Skepticism, moral realism and applied ethics (2)

 It has been a while since I have last posted. Today I want to do a bit of a follow up on my previous post. I am going to focus specifically on providing details of why I am a moral realist. 

In some sense, the moral realist position is highly intuitive - afterall we very much behave as if moral sentences have genuine force. In other senses the position is highly controversial - it is not exactly how we can access this morality. Before we begin, it is worth first outlining what I take to be the moral realist position and the intended structure of my argument.

 Moral realism:= the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective (mind independant) aspects of reality. The position that ethical sentences can be genuinely true.

 It's worth adding a few clarifications.

Ethical sentences are sentences that involve things like 'ethical goodness', 'moral badness' and so on. One way to frame this is to think that there might be 'ethical properties' and that an ethical sentence is one that involves these ethical properties (with no committment yet as to whether these ethical properties refer to genuine parts of reality). I'll also be using ethical and moral as semantically interchangeable.

Sentences are lexical expressions - they are the things people directly say or write. The content of a sentence is the proposition that it expresses. (We actually rely on a subclass of sentences known as declarative sentences) The same sentence can express different propositions at different contexts (e.g. 'I am here' means a different thing depending on where I am). The same proposition can also be expressed by the same sentence (think about saying the same thing in two different languages). Propositions have truth values (true / false - let's assume a binary system) and the truth values are determined by a satisfaction of certain truth conditions. 

To say that ethical sentences can be genuinely true means that I think ethical sentences express propositions that have truth conditions that could be true. For it to be true means that the ethical properties or other such things involved in an ethical sentence have truth conditions that can be satisfied by objective reality. 

To refine 'can' - I am not saying that all ethical sentences are true. This would be an extreme position (think 'Murder is always ethically right') but also vulnerable to contradictions (Think 'Abortion is right' and 'it is not the case that Abortion is right').

Structure of my argument

My argument is reasonably sophistcated and will be split into two primary parts (this may require multiple posts). The first part will involve an exploration of the alternatives to Moral realism and explaining why I find them unconvincing or undesirable.

The second part will address some of the common reasons why we might be sceptical about moral realism and argue that there are epistemic challenges in many similar and analogous areas that we are less sceptical about. I'm not planning to provide a full defense of moral realism - my goal is to argue that the alternatives are all problematic and that the problems of moral realism are not as bad as people might think.

Part 1: 

Moral realism can be considered the conjoinment of the following separate claims:

i) Cognitive - moral sentences express propositions. Propositions can be true or false and have truth conditions. These truth conditions refer to some aspect of reality and are satisfied if they reflect this aspect of reality.

ii) Possibly true - there exist true moral sentences.

It is worth adding an aside that moral subjectivism is actually a branch of moral realism that claims that that the truth values of moral sentences is necessarily dependant on the attitudes of people. I want to express a stronger claim and talk about an objectivist brand of moral realism. I am therefore going to add a third point

iii)  Objectivist - moral propositions are not subjective. The truth value of moral propositions is determined mind independantly.

 Non cognitivism (deny i))

 I'm now going to outline a few views that are variations of this. I'm going to start first with the denial that moral sentences express propositions. This is known as a non cognitivist position. Claims ii) and iii) are both cognitivist positions and thus are inconsistent with non cognitivism. Non cognitivism basically says that we aren't actually expressing propositional content when we talk about morality. Instead we are doing something else - for example we are expressing some kind of attitude towards something.

To a non cognitivist, a sentence like 'Murder is wrong' is simply an expression of disapproval (Boo murder!) towards murder, but is not purporting to express anything more than that. Wrong is not some kind of moral property - there is no propositional content or semantic meaning involved. Instead the focus is on the function of the sentence - what it is doing, as opposed to what it is actually saying.

I think this is the view I have analysed the least but also the view that I have heard defended the least. It is worth noting that most objections against moral realism involve the denial of ii) or iii). Denying i) goes against both of these. I personally find this position unconvincing because of the embedding problem.

Consider a sentence such as 'Adam doesn't realise that murder is wrong'. A non cognitivist would have to assess this along the lines of: 'Adam does not realise 'Boo murder!' which seems like a very strange analysis.

I'm going to move on because as I've mentioned I've never actually heard anyone defend this position, but I would be open to someone who could convince me that this view is plausible.

 Moral nihilism (denying ii))

 Also known as moral scepticism or error theory. This is usually framed as the claim that there are no true moral sentences, i.e. all moral sentences are false. Technically there are different versions of scepticism that differ in why they think we are not justified in believing any moral sentence. The epistemic sceptic might go down a route of lack of access to ethical properties. I'm going to focus on the error theorist for now and respond to the epistemic sceptic later.

Note it is worth clarifying the specific sense of false. They are false because (it is claimed) moral properties fail to purport to any aspect of reality. It is like if I invented a property and I went around talking about people that satisfy or do not satisfy the property. These sentences can not be true because for them to be true would require that they truth conditions about reality when in practice there are no such truth conditions in the first place.

 A standard argument in favour of error theory is that if ethical properties were to exist then they would have to have some sort of mystical properties that are very much distinct from physical properties in our universe. 

I think the moral error theorist is wrong, but I think it is a very tall order to directly refute them. Instead I will argue that there are some very uncomfortable conclusions that an error theorist must commit to. I will also later argue that the motivations for the error theorist (i.e. problems they see in realism) can be explained. Therefore, whilst the error theorist position is in theory plausible, it is very much undesirable and is not more explanatory than a realist position.

 In term of being undesireable, the moral error theorist is saying that when we express ethical sentences ('Murder is wrong', 'Rape is wrong', 'Kindness is good') we are wrong. We are wrong in the sentence that our language involving ethical properties like 'good' or 'bad' fail to refer to any aspect of reality. We are essentially talking semantic nonsense, discussing properties that don't have real meaning. 

The error theorist will usually try and offer an explanation of our behaviour. The error theorist could bite the bullet and offer no explanation but this is a serious charge. There is surely an explanation for why all of humanity would talk and take seriously these imaginary properties despite all talking about nonsense. Thus the error theorist will offer an explanation for this behaviour, which is usually framed in terms of 'usefulness'. It is useful for us humans to talk about morality because it embeds certain principles that are in some sense useful to a functional society. By selling the lie that 'Murder is wrong', society becomes more functional and things can happen. Note we have to use the word functional because we can't say that society is ethically better (as ethical doesn't exist). If people lived in constant fear of death then very little could get done.

I think this is reasonable but has some issues. The first is the rather blunt comment and acceptance that claims like 'Murder is wrong' is not actually true and is fundamentally nonsense. It is just there because it is useful for a society to impose these kinds of rules. So people either believe in these imaginary properties because they are brainwashed by society to genuinely think so (everyone is simultaneously wrong!) or they act as if these properties are real as some kind of social agreement (or a mix). The latter / mix is also problematic - as it suggests that to some extent people are consciously aware that there is some kind of lie going down. There's also the second issue that if believe this due to some kind of social agreement, it is not clear why they would choose to obey these moral principles when they had no chance of getting caught or if there were minimal impact to society. Is it worth you going out of your way to save a kid drowning a river, or to donate to a charity to help the poor in Africa? If no one knows about your actions at all, your thinking would presumably be based on how it is helping you, and here that is really not clear.

There's a sense in which it is hard to demonstrate what these moral properties really look like. However there is also a sense in which it just seems absurd to deny that certain moral claims are true.

Moral subjectivism (denying iii))

In contrast to the error theorist position, i think subjectivism is a terrible position. I think there are two versions of subjectivism that people might be interested.

1) Person dependant subjectivism

2) Culture / Society dependant subjectivism (i.e. cultural relativism) 

Refuting Person dependant subjectivism

Person dependant subjectivism would ammount to claiming that the truth conditions of moral claims are somehow dependant on the person, and can shift between persons. Note that moral subjectivism is a realist position - we are very much committing to morality being real but also allowing that it has some very flexible properties.

I think there are two variants of this person dependant subjectivism. The first is the 'self-identification' position, where the truth value of a moral sentence is just dependant on what a person thinks. This position seems genuinely absurd. We're basically saying that morality is real and that the content of our sentences genuinely refers to reality. What's more, that reality is prone to change at the flick of a switch depending on what I'm thinking.

So I can go around saying 'Murder is right' (and be correct) and then change my mind whenever and say 'Murder is wrong' and still be right! 

This is incredible unintuive and also fails to explain aspects of reality. Even if in practice we might accept some kind of subjectivism, the subjectivism is not so strong that it works just by flicking a switch. We don't allow people to be able to go from 'Abortion is right' to 'Abortion is wrong' and back by simply thinking it, without changing their argument somehow.

The second variant is that there are the personal subjective truth conditions are not based on self identification, but based on some kind of property about the person. The truth value of moral sentences is still fine to flick from person to person, but that's because of some facts about the person that they might not have full control of. Such facts may for example be the background of a person, e.g. their upbringing. I think this variant is slightly more plausible but also faces basically the same issues.

A murderer may have a messed up context, but does this really mean that 'Murder is right' when expressed by them? 

One response is to say that moral sentences depend on the context. Someone might say that 'stealing is justified' in the context of a parent who has to steal to feed their kids, but is not justified in other kinds of contexts.

I think this is actually a fairly good argument, but also not sufficiently convincing. The problem with this is that (I argue) that moral sentences like 'stealing is unjustified' are actual unrefined expressions of a general moral law. The way we talk about 'stealing is unjustified' is similar to the way we talk about 'things fall down to the ground'. They express a general law of how things work but reality is actually slightly more complicated. Think about how a plane doesn't fall to the ground - gravity is still operating but it is able to overcome it. Similar for claims about stealing. In general stealing is wrong, but when we evaluate actual situations we express a different proposition. When I talk about the parent stealing for their child I might express the proposition 'It is justified for THIS parent to steal bread in THIS context', which could be true. The key here is that the proposition I express is fully generated by the sentence I express and fully captures the relevant details. This is still an objectivist position as long as I claim that once the proposition is fixed, the truth value remains static. It would follow that whenever the exact same proposition is expressed it still has the same truth value. The nature of moral justification is sophisticated.

Refuting cultural relativism

Let's move onto cultuarl relativism which can be understood as the view that the moralities are dependant on the culture. This is meant to express some sort of claim that different societies have different moralities. What we think is good in our country might be different to what is good for another country. Murder might be wrong for us, but in some cultures murder could be a positive thing. This helps us explain disagreement (one of the main challenges to realism)

This version of subjectivism is also quite intuitive and explanatory. It seems to explain things like cultural disagreement, whilst also allowing us to engage in a degree of epistemic modesty. We're saying that we somehow have access to our morality, but we don't profess to have understanding of someone elses. I will argue however that this position also encounters some very serious problems.

Remember that this position is a realist position. 

We are allowing for claims like:

'In culture X, doing A is wrong'

'In culture Y, doing A is not wrong'

There are many questions to answer. The first, is how might this work in practice for a given individual - where is the culture applied. For example, suppose in the UK it is wrong to steal, and that in some tribe in the amazon, murder is permissible. Is it the location of the action that is relevant? If I go to the Amazon tribe is it now alright for me to muder people? What if the amazon tribe person comes to the UK, should they now follow UK rules?

Perhaps there is a rule along the lines of 'When in Rome, do as Romans do'. This is plausible and interesting, but also flawed. Consider the normative force - why is this claim saying we should do it. There's two possibilities relevant to us, either the normative force is ethical (there is an ethical reason for us to do as Romans do) or it is non ethical (e.g. it is practically beneficial for us to do this). If it is non ethical then we can ignore this statement entirely for the purpose of our argument. So let's assume that it is an ethical sentence. Where does this sentence apply? Well the claim is really a variable sentence - feel free to replace Rome with any location. For this to therefore apply across all these locations, it must be some kind of universal ethical sentence.

Now because there is an example of a universal ethical sentence does not itself undermine cultural relativism, but it does present it with serious issues. If we accept there is a universal ethical sentence, then suddenly we have to accept some kind of metaphysics of morality that applies universally. What happens if someone disagrees with 'When in Rome do as Roman's do'? Are they simply wrong - presumably they are (as we're moral realists).

There's also big issues in terms of how we establish the morality in a given culture. If we are saying morality is cultural relative, then our standards are placed at the society level. Therefore, we are essentially being moral objectivist within our society. Suppose this is true, then there's the question of whether our individuals are able to successfully access or understand the objectivism of their society. Presumably this must be possible to some extent, as we appear to operate as if other cultures at least understand their own moral principles. There is therefore the question about whether one can have moral disagreement in one's own culture. Note I am talking about genuine moral disagreement - cases where both sides express contradictory positions but no side is at fault (for example not doing enough research). If we accept cultural relativism in this way then it is vulnerable to the argument that is no non genuine disagreement. The moral rules of the society is listed and accessible and only disagreement would occur if people are not up to date with the rules (allowing that they can change with time).

Note that this version of the disagreement objection is actually just a smaller version of the objection that is faced by moral realism. Here we apply it on a societal level as opposed to on a universal level, but the argument still applies. I actually don't think this argument is particularly devastating (I think it is fine to simply say that some people are wrong and that genuine disagreement is not possible). The point is that the purported benefit of cultural relativism is that is successfully explains things like disagreement. We have argued here that it faces the same issues as moral realism!

Okay I think that's enough reasons to reject moral subjectivism. I've written so much and I haven't even got to the reasons for supporting moral realism. It is worth noting that I have previously addressed both some of the issues with realism and ways to defend in my previous posts. I've actually also addressed in this post a few of the arguments.

I'll do a brief summary here:

Objections / issues for moral realism:

1) How to access what is morally good?

2) How to deal with moral disagreement? (Response discussed above - people are just wrong)

3) Do moral properties have weird properties?

4) How can we justify our moral claims?

These are good questions to consider. They aren't decisive objections (I think the positions discussed in this post are far worse) but one should probably have some kind of view on them to be able to successfully defend their position.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ontology of God's game

 In this post I want to discuss a sort of view that I am sympathetic about and I think helps us understand concepts such as truth, objectivity, properties and realness. I call this analogy "God's game" and I hope that this analogy will help us better understand various issues. I also want to discuss some issues I think there are with this analogy in particular with social concepts.

 Before I formally describe God's game, I want to discuss some important claims that I believe in that I hope to explain using the analogy.

1) Truth as some kind of correspondence to a mind independant reality.

2) The ability to characterise 'real' and 'unreal' properties, in particular things like Gender, Race.

3) To understand what it means to have objects and properties.

4) To understand what it means for a property to be formally reductive or supervenient on other properties.

5) To understand how we can have abstract properties that cannot be directly experienced by any existing agent.

6) The concept of meta-agents

7) The concept of property extentionality and extenional oracles.

 I think these are very much non trivial ideas to express and spread across various areas of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, truth and so on.  

As in various religions, God is often thought to be some omniscient and omnipotent entity. The nature of God is very much distinct from not only us as humans but also other entities such as animals or trees. It is first useful to consider the possibility that such a God genuinely exists, that such a God has full power to create various entities and also that such a God has full knowledge over everything in God's universe. 

Now take that exact possibility and imagine instead that we exist in some kind of video game and that 'God' is instead the almighty game designer that has full view of the entire game.

Let us now take a minor aside to a basic concept in objective orientated programming. A programmer can write constructors that are basically a formulaic way for constructing objects with various properties. The programmer can create an object and has the full view of the properties that the object has. For example, we can imagine the game designer writing a 'human' constructor to create a 'Jesus' object with a height property of say 175cm. The programmer can view the property by doing something like Print(Jesus.height).

We can therefore imagine that our game designer is such a programmer who can freely construct different objects. These objects will be the various entities of our game and will include things like people, animals, chairs and so on. Each entity will be its own object and will contain various properties. The game designer can pick out any object and see its various properties.

Now we can think about truth as a how we correspond our game state to truth. In programming speak we can think of this as a unit test. We write something like "assert Jesus.height == 175". What this does is it queries the 'height' property of the 'Jesus' object and checks if it is equal to 175cm. If it equal, then our assertion will come out as true. If not it will come out as false.

We can think about facts as these kinds of assertion statements. A fact makes a claim about reality, which is then queried against the game state to see if it is true or false.

It is important to note that I have said nothing so far about what objects exist and what properties exist. The game designer will of course know because they are a meta-agent, they exist outside the game and they are not an object of the game. With our concepts so far we can now discuss what it means for an object to be real and for a property to be real.

An object is real if it corresponds to an object in the game. Properties are things that are had by an object. However there will often be common property types that are shared by many objects. For example, we might expect all human objects to possess the property type of 'height' but potentially possess different values. We can query whether a property is a real if there exists an object that has the property. This is particularly important for the more controversial properties such as gender. We're saying that 'male' and 'female' are 'real' if and only if there exists an object that has one of these properties assigned to it. Note that the property assignment is done by the game designer only. It's 'real' because the game agrees that it is.

Truth and realness all correspond to the game state. Furthermore, truth and reality are very much mind independant concepts. They are theoretically verified by querying the game state using some kind of assert statement. Note however that this does not require any sort of 'thinking' on behalf of any of the agents in the game. The agents in the game can all think one thing, but the truth is exactly what the game state says. 

OBJECTS WITH FREE WILL

Let us extend God's game further where the game designer allows the objects in their game the freedom to do various things. The objects always live within the confines of the game but can choose to do whatever they wish within the game, as long as they follow the programmatically defined rules. For example, the game designer may create concepts such as gravity. Human objects will need to follow the game rules and thus will be unable to fly unless they develop new things.

Humans (and other objects) can manipulate various objects that exist within God's game. They can take trees to create chairs, kill animals to make food and so on. This a good point to note an objection - how does this object conversion work? Does a cow object somehow become a meat object upon death? 

Now Human's are also able - to some extent - view the properties of other objects. For example, they can broadly detect rocks from trees, short from tall, water from salt. Human's can also build upon existing properties to create new properties. For example we might say that an object that contains the property of 'male', 'adult' and 'unmarried' will also have the property of 'bachelor'. This bachelor property we might say is a 'reductively real' property. The game designer might never have thought of it but it is full understood in terms of properties that the game designer has understood.

Let us consider now one of the more controversial properties. E.g. let's consider now 'race'. We know that the property type 'race' is real if and only if there exists an object that actually has a property with the 'race' property type. This can be directly queried against the game state. Suppose however that there is no 'race' property type in the game. We can now consider whether 'race' is 'reductively real' which means it can be reduced to properties that we do understand in our game state.

Peaceful dialectic

It's been a while since I've last written in this blog, but today I want to talk a bit about the current situation involving #BlackLivesMatter and some of my thoughts and concerns. Primarily, I am worried that in our zeal to 'do the correct thing', we end up confusing a social cause with the justification for it. We end up silencing those who oppose us not based on the counter arguments they raise, but based on a (perceived) judgment on their character and upbringing. I will argue that not only is this practice immoral, it is also irrational and unhelpful. I will describe a concept of 'peaceful dialectic', where individuals make arguments in order to determine the truth of an issue. I will then draw an analogy between peaceful dialectic and peaceful protest and that our reasons to favour the latter also apply to the former. Finally I will argue that if one's position is correct, then it is both epistemically and ethically better to establish it via peaceful dialectic.

As an initial disclaimer, I believe in objective truth (i.e. things are true independant of whether we believe them to be) but I also recognise that it can be difficult to convey truth as I will see things from my own perspective. Still, I will try to provide the context to this all in a neutral manner, as the purpose of this post is less on who is correct, but on how we should approach things.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement that campaigns against racism and system violence against black people. It has recently seen a resurgence after the death of a black man - George Floyd - at the hands of a white police officer. Protests began soon after the death, some of which have over time become violent riots. American police have been ordered to control the protests and have faced criticism for using heavy handded tactics. Around the world there has been a call for solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and many organisations and individuals have made public statements. At the same time there has been backlash against the movement itself and against violent protests.

There are three main phenomena that I think will be useful to help illustrate some ideas:

1) All lives matter and the backlash towards this
2) Silence indicating compliance towards racist structures
3) Backlash towards the violent protests

1) In response to BLM there appears to be a counter movement that take issue with the slogan #BlackLivesMatter. Some reasons provided by proponents of the counter movement is that #BlackLivesMatter places overemphasis on race - in particular blackness - as opposed to the fact that death has occurred. They might agree with the #BlackLivesMatter but only as an implication from their claim that #AllLivesMatter.

There has been a common counter response against the #AllLivesMatter movement that proponents are missing the point. It is argued that the emphasis on black lives is specifically because black people are more likely to lose their life or experience violence at the hands of the state. The slogan #AllLivesMatter implies that all lives are equally at stake, when they are not.

2) I've seen a number of posts on social media that argue this point. The point is that if one is being silent in this situation, then they are being compliant with racism. Instead individuals should feel compelled to make a statement - presumably in this case - in solidarity with BLM. In particular here, and also with the first example there has been a demand for individuals to educate themselves on the matter.

3) There are two parts to this - backlash towards the protestors and backlash towards the police. Let's start with the protestors. There's an interesting tension here as I think most people are against violent protests, but they can also sympathise with the reasoning behind the protest. They can understand why it is done, without necessarily agreeing with it. The police case appears to be different and there currently appears to be a lot of anger towards the police and how they have responded to the protests. The suggestion to potentially bring in the Army may not have helped here.

The examples above illustrate a few interesting observations. The first observation is that many people appear to see these issues as (forgive the pun) black and white. There is the right side and the wrong side. And if you're not on the right side, then you're on the wrong side (particularly evident in the second example).

The second observation is that it seems if one is on the 'wrong' side, then their opposition can be framed as racist, a term which can imply moral corruptness. The prevalence of the term 'educate yourself' I think escalates this a bit further. Not only are you immoral, you are also uneducated or are epistemically sinful. If I claim that my position is correct and tell you to educate yourself if you disagree, then there's a strong implication that my position is factual.


The third observation is that there cases where we might not normally condone of an action, but because the actions are committed by those that we favour, we might see it as permissible and justified. We might for example see violent protests as generally problematic but can sympathise with those who do it in certain cases. The question here is whether are sympathy extends further - do we actually feel like it is justified?

A brief comment - this post is primarily targetted at those who believe the 'right' side is in favour of BLM. In fact, I agree with them - but I still think there are a large number of issues with how the proponents are behaving. I am also open to the possibility that I myself am wrong. Also as I'll argue later, this 'sides' thinking is problematic as well.

Peaceful dialectic

First, some quick definitions. Let us say that a position on a topic (such as BLM) is one's overall set of views about the topic can be considered as a collection of statements that they agree with. As a result, positions can be extremely specific. Sides on the other hand can be considered factions of an issue where rival factions disagree on a core set of statements

I see the practice of vilifying those that we disagree with as really problematic and I worry that we are focusing too heavily on which 'side' individuals are on, and not enough on what justifies it. For if our side is truly justified, we should not need to denounce others are villainous for disagreeing, or denounce others as silently complicit for not shouting about it. The truth should come out by itself. To simply brand those who disagree with you as racist / stupid can be seen as an ad hominem. Given how precise positions are there is likely considerable disagreement even with those on your 'side'. Some of this disagreement can be incredibly helpful and help us refine our views without undermining them.

I can appreciate that some sides may have more riding on their position, both emotionally and physically. However whilst I can sympathise with this, I think one should also be wary. The truth is independant. For the truth is that which reality actually is like, and it is the truth that our own behaviours and beliefs should conform towards.It is also plausible that one's opposition does not engage in these practices, but this does not justify oneself in not doing so. We should lead the way.

I propose we engage in what I call peaceful dialectic. Peaceful dialectic is a manner of discussion where agents are truth seeking. Both sides propose their arguments to one another (without engaging in fallacious practices such as villifying / ad hominem). The aim for each side is not necessarily to win, but to come to a shared agreement. Remember that if your position is correct, we expect the result of this to show that your position is correct. If your position is wrong, then you should admit your position is wrong. One useful way to engage in peaceful dialectic is to consider what your 'opponent' would need to establish to convince you of their side. This has two major benefits - first it humbles us into remembering that we are not always correct, second it helps to refine and allow for abstractions of our position.

Not doing so, I argue, is both ethically and epistemically wrong. Ethically, because you are treating someone (presumably negatively) without being justified. You're accusing someone of wrongdoing without understanding what they have done or where they come from. Epistemically because your practice does not maximise truth - you are outright cutting yourself from further evidence that may expand your view point.

I see this as similar to peaceful protests more generally. If one's protest is justified we should expect for people to be convinced by it without needing for one to engage in physical violence. In fact, engaging in violence can often deter others from supporting one's position.

Rarely is one proposed position completely right and one proposed position completely wrong. Likely there are aspects of each position that make sense, and thus why not take that middle ground and accept that one's own views can have issue? For example, it might be reasonable to agree broadly with a social movement whilst denouncing certain practices as problematic. Similarly we might recognise that a broader structure such as the police force has many problems, without villifying them all or calling for their own suffering. It is because of this observation that I think 'sides' is a problematic concept, because it tends to turn to require uniform judgement on all statements within it. We're unable to admit we made a mistake because it risks undermining the entire position.

(Interesting note - my argument shares some minor parallels to what is known as 'conciliatory' views of disagreement. These views face what is known as self undermining argument, that one cannot be conciliatory about the conciliatory view itself. It might appear that I experience the same problem here where I frame actions or dialectic behaviours as being ethically wrong. There are examples in the literature that defend conciliatory views, which I think could potentially also apply here.)