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June 17, 2005
dormitory relativism
Don Herzog: June 17, 2005
A while ago, David V. argued that relativism is hopeless, and helpfully distinguished it from nearby views. But there's a version of relativism that I like. Relax, I know better than to argue philosophy with David. My version is all crass stuff about politics and social life, of no philosophical interest at all. But it raises some illuminating questions about the promises and pitfalls of liberalism, or so I think.
Many years ago, one of my favorite undergraduates had grown up in a small town in Michigan's upper peninsula, with a devout and extremely conservative family. They'd all fretted about her moving to Ann Arbor, that notorious hotbed of leftist excess. But she was smart as a whip and eager to get a first-class education. When the university awarded her buckets of financial aid, she decided to attend.
Ann Arbor didn't faze her — the place doesn't really live up to, or down to, its reputation — but she did find her freshman dormitory startling. I won't pretend to recall her exact wording, but the litany ran something like this. "Down the hall is a lesbian with short, spiked, bright blue hair. There's an Orthodox Jew from New York, and, um, I haven't met many Jews before. My roommate spent a year working with peasants in Guatemala and came back fired up about Marxism. And the first time I said grace in the dining hall, a crusading atheist wanted to argue with me."
Living in close quarters with exotic strangers: the perfect hothouse setting for the growth of dormitory relativism. And I think it's a gorgeous flower, not a weed.
Dormitory relativism says, oh, it's all just taste or personal preference. You like atheism, I like religion; you embrace the sexual revolution, I prefer staying a virgin; you're a radical, I'm a conservative. As long as you don't leave the bathroom a mess and don't keep me up at 2:00 in the morning with your stereo blasting, we can get along just fine. To vary the metaphor, dormitory relativism is the perfect peace treaty for getting along with people with sharply different views. Instead of bitter arguments and hatred, we get amiable shrugs.
To be defensible — to stay crassly political and eschew any claims about ethics or justification or epistemology or ontology — dormitory relativism has to be an as-if, wink-nudge-nod collective understanding. Dormitory relativism doesn't say, "there is no point arguing about these matters because there's nothing there but personal preference." That's rotten philosophy. Dormitory relativism says, "because we don't want to argue about these matters, let's pretend that they're mere personal preference." Let's pretend that morality, politics, religion, and more are just like the ice cream parlor, where we think there are no reasons or criticisms or arguments or justifications to exchange about flavor. (I confess I don't even believe that about ice cream. I think members of the boring vanilla lobby are in fact making a reprehensibly boring mistake. They could and should be ordering chocolate, which is manifestly better. The nature and depth of our devotion to chocolate is not adequately rendered by saying that we happen to prefer it. A universe without chocolate is objectively worse than one with it. But let that go for now. When David organizes a new blog to discuss The Theory of Value and High-Fat Dairy Products, I'll weigh in.)
As long as people are more or less aware that dormitory relativism is an as-if pose, and as long as they know which settings to invoke it in, it's a big winner. The mischief sets in when they get confused and give it the rotten-philosophy interpretation. Undergraduates sometimes adopt this pose in class, to get off the hook of having to argue. They start too many sentences with phrases like, "I guess my own opinion is that...." And then they start getting ironic and frivolous about their own deepest commitments. But they just need a brisk little sociology lesson. Dormitory relativism is fine for the dorms, fine for the dining halls, fine for parties; but it's a big loser in class discussion, and a big loser in figuring out what to make of your life.
Compare a parallel mistake in economics. Take the common claims: "utility is subjective," or "preferences are given or exogenous." Those might draw a disciplinary boundary: here in economics, we take that stuff as given. Fine by me. Or they might be taken as a deep claim about what utility and preference really are. No, sorry, that's a train wreck. We can always raise further questions about utility or preference. We can critically appraise why people pursue what they do; we can ask for explanations and justifications. De gustibus est disputandum, even if economists aren't interested.
I'd press the same point outside the academy. Dormitory relativism helps you get along amiably enough when you leave your homogeneous small town and head to the big bad city. It helps you sleep peacefully knowing that the unmarried couple down the hall are probably having sex in a position you find revolting, that too many Americans are smoking marijuana, and that millions of Americans don't own a Bible and don't even care that they don't. But you can't actually defend other people's rights to those choices by arguing that "really" questions of value are all mere personal preference, although a surprising number of people have fallen for that dreadful argument. After all, if questions of value are really matters of preference, then the merits and proper sphere of toleration and autonomy are matters of preference, too. Instead you have to get serious and argue about autonomy and rights. In sorting out those matters, dormitory relativism is useless.
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» Things that are bitter; or, why Don is wrong from Letters of Marque
Don has an interesting post up about dormitory relativism. Which I think is fascinating. But let's set that aside, and focus on the truly egregious statement that he makes: I think members of the boring vanilla lobby are in fact... [Read More]
Tracked on Jun 18, 2005 6:23:48 PM
Comments
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Mr. Herzog is, of course, entitled to his views on the subject. After all, to each his own, live and let live, that's what I say. [Insert "as-if, wink-nudge-nod" here.]
Except on the question of chocolate versus vanilla ice cream, about which he is entirely, unequivocally and irredeemably wrong – morally wrong, epistemologically wrong and ontologically wrong. The wrongness of his position is not merely a failure of reasoning or error in fact, it is perniciously and egregiously wrong and nothing short of being a detestable enormity for which he should be deeply ashamed, outcast from decent society and declared anathema. Right thinking people should shun him in public and small animals should growl at him as he passes.
Finally, now that Mr. Herzog has volunteered to “weigh in” on a discussion of The Theory of Value and High-Fat Dairy Products, I expect no more complaints from him about my puns!
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Jun 17, 2005 8:45:45 AM
Posted by: noah
Don,
Vanilla bean here.
Posted by: noah | Jun 17, 2005 8:55:49 AM
Posted by: Carl
"Vanilla-- 'Coz there's nothing plain about it."
Posted by: Carl | Jun 17, 2005 10:11:32 AM
Posted by: Dooble
That dorm tolerance is not an in-principle view should be clear not just from the logical self-undermining argument, but also from the manifest fact that, even if the line is hard to draw, no one feels comfortable extending the pretending-away treatment to behaviors that are causing serious harms to others. That's a sign that the justification of the.treatment has to do with strategy (how best to change minds) and balance (being a dorm absolutist is a pain). And it makes the question what to tolerate substantive and difficult; am I being a cowardly ostrich in ignoring this behavior, or am I exercising wise respect and restraint?
Posted by: Dooble | Jun 17, 2005 10:30:11 AM
Posted by: Aaron S.
I wonder if what Professor Herzog describes as dormatory relativism isn't really just a pragmatic approach to getting by amiably with one's peers because they inevitably are a mosaic of ideologies and lifestyles all forced into tight living quarters. Perhaps this is just a form of toleration, although not the type that Andrew Jason Cohen details.
Dormatory relativism does not work when certain ideological minority groups feel threatened and endangered in virtue of being a minority group. They demand respect which often translates into a desire for others to be uncritical of their beliefs. Every gesture and murmur is quickly read-into and deciphered as an attack or some subtle tactic against them. One wonders if they actually seek to reacquire the status of the early Christians, because there is power in being perceived as persecuted.
Posted by: Aaron S. | Jun 17, 2005 11:26:40 AM
Posted by: JeffS
Well, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur could not have said it better – or maybe it’s a tie. Only here’s the thing: you’ve already won. Dorm Relativism has replaced the clashing worldviews of the 60s as the new mode of close quarters interaction between ideological foes. In fact, the trend towards particularistic identification (“I’m going to Heaven, so who cares if you end up in hell? Just please keep the floor clean while you’re in my way. Thanks.”) on today’s universities has been well reported.
And the result of dorm relativism? …Voila! Today our political camps live side by side, arguing furiously past each other, because they are not in the least bit interested in persuading one-another or understanding how, why, on earth one can hold such “crazy” fundamentalist conservative or “repulsive” decadent liberal views or whatever. But to transcend this give-a-crap mentality would require actually having it out – confronting your suite mate or classmate (politely) about why she holds views you find abhorrent. In other words, caring about her as a real person and not an obstacle in the hallway or a “constituency” to outvote. And we don’t do that anymore, lest an argument break out. Live and let live. But there’s a glimmer of hope: the atheist who struck up an argument about saying grace. Not exactly the stuff songs are made of, but it’s a start.
Posted by: JeffS | Jun 17, 2005 11:48:16 AM
Posted by: Aaron S.
ah! I think I've finally hit on my objection in a less verbose manner. Is there an appreciable difference between Dormatory Relativism and good-neighborliness?
Posted by: Aaron S. | Jun 17, 2005 12:35:33 PM
Posted by: murky
But what about the PC fantasy: Your dorm mate is the son of a despot and going off to the School of the Americas upon graduation. Oughtn't you to make it your concern what he thinks about poor and indigineous peoples, human rights, etc? (I guess this is a version of passing young Hitler in a trench in WWI)
Posted by: murky | Jun 17, 2005 12:48:59 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
David V.'s post on the misuses of the term relativism convinced me not so much that relativism is hopeless but that moralism is hopeless.
Even if we aren't relativists and we believe that moral standards exist, it doesn't help us at all because we can't agree about all of our "Fanaticism, Authoritarianism, Intolerance, Moralism, Absolutism and Rigorism".
Its not so much that moral standards don't exist, its that they are impossible. One simple example, wouldn't any moral theory worthy of the name tell us how much of our effort and resources we owe to others and how much to ourselves?
How are we ever going to figure that one out? Isn't the root of many of our politcal differences due to different views of what we owe our fellow travelers ( some say nothing, some say a little, some say a lot.)
In mathematical terms, David V. has offered an existence proof of moral standards( well, we can define it and we believe in it), when what we need is an algorithm for defining its content.
Is there any pragmatic difference between moral relativity and moral scepticism about moral knowledge?
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 2:25:01 PM
Posted by: tristero
"It ["de gustibus non est disputandum"] helps you sleep peacefully knowing that the unmarried couple down the hall are probably having sex in a position you find revolting."
Don, my problem for the longest time was not being able to sleep because the unmarried couple down the hall was having sex in a position I could only envy.
But seriously, perhaps somewhere earlier you explained what's so bad about all this because you make no case here that "de gustibus non est disputandum" is so awful (and "dormitory relativism??" Talk about rhetorically painting your opponent into a corner! That's just about as bad as branding "scientific" creationists IDiots, as a thoroughly impolite commentator did not so long ago, to universal disgust). I'm not saying such a case can't be made. I'm simply saying you haven't made one here. Nor have you made a case that on a personal level, this kind of live and let live attitude about your neighbors is such an awful way to run/decide one's life most of the time.
Sure, there are limits and we can all think of examples. My favorite is Leo Strauss's only great comment: "If everything is relative, then cannibalism is just a matter of taste." But that doesn't invalidate the general principle: certainly, I don't think everything's relative, but most decisions that humans make with their lives are nothing I need to judge as good or bad. "Whatever floats your boat" in no way implies a disinclination to make moral decisions when they need to be made.* It simply means that the present topic - preferred flavor, preferred gender of spouse, religious observation - doesn't require a moral judgment or opinion. Therefore, simply because I couldn't care less what my neighbors are doing in their non-connubial boudoir, that in no way means I don't care, and passionately so, about recent egregious breeches of the Geneva Convenvtion regarding torture sanctioned by the highest government officials.**
In fact, I think I could probably make a case that it is the ability to distinguish between behavior that clearly rises to the level of moral decisiveness and behavior that doesn't that defines what we mean by character.
*Unless of course you're a literalist, in which case you will have a lot of problems with that phrase before you address the relativism issue, beginning with what boat floating has to do with morality.
**Okay, alleged egregious breeches, but - just between us? - we all know the military's been torturing and murdering a little too much for comfort. Hey! I'm talking about Mugabe. Who did you think I meant?
Posted by: tristero | Jun 17, 2005 3:39:58 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
Tristero,
So, all the supporters and appeasers of slavery over the years, Aristotle included, were men of bad character?
Or does it only show bad character when there is a "live" possibility of changing a practice?
I'll reveal my low character but saying it makes perfect sense to me to speak of cannibals of low character and cannibals of high character. Cannabalism is a matter of taste, character is not.
Character, by one definition, is moral or ethical strength. In other words, character shows courage in moral matters, not just moral discernment.
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 4:12:46 PM
Posted by: janet
This argument is very similar to one I made during a conversation a few weeks ago. The key distinction I made was between respecting other people's opinions or behavior, and treating other people with respect.
In a pluralistic society, the on-going conversation should not be about how to promote tolerance per se, but on which types of behaviors are the business of the community as a whole and which types are not. For example, I might disapprove of the way you raise your children, but unless you're abusing them I'm not empowered to interfere. (Attempts at persuasion are another matter.) The question then becomes, what constitutes abuse, and how does a pluralistic society agree on what constitutes abuse?
Posted by: janet | Jun 17, 2005 4:19:13 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
Isn't the whole point that they don't.
That is what has the moderates and liberals completely freaked out about the fanatics. That is why David V. is obsessive about universalism.
The idea of a mulitplicity of societies with differing moralities in the same geographic space simultaneously having "ultimate" legitimacy is completely foreign to them. They have a hard time giving up the evolution of the state and the monopoly on the legitimate use of force that goes with it.
To the fanatics, nasty, brutish and short lives don't seem as bad universalism. The fanatics may still be a small minority, but who can argue that they currently have the wind at their back.
Why else are they such a topic of conversation?
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 4:33:53 PM
Posted by: tristero
As for your main point, of course it's true that "de gustibus non est disputandum" can't address effectively the world's most intractable problems. You don't blame a screwdriver because it won't do awl you want. (sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)
But, more importantly, because we're actually seeing it in action, neither does "in loco parentis" work well, as the Defense and State Department are slowly learning (and they're getting this useful education on my tax dollars, mind you). You would think this would be patently obvious, but apparently it is not to the fine minds that determine US foreign and domestic policy.
For example, the doctrine of pre-emptive unilateralism (aka, PU) was declared an official US foreign policy position. The Bush administration - whose main reality-based justification for invading Iraq is now thorougly discredited (ie preventing wmd goiing to terrorists) - has fallen back entirely on America's manifest destiny to give everyone our cooties - excuse me, I meant spread democracy - as the main excuse. In short, the present administration is treating the rest of the world like a pack of obnoxious, uncontrollable freshmen whose behavior they must strickly limit and proscribe. It works with the world exactly as it did on my freshman class: poorly.
Given a choice between dormitory relativism and Bush's "in loco parentis", the choice is obvious: Neither.
Far more subtle intellectual tools are needed to address the problems we need to deal with. Fortunately such tools exist. Unfortunately, no one seems to be capable of wielding them. The most important tool is what Raymond Aron called in his masterpiece, Peace and War, "prudence," essentially steering a middle course between the Scylla of realism and the Charybdis of idealism, knowing full well that for all its intellectual inconsistencies, it beats every alternative.
Granted Aron is dated. But a little bit of prudent behavior from the Bush administration is long overdue, both abroad and at home. It is something also our christianist friends should also consider as an alternative to their lust for worldly political power. And as a rule of thumb in our personal lives, the social code of the dorms combined with a healthy dose of prudence sounds like a pretty decent start towards constructing a fine personal morality. Add some God-talk, 'cause it can't hurt and may actually do some good - the brand's unimportant - and keep the punishing parents in reserve for only when you absolutely need them, which is not very often.
And then quit worrying about all the contradictions this creates and get on with your life.
Posted by: tristero | Jun 17, 2005 4:40:24 PM
Posted by: tristero
"So, all the supporters and appeasers of slavery over the years, Aristotle included, were men of bad character?"
I'm sure he was kind to dogs. What's your point? That people are complicated and character multi-faceted and partially determined by historical context? I so admit. And?
Posted by: tristero | Jun 17, 2005 4:43:55 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
tristero:
And so we should quit complaining about fanatics, that's all.
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 4:52:38 PM
Posted by: tristero
mtnmarty: I don't see how that follows from anything I've said. In fact, I said just the opposite, that when it matters, you make a moral judgment and that much human behavior doesn't rise to the level where a moral judgment is called for. In fact, what I'm saying is that refusing to give in to fanatics is all of a piece with that.
As for your point about character, clearly the one definition you bring up simply can not be complete (nor is mine, duh; add the clause "is part of what" before the word "defines" if that floats your own boat better). By your definition Mohammed Atta was a man of character because he and his supporters surely felt he "showed courage in moral matters."
Arguing whether Mr. Atta showed character implies that discussions of character either are pretty pointless or your definition is quite incomplete. Now, I would happily agree with the former but for the fact that the right wing makes a huge to do about character and that they have it and the rest of the world doesn't.
So I assert that it shows considerable character either to ignore prudes or get morally outraged when they try to impose their own sexual priggishness on the rest of us. And I'll leave it to others to tweeze out a formal definition of character that includes these people and utterly excludes Messrs Atta and Falwell. If it can't, it's worthless.
And that's why I brought up what you conflate into "moral discernment" and why I think it's so important.
Posted by: tristero | Jun 17, 2005 6:16:23 PM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Sure, there are limits and we can all think of examples. My favorite is Leo Strauss's only great comment: "If everything is relative, then cannibalism is just a matter of taste."
Which reminds me of the cannibal who became a hermit because he was just fed up with people.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Jun 17, 2005 6:26:26 PM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Okay, I’ll, um, weigh in seriously here for a moment to agree both that relativism as Mr. Velleman defined it in an earlier post is incoherent and useless and also that normative discourse has to seriously address autonomy and rights. But as Mr. Herzog queried in a different thread recently, then what?
Isn’t ‘dormitory relativism’ also just a lazy sort of moral skepticism; that is, not so much an incoherent “everybody’s right” as it is a vague “nobody’s right because it’s the concept ‘right’ that is incoherent”?
No theory with which I am acquainted purporting to establish moral judgments objectively and extrinsically to the purely contingent, shared positive morality of most people most of the time withstands the skeptic’s or, for that matter, the sociopath’s challenge; namely, why should I accept any claim of autonomy or rights on your part? “I understand,” the sociopath (or philosopher) continues, “that you and yours have these shared moral views but they’re frankly alien to me. I understand that it might occasionally be in my self-interest for me to play along, too. But why when nobody’s looking and I’m sure to get away with it shouldn’t I do whatever the hell I want to do?”
It seems to me that all we can do is declare such people simply outside the moral realm and impose our will on them. That solves our practical problem but it doesn’t answer the question. It merely makes us the, ahem, Moral Majority.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Jun 17, 2005 7:06:28 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
So, D.A. what about the possibility that a rising moral majority in the world that believes that freedom of religion is a bad thing and decides to oppose its will on you.
Or, will you confess the majority "faith" whatever that majority happens to be?
I'm thinking of a modern Antigone that says "these freedom of religion and toleration laws that you have passed, these are not the laws of Zeus. They are not the laws of justice"
We pulled off a "moral majority" of toleration worshippers for a few hundred years, but the forces of religion are waxing in the world, are they not?
Are you ready to RRRRUUUUUMMMMMMBBBLLLLLLEEEE!
Call me outside the moral realm, but if there is going to be an end of the world, wouldn't you just as soon be around to see it?
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 7:25:55 PM
Posted by: mtnmarty
But seriously, D.A. and Tristero,
I just can't see how you can look at history, from the Pharoahs, right up to today, including the Nazi's and still think that "Well, we people of good character really all agree about the important moral issues."
Hogwash.
The war criminals all say exactly the same thing.
Posted by: mtnmarty | Jun 17, 2005 7:52:34 PM
Posted by: Dylan Barrell
I have to agree with mtnmarty...even if you can agree that there is a moral standard you will never be able to agree on the content of that standard...therefore what you end up with is the equivalent of moral relativism.
There is no proof that can be given for the set of actions that are moral or even the set of actions that is immoral there is not even an algorithm that can be used to determine it in the face of ever changing sets of possible actions...
There are merely axioms that must be accepted as starting points from which logical conclusions can be drawn...and the set of axioms you choose (a preference) determines what you will conclude are the set of moral and immoral actions.
Posted by: Dylan Barrell | Jun 17, 2005 10:14:20 PM
Posted by: Dylan Barrell
Sorry forgot the concluding paragraph there...my bad...
So if what you are suggesting Don, is that we discuss the relative (sic) merits of the sets of axioms, then I agree with you.
Posted by: Dylan Barrell | Jun 17, 2005 10:19:46 PM
Posted by: le sequoit
All in all, a relatively half-hearted attempt at fleshing out an argument here.
raspberry sherbet
Posted by: le sequoit | Jun 17, 2005 10:30:18 PM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
mtnmarty:
I said no such thing, nor did I imply any such thing. What I attempted to do was sketch a rationale for what Mr. Herzog calls dormitory relativism that is intellectually defensible. If Mr. Herzog or anyone else around here has an answer to the skeptic's challenge, I await it.
But what counts as the moral realm, in which moral discourse is both possible and necessary, is not demarcated by a continuous linear boundary. Rather, it is roughly defined by many overlapping and often vague borders, like a Venn diagram with dozens of domains unclearly marked at the edges. If the skeptic’s argument holds for the individual, even for the sociopath (who is so called, truth be told, precisely because he does dwell outside any of those domains), it holds more for those moral judgments that are included only in a single or a very few domains – the so-called fringe beliefs, etc., and even more for those merely in a substantial minority. How do we decide which of these is right and which is wrong?
Unless and until we have a better account of what it is we are doing when we are engaged in moral discourse and a better sense of what counts in determining whether a moral judgment is correct or not, it seems to me (it is my opinion, to use Mr. Herzog’s disfavored phrase) that those ‘relativist’ dorm residents are on firmer intellectual ground than we might wish to believe.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | Jun 17, 2005 11:43:10 PM