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TheOtherDave comments on A Rationalist's Account of Objectification? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yes, I agree that there's a semantic problem here... specifically, as you say, the problem of understatement.
The planet Jupiter is, in fact, larger than a duck... but saying so is a strange linguistic act because there are so many more important things you could have said instead. Cruelty is, in fact, offensive -- but more importantly, it has net negative consequences.
And status actually turns out to be a fairly useful way to talk about the consequences of cruelty (over and above the consequences of equal amounts of non-cruel suffering).
The status explanation doesn't leave as much room for a similar statement about objectification -- in fact it explicitly disclaims that there's a more important aspect of objectification than its offensiveness. I think this is what's at stake for a lot of the comments here that defend the concept and reproach of objectification.
If I see what you're getting at I disagree. For instance it's not usually possible to lower an animal's status, but cruelty to animals is deeply upsetting for me.
I agree with you that this notion that status is something unimportant -- that it's all about "high school popularity contests and all that sort of thing" (to quote Skatche) -- underlies a lot of the discussion so far.
And as I said here, I think this is simply wrong... unwarrantedly dismissive of the real effects of status. Low status gets people killed.
As for animals, yes, we disagree: I would say that an animal being treated cruelly is in a lower-status position, one in which it has less ability to effect its preferences, than one being treated kindly.