A curious and common dilemma! I experienced this sort of situation yesterday. It wasn't at a dinner party - it was at a pie shop. You can imagine the kinds of opinions people express in pie shops! I looked at my lap and started thinking about how to respond, but I either didn't get a chance or successfully avoided responding, depending how you look at it. In any case, his breakfast arrived and he segued into another topic.
My trouble was
a) I didn't have a clear "boo" or "hooray" response owing to the complex nature of the issue to which my conversationalist made a hostile allusion.
b) I am primed to a near Cartesian degree to respond with openness to people who might turn out to know or understand something I don't.
c) I am culturally haunted by the spectres of propriety and politeness, which seem to me to represent mysterious cocktails of prudence and morality (the prudence is probably the mixer, existing less powerfully yet in greater abundance in both).
I f we make a skill called worlding, then the situation at a dinner so described, can be dealt with by worlding well, rather than badly leaping into the horns of the zero-game dilemma. We suspend announcing judgement (a type of interpersonal Pyrrhonism, where the therapeutic effect is on the world rather than the individual ) and act on behalf of the world not as a self.
(Yes this is Prudence as the other comment suggests, and the suggestion also makes me think that attacks on political correctness also eat away at expectations of being polite generally, while de-platforming may be bad worlding as well.)
Such worlding-as-a-verb would rely on knowing the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the art of the possible in politics, with humour being the obvious way to re-frame such situations, and where this is not available, a common set of policing norms for bad worlding would be handy. This would require most people to understand how narcissists and psychopaths actual work though.
As for the actual philosophy in the post dealing with this situation, I will have to go away and study up on the word used/usage that I do not know, and then delve into the actual argument.
"Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative."
The other option is that we have an urge to should, or ought, and this is selected for in evolutionary frameworks, and the details of a morality are less important than trying to organise ouselves, compare to groups who do not try (and fail, and make mistakes and learn). In which case authority is not needed, but a process to capture learning is. This answers both what sceptical challenges bring to notice, and why appeals to and for authoritative frameworks in some parts of the population, they help us make mistakes. Rules are made to be broken type thing. "An independently motivated account" is therefore interesting but perhaps unnecessary. (logic is a hindsight).
A curious and common dilemma! I experienced this sort of situation yesterday. It wasn't at a dinner party - it was at a pie shop. You can imagine the kinds of opinions people express in pie shops! I looked at my lap and started thinking about how to respond, but I either didn't get a chance or successfully avoided responding, depending how you look at it. In any case, his breakfast arrived and he segued into another topic.
My trouble was
a) I didn't have a clear "boo" or "hooray" response owing to the complex nature of the issue to which my conversationalist made a hostile allusion.
b) I am primed to a near Cartesian degree to respond with openness to people who might turn out to know or understand something I don't.
c) I am culturally haunted by the spectres of propriety and politeness, which seem to me to represent mysterious cocktails of prudence and morality (the prudence is probably the mixer, existing less powerfully yet in greater abundance in both).
Thanks.
I f we make a skill called worlding, then the situation at a dinner so described, can be dealt with by worlding well, rather than badly leaping into the horns of the zero-game dilemma. We suspend announcing judgement (a type of interpersonal Pyrrhonism, where the therapeutic effect is on the world rather than the individual ) and act on behalf of the world not as a self.
(Yes this is Prudence as the other comment suggests, and the suggestion also makes me think that attacks on political correctness also eat away at expectations of being polite generally, while de-platforming may be bad worlding as well.)
Such worlding-as-a-verb would rely on knowing the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the art of the possible in politics, with humour being the obvious way to re-frame such situations, and where this is not available, a common set of policing norms for bad worlding would be handy. This would require most people to understand how narcissists and psychopaths actual work though.
As for the actual philosophy in the post dealing with this situation, I will have to go away and study up on the word used/usage that I do not know, and then delve into the actual argument.
ok, had a new read in th e\\e morning, the link given is broke I'm afraid... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00048402.2023.2225527
Fixed - thanks!
"Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative."
The other option is that we have an urge to should, or ought, and this is selected for in evolutionary frameworks, and the details of a morality are less important than trying to organise ouselves, compare to groups who do not try (and fail, and make mistakes and learn). In which case authority is not needed, but a process to capture learning is. This answers both what sceptical challenges bring to notice, and why appeals to and for authoritative frameworks in some parts of the population, they help us make mistakes. Rules are made to be broken type thing. "An independently motivated account" is therefore interesting but perhaps unnecessary. (logic is a hindsight).