I'm not going to defend (or condemn) his precise phrasing, but his underlying point seems intuitively correct. One of the great aggravations of both a certain brand of feminism and the multinational UN fetishists is a stubborn, foolish, and arrogant refusal to acknowledge the reality of power imbalances and the fact that all "moral" arguments for the weak always depend on the sufferance of the strong.
I don't really understand your last sentence. It's at best not a very important moral claim, any more than my ownership of a sandwich. If I take it into an area afflicted by famine, the moral decisions of those with the power to take it away will not depend on my claims of ownership, but their evalution of relative need.
Simiarly, men shouldn't care a bit that you think you own your body, only whether the enforceability of a rule that you can say "no" ultimately benefits them or not. Of course, I mean (and see Mansfield to mean) "morality" to really mean that which is efficiency or utility maximizing, which I do think is a pretty fair approximation of what others mean by the word, even if they find it distasteful to acknowledge.
Mansfield is saying the implicit bargain is: we won't rape you, as long as you buy us off by obeying certain rules that we don't have to. I think that's right, although it ignores the role played by other men who may find that cheating in their own interests and willing to fight on your behalf for their own reasons.
"Sovereignity over her body" doesn't really enter into it, except as a pleasant fantasy that's more palatable than the underlying reality, at least until too many believe the fantasy and find them surprised when those who don't buy into it insist that the implicity bargain be honored by the other side or forfeit its protection.
Well, I didn't read the entire Mansfield piece, so I'll neither defend him or condemn him, but I do wonder if he is talking about the "is" and not the "ought."
Again, without venturing an opinion one way or another on how empirically correct such a view may be, one can hold to the opinion that women "ought" to have sovereign control over their bodies but in the real world in which we live they are more likely to be the victims of unwanted advances and physical assault in the absence of traditional norms of chivalry than they are in the presence of such norms.
If true, this observation would lead to a very sober question of whether the good of increasing individual autonomy, including the autonomy of women to not live by traditional norms of "correct" behavior, is worth the cost of increasing incidence of boorish and abusive behavior on the part of men. Again, wishing this were not so, or yelling loudly that it ought not be so, doesn't change the underlying tradeoff.
If this is indeed Mansfield's argument then its a subspecies of a broader argument that I'm not sure is entirely correct, but that I don;t think is entirely without merit either, that at least at the population level there are certain types of "good" behavior that it are relatively easy to cultivate in children as they grow up if they are cast in terms of gender-based ideals, and very hard to cultivate in in children as they grow up if they are cast in terms of abstract principles. In other words, that "Gentlemen don't do X" is a lot more inspiring than "it is a violation of your fellow human being's inherent rights and dignities to do X."
I fully realize that I may be misinterpreting you here, Dylan, or that I've missed the point entirely. But honest to God, what the fuck?
A woman only has the same right to decide who will use her for sex as I have to decide who eats my sandwich in a famine - that is, according to you, none? How could a man's relative 'need' for sex with a particular woman ever exceed her need not to be raped, anyway? It's right that men should offer a bargain in which we demand women obey certain rules in exchange for not being raped? If I've gotten you all backwards, I apologize in advance, but otherwise, your head is on wrong.
Anyway, the fact that men are, in the aggregate, physically stronger is increasingly irrelevant in the modern world. God made man, Smith & Wesson made him equal.
Mansfield explicitly characterizes as a moral claim the assertion that women's rejection of sexual advances should be respected if it is in accordance with a standard which expects no desire or meaningful sexual agency by women. Why making the right to refusal conditioned on personhood and autonomy and not adherence to Victorian gender roles is not a moral claim while the other is is beyond me.
I don't agree that the concept of gentlemanly behavior is necessary to inculcate morality into young boys. Boys, like girls, want approval from their parents, and all it takes to condition this approval by saying that good children (not good boys, or good men) respect others. It's only inspiring to the extent that we are also programming children to think that their every behavioral norm must derive in some sense from a gender role. That leads to sin for me and sin for thee being quite different, and that's a recipe for horrible things. Even Mansfield admits that manly virtues can be universalized and manifested by women (curiously, men cannot manifest womanly ones, maybe because they, like us, are held in disdain, or perhaps due to man's innate incapacity).
On chivalry: it never applied to all women, so, I'd say the majority of women are safer as autonomous moral agents under the imperfect protection of an egalitarian system than taking a chance on being born in a high enough social stratum so the only one we need to worry about raping us is our husband.
Mansfield is not, so far as I know, a utilitarian. And Dylan, your defense of rapists disgusts me.
sd: I do wonder if he is talking about the "is" and not the "ought."
That's what he should be talking about, certainly, and it's what I'm talking about. References to "morality" really have no place in any discussion; they're incontrovertible assertions that one side is right. I'm somewhat surprised to find an atheist like Amber adopting that language. Say that you're repulsed by an idea, certainly, but to label it inherently evil or immoral is pretty limiting. All you've said is: "I'm on this team, join me or fight me." Don't be surprised if the other guys pick up clubs and fight.
Geoff: A woman only has the same right to decide who will use her for sex as I have to decide who eats my sandwich in a famine - that is, according to you, none?
In terms of "right", then I suppose so. To me the question is, if you can strip out your social conditioning and irrational empathy (I'm not saying you should do this), what social bargain is welfare maximizing. When the prize is a sandwich, the answer can, crazed Marxists aside, be agreed pretty easily by a combination of empricism and shared moral intuitions. It's best if you keep what you freely bargain for or produce, except perhaps in rare circumstances like our famine example. (Delineating those precise circumstances is beyond the scope of this discussion.)
How could a man's relative 'need' for sex with a particular woman ever exceed her need not to be raped, anyway?
Quite easily from the man's perspective. This is considerably different from our sandwich problem. Men and women both need to eat and share the same outlook on who should get the sandwich. But why should the man care about a pain inflicted on the woman he doesn't feel, and that indeed provides him with pleasure? Several reasons, actually - protecting paternity, protecting his female relatives, who share his genese, and probably others that don't come to mind. So the men collectively agree not to rape women for their own benefit, and without consulting the women on the terms of their repreive. And to make that rule stronger, we cloak it in religion, honor, and other bullshit, which most people, like you, are taken in by.
But that's not what's really going on. Yes, it's good for the masses to think so, because the underlying bargain is the best for society as a whole (or the men, who have the strength to unilaterally impose their rules as they see fit), and that delsion aids enforcement. But the delusion starts to slip, Mansfield is arguing, when women start to break the rules that have really been imposed on them. This doesn't mean massive rape breaks out, but something less, an erosion around the edges of manners and male responsibility. The only real determinants here are power and self interest. The sexual revolution has changed the self interests equation, and not in ways that were entirely predictable, and not always in ways to the advantage of w
And Dylan, your defense of rapists disgusts me.
If I'd said that emancipation would lead to lynchings as angry whites in the South dealt with the new social dynamic and tried to substitute legal power over blacks with intimidation, would you accuse me of defending such behavior?
If I suggest that the EU should spend a lot more on defense because there are a lot of brutal third worlders out there who don't share their peace loving kumbayah committee meeting consensus problem solving solution to international disagreements, am I suggesting these people they don't believe exist are right to invade, terrorize, or threaten for concessions, land, or glory? Am I saying I'm one of them?
I'm saying I understand them. I'm suggesting that happy ignorance of them doesn't protect you from them. You don't have to be enslaved/lynched/raped/invaded/whatever, but it would be to your benefit to know the real score and why you're getting that dirty look when you drink from the wrong water fountain or the wolf whistle and name calling when you wear the mini skirt.
This comment needs more hastily invented analogies.
What Dylan is arguing is far from clear to me; perhaps it would help were he to put it in premise/conclusion form. That always works wonders.
As for Mansfield, imagine he is talking about priests or monks in medieval Europe instead of women today. Priests often used moral authority to get men with swords to refrain from doing things that they wanted to do. But their ability to do this depended on the widespread view that they had special moral status. If, as happened in many places at many times, the local monastery or the Church generally came to be seen in a more worldly way, priests lost this advantage (which was all they had against armed, trained soldiers). Nothing in this suggests that priests don't have moral rights just as strong as anyone else's.
My own objection to Mansfield's claim is that as a man I don't particularly like being compared to a medieval knight with the attendant views about people's status, moral equality, etc.
This is all too abstract possibly vague for me to get a handle on. I'm heading home.
I'm still enough of a hung-over Objectivist to believe that natural rights can inhere in humankind without the intervention of a deity.
By the way, where in your social bargain is the part where women agree not to poison you or set you on fire in your sleep? Strength isn't everything, and as Geoffrey points out, it's increasingly irrelevant now. Part of the "religion, honor, and other bullshit" was for women to be trained not to challenge men.
On your reconstruction analogy: I'd condemn you if you said it would lead to lynchings and left it at that with the kind of smug "well, that's what you can expect when you overturn the white male hegemonic applecart" that you are using here. An individual who cared about morality and the maximization of human flourishing (not just some cereal box evo-psych crap about how men just gotta be men and screw those ladies, they're just bearers of genetic material who don't need to be taken into account any more than a broodmare does) would take the problem posed and see that we, as a society, are capable of inculcating new values of respect to replace the false ones that Mansfield laments. But you're not interested in human beings. You're interested in defending a Hobbesian world because it makes you feel superior.
Amber Wrote:
"I don't agree that the concept of gentlemanly behavior is necessary to inculcate morality into young boys. Boys, like girls, want approval from their parents, and all it takes to condition this approval by saying that good children (not good boys, or good men) respect others. It's only inspiring to the extent that we are also programming children to think that their every behavioral norm must derive in some sense from a gender role."
This comes down to an empirical claim about whether or not one believes that at least in certain domains of conduct appeals to gender ideals are inherently more compelling to men or women in the aggregate than appeals to a risk/reward calculus (don't do this because if you do you'll forfeit the approval of your parents) or to abstract moral ideal (don't do this because I can demonstrate by reference to my secular moral code that it is wrong on the merits).
Its hard to answer this with finality. On the one hand, there is reason to believe that incidence of rape and sexual assault is much higher today than it was in several historical periods in which there was widespread acceptance of certain "gentlemanly" norms of behavior. This is almost certainly true if we control for class differences (i.e. in the pre-Civil War South rape of black women by white men was probably very high, but rape of white women by white men was quite low - today rape of black women by white men in the south is probably much lower than it was 150 years ago, but rape of white women much higher). On the other hand, dozens of underlying variables have also changed, making it hard to attribute causality.
I'm not of a firm opinion on the empirical question. Society often changes its patterns of behavior without reference to gender norms - for example, it is now much less acceptable to be a racist than it once was without notions of manliness or womanliness entering into the discussion at all. But on the other hand, imagine a 13 year old boy. Now imagine telling him not to slap his girlfriend because it violates her inherenet rights and personal dignity. Now imagine telling him not to slap his girlfriend because only pussies hit women. It seems intuitively obvious which is likely to be more effective.
Or to use another real-world example, which of the two following ideas has likely contributed more to the increasing willingness of men to be involved in child-rearing over the past 10-20 years: 1) The feminist idea that there is an unjust distribution of housework, or 2) The idea that children need their fathers (as opposed to a 1X increase in parental resources) to develop properly
Calling a hitter a pussy may be more effective in the short run, but teaching him to be disdainful of women by associating being a "pussy" with negative behavior doesn't strike me as productive in the long run for his interactions with women. Your other intuition also strikes me as non-obvious.
You have no way to know what the comparative rape rates are for those periods because the rates of reporting were minimal for many types of assault. And as you point out, many other variables confound the analysis (increased urbanization, for one).
I'm still enough of a hung-over Objectivist to believe that natural rights can inher in humankind without the intervention of a deity.
Yikes. Well, we all need our self delusions to get through the day.
By the way, where in your social bargain is the part where women agree not to poison you or set you on fire in your sleep? Strength isn't everything, and as Geoffrey points out, it's increasingly irrelevant now. Part of the "religion, honor, and other bullshit" was for women to be trained not to challenge men.
I would say it was to be punished for challenging men. And punishment is what keeps the poisoning under control, too. Has battered wife syndome suddenly become a widely accepted defense even today? Should it? Do the different sexual interests served by this rule and the disproprotion of political power between the sexes explain in part why it hasn't? Do they explain anything else?
And why do I feel like Larry Summers?
An individual who cared about morality and the maximization of human flourishing (not just some cereal box evo-psych crap about how men just gotta be men and screw those ladies, they're just bearers of genetic material who don't need to be taken into account any more than a broodmare does) would take the problem posed and see that we, as a society, are capable of inculcating new values of respect to replace the false ones that Mansfield laments.
I just puked a little in my mouth. No one cares about "the maximization of human flourishing." They care about the maximization of themselves and whatever group they identify with. I suppose one of the things that annoys me about this and similar arguments is the dishonest conceit that the policy that benefits your group is obviously best for everyone. Bullshit. Hell, if we boiled this down to actual policy prescriptions or new social norms I'd probably agree with most of them...because they'd benefit women I care about more than they'd hurt me, given my own relative romantic apathy, or because they'd hurt the kinds of guys I particular detest. I wouldn't pretend they're actually to everyone's benefit, though. But then I usually put a self destructive emphasis on honesty rather than winning. And when I don't, I'm inevitably engaging in self delusion to justify what I really know is dishonesty.
Come clean, Amber!
(By the way, I'm always amused to find another woman pissed off by evolutional psychology.)
"On the one hand, there is reason to believe that incidence of rape and sexual assault is much higher today than it was in several historical periods in which there was widespread acceptance of certain "gentlemanly" norms of behavior..."
I don't think so. Problems of reporting *alone* make this claim almost impossible to verify, especially because the lower your status, the less likely you are to report. (And, seriously, what is "widespread?" Even if you believe that the richest ten percent actually practiced what they preached, that still leaves the question of everyone else's norms.)
"This is almost certainly true if we control for class differences (i.e. in the pre-Civil War South rape of black women by white men was probably very high, but rape of white women by white men was quite low"
Well, I'm sure the raped black women (and lower-class women, and women who for whatever other reason stood outside the protection of their community) took great comfort in this. Personally, not only would I rather not gamble on being deemed worth protecting (especially as it wasn't so long ago that wearing pants, walking on the streets after dark in the city, and working in the professional workplace could put you outside the pale, and I'm rather fond of all those activities), I find it the cowardly choice.
I know Mansfield isn't a lawyer, but his argument is a fair example of the utter uselessness of so many attempts at establishing norms that come out of the legal academy today. They cloak themselves in the rhetoric of honesty and realism about human nature, but they have a deep, deep ignorance of history and other empirical data. In fact, they're essentially scholastics, choosing axioms that appeal to them and deducing their merry way into nonsense. Not that much of morality is subject to rigorous empirical inquiry, but then most religions don't present themselves as fundamentally rational.
Larry Summers, so far as I know, never suggested that the inevitable nature of man is to rape and subjugate. I'm not pissed off by evo-psych in general, only by just-so stories that always happen to prescribe a laconic fatalism about any hope for a stable human society that doesn't resemble Saudi Arabia.
I don't think battered wife syndrome should be an effective defense now because very rarely is an attack of that sort the best response available. There are typically plenty of resources that such women can take advantage of. In the societies you've described, I'd say it would be, since women would have basically no other way to overcome the power differential you're so fond of.
The sorts of norms most civilized people advocate are not in the personal interests of sociopathic rapists, true, but they are in the best interests of most people and promote peaceful development. Some of us do, contrary to your vomit, believe in human flourishing, even if that's cabined by the pragmatic realization that acting locally is the most efficient way to ensure that those norms are extended and the recognition that our own flourishing is usually job one. And haven't we learned anything from studying developmental economics in the last century? What system is best for everyone in a country: sexual equality or patriarchal domination?
I know you're not as ignorant of basic political philosophy as this argument is making you sound, so why don't you come clean, Dylan, and admit that some people might identify with other humans, not just other people with the same genitalia.
Larry Summers, so far as I know, never suggested that the inevitable nature of man is to rape and subjugate.
Neither did I! I suggested the general nature of man is to take anything he wants, not excluding sex, unless given a reason not to, and that when some of the traditional reasons not to disappear, it's not outrageous for a professor to suggest that might have some negative repercussions.
Read two public choice theory books, try to think of a reason why they shouldn't apply to the politics of customs surrounding sexual behavior/socialization, and call me in the morning.
I don't know why haloscan keeps erasing my information tonight; the above was me.
And haven't we learned anything from studying developmental economics in the last century? What system is best for everyone in a country: sexual equality or patriarchal domination?
Neither. The former is better for the most people, but not "everyone." The egalitarians are right: most people prefer relative status over absolute endowments. The only important difference between sexual and economic equality is that the latter requires coercion and the former requires its absence.
And my opinions on the "morality" of using coercion in various circumstances are...complex.
I haven't read this thread, so my objection might be answered above.
I'm with Mansfield. Must we always have "rights" in order to have equality of dignity between groups?
For libertarians who may lean towards anarcho-capitalism or anarcho-socialism, absolutely. For the rest of us, who don't contemplate having sex in public as something people should be allowed engage in because "community standards" are arbitrary, working with the traditions we have will do just fine.
The challenge is to come up with an argument to Mansfield that isn't just "It's my body no matter what." The notion of "right" when you say "I have sovereignty over my body" is a "moral claim" coming about from a conflation of "is" & "ought." Mansfield posits natural sexual differences, and then says things are complicated, and that conventions might want to consider some areas where nature has been neglected. His thought has a subtlety that your declaration of "right" is missing - he can distinguish between "right" and "moral."
Of course, a good libertarian has no such distinction, so I'm just talking to myself here. I do ask that you consider the utter contempt that an insistence on "rights" has on those who work to appreciate the traditions we have been given as something worth rethinking. If you wanted to say "Mansfield should have been diplomatic, and said that no matter how much of a tease a girl may be, a male cannot act in any way without her consent," I'd have been right with you. I think he should have said that, and then put forth an even stronger argument for why morals and mores matter. But we can disagree on that last point.
Instead, you wanted to go for the jugular, and pretty much imply that nothing Dr. Mansfield has to say is of value, since he has no respect for what you consider fundamental. And I can barely conceal how I feel about that.
when some of the traditional reasons not to disappear, it's not outrageous for a professor to suggest that might have some negative repercussions
Again, the proper response in such a situation is to establish new social norms, not to gloat about how women are going to be sorry they stepped off their pedestals.
Respect for women as autonomous individuals is associated with higher GDP, lifespans, decreased population growth, and a host of other socially beneficial things. The only people who lose out under equality are strong men who would be inclined to take women by force, and I don't care about these people. They are barely human and those roaming our modern world enter into my calculations of the good society about as much as do man-eating tigers.
"Yes, it's good for the masses to think so, because the underlying bargain is the best for society as a whole (or the men, who have the strength to unilaterally impose their rules as they see fit), and that delsion aids enforcement. But the delusion starts to slip, Mansfield is arguing, when women start to break the rules that have really been imposed on them. "
If true, this argues that in the absence of some special moral status (which is as confining as it is protective), for women to have authority over their own bodies in the same way as men, they have to be able to defend themselves.
I think maybe buying a gun and getting a carry permit is the way to go in Dylan's example. If enough of us women do this, it makes all of us more dangerous.
I do think the comment thread suffers from Dylan's incoherence and his failure to distinguish between positive and normative thinking, but that's in part because the positive claims Mansfield and his defenders are making are so absurd that one is not inclined to think of them as empirical claims.
NB also the difference among
1) Men are physically incapable of sexual restraint without supernatural suasion;
2) Men should not aspire to sexual restraint outside of supernatural suasion;
3) Men do not act with sexual restraint when female morality does not come into play.
#3 is arguably true for populations like all-male-fraternity members under the influence of alcohol in some situations; Islamic society if one believes Ayaan Hirsi Ali; and poorly disciplined occupying armies. Yet somehow, strip clubs and at-home stripping services manage to operate without turning into daily gang rapes, and strip club bouncers don't worry that they're outnumbered, because they expect most men to behave.
I thus think #1 is empirically false. It is pseudoscientific to attribute this claim to "evolutional [sic] psychology"; female promiscuity is well-accounted for as an evolutionary strategy.
I disagree with #2, but don't think Mansfield is making this argument (as for Dylan, who knows?). But that interpretation requires one to charitably interpret Mansfield as inadvertently botching his meaning by using the word "right" instead of "ability." Perhaps I'm being too charitable, and a more manly man would aggressively chastise Mansfield for what he actually said. But even with the charitable interpretation, Mansfield's argument is poorly thought out and is refuted by "The Caged Virgin."
It occurs to me that #3 has interesting implications for homophobia as well; does Mansfield believe that homosexual male advances, resulting in a mere contest of whims, are commonly characterized by violence and rape? Outside a prison context, I'm not aware that this is so. But if gay men do respect each other's refusals, what moral claim are they acknowledging? I wonder.
On the one hand, there is reason to believe that incidence of rape and sexual assault is much higher today than it was in several historical periods in which there was widespread acceptance of certain "gentlemanly" norms of behavior.
On the other hand, in the US, the rape rate is substantially lower than it was thirty years ago, when rape was much more likely to be underreported. It's hardly the case that gentlemanly norms have rebounded. True: confounding factors, including the development of physical evidence detection that makes it more likely a rapist will be punished, and the relatively recent criminalization of marital rape (though it's unclear where Mansfield stands on that latter development).
There's also the difference between the Swedish rape rate and the US rape rate, a difference that is compounded if one considers the extent to which Muslim immigrant rape is a problem in Sweden. One suspects that Mansfield would object to a US that moves in the direction of Swedish attitudes towards sexuality and feminism.
I think maybe buying a gun and getting a carry permit is the way to go in Dylan's example. If enough of us women do this, it makes all of us more dangerous.
Not really. While this point is obviously too subtle for everyone, the practical consequences here aren't outright violent rape, but contempt, rudeness, and a shift in the boundaries of what men will consider to be punishable date rape.
I can't wait until I get into a discussion of Before the Dawn and its implications for violence and society and have everyone accuse me of supporting picking up a rock and bashing their neighbor over the head to settle disagreements.
But if gay men do respect each other's refusals, what moral claim are they acknowledging?
None whatsoever. They're acknowledging the increased ability of men to beat the shit out of them for improper advances. Since everyone's hung up on thinking I'm advocating/defending/explaining "rape," let's look at your basic public ass grab on the subway.
Do you think that this sort of thing (and much else undesirable but well short of rape) has become more common since the sexual revolution and the erosion among men of certain chivalrous norms as "slutty" behavior has become more common/accepted? Can you imagine any reasons consistent with Mansfield's thesis why this should be so? Does it have anything to do with "morality" or a decrease in the benefits to treating women as a group well that changes the behavior of some men on the margin for reasons of rational self interest that have no moral implications?
And do you imagine that on a train full of gay men going to work that the skeezy ones would entertain for a moment a free ass grab while standing in the crush? Is this because they have a greater "moral" respect for the others on the train or because the cost/benefits are considerably different when the possibility of getting some teeth knocked out is considerably greater?
While there are a lot of parallels between this conversation and international relations (the French would or would not have ever voted to invade Iraq if we'd just not "rushed to war" and spent more time, discuss, with implicaitons for naked self interest cloaked in bullshit moral terms and other forms of duplicity that the gullible take seriously), its reminding me even more of organ donation. Taboo has its place, but it's nice to be able to recognize that it is a taboo and not some inherent TRVTH on your side.
Dylan, you are still arguing that we have to be willing to hurt me (physically punish them) to make them respect our persons. If not a gun, maybe something less deadly?
Do you think that this sort of thing (and much else undesirable but well short of rape) has become more common since the sexual revolution and the erosion among men of certain chivalrous norms as "slutty" behavior has become more common/accepted? No, although it may have become more common for certain classes of women.
Date rape is more likely to be prosecuted today than in the past, more likely to be reported, and more likely to be morally condemned by society at large. Or do you actually think that the "she must have been asking for it" defense has gained credibility through the years? Men today may be more likely to interpret something as consent because consent to sex on a date is more likely, but they are also probably more likely to accept that no means no.
Re: the male-on-male scenario: Not all men can beat up other men. In a situation where a large, muscular man propositions a slender, smaller man, what keeps the larger man from always taking the smaller man against his will (or even just groping)?
When was this mysterious time of chivalry where men, at the margin, were so besotted with female chastity that no one raped or groped given the opportunity to do so?
a shift in the boundaries of what men will consider to be punishable date rape
Again, Dylan, you would be better served by stating your premise and your conclusion, so we know precisely whether the problem with your argument is one of ignorance or something more sinister. What shift are you talking about? Because the idea of criminally punishable date rape of a non-virgin is a thoroughly modern invention that didn't exist forty years ago, so I'm curious what adverse shifts against women's autonomy rights you contend feminism is responsible for. Or is there a movement for legalizing self-help to seek specific performance of the three-date rule that I'm unaware of?
Dylan,
The overarching problem with your comment is this sentence:
"morality" to really mean that which is efficiency or utility maximizing
That is a disastrous account of morality, one that would be totally rejected but all but the most slavish econ types. Interestingly, that is the #1 error committed by all the law-and-econ people (and for the record, I like law and econ). Efficiency is simply assumed to sit at the top of the value hierarchy. Why? Why is efficiency necessarily the intrinsic good?
Of course, I can understand in some situations why maximizing efficiency is a worthy objective, but it does not follow from this that doing so is THE worthy objective, nor that it is THE objective in all scenarios (which it would have to be to stand as the proper definition of morality).
If one wants to model human behavior according to utility, as the economists and social scientists try to do, be my guest (though for every genuine insight such modeling reveals, it produces some rather ignominious failures). But making a normative claim that such utility is the very definition of "oughtness" is a totally different proposition, one that I totally reject, and one which I think is unlikely to be persuasive, especially when you simply assume it without analysis.
This was a lot more fun on Usenet in the old days when a cast of regulars had a dim idea what I was up to.
Equating rape with utility-maximizing sex seems bizarre to me. Is sex in which a woman is not aroused and in some cases doing her best to kill her attacker really that good? I believe that there are men for whom everything, women's bodies included, is simply so much stuff to be taken if the opportunity presents, but Mansfield's and Dylan's claims are premised on the belief that rape is for the sake of sex. If this is true, we should see a huge decrease in rape when prostitution is legalized, broadly available and not unduly expensive -- purchasing sex will be much easier than stealing it. Anyone have those stats?
Women are not fungible, PG.
TP, I think it's the only account of morality that goes any farther than "the Yankees are the devil and Pedro Martinez is my god." Everything other than utility maximization (society's, not yours) is just picking a team for reasons of psychic pleasure. I do that, too, but I don't react with outrage when someone supports the other team. I wonder, instead, why they support it and sneer at them if they're "inauthentic" or take the game too seriously and start to believe their own bullshit.
In this case, I don't care anything for the game, but the raving fanboys on one side particularly irk me.
Dylan,
A comment to a blog post is not a suitable medium to discuss a proper conception of morality, but suffice it to say that I totally and completely reject any account of morality that posits the good as function of maximization of utility. While the great philosophers should not be taken to be the gospel on ethics, I can think of literally none, save perhaps J.S. Mill, who have ever articulated the account you are defending.
Actually, I think it is approaching bizarre to define morality in terms of efficiency. Like I said, most economists and public choice theorists don't do that.
Of course not. Morality is defined in terms of minimizing negative externalities, or at least, that's how Hillel described the Golden Rule 2200 years ago.
This thread was one of the more amusing things I read today.
Dylan, you do bring out the ad hominemiest in people.
Hey, I think everyone here attacked Dylan and his arguments. The CE post, not so much.
But anyway, isn't ad hominem of the form: "D claims X; there is something objectionable about D; therefore, X is false"? Most everyone here followed the path: "D claims X; X is false; therefore, there is something objectionable about D."
From over here it looks more like Dylan made an imperfectly worded but still recognizably positive claim* and got some intensely normative non-sequiturs in response. A path more like "D claims X; X is gross; therefore, D is gross, and only claimed X because of his grossness; therefore, X is incorrect." I'm with him on that: being offended is not a useful contribution to discussion unless with one's therapist.
Toward the end there, to be fair, it veered back into argument, which was nice. The actual question is really how/whether ass grabs can be kept in check. I just think furor over such a thing is funny.
*For example, D, you might have wanted to clarify that the utility to be maximized was personal. Or maybe not.
I'd still characterize the replies as more "X is fundamentally wrong for reasons philosophical, psychological, and economic; D is intelligent enough to realize the preceding facts, therefore, D is saying this just to be gross." He also basically admitted that he was trolling.
Would you like to contribute to the discussion in either of its incarnations or is this more of a drive-by metacriticism?
More of a drive-by. Though not intended as an attack on the blogmistress so much as a honked horn in support of Dylan (on the meta-level; I have no opinion on the underlying question).
I did think the Usenet comment was lame. A Dylan in earnest is rather interesting, but a Dylan-as-schtick is six kinds of boring.
He also basically admitted that he was trolling.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I also said (privately) that a fake belated claim of trolling is a common tactic when you're losing a real argument...or was that the start of trolling?
Confusion to the enemy!
A Dylan in earnest is rather interesting, but a Dylan-as-schtick is six kinds of boring.
Even my worst detractors find my schtick no more than two kinds of boring. And that's when they're sober.
All of this reminds me of Belle Waring's sister.
If women are so recognized as individuals by rapists, Dylan, why are their preferences so meaningless?
My head just imploded. Do you think free range murders roam the land looking for someone to kill because they enjoy violence and power? Or do they want to kill a particular person because that individuals death is particularly desired? Do you sit drooling on the floor in confusion that such a person would recognize his vicitim as an "individual" yet not care about his preference to continue living?
Does the DSMV-IV recognize some category for the diametrical opposite of a psychopath, someone completely unable to put aside their empathy for other human beings and make a logical, abstract decision? It would explain a lot of leftist politics.
Actually, I am fairly sure that the majority of non-intimate homicides occur without the victim's having been specifically known to the perpetrators in advance. Compare the number of people killed in the course of robberies to the number who are killed because the killer just wants that particular person dead. Intimate homicides frequently are very spur-of-the-moment -- the furious person hits too hard, or makes the mistake of picking up a firearm. Rapists are often creatures of opportunity; they do not wait for a particular woman, but instead grab one who is alone. But if you can explain the purely sexual desire rapists have for elderly women (who still are victims of rape), please do. Perhaps you're a little too hung up on your own view of the criminal mind to recognize this. But hey, don't let that get in the way of letting your Usenet-inspired sense of good manners run free.
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