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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   11603 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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There's literally centuries - millennia actually - of discourse over morality and what it is and should be. But first you do need to accept that morality exists.

There's only nothing left to talk about if both sides believe values are merely subjective and that, therefore, no values can be more correct than any other in any absolute sense. Even totally incoherent contradictory values aren't wrong - after all, thinking that someone's beliefs shouldn't contradict themselves is itself just another merely subjective value judgment.

There's only nothing left to talk about if both sides believe values are merely subjective and that, therefore, no values can be more correct than any other in any absolute sense.

I observe a set of people who share my values, and a set of people who do not share my values.

When dealing with the set of people who share my values, appeal to those values we share is a viable method of conflict resolution; we agree on ends, and are only arguing about means.

When dealing with the set of people who do not share my values, I can't appeal to my values because they don't share them, and so such an appeal would be meaningless, and I usually have no interest in appealing to their values, because I don't share them and they don't generally support the argument I'm making.

Once I recognize that a set of people doesn't share my values, what is there to do? Even if I believe my values are objectively correct, I have no way of forcing this set of people to agree. Any further discussion depends on a retreat to subjectivity to even be possible. If I'm not willing to consider that my values might be wrong, why should I expect them to do so?

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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