Insightful thread from @alicemazzy.
I’d add: it’s not about “values.” Those are empty signifiers used merely to construct post hoc rationalizations.
Significant instead is the texture of personal experience: different according to social position.https://twitter.com/alicemazzy/status/969304258947567622 …
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Oh, I was unclear. Those were just sneer quotes. There’s no difference.
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is the sneer caused by the culture-war loaded use of the word values? e.g. "values voters" etc. or are you dipping a toe into some post-nihilism here?
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Well, the culture war usage (on both sides) is a particularly harmful manifestation. But “values” is a folk-psychological notion that doesn’t correspond to anything in reality, and is actively misleading in understanding motivations.
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Strange. I interpret having values to mean that you care about things, that you make judgments about what's desirable or not in general (not just as a personal experience). Seems obvious that people do that.
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[Best expansion I’ve managed so far:]https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/969643349983375360 …
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Should I take that as you meaning that we don't actually care about things, that the experience of caring is a construction of our internal PR-officer so to speak? I'm somewhat sympathetic to a version of that but not as a complete theory, I think.
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No; rather, that the caring-about is not meaningfully summarized by “values.” It’s too fine-grained.
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I aspire to never be as void of hope as the echos in this thread, that it is possible to signal *and* live by agreed upon representations of the good to be found in the human predicament a.k.a. values.
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it's a difficult problem. David goes to great lengths to avoid universalism because the world is far too differentiated for that to be useful. It's a more gut-check satisfying stance then the contextualism that David is advocating for though.
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This is a month old thread and has been surprisingly active for almost the entire month so obviously people have a lot to say about it. Learning how to discuss the topic without appearing relativistic or nihilistic is hard though.
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That's very true. Keeping personal sentiments in check while discussing the value of values is no easy task... lol
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