Re: Pronouns & sexuali

Paul -

I think Mark is more on the mark. (*duck*) Your examples are a very
different kind of difference.

In your case, people agree on what the frame is - they merely have
different opinions (or levels of knowledge) within it. What I am
trying to point at is when people don't even agree on the framing, and
don't realize that they don't.

I'm afraid most examples I can think of are highly charged
social/political issues (and my hypothesis is that this correlation is
significantly causal), but here's a somewhat weak example that
nevertheless has the trait I'm after:

Suppose you are standing on a railway overpass. On the track below, a
train is approaching. Five people are huddled in a group, completely
distracted, further down the tracks. It is absolutely clear that if
you don't act, the train will run them over and kill them.

Next to you on the overpass, leaning over the rail, is an extremely
fat man. You realize that you could easily push him over the edge,
directly onto the tracks, and that if you do so, the train will kill
him - but that he will slow the train down enough to let the other
five people escape.

(For the sake of example, please just presume that these assessments
are utterly unambiguous. It's necessarily a somewhat unlikely
scenario, I know.)

The question: should you push the man?

By one view, the answer is clearly yes. Doing so will, overall, save four lives.

By another view, the answer is clearly no. Doing so is hands-on
murder, which is sinful and Wrong and all that.

My point is that which you happen to choose is less interesting than
the way the answers are posed.

Neither answer in any way actually rebuts the other on its own
grounds. Indeed, if you ever have an argument with someone of the
other (not "opposite") view about this, it's almost certain that
nobody will even TRY to address what you say. What they will
*implicitly* try to do instead - without ever noticing that this is
what's going on - is to convince the other person *emotionally* to
adopt their value-set. If they do, then the answer follows.

But this value-set is axiomatic.

Just briefly as parallels (please don't elaborate on these so as to
avoid NCNC; I'm just trying to tie it more directly to examples you'll
have more intuition for - and yes people will have variants on these,
I'm just giving the most disjoint real views I can think of):
* homosexuality
view 1: homosexual *acts* are sinful, and homosexuality is defined by
whether one engages in those *acts*. "Temptation to sin" is an
incidental.
view 2: homosexual *orientation* is inborn, and homosexuality is
defined by whether one has that *orientation*. Acts are an incidental.
* abortion
view 1: fetuses are sentient-grade *alive*, and we all agree that
killing sentient beings is murder. Thus, abortion is murder.
view 2: fetuses are *part of the mother's body*, and we all agree that
people have a right to take care of their body as they like. Thus,
abortion is on par with getting a root canal.

My point is NOT to discuss what view, or combination of views, you
happen to hold. I've tried to phrase these neutrally. So please pause
a moment here and step back; consider not *what* you think about this,
but how you frame it, and how you would argue in support of your
belief to convince someone of the other view.

The point is that if you consider any popular debate on these topics,
the views I gave are implicit in everything both sides say. But in
order to rebut the others' arguments, you would first have to adopt
their view (if even just for the sake of argument), and NOBODY ever
does this. It is an implicit war not over the results of how these
views play out, but over which view one ought to adopt.


The ObCL question is, to rephrase:

Would it be possible - or have you tried - to create a language in
which these kinds of implicit, unacknowledged arguments about framing
and worldview were impossible?

I'd like to think that yes, one could make indication of what frame
one is using linguistically explicit. But I honestly don't know.

I don't believe you can get anything significantly better than a
dialogue like "View 1 is more compelling!" vs "No, View 2 is more
compelling!", just from the nature of difference here. If anything one
can say "View 1 and view 2 are both viable ways to look at it; where
should we make the tradeoff between them?"

But I'm afraid I'm skeptical of that kind of meta-thinking being
commonplace even in a conworld.

I hope that helps (and stays meta of NCNC).

- Sai

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