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Sewing-Machine 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: [deleted] 20 March 2011 11:59:03PM *  0 points [-]

Cruelty is, in fact, offensive -- but more importantly, it has net negative consequences.

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.

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).

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.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 March 2011 12:26:05AM 0 points [-]

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.