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TheOtherDave comments on A Rationalist's Account of Objectification? - Less Wrong Discussion

43 Post author: lukeprog 19 March 2011 11:10PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 20 March 2011 03:29:00AM *  12 points [-]

Interesting exercise: going through your list of '''10 ways to treat a person as a thing''' and see how many of them the 'LW consensus' satisfies.

1) Instrumentality. The objectifier treats the object as a tool of his or her purposes.

Well, we're mostly consequentialists.

2) Denial of autonomy. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in autonomy and self-determination.

Are you claiming to have free will or something?

3) Inertness. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in agency, and perhaps also in activity.

See 2.

4) Fungibility. The objectifier treats the object as interchangeable (a) with other objects of the same type and/or (b) with objects of other types.

Shut up and multiply!

5) Violability. The objectifier treats the object as lacking in boundary integrity, as something that it is permissible to break up, smash, break into.

6) Ownership. The objectifier treats the object as something that is owned by another, can be bought or sold, etc.

Ok, we don't do these two.

7) Denial of subjectivity. The objectifier treats the object as something whose experience and feelings (if any) need not be taken into account.

Fortunately this isn't that common but there is an occasional tendency by some prominent commenters to dismiss personal experience as anecdotes.

8) Reduction to body: treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts.

What, are you claiming you have a soul or something?

9) Reduction to appearance: treatment of a person primarily in terms of how they look.

Ok we generally avoid this.

10) Silencing: the treatment of a person as if they lack the capacity to speak.

There's a tendency to consider some people so hopelessly biased that one should disregard anything they say.

Taking Bayseanism and consequentialism seriously tends to reduce humans to the status of tools and victory points.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 March 2011 06:48:40AM 10 points [-]

Really, I think the list overcomplicates matters.

Status is a valuable commodity, so behaving in a way that lowers someone else's status is therefore acting against their interests; non-person objects generally have lower status than people, so treating people as though they were non-person objects is therefore acting against their interests.

Comment author: Raemon 20 March 2011 06:54:58AM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, I think this is pretty accurate.