Are you arguing that someone wedded to an existing gender-biased value system would deliberately select a discriminatory society (over an equal rights one) even if they were choosing on the basis of self-interest? That they would fully understand that they have roughly 50% chance of getting the raw end of the deal, but still think that this deal would maximise their welfare overall?
Yes and no. Someone who’d internalized a discriminatory value system—who really believed in it, not just belief-in-belief, to use LW terminology—would interpret their self-interest and therefore their welfare in terms of that value system. They would be conscious of of what we would view as unequal rights, but would see these as neutral or positive on both sides, not as one “getting the raw end of the deal”—though they’d likely object to some of their operational consequences. This implies, of course, a certain essentialism, and only applies to certain forms of discrimination: recent top-down imposition of values isn’t stable in this way.
As a toy example, read 1 Corinthians 11, and try to think of the mentality implied by taking that as the literal word of God—not just advice from some vague authority, but an independent axiom of a value system backed by the most potent proofs imaginable. Applied to an egalitarian society, what would such a value system say about the (value-subjective) welfare of the women—or for that matter the men—in it?
the original objection to CEV was that most people alive today believe in unequal rights for women and essentially no rights for gays. The key question is therefore whether most people would really choose such a world in the Rawlsian set-up. And then, would most people continue to so-choose even after living in that world for a while in different roles?
This, on the other hand, is essentially an anthropology question. The answer depends on the extent of discriminatory traditional cultures, on the strength of belief in them, and on the commonalities between them: “unequal rights” isn’t a value, it’s a judgment call over a value system, and the specific unequal values that we object to may be quite different between cultures. I’m not an anthropologist, so I can’t really answer that question—but if I had to, I’d doubt that a reflectively stable consensus exists for egalitarianism or for any particular form of discrimination, with or without the Rawlsian wrinkle.
So this would be like the “separate but equal” argument? To paraphrase in a gender context: “Men and women are very different, and need to be treated differently under the law—both human and divine law. But it’s not like the female side is really worse off because of this different treatment”.
That—I think—would count as a rather basic factual misunderstanding of how discrimination really works. It ought to be correctable pretty damn fast by a trip into the simulator.
(Incidentally, I grew up in a fundamentalist church until my teens, and one of the things I remember clearly was the women and teen girls being very upset about being told that they had to shut up in church, or wear hats or long hair, or that they couldn’t be elders, or whatever. They also really hated having St Paul and the Corinthians thrown at them; the ones who believed in Bible inerrancy were sure the original Greek said something different, and that the sacred text was being misinterpreted and spun against them. Since it is an absolute precondition for an inerrantist position that correct interpretations are difficult, and up for grabs, this was no more unreasonable than the version spouted by the all-male elders.)
That—I think—would count as a rarher basic factual misunderstanding of how discrimination really works. It ought to be correctable pretty damn fast by a trip into the simulator.
Well, I won’t rule it out. But if you grow up in the West—even in one of its more traditionalist enclaves—that means you’ve grown up surrounded by some of the most fantastically egalitarian rhetoric the world’s ever generated, and I think one consequence of that is the adoption of a rather totalizing attitude toward any form of discrimination. Not that that’s a bad thing; discrimination’s bad news. But it does make it kind of hard to grok stratified social organization in any kind of unbiased way.
I grew up secular, albeit in one of the more conservative parts of my home state. But I have read a lot of social commentary from the Middle Ages and the Classical period, and I’ve visited a couple of highly traditionalist non-Western countries. Both seem to exhibit an attitude towards what we’d call unequal rights that’s pretty damned strange for those of us who were raised on Max Weber and Malcolm X, and I wouldn’t put the differences down to ignorance.
But I have read a lot of social commentary from the Middle Ages and the Classical period, and I’ve visited a couple of highly traditionalist non-Western countries.
Of course there is an enormous selection bias here. You’re reading the opinions of the tiny minority who were a) literate, b) had time to write social commentary, c) didn’t have their writings burned or otherwise censored and d) were preserved for later generations by copyists. It’s very difficult to tell whether they represented the CEV of their time (or anything like it). And on visiting other cultures, even in the present, I can only reflect that if you’d visited the fundie church of my childhood you’d have seen an overt culture of traditionalist paternalism/sexism, but wouldn’t have seen the genuine hurt and pain of the 50% or so who really wished it wasn’t like that. Being denied a public voice, you couldn’t have heard them. That’s kind of the point.
I’ve also visited a few non-Western countries in the world (on business) and to the extent the people there have voiced opinions about their situation versus ours (which was not very often), they’ve been rather keen to make their countries more like ours in terms of liberty, equality and the pursuit of shed loads of money.. Or leave for the West if they can. Sheer poverty sucks too.
Yes and no. Someone who’d internalized a discriminatory value system—who really believed in it, not just belief-in-belief, to use LW terminology—would interpret their self-interest and therefore their welfare in terms of that value system. They would be conscious of of what we would view as unequal rights, but would see these as neutral or positive on both sides, not as one “getting the raw end of the deal”—though they’d likely object to some of their operational consequences. This implies, of course, a certain essentialism, and only applies to certain forms of discrimination: recent top-down imposition of values isn’t stable in this way.
As a toy example, read 1 Corinthians 11, and try to think of the mentality implied by taking that as the literal word of God—not just advice from some vague authority, but an independent axiom of a value system backed by the most potent proofs imaginable. Applied to an egalitarian society, what would such a value system say about the (value-subjective) welfare of the women—or for that matter the men—in it?
This, on the other hand, is essentially an anthropology question. The answer depends on the extent of discriminatory traditional cultures, on the strength of belief in them, and on the commonalities between them: “unequal rights” isn’t a value, it’s a judgment call over a value system, and the specific unequal values that we object to may be quite different between cultures. I’m not an anthropologist, so I can’t really answer that question—but if I had to, I’d doubt that a reflectively stable consensus exists for egalitarianism or for any particular form of discrimination, with or without the Rawlsian wrinkle.
So this would be like the “separate but equal” argument? To paraphrase in a gender context: “Men and women are very different, and need to be treated differently under the law—both human and divine law. But it’s not like the female side is really worse off because of this different treatment”.
That—I think—would count as a rather basic factual misunderstanding of how discrimination really works. It ought to be correctable pretty damn fast by a trip into the simulator.
(Incidentally, I grew up in a fundamentalist church until my teens, and one of the things I remember clearly was the women and teen girls being very upset about being told that they had to shut up in church, or wear hats or long hair, or that they couldn’t be elders, or whatever. They also really hated having St Paul and the Corinthians thrown at them; the ones who believed in Bible inerrancy were sure the original Greek said something different, and that the sacred text was being misinterpreted and spun against them. Since it is an absolute precondition for an inerrantist position that correct interpretations are difficult, and up for grabs, this was no more unreasonable than the version spouted by the all-male elders.)
Well, I won’t rule it out. But if you grow up in the West—even in one of its more traditionalist enclaves—that means you’ve grown up surrounded by some of the most fantastically egalitarian rhetoric the world’s ever generated, and I think one consequence of that is the adoption of a rather totalizing attitude toward any form of discrimination. Not that that’s a bad thing; discrimination’s bad news. But it does make it kind of hard to grok stratified social organization in any kind of unbiased way.
I grew up secular, albeit in one of the more conservative parts of my home state. But I have read a lot of social commentary from the Middle Ages and the Classical period, and I’ve visited a couple of highly traditionalist non-Western countries. Both seem to exhibit an attitude towards what we’d call unequal rights that’s pretty damned strange for those of us who were raised on Max Weber and Malcolm X, and I wouldn’t put the differences down to ignorance.
Of course there is an enormous selection bias here. You’re reading the opinions of the tiny minority who were a) literate, b) had time to write social commentary, c) didn’t have their writings burned or otherwise censored and d) were preserved for later generations by copyists. It’s very difficult to tell whether they represented the CEV of their time (or anything like it). And on visiting other cultures, even in the present, I can only reflect that if you’d visited the fundie church of my childhood you’d have seen an overt culture of traditionalist paternalism/sexism, but wouldn’t have seen the genuine hurt and pain of the 50% or so who really wished it wasn’t like that. Being denied a public voice, you couldn’t have heard them. That’s kind of the point.
I’ve also visited a few non-Western countries in the world (on business) and to the extent the people there have voiced opinions about their situation versus ours (which was not very often), they’ve been rather keen to make their countries more like ours in terms of liberty, equality and the pursuit of shed loads of money.. Or leave for the West if they can. Sheer poverty sucks too.