VivaHedone

Pleasure is good. It cannot be rationalised. It cannot be defined. It cannot be explained. It is, by its very meaning, good. As long as is does no direct harm to another, we should aim to maximise the pleasure in our lives. Otherwise what is it all for?

If everyone stopped work to have sex all day, it would not increase the overall pleasure in their lives. They would not earn any money, the economy would collapse, and everyone would be destitute and starving. Therefore such an action is not justified on hedonistic grounds. (Do a google search for Epicurus to know more.)

long winded fool

Ultimately, the consequences of the act are what make the motivation irrational. Why is it irrational to be racist even if you aren't directly hurting anyone? Isn't the belief itself ultimately harmful merely because it is irrational and promoting irrationality prevents intellectual growth? It is completely natural to fear those different from us, yet it is irrational to do so in human society because it is detrimental to human society. It is natural to give in to sexual desire without thought of reproductive consequences, yet it is irrational for the same reason racism is irrational. No good can come from following instinct without filtering it through reason. Even temporary advantages only mask more permanant future disadvantages.

1.) I have shown how following instinct without filtering it through reason always contributes to human misery down the road. With no natural predators, the species with the strongest desire to couplate will multiply the fastest and eventually destroy its own habitat and either die or move on to destroy another. Once the species is large enough to have filled all the habitable places availible, the strong, natural reproductive instinct becomes the species' death warrant. Artificial predators created by the species to kill individuals in an attempt to avert this catastrophe might be a sign of sentience, but true sapients would avoid the need to kill each other off entirely. Truly wise animals would only engage in instinctual behavior when it will benefit the species. The instincts of sex and fear do not always benefit the species, yet we as a society tend to only critically analyze fear and tell our children to be reasonable and not fearful. We spend much less time telling them to be reasonable and not lustful. Some of us even tell them that lust IS reasonable. The harm of the act itself may be minimal. The harm of teaching it to our children as perfectly natural and therefore acceptable behavior is not. "Natural" should not equal acceptable solely because it is natural. Anyone who feels racism or homophobia, though perfectly natural fears, should not be presented to our children as acceptable beliefs must agree.

2.)Strong sexual drive has a multitude of purposes and consequences just as the fear of unfamiliar skin color does. The detrimental consequences outweigh the beneficial ones in a cooperative and over-populated human society in both cases. Therefore giving in to these instincts solely for pleasure or the aversion of discomfort is morally wrong.

3.)I would argue that departing from the original function of instinct is to stop evolving. When we entertain fear or lust, not because it is rational but because it makes us feel good or prevents us from feeling bad, we are losing our "claws" so to speak. Our ability to reason, ignore instinct, and plan for the future are powerful tools for the preservation of the species which came from evolution. Our ability to reason is what allowed us to conquer the elements and multiply accross the planet. Falling back on animal instinct is like the lion abandoning his claws and fangs, based on the above argument that reason has become beneficial and instinct detrimental to the human species.

long winded fool

Agreed. If, however, pleasure does direct or indirect harm to other human beings, it should not be maximized. It should at the very least be minimized if not sacrificed. Since the instinct to reproduce eventually does harm to a species with no natural predators, and since human beings are a species with no natural predators, the instinct to reproduce is harmful to human beings and should be replaced with reason and rational analysis. Pleasure can be both rationalized and logically defined. Whether we are willing to do either is irrelevant.

The instinct of reproduction will result in the collapse of human society as it has so many times in the past without the application of reason. The "modern" human society is often considered to be the best at using reason to date, yet we reproduce even faster than human societies in the past, which means that our demise will come even sooner than past societies. If we use reason only to maximize individual pleasure and minimize pain, we'll die in our infancy. The reason past societies were relatively long lived is because they failed to use reason to eliminate most of their natural predators. Nowadays, we can theoretically eliminate virtually all those things which cause us pain, and have eliminated a large number of them. The only predator we can never eliminate is the law of cause and effect. Eat more food than is produced, and not only do you produce more humans than can be supported, you destroy the very support you rely on for survival. A plague is harmful not only to the environment, but to the plague species as well.

When the victim dies, the cancer must go with him. If cancer could supress its instinct to reproduce, it could live in harmony with its host indefinitely, (or at least until the host died naturally.) If it were reasonable enough to supress its instincts, it might devise a way to transfer itself to another host when the original nears its end. This is a far more efficient way to preserve the species than instinct alone, therefore reason is superior to instinct. Compare the cancer to humanity and the host to the Earth. Just because we are in the minority with our reasoning ability doesn't make us wrong and the non-reasoning animals right. Since we are the best at preserving our species, owing to our ability to consciously adapt ourselves to our environment and our environment to ourselves, human animals are superior to any other and ought to utilize this ability to its fullest and supress those instincts which make us less able to preserve the species and commit us to the fate of eventual extinction or obsolecense of all non-reasoning animals.

Farren

Long-winded fool, I don't think you're getting me. Evolution is not a designer. It has no intention, only results. To understand the results humans inject intention into it. Any description of evolutionary change is retrospective. Most of your reasoning is prescriptive and anticipates evolution by natural selection, which, if you have delved in chaos theory, you will see is a fairly pointless exercise.


1.) I have shown how following instinct without filtering it through reason always contributes to human misery


How?


down the road. With no natural predators, the species with the strongest desire to couplate will multiply the fastest and eventually destroy its own habitat and either die or move on to destroy another.


A species does not operate, or evolve, in isolation. This is simply a convenient way of retrospectively paraphrasing a natural wave function. SYSTEMS evolve, involving all species as players. The species with the strongest desire to copulate may have low fertility or be at high risk from the environment.


Truly wise animals would only engage in instinctual behavior when it will benefit the species. The instincts of sex and fear do not always benefit the species, yet we as a society tend to only critically analyze fear and tell our children to be reasonable and not fearful. We spend much less time telling them to be reasonable and not lustful. Some of us even tell them that lust IS reasonable. The harm of the act itself may be minimal. The harm of teaching it to our children as perfectly natural and therefore acceptable behavior is not. "Natural" should not equal acceptable solely because it is natural. Anyone who feels racism or homophobia, though perfectly natural fears, should not be presented to our children as acceptable beliefs must agree.


You haven't demonstrated how lust is a bad thing, since your argument appears to be premised on the fact that lust = procreation = overpopulation, which, if sex is indulged in for pleasure with contraception, is not the case. And you haven't demonstrated how such pleasurable sex is morally reprehensible.

Moreover, consider this. Imagine a species that can prosper and dominate its environment only by performing constant actions that make its members miserable. By your reasoning such a species should consider the "good" of the species to be the highest priority, and live in constant misery. The a priori assumption that the "good" of the species you are attempting to define is the highest "good" is faulty. Individual "good" is obviously important. We should attempt to reconcile them, not make one a priority.


2.)Strong sexual drive has a multitude of purposes and consequences just as the fear of unfamiliar skin color does. The detrimental consequences outweigh the beneficial ones in a cooperative and over-populated human society in both cases. Therefore giving in to these instincts solely for pleasure or the aversion of discomfort is morally wrong.


Again: How have you demonstrated that the detrimental consequences are greater than the beneficial ones?


3.)I would argue that departing from the original function of instinct is to stop evolving. When we entertain fear or lust, not because it is rational but because it makes us feel good or prevents us from feeling bad, we are losing our "claws" so to speak. Our ability to reason, ignore instinct, and plan for the future are powerful tools for the preservation of the species which came from evolution. Our ability to reason is what allowed us to conquer the elements and multiply accross the planet. Falling back on animal instinct is like the lion abandoning his claws and fangs, based on the above argument that reason has become beneficial and instinct detrimental to the human species.


I would argue that departing from the original function of instinct yielded speculation, language, philosophy, civilisation. If you don't know what the next step is, a measure of random departure is required to find it. Intellectual thought is in dialogue with biological evolution. If we use it to enforce past purpose, we will arrive at past purpose. How do you see evolution occuring without changes in behaviour?

long winded fool

I was not using the word "intention" in a conscious connotation. "Two masses intend to attract each other," would be synonymous with "The result of gravity is attraction," in my argument. While the second may be more proper since we don't know what "intent" if any the law of gravity has, let me assure you that "intent of survival" is simply a way of simplifying the theory of evolution by natural selection. Since there is no evidence that instinct and natural selection ever favor weak and inept life forms and eliminate the strong adept ones, or ever will, I assume that survival of the fittest is its primary intent/result. And therefore I assume that the intent/result of all species is to strive to be the fittest. To assume that this might not always be the case without proof of an instance where the opposite occurs violates ockham's razor.

How?

A species does not operate, or evolve, in isolation. This is simply a convenient way of retrospectively paraphrasing a natural wave function. SYSTEMS evolve, involving all species as players. The species with the strongest desire to copulate may have low fertility or be at high risk from the environment.

Precisely. The human species has the ability to raise its fertility rates and reduce its risk from the environment while maintaining its strong instinct to procreate. I don't know if reasoning humans will eventually, through trial and error, evolve into a race with a weaker desire to reproduce, or if it will destroy its environment and become extinct. It seems that if we were to assume a goal of species preservation, (our goal because of evolution, not evolution's goal) we ought to avoid those things that threaten the survival of the species. Evolution does not have a goal. Those things which are evolving have goals. Namely, the goal to preserve the species.

You haven't demonstrated how lust is a bad thing, since your argument appears to be premised on the fact that lust = procreation = overpopulation, which, if sex is indulged in for pleasure with contraception, is not the case. And you haven't demonstrated how such pleasurable sex is morally reprehensible.

Lust is a bad thing because lust in a species with no natural predators leads to overpopulation and death. It is morally reprehensible because it is a bad thing. It is conceivable that with a massive campaign to produce immense amounts of contraceptive technology and educate the less advanced societies and enforce the use of contraceptives, that the human population explosion could be curbed and the species could survive while it shuns of one instinct and embraces another. In this unlikely scenario, lust would no longer be a bad thing. Is this more rational than simply treating the instinct of lust the same as we treat the instinct of fear? (Does it require less energy output to get the same result?) Since they ultimately have the same function, survival of the species, why entertain one without subjecting it to critical analysis and not the other? We entertain fear, but we try to make sure we filter it through reason. It would make me feel good to pretend to be sick so I don't have to give a speech to a large assembly of people, yet reason forces me to bear the discomfort so that I benefit down the road. We realize that irrational fear is detrimental to our species, natural though it may be. Why are we less willing to bear the discomfort of sexual desire? Simply because we don't realize or won't accept the very real danger that irrational lust poses to the species. "Because it feels good," is about as rational an excuse to have sex as it is an excuse to be racist. Both are natural. Both are now detrimental to us as a reasoning non-prey species.

Moreover, consider this. Imagine a species that can prosper and dominate its environment only by performing constant actions that make its members miserable. By your reasoning such a species should consider the "good" of the species to be the highest priority, and live in constant misery. The a priori assumption that the "good" of the species you are attempting to define is the highest "good" is faulty. Individual "good" is obviously important. We should attempt to reconcile them, not make one a priority.

An interesting postulation. How do you suppose a species could possibly evolve this strange trait? Is misery ever "good?" All species pursue pleasure and avoid pain. That is the way the system of life works. The rabbit flees from pain and pursues pleasure. The rabbit best able to accomplish this survives the longest and mates the most often. I do not admonish humans to avoid pleasure, I admonish them to avoid death by temporarily sacrificing some pleasure. The "good" of the species is pleasure for all individuals at all times. Humans are a species theoretically capable of accomplishing this, but it will never happen without our ability to reason. Entertaining lust without reason means pleasure for you right now but pain for others in the future. Using our gift of reason and critical analysis, the pleasure of sex whenever we want should be sacrificed for the greater good of the survival of the species. Enjoy having children at a reasonable rate. Avoid meaningless entertaining of the instincts, for their temporary pleasure leads to intense pain and death in the future.


Again: How have you demonstrated that the detrimental consequences are greater than the beneficial ones?

Do you accept the premise that in a species with no natural predators living in a hospitable environment, a strong desire to mate is detrimental given a limited food supply? Things that most people consider evil such as wars and genocide (artificial predators) would be a way to allow the species to continue to survive while maintaining its strong desire to mate, but is this a rational way of securing the survival of the species? Forced contraception and fetal abortion (which is the practical equivalent to genocide) is another way to attempt to keep the species from stripping its environment of resources, but is this any more rational than war and mass genocide? If the strong desire to mate is an instinct and fear is an instinct, and if we accept fear as something in all of us that ought to be overcome by reason, why not accept the strong desire to mate as something to be overcome as well? If we all only had sex for the purpose of raising a healthy family, there would be no danger of overpopulation, because a reasoning human would not attempt to raise a family in an environment with no food.

I would argue that departing from the original function of instinct yielded speculation, language, philosophy, civilisation. If you don't know what the next step is, a measure of random departure is required to find it. Intellectual thought is in dialogue with biological evolution. If we use it to enforce past purpose, we will arrive at past purpose. How do you see evolution occuring without changes in behaviour?

True. In fact this statement reflects my argument very well. I don't see evolution as occurring without changes in behavior. We're already learning to change our behavior of indulging the instinct of fear. We must also change our behavior of indulging the instinct of lust in order to evolve. What I should have said was, "Departing from the original function of evolution is to stop evolving." I was assuming speculation, language, philosophy, and civilization are all natural outcomes of a species which evolves sentience. Sentience is just as much an evolved trait as instinct. I outlined earlier my proof of why sentience is a superior survival tool than instinct. Since we have sentience, to not use it is to devolve. Let's use our evolved wisdom and stop indulging inferior, dangerously obsolete instincts. To do otherwise will lead to temporary individual pleasure, but will ultimately present far more pain than pleasure to those humans who will make up the species in the future.

The AntiChris

long winded fool

Basically, what you seem to be saying is that the consequences of pursuing instinctively pleasurable activities can cause problems when taken to excess. I doubt many would disagree with this.

Quite honestly, your references to evolution appear to be a red herring as they seem to have no no bearing on your particular view of morality at all.

From your response to Farren:

Are you suggesting that it's more practical to demand that "less advanced societies" see the error of their ways and renounce lust as "shameful", than to simply give them a condom and show them how to use it?
The only similarity is that they're both rooted in instictive emotional reactions. Racism is a product of fear and ignorance and the way we "treat" it is to deal with the ignorance. Unlike the ignorance of racism, the pleasurable response to sexual stimulus is shared by all humans. You're equivocating irrational as a defining feature of emotions and irrational as descriptive of poor or ignorant reasoning - they're not the same. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it does reinforce the feeling I have that you're attempting to justify your own personal prejudices.

Chris

Farren

I was not using the word "intention" in a conscious connotation. "Two masses intend to attract each other," would be synonymous with "The result of gravity is attraction," in my argument. While the second may be more proper since we don't know what "intent" if any the law of gravity has, let me assure you that "intent of survival" is simply a way of simplifying the theory of evolution by natural selection. Since there is no evidence that instinct and natural selection ever favor weak and inept life forms and eliminate the strong adept ones, or ever will, I assume that survival of the fittest is its primary intent/result. And therefore I assume that the intent/result of all species is to strive to be the fittest. To assume that this might not always be the case without proof of an instance where the opposite occurs violates ockham's razor.


"Survival of the fittest" is a tautology. It means "Survival of those who survive". The term wasn't even coined by Darwin, to who's theories it is most often applied. Ref. Brian Goodwin "How the Leopard changed its spots" and anything by Stephen Jay Gould.

This massive bias towards the idea that evolution keeps producing "better" things emerges from the hostile environment the theory found itself in when first formulated. Since at the time it was (and still is for many) an a priori assumption that humans are "Better" in some way than everything else, the original theory of natural selection was couched in those terms.

Goodwin has quite rightly pointed out that every other science, when using landscape analogies, describes areas of phase space a situation in likely to arrive at as "troughs" or "depressions", since this is where liquid or a ball would most likely flow to (for example Carl Sagan's illustration of gravity in the "Cosmos" TV series and book).

Only in neo-darwinian evolutionary theory is the landscape analogy inverted. Evolutionary troughs are turned into "peaks" and "Pinnacles". Witness Dawkin's "Climbing Mount Improbable".

In no other science to such a large number of scholars give themselves the luxury of _Imposing_ a value norm on a result. The language of physics and mathematics had even been modified to avoid the bad thinking that comes out of this, by calling apparently useful and apparently useless results "trivial" and "non-trivial" in an attempt to avoid value judgement.

This value judgement of the "superiority" of man, the species, is implicit in most of your arguments. My systemic argument earlier is completely salient here. At the present point in history we CANNOT live or survive without a vast number of other species in support roles. James Lovelock and Lynne Margulis, authors of the Gaia hypothesis, have pointed out that we are as dependent on kelp forests (for oxygen) as we are on our own lungs.

Ergo, the Biosphere is evolving as a system. In this context, an individual part that may have been "superior" in another system could be "inferior" in our system because of its systemic relatonship. Another consequence is that a species that died out millions of years ago, such as certain dinosaurs, may be a "superior" species in the current system, but was unable to find a niche in some phase space BETWEEN that point and this point. So just because its dead and gone doesn't mean it is in some absolute sense "inferior" or that we've got "better".

Another analogy used to demonstrate this is the "left wall" principle. A drunk bumbles along a pavement next to a wall on the left. There is an absolute limit to his leftward motion, the more drunk he is, the further to the right his bumbling will take him. In the evolutionary case the "left wall" is minimum structural complexity for DNA based life. The greater the chaos, or "noise" in the system, the more complex the life forms that emerge (rightwardness is complexity). Seen from this perspective, what appears to be greater "sophistication" or "elegance" of biological species is clearly shown to be simply a random walk through the phase space of biological forms.

Here we cannot agree on the ethics because our (not just yours and mine, but apparently yours and others here too) base axioms are so different. From a systemic perspective, I see the survival and prosperity of the biosphere, a single beautiful organism as the first good. If man were to to have less and less dominance of that sphere, but dwindle away to extinction happy and contented in each individual human life along the way, I would see no moral harm in that whatsoever.


Namely, the goal to preserve the species.


See above.


Lust is a bad thing because lust in a species with no natural predators leads to overpopulation and death.

Here you simply outright ignore salient points in my preceding post - Lust + education + contraception NOT EQUAL TO overpopulation.

An interesting postulation. How do you suppose a species could possibly evolve this strange trait?

How? It happens all the time! Natural selection doesn't automatically produce species that are happy with the way they are designed. Just as individual humans are often motivated by pure rage most of the time (arguably not a nice way to live), examples abound of where this seems to have evolved as instinct in many life forms:

The male black widow spider rushes in to fertilise the female's eggs then flees in terror as the murderous female tries to catch and eat him. This ensures that only the strongest males survive, but with adequate sentience I'm sure Black Widows would try to work this one out and say "Screw instinct"


Do you accept the premise that in a species with no natural predators living in a hospitable environment, a strong desire to mate is detrimental given a limited food supply?


No. See Above again.

Finally, you seem to imply that it would be easier to use cultural means to discourage casual sex altogether than produce massive amounts of cheap contraception. This assertion seems at odds with the whole of recorded history. I honestly think its silly, especially when the alternative is to say "Wow, heres a way that humans can have brief moments of exquisite pleasure. Lets find a way to negate the negative consequences"

VivaHedone

Casual sex using contraceptives does no harm. it is pleasurable. Therefore it is good.

long winded fool

I have no problem using "Survival of those who survive." I agree that this means the same as survival of the fittest. Were mammals superior to dinosaurs? Not in any way except that the mammals survived the ice age and the dinosaurs didn't.

This massive bias towards the idea that evolution keeps producing "better" things emerges from the hostile environment the theory found itself in when first formulated. Since at the time it was (and still is for many) an a priori assumption that humans are "Better" in some way than everything else, the original theory of natural selection was couched in those terms.

The only way living animals are better than extinct ones is the fact that the living ones are still alive. If you believe that any species instinctively wants to become extinct, I think you are mistaken. Since all species instinctively want to live, and since the strong desire to reproduce no longer furthers this goal, it should be controlled in the same way that the strong desire to be afraid is controlled.

Goodwin has quite rightly pointed out that every other science, when using landscape analogies, describes areas of phase space a situation in likely to arrive at as "troughs" or "depressions", since this is where liquid or a ball would most likely flow to (for example Carl Sagan's illustration of gravity in the "Cosmos" TV series and book).

Only in neo-darwinian evolutionary theory is the landscape analogy inverted. Evolutionary troughs are turned into "peaks" and "Pinnacles". Witness Dawkin's "Climbing Mount Improbable".

Of course there are troughs and peaks. As soon as troughs become detrimental to individual survival, they attain a value judgment of "wrong" by the individual whose survival is threatened. When the peaks become beneficial, they attain the value of a "right" goal. The value judgments come from the species doing the judging only. I don't see how this renders them impotent in the slightest.

In no other science to such a large number of scholars give themselves the luxury of _Imposing_ a value norm on a result. The language of physics and mathematics had even been modified to avoid the bad thinking that comes out of this, by calling apparently useful and apparently useless results "trivial" and "non-trivial" in an attempt to avoid value judgement.

All sciences affecting the lives of human beings should be (and are) subject to value judgments. Things that hurt are bad. Things that help are good. This doesn't mean that mother nature is an evil or a benevolent entity, or that there is a supernatural entity controlling the forces of good and evil. We place negative value judgments on things like racism and war because they are detrimental to the survival of the species as a whole.

This value judgement of the "superiority" of man, the species, is implicit in most of your arguments. My systemic argument earlier is completely salient here. At the present point in history we CANNOT live or survive without a vast number of other species in support roles. James Lovelock and Lynne Margulis, authors of the Gaia hypothesis, have pointed out that we are as dependent on kelp forests (for oxygen) as we are on our own lungs.

Ergo, the Biosphere is evolving as a system. In this context, an individual part that may have been "superior" in another system could be "inferior" in our system because of its systemic relatonship. Another consequence is that a species that died out millions of years ago, such as certain dinosaurs, may be a "superior" species in the current system, but was unable to find a niche in some phase space BETWEEN that point and this point. So just because its dead and gone doesn't mean it is in some absolute sense "inferior" or that we've got "better".

While I do believe that the ability to plan for the future and think abstractly is a superior survival adaptation than instinct alone, this is not a required premise for my argument. It was merely an attempt to give another argument to support my conclusion. The fact that the strong desire to mate will destroy all of those vast numbers of other species that we require for life was clear in my initial argument. When I say that a species with no predators and a strong reproductive instinct is dangerous, I am saying that because they destroy those species that they depend on for survival, they are dangerous to themselves. You don't have to accept humans as being superior to any other species. Unless your argument is that voluntary suicide is a better outcome than the survival of the human race, I believe my argument remains unrefuted. Value judgments are completely sound as long as we agree on the values. Show me that you truly believe death is more to be sought after than life, and I will agree to disagree based on differing ethical values.

Another analogy used to demonstrate this is the "left wall" principle. A drunk bumbles along a pavement next to a wall on the left. There is an absolute limit to his leftward motion, the more drunk he is, the further to the right his bumbling will take him. In the evolutionary case the "left wall" is minimum structural complexity for DNA based life. The greater the chaos, or "noise" in the system, the more complex the life forms that emerge (rightwardness is complexity). Seen from this perspective, what appears to be greater "sophistication" or "elegance" of biological species is clearly shown to be simply a random walk through the phase space of biological forms.

Again, the "superiority" of man over animal is irrelevant to the argument. The superiority of survival over extinction for any given species is what the argument is based on. Show a species that voluntarily chooses extinction over survival and I will retract my statement that survival is an objective and extinction is something to be avoided at all costs.

Here we cannot agree on the ethics because our (not just yours and mine, but apparently yours and others here too) base axioms are so different. From a systemic perspective, I see the survival and prosperity of the biosphere, a single beautiful organism as the first good. If man were to to have less and less dominance of that sphere, but dwindle away to extinction happy and contented in each individual human life along the way, I would see no moral harm in that whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the strong desire to mate in a species with no predators always threatens the survival and prosperity of its habitat. There have been national parks that were entirely wiped out by protected deer. Humans were forbidden to harm them and they over-populated and literally ate the entire park. Those that didn't die moved on into areas where they weren't protected and their population growth became healthy again. The strong desire to reproduce does not give man less dominance over the biosphere, it gives him more by default. I continue to find that your argument to play down the superiority of man is furthering my argument. I argue that man is nothing but another animal. Take away his predators and leave him his instincts and he wipes out his biosphere and eventually himself, just like locusts or cancer or protected deer.

Here you simply outright ignore salient points in my preceding post - Lust + education + contraception NOT EQUAL TO overpopulation.

Not true. Without predators it ALWAYS leads to overpopulation. Contraception has had no effect at curbing the exponential increase of the growth rate of the human population, and is available throughout almost the entire world. I believe the human population of the Earth is expected to double in less than twelve years. Contraception is certainly not enough. Shaking our finger and saying, "Having sex is okay but use protection!" is far less persuasive than saying "Having sex is not okay unless you can raise a healthy child." It may be too late for Lust + education + abstinence to work either, but at least it is a far more effective solution to the problem. Contraception is ridiculously hypocritical. It is an excuse to engage in irrational behavior that is otherwise detrimental to the species and the environment. It is the equivalent of private racism and homophobia. "Since I'm not directly hurting anyone, there's nothing wrong with it." There is something wrong with it. It is failing to be rational. The less rational we are, the worse we are at surviving. It is irrational for a hungry lion to refuse to use his claws, and it is irrational for an overpopulated human society to refuse to use its ability to reason.

How? It happens all the time! Natural selection doesn't automatically produce species that are happy with the way they are designed. Just as individual humans are often motivated by pure rage most of the time (arguably not a nice way to live), examples abound of where this seems to have evolved as instinct in many life forms:

The male black widow spider rushes in to fertilise the female's eggs then flees in terror as the murderous female tries to catch and eat him. This ensures that only the strongest males survive, but with adequate sentience I'm sure Black Widows would try to work this one out and say "Screw instinct."

Natural selection automatically produces species that always pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Even humans who sacrifice temporary pleasure do so for greater pleasure or less pain down the road. This is, in fact, the motivation of my argument.

LWF
Do you accept the premise that in a species with no natural predators living in a hospitable environment, a strong desire to mate is detrimental given a limited food supply?

Farren
No. See Above again.

What about my analogy of the protected deer that destroy their habitat? What about cancer? What about locusts? You can disagree that plague species are "bad" or inferior, but what is your reasoning that they are not detrimental to themselves and their environment?

Finally, you seem to imply that it would be easier to use cultural means to discourage casual sex altogether than produce massive amounts of cheap contraception. This assertion seems at odds with the whole of recorded history. I honestly think its silly, especially when the alternative is to say "Wow, heres a way that humans can have brief moments of exquisite pleasure. Lets find a way to negate the negative consequences"

What about casual fear? People are naturally afraid. Though we do attempt to use cultural means to discourage fear, (the point of this discussion forum, I think) we also make laws that give consequences to behaviors stemming from irrational fears. Rational humans who experience very little fear have no need of laws. While one might consider a "fearless" bank robber, the fact is that greed and anger, both of which are emotions based solely on the instinct of fear, are what motivate him to rob the bank and this proves otherwise. Without some kind of fear, there are no "negative" emotions. I realize that this is ultra idealistic and unrealistic, but I think the analogy parallels the problem of lust:

Laws are necessary to prevent those who act out of fear and not reason from harming others, however we as a culture discourage this behavior. Contraception is necessary to prevent those who act out of lust and not reason from conceiving an unwanted child and adding to the already overpopulated species. Society ought also discourage this irrational behavior if it discourages acting solely out of fear. To do otherwise is not logical.

And using contraception is by definition pursuing the instinct of reproduction to excess.

Quite honestly, your references to evolution appear to be a red herring as they seem to have no no bearing on your particular view of morality at all.

They certainly do. A species with no predators and a strong desire to mate will destroy its environment and thus itself. We have evolved the ability to plan for this. We ought to plan for it. Using contraception along with promoting sex as a good thing is not a rational plan because it encourages irrational behavior. Encouraging breaking the law is another example of the same rational error, of course we do that to. The difference is, the majority would encourage a child not to break the law, and would frown on those that do. Not so with consensual, adult, non-reproductive sex. Take a step in this direction and you take a step in the direction of preventing the downfall of society which must result from overpopulation.

False!

Mad Kally

Be careful with the word always. I've just read all your posts in this thread and it is my belief that you either have some serious religious hang-ups or some type of thought disorder. The name "long winded fool" was a good choice. I won't be reading your posts again. I need some aspirin. I could say that you will never listen to reason, but I won't.

Kally