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Is it possible to be prejudiced about something that doesn't exist?

Thurlor

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I'm not exactly sure how to word this, but is it possible for an individual to hold prejudiced views regarding an object or class of objects that don't exist?

An example would be something like unicorns or people with purple skin.

Maybe a person could be considered prejudiced against those who are yet to be born, but that seems a bit different.
 

EndogenousRebel

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If those things contain "qualities"/attributes that we already don't like, you could say that. Though it's an epistemological nightmare.

You're basically guessing about yourself until you actually experience said stimuli from the thing you don't like.

Taste tests have to be double blind for this reason.
 

Daddy

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Yes, I'm prejudiced about dying; I'd prefer not to. But I don't know that dying even exists or what it would really be. There are many theories and religions and ideas about what it means or what happens, but no one knows. It's all just philosophical speculation or wishful thinking.
 

Black Rose

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scorpiomover

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I'm not exactly sure how to word this, but is it possible for an individual to hold prejudiced views regarding an object or class of objects that don't exist?
Lots of atheists believe there's no evidence for G-d, and yet still say nasty things about G-d.

Maybe a person could be considered prejudiced against those who are yet to be born, but that seems a bit different.
I don't know anyone who hates children yet to be born, who didn't also hate children who were already born.
 

Hadoblado

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Yes.

If I'm racist against Eskimos, I can be racist against the water nation in Avatar as a result.

There are plenty of people with strong feelings regarding vampires with sparkly skin.
 

Cognisant

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Prejudice: Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

You can't be prejudiced against something that actually exists, you can be prejudiced against the idea of it being something other than what it is, in which case you are preemptively judging it to be that which it is not, but if you're judging it for being that which it is that's not prejudice. That's being right.

The Abrahamic god is the biggest asshole that never was, it's not prejudice it's a fact.
 

Ex-User (9086)

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What would be the opposite of that? A person who isn't prejudiced to things that don't exist? As in a person who tries to view nonexistent things fairly and accurately?

There are infinitely many things that I have never thought about and I don't know if they exist or not, but I would probably react with prejudice to initially.

Unicorns technically exist, they are defined in the cultural canon by common shared characteristics. It's possible to be prejudiced and view unicorns negatively without any reason for it.
 

Cognisant

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So you're either creating your own negative definition of a unicorn, so it's not unicorns you're prejudiced against but rather your idea of a unicorn. Or there’s something about unicorns you hate for some particular reason in which case since your hate is not without reason it doesn't qualify as prejudice.
 

ZenRaiden

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If prejudice means pre judgment ergo judging a thing before we know it, then humans do those things automatically all the time.

That is how we can function without looking at every blade of grass or every pebble in the desert.

We just assume all grass is same, until we are confronted with evidence that there is a blade of grass that is different.

We prejudge the grass as we know it.

Does that mean we actually are wrong about the grass?

Well we know the grass exists.

Well actually grass does not exist.

There is no such thing as grass.

We conceptualize grass as grass.

Grass does not know we call it grass. Its a mental construct we created.

We know grass exists, but the concept and the way we perceive grass is limited to our way of experiencing grass.

Our brains can only deal with reality by filtering out stuff, and then focusing on few things.

Those things are either real or not real.

We can certainly be wrong about existence of things.

Good example is aliens.

There are literally millions of ideas in fiction about those and we have all types of concepts about them.

We have both concepts of aliens that are hostile, or even malevolent, to aliens that are nice or benevolent.

We also have space operas where there are entire planets and species of aliens of different types and personalities, and qualities.
 

Thurlor

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This was the question asked of me by my friend's son who seems to be on the spectrum. We have spoken since then and it appears that he was mainly interested in the concepts of race and racism. He has been taught that race doesn't exist, so he is questioning how racism can exist.

This is a whole tangled mess and I am not sure how to explain it in a satisfactory way to him.
 

Hadoblado

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How old are they? How complex an answer are they able to handle?

My understanding is that when people say race doesn't exist, they're claiming it's a social construct and not a biological one. That doesn't mean it's not meaningful to people.
This proposition is substantiated by the Human Genome Project finding that more genetic variation exists within racial categories than between them. This seems to be some sort of threshold for scientific validity but I'm ignorant of the specifics.

It might be easier to talk about how we categorise based on simple characteristics like skin colour, but these characteristics don't necessarily mean there is a relation. "White" as a category has at times not included Irish or Italian. "Black" would include both African and Australian heritages but tmk they are no more related than blacks and whites.

A useful point might be that killer whales look like and are named whales, but are closer related to dolphins. Dolphins look like fish, but are more related to us.
 

washti

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' hispanic' race sounds made up. Deff cultural construct.
 

washti

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By racial terms they would be called mestizo, no?
 

washti

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So 'hispanic' is excessive and missleading by mixing race with nationality?
 
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