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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25769 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Agreed. But how do we know that something is or is not?

That's hard to answer unless the standard of "knowledge" is sufficiently defined for the context. We know quite a lot about child psychology in general, which is sufficient for setting general laws and ethical norms for child behaviour. Of course, these get ambivalent and complex at edge cases, e.g. a 16 year old and a 15 and 11 months old can presumably satisfy any ethical demands that anyone might reasonably have for sex, but it still makes sense to have a law at 16 (or 15 or 18 or whatever) that makes sex acts between them technically illegal.

Substance use is a very tricky part of both Westen and Wertheimer.

The gambling and drunk example is an interesting one and you give a clear introduction to it. I'd be quite happy to forbid physical casinos from admitting the heavily intoxicated. For online casinos, such a rule isn't worth enforcing, so to me it's regrettable but inevitable (given that the restrictions on freedom from banning online gambling would be so great) that sometimes drunk people will e.g. go broke gambling online.

LOL! Nah, tho. They're Aella-based and enlightened-pilled. They'll be as happy as all get out to describe how sex-positive they are about all the sex they chose to have. "Even the sex I kind of regret was good in its own way, and I'm glad to have had the choice," or whatever. See the NYT article that I linked in one of my comments that I linked way back up in our earlier conversation.

Depends on the person, but the Aella example is pertinent: my suggested method could be opening Pandora's box (pun not intended).

I mean, this is going to go very poorly for you. You've sort of given up the game that you can have the same level of understanding of sex (and presumably the gravity and breadth of any moral implications), but somehow, those children still can't attain some mystical additional "sophistication"?! Like, what? How does this even work? What religious magic is this?

I never suggested that sexual partners should have the same understanding of sex, only more than that possessed by a child.

Fair enough. We might be doomed, you and I, regardless of whether we can actually complete this project. They're probably going to do what they're going to do, regardless of whether we actually have a rigorous argument that children can't consent. Mayyybe, it miiiight help, but probably they'll just find some way to ignore it or minimize it anyway. Of course, it doesn't help that their counter to, "Children can't consent," is something short and pithy like, "Why not? They consent to all sorts of stuff!" whereas our counter to their counter is, "Well see, if you understand this complicated rigorous argument that fixes all the prior issues with not being able to analogize this situation to intoxication and avoids falling into the trap of, and... and..." I guess we really just are doomed to the fate of being right (ya know, if we can fix all of the problems in the project, which I'm still not seeing yet) but ground under an unstoppable cultural force.

At the very least, "Why do you think that children can choose radical medical interventions but not minor sexual acts?" is a simple yet effective question in some debates. Of course, there will be people blind to thinking through the issues raised by the question, but it's an analogy worth drawing.

As for our historical fate, I'm reminded of Allan Bloom in the Closing of the American Mind, when he takes inspiration from Irish monks in the Dark Ages. They were unable to contribute much to the stock of human knowledge, nor to solve the problems of their times, but they lovingly preserved certain ideas and texts, thereby greatly influencing the history of Western Europe and ultimately the world. If those Irish monks did what they saw as their duty, then it seems like others in less hopeless circumstances can do likewise.

That's hard to answer unless the standard of "knowledge" is sufficiently defined for the context.

Agreed. That's why I was so hopeful with Westen's approach to probing his "knowledge prong" of consent. However, I really don't think he got very far with it. I've said here before that if there is going to actually be solid theoretical development on this topic to actually get something useful, it's going to have to be here.

We know quite a lot about child psychology in general, which is sufficient for setting general laws and ethical norms for child behaviour.

I mean, do we? This is kind of a mess. At very early ages, we have some pretty standardized milestones. Beyond that, you very rapidly descend into a nature/nurture mire and all sorts of theories about what children could or could not be educated into being capable of. (I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the details here still need to be connected somehow to the theory of consent to sexual relations in order for this project to be completed, and that is no small task.)

I never suggested that sexual partners should have the same understanding of sex, only more than that possessed by a child.

More in what way? Vague additional "sophistication"? This, frankly, isn't going to cut it.

As for our historical fate, I'm reminded of Allan Bloom in the Closing of the American Mind, when he takes inspiration from Irish monks in the Dark Ages. They were unable to contribute much to the stock of human knowledge, nor to solve the problems of their times, but they lovingly preserved certain ideas and texts, thereby greatly influencing the history of Western Europe and ultimately the world. If those Irish monks did what they saw as their duty, then it seems like others in less hopeless circumstances can do likewise.

This is very nice. I am sort of putting on a bit (hopefully obviously) about us having to put together a theory to be the last line of defense. I'm pretty much at peace with the idea that a couple of schmoes on a whacko corner of the internet aren't going to have a significant influence on the problems of our times. Personally, I actually surprisingly do at the moment feel like I can have a significant influence on my very niche corner of the academic literature (it's about as far of a topic from this conversation as you can imagine; also, I really didn't feel like this about my own work until quite recently, so I hope you don't get the impression that I have a raging ego about my work even in my little niche; my collaborators and I just happened upon what I think is a really cool perspective in the last few years), but I really can't imagine I'll have much influence outside of that. I'm more just curating my own mind, and if I influence any other individuals in the process, I guess that's neat.

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