Professional "moral philosopher" ponders whether it's OK to sexually assault animals, featuring AI art
https://nitter.net/PeterSinger/status/1722440246972018857
No, the art does not depict bestiality, don't worry.
I gotta admit I started reading this thread ready to engage in our latest struggle session but actually I've decided I simply won't be reading it.
Please do not fuck your dog or horse or cow or sheep or hen or whatever.
Dw it's mostly just disgust and vegan struggle sessions
Sweet not missing much then. I can get my disgust and vegan struggle sessions elsewhere haha
Knew it was gonna be singer before i even clicked on it. Fucking utilitarians lol
always strange to me when people start trying to talk about bestiality like it's a real moral question and not just a fantasy fetish.
real people don't actually do that, 99.9999% of allegations are literally just made up, even an anonymous essay about why someone should be allowed to fuck a dog, that's someone writing themed smut it's not moral philosophy. the only academically interesting thing about bestiality is why it's had cultural purchase in myth, rumour, and storytelling for thousands of years.
Uh unfortunately that's not true, people do actually fuck animals and have since time immemorial probably. Just this year there was a case in my country where they're prosecuting a dude that sexually assaulted his dogs and filmed it.
Also being a dumb teenager with unrestricted internet access in the early 2000's, I've seen stuff I would have preferred not to.
i'm not saying nobody has ever done bestiality but the rare un-faked examples have to be extraordinarily rare. like all the animals people talk about it with, besides like sheep are dangerous and these people would be assaulting them, probably while naked. no fucking way people manage to do that at any appreciable rate.
but there's a lot of fictional depictions of bestiality, a million lurid rumors and taboo tales. makes you think it's more common & possible than it is, but there simply never were 'donkey shows' or bestiality executions in ancient rome.
Literally everything, even the most baby brained shit, you should ask why we do or do not do it. If you don't have an answer past "because it's wrong" you don't have a set of ethics and morals, just gut impulses and whatever you were taught was normal growing up.
my answer to bestiality would be "because you can't" animals won't fuck you and they'll probably kill you if you try to fuck them.
Because if you’re too undesirable to fuck your fellow species, you don’t get to just move on to the next species. You either fuck a non-living sex toy produced in a factory or don’t fuck anything and live with it.
Also there has not been a single normal human being who’s been exposed for bestiality. Usually they’re serial killers, abusers, pedophiles, and so on. So not a lot of good representatives in the Animal Sex Having population
always strange to me when people start trying to talk about bestiality like it's a real moral question
everything can be a moral question, how is that hard to understand?
you don't have to have a bestiality fetish to think about the morality of it lmao
Most people in animal husbandry would argue that artificial insemination is better for the health of the animals involved, for both the cow and the bull. Animals don't really follow the concept of consent, and the cow or bull could get seriously injured, or worse, otherwise.
Though the argument could easily be made that it would be better not to breed cows at all, and that would be the best health outcome.
Always have admitted vegans are correct and much better people than I am
carnists, if this somehow gives you pause, consider that if it is morally permissible to kill and torture animals for enjoyment...
huh what the hell does this bullshit have to do with anything
so carnists also condone bestiality?
what the fuck
What fucking solar system are you living in
so carnists also condone bestiality?
Functionally, yes. Do you know how the beef industry keeps getting more cows?
carnists also condone bestiality
yes, you do. Your diet requires humans to breed animals on factory farms: collecting semen from male animals and inseminating female animals. Those actions are mechanically the exact same thing as people committing the crime of bestiality. This is why most bestiality laws (and animal cruelty laws, for that matter) read something like "you can't fuck or mutilate animals, unless it's for a farming purpose".
Don't eat em, don't fuck em.
hexbear moment
Honestly could apply to the majority of comments in this thread. People here have seriously lost touch with reality with some of the arguments in here. Reading this makes me want to never comment on general hexbear again. No one should seriously debate what Peter Singer says. He's been a crank for longer than I've been alive.
Genuinely curious, how do vegans think of indigenous diets and their consumption of animals? Many of the critiques I see here apply to industrial consumption of meat.
And how would you respond to the argument that vegans are propagating an unscientific belief in the supercession of nature by humans in a way similar to Christian dominionists, that sees us as unique actors capable of transcending a mutual relationship with nature whereas our inferiors (all other animals that eat animals) are incapable of moral action?
Also I've heard people argue that consuming plants also causes them distress and should be avoided. Would you reply to that in any way or is it silly?
Not here to argue, genuinely just want to know how vegans think about these questions. If you want.
I've seen vegans disagree on the matter of indigenous diets. I'm not sure what most agree on, but I can say vegans are way more focused on ending animal-eating in the context of industrialized society.
Not a vegan but we crossed that bridge the moment agriculture was invented. As for animals incapable of moral actions... I have yet to see a vegan seriously propose the end of natural predation. You're fighting ghosts or I'm misunderstanding.
You can check the r/vegan threads from when that was making the rounds. Plants don't feel pain. Even if they did, you'd cause more beings pain eating meat cause animals eat plants.
Indigenous people get trotted put in defense against veganism all the time. The defense treats indigeneity like some kind of monolith, it's very off-putting.
Indigenous people in the US are vegan more often than white people, same with most BIPOC people. I would recommend asking a vegan indigenous person these questions, or even just imagine yourself doing so, and consider whether it comes across as stereotyping.
Anyways, vegans are generally not focused on going after indigenous diets. They're focused on the vast majority of people who consume animal products because they were simply socialized to do so and never had to question it growing up, but have no sacred attachment to their sloppy joes or slightly more durable shoes or whatever. It's just food or products consumed out of habit and folks pitch an absolute fit when you point out that, say, it's a contradiction to say you're an animal lover because you love your pets but you go absolutely apeshit on someone that asks you to not eat or otherwise consume (entirely as a luxury, a form of entertainment) pigs that are just as smart and cuddly.
Industrialized agriculture produces sufficient vegan food such that animal products are no longer necessary dietarily. Same for materials and other animal products. The question is whether it continues to be acceptable to harm animals because the products have entertainment value.
I think for most people the answer is pretty obviously no, but they reeeeaally don't want to self-crit, so they fight for a while first.
plants can suffer but it's not an argument against veganism since every animal also eats plants, you are killing more plants (by like 10-100x) by eating meat
somehow
oh just morally bankrupt as satan because we've been doing THE SAME THING AS ALL FUCKING HUMANS SINCE BEFORE WE WERE HOMO SAPIENS YOU HAOLE ASS BITCH
Factory farming has not been around as long as homo sapiens. Hell, animal husbandry and domestication of animals has only been around for at most 15000 years. Sure we've been eating meat for millions of years, but aside from some edge cases (arctic peoples are the first example that comes to mind) meat made up very little of the average diet.
If you're still driving predators off their kills so you can scavenge some meat or persistence hunting antelope then you can say you're doing the same thing that we've been doing since before we were homo sapiens sure, but I would argue even the modern practice of raising animals as opposed to hunting drastically alters the amount of animal products we consume.
Apologies for the rambling post but early hominid diets is something that interests me deeply
I'm also someone who isn't vegan (yet) but fully admit they're basically always right
lmao
Omg true. He's a vegetarian right? Bruh... Actually that checks out tbh
He's the guy that came up with the original concept of specieism, and yes, he did it in a similarly deranged manner to this article. Most modern vegans and vegetarians distance themselves from any of his ramblings and have come up with their own definition of specieism that actually makes some sense.
The deer who consents to me feeding him does not understand – and does not have the cognitive capacities to understand – my complex motivation to hand him food or the stories that I will later tell to my friends about this unusual encounter. The range of information that animals can learn differs from that of humans. This is not a problem though, because information that we do not have the capacity to grasp cannot constitute a deal breaker.
Read the article, thought it was interesting, my most direct philosophical objection was here. I think that information that we do not have the capacity to grasp can constitute a deal breaker. For instance, animals are incapable of understanding that they are being "fattened up" for slaughter, but if they could they would likely refuse to eat. It is permissible to do acts an animal does not consent to, like bringing my cat to the vet (scary) and having him vaccinated (painful), only when such acts are clearly in the animal's own best interests so that a "rational" animal would surely consent if it existed. If my cat could understand the purpose of going to the vet he would agree to it.
More broadly, I think
whoops, this is deontology with extra steps. Ah well I'm a man of the people
Yeah, that sentence you quoted is just obviously untrue. The obvious counterexample to me is grizzly bears in Yellowstone. There's a reason every trash can in Yellowstone is specially engineered to be bear-resistant. If bears start to associate humans with dumpster food, they get too comfortable around humans and once a bear no longer has the proper fear of humans, they get shot, because the park rangers at Yellowstone can't have bears hanging out too close to humans and posing massive danger to human life.
So, the information a bear doesn't have about dumpster food can absolutely affect them, even to the point of causing their death!
I'm a little annoyed that a so-called "philosopher" writing about animals and consent doesn't understand even this basic example.
if they could they would likely refuse to eat.
I'm not sure fundamentally changing the situation like that keeps things applicable to situation. a lot of people here don't validate that logic in other situations.
putting that aside i'm not even sure it's true. homer simpson would keep eating. probably some real people would as well, maybe me if the food tasted good enough and escape didn't seem possible. Plenty of people refuse to do things to their own benefit equivalent to what going to the vet is to your cat.
i agree on the heuristic analysis, sometimes those relationships are even the less powerful person's idea but that doesn't eliminate the risks of those power dynamics... maybe your boss is hot but if they're a shitty partner for months how able to dump them will you be? and are they going to not retaliate? maybe in one of the good star trek shows, but even in the optimistic TNG the writers had picard dump his subordinate because their relationship was affecting his judgement.
putting that aside i'm not even sure it's true. homer simpson would keep eating
Yeah we're being charitable here and imagining that my supernaturally-smart cat is his best self, a "rational" actor acting in his own best interest. We want basically the same yardstick parents use when they make their kids eat their vegetables and go to the doctor and such. If we override agency, we must make the decisions they would make if they were wiser. Otherwise you can just say "oh whatever this pig has poor impulse control, if he could understand he'd still probably just do [whatever I want / whatever he was already doing]" and then why bother with the thought experiment, you can just treat animals as property and ignore their agency altogether.
That is how the law works for both children and animals - parents are allowed to make arbitrary decisions for their kids, down to what clothes their 17-year-old wears to school, and owners can do almost anything to their animals. I think this is wrong; I think (a) we should not override the agency of others unless (b) we are making a choice that their best self would want us to make (c) we often have an affirmative responsibility to make these choices. It's neglect if you don't get your kid their shots, but it's shitty if you control every tiny aspect of their lives. Another example of the "best self" thing: you should put your drunk friend to bed instead of letting him drive back to the club even if he's a shithead and will still be mad you didn't give him his keys once he sobers up.
You could say he goes back and forth on the issue
*already did
Why specificly a white woman?
They do be letting dogs slober all over their mouths
Did you hear a certain Rusty Cage sing about it?
He's just out here asking questions like
Intellectual: "Come, join me in pondering [this depraved shit I've been jacking off to]."
ah, anti-intellectualism. Like, asking this question is not a bad thing. Asking why we don't do some things and do do others is the foundation of thought.
Alice
White women aren't beating the allegations
That last paragraph is the ramblings of someone that has lost it completely . There is no other explanation. I can't believe I read that shit. It is utterly deranged. Detached form any semblance of sanity.
You literally own your dog. Your dog is entirely dependent on you in every conceivable way. Many dogs literally have a chip implanted so that they can be returned if they run away.
How anyone could frame that as a "consensual" relationship is beyond me.
It's the exact sort of self-delusion you see in pedophiles.
Grooming animals for sex is the same as grooming children for sex.
The people that want to permit one are also the people that debate age of consent laws.
The net happines of the world decreased with your action, Peter
Shana, they bought their degrees, they knew what they were getting into.
I say, let metaphysics crash.
... but this was the good part of Leviticus.
people will do anything for views once you monetize them
fuck peter "kill your toddler, fuck a horse" singer, all my homies hate this man
Not in the loop, I only know this guy from "practical ethics" a book I never finished but was an OK read for a 14 yo (or less). Where does the "kill your toddler" comes from?
The book was pro abortion and against killing sentient animals but according to him fish aint sentient for some reason. Anyways, I remember liking the book. Why did he ended up like this?
peter singer's "pro-abortion" stance ultimately boils down to examining the presumptions under which killing a human is permissible. he argues that a human does not rightly become a person without certain mental characteristics and faculties, and therefore infants in particular are humans that aren't people. therefore, infanticide and abortion are equal and ethical.
I'm not prepared for the horrific backlash this statement will get on this site, but nonetheless I'll say that though I condemn bestiality, the exploration and questioning of ideas (especially long-held, cultural taboos) is a good thing.
I agree here honestly. There's good reasons to not fuck animals, mainly that that they can't consent.
However that is absolutely not as to why it's a taboo. Should be though.
Over-intellectualization can cause rationalization of otherwise atrocious things. Academic texts can be difficult to understand which can cause people to take away wrong conclusion, which can cause actual harm.
I'll give an example, let's say an economist says "Palestinian people are less productive than Israeli people". This statement causes harm, even though no harm was intended. Many people will interpret this as Palestinian people being less than Israeli people and embolden racist ideology. But the actual statement was a statement of fact because the economist has a different working definition of "productive": Palestinian people have less net output (likely from seizure of industrial equipment, less access to education, etc). Is it okay to explore the right for Israel to seize Palestinian land even in an intellectual way? Probably not, because we live in a world of science-as-a-religion with a lot of blind faith.
anotha one for the gulag
In a good world we could just shoot this mofo and move on
ah peter singer lmfao
Let's just get the nuclear holocaust over with already.
I'm glad I never liked Singer.
we can just medicalize people wanting to do that and not have to invent moralities concerning notmonids
do you mean pathologize?
Is there any thought on socialist meta-ethics?
Seems like deontology (predetermined rules = ethical, eg. divine rule) is aligned with pre-capitalist modes of production.
Consequentialism (results = ethical, eg. number line go up) seems capitalistic
Is there one proposed for socialism? The third major meta-ethical category is virtue ethics, but that is as broad as deontology and consequentialism put together. Still it seems to fit, that the socialist citizen is free to produce and live as they see fit, which may be some form of eudaimonia. In short, it is about improving oneself over time through one's habitual actions ie increasing virtues
Deontology and consequentialism are both cringe compared with virtue ethics. As socialists, we understand that the ultimate purpose of intellectual work is to change the world. This means that any ethical system needs to:
Deontology and consequentialism exclusively focus on 2 to the exclusion of 1 and 3. Cool, you've definitively proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's okay to fuck animals. Too bad the rest of society thinks you're a complete pervert and the anarchovegans have organized community defense to ensure your lecherous hands will never touch an animal. Explaining your reasoning isn't stopping the anarchovegan enbie from breaking your arms and kicking your teeth in. Now what? What's the game plan, chief?
Virtue ethics does not have this problem because unlike the other two, virtue ethics is much more grounded and understands that ethics is inexorably linked with human conduct, which is often times messy and contradictory. It understands that people need both guidance and accountability, that reading a bunch of books wouldn't make you a moral person, but that you must practice what you've read out in the real world and face the many challenges of living an ethical life in this messy world, that the good aspects of a person must be cultivated with the bad aspects culled. In short, virtue ethics is dialectical while the other two are not.
Great comment, appreciate the effort. Any thoughts on Rawls Theory of Justice? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
i would tend to agree that virtue ethics is most compatible with socialist/marxist principles. i think the definition of virtue and the doctrine of the mean can apply aptly to the life of a socialist citizen, one that is without excess or deficiency. it would be a vice to live in excess (e.g america with cars, being filthy rich, etc) but it would also be a vice to live in deficiency (no human should live in poverty or not be able to have access to basic needs). and hopefully, a proletarian state would enforce this too, preventing the vice of excess (wealth redistribution) and of deficiency (providing to all workers).
Oh yeah applying virtue to society itself is a smart move! Less individualistic and more in line with a dialectical approach to radicalizing and organizing. Along the lines of Maoism maybe
The takes on virtue ethics are interesting to me, as I see myself becoming more and more consequentialist. Like, I'll talk to someone or overhear a conversation and it's all about doing the right thing or being a good person, all of which usually seems ineffectual and ego-focused amidst the non-existent Leftist movements of the West and the ticking time bomb that is climate change. I care less about whether an action makes any specific individual a good person than what the action accomplishes, particularly to advance working class or decolonial interests. Both virtue ethics and deontology, at least as I see them manifested in my circles, seem largely subsumed into consumer ethics.
They each have value as analytical lenses to judge difficult situations with, I suppose.
FWIW there are different flavors of virtue ethics, which is what I was alluding to about its breadth.
For instance there is one they call target-centric virtue ethics, which I interpreted as a consequentialistic virtue ethics, or in simpler terms: RPG character grinding. The definition of virtue is based on how much you can improve some score in your character like a game, which could be something like always answering a cry for help, putting your good/evil metric in the green zone.
I also think there's another degree of freedom in who is the patient of action. Usually ethics focuses on an ethical agent, but I also care about who is affected. It might be more important in fact that I improve someone else's life, and only secondarily improve myself doing so.
Maybe this could be an area of ethics relevant for you? "A good leftist is one who improves the material conditions and interests of their comrades"
Peter Singer wrote an interesting short essay on the history of beastiality if anyone's interested https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/opinions/56258/heavy-petting
It found that 8 per cent of males and 3.5 per cent of females stated that they had had a sexual encounter with an animal. Among men living in rural areas, the figure rose to 50 per cent.
Among men living in rural areas, the figure rose to 50 per cent.
50 per cent
50 per cent
I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself
I think that he may have misread the study, I have seen that study cited elsewhere and I saw the figure as 17 percent. He also left out the part where for the vast majority of those people, it's a one-off thing that's often a dare or hazing ritual, which paints quite a different picture than what he is trying to make out of it.
Country boys make do
okay i'm moving back to the city what the fuck
I'm gonna pretend that says rose by 50%
What a terrible day to have eyes
this topic is like a sandtrap honestly, feels like everybody comes at it from different directions
like of course people shouldn't be having sex with animals irl, I think the consent argument works here. Unfortunately there is a communication barrier between humans and other animals, and until that barrier can be magically crossed we simply will not be able to confirm consent, which means sex is off the table.
But over on the other end, I don't think people who jack it to lion king rule 34 porn should be arrested. People who try to come up with essential reasons why it's immoral seem silly to me, as if there's some line that can be drawn between good arousal and evil arousal.
Here's some music related to this topic:
(CW: may be discrimination against white gals)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1*removed*Np9xvNQ&pp=ygUOcnVzdHkgY2FnZSBkb2c%3D
(Edit: I don't know how to do proper Content warnings)
Type this:
`
This has gotta be the worst thread this website has ever had. I'm not pretending I'm not part of the problem, but damn. Literally no one is benefiting, we're just all thinking about something disgusting and repulsive. Terrible job everyone, we really screwed the pooch on this one.