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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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If it is ok to go to Palestine and shoot people who are going to murder Israelis then people who truly think abortion is murder, have the same logical justification.

That's not reasoning we accept anywhere else.

"If it's okay to eat a burger because you own it, what about people who truly think they own that burger?"

"If it's okay to go at 60 mph because that's the speed limit, what about people who truly think the speed limit is X mph?"

"If it's okay to take merchandise from a store if you paid for it, what about people who truly believe they've paid for something?"

Whether someone can truly (but not truthfully) believe something is irrelevant.

All of those are factual claims though. Did you go 60 mph or 70. Whether murdering Istaelis is equivelent to aborting babies is a moral one. Thats my point.

I may disagree with HlynkaCG but his position seems to be consistent at least. But if your position is that it depends on the moral valence of the rules in question, then i think you have to logically accept that applies to people who will have different moral intuitions to you.

And just to clarify, thats ok. I am not exactly a moral relativist so i completely accept some moral codes are simply better than others. But it means there is no logical principle that can be applied universally. If you think murdering Israelis is worse than aborting babies and therefore would fight against that, but not against abortion, then just say that. I'd probably agree. But it doesn't give us a universally applicable rule of when we assimilate to the rules of an alien culture and ehen we do not. When it conflicts with my own moral code, is an individual approach.

Which is what makes HlynkaCG's position interesting as a conservative. It illustrates the difference not between a liberal and a conservative, but between a collectivist and an individualist.

All of those are factual claims though. Did you go 60 mph or 70.

Whether it's factual is irrelevant to your argument. Your argument is "couldn't someone truly think X?" It's possible to truly think X whether X is factual or not.

But it's not hard to think of examples without that nitpick. Instead of 60 mph, think of "are you driving at a safe speed?" It's a judgment call, yet we still require people to drive at a safe speed and we don't say "couldn't someone truly think that any speed is safe?" You can kill in self-defense, and it's certainly possible for anyone to truly think that a killing is self-defense, but self-defense is still a useful concept. Whether someone consents to sex is in the real world not a yes/no thing, and "couldn't someone truly think that a victim has 'consented'" doesn't negate the idea.

Even the examples I already gave aren't really like that. Someone could have a moral code under which, for instance, capitalist exploiters don't truly own their property, it's all stolen property which is really owned by the proletariat; whether you own that burger is just as much a moral issue as whether abortion is murder. But trhe fact that people can have moral disagreements which lead them to conclude that you don't own your burger doesn't mean that "you can eat a burger if you own it" becomes useless.