AASECT discussion of agency and autonomy

[John_Doe]

G@yWad69,

I'm not convinced that children under 6 are generally sexual beings (or more precisely, children who haven't started andrenarche which I assumed typically occurred at 6 but from what I was able to quickly search might vary in onset to a greater degree than I thought. I knew it can happen at 5, I don't know if it's considered premature at 4). I'm not bothered by the idea that they are (i.e. I have no bias in not wanting them to be), my core position stands regardless- if they don't suffer as a result of sexual intimacy then they haven't been harmed by it. Mature cats are obviously sexual (unless they've been neutered or spayed, I assume). I don't think that Western culture introduced the idea of 'purity' implying asexuality. It seems to me that possibly most cultures, or at least agrarian societies, traditionally discouraged female promiscuity. What seems to stem from modern Western culture is the stigmatization of adult-teen relationships (even in the context of marriage), then again you might have a point (the sexualization of children per se might be a relatively recent taboo and 'impurity' in the past might have been tied only to sex outside of marriage, I don't know).

I think that 'why' applies to instrumental value. At some point you just accept that the nature of a thing is what it is and you can't explain why it is that (you can ask, 'why is the sky blue,' in the sense of what causes it to be blue but blue is just blue, you can't really ask, 'why is blue blue'). When it comes to 'why's, I would probably focus on the inconsistency of valuing adult sexual pleasure or sexual pleasure under some conditions but not child sexual pleasure or sexual pleasure under all conditions (whatever pleasure someone feels raping someone else would, in and of itself, be good but they almost certainly do not value the happiness of their victim; there are other scenarios where you might reluctantly or with regret cause someone some presumed level of pain as a trade-off for personal convenience or some other greater good but given the psychology of rape I doubt that would apply and I'm 'abstracting' the rapist's pleasure from the object of their pleasure and the psychology that might allow for it) or even the inconsistency of viewing some physical contact as fundamentally uncontroversial but sexual contact as having its own separate 'meaning' or inherent value (apart from how it might affect people emotionally). To be fair, there are some life and death situations we generally wouldn't allow children to make. I'm very open to an argument that sexual intimacy might lead to long-term harm for complicated reasons that don't have to do with internalizing existing social stigma but, again, that wouldn't capture the 'meaning' or inherent value of sex that the stigma seems to be rooted in and it doesn't really seem to me that in a society without the stigma there would be reason to assume that children will regret any given sexual experience for age-related reasons. This is more of a general point- I think a lot of the stigma is implied by the same sex exceptionalism that plays out in other areas even when adults are the actors/patients involved, not entirely a 'disgust' or aversion to children being sexual per se (which is a reality but I don't know how much of that you can separate from the 'meaning' of sex that's assumed even in adult interactions, although some people might switch back and forth from viewing sex as recreational bonding and pushing back against the idea of it having 'meaning' beyond that and re-adopting the belief in that 'meaning' when it comes to children; or even adult sex under certain conditions).

"I think most of them don't actually care, they mostly just enjoy having power over someone lesser than them; in a way, the issue of power dynamic imbalance they claim to have with AMSC, may reveal something about their own desire for unequal relationships and their own guilty pleasures."

I have often suspected that many of them don't care but I'm almost certain that many of them do and that I might be emotionally desensitized to how taboo it is. I do think that many people are seriously bothered by the idea of child-adult sex and that matters but I think the idea that something other than suffering is inherently harmful/bad or that children's sexual pleasure 'wouldn't' be inherently good; even if it needs to be weighed against risks and costs, must be pushed back against. With the point I made about cats earlier (or in another thread), for example, I don't claim that there's an altruistic reason for me to oppose humans who love and sympathize with cats having some kind of 'sexual' contact with them that doesn't cause them pain; that they'd probably be apathetic to (or might interpret as a gesture of non-sexual affection, since many non-human mammals seem to lick each other to express affection) even though I'm personally bothered by the sexualization of cats (there are victimless crimes that would bother me because they imply not valuing someone's happiness), what I want anti-pedo. people to consider (not that most anti-anti-pedophilia people would agree with me on this. I don't even really care to think of myself as 'pro-contact' or 'anti-contact' even though I am 'technically' anti-contact in the context of not wanting children to internalize the child-adult sex stigma and suffer after some initially wanted sexual experience with an adult for that reason, because I'm not committed to either position on principle. I don't know if I'm actually who people have in mind when they talk about 'antis') is that experiencing happiness and being free from pain is what actually benefits children, so their anger over child-adult sex on principle doesn't stem from any altruistic love that's rooted in an authentic understanding of what actually harms or benefits people. I do suspect that some people might feign anger so that there can be someone lower on the totem pole than them (in general, pedophiles as a class of people can serve that function and throughout human history, many cultures, if not most, have had some lower class or caste to arguably serve that role. We are hierarchical animals; we're capable of compassion, justice and wisdom alongside cruelty, egoism and irrationality, but building hierarchical societies seems to be written into our DNA/a natural instinct we possess alongside other natural conflicting instincts. 'However much people might look down on me, at least I'm not a pedophile'. You'll even hear people mention this, that hatred for pedophiles brings everyone together, but, 'to be fair,' I don't think that's necessarily because they just want to dunk on a more vulnerable person as it is that they're genuinely bothered by the sexualization of children so it's comforting to them to have the validation of the group or broader society), and some people just don't want to stand out (and, as you mentioned, be accused of being closet pedophiles or pedophile sympathizers. Some of they may or may not be personally interested in children; they might be the loudest, angriest person in the mob or they might half-heartedly agree with the conventional view but not seem really invested in it, etc.).


"I'd say that's a kind of disgust. Looking back, my points about disgust versus sadism as the psychological motive of antis wasn't entirely clear; I think disgust is probably the main motive, and opportunistic sadism gets it's social acceptance because of that disgust."

It's not what comes to mind when I think of 'disgust.' I think the motivation is largely rooted in the same aversion to promiscuity, homosexuality, fornication, etc.

[PorcelainLark]

I don't think that Western culture introduced the idea of 'purity' implying asexuality.

It depends on whether we're talking about asceticism that happens to also cover sexuality, or sexuality as something uniquely negative. Buddhist monks may have a vow of celibacy, but that's part of a broader view of desire. In contrast, consider the view of Augustine of Hippo:

He taught that Adam's sin is transmitted by concupiscence, or "hurtful desire", resulting in humanity becoming a massa damnāta (mass of perdition, condemned crowd), with much enfeebled, though not destroyed, freedom of will.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concupiscence#Augustine

For the most part, the Western view of sexuality is that sexuality is uniquely bad.

...(whatever pleasure someone feels raping someone else would, in and of itself, be good but they almost certainly do not value the happiness of their victim; there are other scenarios where you might reluctantly or with regret cause someone some presumed level of pain as a trade-off for personal convenience or some other greater good but given the psychology of rape I doubt that would apply and I'm 'abstracting' the rapist's pleasure from the object of their pleasure and the psychology that might allow for it)

This is why hedonism doesn't ring true to me. Gang rape could create a situation where the amount of pleasure is greater than victim's suffering. Trying to make morality into a matter of the quantity of pleasure people experience feels contrived, to me.

This is more of a general point- I think a lot of the stigma is implied by the same sex exceptionalism that plays out in other areas even when adults are the actors/patients involved, not entirely a 'disgust' or aversion to children being sexual per se...

It doesn't have to entirely be about disgust for disgust to be central.

I have often suspected that many of them don't care but I'm almost certain that many of them do and that I might be emotionally desensitized to how taboo it is.

Maybe, in a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. However, I don't think people really have an intrinsic moral aversion to AMSC. I think it has to be reinforced by sensationalism via things like tabloids and misery lit.

I don't know if I'm actually who people have in mind when they talk about 'antis'

"Anti" and "anti-c" aren't the same thing. Anti is to pedophilia, as homophobe is to homosexuality, it means someone bigoted against and/or hostile towards MAPs. All antis are anti-contact, but not all anti-contacts are antis.

You'll even hear people mention this, that hatred for pedophiles brings everyone together, but, 'to be fair,' I don't think that's necessarily because they just want to dunk on a more vulnerable person as it is that they're genuinely bothered by the sexualization of children so it's comforting to them to have the validation of the group or broader society), and some people just don't want to stand out (and, as you mentioned, be accused of being closet pedophiles or pedophile sympathizers. Some of they may or may not be personally interested in children; they might be the loudest, angriest person in the mob or they might half-heartedly agree with the conventional view but not seem really invested in it, etc.).

I think peer pressure plays a big role reinforcing these norms. I mean if the stigma for identifying as a pedophile or being sympathetic to pedophiles is as big as it is, what incentive is there for people be honest about what they actually felt?

It's not what comes to mind when I think of 'disgust.' I think the motivation is largely rooted in the same aversion to promiscuity, homosexuality, fornication, etc.

You don't think disgust plays a central role in people's aversion to promiscuity, homosexuality, and fornication?

[John_Doe]

PorcelainLark,

-I think at one point I considered mentioning the Buddha's attitudes about sexuality (being disgusted by the behavior of the women at his palace before he went out in search of enlightenment or to decide whether or not to be a prince or to devote his life to enlightenment, I can't remember and I'm no expert on Buddhism so I probably sound like a fool talking about something I know so little about). It's always seemed to me as though Buddhism and Jainism might be unique among religions in wanting to minimize the suffering of others but even they aren't strictly negative hedonistic and no religious tradition I'm aware of seems to emphasize happiness as happiness without condition.

-I don't believe that the happiness and suffering of separate minds can be meaningfully aggregated (so the comparison would have to be made between the victim and the rapist/s who benefited the most as individuals, which isn't to deny that I think the number of people who are harmed by or benefit from something should be considered after we've controlled for intensity/duration in regards to the individual/s who would suffer or benefit the most from any given trade-off). If you were talking about torturing someone or burning them at the stake to amuse people or satisfy their vengeance I'd counter that hedonism, in practice, justifies promoting hedonism so we should want to discourage behavior that has a hardening effect (makes us less sympathetic) and avoid accommodating non-hedonistic values (those people want to torture or burn that person because they don't value his or her happiness and we should be trying to persuade people to care about everyone's happiness/suffering and only happiness/suffering, if they were consistent hedonists they would care about their happiness and that implies being emotionally invested in it because 'valuing' is necessarily personal, that's a big part of why I don't like the idea of hedonism as an 'academic theory' or the detached 'academic' approach to ethics even though that might work in just pinpointing inconsistencies) but even though I'm convinced that in practice no one who valued the victim's happiness could enjoy forcing sexual intimacy with them let's consider that the rapist's pleasure doesn't stem entirely from wanting them to suffer or even just not caring whether or not they do in some silly hypothetical scenario where the rapist genuinely cares about their victim's suffering, shouldn't the value of their sexual frustration fundamentally hold the same weight as the victim's distress? That's empty rhetoric from, say, a libertarian perspective but consider that in this scenario the rapist's frustration would be so much greater than the victim's disgust, humiliation, frustration or inconvenience and we don't intuitively grasp this because we're comparing how much we expect a rape victim to suffer to how much pleasure we expect a rapist to experience, I bet that's probably at least part of why you find that scenario morally impermissible on principle, on top of our intuition (I'll assume you feel this way) that suffering fundamentally holds more weight than happiness (which I think we generally have because we feel pain more easily so the most high-intensity pain we can concretely imagine, not just abstractly conceptualize, is greater than the most intense happiness we can imagine).

From the hedonistic point of view every possible person's pain, even the mildest degree of emotional distress, is inherently bad in all scenarios so the hedonist isn't unsympathetic to the rape victim and there's an important distinction to be made between the presumed ultimatum and the ideology (hedonists will differ among themselves as to which policies or choices are justified in practice, they only agree that everyone's suffering is bad/everyone deserves happiness and only suffering is inherently bad). The question is, why is rape bad and if it's for any other reason than suffering then this point won't make hedonism less repugnant to you but if one rejects hedonism because they believe it justifies causing people to suffer, or to a certain degree, in scenarios where they can't tolerate doing so because they care about their suffering then they would be rejecting hedonism for inconsistently hedonistic reasons. It's clear to me that suffering is why rape is bad, even though I'd never tolerate gang rape or pushing someone in front of a moving trolley or killing one to save five or this or that atrocity in practice, even whatever distress the possibility of hedonistic consequentialism justifying those things causes me clarifies why hedonism is true and desirable. Hedonism stands out among all the ethical theories because we actually experience pain as inherently bad even if we rationalize otherwise upon reflection.

-I guess not but I'm not sure if disgust is the primary motivator.

-I'm not sure what you mean (by self-fulfilling prophecy). I wouldn't say they have an 'intrinsic' aversion to AMSC either, I'm not sure what you mean by 'intrinsic' because I'd agree that it's probably learned.

-In that case, I'm not an anti.

-I agree.

-When you put it like that it sounds pretty strange. What I meant was that I don't necessarily think that people are bothered by people sexualizing their children or children they have parental instincts toward because of 'disgust,' even though you could argue it's a kind of sex negativity in associating 'innocence' with asexuality (I don't think sex negativity is necessarily implied by an aversion to sexualizing certain people though) and I don't think my anger with Butler or the 23-year-old man in Fledgling was rooted in disgust either, I'm not sure what exactly you were referring to. I also don't think disgust has much to do with one's personal aversion to their being promiscuous or their engaging in fornication, when our libido is high enough our instinct is to be promiscuous even if, because of learned attitudes about sex or our natural capacity for conflicting desires and feelings, we feel disgusted with ourselves for wanting what we want. I think a lot of it lies in the 'meaning' that people project on to sex (maybe because in the Judeo-Christian tradition sex is seen as something that helps to cement an exclusive bond between man and woman so when you run around sharing it casually you cheapen what it's for- strengthening sacred marital ties that are valuable largely because they are exclusive. If that's the case I can see why pedophilia would be repugnant because most of us agree that children aren't prepared for an ideally life-long commitment to marriage and children, and to degrade them by turning them into 'sluts' is even worse than doing the same to a woman because they're more innocent, in the same way that killing a child might be considered fundamentally worse than killing an adult. In most cultures, female promiscuity is looked down on so even if the child-adult sex taboo isn't universal you could make the same argument; I'm not sure how pervasive it was in the ancient world, I know you'll find child-adult romance in the original Grimm's fairy tales, I think boy-man/child-adult sex occurred in ancient Greece; I don't know how accepted it was, the prophet Muhammed married Aisha when she was 9 but I don't know if their relationship was sexual from the start and boy-man relationships are also apparently not very rare in certain Islamic societies, etc.). It is hard for me to understand where people are coming from if you pose a hypothetical scenario in which a child engages in pleasurable sexual intimacy with an adult with no long-term harm and they still have an issue with that, it would be something else if it was just "but you idiot, it WILL cause the child pain" (which can still be an ad hoc argument that's rooted in valuing something other than happiness/freedom from pain and I'm sure many hedonists will try to accommodate conventional attitudes by downplaying what hedonism implies when it comes to child-adult sex) which still doesn't address pedophilia itself or fantasy child-adult sex (I wouldn't be considered suicidal if I daydreamed about jumping out of a window and flying, there would be nothing wrong with jumping out of a window if one could fly or gravity was turned off and no one would really be angered by my playing with that fantasy scenario in the realization that that isn't how reality works in practice; not that I think harmless, mutually beneficial child-adult sex is as unrealistic). It's a fascinating conversation to have because you expect people to think as you do and it's very clear to me that only suffering is inherently harmful and justice revolves around that (harm reduction and considering the happiness of all beings), what would be wrong with valuing a child's sexual pleasure in some scenario where they would feel it, don't you want to experience happiness (sexual or otherwise) yourself?

[PorcelainLark]

That's empty rhetoric from, say, a libertarian perspective but consider that in this scenario the rapist's frustration would be so much greater than the victim's disgust, humiliation, frustration or inconvenience and we don't intuitively grasp this because we're comparing how much we expect a rape victim to suffer to how much pleasure we expect a rapist to experience, I bet that's probably at least part of why you find that scenario morally impermissible on principle, on top of our intuition (I'll assume you feel this way) that suffering fundamentally holds more weight than happiness (which I think we generally have because we feel pain more easily so the most high-intensity pain we can concretely imagine, not just abstractly conceptualize, is greater than the most intense happiness we can imagine).

I don't think suffering is necessarily a bad thing. I'm more concerned with human dignity: that certain forms of violation injure human dignity in a way that's more significant than just displeasure or pain.

Hedonism stands out among all the ethical theories because we actually experience pain as inherently bad even if we rationalize otherwise upon reflection.

I disagree, I think that leads to a life-denying outlook and could even justify euthanasia. This isn't a topic I can debate in a disinterested way about.

I'm not sure what you mean (by self-fulfilling prophecy). I wouldn't say they have an 'intrinsic' aversion to AMSC either, I'm not sure what you mean by 'intrinsic' because I'd agree that it's probably learned.

Imagine a small village that was completely disconnected from the rest of culture, and someone comes along to tell them that pedophilia is wrong because everyone feels pedophilia is wrong, the village doesn't know what that person is talking about so the person tells a bunch of horrific stories about people like Josef Fritzl. The village is horrified, and now the person was right to say everyone feels pedophilia is wrong. They care because of a picture that has been given to them, they don't actually care about pedophilia in of itself.

I don't think my anger with Butler or the 23-year-old man in Fledgling was rooted in disgust either

So, what was it? Was it because you saw the relationship as exploitative?

I also don't think disgust has much to do with one's personal aversion to their being promiscuous or their engaging in fornication, when our libido is high enough our instinct is to be promiscuous even if, because of learned attitudes about sex or our natural capacity for conflicting desires and feelings, we feel disgusted with ourselves for wanting what we want.

I disagree, I think sex aversion has a lot to do with toilet training. We develop a reflexive disgust at the genitals for the sake of hygiene. Becoming sexually active means overcoming that deeply ingrained disgust. Hence why people call sex "dirty". Libido may be powerful enough to overcome disgust, but the disgust will always be there.

[John_Doe]

PorcelainLark,

We have to 'agree to disagree' about hedonism (which is the beginning and end of all my formally thought out/reflective opinions on morality and the very concept of value, my first ethical principle). I appreciate the straightforward rejection of my position (I could be wrong but, when I bring it up, I don't think most people really address it or act as though it's a notable aspect of my take, that's not really what I mean, I have no idea how to articulate this. I appreciate knowing where you frankly disagree with me). I'm not 'disinterested' either. It's off-topic, and outside of unbearably painful, uncurable chronic illness (that may or may not be terminal) I'm not sure what public policy on euthanasia should be, I don't think that I ever will be and I probably shouldn't be either (at the moment I lean toward, say, a 6-12 month-long waiting period for people who suffer from psychological and environmental reasons rather than medical ones to see if they might change their mind or find some hope in their lives and if they don't then qualified physicians can assist them in that or they'll be provided with some 'medication' that they can take on their own, I would personally choose to end my life if my mother was dead and I had a painless, convenient method of doing so). I find the idea that life is inherently beautiful, that it is worth preserving for its own sake regardless of the emotional quality of that person's life, to be genuinely harsh and brutal (I do want people to live in ideal circumstances; when they benefit from their lives, but I don't value 'life' ; i.e. conscious experience, for the sake of life. It would be one thing if someone is holding out hope for someone else experiencing future happiness that will compensate for their current misery, even that can be naive and rooted in a bias that de-values suffering on its own but I could still respect wanting them to feel joy, euphoria and pleasure in their life; I can even appreciate the idea that we should be grateful for what little happiness we've felt in our lives even if it doesn't compensate for the harm, but to just concede that even if person a is always going to be in unbearable pain and there's no 'real ambiguity' around that that we should value his life per se does not sit well with me). I might add though that I don't see what the point of sexual or emotional intimacy would be if not for it being pleasurable and you might concede that happiness in some scenarios is good as an end in itself but I'd maintain that if I oppose x in one scenario because it causes suffering (and suffering is ultimately the problem) then that same perspective would lead me to oppose, encourage or be neutral about y for the same reason (I could oppose y for other reasons; like a concern with autonomy, health, spiritual growth or self-improvement, knowledge or wisdom etc. but that's contrary to why I oppose x, they're fundamentally different perspectives. If x is the ultimate justification for a thing it would be the ultimate justification for accepting or rejecting any other position as well and that also applies to epistemology. Value pluralism involves shifting back and forth between fundamentally unrelated positions on a 'whim,' based on criteria that has nothing to do with the nature of a thing. If you're a relatavist/nihilist then you don't think that anything is inherently good or bad and considering something that you believe to be objectively neutral to be good or bad is already a contradiction, but if you accept intrinsic value multiple things can't share the property of goodness or badness despite being entirely different things). I won't expand though, because I could through a million different angles.

I'm not sure I follow your logic (I don't see how that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy and I don't think many people would argue that pedophilia is wrong because people intuit that it's wrong, although they might make an appeal to consensus to legitimize the claim that it's wrong. I think the idea would be that they've figured out that it's wrong, not that it's wrong because they view it as wrong). I'm sure people do associate a thing at its core with what it tends to correlate with in practice but, truth be told, I don't think that people feel pedophilia is wrong because they believe that pedophiles tend to be abusive molesters. The stigma remains even when you outline hypothetical scenarios where the children do not suffer and the adult is not being 'abusive' (my response to Fledgling exemplifies this. I'd recommend checking it out if you're interested in science fiction or at least I liked it personally). I'm not really convinced that the villagers would oppose pedophilia on principle because of their expectations about real-life child adult sex (if they themselves have some interest in children, I'm sure it will be all the more obvious to them that it's possible to be attracted to one and have compassion for them simultaneously).

In retrospect, I'm not really sure. That's a good question. I remember being 19 and some girl online was joking about how she wanted some rapper to cum on her and I found that 'shocking,' even though I looked at porn and was instinctively turned on by the idea of cumming on attractive women, I think it rubbed me the wrong way because it came off as provocative to me.

I don't think a psychological aversion to something can necessarily be tied to 'disgust' though. Libido can overcome some disgust but not all of the aversions we have are the 'disgust' that I would feel if I came across an unflushed toilet, unless maybe you're just defining 'disgust' as aversion broadly. I know that researchers have tried to connect disgust to morality (and conservatism specifically) but I don't think an automatic, reflexive disgust with certain sensory experiences has to do with ideas about propriety (a man might have a psychological aversion to sexualizing a woman he finds physically flawless, for example, but have no moral issue with sexualizing a woman who physically turns him off).

[PorcelainLark]

We have to 'agree to disagree' about hedonism (which is the beginning and end of all my formally thought out/reflective opinions on morality and the very concept of value, my first ethical principle). I appreciate the straightforward rejection of my position (I could be wrong but, when I bring it up, I don't think most people really address it or act as though it's a notable aspect of my take, that's not really what I mean, I have no idea how to articulate this. I appreciate knowing where you frankly disagree with me).

For me, moral discourse is more about a combination of moral psychology (guilt, shame) and consistency of rules versus hypocrisy. So my arguments are usually about the emotional reality involved in moral decisions, or about the logical consistency of the judgement. Where possible I prefer to start from the bottom up (i.e. emotional experience), and then look for different logical interpretations of the judgements involved implied by emotional experiences, rather dimiss things as irrational/inconsistent from the outset. Academic theories of morality can help clarify human experience, but I don't think they can replace it. Dishonesty, hypocrisy, and pretence are usually things that bother me, integrity, sincerity, and vulnerability are things I usually value.

I'm not 'disinterested' either.

I mean it's not a topic I'm capable of debating. It's too triggering to me.

I might add though that I don't see what the point of sexual or emotional intimacy would be if not for it being pleasurable and you might concede that happiness in some scenarios is good as an end in itself but I'd maintain that if I oppose x in one scenario because it causes suffering (and suffering is ultimately the problem) then that same perspective would lead me to oppose, encourage or be neutral about y for the same reason (I could oppose y for other reasons; like a concern with autonomy, health, spiritual growth or self-improvement, knowledge or wisdom etc.

I don't think pleasure is a bad thing, I just don't think it's what morality is about. Regarding sexuality I think there's a lot of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and shame which I take issue with.

I'm not sure I follow your logic (I don't see how that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy and I don't think many people would argue that pedophilia is wrong because people intuit that it's wrong, although they might make an appeal to consensus to legitimize the claim that it's wrong. I think the idea would be that they've figured out that it's wrong, not that it's wrong because they view it as wrong).

It's not a point I'm that invested in or thought heavily about to be honest, but I'll try to explain. Your quote was as follows:

"I think most of them don't actually care, they mostly just enjoy having power over someone lesser than them; in a way, the issue of power dynamic imbalance they claim to have with AMSC, may reveal something about their own desire for unequal relationships and their own guilty pleasures."

I have often suspected that many of them don't care but I'm almost certain that many of them do and that I might be emotionally desensitized to how taboo it is. I do think that many people are seriously bothered by the idea of child-adult sex and that matters...

When you said you thought that many people are "seriously bothered" by AMSC, I thought maybe people could will themselves into caring about it.

I don't think a psychological aversion to something can necessarily be tied to 'disgust' though. Libido can overcome some disgust but not all of the aversions we have are the 'disgust' that I would feel if I came across an unflushed toilet, unless maybe you're just defining 'disgust' as aversion broadly. I know that researchers have tried to connect disgust to morality (and conservatism specifically) but I don't think an automatic, reflexive disgust with certain sensory experiences has to do with ideas about propriety (a man might have a psychological aversion to sexualizing a woman he finds physically flawless, for example, but have no moral issue with sexualizing a woman who physically turns him off).

Sure, in certain contexts. Like a tool made for left handed people could produce aversion via irritation in a right handed person. However, when we're dealing with the body and modesty, I think disgust plays a central role. I don't see how you can have feelings about sex without relating it to feelings about the body.
Regarding how my preoccupation with disgust originated, it was partially a reaction to Martha Nussbaum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nu ... o_Humanity

[John_Doe]

I don't really understand your position. What would make you feel guilt or shame or what do you think warrants that? I'm not sure what you mean by starting from the bottom up, with emotional experience, because if you're rejecting hedonism that seems to imply a preoccupation with what you feel good or bad about, i.e. intuition. In practice at least, our intuitions are necessarily going to be inconsistent so if you want an internally consistent worldview or one that allows for consistency between judgments you have to sacrifice some intuitions (one thing about hedonism is that it connects very different problems and grievances even when it doesn't entirely capture the intuition behind why something is seen as bad or wrong. It applies to cancer, it applies to war and poverty, it applies to sexuality, it applies to bullying, etc. Someone out there has a completely unique problem that other people can't understand or would never consider but their problem, whether it's medical or psychological or environmental or whatever, is only unique as a cause of stress; if a problem is a problem because it causes suffering then s/he is really in the same boat as the rest of us and their predicament isn't truly unique. Libertarianism, cultural Marxism, nationalism, etc. have nothing to do with a lot of our life experiences and problems; if sentient aliens exist, however different from us they might be, hedonism applies to them too. When it comes to map issues libertarianism could do a good job in advocating against statutory rape laws but I think hedonism better captures the argument against non-violent discrimination against maps and the stigmatization of pedophilia and child/minor-adult sex on principle). I do think we can say from the start that certain positions are inconsistent but in itself I don't think that has any normative implications (and the idea that consistency per se is inherently good is itself internally inconsistent because it implies viewing the same things as ultimately good or bad not because of their nature but relative to whether or not any given person claims to value them). I don't think that anything other than actual experience can clarify experience, besides hedonism that means my conscious experience must be real but happiness/pain is the only mental state I can think of that doesn't simulate or isn't in some way oriented toward some other reality (like desire which motivates us to produce/maintain or minimize/avoid some state of affairs that we view as good or bad and I think that it's meaningful to talk about correct or incorrect desires/values because wanting something necessarily implies some kind of an 'assessment' about the nature of that thing. My sensory experience is real but it doesn't necessarily tell me anything about the 'objective' physical reality that it seems to represent).

Do you mean euthanasia specifically? I'm sensitive about different issues (feminism, the concept of mental illness and psychology and neuroscientists occasionally overstep their authority in treating consciousness as the neurological activity that it corresponds with, even the perceived expertise associated with academic philosophy, the age gap stigma also somewhat 'bothers' me and so does the devaluing of sexual pleasure in many scenarios, the devaluing of suffering and happiness in many scenarios is especially upsetting to me; in terms of my emotional response and not just my appraisal of that as immoral or unjust), it would be hard to speak on these issues offline because I'm not very articulate and have difficulty thinking quickly on the spot with no time to sort things through but what would bother me more than anything, because I know what my basic arguments would be, is coming off as childish or ineloquent (people might take a position more seriously based on presentation, even if the core arguments are the same. It's part of where I think 'philosophy' fails, I guess, with the emphasis on esoteric language and the perceived authority that might come with it to communicate simple ideas that can't be inter-subjectively tested. I could argue that a philosopher is someone who holds opinions professionally) but I like online debates. I'm excited by my ideas and I like clarifying my position, defending what I care about or what helps me to make sense of things and taking what's in my mind and putting it outside. I tend to not read about hedonism because I'm really bothered by the idea of my worldview being misrepresented by other hedonists or having disagreements with them that I normally process or make peace with through my worldview (it would be brutal to go to some hedonistic convention or come across another hedonist in real life even though, ideally, I would love to live in a pan-hedonistic world).

When you said you thought that many people are "seriously bothered" by AMSC, I thought maybe people could will themselves into caring about it.

I'm not sure what you mean. Based on your quote that my quote is in response to, do you mean that they develop an anger response to it because it allows them to maintain power over a weaker party? Like I said some time earlier, I do think that humans are hierarchical animals (in terms of an organic desire to be above others/have a society with lower and higher status people; not just the kind of hierarchy where the most violent murderers will be given less consideration because their behavior angers people and their resentment over unjust behavior blocks sympathy that they would otherwise naturally feel for them) but I don't think that's what it comes down to entirely, I don't really think that's the initial cause of the stigma even though certain people who value having a comparatively higher status for its own sake might latch on to that existing opportunity.

Your last point-again I have to 'agree to disagree' but one thing to consider is that the cultural stigma around female promiscuity might have originated from men wanting to ensure that their partner's offspring are truly theirs, biologically. I don't see how that might relate to homophobia but when it comes to children it might play a role. I think a lot of the age-gap stigma really starts with the sexualization of girls/young women and includes boys in the realization that we have to include them for the sake of consistency (so we 'learned' to be angered when female teachers in their 30s sleep with male teenage students because that's implied by opposing the sexual exploitation of girls/young women by men).

[PorcelainLark]

What would make you feel guilt or shame or what do you think warrants that?

An example would be taking advantage of a good person, (although I think it's something of a category error to talk about emotions in terms of whether they're warranted).

I'm not sure what you mean by starting from the bottom up, with emotional experience, because if you're rejecting hedonism that seems to imply a preoccupation with what you feel good or bad about, i.e. intuition.

I feel like that's already adding a layer of interpretation. Here's an example, a confession can be painful even if you have the sense it's morally right. I think to say the sense of the right and the good are just kinds of pleasure devalues them (or makes the concept of pleasure so broad as to make hedonism encompass all moral and ethical theories). Like the decision to lie or not is equivalent to whether or not to eat a cake. A decision being concerned with more or less sensual pleasure isn't sufficient to make it a moral decision, in my opinion.

In practice at least, our intuitions are necessarily going to be inconsistent so if you want an internally consistent worldview or one that allows for consistency between judgments you have to sacrifice some intuitions (one thing about hedonism is that it connects very different problems and grievances even when it doesn't entirely capture the intuition behind why something is seen as bad or wrong.

This is another point where we're fundamentally going to disagree. I don't think intuitions are things that can be bargained away. They remain part of our moral senses even if we try to downplay them because we can't find an obvious justification for them. It's a big part of why debating morality rarely works; you end up dealing with a picture of why a person might think something, rather than dealing with what they actually feel. In a way, I think this can be why academic moral philosophy can at times be worse that useless: it habituates people to dismiss the main thing you need to pay attention to in order to productively engage in moral discourse.

When it comes to map issues libertarianism could do a good job in advocating against statutory rape laws but I think hedonism better captures the argument against non-violent discrimination against maps and the stigmatization of pedophilia and child/minor-adult sex on principle).

As theoretical frameworks, sure. However, in practice, I don't think they're necessarily that helpful. I don't think the root of people's inability to see the humanity of MAPs is an aversion to pleasure or to freedom. I feel you have to get to decision making and reactions that are happening earlier than those questions (for example, the decision to fall in line because of fear of the mob).

I do think we can say from the start that certain positions are inconsistent but in itself I don't think that has any normative implications (and the idea that consistency per se is inherently good is itself internally inconsistent because it implies viewing the same things as ultimately good or bad not because of their nature but relative to whether or not any given person claims to value them).

I have to disagree. Otherwise all we have are hypothetical imperatives and no way to say which are better or worse. Either we have consistency or we necessarily end up as relativists or nihilists.

Do you mean euthanasia specifically?

Yes. I'm sorry, I don't feel comfortable talking about it.

Based on your quote that my quote is in response to, do you mean that they develop an anger response to it because it allows them to maintain power over a weaker party? Like I said some time earlier, I do think that humans are hierarchical animals (in terms of an organic desire to be above others/have a society with lower and higher status people; not just the kind of hierarchy where the most violent murderers will be given less consideration because their behavior angers people and their resentment over unjust behavior blocks sympathy that they would otherwise naturally feel for them) but I don't think that's what it comes down to entirely, I don't really think that's the initial cause of the stigma even though certain people who value having a comparatively higher status for its own sake might latch on to that existing opportunity.

I think it was a few separate points: that aggression towards MAPs is opportunistic, and that people have to continuously keep themselves in a state of outrage in order to maintain their dehumanization of MAPs. I don't think it's about hierarchy in the social status seeking sense, it's something more disturbing. It's about power, not in the sense of people seeing you as better than another person, power in the sense of being able to do what you want to another person and no one is going to stop you (like an older brother who could discretely beat his younger sibling). In my view, pedophile hunters and vigilantes are in the same category as those who beat up homeless people and take advantage of drug addicts; they are the types to take advantage of people left behind by society.

Your last point-again I have to 'agree to disagree' but one thing to consider is that the cultural stigma around female promiscuity might have originated from men wanting to ensure that their partner's offspring are truly theirs, biologically.

I think that comes after bodily taboos (both in a psychological developmental sense and in an historical sense). There are cultures which have partible paternity, so I don't think that works as a universal explanation; from what I've read the idea of biological fatherhood is closely related to the adoption of agriculture (via an analogy to animal husbandry).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partible_paternity

[John_Doe]

-I'm not sure what you mean. If a thing is bad we're primed to have a negative emotional response to it although a negative emotional response to something doesn't necessarily require a belief that it is bad. If people view child-adult sex as inherently bad they're likely to be bothered by its 'normalization,' if they don't then they won't be. When I say that guilt or resentment or a negative emotional response is warranted I mean that it's the natural response to the correct assessment of your behavior or someone else's behavior or some state of affairs; namely suffering or the absence of happiness (I don't think resentment is productive and it might conflict with sympathy, although I might differentiate resenting someone from being angry or frustrated with their behavior; or even a certain situation that's out of their control, but I think it makes a kind of sense to resent someone for de-valuing the happiness or suffering of others. I don't think it makes sense to resent someone for being attracted to children or acting on their attraction in some theoretical scenario where we could reasonably presume it would be ultimately harmless, so the anger people feel toward pedophiles as pedophiles is unwarranted).

-Again, I'm not sure what you mean. A thing is good or bad if its existence is a better or worse state of affairs (if we're justified in wanting it to exist or to not exist). All possible sentient beings must instinctively want to experience happiness and to avoid pain because those mental states inherently appear to be positive and negative in value (and they don't simulate something other than themselves), we don't just intuit that they are based on subjective criteria in the same way that people intuit that pedophilia or incest are inherently wrong, happiness and pain feel inherently good and bad (again, it's not that we feel that they are good and bad, I'm making a statement about how we actually experience those states). When you say that you prefer to start with emotional experience I read that as you're starting with your experience of happiness/pain or you're starting with intuition, i.e. what you feel good and bad about.

I wouldn't say that the right and the good are kinds of pleasure. I would define 'pleasure' as encompassing all emotional states that are felt as inherently positive, feeling good is what makes pleasure/happiness pleasure/happiness. To be moral is to value what is good and the right choice (not just the moral choice in terms of intent or consideration) is the one that actually results in the most happiness/least suffering for the highest number of beings (since I reject aggregation, I would otherwise say 'the greatest balance of happiness over suffering'). I don't follow the logic about defining pleasure so broadly that hedonism would encompass all moral theories, hedonism is the view that everyone's/all happiness and only happiness is inherently good, all things would have to be pleasure or pain in order for that to be the case. A moral choice (like the confession you mentioned) can be painful but ethical in its consideration of the happiness/suffering of others, or even one's future self. I'll try to avoid just going back and forth, you don't think a preoccupation with happiness is moral, but I would argue that 'moral' follows 'good.' If a certain outfit is objectively more valuable than another it is moral to value that outfit more than the other.

-From a practical standpoint I appreciate where you're coming from but we do have to try to correct some of our flawed intuition just in the service of other intuitions and emotional biases we have. In much of science and philosophy we have to let go of certain intuitions just to make sense of reality. The way that people's understanding of anything (this applies to 'self-improvement' and religious enlightenment if that's something that's important to you) evolves is largely through abandoning long-held intuitions. Without objective justification you cannot legitimately criticize the values or beliefs of others. The hatred toward pedophiles is rooted in/justified by subjective criteria. If your criteria is just as subjective then what gives you the upper hand (in terms of your appraisal of the other side as being in the wrong, they think; or at least claim, that YOU'RE in the wrong!), how can you rule out the possible legitimacy of anti-pedophile prejudice? I can agree that it's factually why debate often fails, you can't change the world or the hearts and minds of other people; at best you can show them alternative options, but the whole concept of a moral grievance or injustice falls apart without an objective standard and we seem to be of the same mind that discrimination against pedophiles is really wrong, that it's truly unreasonable. It's not just that we can't relate to anti-pedophile hatred or feel differently, I hope this is true in your mind as well, but that people who see pedophilia as inherently wrong have made some kind of factual error in judgment. I would not ask people to be objective just to be objective though, there is a pay-off in sacrificing some intuitions for a non-arbitrary standard; there's no other way to minimize ambiguity although different personality types might be more or less driven to do so relative to other agendas (I do believe that ambiguity is inherently stressful for all people, in the sense of priming a negative emotional response. I also believe that universal compassion is most conductive to long-term happiness because of the natural dissonance that comes with viewing suffering as good, bad or neutral based on conditions that have nothing to do with the nature of suffering and contrary to our actual experience of it. I believe there's a peace that ultimately comes with universal compassion, as difficult as it can be, for that reason among others).

-In terms of persuading people they might not be very practically helpful but in terms of coherently outlining grievances I think the freedom to act on one's attraction with a willing partner can be best covered by libertarianism and hedonism (the former being preoccupied with freedom as an end in itself and the latter with the psychological harm that government coercion causes, on top of the value of those sexual experiences to begin with). What is the value of child-adult sex? Would there be a point in having sex with someone, even one whom you appraise as physically beautiful, when doing so is not remotely pleasurable for either of you (and not because it leads to something else, like reproduction, I mean the sensory experience on its own). People are prejudiced against pedophiles because of their view of pedophilia; the sexual attraction to prepubescent children (although, in popular usage, one can be a 'pedophile' if they're attracted to significantly younger adults, never mind pubescent children or teens), and by extension actual child-adult sex (despite the point I've made about raw physical attraction having nothing to do with cognition I still think an aversion to the act itself is the root of the aversion to the desire for that act which I guess is viewed as implied even when one is attracted to a child-looking person who isn't psychologically a 'child'). What is the value of sexual attraction, to children or whoever? To feel sexually attracted to someone is to find the prospect of physical intimacy with them pleasurable, that person has features that are desirable in the context of pleasurable physical/emotional intimacy with them (sunsets are aesthetically pleasing but one doesn't want intimacy with a sunset, it's just the visual that is pleasing). The anger around pedophilia is directly rooted in the de-valuing of sexual pleasure (i.e. it can be fine, even good, circumstantially but only under the right conditions), anti-pedo. people (whether they resent pedophiles as people or not, one can view pedophilia as bad without hating people, one can even view acting on one's attraction to children; which unlike just having the attraction is a choice, to be unjust and still not hate anyone. Many people who disagree with us, and who hold views that I believe to be truly immoral, are still deeply anti-hate, to their credit), anti-pedo. people take issue with the fact that pedophiles are wired to take pleasure in physical contact with prepubescent children (I could argue that it's not even just the actual physical contact they necessarily take issue with and are just devaluing as a source of happiness as opposed to only having a problem with the pleasure-response to it, e.g. the response to an adult who hugs a child and feels no sexual gratification in that and one who does the same and privately finds it erotic/romantic).

-The badness of suffering isn't theoretical. We have to start with some principle other than a concern with consistency per se and then apply that principle consistently. I agree that we should be consistent in regards to the principle that we believe is legitimate but pointing out the inconsistencies of other positions doesn't further our agenda. You want a morally ambiguous/schizophrenic soft-hearted Nazi to smuggle Jews to safety or aid them in some way even though that's inconsistent with his ideology, something he does because he's overwhelmed with pity despite having committed himself to Nazi ideas ideologically; I would rather that than for him to be a consistent Nazi. I think you lost me somewhere because you said that you didn't want to dismiss a position as inconsistent from the outset but you also said that you value consistency of rules/judgments. A concern for consistency as consistency seems to imply relativism to me, since it implies that a thing isn't bad in itself, in a vacuum, but relative to whether or not people who claim to value it actually do, or do consistently.

-Then we shall speak of it no more.

-There may be some people who seize the opportunity to abuse vulnerable people because they know it will be socially acceptable but I think generally you're understating how emotionally threatened people are by pedophilia and the idea that child-adult sex will one day be normalized, whether or not they truly think that they're in the right I think they're generally acting out of pain-avoidance. I don't think that abusing other people because you find something about what they represent to you threatening is less of a moral error (people handle pain in different ways, not everyone wants to shoot up a school to get back at the ones who hurt them even when they suffer unbearably, so a preexisting capacity for anti-social behavior works with pain to bring out the worst in us. How much pain would I have to cause you to push you torture your own mother? The level of pain is irrelevant if you have a deep-rooted aversion to hurting your mother; to be clear I'm not talking about some 'greater good' scenario where your ultimatum was hurting her or suffering more yourself, an example could be hurting her because you know it would offend me. There's never an excuse for wanting someone else to suffer or not caring whether or not they do although it's easier for me to swallow just being selfish, which I am, than actively sadistic, so I don't really care if someone is abusive for fun or out of pain-avoidance) but I don't think it's generally that they just want to abuse someone for the thrill of domination, even though I'm sure that exists. Having to keep themselves in a constant state of outrage in order to continue dehumanizing MAPs seems to imply that (it seems to imply that the default mode is sympathy until someone; what their existence as a member of an offensive class represents for you existentially if not immoral or unjust choices that they have made, causes you enough pain to block that) and that's not even to say that I think such outrage is necessary for 'dehumanization' (one might squash a fly not because they're emotionally threatened by him/her or what they represent in anyway but because they just don't care about the fly. I think some, not all, of bullying is rooted in this kind of natural apathy and it seems to be exemplified through various atrocities throughout history, people have literally killed just because they wanted to commit the perfect crime or were curious about what it would be like, no anger toward their victim or anything).

I should have asked you this earlier but what do you think is going to work in terms of actual persuasion (maybe I didn't fully grasp that this is mostly or entirely where you were going with the point about the importance of intuition in moral discourse)?

-I don't think it works as a universal explanation either. Even non-human males often mate guard, I haven't heard of the same from females. I have also read that the concern with biological paternity might have risen through the rise of property that came with the development of agriculture.

I should work through some of this but I've already spent a lot of time on it.

[PorcelainLark]

When you say that you prefer to start with emotional experience I read that as you're starting with your experience of happiness/pain or you're starting with intuition, i.e. what you feel good and bad about.

That's what I have an issue with, I think labelling experience usually leads to abstraction. Slowing down and reflecting on what I'm feeling feels like it can alter my experience in past events and my perception of similar events in the future. I think it's healthier to treat emotion as something subject to change.

I don't follow the logic about defining pleasure so broadly that hedonism would encompass all moral theories, hedonism is the view that everyone's/all happiness and only happiness is inherently good, all things would have to be pleasure or pain in order for that to be the case.

Maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you were arguing because goodness is happiness, the experience of desire means that our sense of the good is happiness. Therefore, Kantians, virtue theorists, and negative utilitarians are all implicitly hedonists because they desire for the good or the right. If that were the argument, I'd have to say that definition of hedonism is so broad as to not really work. However I guess I misunderstood you.

In much of science and philosophy we have to let go of certain intuitions just to make sense of reality. The way that people's understanding of anything (this applies to 'self-improvement' and religious enlightenment if that's something that's important to you) evolves is largely through abandoning long-held intuitions.

I don't think moral intuitions are the same as how we imagine the world works; in contrast to physics, morality is prospective because it's concerned with what's preferable rather than explaining what already is. The other part is my skepticism towards humans ability to consciously change; I'm more confident in change occuring unconsciously.

...that people who see pedophilia as inherently wrong have made some kind of factual error in judgment...

I think it's due to the image they construct of pedophilia. If we were the monsters they imagined us to be, I think they would be justified in their judgement of us.

...there is a pay-off in sacrificing some intuitions for a non-arbitrary standard...

I don't think we really have a choice in the weight we give to things.

In terms of persuading people they might not be very practically helpful but in terms of coherently outlining grievances I think the freedom to act on one's attraction with a willing partner can be best covered by libertarianism and hedonism...

I see the merits, in that regard.

[P]eople take issue with the fact that pedophiles are wired to take pleasure in physical contact with prepubescent children (I could argue that it's not even just the actual physical contact they necessarily take issue with and are just devaluing as a source of happiness as opposed to only having a problem with the pleasure-response to it, e.g. the response to an adult who hugs a child and feels no sexual gratification in that and one who does the same and privately finds it erotic/romantic).

I think maybe the answer is to view judgement and treatment of pedophiles as the end result of a multifaceted process. It begins with simple disgust at sexuality and the human body, then children are idealized as pure and free from sexuality, then pedophiles come to be viewed as violaters of that pure freedom from sexual desire. I think the fact that pedophilia became an issue at the same time hygiene and sanitation were deep concerns isn't a coincidence; it was a time when disgust could be rationalized as a concern with hygiene.

I think you lost me somewhere because you said that you didn't want to dismiss a position as inconsistent from the outset but you also said that you value consistency of rules/judgments.

It's more that I don't think the reasons why people value the things that they do is transparent.

A concern for consistency as consistency seems to imply relativism to me, since it implies that a thing isn't bad in itself, in a vacuum, but relative to whether or not people who claim to value it actually do, or do consistently.

I disagree, I think it's the only way out of relativism. Otherwise what we say is right is arbitrary (e.g. based on the opinion of the majority, based on personal preferences). This is one thing which makes me sympathetic to Kant.

I think generally you're understating how emotionally threatened people are by pedophilia and the idea that child-adult sex will one day be normalized...

Maybe. However, I think it's worth remembering that public executions used to be a form of entertainment and bullfighting still is. Human bloodlust is something I think people underestimate.

I don't really care if someone is abusive for fun or out of pain-avoidance) but I don't think it's generally that they just want to abuse someone for the thrill of domination...

I think the difference is pain-avoidance is an issue that can be resolved; if somethings painful you could remove it and the person wouldn't be motivated to mistreat MAPs. However if pain-avoidance is a pretext for sadism, the goal-posts can move indefinitely without resolution.

I should have asked you this earlier but what do you think is going to work in terms of actual persuasion (maybe I didn't fully grasp that this is mostly or entirely where you were going with the point about the importance of intuition in moral discourse)?

I think you have to try to make them be honest with themselves about what they're doing. It wouldn't solve everything over night, but it does help. For example, asking the question of whether a person's enjoyment of To Catch a Predator might be biasing their views when organizations like VirPed come up; or whether they say violent things about pedophiles because they are afraid to be labelled a pedophile. Basically I think you need psychologically probe people because for the most part their perspectives on pedophilia aren't things they've reasoned themselves into believing.