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casebash comments on Subjective vs. normative offensiveness - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (86)
This exact critique is used against single-level (standard) cultural relativism. My analysis is agnostic between objective morality and single-level cultural relativism. It doesn't cover multi-level cultural relativism.
That said, it handles this case fairly well. If someone wants to argue that something is family-level offensive or country-level offensive, they can't just equate this with being individual-level offensive.
Echoing VoiceOfRa, none of my analysis is contingent on people agreeing which offenses are normative. If you disagree, I'd love to know which part depends on this assumption.
If there is no established standard, I can equate anything with anything. What's going to stop me from calling my personal offense "normative"? I'm sure there are some people somewhere who will be just as offended as I am.
Of course it is. If people do not agree on which offenses are normative, the word "normative" loses its meaning and becomes nothing more than "I want some support for being offended so I'll call the offense 'normative' ". The whole concept of "normative offenses" relies on a large number of people agreeing that the behavior in question is, indeed, offensive.
And by the way, I'm still interested: 20 goats for a bride, offensive or not?
I was merely explaining that my analysis was robust enough to be applied within a multi-level relativism framework. However, in retrospect, that does not appear to be the framework that you are using. What conception of morality are you critiquing my analysis from?
Relative. If you accept objective morality then the point becomes moot -- there is no "normative" or "subjective", there is just right and wrong.
How about them goats?
Well, as we're currently assuming a relativist framework, I'd say not offensive within certain cultural contexts.
"Normative" doesn't mean "globally normative" here. It can also mean "culturally normative". Cultures don't just take positions on object-level positions, they also take meta-level positions that can be used to justify these object-level positions.
So, did we already reach the point where it's all relative and culture-dependent, and subculture-relevant, etc. and the difference between normative offense and subjective offense disappears into indistinguishability? :-)
I was using subjectively offensive to mean personally offensive; that is subjectively offensive relative to a person. Normatively offensive here means offensive relative to a group. So they are distinct. Does this clear it up? I'm getting quite confused here: are you a cultural relativist or do you believe that morality is individual?
I don't fit into pigeonholes well :-)
Except most people claiming offense are capable of finding or defining some group in whose name to claim offense.