Tyrrell_McAllister comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: novalis 12 August 2012 05:03AM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 27 August 2012 09:37:01PM *  4 points [-]

With this in mind, I think it should be reasonable to ask whether the liberal intuitions of personal (and particularly sexual) autonomy are in fact a sort of pomerium backed by moral intuitions of sacrilege triggered by the perceived violations of this autonomy. (Whether or not we end up agreeing on the answer to this question.)

I'm having trouble distinguishing your notion of "sacred" from the very broad notion of "deserves respect". Is there something more to your meaning of "sacred" besides "deserves respect"?

I agree that liberals believe that lots of things deserve respect. I agree that, typically, every individual's sexual autonomy is among these things. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of liberals added sexual autonomy to their list of things-that-deserve-respect because of some sort of Schelling-point-type phenomenon.

Are you saying something beyond this?

There's no denying that liberals use the language of respect a lot. Furthermore, I doubt that many liberals would want to deny it. So, in that sense, you could say that liberals appeal to sacredness a lot. But I thought that Haidt was using "sacred" in a different sense. How is your disagreement with him here more than semantics?