# Contested concept: fashion

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: The analogy hides the question of whether current moral beliefs are merely conventional or track real moral truth. Treating them as fashion presupposes that they are arbitrary rather than tracking progress.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/fashion` (data: `/concept/fashion.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good** — used in 8 claim(s)
- **Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style** — used in 5 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Dressing oddly gets you laughed at.](/claim/claim_1c3238ace294.md) _(sense: Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style)_
- [Moral fashions are much more dangerous [than fashions in clothing].](/claim/claim_4a0efca4be53.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Moral fashion is mistaken for good.](/claim/claim_4bc29beeea31.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Moral fashions are just as invisible to most people [as fashions in clothing].](/claim/claim_5cea3975c1aa.md) _(sense: Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style)_
- [The biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand.](/claim/claim_607f865ea805.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [There are moral fashions as well as fashions in clothing.](/claim/claim_8802e04111f2.md) _(sense: Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style)_
- [Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of the adoption of moral fashions is …](/claim/claim_9e10dfc5b9bd.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.](/claim/claim_bb65736f2a97.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to someone in the grip of fashion. It just seems like the right thing to do.](/claim/claim_c087dc91612b.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Ordinary fashions [as opposed to moral fashions] arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of some influential person.](/claim/claim_c1e742f5f67a.md) _(sense: Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style)_
- [It's the nature of fashion to be invisible. It wouldn't work otherwise.](/claim/claim_d022846c921d.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_
- [Moral fashions are just as arbitrary [as fashions in clothing].](/claim/claim_e0276c717f29.md) _(sense: Arbitrary, accidental trend arising from imitating an influential person's whim; harmless style)_
- [Moral fashions more often are created deliberately.](/claim/claim_f0e1ccfc747a.md) _(sense: Moral belief pattern deliberately created by groups in power struggles, enforced by sanctions, and mistaken for the good)_