Eugine_Nier comments on The Phobia or the Trauma: The Probem of the Chcken or the Egg in Moral Reasoning. - Less Wrong

1 Post author: analyticsophy 15 June 2011 04:16AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 June 2011 05:41:46AM *  7 points [-]

Would you generalize your analysis of pedophilia to non-consensual sex? If not, why not?

Comment author: analyticsophy 15 June 2011 07:52:44AM 0 points [-]

Yes, absolutely would. The only thing i think i would loose in doing so is showing that there is much more to our distaste of pedophiles than the obvious harms they cause.

Comment author: analyticsophy 15 June 2011 08:10:34AM 2 points [-]

Wait I misunderstood what you were asking, sorry. No, I specifically argue that sex involving a non-consenting partner is always going to be traumatic for that member of the ordeal.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 15 June 2011 04:12:16PM 4 points [-]

sex involving a non-consenting partner is always going to be traumatic for that member of the ordeal.

Why? Do you also believe that being touched non-consensually should always be traumatic? (Yes there exist cultures were being touched by a random member of the opposite sex or a member of an untouchable caste is considered traumatic). What's so special about touching with sexual overtones, and aren't the sexual overtones themselves cultural?

Comment author: Alicorn 15 June 2011 05:36:17PM *  6 points [-]

It is to the game-theoretic advantage of someone who does not want (a particular instance of) sex to be traumatizeable by non-consensual sex. People who don't care if they traumatize others will not likely be deterred either way, but people who do care about such a thing will avoid doing the thing that can cause the trauma. Sex in particular is a commonly enough not-wanted thing - a by default not-wanted thing - that we can have a societal framework designed around prohibiting people from forcing it on others, and this has (comparatively recently) generalized to cases where sexual partnership is the societally recognized default, i.e. within a marriage.

Meanwhile, uncommon strong preferences about how one is touched - for instance, my extreme desire not to be tickled, which I do think ought to have moral force for people who know about it but cannot hope to give legal force - do not have enough general currency to be supported in this way. Common strong desires which require the public identification of a non-default, like the desire not to be close to a smelly person, are ignored because as a culture we consider enforcing those desires to be rude (by default, we are presumed to be not smelly, while by default we are presumed to be non-sex-partners with arbitrary persons). The closest we come is guidelines about generically personal space which evaporate under some circumstances.

Comment author: MatthewBaker 05 July 2011 04:10:51PM 1 point [-]

edit button :)