Then there’s another half—when the wrongness of something is missed because it does not (technically by an approximate dictionary definition) fall into a pre-existing category in the ‘Wrong Cluster’. Examples: Forced consent, dishonesty that’s ‘technically not lying’, extortion that’s ‘technically not stealing’ getting a free ride.
So we have a general ‘linguistic ethical determinism’ (better name anybody?) fallacy, wherein something is considered wrong if and only if it comes under an existing Category of Wrong according to a pedantic definition. (This is itself, of course, a corollary of human obsession with linguistic categories, which I gather is covered in A Human’s Guide to Words.)
Then there’s another half—when the wrongness of something is missed because it does not (technically by an approximate dictionary definition) fall into a pre-existing category in the ‘Wrong Cluster’. Examples: Forced consent, dishonesty that’s ‘technically not lying’, extortion that’s ‘technically not stealing’ getting a free ride.
So we have a general ‘linguistic ethical determinism’ (better name anybody?) fallacy, wherein something is considered wrong if and only if it comes under an existing Category of Wrong according to a pedantic definition. (This is itself, of course, a corollary of human obsession with linguistic categories, which I gather is covered in A Human’s Guide to Words.)