Means and Ends (Joshua Cohen & Glenn Loury)

[Florian]

Originally Posted by sugarkang

More than happy to. The flaw in your reasoning is that you think unfounded accusations are valid. You think that a potentially innocent person who responds with a cliche is circumstantial evidence of guilt by virtue of the fact that the cliche is a cliche. The flaw in your reasoning is the mob mentality you and most people use to convict innocent (not moral) people, like DSK.

Where did I say that unfounded accusations are valid? I said that accusations of racism cannot be proved (or verified) because they refer to thoughts, beliefs and attitudes (of the person being accused). Obviously, if they cannot be proved, they are not valid.

And where did I say that a person who responds with the cliché is guilty "by circumstantial evidence?" I said exactly the opposite: that the person using the cliché may be telling the truth or may not be telling the truth, but that in any case the cliché has a poisoned history.

The person who uses the cliché is not "guilty" of anything, except perhaps insensitivity to usage or stupidity.

You implicitly did.

No, I did not. Show me where I implicitly said that: an innocent person will have to suffer the consequences of getting stuck in unlucky situation

All I said was: Life is tough. That means: a person suspected or accused of racism can deny the charge or try to prove that the accuser is wrong (by his actions for example), but no one is obliged to believe him.

I think you are confusing "guilt" and "innocence" in the legal sense (where they refer to actions or crimes) and guilt and innocence in the purely moral sense, where they refer to thoughts/beliefs/attitudes. Racism falls into the latter category. Do I need to repeat this again? Thoughts, beliefs, attitudes are only known to the person who has them, not to an observer. They cannot be proved or disproved.