why heterosexuality is natural and homosexuality a deviance

[Scholar]

22 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Ok. Is incest wrong?

Of course not, why would it be wrong.

 

22 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

So there were no differences between humans and animals period (and they presumably studied a large variety of animals with varying degrees of sociality), so the "more social bonding produces more incest avoidance" hypothesis seems to not be supported in this case.

I don't quite understand what you are saying here. No difference in what?

[Danioover9000]

@Scholar

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

Of course not, why would it be wrong.

 

I don't quite understand what you are saying here. No difference in what?

   Why would incest not be wrong?

   I think that no difference between multiple animals studied, and multiple humans studied, is that the incest aggregate is similar between all animals and humans, meaning that the hypothesis of more social bonding reduces incest is inconclusive at best, wrong and that animals and humans are similar in incest at worst. 

[Carl-Richard]

4 hours ago, Scholar said:

Of course not, why would it be wrong.

I think there are more problematic and less problematic forms of incest. For example, most forms of parent-child incest (different ages, different roles; more power differential) vs. peer cousin-cousin incest (same ages, same roles; less power differential). Sibling-sibling incest generally falls somewhere in-between. You could say it's not the incest per se that is wrong, but it's the potential of abuse that occurs in particularly sexual relationships with a power differential which is wrong, and incest is one common manifestation of that dynamic.

 

4 hours ago, Scholar said:

I don't quite understand what you are saying here. No difference in what?

There was no difference in incest avoidance between humans with supposedly higher social bonding and animals with supposedly lower social bonding, which is evidence against the hypothesis that social bonding affects incest avoidance. If social bonding is a significant factor for incest avoidance, and if humans display significantly more social bonding than other animals, you would expect to see a significant difference between humans and animals in incest avoidance.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Scholar]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think there are more problematic and less problematic forms of incest. For example, most forms of parent-child incest (different ages, different roles; more power differential) vs. peer cousin-cousin incest (same ages, same roles; less power differential). Sibling-sibling incest generally falls somewhere in-between. You could say it's not the incest per se that is wrong, but it's the potential of abuse that occurs in particularly sexual relationships with a power differential which is wrong, and incest is one common manifestation of that dynamic.

I don't think any of these are wrong whatsoever. Abuse is wrong, that's as simple as it is.

Many things have potential for abuse, that doesn't make them abusive. It just means it requires more care and maturity to engage in such relationships.

I agree that most incestious relationship, in practice, will be dysfunctional. And today, most relationships might even be abusive, simply because of the taboo, the type of individuals engaging in it will in most cases be abusers.

 

But in regards to consenting adults engaging in these relationships, even if they are dysfunctional,  they are not immoral. People have a right to do dysfunctional things, they always do. The correct approach is not moral condemnation of the act, but an attempt to help these individuals.

 

Child parent relations would be wrong when the child is a minor. And you can make a case for the duty of parents to their children making it wrong even between adults. Grooming a child to engage in incest by the time they are adults is also wrong.

But these things aren't wrong because of incest, but because of abuse and inappropriate relationship explotation, or simple pedophilia.

 

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

There was no difference in incest avoidance between humans with supposedly higher social bonding and animals with supposedly lower social bonding

I don't understand, we have an incest taboo, and you made the case that animals do not actually avoid incest in nature. So how can humans and animals not have a difference in incest avoidance?

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

I don't think any of these are wrong whatsoever. Abuse is wrong, that's as simple as it is.

Many things have potential for abuse, that doesn't make them abusive. It just means it requires more care and maturity to engage in such relationships.

I agree that incest is not really what is wrong, rather the abuse that may arise. And I'm not saying that incest is wrong because abuse may arise (which you seem to think I'm saying). I'm simply saying in the cases where abuse does arise, it's wrong, and those cases are pretty common for incest.

Still, "potential" can certainly be wrong. Should you convince a child to play Russian roulette? They can potentially get hurt, but as you say, they won't get hurt before they actually do get hurt. Also as you say, it just requires more of a certain thing (in this case luck) to engage in Russian roulette (and not get hurt).

That is also for example why there are ethical rules against teachers engaging in behavior with students that is not compatible with the teacher-student relationship, e.g. initating a romantic relationship. The hurt is not in the fact that they're iniating a romantic relationship, but it's about the potential abusive outcomes of such a relationship (e.g. incentivizing sex through improved grades). It's just like how a parent-child romantic relationship might be wrong, not because it necessarily leads to the child being hurt, but because it likely can.

 

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

I agree that most incestious relationship, in practice, will be dysfunctional. And today, most relationships might even be abusive, simply because of the taboo, the type of individuals engaging in it will in most cases be abusers.

But in regards to consenting adults engaging in these relationships, even if they are dysfunctional,  they are not immoral. People have a right to do dysfunctional things, they always do.

I think there can be a definite overlap between dysfunction and morality, certainly when it's one individual (usually the one with power) imposing their dysfunctionality on another.

 

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

The correct approach is not moral condemnation of the act, but an attempt to help these individuals.

I have the same attitude to people who I deem immoral (to primarily try to help them).

 

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

Child parent relations would be wrong when the child is a minor. And you can make a case for the duty of parents to their children making it wrong even between adults. Grooming a child to engage in incest by the time they are adults is also wrong.

I'm going to use your own logic here: what if there is enough care and maturity in the relationship? Some minors are more mature and caring than an adult. Why does them being a minor necessarily make it wrong? Even still, would you say that immature and uncaring minors can potentially (that word again) engage in such a relationship while also not being abused? Why does them being a minor necessarily make it wrong?

 

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

But these things aren't wrong because of incest, but because of abuse and inappropriate relationship explotation, or simple pedophilia.

Just a slight correction: pedophilia describes sexual attraction. It does not necessitate abuse. Also, again, I agree that incest is not really what is wrong, rather the abuse that may arise.

 

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

I don't understand, we have an incest taboo, and you made the case that animals do not actually avoid incest in nature. So how can humans and animals not have a difference in incest avoidance?

I was just quoting the results of the study which uses statistical tests and threshold values for establishing statistical significance. There might in reality be a tiny difference, but not a large enough difference to produce a statistically significant result. Also, just because there is a taboo doesn't necessarily mean it will lead to a statistically significant difference. Maybe the taboo is actually really ineffective when it comes to stopping people from actually engaging in incest.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Carl-Richard

[Scholar]

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I agree that incest is not really what is wrong, rather the abuse that may arise. And I'm not saying that incest is wrong because abuse may arise (which you seem to think I'm saying). I'm simply saying in the cases where abuse does arise, it's wrong, and those cases are pretty common for incest.

You are mislabelling what is wrong here though. When abuse happens in a homosexual relationship, that doesn't make the homosexual relationship wrong, that simply makes the abuse wrong. So, whether or not it is common, it is not the incest that is the immoral thing, but the abuse.

 

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Still, potential can certainly be wrong. Should you convince a child to play Russian roulette? They can potentially get hurt, but as you say, they won't get hurt before they actually do get hurt. Also as you say, it just requires more of a certain thing (in this case luck) to engage in Russian roulette (and not get hurt).

But you are constructing your hypotheticals in an inappopropiate way. What you described is wrong for several reasons that have nothing to do with potential, but inherent, known risks and inability to understand.

A child firstly, cannot conceive of risk, so of course it is wrong. Secondly, there is not merely potential of risk, but absolute risk (meaning, we know there is a bullet in the gun and there is an actual risk involved, which is not the case in relationships).

If two consenting adults engage in an incestious relationship doesn't mean that there is a risk involved (even though I don't know if for such relationships that did not have prior grooming, between adults, is actually significantly risky in that way). Whether or not a risk is involved will not depend on whether or not it is incestious, but whether or not the individuals are dysfunctional in relation to their psychology and how they relate to others. So, the risk isn't inherent to incest, it doesn't make sense to attribute it to that thing.

 

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

That is also for example why there are ethical rules against teachers engaging in behavior with students that is not compatible with the teacher-student relationship, e.g. initating a romantic relationship. The hurt is not in the fact that they're iniating a romantic relationship, but it's about the potential abusive outcomes of such a relationship (e.g. incentivizing sex through improved grades). It's just like how a parent-child romantic relationship might be wrong, not because it necessarily leads to the child being hurt, but because it likely can.

But a teacher holds inherent power of the student, this is not necessarily the case in a relationship with two consenting adults that happen to be related.

Teachers and students are a bad example because we are talking about minors vs adults, college professors and their students would be a better example, which I would not really consider wrong at all to engage in.

Consenting adults should have the right to engage in relationships that are risky, there is nothing wrong with that. With professional relationships there are different arguments because of standards of care and so forth, and potentials for compromise of their duties.

This is why I said, the only argument between parent and child you can make that is good (assuming both are adults and have not been groomed) are duties the parent might have to the child. Which, I personally find are not very robust arguments.

 

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think there can be a definite overlap between dysfunction and morality, certainly when it's one individual (usually the one with power) imposing their dysfunctionality on another.

Again, you are identifying what the actual problem is and then saying it is the incest that makes it problematic. It would be equally wrong whether or not the individuals had a blood relation or not. The thing that makes it wrong is the abusive of power.

You can even have relations with significant power differentials. I would wager that, if you have more or less same aged adults siblings engaging in sexual relations, if it wasn't such a taboo and require a certain type of psychology to engage with, you would see that relationships between 30 and 20 year olds would have a higher likelihood of abuse.

We don't even know what the numbers here would look like, because incest is illegal. I guess you could look at countries where incest is legal and if there are in insane amount of cases of adult consenting family members who end up in super abusive relations.

But either way, people have a right to engage in these risks, in ending up in abusive relations. It might be stupid, but it's not immoral. Adults should be given the choice to evaluate these things themselves, even if the likelihood for abuse as calculated by some statistic were to be 90%. They are not children, they are not playing russian roulette, they are making choices about who they want to engage in romantic relationships with.

If you want to prevent abusive in relationships, educate people, treat the root cause, instead of morally condemning incest.

 

 

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I'm going to use your own logic here: what if there is enough care and maturity in the relationship? Some minors are more mature and caring than an adult. Why does them being a minor necessarily make it wrong? Even still, would you say that immature and uncaring minors can potentially (that word again) engage in such a relationship while also not being abused? Why does them being a minor necessarily make it wrong?

It's not necessarily wrong. But with minors, we decided they cannot consent, and the only reasonable way to legislate this is by having clear, defined lines.

With consenting adults the whole game changes, because they do have the ability to consent, and can make bad choices if they want to. People make all sorts of life choices that are incredibly stupid. Smoking is probably far dumber than engaging in incest with your family members (assuming it was legal and had no taboo associated with it).

Obviously in a society in which incest is a taboo and illegal, the only cases when it will happen will be exceptional, meaning as a result of sociopathic behaviour and the like.

 

This is the problem with children: Children cannot engage in informed consent, therefore they cannot consent to the risk of harm that could fall upon them for the act they were to engage in. Adults are capable of informed consent, so they are capable of consenting to even a significantly high risk of abusive relationships.

In fact, adutls can consent to abusive relationships full stop. There is nothing immoral about it. How insane would it be to put people in prison because they are in an abusive relationship? You put the person to prison if they abuse someone, that's it. There is no evaluating whether or not a relationship is potentially abusive, we don't do that with adults and then call them immoral for engaging in such "potentially risky" relations.

 

 

Contemplate this:

If we found that, interracial relationships lead to an 80% chance of an abusive relation (which is probably significantly higher than what would be the case with sibling incest if it was legal and acceptable, and I wager even if it wasnt, and in fact I wage even between parent and child adults), would we call interracial relationships immoral, or prohibit them by law? No, of course no. People can take that risk if they want, they have every right to try and be one of the 20%, or even the 80%.

Now, if someone does do something abusive, they should be persecuted at that point. But we can't be doing this Minority Report shit and punish or condemn people who engage in risky behaviour, especially because we then include those 20% who aren't even engaging in it.

 

45 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I was just quoting the results of the study which uses statistical tests and threshold values for establishing statistical significance. There might in reality be a tiny difference, but not a large enough difference to produce a statistically significant result. Also, just because there is a taboo doesn't necessarily mean it will lead to a statistically significant difference. Maybe the taboo is actually really ineffective when it comes to stopping people from actually engaging in incest.

This doesn't make sense to me whatsoever, I think you misread the studies, or they got it wrong. But I am not that interested in this to make sure.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Scholar

[An young being]

5 hours ago, Scholar said:

But either way, people have a right to engage in these risks, in ending up in abusive relations. It might be stupid, but it's not immoral. Adults should be given the choice to evaluate these things themselves, even if the likelihood for abuse as calculated by some statistic were to be 90%. They are not children, they are not playing russian roulette, they are making choices about who they want to engage in romantic relationships with.

When you look into the bigger picture of how laws should be made, it's not only about being how immoral it is, but also depends on the degree of suffering it now causes and may cause in the future and whether it affects others or the society or themselves.

For example, murder, rape, theft, abuse etc. are punished severely in general, because it has a higher chance of causing suffering to the victims, to the society, as well as themselves.The extent of severity depends on how much suffering it brings.

Things like drug usage have higher chances of causing suffering to themselves, and to the society, hence they are punished moderately.

Suicide and self harm causes suffering mainly to the individuals and to some extent to the society and hence punished less severely to severely depending on how liberal the country is.

In order to see whether incest fits in any of the above, detailed studies backed by science, psychology or other rational studies must be conducted in order to see how much it affects and what's the probability of affecting individual's happiness or suffering, and other's happiness or suffering, with more weightage to the latter. 

Even many countries are confused with homosexual laws especially those with a mixture of rational and traditional views, because they are worried that it may affect the society and even the individuals in some ways, although scientific and psychological studies point to the opposite. In the case of incest, there are no proper studies available at all to decide anything upon it, as even in this discussion we are not able to point out large scale,well made studies.

When it comes to immorality, in my opinion, for the law making bodies, there is no need to judge anyone or anything good or bad, based on the actions, even if it's a murder or a rape and even if it's done with utmost selfishness. Immorality is not solely based on rationality, and is prone to large number of biases, and hence should be replaced by laws and compassion. 

When it comes to incest, my personal opinion is that, it is capable of causing more suffering to the society than what already is, and to some extent to the individuals.

 

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by An young being

[Scholar]

6 hours ago, An young being said:

When it comes to incest, my personal opinion is that, it is capable of causing more suffering to the society than what already is, and to some extent to the individuals.

Firstly, we are talking about morality. Most of the things you listed are immoral because they are a fundamental undermining of someones will. Rape, murder and so forth is immoral not simply because there is a likelihood of suffering occuring, but because the individuals do not consent to such things.

When we are talking about laws, even if something causes harm, we have to be careful not to restrict human beings rights to autonomy. Sexual freedom should have a significant burden to be restricted between consenting adults, because of how fundamental this aspect is to human well being. And furthermore, we have to be as precise as we can be when restricting the freedoms of individuals. Meaning, we cannot just ban homosexual relationships because there might come harm from them to society (if that was the case), we would attempt to actually specifically find the thing that is causing the harm and target that. If we cannot do that, and the harm to society is proven to be exceptionally high, then you might have a case.

But then, still we are not talking about morality but simply about maintaining society.

 

Now, I will propose this hypothetical to you again: If 90% of interracial relationships lead to abusive dynamics, would it be immoral, or should it be illegal for consenting adults to engage in such relationships?

And remember, when we target the specific thing where abuse mostly occurs (which is in child exploitation incest cases), you will probably see that the rest of the cases, because then we are talking only about consenting adults, probably are not significantly more harmful than any normal relationship, aside from the social costs associated with the taboo and the obvious costs coming from engaging in illegal activity. If you want to restrict adults from engaging in these types of sexual relationships, what you would need is actual evidence that these relationships cause a level of harm to society that would outweigh the need for the sexual freedom of consenting individuals. But you don't have that evidence, because all relationships that you do have data on now already require a willingness to engage in illegal activity, which will heavily bias this towards individuals who lack moral integrity and so forth. By nature of how society is constructed you basically are selecting for the most dysfunctional dynamics. I wouldn't be surprised that when homosexuality was outlawed, a significant amount of homosexuality was things like child-abuse.

By this standard alone, we have no right to restrict the freedoms of these individuals, because we have no good evidence, nor really very good reasoning, for it. And remember, what would you consider the necessary harm to society to say that interracial relationships should be outlawed? Is it if a lot of them end up in abusive dynamics? Even if it is 90%, in my view, it would be unjustified to outlaw these things, because again, we cannot use the law for every activity that could potential bring harm to society. And we are talking about abuse here, unhealthy relationships. While this is undesirable, it is nowhere close to things that undermine individuals will fundamentally, like rape, murder and arguably many cases of suicide. If there is no clear violation of the will of individuals, as is the case with rape, murder and so forth, or an activity which cannot be consented to, we need a very high standard to the risk of society, and clear evidence for such claims, to consider outlawing an activity and restricting the sexual freedom of consenting adults.

There should be an awareness here of how significant of a violation to freedom it is when a state starts interfering with your choice of consenting sexual partners. Potential for abusive relationships, even if astronomoically high, cannot be the standard here, it would have to be a significantly higher cost to society, backed up by actual evidence. The only real restriction we make in terms who consenting adults can engage with sexually, is in professional relationships, where you basically make an oath to the duty of care, or the work environment regulates sexual activity in certain ways. Remember, individuals consent to that type of restriction when they enter these work places, and they can at any time leave that type of work place. You cannot simply do this to just consenting adults out of nowhere, becaue of risk of abuse or such things. We don't ever do this. And I guarantee you, being a pornstar is probably far more harmful to someone than being in an incestious relationship under the assumption that you are consenting adults, that the incest does not come with some sort of tremendous social cost via taboo (and even then you can argue when porn did come with that taboo, it was as harmful), and that you are not legally punished for it.

 

And the worst part is even that, you outlawing this and creating a social taboo around this activity might actually lead to a prolifiration of abuse, rather than a reduction. Most incest, in the current societal context, will occur in child exploitation cases. The shame associated around the incest taboo could very well be a primary reason for why victims of such activity are so hesitant to come forth with their abuse and therefore cannot get the help they need.

 

This case you are trying to make is just exceptionally weak. I understand why there is a desire to make this case, but it just doesn't appear sound to me.

And this is just incest, we can discuss something like bestiality some other time. That is an even more interesting discussion because there we go into what informed consent is and what makes sexual activity in humans who are incapable of informed consent so problematic.

 

There is an even more repulsive activity (and I am not talking about pedophilia) that is currently considered completely immoral and illegal, that is exceptionally difficult to argue for why it should be considered immoral and illegal. But if we can't even get past incest, we certainly won't have a productive conversation there. But these are the juicy moral discussions that I think get to the core of moral reasoning, and I think it is benefitial to have them.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Scholar

[An young being]

@Scholar, will reply you after a couple of days, a bit busy and there is lot to read!

[Devin]

People don't avoid inbreeding because of morality, they avoid it to avoid this.

https://youtu.be/l4aAIF-iW9U?si=RPY1mtwGZ88McUCg

Edited December 11, 2023 by Devin

[Scholar]

46 minutes ago, Devin said:

People don't avoid inbreeding because of morality, they avoid it to avoid this.

https://youtu.be/l4aAIF-iW9U?si=RPY1mtwGZ88McUCg

That would be morality. When you look at the negative consequences of something and conclude that you ought not to do that for that reason, you have engaged in a moral calculus.

Inbreeding of course is a seperate issue from pure incest. Although even with inbreeding it is hard to argue that people ought to be prohibited by law from having children that way. There is a cost to freedom, and the higher the freedom in any given society, the more responsible and mature society must be to avoid the negative consequences.

[Devin]

26 minutes ago, Scholar said:

That would be morality. When you look at the negative consequences of something and conclude that you ought not to do that for that reason, you have engaged in a moral calculus.

Inbreeding of course is a seperate issue from pure incest. Although even with inbreeding it is hard to argue that people ought to be prohibited by law from having children that way. There is a cost to freedom, and the higher the freedom in any given society, the more responsible and mature society must be to avoid the negative consequences.

They don't avoid it for the offspring, they avoid it so they don't have to deal with the offspring, the same reason down syndrome has almost disappeared in western europe since prenatal testing for it along with legalized abortion. The same reason people are now doing prenatal genetics testing for eye color and height.

If you're going to use the name Scholar please at least consult a dictionary, you make up all kinds of definitions, you graduate from Trump U or something?

Edited December 11, 2023 by Devin

[Scholar]

Just now, Devin said:

They don't avoid it for the offspring, they avoid it so they don't have to deal with the offspring, the same reason down syndrome has almost disappeared in western europe since prenatal testing for it along with legalized abortion. The same reason people are now doing prenatal genetics testing for eye color and height.

Who is they? I'm not sure how this is related to the discussion.

[Danioover9000]

   Oh my god, you guys are having it backwards that it hurts my head...

[Devin]

2 minutes ago, Scholar said:

Who is they? I'm not sure how this is related to the discussion.

People that would otherwise have an incestual relationship.

[Scholar]

Just now, Devin said:

People that would otherwise have an incestual relationship.

People avoid incest because they they don't feel attraction towards people they grow up with and consider family.

And relationships don't necessitate children, and even if you wanted to have children in an incestious relationship, you could do that by means that would avoid the genetic disease problem, assuming it was legal.

Anyways, none of that is relevant to whether or not it is moral or should be illegal.

[Devin]

3 minutes ago, Scholar said:

People avoid incest because they they don't feel attraction towards people they grow up with and consider family.

Again, please consult a dictionary, you can't avoid something non-existent, you said

37 minutes ago, Scholar said:

That would be morality. When you look at the negative consequences of something and conclude that you ought not to do that for that reason, you have engaged in a moral calculus.

that means they were interested in the relationship, your theory is just that their morality stops the relationship though.

[Scholar]

2 minutes ago, Devin said:

Again, please consult a dictionary, you can't avoid something non-existent, you said

that means they were interested in the relationship, your theory is just that their morality stops the relationship though.

You are incoherent to me, I don't know how to engage with what you are saying. If you want you can try to clarify, in more than one sentence, what exactly your position here is.

[Yimpa]

This is what happens when our society lacks religion 

[Scholar]

1 minute ago, Yimpa said:

This is what happens when our society lacks religion 

Yes, it all started with those pesky women's rights and homosexual deprivation. We should have never abolished slavery!