Scholar

That's amazing motivated reasoning. By the way, unconditional isn't love for family. Love for family is one of the most conditional types of love that exist, considering it solely applies to these individuals because they happen to be your family. Unconditional love necessarily is universal, because if it lacks conditions, then it cannot apply to just a limited set of things. And consider this: By your logic, if I grow up along a person and develop a platonic love to them such that they are basically equivalent to a family member (which is what you mean by unconditional love), and I then developed romantic feelings for them, somehow this would sabotage the unconditional love? This is just silly. While this might happen, and I agree with incestious relationships it probably would happen in most cases, it is not some sort of spiritual reality we are talking about here. Of course you could have that type of deep bond to someone and then move it to romantic love and elevate the relationship. Whether or not someone has a closer genetic code is irrelevant in that regard. And either way, people do things that undermine unconditional love all the time, and we don't have some sort of inherent aversion to it. So the argument seems to just be an attempt to make your personal morality fit your spiritual believes. I could sit here and argue for why homosexuality is anti-spiritual because our souls recognize that we undermine the greater unity of the divine by seeking relationships that will not lead to the creation of new life through pure spiritual union, that it undermines the greatest type of "unconditional" love we are capable of, the love for a child. You can do these types of mental gymnastics with anything.

I would assume that there are probably a vatiety of strategies in this regard, and how the psychology functions. It could be that the psychology of animals adapts to certain contexts. This is why holding animals in captivity and doing tests on them might not be the best idea, because who knows, maybe if an animals gets the stimuli that it is restricted to one habitat and cannot expand, it will switch on some gene to cease distinguishing between kin and non kin. It's just very speculative a that point. I do think it is related to cognition, our higher complexity requires the inherent aversion. And I do suspect it is inherent, because I don't remember ever being told that I ought not to be attracted to my sibling or cousins. I do not even have a taboo around incest, I could not care less, yet, I feel zero attraction to any of my family members who I have grown up with. It's complete asexuality in that regard, or rather a sexual aversion. Now, I am sure the taboo plays some role, but I doubt it is sufficient to cause something like this, because usually you can break down social constructs and your psychology might adapt, I don't see this being the case here. I don't think there is that much harm genetically speaking of an animal procreates with a sibling, or probably even parent, every other generation or so. I do think they are instincts, but with humans it's complicated. We are so adaptive, I think even if there is an instinct, you could raise someone to get attracted to their family members, all of them, if you just raise them that way. So there might be a tendency, but it's obviously not a static thing. Sure, but the question is whether it is wrong or not, not why we think it is wrong.

Yes that's what I wrote in the response to Carl. Cats aren't that social it seems. You have to keep in mind, you probably want an instinct that is socially contextual, so that the animal doesn't avoid the kin even if breeding with them might be benefitial due to a lack of other options. But evolution is complicated and there are lots of negatives and benefits to everything. You also have to consider if an animal tends to be monogamous, how much time and energy it invests in offspring, how much offspring it has over it's life time and so forth. Sometimes higher complexity doesn't benefit a species, so it might be better to not have the ability to discern kin from non-kin in that way because it could influence other behaviors in negative ways. Who knows.

Cats who live in the wild with normal social hierarchies? But I don't know if cats are particularly social, do cats live in packs?

He is implying that homosexuality is wrong because it is not natural or conducive to evolutionary function. This is a stupid argument, end of story. There shouldn't be a need for discussion here. I don't even understand what you are asking in the second paragraph. I don't have time to read the study, but my assumption would be that only animals who form strong bonds and community like structures will develop and aversion to incest by means of recognizing kin that they grew up along. And by aversion I mean that they would probably prefer to have sex with animals that they did not grow up with. Animals who don't have such social structures probably don't need to develop such aversions or preferences, and I suspect with humans there could be further mechanisms due to our higher social bonding. Maybe due to our more sophisticated psychological nature and mating rituals, we would more easily get attracted to our close relatives if we did not have such aversions. I don't know how many animals that have higher social complexity are likely to engage in for example in parent-child incest, or that they are as likely to engage in that as they are in sexual activities with other animals. So, it's a tricky question because they might just reduce everything to either being inbreeding or not, rather than having a more indepth analysis on whether or not some animals avoid it while others do not, and if certain types of relational inbreeding are avoided. With most animals I assume this isn't even relevant because they are unlikely to ever mate with offspring for multiple generations, which is what would be needed to cause any significant harm to the genetic line. But humans are also special. Who knows how we would behave if we didn't have anti-incest instincts, lol. Either way, none of that is even related to whether or not incest is wrong. But thanks for the article, I adjusted my assumptions.

You are missing the point. OP doesn't care about what is natural, he is stuck in bigotry. It's as simple as that. The whole natural argument is just so he can justify his views, if he was a proponent of natural living he wouldn't be on this forum. I am pretty sure animals avoid incest if they have the opportunity to, the same as human beings. But none of that is relevant, because this is all a basic naturalistic fallacy. This isn't even worth discussion, this is like basic shit you should have learn in your high school philosophy class. This should, in fact, be self evident. The reason why I brought up incest is because it would be a discussion that could elevate and inform people on ethical thinking.

It's my name combined with my impeccable rationality.

I love how my name triggers people so much. None of this is ironic. And no, I meant precisely what I said.

The person with a brain is to say.

You can tell the lack of consciousness on this forum considering that much of the energy is spent on helping people get to the status quo of moral progression rather than being the ones who challenge and question the current moral paradigm.

You guys are getting baited hard. What is this quality of conversation, lol. Would have been more interesting if he said incest was wrong, then we could have at least had an interesting moral discussion about moral intuitionism that applies to most people.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/11/07/opinions/israel-hamas-gaza-not-war-crimes-spencer/index.html On whether or not Israel is committing warcrimes.

You are moralizing. Your moral outrage closes your mind. Your own fear prevents you from seeing the obvious, because you have closed your heart to the suffering of one side on the basis of abstract moral evaluation. This blindness is the root cause of the conflict. You are the Israelis, you are Hamas. Your mission is to realize this, so that you can approach this topic from a position of truth. If the western countries had not ignored the germans suffering after World War 1, it might have never come to World War 2. Never again, they say, yet they never seem to learn. Your mistake is that you allow your moral righteousness and outrage to cloud your vision. He did not condemn anyone, because he seems wise enough to realize that condemnation will not help. He is one step ahead of you, my friend.

How racist a country will be depends on it's development and other factors, like collective fear and so forth. Israel as well as Palestine are both in fear, and so they will both be susceptible to hate. One of the major flaws of western society today is that it does not seek to understand racism, it simply uses it as a term of judgement and moral condemnation. It uses it so that it can blame someone, not realizing that it is afflicted by the same blindness that the people they point fingers at are as well. Remember, the greater your judgement of others is, the more blind you become to your own selfishness, because you will have to face your own judgement if you were to recognize your own evil.

@Karmadhi Funny, the video I linked with Arnold basically addressed this very issue.

You have to be careful with such conclusions, these types of videos exists in palestine too. And they also exist here in the west, against jewish people. You are just not presented this information because depending on your bias you will only be fed things to confirm your own bubble.

Tiktok is what happened to them, this is what it was designed to do. Create division and idiocrify society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsETTn7DehI Message from Arnold Schwarzenegger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8YYmrgAeqw This is basically what Palestinian activism should look like. On the other hand, Israeli activism should be focusing solely on criticizing the Israeli far right regime and their transgressions. But it is easier to wallow in victimhood and avoid taking any responsibility, so of course both sides will just add fuel to the fire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keqZb6YrVO4

Most of the people who were slaughtered by Hamas probably had a similar attitudes. People living in these Kibbutzes are stage green hippie types, same goes for the people at the music festival. There were in fact some peace and human rights activists who were executed by Hamas.

To be clear, she is referring to the people who held her captive, not the people who kidnapped her. She reported she was beaten and experienced hell by the actual terrorists who slaughtered civilians and brought her back as a hostage. Hamas has every reason not to mistreat the hostages that are designated for exchange, so this is not very surprising.

US voters.

This is a little worrisome: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/HHP_Oct23_KeyResults.pdf Over 50% of 18-24 aged participants answer Hamas mass murder of over 1,200 Israeli civilians can be justified. This is US registered voters by the way. @Leo Gura Is it just me or does image embedding not work anymore?

Look, a mature person's take on the issue: https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-on-israel-and-gaza-a6c397f09a30 Barack Obama