. (Depending on how introspective Alice is, she may not be able to articulate all this, and just feel that “I know that Bob never said that he would come on Friday, but I still feel betrayed”.)
Habitual action creates expectations (especially in informal contexts, like interactions between family members). This is a perfectly ordinary thing. If (as you suggest at the start of the comment) Bob also understands this fact, then there’s nothing unusual here at all; Bob has created an expectation that he’ll be coming on Friday, and he knows this, and he then violates this expectation. This is a betrayal, especially given that it’s his mother we’re talking about, and given (as you say) that this matters to her (and that Bob knows this, too).
Now, the expectation isn’t very firm, and the betrayal isn’t very severe. Like I said before, there are degrees of this thing. But the situation isn’t of a different kind. So why call Alice’s feelings irrational?
It seems to me that this isn’t at all an example of the given extensional definition.
I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
So early on in this thread I said:
Like, in my view this one is more of a “patch that prevents a predictable failure mode” than a claim that, like, justice or principles don’t exist and only emotions do. [I am not sure how widespread my view is.]
and later I said:
He might discover that Alice is contrite and wants to do better, or that Alice thinks his expectations were unclear, or Alice thought he was in violation of some of her expectations, and so thought she was matching Bob’s level of reliability. Or he might discover that Alice is uninterested in his wellbeing, or in collaboratively seeking solutions, or in discussing the possibility that she might have done anything wrong.
I thought the second does an adequate job of pointing out “betrayal is complicated,” in that a discussion of it could go many ways and I do not believe “betrayal is a malformed concept,” as pointed out in the first. Like, for any particular case, I think you could in principle reach a “fact of the matter” that either Alice betrayed Bob, didn’t, or that Alice and Bob have irreconcilable standards (which you might lump into the ‘betrayal’ case, or might want to keep separate).
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
Yes, this is a reasonable portrayal. Facts being what they are, nevertheless the purpose of all such exercises is to determine future actions taken by people, so what we’re (mostly) actually talking about here is facts as represented in the minds of the people involved. (This is, of course, true of a very broad spectrum of situations—far broader than only “interpersonal conflict” or similar.)
I actually objected (and was somewhat surprised Vaniver didn’t object to) your description upthread of “either Alice betrayed Bob, or she didn’t”. Betrayal is very much not an atomic object (and importantly so, not just in the generic “everything is complicated” sense)
(Note: the following all tracks how I personally use the word Betrayal. Notably, others might use the word differently. But, the fact that people use words differently is a related, important point)
Betrayal is a meaning that people assign to actions, and only really has meaning insofar as people assign it. It exists in social reality, personal subjective experience, and interpersonal subjective experience. It is not objective fact about reality, except insofar as personal subjective experiences are part of reality.
If Alice and Bob have an explicit agreement that they are monogamous, and that cheating is an act of betrayal, and then Alice has sex with Carl, there are three concrete facts of the matter: Alice had sex outside the relationship, Alice took an action that both parties agreed they would not do, and furthermore agreed was a betrayal. In this case it’s all pretty clear cut.
But, often (I would expect most of the time), instead it’s more like people have a bunch of implicit expectations, some of which they don’t understand themselves.
Suppose Alice is spending a lot of time with Carl. Is that a betrayal?
Suppose Alice is not spending much time with Carl, but feels attraction to him that she’s deliberately cultivating. Is that a betrayal? What if she’s not deliberately cultivating it, but neither trying to squish it? What if she tries to squish it, but sort of halfheartedly?
Suppose Alice and Bob have been on one date, and not discussed monogamy. Bob has sex with Charlotte. Is that betrayal? Is it betrayal after the second, third, or 10th date?
Suppose Alice watches a movie that Bob had been looking forward to seeing together. Is that a betrayal?
You might say “betrayal has a specific meaning, and it applies in [whichever those cases you think it applies to]”. But I am quite confident people will not agree on which is which.
And in many other cases, people might rationally agree “betrayal has not taken place”, and nonetheless feel a deep sense of having been betrayed. And if Alice tells Bob he is being unreasonable… maybe she’s right, but nonetheless there’s going to a nagging pit in his stomach that is going to poison the relationship, and trying to reason his way out of those feelings is not going to work most of the time. (I’m not sure whether you’re claiming it works that way for you, but I am claiming fairly strongly it doesn’t work that way for many (and probably most) people).
Even in the most explicit first case, “betrayal” still lives entirely in social reality, perception, and assigned meaning. There’s an alternate Alice and Bob who still agreed to be monogamous, and nonetheless… don’t find themselves caring that much about the breaking of the agreement, and who reserve the word “betrayal” for things they care more about. (You may or may not want to be in a relationship with them, but that’s a fact about you and your own sense of what betrayal means and what things you assign it to, not a fact about objective external reality)
(Removed text that merely pointed out typos.)
One can say such things as you have said, about almost anything. A tree, after all, is only a meaning that people assign to certain collections of molecules (or quarks, or waves in the configuration space, etc.). Democritus: “By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.”
And we can ask these kinds of questions, too: is a palm a tree? Is a bonsai tree a tree? There are difficulties in categorizing; what of it? We know all about this.
Alice and Bob, we may imagine, agreed to various things. Some of the agreements were explicit; some, implicit, or assumed. Some of them were inherited from a larger social context. Perhaps Bob thought that an agreement existed, but Alice had no such notion. Perhaps Alice only claims this. We can investigate this; we can ask Alice, and ask Bob, what was said, and what was expected; we may believe their answers, or not. Bob (or Alice) may claim that any reasonable person would understand that such-and-such agreement had taken place; Alice (or Bob) may disagree; we may agree with the one, or with the other. Alice, or Bob, may come to see that they were wrong, and the other was right; or, they may not. Perhaps Bob concludes that Alice really didn’t think any obligation obtained, but also that Alice is so unreasonable and weird a person that she cannot be trusted, despite a lack of malice. And so on, and so forth. And, supposing that we do conclude that some betrayal has occurred, we (or Bob) may judge it to be relatively mild, and well within the bounds of what may be atoned for, and forgiven… or, instead, something terrible, from which a relationship cannot recover. There is a range of possibilities.
Nevertheless, we are still talking about what happened—about obligations, expectations, agreements, intent, responsibility, and actions taken—and not about how everyone currently feels about it!
I would need an example of this, before I could say for sure what I think of it. My suspicion is that, in such cases, I would say: “Bob has some issues to work through, if he has such irrational feelings”. Labeling feelings as ‘irrational’ isn’t something to do lightly; but if, indeed, the label applies, then the problem is of a very different kind, and should absolutely not be conflated with the question of what are the facts of the matter.
In my experience, this kind of a thing tends to come up when there has been no explicit agreement about something, but previous experience implies a particular thing, and the other person knows that this matters for the other.
For example, say that Alice is Bob’s aging mother who is lonely in her old days. Bob has explicitly promised to visit her every week. Over time, this has ended up usually meaning twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Now one week it happens that Bob visits on Tuesday, as normal, and doesn’t say anything about any changes to the normal schedule. Then on Thursday, when Alice asks what kind of dinner Bob would want to have on Friday, Bob says “oh, I’m not coming this Friday, I’ll see you next Tuesday”.
In this situation, Alice might on an intellectual level think that there was no betrayal. The explicit agreement was for Bob to visit once a week, and he never promised anything else. It just kind of happened that Bob ended up visiting more regularly, but he never made a promise to visit every Friday. Nor did he on Tuesday say that he would visit next Friday. Alice just kind of ended up assuming that he would, like usual.
On the other hand, she may still feel betrayed, in that she had expected Bob to visit on Friday. In particular, there may be a feeling that Bob should have known that based on him having visited on every Friday for the last six weeks, Alice would expect him to visit the coming Friday as well. Alice may feel that Bob should have understood his mother well enough to know that unless Bob specifically says that he will not be coming, Alice will plan her week under the assumption that he is coming. (Depending on how introspective Alice is, she may not be able to articulate all this, and just feel that “I know that Bob never said that he would come on Friday, but I still feel betrayed”.)
Habitual action creates expectations (especially in informal contexts, like interactions between family members). This is a perfectly ordinary thing. If (as you suggest at the start of the comment) Bob also understands this fact, then there’s nothing unusual here at all; Bob has created an expectation that he’ll be coming on Friday, and he knows this, and he then violates this expectation. This is a betrayal, especially given that it’s his mother we’re talking about, and given (as you say) that this matters to her (and that Bob knows this, too).
Now, the expectation isn’t very firm, and the betrayal isn’t very severe. Like I said before, there are degrees of this thing. But the situation isn’t of a different kind. So why call Alice’s feelings irrational?
It seems to me that this isn’t at all an example of the given extensional definition.
Fixed, whoops.
I understood Said to mean something like “either Bob would think he had a convincing case that Alice betrayed him, or Bob would change his mind, and assuming Bob follows some standards of reasonableness, a Reasonable Observer would agree with Bob.”
So early on in this thread I said:
and later I said:
I thought the second does an adequate job of pointing out “betrayal is complicated,” in that a discussion of it could go many ways and I do not believe “betrayal is a malformed concept,” as pointed out in the first. Like, for any particular case, I think you could in principle reach a “fact of the matter” that either Alice betrayed Bob, didn’t, or that Alice and Bob have irreconcilable standards (which you might lump into the ‘betrayal’ case, or might want to keep separate).
Yes, this is a reasonable portrayal. Facts being what they are, nevertheless the purpose of all such exercises is to determine future actions taken by people, so what we’re (mostly) actually talking about here is facts as represented in the minds of the people involved. (This is, of course, true of a very broad spectrum of situations—far broader than only “interpersonal conflict” or similar.)