Justice vs. Morality (UV video)

[brimstoneSalad]

Of course, but my point is that I don't think it's dishonest.

When there are no inherent logical problems with any number of the commonly understood definitions (as equity, equality, equal opportunity, or as playing by the rules in terms of what is due in accordance with law), what's the basis for preferring an uncommon one that most people wouldn't recognize, that already has other words, and that doesn't enhance conversation on the subject?

There's a good reason a word like "literally" should not mean "figuratively". By doing that, we basically lose the function of the word "literally".
I think the same applies to justice as a general concept.

There's disagreement about its meaning, but mainly within a general range of closely related concepts. I don't think a consequentialist one fits in there anywhere.

I'm not so sure a just outcome needs to mean an equitable one. For example, take the story of King Solomon's "splitting the baby" as a traditional caution against fairness in doing justice.

Solomon used it as a trick to figure out who the real mother was (the true owner according to law).
Although as king, probably everything he said was justice. This was in the era of divine command and divine right. Before modern concepts of equality before the law, although they were treated equally (the two women), Solomon just needed information about who the proper owner was.
I don't think it was a caution against fairness in justice specifically.

[inator]

There's a good reason a word like "literally" should not mean "figuratively". By doing that, we basically lose the function of the word "literally".
I think the same applies to justice as a general concept.

I think this applies to concepts like equity, fairness, equality, merit, rightness. Social and distributive justice are defined in any of these terms, that's why there's so much philosophical and, by extension, political debate surrounding it. The concept has a significant moral dimension in its connotation.

Distributive justice
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justice-distributive/

Arguments about which frameworks and/or resulting distributions are morally preferable constitute the topic of distributive justice. Principles of distributive justice are therefore best thought of as providing moral guidance for the political processes and structures that affect the distribution of economic benefits and burdens in societies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributive_justice

Distributive justice considers whether the distribution of goods among the members of society at a given time is subjectively acceptable.
Not all advocates of consequentialist theories are concerned with an equitable society. What unites them is the mutual interest in achieving the best possible results or, in terms of the example above, the best possible distribution of wealth.

Social justice
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-minimum/#WhySocMin

we shall review a number of influential theories of social justice asking, with respect to each theory, what support (if any) it can give to the case for enactment. The five theories to be reviewed are: utilitarianism; libertarianism; left-libertarianism; egalitarian liberalism; and democratic theories of social justice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice#Philosophical_perspectives

Many authors criticize the idea that there exists an objective standard of social justice. Moral relativists deny that there is any kind of objective standard for justice in general. Non-cognitivists, moral skeptics, moral nihilists, and most logical positivists deny the epistemic possibility of objective notions of justice.

It's just that much of the discussion about what we owe one another in the social context is influenced by the work of Rawls, so his theory of justice as fairness is currently the most influential. And he only equated it to fairness because he belonged to the social contract moral tradition.

Although as king, probably everything he said was justice. This was in the era of divine command and divine right. Before modern concepts of equality before the law, although they were treated equally (the two women), Solomon just needed information about who the proper owner was.
I don't think it was a caution against fairness in justice specifically.

I've heard it used that way, but you're right about the original meaning.
Still, I'd say that the fact that everything he said was justice meant that his decisions were taken to be right, not necessarily equitable or bringing about equality.

[RLRobbins]

One of the most important points that UV conveyed was that it is already hard to convince people to go vegan, so how difficult do you think it'll be if we try to force everybody to be intersectional vegans?
According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality) "It (intersectionality) is the study of what she Crenshaw contends are overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities."
While detestable, discrimination is not as bad as something like murder, so I don't see how the two can be equated. Does the US or Western Europe allow for the enslavement and murder of humans? How many of the less-developed countries around the world allow these crimes to happen?
If you were to go to a country where people did not have the right to freedom, or where it was legal to just murder someone in the street, then the fight against those crimes would be equal to- or maybe more important than- veganism. In the world that all of us live in, we need to prioritise. Anybody who manages to convince people to go vegan is doing a great job - they are actively improving the world much more than those who just wistfully dream of their own vision of paradise. To insist that all vegans ought to be intersectional is crippling the progress of our activism, and i think that is UV's biggest concern.

Social justice is very important to me. Because if consequences matter, then you should care about social inequality, since it produces horrible consequences! (does anyone remember the French Revolution?).

According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice) "Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labour law and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equal opportunity and equality of outcome."
While everybody ought to have the right to a roof over their heads and three healthy meals a day, I don't see how one could expect perfect equality of outcome - it just makes no sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding this, but doesn't equality of outcome mean that a brain surgeon would get paid the same amount as a bartender? (Equal outcome, right?) But the two things are in no way equal: bar-tending requires less effort, less dedication, less expertise, and does not save any lives.

What I think people are really upset with is the "I don't care about justice" claim UV constantly reasserts. Personally, I think she does care about justice, just not the straw man version of it that she seems to want to attack in order to provoke the pro-intersectional vegans.

In none of her videos do I see any evidence of UV provoking "pro-intersectional vegans". She says that she disagrees, and that she wants to focus on the animal lives. That is not a provocation, merely an approach that will allow her to reach more people, effectively saving more lives and benefiting the environment; if more vegans are aware of this, then they can also reach more people, which would lead to more good.
The most important thing in vegan activism is an approach that is attractive to the majority of people.

[NonZeroSum]

One of the most important points that UV conveyed was that it is already hard to convince people to go vegan, so how difficult do you think it'll be if we try to force everybody to be intersectional vegans?

It's a good argument against 'militant' rather than pragmatic intersectionalists, but UV went further than that, her base claim was just the mere identifying as an intersectionalist is bad for veganism, I find this pill hard to swallow, because abolitionists of all stripes have been around for centuries often fighting for overlapping causes for the good of the country they reside in. It’s just that in this last century they’ve started calling themselves internationalists, socialists, anarchists and intersectionalists.

According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality) "It (intersectionality) is the study of what she Crenshaw contends are overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities."
While detestable, discrimination is not as bad as something like murder, so I don't see how the two can be equated. Does the US or Western Europe allow for the enslavement and murder of humans? How many of the less-developed countries around the world allow these crimes to happen?
If you were to go to a country where people did not have the right to freedom, or where it was legal to just murder someone in the street, then the fight against those crimes would be equal to- or maybe more important than- veganism. In the world that all of us live in, we need to prioritise. Anybody who manages to convince people to go vegan is doing a great job - they are actively improving the world much more than those who just wistfully dream of their own vision of paradise.

You can believe in intersectional causes and decide never to reveal your politics to anyone and only ever discuss veganism with someone who you think is receptive to science based ethical questions because that’s the language you feel most adept at using and convincing others, where you feel you can be most useful.

Other people might be born into a historically segregated area where they feel most adept at talking about their substandard state school and lack of job opportunities, they can still throw into the mix with audiences that are receptive to arguments for compassion, that it is sad how there is little access to fresh fruit and vegetables in the food desert so everyone ate unhealthily and too much meat, the need for more public money going to better infrastructure planning and community allotment schemes.

Someone who is gay living in a fundamentalist Christian neighbourhood with high teen gay suicide rates, might feel like because they grew up there, they are the best suited to convincing people out of their prejudices, so they can be most useful working on gay rights activism, they can still try to goad the neighbours into eating the mushroom burgers you brought along to their BBQ even if the mere thought of fake meat is an affront to their masculine hunter provider personas.

To insist that all vegans ought to be intersectional is crippling the progress of our activism, and i think that is UV's biggest concern.

Agreed just like it’s good vegan activism not to make vegetarians feel like shit, but is the bad actions of a few, really a good reason to dismiss intersectionality as a whole? like what Jacklyn Glenn did with vegans?

You could make the same argument that the general population has an unfavourable view of vegans, so all vegans should just abandon that lifestyle for vegetarianism, pack your bags people, we’re going underground, don’t you dare let anyone think you’re a vegan, you better chew on those chicken wings if you go round to friends house and get offered them also, can’t have anyone thinking you’re ungracious, public sympathy wasn’t ready for you, reducitarian is the only pragmatic course.

Social justice is very important to me. Because if consequences matter, then you should care about social inequality, since it produces horrible consequences! (does anyone remember the French Revolution?).

According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice) "Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labour law and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equal opportunity and equality of outcome."
While everybody ought to have the right to a roof over their heads and three healthy meals a day, I don't see how one could expect perfect equality of outcome - it just makes no sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding this, but doesn't equality of outcome mean that a brain surgeon would get paid the same amount as a bartender? (Equal outcome, right?) But the two things are in no way equal: bar-tending requires less effort, less dedication, less expertise, and does not save any lives.

As with UV thinking she was a speciesist and then learning she wasn’t because it was about unnecessary biases; effort, dedication and expertise are all values you should take into consideration when assigning someone’s work value, these aren’t irrational biases. Paying bankers millions of dollars bonuses because they might move to another company if they didn’t get what the system we have now recommends, that is an unfair bias because it’s a bad argument, the right thing to do is change the system, to support the brain surgeon for doing a more useful job than the stock market speculator skimming off capital.

What I think people are really upset with is the "I don't care about justice" claim UV constantly reasserts. Personally, I think she does care about justice, just not the straw man version of it that she seems to want to attack in order to provoke the pro-intersectional vegans.

In none of her videos do I see any evidence of UV provoking "pro-intersectional vegans". She says that she disagrees, and that she wants to focus on the animal lives. That is not a provocation, merely an approach that will allow her to reach more people, effectively saving more lives and benefiting the environment; if more vegans are aware of this, then they can also reach more people, which would lead to more good.
The most important thing in vegan activism is an approach that is attractive to the majority of people.

The problem is it’s somewhat solipsistic to believe because her approach works for her niche channel that means everyone else has to talk in hard consequentialist terms. Also to not to let anyone know they believe in other causes or connect them to veganism. Sometimes boldly standing your ground as an abolitionist / liberationist (yes as well as a welfarist), is good for provoking debate on a panel or on the street where emotional protest narratives work.

[brimstoneSalad]

I think this applies to concepts like equity, fairness, equality, merit, rightness.

I agree with all but the last one; I think that's antiquated (like Solomon, or theistic Justice where anything they do is just) and not relevant to modern definitions as people understand them.

Social and distributive justice are defined in any of these terms, that's why there's so much philosophical and, by extension, political debate surrounding it. The concept has a significant moral dimension in its connotation.

I think it did and may have in the past, but I don't think that's something that modern advocates of social justice would recognize, and I think it deviates from what the common definition has settled into quite substantially.

There are times and places to wage wars over definitions, perhaps, but given the lion's share of attention and influence on justice has been deontological or related to equality/equity, I don't think we have a strong footing here

If we try to redefine, or reclaim if you want, "justice", the kind of behavior and arguments used would be the same sort I would criticize adversaries for as dishonest (like, as I mentioned, if they tried to claim "harm" meant a violation of rights, or something like that regardless of interests. Or even defined interests more abstractly insisting that all beings have interests in rights.).

I've heard it used that way, but you're right about the original meaning.
Still, I'd say that the fact that everything he said was justice meant that his decisions were taken to be right, not necessarily equitable or bringing about equality.

At the time perhaps, but that's antiquitated. It had nothing to do with good consequences, and everything to do with divine command and divine right of kings.

[inator]

If we try to redefine, or reclaim if you want, "justice", the kind of behavior and arguments used would be the same sort I would criticize adversaries for as dishonest (like, as I mentioned, if they tried to claim "harm" meant a violation of rights, or something like that regardless of interests. Or even defined interests more abstractly insisting that all beings have interests in rights.).

You see, the way you feel about 'harm', I feel about 'justice', though less strongly.
Harm is redefined within any distinct belief system too. The most popular one right now is probably harm as hedonistic suffering in the sense of negative mental states. I think it's important to define these important words according to the framework we promote. Because others do too.
If the most popular understanding of 'harm' became the violation of rights, I wouldn't just discard the word as wrong. We'd eventually run out of useful terminology that way, and we'd have to talk about everything in the technical terms of interest violation. But I guess we can just disagree on this.

[inator]

In the world that all of us live in, we need to prioritise. Anybody who manages to convince people to go vegan is doing a great job - they are actively improving the world much more than those who just wistfully dream of their own vision of paradise. To insist that all vegans ought to be intersectional is crippling the progress of our activism, and i think that is UV's biggest concern.

Well said.

While everybody ought to have the right to a roof over their heads and three healthy meals a day, I don't see how one could expect perfect equality of outcome - it just makes no sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding this, but doesn't equality of outcome mean that a brain surgeon would get paid the same amount as a bartender? (Equal outcome, right?) But the two things are in no way equal: bar-tending requires less effort, less dedication, less expertise, and does not save any lives.

I think she assumes another definition of social justice. Some conceptualizations are based on equality of outcomes, others on equality of opportunity or meritocracy, some are rights-based, and others are concerned with the best social outcomes.

The most important thing in vegan activism is an approach that is attractive to the majority of people.

It should also be logically consistent, so that, once converted, the belief will be bulletproof against criticism. Emotional approaches, which tend to be effective initially, are often not enough to keep someone vegan. A consistent system of ethical beliefs (and proper nutritional advice) is key.

[RLRobbins]

One of the most important points that UV conveyed was that it is already hard to convince people to go vegan, so how difficult do you think it'll be if we try to force everybody to be intersectional vegans?

It's a good argument against 'militant' rather than pragmatic intersectionalists, but UV went further than that, her base claim was just the mere identifying as an intersectionalist is bad for veganism, I find this pill hard to swallow, because abolitionists of all stripes have been around for centuries often fighting for overlapping causes for the good of the country they reside in. It’s just that in this last century they’ve started calling themselves internationalists, socialists, anarchists and intersectionalists.

While I agree that anybody and everybody should be vegan, and that the overall goal is more important than any minor differences like labels, the problem here is that most people respond negatively when they hear the term "intersectional" being used - in which case, it really is bad for veganism as a whole. Of course I realise that most people are put off when they hear the term "vegan" as well, which is what makes fighting for veganism so hard in the first place. Adding "intersectional" to "vegan" makes people even less likely to listen, which does therefore harm the movement.

According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality) "It (intersectionality) is the study of what she Crenshaw contends are overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Intersectionality is the idea that multiple identities intersect to create a whole that is different from the component identities."
While detestable, discrimination is not as bad as something like murder, so I don't see how the two can be equated. Does the US or Western Europe allow for the enslavement and murder of humans? How many of the less-developed countries around the world allow these crimes to happen?
If you were to go to a country where people did not have the right to freedom, or where it was legal to just murder someone in the street, then the fight against those crimes would be equal to- or maybe more important than- veganism. In the world that all of us live in, we need to prioritise. Anybody who manages to convince people to go vegan is doing a great job - they are actively improving the world much more than those who just wistfully dream of their own vision of paradise.

You can believe in intersectional causes and decide never to reveal your politics to anyone and only ever discuss veganism with someone who you think is receptive to science based ethical questions because that’s the language you feel most adept at using and convincing others, where you feel you can be most useful.

Other people might be born into a historically segregated area where they feel most adept at talking about their substandard state school and lack of job opportunities, they can still throw into the mix with audiences that are receptive to arguments for compassion, that it is sad how there is little access to fresh fruit and vegetables in the food desert so everyone ate unhealthily and too much meat, the need for more public money going to better infrastructure planning and community allotment schemes.

Someone who is gay living in a fundamentalist Christian neighbourhood with high teen gay suicide rates, might feel like because they grew up there, they are the best suited to convincing people out of their prejudices, so they can be most useful working on gay rights activism, they can still try to goad the neighbours into eating the mushroom burgers you brought along to their BBQ even if the mere thought of fake meat is an affront to their masculine hunter provider personas.

I fully agree. Adapt your activism to your audience.

To insist that all vegans ought to be intersectional is crippling the progress of our activism, and i think that is UV's biggest concern.

Agreed just like it’s good vegan activism not to make vegetarians feel like shit, but is the bad actions of a few, really a good reason to dismiss intersectionality as a whole? like what Jacklyn Glenn did with vegans?

No, the bad actions of a few is not a good reason to dismiss the whole. I get incredibly frustrated at the narrow-minded thought process which brings people to those assumptions. However, nobody should be forced to label themselves a certain way - which, I'm glad to see, is something else that we agree on.

You could make the same argument that the general population has an unfavourable view of vegans, so all vegans should just abandon that lifestyle for vegetarianism, pack your bags people, we’re going underground, don’t you dare let anyone think you’re a vegan, you better chew on those chicken wings if you go round to friends house and get offered them also, can’t have anyone thinking you’re ungracious, public sympathy wasn’t ready for you, reducitarian is the only pragmatic course.

I must have miss-communicated for you to use that argument.
Being vegan is hard, I know this especially well because of the community I live in (I suppose my town might be compared to the stereotypical image of a small town in Texas, where men are seen as effeminate if they don't like the right sports and don't throw some dead flesh on the coals at least once a week) and I never suggested giving up on something which you believe in. What I meant was, when we compare any issue in the civilised world with that of veganism, the vegan cause is more important, and if we want to take any real steps towards saving the animals and (by extension) the planet, we would do well to cater to our audience. What this means is that, if terms like "intersectional" have negative connotations for the majority of people - whether these connotations are accurate or not - then adding them to the vegan cause is detrimental to the goal of saving lives.

According to the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice) "Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labour law and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, equal opportunity and equality of outcome."
While everybody ought to have the right to a roof over their heads and three healthy meals a day, I don't see how one could expect perfect equality of outcome - it just makes no sense. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding this, but doesn't equality of outcome mean that a brain surgeon would get paid the same amount as a bartender? (Equal outcome, right?) But the two things are in no way equal: bar-tending requires less effort, less dedication, less expertise, and does not save any lives.

As with UV thinking she was a speciesist and then learning she wasn’t because it was about unnecessary biases; effort, dedication and expertise are all values you should take into consideration when assigning someone’s work value, these aren’t irrational biases. Paying bankers millions of dollars bonuses because they might move to another company if they didn’t get what the system we have now recommends, that is an unfair bias because it’s a bad argument, the right thing to do is change the system, to support the brain surgeon for doing a more useful job than the stock market speculator skimming off capital.

Again, we fully agree.

In none of her videos do I see any evidence of UV provoking "pro-intersectional vegans". She says that she disagrees, and that she wants to focus on the animal lives. That is not a provocation, merely an approach that will allow her to reach more people, effectively saving more lives and benefiting the environment; if more vegans are aware of this, then they can also reach more people, which would lead to more good.
The most important thing in vegan activism is an approach that is attractive to the majority of people.

The problem is it’s somewhat solipsistic to believe because her approach works for her niche channel that means everyone else has to talk in hard consequentialist terms. Also to not to let anyone know they believe in other causes or connect them to veganism. Sometimes boldly standing your ground as an abolitionist / liberationist (yes as well as a welfarist), is good for provoking debate on a panel or on the street where emotional protest narratives work.

Yes, it works for her, which is why she ought to use that approach. Nobody has to talk in hard consequentialist terms, but they do need to consider what is more likely to work. I became vegan for moral and ethical reasons, but most of the time I never talk about these things because many of the people who are open to actually discussing the vegan lifestyle with me are more concerned with fitness and aesthetics, so I have to explain why meat and dairy is actually bad for them, which means that the issues which I consider to be the most important never even get mentioned because I know that they will have no impact. This does not mean that we should hide our beliefs, only that bringing them up during a discussion on going vegan will most likely be detrimental. Yes, stand your ground when someone confronts you or tries to change you, but don't go around trying to add all your beliefs to your vegan activism. It's already hard enough to convince people to go vegan, so we ought not make it any harder.

[brimstoneSalad]

You see, the way you feel about 'harm', I feel about 'justice', though less strongly.

You think consequentialists should rightly own (or have just as much claim to) Justice but it's being appropriated by dogmatists?

If the most popular understanding of 'harm' became the violation of rights, I wouldn't just discard the word as wrong. We'd eventually run out of useful terminology that way,

Or we would just coin new terminology.

But I guess we can just disagree on this.

Well, it's an empirical question. Is it counter productive, and does it or does it not strike most people as dishonest usage?
Maybe some surveys are in order.

[RLRobbins]

The most important thing in vegan activism is an approach that is attractive to the majority of people.

It should also be logically consistent, so that, once converted, the belief will be bulletproof against criticism. Emotional approaches, which tend to be effective initially, are often not enough to keep someone vegan. A consistent system of ethical beliefs (and proper nutritional advice) is key.

Right, I should have elaborated more. Of course there must be a solid foundation (logic), otherwise everything falls apart.
If we're dealing with, say, a moral person, we show them footage of what really happens in the meat and dairy industry, and then educate them: we do not need these things to survive, in fact look at all these very healthy people who have been vegan for x amount of time. We can branch off into all the other benefits of switching to a vegan lifestyle if we want to (and we must use a completely different approach when speaking to someone who has different concerns, of course), but when dealing with a moral person (if done right) this would be unnecessary. The emotional impact will draw them in; the fact that we survive and thrive on a vegan diet will assure that they remain vegan. Logically, why kill when we don't need to?