É digno?

In his 2010 book The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows that arguments are not what change people’s minds on moral questions — honor is. The end of dueling, or Chinese foot-binding, or the Atlantic slave trade, did not come about, Appiah writes, because of new or more convincing arguments — the arguments against these practices had been in place, sometimes for centuries, before most people were turned against them. What changed was the “honor world” — the group of people who understand and acknowledge the same codes of behavior. Dueling was illegal before it came to seem dishonorable, in part because a newly created popular press brought the aristocracy’s honor code into discussion in lower class circles. This exposure to ridicule or mimicry put a new complexion on a practice that had persisted despite all logical argument against it. 

If debate doesn’t actually change minds, the rhetorical power of social media networks may work best as a way to insist on a broadening of our honor worlds. In the behavior of social media users posting under their real names, identity — contrary to logic-proponents’ assumptions — may be among the strongest persuasive tools. If an honor world is about acknowledging the same codes of behavior, an expanding sense of one’s world can bring unquestioned values or practices into sharp relief. Most Canadians, for instance, would not consider it honorable to rob someone of their land or to break a treaty. (...)

It’s possible for digital interactions to enlarge our honor worlds by bringing us into closer contact with one another. As novels propose moral arguments through character development, digital spaces are best designed not for debating universals, but for developing our capacity to identify through difference. Interacting with a wide range of people with differing worldviews and experiences in digital spaces means more subconscious absorption of alternatives to the life we know. The idea of “debate” imposes an adversarial framework on online interactions, as well as privileging logic as a tool of discovery.

Linda Besner, Faulty Logic.