@Toothy_Maw @AmadeusD I’m intervening to end your dispute, which has become too hostile and destructive. Please stop posting in such an aggressive manner. I suggest you ignore each other if you are unable to treat each other with respect. NOTE: This is not up for discussion here, so do not reply to this. Thanks.
(I have deleted several posts)
Thank you, Jamal. Appreciate that.
Much of this relies on empirical claims I don’t agree with.
Besides that, I agree that there is always a disagreement about normative superiority - as, somewhat, there should be - and I also agree this is going to be somewhat secondary in terms of tangibility. But unfortunately, as far as I can tell, given I don’t accept the empirical claims, that puts an end to what we can say to one another.
In your deleted post you dismissed out of hand that white supremacy is at all extant and responsible for outcomes. While this indicates that we might disagree on the specifics of the outcomes we see as a result of grievance built on value-specificity, I think we can agree that my model at least addresses the problem I set out for it and that it is uniquely prepared to deal with factual, experiential claims. That is, it is inherently practical because the mechanic by which the theoretical apparatus is established depends entirely upon a very specific, practical measure associated with identity.
Do you at least think that such a thing could be used to guide us? Even if you have no confidence that white supremacy is even worth addressing?
So if I’m reading you correctly: Your end goal in positing value-specificity is to give you a means for judgment in order to build up particular groups of people. In particular your focus seems to be on racial difference, and a defense of utilizing different standards for different groups because of the particular context of said group.
Do we need a hierarchy of values or a double standard in order to address minority issues? Do we need a philosophical theory to dismiss white supremacist talking points?
My thought is that a standpoint is not a double standard; I’d hesitate to put it in those terms, at least, because rhetorically double-standards are bad, and I think standpoints are good with respect to social issues and social justice.
Material struggle with people in a similar circumstance.
Not necessarily. There are many kinds of justice: punitive, procedural, or distributional as some clearly different examples of justice.
I think that it’s an easy standard to apply which even if it did not result in perfect justice looks a lot better than what we have now, and is ostensibly universalizable regardless of one’s social identity. Here I’d note that racial segregation is largely enforced by property claims, for instance - - we have material measures we can point to which show that Black Americans have less wealth than white Americans, and we have some very good reasons to believe that this is because of the way our country has treated (in a way, created) Black lives in America as a separate experience from White America.
Also I can imagine, much like our current situation, even if everyone had an apartment and food, for instance, democracy could be overshadowed by large disparities in power resulting from wealth. So it’s even plausible that what I say is not enough to attain justice - - but it is a simply stated dream that most people can understand and would be better than what we have now.
I did not. I denied that it’s largely resosponsible or particularly widespread (particuLarly in contrast to other nefarious views). Perhaps you over read some of that, but the above is my position.
No, I don’t agree. I made comments explicitly to that effect in the longer post. It is in principle unjust imo
I think I need to describe the process of addressing grievances as altering outcomes for different groups dependent upon situational factors. What I propose in the OP would only include applying a different standard in select circumstances and only to correct for a more arbitrary and harmful sort of double standard. That is, when all or many of the valuations assigned to a group (almost certainly by those with power) that dictate a disparate and undesirable outcome for that group are shown to be either irrelevant or arbitrary in determining that outcome, trying to alter that outcome according to situational factors becomes justified. I don’t think that counts as a double standard across identities because those arbitrary and irrelevant qualities are almost certainly not part of any groups’ self-reported identities were they to be substituted for the underprivileged group. Thus, altering that outcome becomes justified largely independent of who is asking for it. As such, I believe it could be argued that there would be a net decrease in harmful double standards were my process to be adopted.
I had no end goal in positing value-specificity other than to address what looked like the underlying mechanic enabling the flaws in how I saw justice being applied. I ended up applying the model in the way I did because it seemed to support some of my assumptions about what would be fair given the existence of this mechanic. One important part of that is establishing a basis for combating the misvaluing of underprivileged groups of people by those groups with power.
Do we really need half of the philosophical theories we have?
Yes, I do think a philosophical theory and its systemic underpinning might be necessary if the impetus for justice for minorities and vulnerable groups becomes too distal to the main discourse - even if the discourse is itself largely composed of the sentiments of mostly well-intentioned but perhaps somewhat uncommitted people. That is, I’m just not sure if the relevant well-intentioned people will truly be invested in seeing it through. While it seems that progress is largely being made in the right direction, the decisions of the Trump administration and the efforts of actual ideological fascists seem to indicate that at the very least the otherwise upward curve is not actually monotonic; we can have major setbacks that are really difficult to recover from. In fact, I contend that there are slumps that we might never be able to overcome without the efforts of enough like-minded people, and when the people are absent, what remains? Whatever writings and ideas we can put together to inspire people. That’s pretty much it.
Furthermore, If I thought that many people were not already inclined to dismiss white supremacist claims on the grounds of them being obviously odious without philosophical examination, there wouldn’t be much reason to write about value-specificity as it kind of presupposes that people will be agreeable to addressing factors exasperating disparities between groups of people.
Fair enough.
I agree with all of that, I would just go further and say that what you describe is a minimum, or at least an intermediate step, not what our endpoint should be.
That sounds fruitful to me.
I agree.
Fair point.
I’m not grasping what you’re getting at with the idea, yet. I’m trying as best I can while also being critical.
The materialist in me thinks that you’re proposing something like an idealism, but of course we need standards of thought too.
I still worry about trying to isolate groups, though. It could become something “from the outside” rather than listening to people and learning what it is they have to say. Rather than an act of political listening we could invent standards which specify what is right, and insofar that a group does not meet that standard they are thereby wrong, by that “objective” measure.
I don’t think that value-specificity is somehow fundamental to reality or the reality of how justice is applied except insofar as it is a product of human behavior and psychology that can be abstracted enough for us to discuss. It is very much compatible with materialism. I myself am a materialist.
I get what you are saying, I think, but it only becomes something from the outside if we let it. The process I described in my previous post could easily go wrong, yes, but not so much on the grounds of what is objectively best being imposed if we orient the solutions towards achieving what underprivileged groups want for themselves. These measures would need to be robust, but I think it is doable.
Not to mention I don’t think one can extrapolate what is an objectively right course of action from a series of subjective (although experientially supported) grievances anyways, so trying to do that is on shaky ground from the start.
Isn’t justice ultimately whatever a society or intersubjective community holds as it works to reduce harm and treat people more fairly? Isn’t this always context dependent and reflective of values? Do we have access to justice as a pure idea?
What I’m saying when I say that justice is contextual is that there is no immutable universal standard by which we can judge everyone that is truly fair. This is because, as you might have read in the OP, we all have values attached to us that make that universal standard effectively give rise to disparate outcomes for different groups under that universal standard. That is, justice in the US is very much not oriented towards reducing harm and treating people more fairly but rather exploits value-specificity to reinforce privilege.
What I’m doing is contrasting universalized, static criteria of justice with a process that takes into account value-specificity. Your suggested version of justice is more in line with the latter and is not what the OP is intended to address so much.
Yep, that’s pretty much what I’m saying. Although I am not sure what “truly” adds to fair.
On what grounds is a static, universalized standard unfair? What underlying mechanics enable the continued existence of those standards? How do we move to a more contextual justice from what we have? The suggestion that justice is:
implies a greater project than just claiming that justice is the way you define it in your post. How and why does a particular model of justice reduce harm? What kind of values should inform the application of justice?
Justice is not as conceptually simplistic as you seem to treat it, and the conversation merely begins at the juncture you are at.
No worries. Thanks for the chat.