As I near my 40s, instead of focusing on continually refining my own moral or political views, I find myself more concerned with trying to explain how others have arrived at their own. That is - especially when social media has a tendency to amplify in-group vs. out-group dynamics - I want to see others with the dignity I wish others would grant me. So, here, I'd like to expound upon two families of concepts that I've found to be useful: intuitions and two broad approaches found in normative ethics. Philosophers use the word "intuition" in a specific way that may not line up with how the linguistic community as a whole may use it. So, to be precise, when I use "intuition" I mean something like an instinct, primary response, or knee-jerk reaction. To speak of intuitions in this sense is not to grant them any special epistemic status. Rather, they are to be treated as raw data to be evaluated in light of other considerations. For instance, many of us have or h
As a closeted, anti-war (the Iraq war, specifically), non-religious, left-leaning teenager in the early 2000s, the prospect of my conservative family finding out my secrets put me in a state of terror at family gatherings. In particular, I recall a time when the conversation turned to what fate they wished upon people like me, if they had their way (not happy things). Having just turned 38, I'm still apprehensive about coming out - and thus apprehensive about divulging what I've just divulged. To be sure, as alien I was / am to them, they are to me - at least in terms of political and religious beliefs. And this is a source of a persistent, bothersome cognitive dissonance that I'm still trying to resolve. In a larger context, I think this is something many of us experience, as we try to hold on to relationships despite the seemingly untraversable chasm between us. In what follows, I'd like to make a modest attempt to at least begin to build a bridge across this chasm.