AASECT discussion of agency and autonomy

[John_Doe]

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. One's emotional state can fluctuate and we can like one thing at one point and dislike the same thing at another but the nature of happiness/pain doesn't change. I'm also not sure that I would call happiness an 'abstraction.' We never see redness, we see specific red things and 'redness' is a generalization of a quality those things share in common but we feel happiness itself (oriented toward different objects that have nothing to do with the feel-good state itself. The object of sexual pleasure is sexual intimacy with an attractive partner, the object of pride is one's self-image, the object of grief is the loss of something valuable, the object of boredom is the absence of pleasurable stimulation, etc. and we intuitively associate our emotional states with their objects but they are not one and the same; so I don't think that humiliation is a different 'kind' of stress than physical pain).

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.

I think it's a false distinction to some degree, I've always taken issue with the supposed 'is-ought gap.' To say that we should do something is to say that it would be good if we did it (if we're talking about reason or epistemology you could even say that it would be correct or rational to adopt a certain view). You can just reword it in a way that makes it descriptive so what's really being denied is that there is a such thing as value. I don't know what would bring about 'unconscious' change as opposed to conscious change, or the former without the latter.

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.

I misunderstood you at first. I thought you were just saying that they do see pedophiles as monsters and I was going to add that this wasn't necessarily due to stereotypes about pedophiles but just in one being a pedophile so they're being otherwise virtuous won't necessarily help.

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

If you don't think that someone can change their position then there is no point to any kind of dialogue (unless we're just talking about conversations we engage in because it's satisfying to express our ideas), even the concept of someone being immoral requires that they have the capacity to change; to choose to stop being immoral. I'm not arguing that people necessarily will change (although I believe that they can), I'm just adding that. I think the most effective strategy might be to appeal to what someone already cares about and show them what you believe it consistently implies. Everyone instinctively wants to avoid pain and experience happiness. Like I said earlier though, when it comes to minimizing moral ambiguity/arbitrariness, people have different agendas that take priority so obviously there's nothing you can say or do that is guaranteed to persuade anyone on any given issue.

I see the merits, in that regard.

It is harder to argue against an idea you can't find any logical holes in (or disprove/show to be 'improbable' through empirical evidence), and I think most people want to appear reasonable, on top of maybe preferring an internally consistent worldview/consistency of judgments when it's not too inconvenient, although we can rationalize contrary to what we understand on some level and I don't think people people run on 'logic' (I remember a consequentialist vegan once saying something about how he preferred facts and logic over emotionalism when it comes to arguments for veganism or something like that and thinking that it was somewhat dishonest/not in sync with human psychology, although depending on what exactly that might apply I could maybe see his point when it comes to certain sentimental arguments. Ultimately what drives us will be personal, even if it's a desire to be seen as reasonable).

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'm not really sold on reducing the stigma down to 'disgust' but I do think pedophiles are seen as people who want to corrupt childhood innocence (if not rationally upon reflection then in terms of their primal desires). Consider the attitudes that people sometimes have toward drugs, they are dangerous but I could argue that anything that is intensely pleasurable is often met with suspicion (wasn't there a time, if this isn't true for some churches today, where secular music was frowned on, and not even because of controversial lyrics but because it was overly sensual or primal? I don't know where I'm getting this from). I won't commit to that, it's just one thing to consider.

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

If I see someone torturing someone else and laughing/smiling about it my default assumption will be that they just don't naturally sympathize with them (as opposed to being in pain that blocks their natural sympathy and causes them to lash out). I don't think I have high cognitive empathy, I tend to see other people as very mysterious (and on the same page with each other in a way that I couldn't relate to, as an 'outsider'). By contrast, I think my biases are basically transparent.

Even that being the case, I think anti-pedo. people are generally emotionally threatened by pedophilia as opposed to just wanting to hurt pedophiles because they're vulnerable, although; again, I'm sure some people will latch on to the opportunity to abuse vulnerable people or, more likely, to step on them as a means of climbing higher on the totem pole (i.e. for the sake of social status). Also, again, I'm sure some people will join in because they don't want to stand out (they're privately apathetic about pedophilia; they might even have some romantic/sexual interest in children themselves, and they lack a personal malice or hatred toward pedophiles even though they're not sympathetic enough to not join the dog pile).

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.

My view of what's right is rooted in my experience of happiness and pain. It's not just a personal preference that I have, because emotional states have objects my position is often counter-intuitive for me. I needed a reason to adopt it. Every possible mind has to instinctively want to experience happiness because we experience it as inherently good, so I'm not arguing that happiness is good because we want it (this is off-topic but I actually find the idea of pure negative hedonism to be somewhat appealing, even though it has repugnant implications, because it gives me a reason to look forward to oblivion; as something equivalent to heaven rather than being a a mixed bag-as desirable in protecting us from pain as it is undesirable in depriving us of happiness. I'm not trying to gear the discussion toward euthanasia, maybe I shouldn't have said that much, on the contrary being pro-happiness requires that I prefer that all possible sentient beings exist in ideal enough circumstances. There does seem to be something peaceful and 'spiritual' about a life devoted only to alleviating the suffering of all though and minimizing suffering is an accomplishable goal whereas there will always be another level of happiness; in terms of duration at least, that the most privileged person could experience, but I firmly reject negative hedonism upon reflection, to be clear).

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.

This might be beside your point but with many of the public executions their might have been an element of vengeance (depending on why whoever is being executed is being executed, which is a blood lust but one that stems from wanting to satisfy anger as opposed to an organic desire to be cruel), the bullfighting is cruel but it might be about the danger the man is (vicarious excitement through that) than just hurting the bull, I'm not sure how bullfighting works. It might be besides the point because I think there are better examples (e.g. poor 17th? century English people used to set dogs on rats for sport, I vaguely remember some kind of cruelty toward bears; I don't know if dogs were used for that, people hunt even today, apparently European colonialists used to hunt indigenous Khoi-San people in southern Africa, ).

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 don't really understand this. Pain-avoidance often cannot be resolved, as far as someone might realize, through any other means other than vengeance (they might not be interested in other ways that require thinking or effort etc. or vengeance might be what's quick or it might seem to be the only thing that will help or they just don't have a natural concern to be ethical so why not act on every vengeful impulse if it doesn't create dissonance with an established pro-compassion worldview?). If MAPs make people angry (because of what they represent, if not because of their choices) then hurting MAPs can satisfy that anger (leaving aside how conductive it might be to long-term happiness or how satisfying any given person finds vengeance once they've had it and maybe have a change of heart).

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.

The answer to 'why' might not lead to a realization that one's attitude is in conflict with a value they hold that you do as well (i.e. it might not serve a pro-MAP agenda). I think for many people it is ultimately because they connect asexuality with innocence (and children should be innocent) and the meaning that they project on to sex. If you're asking them to be consistent in some of their judgments they will have to sacrifice some intuitions.


I rushed through a lot of this. I won't address some things.

[PorcelainLark]

One's emotional state can fluctuate and we can like one thing at one point and dislike the same thing at another but the nature of happiness/pain doesn't change. I'm also not sure that I would call happiness an 'abstraction.' We never see redness, we see specific red things and 'redness' is a generalization of a quality those things share in common but we feel happiness itself (oriented toward different objects that have nothing to do with the feel-good state itself.

I don't understand your point. Person x says they are miserable, suffering is bad, therefore person x should die to reduce suffering. If that's the position you believe in, there's nothing left for me to say except that I think advocating for suicide breaches Rule 6.

Do not use hateful language (e.g. racial slurs) or post extremist content. This includes expressions of support for violent sexual behavior. Do not post content that could easily be misrepresented to malign or endanger yourself, other participants, or the forum host.

...I've always taken issue with the supposed 'is-ought gap.' To say that we should do something is to say that it would be good if we did it (if we're talking about reason or epistemology you could even say that it would be correct or rational to adopt a certain view). You can just reword it in a way that makes it descriptive so what's really being denied is that there is a such thing as value.

I mean, this implies that we already agree on what the good is. For you, pleasure, for others, other things. I'd say it's defining away the conflict which still remains there.

If you don't think that someone can change their position then there is no point to any kind of dialogue...

That's not what I mean. I mean we don't choose how important one or other thing is to us. Dialogue can change how we feel about something, but it's rarely because you've shown a position is illogical.

If MAPs make people angry (because of what they represent, if not because of their choices) then hurting MAPs can satisfy that anger (leaving aside how conductive it might be to long-term happiness or how satisfying any given person finds vengeance once they've had it and maybe have a change of heart).

Consider what would happen to those people if tomorrow every MAP vanished; those bothered by the existence of MAPs would be satisfied, while those who used MAPs as an outlet for cruelty would try to find a new excuse to be cruel. However, I'm skeptical of people who claim to believe/feel the former. I think if you interrogated it, it's something they're genuinely choosing rather than an involuntary belief. It's similar to people who want a break in to happen, so that they can have excuse to kill someone; they know their own aggression is excessive and isn't motivated by morality.

I think at this point neither of us are gaining from this discussion, shall we leave it at that?

[John_Doe]

I don't understand your point. Person x says they are miserable, suffering is bad, therefore person x should die to reduce suffering. If that's the position you believe in, there's nothing left for me to say except that I think advocating for suicide breaches Rule 6.

I did not have suicide in mind when I responded to your quote. I'm stating an abstract principle that can arguably justify suicide in some scenarios but I think it's kind of a reach to connect that to advocating for a specific course of action in any given real-life scenario (beyond opposing a policy or choice that 'obviously' is not rooted in consideration of everyone's welfare or values something other than happiness-suffering which might compete with an agenda of minimizing suffering/maximizing happiness. I'll get back to this). If that applied the rule might as well be 'don't not believe that life is inherently valuable.' I would have rather avoided the euthanasia topic as I agreed to but hedonism isn't a guideline for real-life policy or decision making (although I would hope that we'd all be on the same page about what it obviously implies in many practical real-life scenarios), so hedonists can argue for or against the same policies because; despite sharing the same core value system, they have different expectations surrounding the consequences of any given choice or policy. You can argue against suicide on the grounds that the suicidal person will otherwise eventually experience happiness that will compensate for their current misery, as well as in consideration of the suffering of their loved ones or how their death will affect other people in general or even in consideration of an afterlife that might be even more painful than their current existence. You would have to accept that there are some hypothetical scenarios in which suicide would be justified but in no scenario does a consistent hedonist want person x to die per se, they want person x to be free from pain and causing death might be the only conceivable means we have to end our/someone's suffering and that's in the context of presuming that our/their current suffering won't be compensated for if we/they hold on for however long. Depriving someone of the mildest happiness for the briefest period of time is regrettable and if they couldn't hope to feel even the mildest occasional happiness in life then we should regret that much if not their death per se so, again, under a pro-happiness worldview we should always prefer that people live (exist) rather than not in ideal enough circumstances.

I mean, this implies that we already agree on what the good is. For you, pleasure, for others, other things. I'd say it's defining away the conflict which still remains there.

I don't follow. It's possible that I don't understand what the 'fallacy' actually is but my issue is with the idea that there's something logically incoherent about intrinsic value. The issue isn't just that we don't agree on what's good but that anything could be objectively good, that it could be the case that so and so really should do x instead of y (that it would be good if they did x instead of y, that they would be correct in valuing x or what x leads to). I would agree with the idea that we can't logically derive an 'ought' from an 'is' but that's just saying that we can't use subjective logic to determine whether or not something is inherently good or bad, as an epistemic solipsist I would argue that only our experience of a thing justifies a belief that it is inherently good, bad or neutral.

That's not what I mean. I mean we don't choose how important one or other thing is to us. Dialogue can change how we feel about something, but it's rarely because you've shown a position is illogical.

I don't really disagree, I think that if you have any chance of persuading someone you have to start with what they actually care about-what they're emotionally invested in, the personal and not just the 'logical' in a vacuum (although people can use impersonal logic to determine what's consistently implied by their values).

Consider what would happen to those people if tomorrow every MAP vanished; those bothered by the existence of MAPs would be satisfied, while those who used MAPs as an outlet for cruelty would try to find a new excuse to be cruel. However, I'm skeptical of people who claim to believe/feel the former. I think if you interrogated it, it's something they're genuinely choosing rather than an involuntary belief. It's similar to people who want a break in to happen, so that they can have excuse to kill someone; they know their own aggression is excessive and isn't motivated by morality.

Honestly, I kind of feel that most people who reject hedonism are choosing to do so because it's counter intuitive/has unappealing implications rather than it being something that they think is objectively wrong (I don't think there are people who can't 'understand' why someone would think hedonism is true). Either you deny that we experience happiness as inherently good or you deny that our experience of happiness justifies a belief that happiness is inherently good (even though we are talking about the experience itself and not some other reality that happiness simulates and thus might misrepresent). It's kind of like when you watch a movie (or daydream) and choose to suspend disbelief and doing so allows you to have a certain emotional response to what happens, but on some level you understand that it's not real. I'm sure there are people who truly believe that nothing has objective value, as a former moral nihilist/materialist myself, but even they will often seem to concede that hedonism is "for all intents and purposes" the non-arbitrary position or the most likely candidate for moral realism if moral realism were true. I have to say, although it might sound pompous, I think everyone 'secretly' understands that and why hedonism stands out as an ethical theory/philosophy.

Where we might differ is that even though I think many people (not all, many people haven't heard compelling arguments regarding consent- why children can consent, why our concern with or skepticism about their consenting in this one area is inconsistent with other policies or attitudes we have regarding our treatment of them, why children not being able to consent wouldn't imply what they think it does; i.e. that it wouldn't mean that sexual contact with an adult was against their will, why sex doesn't have the objective meaning that they think it does which largely explains the inconsistencies I mentioned earlier, etc.) are letting themselves hold on to the idea that child-adult sexual contact is inherently exploitative and traumatizing and tantamount to 'rape' in all scenarios etc. to serve emotional biases rather than an involuntary belief that they're objectively correct (if this is somewhat off-topic, when we're talking about reflective beliefs I think there is an element of choice in that we're selecting one option among several possible alternatives after consideration, it's not like the instinctive beliefs a dog presumably has, so I think we 'choose' our beliefs even without it simply being a question of wanting those beliefs to be true, the whole concept of 'justification' or a 'reason to' implies choice. It's also obvious to me that our emotional and cognitive biases indirectly influence what we truly and genuinely believe is actually true), I don't think it's for an excuse to abuse weaker people, I think it's to serve those emotional biases (e.g. wanting to maintain their image of childhood innocence). I think that most people are deeply insensitive to the suffering of others (under certain conditions), all of us really, but I think it's a small minority of gun owners who secretly want someone to break in so they can have an excuse to shoot them and a possibly smaller minority of anti-pedo. people who are just looking for someone they can be cruel toward because they're that naturally aggressive rather than just insensitive or inconsiderate or selfish.

I think at this point neither of us are gaining from this discussion, shall we leave it at that?

Unless you'd like to address something I've mentioned here, I'm ok with leaving it at that.