One of the differences in the way people analyze the world that I found most interesting is something called high decoupling and low decoupling. What is decoupling? In this context, it means the ability to think about ideas in isolation, separating them from other variables and influences. Low decouplers believe that ideas are embedded in social contexts, so it is best to analyze them in abstract, isolated terms rather than situating them within social narratives. I think it’s wrong. Check out this very long essay that explains this divide and applies it to modern debates. hereHowever, here is an excerpt outlining some of the key ideas.
Heidecouplers separate ideas from each other and their surrounding context. This is a necessary practice in science that allows us to separate variables, reveal causal relationships, and formalize and operationalize claims into carefully delineated hypotheses. Cognitive decoupling is what scientists do…
While the fields of science and engineering (and analytic philosophy) are populated by people with a knack for decoupling who learn to accept this norm as a given, other intellectual fields do not. Instead, they are primarily made up of the opposite of the scientist in the gallery of brainiac archetypes: literary or artistic intellectuals.
This crowd does not live in a world where decoupling is standard practice. On the contrary, the coupling is what makes what they do work. Storytellers, including novelists, poets, and artists, as well as journalists, politicians, and publicists, rely on dense, rich, and ambiguous meanings, associations, allusions, and allusions to evoke emotions, impressions, and ideas in their listeners. I am. The terms “artistic” and “literary” refer to the clever use of combinations of ideas to subtly and indirectly push the audience’s meaning buttons.
The ability of low and high decouplers to avoid threatening effects appears to be a lack of empathy for those under threat, but for the high decoupler, the low decoupler’s assertion that it is impossible looks like naked prejudice and unjust prejudice. I can’t think straight.
I tend to lean more toward the Heidecoupler mentality. One aspect of advanced decoupling that I find useful is that it often separates things that are substantively related but logically distinct. The author of the essay linked above says: logically and/or causally they are common structurally, socially and emotionally They are similar and that makes them feel like a single thing. A single positive or negative valence “informs” our response to a single instance. ”But even if different things feel emotionally the same, different things are still different. (Yes, I’m not afraid to make bold and controversial statements like “different is different.” Stay tuned for more featured opinions!) And the world.
As an example, Dan Moller in his book minimal governanceseparates the concept of desert (not the delicious kind, but the philosophical kind of “desert” that indicates deservingness) from rights. In normal everyday life, what you deserve and what you are entitled to often tend to go together, which makes them feel like a single thing – with a single positive or negative valence. A single instance that “informs” our response to it. ” Therefore, many philosophers argue that Redistribution Wealthy people argue that even if they accumulate wealth in the most morally primitive way possible, they will never give up what they have accumulated. They say if you honestly accumulated wealth because you were intelligent, hard-working, and driven, you wouldn’t have. worthy To be born a smart and hardworking person. You did not acquire an innate ability, nor did you acquire the environment in which you were raised or the mentors you met to help you develop that ability. therefore you don’t worthy The wealth you accumulate through those abilities.
However, as Mr. Moller points out: worthy They are logically distinct from the actual qualified To. If you and I were hiking together and happened to find a giant diamond worth $100,000, obviously you don’t worthy This good fortune is in some deep moral sense. Nevertheless, you are entitled to it. Similarly, someone who wins the lottery or hits a jackpot on a slot machine worthy They receive the prize money, but they are still entitled to it. The fact that you were not “entitled” to find the diamond is of no use in a redistribution case. If I said to you, “You don’t deserve to find that diamond, and I could have found it, give me some of that money. It’s mine!” would be wrong. That’s because you simply don’t follow it. I didn’t Therefore I deserve your good luck morning That’s what I deserve — or I’m even entitled to some of it from you.
Contradictions also exist in the opposite direction. Sometimes you deserve something, but you don’t deserve it. Let’s say you are an employee of my company. If you work hard and create great value, there is a job opening for you that could mean an important promotion and for which you are clearly qualified. Still, this is my company, so I decided to give the job to an old friend who has never done the job you haven’t done. This is my company, so I can hire anyone for any role I want. You are not. qualified To that job. But even if it wasn’t, it still seems reasonable to say that qualified You still deserve that promotion.
Or let’s say you’re getting married and you want your parents to come to your wedding, but they refuse. Maybe you’re married to someone of a different race and your partner doesn’t like it. Or maybe you’re gay and married to someone of the same sex and your partner is very against it. I think it’s fair to say that you deserve your parents to support you at your wedding, but you still don’t qualified Also. It’s wrong to refuse them to attend and support you, but it’s also wrong to force their attendance and pretend to be supporting them against their will. Thus, although deserts and rights often (perhaps usually) overlap, they are still separate and separable. Sometimes you deserve something but you don’t deserve it, and sometimes you deserve something even if you don’t deserve it.
At the risk of exhausting your patience, dear reader, all of the above lays the groundwork for another kind of detachment that I think is worthy: taking responsibility for, and deserving of, my circumstances. I just laid it out. If you are responsible for the situation you find yourself in, is that the same as saying you deserve to be in that situation?
There is an intuitive force at work here. When you say to someone, “You are responsible for the situation you are in,” it seems almost the same as saying, “It’s your fault,” or “You’re to blame.” Masu. Unless, of course, things are good, in which case saying we’re responsible for being there sounds like some kind of affirmation or blessing. At first glance, “what I am responsible for” and “what I deserve” seem to be “one thing.” But reality can rarely be explained by a single, unexceptionable statement, and these too can be separated.
Please imagine the following situation. John Q. Sample is wandering the streets with headphones on and listening to music. Unfortunately for Mr. Sample, he becomes so engrossed in the upbeat music playing in his headphones that he loses all focus on where he is wandering and wanders into a crosswalk, where he is hit and killed by a car. It seems to me that two things can be said in this case. The man in question is responsible for what happened. His actions were careless and directly led to his death. At the same time, I don’t think he deserved to die. He was responsible for letting himself die, but he still didn’t die. worthy death. After all, imagine he was wandering around an intersection in a daze and, by sheer luck, was missed by all the passing cars and made it safely to the other side. Let’s just say that after witnessing this, I pull out my trusty handgun and shoot him dead. When the police are called, I try to explain that my actions were justified. Of course die Because of his careless and careless actions. That is clearly an irrational statement, and I would be a moral monster for saying it.
My purpose here is not to provide a finely tuned explanation of when being responsible is and isn’t worth it. (Please try your best to spell it out. that (Out!) But I think the problem is that people have a hard time separating the two ideas.
Brian Caplan is a person who strongly believes in the principle, “You are responsible for X, so you deserve X.” He draws on books he has written about poverty and responsibility for years (I’m looking forward to this one!), and he makes an important distinction between the deserving poor and the deserving poor. This is the difference between the poor and the poor. Whether someone is worthy or not depends on how responsible that person is for their situation. Caplan argues here:
If someone has a problem, they deserve to have a problem. reasonable steps he could have taken to avoid the problem. Because poverty is a problem, a person deserves it if reasonable steps were taken to avoid it.
Of course, Caplan is not arguing that all poor people deserve it. By his light, many poor people, such as those born with disabilities, the children of irresponsible parents, or those unlucky enough to be born in a poor country, could not have a better future elsewhere. I understand that you are not qualified. Nevertheless, he says that many of the poor today are responsible for their situation and therefore deserve to be poor.
Now, I don’t think Caplan’s statement quoted above is very convincing as stated. The aforementioned John Q. Sample may have taken “reasonable steps” to prevent his death, but it still seems clear to me that he did not deserve to die. And although Mr. Sample is a hypothetical case, it is not far-fetched or fanciful. Scenarios that basically match what I’ve described are not at all uncommon. “You are responsible for X, therefore you deserve X” is true in many cases, perhaps even in most cases, but it is not a logically or metaphysically necessary truth. More is needed to establish that worthy X doesn’t just point out that they are; person in charge I hope he will elaborate on additional arguments to fill this gap in the book when it is released.
But there is another side to this coin. Some ideas appear “like a single thing,” even if not disconnected, with “a single positive or negative valence that ‘informs’ our response to a single instance.” Therefore, many people will have a particularly counterproductive reaction to Caplan’s argument. Suppose you believe that no one truly “deserves” to live a life of poverty. This is a value that many people probably hold. When we hear the argument, “They are responsible for poverty, so they deserve poverty,” we cannot separate responsibility from desert, so we play the opposite card and instead say “They deserve poverty.” Some people think, “They don’t, so they are not responsible.” for that. ”For those people, I recommend taking the third route. “They don’t deserve to be in poverty, but they are still responsible for it.”
Why do I recommend this route? First, I think Mr. Caplan is factually correct. Very often, people are responsible for poverty because of the choices they make in life. (In the past, I’ve been one myself.) And here’s another hot take I promised. I think we should tell the truth and refrain from saying false things. Even if you believe that the person making such a decision is not worthy Even if you’re poor, it still wouldn’t be true to say otherwise person in charge Because I ended up being poor. And secondly, if you truly have compassion for people in such situations, you will absolutely worst What you can do for them is convince them that they are not responsible for how it ended. If someone is genuinely convinced that their choices did not cause the current situation, it means convincing them that there is nothing they can do to improve the situation by making a different choice. Masu. Convincing someone that they are not responsible for their situation is not compassion. It would deny them their basic independence and even a modicum of dignity.
