Giving one example—a hugely mindkilling one—is not the same as providing a definition. It can help me understand your feelings about “social alienation”, but I still don’t know what exactly it means—where are the boundaries of this concept.
Is “social alienation” any kind of situation when one group of people has problems imagining themselves as members of another group? Or is it necessary to have some asymetry, where almost everyone agrees that it is better to belong to group A than to group B? Is there a difference whether belonging to group A or B is caused by family one was born in, or by one’s abilities, or by one’s decisions?
A too wide definition could lead to: “Any difference in anything (including opinions, hobbies, values) is morally wrong.”
For more specific definitions we could perhaps discuss the possible paradox of morally acceptable differences causing morally wrong differences later, and how could that paradox be solved.
And then, later, we could discuss speficic strategies that could be used to solve specific problems.
Giving one example—a hugely mindkilling one—is not the same as providing a definition. It can help me understand your feelings about “social alienation”, but I still don’t know what exactly it means—where are the boundaries of this concept.
Is “social alienation” any kind of situation when one group of people has problems imagining themselves as members of another group? Or is it necessary to have some asymetry, where almost everyone agrees that it is better to belong to group A than to group B? Is there a difference whether belonging to group A or B is caused by family one was born in, or by one’s abilities, or by one’s decisions?
A too wide definition could lead to: “Any difference in anything (including opinions, hobbies, values) is morally wrong.”
For more specific definitions we could perhaps discuss the possible paradox of morally acceptable differences causing morally wrong differences later, and how could that paradox be solved.
And then, later, we could discuss speficic strategies that could be used to solve specific problems.