To make a relevant or irrelevant distinction is one thing, to intend to make it quite another: someone may make an irrelevant distinction while intending to make a relevant one. Similarly, to make a false statement is not always the same as intending to make a false statement. We do not even call someone "a liar" who merely utters a falsehood. A scientist, for instance, whose hypothesis turns out to be false is not a 'liar' because 'e always did as if it were true. To be called "a liar" 'e must have had the intention to deceive or to create a false impression. The present language does not have an analogous, simple expression with respect to acts of distinction, that is, for intentionally or knowingly making an irrelevant distinction, or it must be the word discrimination itself when the intention of making the irrelevant distinction is incorporated into its meaning.

Underlying the wrongness of lying is obviously the wrongness of intentionally making an untrue statement, or rather the normative imperfectness of falsity and the perfectness of truth. A person might lie to make someone else happy but if this is the right thing to do, it is only so for eudaimonist reasons. Even if it is right to make someone happy, for example, by creating an untrue impression or belief, it remains wrong to knowingly or intentionally make a false statement (and also to carelessly do this). Similarly, underlying the wrongness of (intentionally and/or carelessly) discriminating is the imperfectness of irrelevance and the perfectness of relevance. Discrimination may also make a person or sentient being unhappy, or happy, but this is again a eudaimonist consideration, and purely on the basis of a eudaimonist calculus discrimination would be neither right nor wrong as discrimination -- it would all be contingent on the total balance of happiness over unhappiness.

Form the point of view of the relevance principle alone all manifestations of discrimination are equally objectionable, whether a particular entity or class is treated as inferior and excluded or ignored, or whether is is treated as superior and made exclusive. The same holds for the making of nonrelevant distinctions, not on the basis of one particular factor or cluster of factors, but between different factors or clusters of factors. This is not to imply, of course, that all these forms of making nonrelevant distinctions are equally harmful in practise. On the contrary: a nonrelevant distinction may be entirely harmless, or may even be made to avoid harming someone. In that, again, it is not different from a lie. The point is, however, that a special interest in harmlessness would oblige us to adopt some kind of eudaimonist or related principle as well. But if relevancy is to be an independent notion, such a principle should, if endorsed, furnish the focus of relevancy or one of its focuses. If it is the only one (as in utilitarianism) no relevant distinction would be harmful to the whole of all sentient beings of all times. But then, someone adopting such a scheme would not be interested in the harm done to individual sentient beings, and especially not in a large imbalance in their feelings of happiness or the satisfaction of their interests.

Paradoxically, the very harm done to particular persons or groups by certain practises does not make these practises objectionable in themselves in utilitarianism if they are to the advantage of the whole. To avoid these consequences of utilitarianism other determinants are needed like equality in well-being and, perhaps, the maximization of the well-being of the worst-off. But having adopted one or more of these other goals, it would be inconsistent to evaluate the diverse forms of discrimination exclusively by their being more or less harmful. This would lead us straight back to a utilitarian scheme. Consequently, in every nonutilitarian doctrine recognizing truth and relevance as separate, basic principles lies and discriminatory actions or attitudes may be equally wrong or bad, even when they are not equally harmful, or not harmful at all.

Endorsing the principle of truth(fulness) a lie is wrong --as noticed before-- regardless of its subject-matter, that is, regardless of what the sentence uttered is about. But endorsing the principle of discriminational relevance a nonrelevant distinction made, or discrimination, is also wrong regardless of its subject-matter, that is, regardless of the goal at issue and the factor or cluster of factors on the basis of which the distinction is made. Just as the subject-matter of a lie can be any untrue proposition, so the subject-matter of a discriminatory attitude or practise can be any nonrelevant distinction (or class resulting from such a distinction). It is wrong to say, for example, that there is a relation between race and intelligence, or race and musicality, if there is no such relation (or to say that there is no relation between those factors, while knowing that there is one). This is not wrong because of the subject of the conversation, not because the lie is a racial lie, but because lying or making untrue statements is wrong. (Note that the noun lie is also used when the statement is believed to be true by the speaker.) Similarly, it is wrong to distinguish between races if the distinction is irrelevant (or to refuse to distinguish if the distinction is relevant while acting nevertheless). This is not wrong because of the object of discrimination, that is to say, the factorial basis of the distinction, but because discriminating itself, or making irrelevant distinctions, is wrong.

To intentionally or carelessly say something about the female sex or the male sex, or about the relation between them, that is not true is also wrong. This is not wrong --again-- because one says something about the female or male sex, but because saying something which one knows to be untrue, or which is not likely to be true, is wrong (if said as if it were true). That the lie is, then, a sexual lie, is not to the point. Similarly, to intentionally or carelessly make an irrelevant distinction between males and females is wrong. But this sexism is not wrong because the distinction is one between males and females (let alone because it is to the disadvantage of one of both sexes), but because knowingly, intentionally or carelessly making an irrelevant distinction, or a distinction which is not likely to be relevant, is wrong.

In short: racism, sexism, and so on, are not wrong because of the factors concerned or because of the object of discrimination, but because of the nonrelevance of the distinction made (at least insofar as the nonrelevance is a necessary criterion of its wrongness). But this means that any normative doctrine which confines attention to the wrongness of racism and sexism, and maybe a few more, similar, attitudes and practises, is as faulty (and irrational) as one condemning only lies about, say, other ethnic groups or the opposite sex, and about one's own marital status and income, and perhaps a few more kinds of lie. And just as a lie to someone's advantage is as bad as a lie to someone's disadvantage (judging by the principle of truth alone), racism which favors one's own race is as bad as racism which disfavors it, gynocentrism as bad as androcentrism, a state which imposes the symbols of our own ideology on everyone as bad as a state which imposes the symbols of other people's ideology on us and everyone else, and so on and so forth. It is the obvious irrelevance, or the partial, fake, pseudofactual or circular relevancy of a distinction made which is inherently bad, regardless of the factor concerned, just as it is the falsity of a statement which is inherently bad, regardless of the subject of discourse.

Ethical theorists have usually understood the importance of truth but the general support for relevance as a principle, maxim or requirement which can be found in linguistic pragmatics in addition to the support for truth does not exist in traditional ethics. Yet, for those who are specifically interested in the norms and values of the ground-world, relevancy (particularly the relevancy of discrimination) plays a role of paramount importance. Discriminational relevancy may even make a separate notion of moral relevancy superfluous dependent on the normative doctrine espoused. A principle, maxim or requirement of discriminational relevance does not only cover all questions of discrimination (altho not necessarily solving them), but also many, or all, aspects of equality, fairness, (distributive) justice and universalization. In spite of this, there may certainly be fundamental discrepancies in the application of these divergent ideas and principles. Those endorsing a principle of universalizability, for instance, tend to start from a specific maxim and try to ascertain then whether or not it is universalizable.

Now, it follows from the definition of universalizability --see 5.1.2-- that the principle of universalizability attaches a lot of weight to the distinction made in each maxim under consideration (namely between x and non-x, or everything which is like x and not like x). It takes these distinctions as a starting point. But such distinctions which are already made in ordinary language (with words for 'x', or for 'being-like-x') are traditionally but too readily accepted as 'normal' or 'natural'. All the distinctions have first been made, as it were, and their relevance is then examined afterwards, while the burden of proof is made to rest with those objecting that a distinction drawn is irrelevant. When endorsing the relevance principle, on the other hand, the procedure is quite the other way around: the distinction is not made until is is (proved or believed to be) relevant (unless one would opt for the different, unless-approach). The end result of universalization and the making of relevant distinctions should be the same, but from the standpoint of the relevance principle universalization is a process of repristination in which the original oneness which should not have been divided in the first place (in the language or in the specific maxim) is restored again.

Altho the end results should be the same it is obvious that the principle of relevance and that of universalizability work in opposite directions. It would require a separate study to look at all the resemblances and differences between adopting a principle of universalizability or equality or justice on the one hand, and a principle of discriminational relevance with, for example, equality as a focus on the other. What is more interesting and rewarding from a systematic point of view is to keep sight of the parallels between truth and relevancy, and the principles lending these concepts their normative significance.