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Sewing-Machine comments on A Rationalist's Account of Objectification? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Presumably, in "I don't understand why objectification is wrong" you have a plain English meaning of "wrong" in mind, and not something technical. Still, I wonder if you can explain what kinds of answers you would be looking for to a simpler or more abstract version of your question. Objectification is tendentious and controversial. Is there something more unanimously agreed on to be wrong whose wrongfulness can be explained in rational terms?
Take cruelty. If someone posted here "I have never understood why cruelty is wrong" and asked for help and arguments, what would people come up with?
Right; I don't have a technical definition for 'wrong' in mind. Whatever people mean by 'wrong' when they say objectification is 'wrong', that's what I'd like to understanding. I might disagree, but before I can agree or disagree I need to understand what is being claimed.
I agree that explaining why wrong is wrong is complicated (though, the metaethics sequence, particularly this and this, do a good job).
I'm interested in what people mean when they say "objectification".
So like, what's objectifying, why is it objectifying, etc. Stuff that makes it more obvious to a heterosexual male (who, to his knowledge either hasn't been or doesn't mind being objectified) what people are talking about when they say "objectification". In a way that just fleshes it out some more.
I think cruelty is a tricky example, because it's wrongness seems very close to axiomatic. But there are more tractable examples. If I ask "I have never understood why driving an SUV is wrong", you can reply that they harm the environment by consuming lots of fuel, and in a car accident they increase the risk of harming the other party.
I think this is a very important question but am not sure how to answer it in a way that'd be satisfying to everyone.