In other words, “right but I want to quibble”.

“Right” about what? It’s true that Micha was using the term “naturalistic fallacy” in a sense other than the sense in which Moore used it. (Specifically, he used it to refer to arguments that infer something about the moral status of something from its naturalness.) But I don’t have any basic problem with that kind of loose usage as long as it doesn’t interfere with accurately understanding what Moore meant by the term when he used it. The “quibble,” such as it is, is aimed to clarify how Moore himself used the term. Which is not an issue that Micha raised, or one that’s particularly important to assessing his argument; it’s an issue that you raised in the course of a reply to him.

It’s certainly true that the issue of what Moore coined the term “naturalistic fallacy” to mean is tangential to this conversation. But misrepresentations of his view, especially those that are very common and very misleading, are worth correcting anyway, in the interest of accuracy.

I read him right without the benefit of seeing his later explanation

Well, no; what he said is that by “natural” he means those things which arise from a “spontaneous order.” But that explanation is itself ambiguous, depending on whether he means strictly a “voluntary order” (which may very well be designed), or instead an “undesigned order” (which may very well be involuntary), or both. Libertarian writers have often used the term “spontaneous order” to refer to either, or both, or have simply equivocated between the two different meanings from one use to the next.

If he means the former, you read him right; but then the claim is unresponsive to what it was supposed to respond to. And, since that interpretation is unresponsive, it made sense for Micha to suggest, out of motives of charity, a more responsive reading.

If he means the latter, you read him wrongly, and the claim is somewhat more responsive to Francois; but then it is underargued and almost surely false.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that your reading of him is “off the wall;” I’m not even claiming that it’s wrong. My point is that whether you read his claim rightly or read it wrongly, the claim doesn’t get Arthur very far either way vis-a-vis his interlocutors.

Constant:

So, is my preference for a female secretary (assuming I have one) sexist,

Probably, but as I said, I don’t know. What’s the reason for your preference? I can imagine sexist, anti-sexist, and sexism-neutral reasons for preferring hiring a woman (as such) rather than a man. Without knowing which one is hypothetically yours, I can’t answer the question.

and if it is, is that immoral?

Yes, if it is, it is (therefore) immoral.

Constant:

Is it sexist for a man to lust after women?

Depends on what you mean, I guess. If you’re asking whether it’s sexist when the particular people you’re sexually attracted to all turn out to be women, then no, I’m not claiming that. If you’re asking whether it’s sexist to lust, more or less indiscriminately, after “women,” due to some kind of attitude towards femininity in general, then that may well be sexist. In any case it’s immoderate and objectifying.

More to the point, while being male and heterosexual is not, as such, sexist, there are a lot of things commonly associated with heterosexual male “lust” for women, as it is actually felt and expressed in the society we live in, that are sexist. For example, preferring to surround yourself with women in subordinate positions to you so that you can ogle them or sexually harass them is fairly sexist, and, as I said, fairly sleazy.

If one’s preference for associating with women rather than with men in a particular context is based on different reasons, then who knows? It may well be neither sexist nor sleazy.

Constant,

I agree with you that any value other than non-aggression could, when combined with the notion that it is O.K. to use the State to enforce values other than non-aggression, lead to aggressive actions or policies. Anti-racism included.

You also don’t have to convince me that government-imposed antidiscrimination policies are harmful. I think everything unjust is (therefore) harmful, and that they’re harmful in other ways besides the fact that they’re unjust. (Although we might disagree on the exact details as to why, I don’t think we’d disagree in a way that matters for this discussion.)

However, I think that there is good reason to say that a belief in natural orders of superior and inferior social rank, based on race, are more conducive to aggression than a belief in social equality among people of different races. It could quite easily be argued that it takes a bigger inferential step to get from “Racism is a social evil” to “The government should make specific policies to force people not to promote that evil” than it takes to get from “White people are naturally superior to black people and should be in a socially dominant position to them; black people who are not submissive are vicious and dangerous” to “The government should make specific policies to enforce white dominance.” I don’t think that in either case the premise logically necessitates the conclusion (without auxiliary principles), but an independent belief in the propriety of the State as a means of social change has more of a leading role to play in the first case than it does in the second case.

For what it’s worth, I also think that there are other reasons why racism is vicious and not merely foolish. The precise reasons why generally depend on what we’re discussing (prejudiced attitudes or beliefs? exclusionary actions? antagonistic actions? etc. etc. etc.). Part of the issue here is that I think there are things that are naturally classed as examples of racism, and not easily divorced from the fact of the perpetrator’s racism (for example, racist harassment, slurs and insults) which I regard as vicious, and which are very widely regarded as vicious. I don’t know whether Arthur means to deny that acts like these are vicious (if not, why not?), or whether he means to say that they are vicious, but should not be classified as a part of racism. So I’m asking him to clarify what he means to say about cases like those.

I might prefer to have a female secretary. If this is not as legitimate as preferring to marry a woman, why not?

I don’t know what you mean by “legitimate.” Are you asking me whether or not this is within your rights, or are you asking me whether or not it’s morally licit for you to do?

If the former, then certainly it’s within your rights. You have a right to prefer all kinds of things. If the latter, well, reasonable criteria for a good romantic partner for you are presumably different from reasonable criteria for a good secretary for you, and I suspect that the former allows a lot more leeway for unargued idiosyncratic preferences than the latter does. While nobody has a right to force you to go along with somebody else’s judgement about what criteria are the reasonable ones, it may very well be the case that they have good reason to suggest that your own understanding of the matter is mistaken, ignorant, foolish, or even vicious. (After all, you might have reason to change your own mind at some point; and if you can have good reasons for differing with your past opinion, then other people could have had those good reasons, too.)

As for whether such a preference really is mistaken, ignorant, foolish, or even vicious, I suppose it depends on what your reasons for having that preference are. Most of the historical reasons that men had during the 20th century for preferring women (as such) over men (as such) as secretaries have been fairly sleazy. But any serious discussion of a preference like that will require more details than just its existence.

For what it’s worth, while sexist hiring practices are a serious concern for those who are concerned with gender equality, there are a lot more issues involved than just that, many of which go well beyond exclusiveness in terms of who you want to associate with at your job or on your own property.