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PerseusWizardry  2yr ago (text post)   3914 thread views

Does my Philosophy of Sexuality Professor Have a Point? (It's a mandatory gen-ed)

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But now I'm puzzled, because A) I feel like I have a moral obligation not to racially discriminate in friendship, but B) I don't feel like I have an obligation not to choose not to befriend a tennis player just because I don't have the necessary desires, even though tennis players don't deserve friendship any less than black people.

This seems like "Deontology Gone Wrong 101". The idea "I have a moral obligation not to racially discriminate in friendship" sounds like a great idea...hard to argue against, in the current Western zeitgeist. But most people, hearing that phrase, are thinking "right, it would be totally wrong and stupid to reject friendship from somebody who is otherwise completely suitable to be my friend (i.e. lives close, shares a lot of the same interests, knows a lot of the same people, similar age/education/SES) solely because they are of a different race". They're not thinking "I have a moral obligation to make sure that my group of friends has similar racial demographics to the population of the country I live in" or "I have a moral obligation to actively prioritize friendship with people of other races". They're certainly not thinking "a person of X race whose friends are all or mostly other people of X race is an evil person".

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