Theseus’ ship is a philosophical thought experiment that asks what happens if you take a ship, replace it piece by piece until none of the original pieces are left. Is it the same ship, or is it a different one?
Now imagine the following response: “It depends. Is the ship seaworthy?”
This response is a bit absurd, because clearly the question does not depend on whether the ship is seaworthy. A ship may still be the same ship while falling into disrepair, or perhaps the ship was never seaworthy in the first place. And on the other hand, you could have another ship which is also seaworthy but is nonetheless a different ship. We may disagree on how to answer the question about Theseus’ ship, but surely whether the ship is seaworthy is besides the point.
Nonetheless, this seems to be the way people think about many categories. A laudatory category is one whose definition has become intertwined with the question of “is it good?” A pejorative category is one whose definition has become intertwined with the question “is it bad?” Let’s talk about a few examples.
Are video games art?
In video game criticism, one of our favorite dead horses to beat is the question of whether video games are art. People are particularly fond of pointing to that time in the 2000s that Roger Ebert said that video games aren’t art. The main thrust of Ebert’s argument is that video games just aren’t good enough to be art.
To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.
I have to ask, why only compare to the works of “great” dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists, and composers? What about mediocre poetry, does that not also count as art? If I wanted to determine whether a hot dog is a kind of sandwich, wouldn’t you find it strange if I insisted on only comparing hot dogs to the “great” sandwiches?
In this argument, “art” is being treated as a laudatory category. To Ebert, art is the good stuff. In order to determine whether video games are art, he compares it to the good stuff. And Ebert isn’t alone in doing that. When people try to argue that video games are art, they routinely trot out examples of games that they think exemplify the good stuff. Because really it’s not an argument about definitions, it’s an argument over the legitimacy of video games as a medium.
The problem with using “art” as a laudatory category, is that it renders the whole question incoherent. Obviously, the good stuff is subjective. The stuff you like is art to you, but if I don’t like it, then it’s not art to me. At the same time, we’re committed to certain base assumptions, such as “the stuff in an art museum is art”. But what if I don’t like art museums?
Using art as a laudatory category restricts how we can even think about the question. For instance, I prefer to take an expansive view of art. Art that’s used to make money is still art, and that’s why commercial films are art. That also means advertisements are art, like what you see on billboards. Architecture is one of the classical art forms, so why not also the design of my shirt, my mug, and my mouse? Art, all of it. You don’t need to agree with me, but you can see how, under this perspective, I cannot see art as a laudatory category. Obviously I think plenty of art is bad. Video games are art, that’s always been obvious, but that doesn’t actually lend any greater legitimacy to the medium.
What is feminism? and other political questions
I started with “art” because it’s a relatively non-political example, but most of the best examples I can think of are political categories. In politics, people are quite committed to the idea that their own political ideology is the good stuff, and the stuff that isn’t good doesn’t count.
One of the more controversial arguments I’ve ever made was that TERFs are (sadly) feminists. And for the record, I changed my mind about that. I do think some feminists in decades past have been TERFs, but I no longer think this is true of the modern TERF/Gender Critical movement. They don’t meaningfully draw upon the feminist tradition, they have more in common with conservative movements and organizations, and many of them don’t think of themselves as feminists.
Either way, I am of the opinion that it is a meaningful question. Because to me, it is entirely possible for a feminist movement to go bad. It’s undeniable if you take any sort of historical perspective. First wave feminism was one of the main forces for US prohibition. In second wave feminism, there were major disputes about lesbianism, porn, and sex work. As an ace activist, I have on several occasions disagreed with modern sex-positive feminism. To me, feminism is a social movement and tradition. Feminism is not a laudatory category.
Pejorative categories are also common in politics. The atheist movement commonly took “religion” to be a pejorative category, resulting in some truly incoherent takes on what is or is not a religion. I’d hear atheists say various conservative ideologies were religions, or they’d say UU or certain eastern religions don’t count. People who didn’t like atheist activism seemed to pick up on this usage, and turn it around to argue that atheism was its own religion. And like, some religions actually can be atheistic, but it doesn’t make any sense to say atheism itself is a religion, and atheistic religions are not automatically bad just because they’re religions. You want to argue that something is bad, just argue that it’s bad, please skip the totally unnecessary step where we try to fit it into an increasingly incoherent category.
If you want to see what this looks like from the outside, consider how conservatives today use “woke”. It’s obviously a pejorative category for liberal stuff they don’t like, but they don’t want to admit it. The result is some embarrassingly bad definitions that don’t match their own usage.
My refusal to accept laudatory and pejorative categories makes me disloyal. I am not committed to feminism or leftism or social justice per se. That which is good in feminism is good because it’s good; it’s not good because it’s feminist. If it stops being good but continues being feminist, I’m on to the next thing. Nobody likes disloyalty in politics, and perhaps that’s why laudatory categories are so persistent. But the way I see it, the political landscape shifts significantly given enough time, and I want to be able to adapt to it.
TL;DR
There are many categories that people seem to define as “things that are good” or “things that are bad”. This is particularly common in political labels. There are several problems with this: 1) The definition is incoherent, since people disagree on what’s good or bad. 2) People use it in combination with other definitions, making unstated assumptions about what’s good or bad. 3) People generally won’t admit that they are doing this.
i feel like marcus would dig this one. really puts a lot of the arguments we have on internets into perspective.
Yeah, this kind of thing is everywhere- people’s actual intention to argue that some thing is good or bad, but instead the words they use are arguing about if the thing belongs in some certain category or not, and there’s an unspoken assumption that being in that category is inherently good or bad.
I see this a lot in campaigns to help encourage women in their self-esteem- “all women are beautiful”/”all body types are beautiful” etc. It’s arguing against the idea that “women only have worth if they are beautiful, and you are not, therefore you should feel bad about yourself” but it only challenges the 2nd premise and not the 1st. How about we challenge the first part, like why do women need to be “beautiful” in order to have value?
Lots of examples from Christianity too. Christians claiming that other Christians aren’t “real Christians”- Evangelicals are all about judging who is and who isn’t a “real Christian” but I just don’t see the point of that any more. Also arguing about if something is “biblical” or not- sure lots of things are in the bible, but that’s not what they mean by “biblical”, they’re using it to mean “there are the CORRECT rules we are supposed to follow.” Or claiming that some beliefs they disagree with are “pagan”- they’re using the word “pagan” to mean it’s *bad*, it has nothing to do with what actual pagans actually believe.
Or, another example, when someone figures out they’re autistic (or some related label like that) and they find it’s very helpful in understanding themself, and then they tell their friends, and their friends are like “no you shouldn’t label yourself that way” because they’re understanding it as an inherently bad thing.
Or, people who claim that “you can’t support [something] if you don’t also support [something else]”- like “you can’t support gay rights if you don’t also support trans rights.” … why not? (Surely there have been people who have made contributions to gay rights and also had bad opinions about trans people…) What they’re really trying to argue is “The reasons that *I* support gay rights are the *correct* reasons, and those reasons apply to trans rights too- if you support gay rights for different reasons which don’t logically transfer to trans rights, then you are supporting gay rights in the *wrong* way and that doesn’t really count as supporting gay rights.” Like… okay yeah it’s valid to discuss the reasons behind it, and whether those reasons make sense or not, but to claim that they don’t *actually* support something because you don’t like their reasons for that support, that just seems like not worth arguing about.
Yes, so much yes. Another example would be GMOs, many of the environmental groups argue against them, put them in a ‘bad’ category, because they are concerned primarily about the concentration of food production in the hands of a few corporations. This becomes obvious when they try to argue against Golden Rice, it isn’t owned by a corporation, the patent specifically allows farmers to breed GR with their local varieties, and doesn’t charge, which means because the environmental groups are actually arguing against the concentration of power in the hands of a few multinational agro-businesses they don’t have a coherent argument about Golden Rice, but still oppose it because they’ve put GMOs in the ‘bad’ category. It’s far easier to argue against GMO’s specifically than against global corporatisation of the food supply. Oh and they conveniently ignore GMOs that produce insulin, growth hormone etc.. I have had some bitter arguments about that one with one of my brothers and his refusal to see what he is doing depresses me, as generally I’d have said he was rational.
I think what your saying is largely true but your also conflating labels and movements a bit. If a person doesn’t believe in a god they remain an atheist even if they don’t want to be associated with the atheism movement.
@JM,
I’m very attentive to the difference between “atheist” and “atheist movement”, and I’m deliberate about exactly when I refer to one or the other. You’ll have to be more specific about your disagreement.
This is what set me off. I have dealt with too many people who became upset at the atheistic movement and decide they would not identify as atheists and objected to others calling them atheists. The first is reasonable, the second is your choice and the third is wrong. Your statement sounds a little too much like the same thing.
Thinking about this, different words and movements have different connections. Feminism is defined by the movement as much as the word and it’s probably best to give up the label if you give up on the movement even if you still agree with the ideals. Atheism is almost exactly the opposite in that regards, it’s a label first and it’s incidental that there is a movement that uses that word as a name.
@JM,
Okay, but that sentence doesn’t refer to atheism at all, so I don’t know what you’re on about.
Oh, okay, I get what you’re saying, but as you noted there are differences in how “atheist” and “feminist” are constructed.
I think that’s the result of a deliberate strategy in atheism. People spent a lot of time emphasizing that atheism had a minimal, broadly inclusive definition, which did not necessarily require advocacy or alignment with any particular social movement.
There is a parallel tactic in feminism, to give it a broad definition like “if you believe women should be treated equally then you’re a feminist”. But I just don’t buy it. I don’t think that’s sufficient, and I don’t think it’s descriptive of actual usage.