Re: Pronouns & sexuali

Slight neutrality fail.  I think even the staunchest
pro-abortion-rights activist would take umbrage at an insinuation that
they believe abortion to be no more serious than a root canal.  IME,
that sort of casual attitude exists mostly in pro-life depictions of
their opposition.
   More generally, it is an error to equate a belief that something
should be legal rather than illegal with an endorsement of that
something.  The law is a blunt instrument, and it's at least as much
about who gets to choose as about whether any particular choice is
right or wrong.

On 2/25/09, Sai Emrys <saizai@...> wrote:
> 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
>
--
Sent from my mobile device

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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