"No, it wouldn't make you worth any more. To make this more concrete, are you seriously suggesting that given the choice between saving the life of someone with bad skin and saving the life of an otherwise identical person with good skin, you could cite skin quality as your justification for choosing to save the one over the other?"
Having to choose between any two people in that situation would be difficult. This is getting rather far afield, though.
"I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues."
If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention. Would you suggest a better way of judging people?
No it isn't. It's directly addressing your claim that good skin makes a person worth more. If you really believed that, you would not find your choice in that situation to be difficult at all.
I think that your claim is just hard-headed posing. You don't really believe any such thing, but for some reason you seem to think that you ought to believe it, or that professing to believe it makes you sound objective and rational. It doesn't; it makes you sound crazy.
>If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention.
The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that.
"your claim that good skin makes a person worth more"
It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.
"The taboo is on judging people in the same way that we judge products, services and merchandise. And quite right too -- there should be a taboo on doing that."
No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
>It was a passing thought, not a claim. Pay it no more attention.
Ok, so then I direct you to what I was saying originally:
"the OP has 'good skin' as one of his indicators of quality -- he's clearly not talking about quality in a deep sense, unless you think that having good skin makes you worth more as a human being!"
If you've changed your mind on the issue of good skin adding to a person's worth, then perhaps you'll now agree with me on this point.
>No, it extends further than that. Even judging people on moral grounds is condemned as "judgmental".
Not in my experience. I hear people judging others all the time without being called out on it.
Having to choose between any two people in that situation would be difficult. This is getting rather far afield, though.
"I suppose it might look from your perspective as if there is some kind of weird "taboo" on judging people, but really it's just that you're doing it wrong. People aren't valued according to a weighted sum of their qualities and virtues."
If you haven't noticed a massive taboo against judging people, either we live in very different cultures or you haven't been paying very close attention. Would you suggest a better way of judging people?