https://dictionary.cambridge.org/fr/example/anglais/degree-of-autonomy

And the irony here is that you actually know very little about me and my life. Certainly not enough to rule out that I'm part of the dark goings on in the real world on a regular basis. — S

Not important, I'm more interested in the general point, which is that we're all apt to overestimate our moral autonomy and when it comes to the crunch, fall mostly in line, often inventing some reason why we 'had' to.

Trying to play psychologist, are you? — S

It goes for almost all of us to a large degree except for true deviants like sociopaths where through some combination of environment (often abuse) and genetics, enculturation is seriously short-circuited.

You're just rationalising your own deep-seated aversion to confronting the dark side of our human nature. — S

Nothing you've come up with here is particularly dark compared to what goes on in the real world daily.

You're a fragment of the sociocultural awkwardly expressed through the mostly compliant body of an ape. Your perceived individualism and autonomy is largely formed of retroactive confabulations designed to make the marriage between the fragment and the ape less acrimonious. There's plenty you can't do but manage to convince yourself you don't want to.

Ah, the romantic fantasy of the individualist! — Janus

:up:

Of course they are not really "objective" they are inter-subjective. — Janus

:up:

You are fundamentally mistaken about where morality stems from. It stems from the individual — S

And where does the individual stem from? Hint: It begins with "S". You didn't choose your moral system so much as it chose you.

Piss pot Toby jug!

(Apologies to @andrewk for stealing his point and repeating it).

Given that, I suppose the most sensible way to conduct the debate is to avoid "PC is good" vs "PC is bad" type positions and focus in on actual real-life examples and see what's going wrong (or right) with them, and why.

And I think many who take up arms against political correctness probably feel the same way. Makes me wonder sometimes where the points of disagreement actually lie. Do we just define things differently?

For example, I don't think it's appropriate to call children who have learning disabilities, 'mongoloids' or 'retards'. I, like most people, prefer PC terms. The children in question and their parents prefer it too and I lose nothing by being PC. So, there's a harder target for you to attack.

You may have a point there. I still don't think the overall critique of political correctness is very powerful though. Attacks on it almost always tend to go for soft targets that many proponents of PC behaviour would also find problematic.

Ok, well, I have no sympathy for her considering her background whatever his motives were. But it doesn't seem a very good illustration of why political correctness is a bad thing. I would say the principle of etiquette that frowns upon people shouting "nigger" for fun is pretty sensible.

Where did I say I disapprove of the prank? He embarrassed her primarily for being a racist not for being politically correct. It makes zero sense otherwise. Don't you know the background?

Hehe, good call. :eyes:

The video has nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with embarrassing a minor celebrity who has made past racist comments.

Btw, it's a bit naff to constantly go on about how cool and rebellious you are.

A few retards are yelling "transition without a backstop" — Benkei

It's Ok, no-one is listening. Most likely outcome now is a delay followed by UK capitulating further to customs union arrangement or final say referendum.

I'm superficial snooty common decency daddy. The TPS must be catching though.

The deep salt-of-the-earth guy with Tourette's posting syndrome.

And then Badenetta's daddy mysteriously expired on 9999 posts. True story.

Wonder where your phobia of anything that smacks of common decency springs from? Let's analyze... :eyes:

On the one hand, the rebuke could be seen as a purely political decision devoid of any real ethical basis. On the other, anti-semitism is very real, very dangerous, and alive and kicking in the US (see Charlottesville), and politicians need to be super careful and qualified in how they approach things so as not to encourage it.

You can be sure though the Dems won't rebuke Netanyahu for saying this:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/10/benjamin-netanyahu-says-israel-is-not-a-state-of-all-its-citizens

State-institutionalised racism is apparently OK if it's your friends who do it.

Thanks @Noah Te Stroete. :strong:

Good to hear. You're both decent blokes (except for @Hanover, of course).

Depends on the OP, but certainly more effort in writing with clarity and precision there would help offset the issue. For example, a couple of lines anticipating misunderstandings, definition-based or not, could probably benefit most OPs.

Will you measure these truths with a human device? What value has that? Eat, or eat not; there is nothing to argue about. — unenlightened

Agreed.

Here's my burnt offering:

What is the night if not a cartwheel
on the frenzied bust of day?
A shape scraped from concrete longings
To stay the execution, stay
And bright stars belie the coming bloom
of sun you say
but I’ll fling my surface ’pon
the moon and bounce
thereon before
a blink of dawn’s amber
play, sing my song
along
the Milky Way
the night is a cartwheel
on the frenzied bust of day

:sparkle: :pray:

...and what can you do to reduce its occurrence? — S

Delete the posts in question. It's inevitable you'll get posters talking past each other especially as a lot of posts here are likely written while multi-tasking or in haste. Ideally, we should just all slow down. But, realistically, that's not going to happen.

No, rocks are not always just rocks. And I'll thank you not to try that one on again.

So, if degree of harm intended and achieved is relevant to morality, what is your justification for bracketing out emotional harm given, apart from common sense, the scientific evidence I've provided that it often has a physical component and it clearly can in degree be a higher level of harm than a physical harm? You said:

Re justifying why we find anything in particular moral or immoral, as I've stated many times, it simply comes down to what we feel should or shouldn't be allowed re interpersonal behavior that we consider more significant than etiquette. — Terrapin Station

But this doesn't answer my question as to why you feel emotional harm should be bracketed out in terms of not being allowed re interpersonal behaviour that we consider more significant than etiquette.

If all you want to say is it's just that you feel it should be allowed and are not willing to answer why then your position has no support and no value. I thought you might want to say more than that. But, OK, fine.

For one, they could choose to leave the situation before it gets to that point. — Terrapin Station

Not necessarily. So, I posit they can't.

Re punching someone, that's not sufficient to be immoral either. It depends on just how hard someone is punching the other person, the injury sustained if any, etc. — Terrapin Station

OK, so morality is about degree of harm then?

I don't feel that hurt feelings is ever sufficient to make something immoral — Terrapin Station

It's possible to emotionally torture someone to the point where they commit suicide. And you are saying you wouldn't consider that immoral? Simply because there is no physical contact? What about punching someone in the stomach (adult on adult)? Is that immoral? And which do you think is the more harmful?

Apropos:
General:
https://rsds.org/physical-pain-emotional-pain/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-causes-chest-pains/
https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-to-take-emotional-pain-as-seriously-as-physical-pain/
Scholarly:
https://www.pnas.org/content/108/15/6270.short
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-08705-001
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-2892-6_10

If morality is about intention to do harm and actual harm done, the distinction between the physical and emotional is not at all decisive in judging it.

Ok, that's fair enough.

You will never reach an exhaustive qualification of criteria. And there's little point in trying. The point is there are cases like the one I gave that (I claim) are clearly immoral. And there are other cases like the one you gave that (I claim) are clearly not (without further detail given). Then there are grey areas where a more granular analysis would need to be done. I recognize that. You seem not to, and, if so, you'll need to justify why you think the behaviour in the example I gave is not immoral. Can you do that?



I presume most of us do. And it's easy to back my claims up by pointing to scientific evidence of the very real psychological harm non-physical violence can do. The idea that hurting someone is only bad when it's physical, without any consideration taken of context or degree or intention, is absolutely unsupportable. And that does not imply in any way that just because someone is hurt, the one who hurt them necessarily did anything immoral.

Do other moderators hold the same view about this kind of 'discussion'? — Amity

You'll have to ask them. But in general, we all try to walk the line between being permissive and illiberal, and someone will always be unhappy.

Sounds like a false dilemma fallacy there. Things can be more or less immoral. The examples you gave are extremely immoral due to the physical violence done. A white man walking up to a black child and shouting "nigger" in their face may by contrast "only" hurt the child's feelings, but anyone who thinks that's moral is living in a very perverse ethical universe. And no, @Terrapin Station, I don't care what shirt you wear.

A 'Lounge' indeed. More like a stinking hellhole of cesspit filled with outpourings from the sexist and the disturbed who think themselves hilarious. — Amity

One discussion out of hundreds does not a stinking hellhole cesspit make. If every discussion, or even a significant minority of discussions here, were like this, we might have a problem. As it is, I don't see any reason to give it attention or to get upset by it.

Why not ? — Amity

We can and might. It was a joke.

The physical characteristics of different human groups aren't determinative of any ethically relevant behaviour; ergo, racism is first and foremost a result of stupidity and ignorance (some of which is inbuilt and some of which is environmental / culturally conditioned). And is unethical, like most things, insofar as it causes unnecessary, and particularly, intentional, physical and/or emotional harm.

You don't need to apologize. For most, it's not at all confusing. A very few people might not understand what it means because they look at -ism words that are on the belief end of the spectrum, like 'atheism', and falsely generalize from those (forgetting -ism words like 'alcoholism', which are more on the behaviour spectrum). Of course, 'racism' as any dictionary will tell you covers both ends. Where a useful distinction could be drawn on actions and psychological states would be regarding 'prejudice' vs 'discrimination' where discrimination in the behaviour that expresses the attitude of prejudice. But anyway, you asked a clear question and are entitled to clear answers to it rather than confused word games.

No worries. :up: