#Practical Ethics » Feed Practical Ethics » Comments Feed Practical Ethics » Plausibility and Same-Sex Marriage Comments Feed Bentham and butterflies Practical Ethics -- « Bentham and butterflies Plausibility and Same-Sex Marriage Published January 24, 2015 | By Owen Schaefer In philosophical discussions, we bring up the notion of plausibility a lot. “That’s implausible” is a common form of objection, while the converse “That’s plausible” is a common way of offering a sort of cautious sympathy with an argument or claim. But what exactly do we mean when we claim something is plausible or implausible, and what implications do such claims have? This question was, for me, most recently prompted by a recent pair of blog posts by Justin Weinberg over at Daily Nous on same-sex marriage. In the posts and discussion, Weinberg appears sympathetic to an interesting pedagogical principle: instructors may legitimately exclude, discount or dismiss from discussion positions they take to be implausible.* Further, opposition same-sex marriage is taken to be such an implausible position and thus excludable/discountable/dismissable from classroom debate. Is this a legitimate line of thought? I’m inclined against it, and will try to explain why in this post.** -- The role of implausibility One route is argument by analogy. Weinberg brings up slavery in this context – we’re so confident slavery is wrong, there’s no need to take pro-slavery arguments seriously in the classroom or during debates. Weinberg and others are similarly so confident that same-sex marriage is OK that it should be similarly excludable. I worry this is too exclusionary, though. As philosophers, we often take strong positions on issues; for instance, many deontologists are absolutely convinced that utilitarianism is incorrect due to its narrow value focus, ignorance of central moral issues and absurd implications. But it would be inappropriate for them to exclude utilitarianism from classroom discussion on these grounds, and decline to engage in debate with utilitarians on the grounds that they’re just silly. Perhaps we could differentiate things like utilitarianism’s alleged implausibility from slavery’s (and same-sex marriage’s) by adverting to the latter’s association with bigotry and disrespect (though Weinberg specifically rejects this strategy in comments). Slavery was historically often justified on racist grounds, and some argue same-sex marriage is opposed on homophobic grounds. So the principle would be something like: X is excludable if it is (a) implausible and (b) expresses a bigoted/disrespectful position. Or maybe (b) could be fleshed out in terms of human rights? The idea would be that some ideas are both so unlikely to be true AND harmful that discourse over them is inappropriate. I would say such an exclusionary principle is plausible (see what I did there?) but still misguided. In fact, instructors should be engaging with arguments for even ‘beyond the pale’ institutions like slavery, as well as ‘obviously’ immoral activities like lying and murdering. Understanding why some position is (deeply) misguided can be illuminating, causing – as Mill notes – one’s own considered views to become stronger and more clear in contrast. For example, Hare’s famous Juba and Camaica thought experiments show that utilitarians have to address whether slavery is intrinsically wrong, if so why, and if not how to reconcile that implication with strong contrary intuitions. Even if they ultimately agree we shouldn’t enslave people, their moral theory becomes more clear and well-worked out when pressed to explain why. -- Application to Same-Sex Marriage Debates Just as we should be inclusive about discussion of ‘settled’ issues like slavery and climate change, we should be inclusive when discussing and teaching about same-sex marriage. By engaging with opponents, those who support marriage equality can flesh out what they take marriage to be (an issue recently emphasized by Spencer Case, in response to Weinberg), what is at stake in the political debate and where, exactly, they disagree with interlocutors. Dialectically, this allows for more rigorous and convincing argumentation. Pedagogically, this allows people to properly grasp what is going on in the broad debate, learn about the commitments that go along with various positions and come to their own opinions based on reasoned consideration rather than group-think or rhetoric. If proponents of same-sex marriage are right and opposition is indeed implausible, they should be confident that many benighted opponents will come around when faced with rigorous discussion (as, I believe, has been the case). To be sure, there may be *other* grounds to exclude a topic like same-sex marriage from discussion. It’s not relevant to every class and discussion. And perhaps, if it is a non-issue in society, one could exclude it due to more general irrelevance or obscurity (Weinberg sometimes adverts to this sort of reasoning as well). Student interest, general relevance and practical import are, to my mind, perfectly good grounds for designing a syllabus. And even steering debates away from obscure issues that others in a classroom just don’t care about may be fine. But given that same-sex marriage is such a relevant topic politically at the moment – with the US Supreme Court set to make a landmark decision on the issue in the next year and many nations’ policies in flux – we are not likely at the stage where exclusion of the topic is legitimate on irrelevance or obscurity grounds. But of course, all this applies to the meta-issue of whether and how same-sex marriage should be discussed – that is, we should have a healthy debate over whether or not Weinberg is right. And even by Weinberg’s lights, this is the case – he doesn’t seem to think that support for a decision to engage with same-sex marriage opponents is implausible. Which, in turn, means Weinberg should at least be on board with a classroom discussion and debate (when relevant) over this very issue: should proponents of same-sex marriage seriously engage, in the classroom and beyond, with opponents whose views they find implausible? Though I would answer ‘yes’, I also think this is itself an interesting and worthy topic for discussion and debate. *At least, I take this to be Weinberg’s position – it’s not explicitly stated, and this is what I infer from his comments. Also, notably Weinberg is fine with talking about same-sex marriage opponents’ positions more broadly – but more to explore why they’re so deeply mistaken, rather than inquire as to whether or not they’re correct. It’s the latter sort of open-minded inquiry into veracity that I am interested in here. ** I argue that Weinberg is mistaken to exclude debate over same-sex marriage even if same-sex marriage opposition turns out to be implausible; strictly speaking, I’ll here be neutral on whether such opposition is in fact implausible. IFRAME: http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk%2F2015%2F01%2Fplausibility-and-same-sex-marriage%2F&layout=standard&colorscheme=light&show_faces=false -- * Reddit Posted in Current Affairs, Epistemic Ethics, Owen Schaefer's posts, Political Philosophy, Politics, Professional Ethics, Reflections, Weblogs | Tagged ethics, exclusion, Justin Weinberg, plausibility, Same-sex marriage, teaching 2 Responses to Plausibility and Same-Sex Marriage * Peter English says: January 24, 2015 at 8:10 pm My apologies for focusing only on the plausibility concept and ignoring the same sex marriage topic here… For me, plausibility and implausibility carry very different weights. I am a doctor; and I have to consider evidence as to whether or not a treatment works. -- Recent Posts * Plausibility and Same-Sex Marriage * Bentham and butterflies * Review: Beyond The Abortion Wars, by Charles C. 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