{"id":6024,"date":"2013-03-12T00:35:09","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T08:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6024"},"modified":"2025-03-04T02:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T10:33:09","slug":"a-whiter-shade-of-pale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6024","title":{"rendered":"A Whiter Shade of Pale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The term <q>ambiguity<\/q> is often applied to matters that are in fact <em>not at all ambiguous<\/em>.  Sometimes the mis-application is simple <em>carelessness<\/em>, but in one application it is hard not to see a more active <em>perversion<\/em>.<\/p> <p><em>Characters<\/em> (fictional or actual) who are called <q><u>morally<\/u> ambiguous<\/q> almost <em>never<\/em> are.  Instead, the label is most often applied to characters of two sorts.<\/p> <p>One sort is <em>morally compromised<\/em>.  Those characters are not <em>all<\/em> bad; they may even be <em>mostly<\/em> good; but they are discernibly not <em>all<\/em> good.  The person labelling them as <q>morally ambiguous<\/q> typically very much seems to be trying for <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">special pleading<\/span> if a sort on behalf of the character or of the moral short-comings exhibited by the character.<\/p> <p>The other sort exhibits a combination of characteristics, some of which the audience will find attractive but some of which the person applying the label finds disagreeable, without his or her being able to make a sound case (or seemingly sound case) against those traits.  By labelling the character as <q>morally ambiguous<\/q>, the labeller is insinuating <em>doubt without reasoned foundation<\/em>.  Challenged, he or she will likely deny having issued a condemnation of the characteristics against which he is directing that doubt.<\/p> <p>In application to <em>situations<\/em>, the term <q>moral ambiguity<\/q> is more likely to be legitimately applied than in application to characters.  But calling a situation <q>morally ambiguous<\/q> is also often an attempt to introduce by back door a special plea for bad behavior.<\/p> <hr width=\"13%\" align=\"center\" \/> <p>(One of the papers on which I am presently working, and the paper of that lot that is likely to end-up the least mathematical, compares and contrasts some decision-theoretic states that are often mistaken one for another.  One sort of these states entails <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">ambiguity<\/span>.  So I have been thinking about real and specious ambiguity more generally.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The term ambiguity is often applied to matters that are in fact not at all ambiguous. Sometimes the mis-application is simple carelessness, but in one application it is hard not to see a more active perversion. Characters (fictional or actual) who are called morally ambiguous almost never are. Instead, the label is most often applied [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,720,318,4],"tags":[1170,404,1172,1171,405,1173],"class_list":["post-6024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-epistemology","category-ethics-philosophy","category-public","tag-ambiguity","tag-eristicism","tag-moral-ambiguity","tag-morality","tag-sophistry","tag-special-pleading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12716,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6024\/revisions\/12716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}