What's so ethically special about sexual relations?

Reply to Bartricks

Sex is a huge part of the human psyche. So much of what people do and say and make rules for are based on the biological imperative to pass on genes, its no wonder it provokes such strong reactions in ethics.
I think alot of those old traditional sexual “ethics” come from religion in modernity. They are largely outdated, since its so much less necessary to control sex among the masses. Its just not a big a deal anymore, and thats why you get the sexual revolution and a much looser ethic in the growing generation.

Isn't it more plausible that the reason religions typically make a big deal about sex is that sex is obviously ethically special?

Reply to Bartricks

Maybe. What makes it more plausible? You think if there was no religion, sex wouldnt be one of the main “special” things for humans? I think its pretty plausible it wouldnt change much at all.

Reply to DingoJones Well first we should respect appearances. If we just decide that some appearances are deceptive because the truth of our theory is incompatible with them, then we have made our theory unfalsifiable and show ourselves to be dogmatists, not followers of reason.

So, the fact that sex appears to most reason-responsive people to be ethically special in the ways I have described (and no doubt many other ways that I have not) is default good evidence that it is. The appearances may, of course, be the product of corrupt forces. But we would need some evidence that this is the case, not just a conviction that it is.

It is not plausible that religions just arbitrarily decided to insist on the ethical significance of sex, especially not when it is probably in a religion's interest to insist on its ethical insignificance (so that its members have lots of it and breed like sheep). It is far more plausible that religions insist upon the ethical significance of sex because sex appears to be ethically significant and religions want to provide their own special backstory about that ethical significance.

Plus, in point of fact the Abrahamic religions built, in no small part anyway, on foundations laid by Plato. Plato's views on sex were not informed by religion, but by reason.

Reply to DingoJones As regards your second point - yes, quite. If there were no religions I think sex would still appear to be ethically special. It appears ethically special to me, for instance, and I am not religious in the slightest.

Reply to DingoJones I should also add, that the new generation seem far from breezy about sex. They seem acutely aware of the wrongness of sexual molestation and sexual manipulation.

Reply to Bartricks

Well most people are aware of the wrongness of sexual predation, thats not the same as being sexually liberated. Sure, awareness about sexual predation is at an all time high but there is also Tinder.
To your other points, I think that makes sense. I was more alluding to the social history of sex.

Sex leads to kids. You don't want your woman to fool around because that'd mean you'd be raising someone else's kid. And you don't want your man to fool around lest he divide his resources among many responsibilities.

This was worked out by customs and observations and realizing what makes a baby, by our species' early representatives, back a very long while ago. Today we have more than enough resources to raise kids, but back then death by starvation or by exposure was a real fear, because it was a real threat. Life was hard and sexual investment was big, bigger than life.

On the other hand, the man who fools around expands his chances of getting his progeny survive, and the derivative of his own DNA get propagated. And the woman who fools around and bears children out of wedlock to a husband who is faithful and will raise the little bantling, also increases the chances of derivatives of her DNA surviving, by simply diversifying her DNA derivative portfolio.

Thus, for human beings, the most important thing in reproduction is a faithful and loyal spouse; and the second most important thing is to fool around behind your spouse's back without anyone else finding out but you and your lover married to someone other than you.

Quoting DingoJones

sexual predation is at an all time high but there is also Tinder

What is tinder? I keep seeing their ads on the porn sites I visit for autoerotical purposes. But I never figured out what it is. I don't click on suspicious or dubious links on porn sites, they could or theoretically ought to link to traps, malware, viruses.

Quoting DingoJones

but there is also Tinder

The closest I come to is "tündér" which in my language means "fairy" as in winged beautiful women.

Reply to god must be atheist

Its a “dating” app. People use it to have casual sex.

Quoting DingoJones

Its a “dating” app. People use it to have casual sex.

Thanks! I've seen those in action... the next closest willing applicant to you is typically 500 miles away from you, and she fat or a hooker. Guys too. Some are planted ghosts by the website management. They are the gorgeous ones with good ads who never reply to anyone.

Thanks, anyway, for kindly providing the info, DingoJones.

Reply to god must be atheist It is not clear to me whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with what I've said. You seem to be describing what it may be in our reproductive interests to believe or desire, but what I am talking about is the moral significance of sex (not its biological significance).

Quoting Bartricks

what I am talking about is the moral significance of sex (not its biological significance).

I'm inclined to think the biological significance is exactly what gives rise to the large "moral" significance here. In part, our morals here are what they are because of how we feel about these things, and how we feel about them is a matter of biological instinct evolved by selection pressures.

Reply to god must be atheist

The parental investment matter you describe is exactly on the mark. Thank you.

I once read an interesting account of why extreme sexual jealousy probably evolved in Alexander Rosenberg's An Atheist's Guide to Reality. Maybe I'll try to come up with an extended quote.

[Reply to petrichor But what it is right or wrong for us to do is not constitutively determined by our feelings.

Our reason is our source of insight into what it is ethical for us to do. Perhaps creatures whose reason told them not to treat sex as just another leisure activity, not to sell or buy it, that it is especially wrong to force it on someone, and really only ok to engage in it in the context of a loving relationship had more children than those whose reason told them something different. But this by itself does not discredit what our reason tells us about this.

Quoting Bartricks

It is not clear to me whether you're agreeing or disagreeing with what I've said. You seem to be describing what it may be in our reproductive interests to believe or desire, but what I am talking about is the moral significance of sex (not its biological significance).

In my world, morals are closely connected to societal institutions, and societal institution try to instill into people what the rulers of the society want for that society. Most times the rulers want a stable (or stagnant) moral code instilled into people's behaviour.

Some morals don't get changed, as they represent a "don't care" state for the rulers.

Marriage, sex, and sexual reproduction has been a major issue in the development of morals. Some rulers wanted all possible sex partners, or the most desirable ones, for themselves, and they by-and-large achieved this goal. Ghengis Khan, Attila the Hun, Agoston the Strong, many feudal landlords, and the pharaos, the Roman emperors and centurions, and celtic and other tribes chieftains are prime examples.

Christianity destroyed these ideals, and now on paper even the president of the USA is expected to have only one sex partner, his wife. (This is a big laugh, though.)

So today's societies in the world reflect the pattern of families of prehistoric times. One man, one woman, and their children. Special exceptions exist for same-sex couples. Their children are not biologically theirs but many heterosexual marriages adopt as well.

The similarity between the morals necessitated for survival and the morals today are a coincidence; but I believe that this is actually a DNA-borne quality, a cogenital moral expectation (if they can exist). The reason I say this is that one man normally falls in love with one woman at a time, and vice versa. If the love does not become fruitful, i.e. does not lead to marriage, the person can fall in love in short notice again.

But sex is rampant, if it is let loose. Why? to increase the likelyhood of the survival of the derivative of one's DNA. It is IN us to be promiscuous. Only diseases and the threat of moral face-losing stops us from it. In some states, the law also punishes cheaters by way of finding the marriage divorcable, and thus a large chunk of a person's wealth may be lost to the divorcing spouse.

In all, I think it is all DNA related. I do believe that a lot of our moral and emotional stances are inherited, not learned.

Um, I’ll be one of the prudes, if labels are requisite. I don’t give a damn about how safe the sex is, if a sexual partner of mine (I’m into that mono-amorous stuff) were to have sex with another that would chap my hide. If she were to be in a safe-sex orgy, doubly so.

I find that the OP is onto something.

For the record, for prudes such as myself, where she to kiss another lovingly in a [s]french[/s] freedom kiss style (hey, if us US Yankees have freedom fries sanctioned by our esteemed elected leaders …) that would piss me off worse than if she were to have casual sex with him/her.

And kissing has never led to pregnancies.

So yes, there’s something significant about sexual intimacy. For at least a good portion of the populace, including for non-Abrahamic bleeding heart progressives such as myself.

But hey, to balance this shpeal off, there’s nothing sexier than seeing the love of your life look at you lovingly while talking in the other part of a room with a handsome guy at a party, kind of thing. To be loved and wanted by someone you want and love, its a good aphrodisiac.

Quoting Bartricks

Our reason is our source of insight into what it is ethical for us to do.

I disagree. For one thing, there is the is/ought problem, which was so cleanly laid out by Hume. "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Pure reason can't prefer one state of affairs over another. There is no state of affairs that is provably "better" than another.

Such and such will hurt lots of people! Can you rationally show that people should not be hurt? Try it. You'll find that you are just appealing to feelings at some point. It makes us feel bad.

Most of our objections to things in the world, including behavior in other people, really come down to feelings, and can be neatly explained in evolutionary terms. Why are we repulsed by maggots, for instance? And sex involves the most important matter of all from an evolutionary standpoint. Even if your body is healthy and you have all the skills to survive in your environment, if you fail to reproduce, from the standpoint of your genes, it is all for nothing (I am ignoring eusociality here)! Selection will favor an organism that reproduces and dies soon after over one that lives long and never reproduces. The reason is simple. If you don't reproduce, your genes simply don't pass into the future. What we find existing is what got passed on. All your ancestors successfully reproduced, without exception, and were strongly inclined to do so.

If you observe animals, you see plenty of examples of them protecting their opportunities to pass on their genes, and strong feelings are obviously involved. And rational justifications for that behavior are obviously lacking on their part.

I'd suggest that much of our "reasoning" about morality is a lot of post hoc rationalization of our feelings, which have an evolutionary origin.

Sometimes, moral reasoning can lead us to imperatives that most of us generally find a bit repugnant, anti-natalism for example.

Notice that sex and death are the big issues to us, the ones with the most charge feeling-wise. And notice that successful reproduction (which involves extended care of children in the case of humans) and not dying are the primary imperatives from an evolutionary standpoint. Survive and multiply! So things that threaten to damage the body, to kill or maim, and things that otherwise threaten our reproduction, are things we feel strongly about. They often involve literal pain. And what causes us pain evolved. A perfect example is how painful it is to get hit in the testicles! Why? Think about it!


In evolutionary terms, why is rape a problem for a female? He won't be there to help make sure the child matures into a sexually successful adult. Regardless, she'll be forced to devote a lot of resources, including precious time during which she can't gestate other children. Her parental investment is huge, much larger than a man's. A woman's feelings about a potential mate and her willingness to mate with him have everything to do with how she was wired by evolutionary forces. Naturally, in the case of rape, her favorable feelings and her bonding hormones didn't coincide with the conceptive event.j One would expect that she'd feel strong negative feelings toward him. She hasn't accepted him. Nevertheless, he invades and potentially plants his seed anyway. This is far worse than being punched! She might survive and reproduce anyway if punched. If raped, her precious time and other resources might be used up, especially in the tough circumstances of primitive or animal life.

Notice that men complaining of being raped by women is rare. The opposite is true for women. And there is the double standard for men and women regarding sexual selectiveness. Women need to be choosy. Their parental investment is large. Men, not so much. Evolution explains this. For one thing, we come from polygynous ancestors.

Quoting petrichor

If you observe animals, you see plenty of examples of them protecting their opportunities to pass on their genes, and strong feelings are obviously involved.

Yes, well, bonobos are horny and kinky little monkeys (great apes, to be exact). They'll have sex in exchange for a banana with no hard feelings on anyone's part, Orgies (group sex) are not unheard of. They're also thoroughly bisexual, both females and males. They're anecdotally believed to be more intelligent than chimps by researchers. And they're about as close to us genetically as are chimps - only that we share more analogous evolution with bonobos, such as in the facial expression of smiles (same look, same function).

No, we didn't evolve from chimps or from bonobos. We evolved from a common ancestor whose lineage bifurcated into us and a separate branch which itself bifurcated into chimps and bonobos. But these two great apes are our closest evolutionary kin. So if one looks to evolution, one should be looking to both chimps and bonobos ... as opposed to, say, starfish.

Quoting javra

Yes, well, bonobos are horny and kinky little monkeys (great apes, to be exact). They'll have sex in exchange for a banana with no hard feelings on anyone's part,

It isn't clear to me that bonobo behavior is at odds with the general thrust of what I am saying.

Quoting petrichor

It isn't clear to me that bonobo behavior is at odds with the general thrust of what I am saying.

The thrust, to summarize, was that our emotions on sexual intimacy are grounded in evolutionary functionality. Right?

Bonobos, one of our two closest evolutionary kin, have evolved to be promiscuous in manners that do not consist of "cheating", and are emotionally comfortable with that. Point being, this then serves as a major impediment to the theory that we, humans, are the way we are in relation to sexual intimacy due to our evolutionary history.

Here is a quote from Alexander Rosenberg's book where he talks about jealousy:

Let’s start with love and the design problem it solves for males. A male won’t get sexual access to a female unless the male can convince her that he’ll be around to share some of his resources with her and the kids he is going to produce. Since females have been selected for not being fooled by mere expressions of fidelity, they demand stronger assurances before they will allow males to have their way with them. As the Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn noted, a verbal contract is not worth the paper it is written on. A male’s promise is unenforceable. Females can’t rely on it because for a male it would be irrational to keep. With millions of sperm, the male’s best strategy is to promise, get sexual access, and renege. The mammalian female has only a few hundred eggs and a limited number of ovulatory cycles. She can’t afford to guess wrong about a reliable mate. What will reliably guarantee unenforceable promises about the future when it would be irrational for any male to keep them? One thing that would do it is a sign of irrational commitment to the female and to her interests that could not be faked.

Why must the sign signal irrational commitment? Because females recognize that it’s irrational of males to commit resources to one female. So the sign the male sends the female really has to be one of irrational commitment. Why must the sign be unfakable? Because a fakable sign of commitment is just that, fakable, and therefore not credible. Love is irrational and unfakable, by males at any rate. In nature’s search through design space for a strategy that will secure males’ sexual access, the emotion of love looks like it will just do the trick.

Irrational love does not fully solve the male’s design problems. After pairing up, the male faces another issue: the uncertainty of paternity. To convey resources to his mate’s offspring, he needs assurance that the kids are really his. This is an uncertainty problem females don’t have (unless kids get switched after birth). The male needs to reduce the uncertainty as much as possible. One way to do this is to pose a credible threat to anyone suspected of taking advantage of any absence from his partner’s bed. To make this threat credible, the male must be motivated to carry it out even when it is crazy to do so. And often it is crazy, since it’s the strong, the powerful, and the rich who usually try to take advantage of the weaker. The emotion of uncontrollable jealousy fits the bill perfectly. Revenge must be a credible threat; males must convince everyone that they will take measures to punish cheating wives and/or their lovers no matter how great the cost to themselves. Overpowering jealousy does the job, though it makes the occasional male actually sacrifice his own short-term and long-term interests. In the overall scheme, the fact that every male is prone to feel such emotions maintains a norm among men and women that effectively reduces the uncertainty of paternity and so enhances most males’ fitness. (Of course, female jealousy isn’t selected for reducing the uncertainty of maternity. There is little to reduce. But the emotion’s unfakable and irrational force deters other females from shifting her partner’s resources to their offspring.)

Emotions are hardwired by genes we share and presumably share with other primates and indeed other mammals, as Darwin himself noticed. In us, of course, they get harnessed together with our highly developed theory-of-mind ability and with norms adaptive in our environments. They motivate enforcement of the norms they get paired up with, on others and on ourselves. Some of these norms solve design problems common to humans in all the environments we inhabit. These are parts of the moral core we all share. Others will not be part of core morality but will be locally restricted to the different ecologies that different groups inhabit. Some examples will illustrate how this works.

Reply to javra

There is a lot about bonobos I would need to learn before it would be clear to me how their instincts mostly align wih their evolutionary interests, which they surely do. There are probably eusocial factors at work there for one thing.

Not all animals are monogamous, or polygynous, or asexual, and so on. There are different strategies. In humans, female parental investment and the need for male help was especially high. With our long gestation times, large brains, long developmental period after birth before survival is possible, and so on, our situation is somewhat different than that of many other animals, including primates.

Reply to petrichor No, bonobos are quite fertile animals.

Re strategies: From my studies, it boils down to choice between one of two strategies for males: shoot seeds like a madman to increase the probability that some offspring will survive (quantity of offspring) or invest energy in ensuring that the few offspring one does have will all survive (quality of offspring).

The female also has one of two choices: either chose a male that is about quality of parenting (maximizing the likelihood of offspring survival) or, to make something complex oversimplified, mate with a male that is about quantity of offspring and, ideally, having this genetic offspring raised by some male that is about quality of offspring (again maximizing the likelihood of offspring survival).

Humans, we're a mixed bag of all conceivable strategies. I reckon that's due to our behavioral plasticity, itself due to our relatively great degrees of intelligence (and reduced behavioral reliance upon genetically hardwired instincts).

As a good example of the evolutionary argument as regards sexual taboos (what some call morality), consider the incest taboo, which is one of the first taboos. Why is incest bad? Could the genetic problems it causes have anything to do with it?

This is interesting:
link

Quoting javra

No, bonobos are quite fertile animals.

Did I suggest otherwise?

Anyway, I think what you say about bonobos fits into the basic picture I am trying to paint here, which is simply that our taboos reflect our evolutionary interests.

Quoting Bartricks

There seems to be something ethically special about sex.

I don't know how to describe it but I think, despite our attempts to compartmentalize reality, things flow into each other or rather intertwine with each other. So, to use another analogy, we have a tangled ball of twine. The threads, morality and sex, are distinct but they're so thoroughly entangled that it appears that they overlap.

Reply to petrichor Of course. We could also get into why human lips turn redder when we get sexually aroused, especially amplified in females with rouge lipstick. But this will likely deviate quite a bit from the theme of this thread. As to bonobos, good ol' wikipedia to the rescue:

Quoting Wikipedia entry on bonobos

Sexual activity generally plays a major role in bonobo society, being used as what some scientists perceive as a greeting, a means of forming social bonds, a means of conflict resolution, and postconflict reconciliation.[42][4] Bonobos are the only non-human animal to have been observed engaging in tongue kissing.[43] Bonobos and humans are the only primates to typically engage in face-to-face genital sex, although a pair of western gorillas has been photographed in this position.[44] [etc.]

Quoting petrichor

Did I suggest otherwise?

Yes, here:

Quoting petrichor

There are probably eusocial factors at work there for one thing.

Quoting petrichor

Anyway, I think what you say about bonobos fits into the basic picture I am trying to paint here, which is simply that our taboos reflect our evolutionary interests.

OK, I'm not opposed to the general idea. But how do you figure that our human touchiness in relation to sexual intimacy relates to our closest living evolutionary kin? Well at least one of the two: bonobos.

Reply to javra

As regards eusociality and what you said about fertility, consider the problem of homosexual behavior in both humans and bonobos. How to explain it? It is non-reproductive. Some have argued for eusocial explanations. In humans, such things as celibacy for certain members of the group also might have a eusocial explanation.

Quoting javra

But how do you figure that our human touchiness in relation to sexual intimacy relates to our closest living evolutionary kin? Well at least one of the two: bonobos.

I'd have to give it some further thought, but at the moment, it occurs to me that sexual engagement can serve multiple purposes. And since bonding hormones are involved, social bonds might be solidified.

I don't know much about bonobos, but I'd suspect that with such prolific sexual behavior, there must be other reasons to expect that offspring will be well cared for and will have a good chance of reaching sexual maturity. Most likely, this reason is that the whole group is tightly bound together, and adults not ancestral to a young bonobo might well participate in caring for it. So maybe it isn't such a huge deal if the male who fathered the child isn't devoted to the mother.

In the instance of sexual jealousy, if it is absent in bonobos, it might be because a female doesn't need the unfakable indication of devotion from the male as Rosenberg describes in the quote I gave earlier. Perhaps the tight social bonds of the group serve the purpose just as well, as perhaps the members of the group share child-raising duties. And probably, bonobo babies don't need extended raising to anywhere near the degree that human babies do. Human babies are unusually helpless and needy, and for a long time!

Quoting petrichor

As regards eusociality and what you said about fertility, consider the problem of homosexual behavior in both humans and bonobos. How to explain it? It is non-reproductive. Some have argued for eusocial explanations. In humans, such things as celibacy for certain members of the group also might have a eusocial explanation.

I can see that argument. I don't know of recorded homosexuals among bonobos, though. They are, however, well documented to be bisexual.

Quoting petrichor

I'd have to give it some further thought, but at the moment, it occurs to me that sexual engagement can serve multiple purposes. And since bonding hormones are involved, social bonds might be solidified.

:up: I very much agree. Have gotten into one or two arguments where I asked, paraphrasing, "But if sex is only about reproduction, then what the heck do you make out of oral and anal sex??? To not even address french kisses and the like." Yes, I'm one to strongly believe that social bonding is a very big aspect of sex (a roundabout path to the content of my first post on this thread).

As to the rest, I'm very much inclined to agree.

There seems to be something ethically special about sex.

This is a tautology. By use of the word 'ethically' you have already singled out the word 'sex' as 'a special relationship between people'. The origins of its status can clearly be traced to basic primate social behavior in which other (human) ethical considerations (honesty, theft) are inapplicable. Other human factors like language and the seeking of prediction and control, merely serve to embellish its 'natural' status.

The Cynics whom we should all admire wished every desire could be fulfilled akin to the sexual one a la masturbation.

Reply to petrichor Hume was quite wrong. Morality is not made of feelings. If it were then we could change the morality of a deed by changing our feelings. For instance, we could eradicate world injustice by just learning to lighten-up about it. That's absurd though and someone who thinks that is a way of eradicating world injustice is about as confused as someone who thinks morality is a type of cheese.

Moral truths are truths of reason. For instance, virtually all of us recognise that if we feel approval of an act that does not necessarily entail that it is morally right for us to perform it.

And we recognise, most of us, that it is by reason that we are primarily aware of morality, and that it is by consulting our reason and engaging in reasoned debate that we resolve moral problems.

And we recognise, most of us, that if an act is morally required, then we necessarily have some reason to do it. Yet clearly if I approve of something it does not follow of necessity that I have some reason to do it.

So Hume's individual subjectivism about morality is just plain wrong and confused.

Reply to Bartricks I've been reading a book about "how gentility became a thing in colonial America and during the 19th century". Interesting book. But anyway, the author asks the question, "Why were royal courts so extremely regulated and formal in their behavior?

The author points out that extremely ambitious and highly acquisitive people flocked to court and surrounded the king--they were the courtiers. Without extremely severe regulation, life at court would have quickly turned into a vicious and deadly brawl. All those ambitious and acquisitive people had to be kept under control. Hence all the rules of proper behavior.

Sex is quite powerful. People get quite charged up over sexual offense, sexual desire, sexual performance, sexual deprivation, sexual competition, sex this, sex that, and sex and so on. The lid has to be kept on, or we would be doing a lot more squabbling and taking pot shots at each other.

Sex is fenced off with all sorts of barbed wire boundaries to keep everyone behaving tolerably in group settings.

What happens when the lid comes off? In some situations, heaven sets in. A gay bath house operates (or operat[U]ed[/U] when there were lots of bath houses around) on rather loose terms--something not too far from [i]anything goes[/I] as long as there was no serious objection from those involved. Sex in the bushes also operates with a minimum number of rules.

Why don't straight men engage in that sort of sex play? Because straight women won't let them. Wives and partners expect their men to be responsible and not engage in extra-marital sex, let alone engage in flagrantly promiscuous anonymous sex with god knows whom. Women tend to be guardians of the hearth. Vesta was the goddess of the Roman hearth. The Vestal Virgins kept the sacred fires of Rome. Your suburban housewife is a small-time goddess of her own hearth. Her job is to keep the home fires burning, and to keep the guy near the fire.

Men tend not to look at home quite the same way. There aren't any male god hearth watchers that I know of. Men, far from being vestal virgins, are more like festive fuckers -- happy to have as much sex as possible.

Allow me to approach this from a slightly different angle.

Sexual relations occur in living things as a method of preserving the information integrated in the organism as a result of its many interactions with the world over time. The proven systems of sexual reproduction prioritise not so much the faithful reproduction of the organism in its entirety, but the reliable extension of information contained in the organism beyond its own lifespan, and the capacity to then build on that information through integration.

Human sexual relations, evolving in this manner, produces progeny that relies heavily on long term interaction from other humans as well as the environment in order to acquire sufficient information just to survive - although this is not the prime objective. This structure initially makes for an extremely fragile offspring, but allows humans to be more adaptable to change in the environment, and develops their information processing, integration and collaboration systems to maximise effectiveness in the situation at hand.

Morality has developed from our capacity to acquire additional information about the environment in relation to hierarchies of value for the system: rating stimuli according its meaningfulness. The information structure that results suggests a distinction between the environment as a system and the organism itself in terms of what is deemed more valuable. Further information shows that within the environment we also distinguish other organisms whose values align with our own.

As family, tribe and community grows, further information demonstrates that what we assumed was the same value structure or perspective of the world actually develops a number of variations, particularly over time. Morality becomes a way of minimising these variations within the social group, as well as reconciling the values of the human organism with the values of the environment/world/universe as a whole. Many social groups anthropomorphise this universal value system as a way of interacting with it on a more personal level - similar to how they learn to interact with each other.

A prominent issue in terms of recognising a difference in what is valuable would be sexual relations. What I value or want as an organism is different to what you want - this is rarely so obvious as in a sexual encounter. It is here that an overarching perspective of what is valuable can be most useful...

Reply to Bartricks

I don't agree with a lot of your premises, and I'm one of many people who wouldn't. So, things like "Sexual betrayal seems ethically worse than financial betrayal," "Sellling sex seems wrong," or "Treating sex as just a fun pasttime seems wrong" shouldn't be presented as near-universal notions.

[reply="Bartricks;d6624"

Bartricks just a quick question.

Were you able to dip your toes into any Freudian Psychosexual waters? Any theories there worth exploring in your view?

I haven't studied much from him lately but my sense is that he covered certain ethics and pathology...

I think most of you are approaching this the wrong way. You are attempting to explain why it might have come about that sex appears to us to be morally special. But you (most of you) are saying nothing about whether it actually is or not.

Perhaps you think that if you can explain why something appears to us to be the case, that constitutes evidence that it is not in fact the case - but without further explanation you'd be committing the genetic fallacy in drawing that conclusion.

So I think most of you are missing the point, which is that sex appears to be morally special in and of itself. So sex is a bit like pain in this respect. Many acts that are wrong are wrong precisely because they cause someone some pain. (Not all, obviously, and not all acts that cause someone pain are wrong, but many are wrong and wrong precisely because they cause a person pain). Many acts are wrong precisely because they involve sex.

Quoting Bartricks

So I think most of you are missing the point, which is that sex appears to be morally special in and of itself. So sex is a bit like pain in this respect. Many acts that are wrong are wrong precisely because they cause someone some pain. (Not all, obviously, and not all acts that cause someone pain are wrong, but many are wrong and wrong precisely because they cause a person pain). Many acts are wrong precisely because they involve sex.

Sex is not special. It's one of several essential biological functions: eating, breathing, drinking, voiding urine and feces, clearing one's nose, coughing, farting, sneezing, salivating, tearing, sleeping, moving about, and so on. Over time our biological functions have been hedged about with social restrictions, mostly top-down.

As Richard Lyman Bushman observed in his book (I mentioned it above) The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, 18th century "taste makers" (various people who helped people achieve the level of gentility they desired) considered the body an embarrassing "shell" that one should not expose or infringe upon. They disapproved of open mouths. Quality people were not to laugh out loud, yawn, walk around with their mouth open (no mouth-breathers allowed), and so on, because the open mouth was considered 'disgusting' and low class. Sharing a spoon was strongly disapproved of, NOT BECCAUSE OF ANY FEARS OF DISEASE, but because if one person's mouth had touched a spoon, it was "ritually contaminated", so somebody else would not want to touch it.

All this is perfectly irrational, and our attitudes about sex and sexuality are of like kind. We are not supposed to behave like animals (so they say). So over time, (centuries, not years) sexuality has been overlaid with multiple layers of ethical and behavioral restrictions.

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Reply to tim wood Question begging. I have just explained why it appears that sex most certainly is an appropriate subject for ethics as it would seem to be a feature, like pain, whose presence can make an otherwise ethical act unethical.

Reply to Bitter Crank Question begging. By insisting that it is irrational to view sex as ethically special you are assuming that reason does not represent it to be. Yet as my examples show, reason clearly does represent it to be ethically special.
And once more you are committing the genetic fallacy by providing a possible history of the intuitions.

Reply to 3017amen No, I try to read as little as possible and, as I understand it, Freud was a psychologist not a philosopher, so I think that the odds are he will have nothing much to say that I will find relevant as fundamentally his concern was with making his patients feel better about themselves not with what's true.

Reply to 3017amen That's what I assume, anyway - happy to be wrong.

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Reply to Wallows What - they thought it would be good if we could solve every problem by masturbating? That's insane. Plus surely that would make many trivial problems harder, not easier, to solve?

Reply to tim wood No, you were just begging the question.

[reply="tim wood;328145"Reply to Terrapin Station But they are near universal.

Reply to Terrapin Station But they ARE near universal. Most people really do consider sexual betrayal worse than financial betrayal. You may not, but most people do - and most people consider it such a grave wrong they end their relationships because of it. Perhaps there is no moral aspect to it, but I think that's seriously mistaken as, again, most would agree.

Quoting Bartricks

And once more you are committing the genetic fallacy by providing a possible history of the intuitions.

Not quite sure what this means. But history has a great deal to do with the reasoning behind sex being viewed as a special ethical case. What was going on in the 16th, 17th, or 18th century doesn't govern our thinking directly, but indirectly it has some influence.

That people today are supposed to cover their mouths when they yawn is a 17th/18th century behavior based on what the folks on the hill in those days thought proper. I'm not, and maybe you are not either, a descendant of the folks on the hill--the cultural elite of past centuries. But from generation to generation people are taught what their parents knew. It's not genetic, it's pedagogical.

Quoting Bartricks

By insisting that it is irrational to view sex as ethically special you are assuming that reason does not represent it to be. Yet as my examples show, reason clearly does represent it to be ethically special.

Au contraire. By reason people represent sex to be special--or not. How else would we have an opinion on the ethical specialness of sex? But reason doesn't exist in a vacuum. We reason in the context of our culture, of course, and our culture contains elements of various age. Like the business about yawning.

You asked what was so special about sexual relations. I said I didn't think it was special, except by convention. Where ethics comes into play is when it concerns progeny. Most people feel obligated to support their children, but certainly not everyone. I consider abandoning progeny to be quite unethical. Convenient, yes -- ethical, no.

Unwilled sexual relations is also an ethical issue, not so much because it is sex, but because people generally don't like being forced to do things. You would like to eat your favorite meal. You wouldn't enjoy being force-fed the same food.

If you don't like my reply, please be more specific about what you think is wrong with it.

Reply to Bartricks I think you are right, in general. I think it has to do with physicality and intimacy. Touching another person, especially with any force, ups the ante radically over, for example, speaking to them. The sense of touch is prioritized ethically over other senses. We can make pucker faces at other people, but kissing them raised the stakes immensely. Pucker faces at a funeral might be consider unethical but kissing other mourners without consent and the ante is raised radically. Placing your penis in their lap and you have a crime. Sex is extremely intimate touch. Violence is touch with a great deal of force. Screaming can be considered unethical in many situations. Bright lights shined into someone's house. But the sense of touch is a whole nother ball game. There are many reasons for this, I would guess: touch involved potential life threat, pregnancy, harm. Another key thing is the word I used above: intimacy. Pucker faces, however annoying, do not approach the feeling of intimacy that a kiss does. Even getting up real close and makign the biggest lips possible.

Of course some of the charge around sex goes back in time to tribal times without birth control, where women were seen as property of men, where fatherhood had to be monitored carefully in ways it need not be now, where religions had sway everywhere, and religions were pulling morality out of tribal needs and biases.

But even black boxing all that, touch without consent is much more intimate and potentially dangerous and/or more painful than intrusions via other senses.

And there is emotional pain in unwanted intimacy. Or unpleasance at least.

But then it is very hard to cross measure a financial crime and a sexual crime. What are the units of measurement whereby we can say sex is more than money?

Quoting Bartricks

But they ARE near universal.

Citation? (with info about how many people were surveyed and how they were chosen)

Reply to Bitter Crank What is wrong with your argument is that you are dogmatically assuming that there is nothing special about sex and then rejecting all the evidence to the contrary on the grounds that it conflicts with your dogmatic assumption. So you are starting out with a theory rather than starting out by following evidence (our theories should follow the evidence, not the other way around).

You say, for instance, that what is responsible for the widespread intuitions that sex is ethically special is 'convention'. But it could be the other way around - it could be that we have the conventions we do because sex seems special. Now that's a more reasonable working hypothesis. Why? Because sex appears to be ethically special and it is arbitrary to just reject some appearances. We should respect the appearances - sex appears to be ethically special in the way that, say, pain is, and so we should assume that it is, not that it isn't.

Reply to Bitter Crank Here's a refutation of your case:

1. If Bitter Crank is right and there is nothing ethically special about sex, then other things being equal (so equalize psychological fallout and so on), forcing someone to have sex with you is no worse, ethically speaking, than forcing someone to play tennis with you.
2. Forcing someone to have sex with you is much worse, ethically speaking, than forcing someone to play tennis with you
3. Therefore Bitter crank is wrong.

Have you considered just how much coercion would be required to FORCE someone to play tennis with them--especially if they didn't know how?

Quoting Bartricks

You say, for instance, that what is responsible for the widespread intuitions that sex is ethically special is 'convention'. But it could be the other way around - it could be that we have the conventions we do because sex seems special.

Is your statement not an example of what you said in your previous sentence... "you are dogmatically assuming"?

As for convention on the one hand and the alleged natural specialness of sex on the other, how would we at this late date in our development, parse one from the other? I am not a sexologist, so I do not gather evidence about sexual behavior from large numbers of subjects, and then examine the results. What I have to go on is what I have learned from others (reading, conversation, lectures...) and what I have experienced. The same is probably true for you. But even If we were both sexologists with the Kinsey Institute and the University of Indiana at our disposal, we still would never have a sexually naive de novo population to examine. All we would have is millions of people who have a variety of views about sex to which they are probably dogmatically committed.

Look, I'm not in favor of forced sex, forced tennis, forced labor, or forced anything else. I do, as it happens, have strong preferences for HOW we deal with sexuality. Good sex is a piece of personal fulfillment and I think that people have a right to both fulfillment and good sex (voluntary, mutual, unforced, uncoerced, and safe to the extent that it is possible in this unsatisfactory world.

Reply to Bartricks You inserted a condition into your syllogism which I had explicitly rejected.

1. Sex and tennis should be mutually consensual.

2. Bitter Crank is opposed to forcing people to play tennis or to have sex.

3. Therefore, Bitter Crank is right.

Quoting Coben

Placing your penis in their lap and you have a crime.

A guy's penis may not be quite long enough to place in somebody else's lap. If they cut it off first and then put it in this person's lap, is it still a crime?

Quoting Bartricks

Most people really do consider sexual betrayal worse

I bet there are a few people who would rather have had Bernie Madoff et al betray them sexually than lose their entire wealth and security.

Quoting Bitter Crank

A guy's penis may not be quite long enough to place in somebody else's lap. If they cut it off first and then put it in this person's lap, is it still a crime?

Might be two crimes. At the very least cutting your penis off in public would get you taken into custody. Putting in someone's lap would be a crime. Of course you'd be heading for psychiatric wards not prison most likely once all the legal smoke cleared.

Quoting Bitter Crank

I bet there are a few people who would rather have had Bernie Madoff et al betray them sexually than lose their entire wealth and security.

Well, that's the thing...how do we measure across crime types? What is the monetary value of a rape?

Reply to Bitter Crank So, just to be clear, you think that forcing someone to have sex with you is morally indistinct from forcing someone to play tennis with you? Note, the 'other things being equal' clause covers things like amount of force involved etc.

Well, even if you think that, I think the vast bulk of people do not - their reason tells them that forcing sex on someone is far worse than forcing tennis on them, other things being equal. My evidence for that: most people I have spoken to have said so, and furthermore it is reflected in the laws of most lands, which would punish rape far more severely than forced tennis playing.

Reply to Bartricks You did not, could not, or would not read what I wrote.

Quoting Bitter Crank

2. Bitter Crank is opposed to forcing people to play tennis or to have sex.

Reply to Bitter Crank the point, which you seem to be having such a hard time grasping, is that the two are not morally equivalent as any morally sensitive personal recognizes. You, howeve, think there's nothing special about sex. Thus you are committed to the morally silly view that there's no ethical difference between forcing someone to play tennis with you and forcing sex on someone, other things being equal.

It is the one thing that you own but that belongs solely to the mother of your children.

Reply to Bartricks Hey, Bartricks: We're all smart people here. Of course I understand the distinction and moral significance of voluntary sex vs forced sex.

You are the one that introduced the silly comparison between sex and tennis. I did not.

Quoting Bartricks

Thus you are committed to the morally silly view that there's no ethical difference between forcing someone to play tennis with you and forcing sex on someone, other things being equal.

Don't be tiresome.

Reply to Bitter Crank that's question begging - I think you demonstrably don't. Look, if other things are equal - so we equalize all other properties, such as psychological fallout and so on - then still, forcing someone to have sex with you is an order of magnitude morally worse than forcing someone to play tennis with you - yes, or no?

If yes, why? If no - then you hold the view I have attributed to you.

Question: Is this some sort of game?
Answer: The game is getting someone to agree with your non-sensical point.

Yes, of course. Forced sex is rape and is several magnitudes worse than forcing someone to play tennis with you.

Why? Because forced sex involves assault and battery, possible injury in the attempt, penetration (or the attempt) of another person's body, a possible pregnancy (which some jurisdictions will force the woman to endure), a denial of the victim's autonomy and dignity, and so on.

Sex can be a non-unique behavior and still be irrelevant to tennis-playing behavior. There are a million non-unique behaviors that can be sorted into ten thousand categories. Some non-unique behaviors will be completely unrelated (celebrating Mass and playing Monopoly) and some will be more closely related (like fixing a flat tire on a car and changing the car's oil and filter).

Reply to Bitter Crank I don't think you understand what the 'other things being equal' clause means - it means compare forcing sex on someone with another act that is otherwise identical apart from that it does not involve sex but something else.

So, let's say I go up to a stranger and stick my finger up their nose. That's wrong, certainly. But not as wrong as I stuck my finger elsewhere, yes?

Perhaps the latter will cause more long term psychological trauma than the former. But there is no necessity to that, so just imagine that I have a short-term memory-wipe spray, and I spray this into the person's face such that she will forget immediately what I just did. I do this in the nose case and in the other case. So now the psychological fallout will be the same - namely, non-existent.

Still, it is worse to do the latter than the former, isn't it?

Why? Both acts involve the same degree of assault, both involve insertion. And in neither case will the affected party remember what happened. So, the difference in their moral wrongness cannot be attributed to any of those features. What, then?

Reply to Bartricks You are obsessed. And kind of a pain to be around, what with forcing people to play tennis with you, sticking your finger up their noses and into other orifices, and spraying them in the face.

You might get more sex AND tennis if you just asked people nicely.