Quote:
Originally Posted by rubecube
Okay, but that entire conversation then shifts the focus to the morality or intention of your neighbour's actions and not the impact of the dude whose house was set on fire. I get that, in theory, you can have both conversations simultaneously but that generally isn't how it works out in practice.
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Really? I just gave you an example of a situation that could very well happen, and probably does quite frequently - a house fire. Are you really telling me that when it comes time to wonder how it happened, your answer would be "it doesn't matter what happened, at the end of the day my house is burned down and that's all I care about"? You don't care at all if your neighbour just made a mistake, or was actively trying to kill everyone in the neighbourhood? I definitely don't agree that that's how we make moral judgments in practice. I really think that's a position that very few people are going to hold, if they think about it hard enough.
For the same reason, if you take the view that the results of a pro-life policy are going to be bad for women's health generally, let's look at three pro-life positions.
Pro-lifer 1 thinks men should be and are inherently equal in every way to women and in principle is in favour of women's rights every bit as much as you and me. However, s/he thinks that abortion is murder, because s/he can't see any moral difference between the baby before it's born and after. S/he also doesn't think that his position has any negative effect on women's health - s/he has a bunch of reasons for believing this that might be wrong, but s/he's totally convinced that this is the case.
Pro-lifer 2 also thinks men should be and are inherently equal to women, and is in favour of women's rights every bit as much as you and me. However, s/he thinks that abortion is murder, because s/he can't see any moral difference between the baby before it's born and after. S/he understands that the consequences of being pro-life might have a negative effect on women's health overall, but ultimately thinks that preventing murder is more important here, and so is willing to live with that negative effect - though s/he wishes s/he didn't have to.
Pro-lifer 3 thinks women are inferior to men. Sure, they should have
some rights, but those rights aren't a real concern, according to this person. Pro-lifer 3 also thinks abortion is murder, for the same reason as above: no apparent moral difference between a baby before birth and after. Pro-lifer 3 understands that some people are worried that the consequences of being pro-life might have a negative effect on women's health overall, but doesn't really care about those effects, because again, women are less of a concern.
Your view of intention requires us to approach this by saying all of these three people are sexist.
Mine is that the first person is innocently mistaken as to the facts of the matter. The second is taking a consistent moral position, but I disagree with it, because I'm less convinced about the moral worth of the fetus relative to the importance of the mother's autonomy and women's health. The third is a sexist.
The results still matter, but so do the intentions. The three people above are very different people. They're not all morally blameworthy, and certainly not to the same degree. If you want to expand the definition of "sexist" so that it encompasses all three, just because they take a pro-life view and regardless of their reasons for reaching that view, you've defined the term "sexist" so that it applies to really terrible people, and also much less terrible people who may be confused or have earnest, honestly held positions based on different value judgments. Given how bad the connotation of the word "sexist" is (and I think rightly so), it shouldn't be given such an expansive definition.
I think in future we should probably just have these sorts of discussions over PM. I doubt it's going to yield much of worth in here.