Incest.

[s0denone]

You do say that it's wrong because of a moral majority... but here it's been shown that there are a large amount of people who don't see much wrong with it.

Are you intentionally being thickheaded here?

I don't want to reiterate my entire post, so I'll ask you these rhetorical questions, which I will the proceed to answer myself:
Does "The Escapist" represent the morals and values of the majority of people? No.
Is "The Escapist" always right? No.
Does the law represent the morals and values of the majority of people? Yes.
Is the law always right? Yes.

Do I need to say more?
What I've just quoted from you post (The only part of it having to do with the post you're replying to) is simply and outright silly statement.

What is the point of that statement?

You should note that I am an anarcho-communist at heart, and that nothing would please me more than bringing down "The Man". It has nothing to do with being one of the sheeple, it has to do with morals, and with the law. Regardless of whatever beliefs you have, you cannot determine what is right and what is wrong yourself. Such has been predetermined, and is continuously being reevaluated, by the majority.

The majority is always right.

That is called the "Tyranny of the Majority", something any proper democratic society attempts to deal with by laws in which prevent the majority from oppressing the minority. The majority is not always right, the majority can sometimes be utterly wrong. The majority of Germans in Nazi Germany thought the Jews were the source of all of their problems. Were they? Fuck no. A good majority of people opposes gay marriage in the United States, does that mean gay marriage is inherently immoral because they are a majority in that opinion? Fuck no.

So you invoked Godwin's law. Good for you.

Is there anything else you would like to add to the discussion, friend?

 

[kaizen2468]

EDIT: I sound like an out-raged parent on a chat-show. Haha. But seriously, I am very against incest just like I am against Paedophilia and Necrophilia.

I've got to say I think that's a little strong!

You use words like morally wrong. Morality depends on culture, society and their views. It's not a constant. And it has a meter. On one side is the morally right, and on the other is morally wrong. In modern society incest is in the morally wrong area. So from a moral standpoint it is immoral because society says it is. I know what you said about "just cuz" argument but this is basically it. Like I said, morality is not a constant. It changes and it varies from culture to culture.

Morality is also something expressed by people and different people have different morals.

I think someone has it bad for his sister.

I'm sorry, no. It happens to be your mother that I'm interested in.

well then that isn't incest is it

 

[BGH122]

Does the law represent the morals and values of the majority of people? Yes.
Is the law always right? Yes.

Woah! Heavy disagreement here.

Does the law genuinely represent the morals of the majority? What about China's laws on censorship or Iran's laws? Those are still laws, but they don't represent their people. What about laws regarding piracy which slant in favour of the economically powerful, such as the RIAA? They don't represent the majority.

Furthermore, you're utilizing the fallacy of equivocation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation] with your use of the word 'right'. The 'right' we're discussing here is moral, not legal, so claiming that the law represents 'right' without defining whether you mean moral or legal isn't useful.

 

[NeutralDrow]

After all your brain is wired not to be attracted to siblings or offspring for very good reasons.

Is it? Where's the proof for this, where's the proof it's not behaviourally or cognitively learnt?

<url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect#Westermarck_effect>The Westermarck Effect. Technically, our brains appear to be wired both for and against being attracted to siblings. It's just that the "against" part isn't limited to siblings, and is usually stronger.

Imprinting doesn't prove biological cause of imprinting, just that the phenomonon exists. This'd be like you asking "Well what proves God exists?" and me pointing at lightning. Sure that could prove God exists, but it's not a reason to believe that this is the case.

For your analogy to work, you'd have to have scientific evidence of God, comparable to the cited studies.

Considering the imprinting in question doesn't have a cultural explanation (the societies in question don't have taboos against non-related children marrying, and yet they still rarely do), and your distinction between "behavioral" and "biological" strikes me as a false one, a biological explanation makes the most sense.

Nope, biological and behavioural are a valid distinction. Whilst all behaviour ultimately routes back to biology this is a ludicrously reductionist approach. This approach can't explain why, for instance, when I am filled with rage I can prevent myself from murdering the instigator of said rage due to learnt moral and legal laws. It doesn't explain how Pavlovian conditioning works, nor Skinner's operant conditioning chambers. It doesn't explain how societal and temporal variation occurs, for instance, the perception of 'fat' as attractive in the renaissance whereas it's now unattractive. You'll need to show why biological/behaviour division is false, simply stating your opinion on the matter without further a priori or a posteriori proof won't do.

...wait, so you're using "behavioral" to mean "cultural?" Sorry, when you brought up chickens, I assumed culture was off the table.

Then you didn't counter my argument at all. This sort of behavior exists in places where a cultural explanation doesn't exist.

The analogy also works. It highlighted an instance in which a claim is made that could have other explanations other than those factored by the claimant. It doesn't attempt to perfectly analogise your claim with another scientific claim because it seeks to highlight an underlying fallacy which is true in both scientific (as with imprinting) and unscientific (as with a posteriori theology) cases.

A fallacy I didn't commit. The subject brought up was incest. I brought up the Westermarck Effect, in which apparent anti-incest behavior arises even in cases where the taboo of incest doesn't apply, and pointed out that since social factors provide no explanation, it's reasonable to assume biological cause.

Morality depends on culture, society and their views. It's not a constant.

Let's dispel that myth right here. Hauser et al (2010), written up very nicely here [http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2010/03/remote-rural-community-that-thinks.html], showed with global testing both online and, where internet doesn't exist (e.g. his rural Mayan sample), offline, showed that human morality is essentially unanimous in many issues with only small aberrations from culture to culture.

I hope you have more examples to cite, because all yours could possibly indicate at the moment is that human morality has a few very vague constants with massive aberrations from culture to culture.

Really? Where are these 'massive aberrations' because they certainly weren't present in the Hauser study which concluded:

'Ultimately,' Abarbanell and Hauser concluded, 'this research may suggest that some psychological distinctions are moral absolutes, true in all cultures, whereas others may be more plastic, relative to a culture's social dynamics, mating behaviour and belief systems.'

Of course they weren't present in the study. They studied one thing, and therefore could reasonably conclude that a commonality of human culture is bias against unjustified killing or harm. I could add myself that another commonality of human culture is the desire to live as one's culture chooses. The question then becomes...so what? What's the applicability of that? The only possible answer I can think of is trying to establish a universal moral system, which I'd point out is quite clearly an impossibility.

Considering your stance against cultural relativism, I'm sure you can come up with an explanation for how exactly these two overarchingly vague concepts can be turned into effective communication tools, and how all of the "small aberrations" (social dynamics and belief systems) that form the basis of human culture are ultimately meaningless.

 

[nuba km]

OK guys simple biologie for people most genetic flaws are recessive (r) genes meaning if you have a dominant(D) gene you aren't affect by it but carry this is why something "skips" a generation they get a (D) gene from the other side of the family. so if you are were (r)(D) blue eyes (presuming blue eyes are recessive) are concerned and your sister/brother is the same (r)(D) your child gets one of the two genes there are four outcomes (D)(D) your child doesn't get it at all (r)(D) there are two ways to get this outcome or(r)(r) meaning your child has blue eyes. this is the same for genetic flaws it doesn't matter whether you sister/brother has it or some stranger has it your child has the same chance of getting it either way.
NOTHING SPECIAL HAPPENS WITH INBREEDING IT'S JUST THE CHURCH SAID SO THEN SOME EARLY SCIENCE THAT DIDN'T FULLY UNDERSTAND GENES DID SOME EXPERIMENTS THAT AT THE TIMED PROOFED IT AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC LIKE IN MOST CASES HASN'T BOTHERED TO CORRECT THIS FLAWS BELIEVE.

This is incorrect because only half of the genetic information is included in each sex cell to be used in meiosis. So it's much likelier that, in a family with a recessive negative trait, two siblings, both of whom potentially have the recessive trait, could have the recessive trait packaged in their sex cells. With the general population the likelihood of meeting someone with the same recessive trait and having it end up in the sex cell which is used to create your zygote is far lower than with siblings.

I know that a sex cell only has halve the information I thought I made it clear in what I said
also your sibling my not even have the gene at all because lets say the dad had two (D) genes and the mum had (r)(D) meaning it's a a 50% chance of one of you having it meaning its a 25% that both of you have it meaning that the likely hood of the baby having it is relatively low. pulse the genetic flaws a lot of people are talking about is quite common these days compared to fifty years ago and that's only the people that have both recessive genes not just the people that have one meaning the likely hood of meeting some one that has the same (D)(r) gene combo is very likely. (sorry for bad grammar I'm dyslexic and it's 4:22 in the morning for me)

 

[s0denone]

Does the law represent the morals and values of the majority of people? Yes.
Is the law always right? Yes.

Woah! Heavy disagreement here.

Does the law genuinely represent the morals of the majority? What about China's laws on censorship or Iran's laws? Those are still laws, but they don't represent their people. What about laws regarding piracy which slant in favour of the economically powerful, such as the RIAA? They don't represent the majority.

Furthermore, you're utilizing the fallacy of equivocation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation] with your use of the word 'right'. The 'right' we're discussing here is moral, not legal, so claiming that the law represents 'right' without defining whether you mean moral or legal isn't useful.

You're right - there are some inadequacies in the post you have quoted.
I was working under the assumption that we are debating from our own stand- and viewpoint, which isn't necessarily a global one. I would like to reiterate, however, and make it clear that I am talking about "first world", democratic countries where the government always represent the majority of the people.

In depth, that would mean that the U.S isn't democratic, but lay that lie, please. The flaws of your electoral system are not part of the debate

And, of course, I was talking in a very legal sense, about the law. Legally, the law is always right.

Also, if "Morally right" and "Morally wrong" is to be interpreted as "Morally alright with the majority" and "Not morally right with the majority" then that could be paraphrased to "Against" or "Not against" the law, which, in turn, would also make the law "always right" in matters of morals.

 

[Wedlock49]

Is the law always right? Yes.

Do I need to say more?
What I've just quoted from you post (The only part of it having to do with the post you're replying to) is simply and outright silly statement.

What is the point of that statement?

You should note that I am an anarcho-communist at heart, and that nothing would please me more than bringing down "The Man". It has nothing to do with being one of the sheeple, it has to do with morals, and with the law. Regardless of whatever beliefs you have, you cannot determine what is right and what is wrong yourself. Such has been predetermined, and is continuously being reevaluated, by the majority.

The law isn't always right, it used to be against the law for black men to touch white women and for black people to sit in certain places.

We do share the same utopian fantasy.

I do see the sense in a lot of what you've said, but I refuse to accept "because the majority say so" as a legitimate justification. I know you can't pander to all minorities but in something such as this... there isn't all that much wrong with it. In nature it would happen with nothing restraining it. society as a whole has made it a taboo, much like homosexuality. I apply the logic of not having children because that has proven to be a risk.

It does seem that I'm talking more about incest between siblings so I'l state my opinion on parent-child relationships, this is a much more... sensative subject and I don't feel I will put across a decent opinion (I have trouble expressing myself as it is.) I feel it follows the baisic ruling of what I said before, so long as it's consentual and informed it would be ok.

 

[nuba km]

Does the law represent the morals and values of the majority of people? Yes.
Is the law always right? Yes.

Woah! Heavy disagreement here.

Does the law genuinely represent the morals of the majority? What about China's laws on censorship or Iran's laws? Those are still laws, but they don't represent their people. What about laws regarding piracy which slant in favour of the economically powerful, such as the RIAA? They don't represent the majority.

Furthermore, you're utilizing the fallacy of equivocation [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation] with your use of the word 'right'. The 'right' we're discussing here is moral, not legal, so claiming that the law represents 'right' without defining whether you mean moral or legal isn't useful.

You're right - there are some inadequacies in the post you have quoted.
I was working under the assumption that we are debating from our own stand- and viewpoint, which isn't necessarily a global one. I would like to reiterate, however, and make it clear that I am talking about "first world", democratic countries where the government always represent the majority of the people.

In depth, that would mean that the U.S isn't democratic, but lay that lie, please. The flaws of your electoral system are not part of the debate

And, of course, I was talking in a very legal sense, about the law. Legally, the law is always right.

Also, if "Morally right" and "Morally wrong" is to be interpreted as "Morally alright with the majority" and "Not morally right with the majority" then that could be paraphrased to "Against" or "Not against" the law, which, in turn, would also make the law "always right" in matters of morals.

ya the first world countries used to think slavery was alright and law is always changing so in the future people could call use silly for thinking someone needs a parent to agree to by a game with VIRTUAL violence (<-this is only a example not what I think might actually happen before you used it in your argument to distract me from the main topic and calling me and idiot for it because slavery is much bigger than this (to say the least), this is just a SMALL SCALE version of people being stupid)

 

[Wedlock49]

well then that isn't incest is it

Then that makes it about as redundant as your post, doesn't it?

 

[BGH122]

...wait, so you're using "behavioral" to mean "cultural?" Sorry, when you brought up chickens, I assumed culture was off the table.

Then you didn't counter my argument at all. This sort of behavior exists in places where a cultural explanation doesn't exist.

Of course I'm using behaviour to mean cultural. If we accept that biology isn't the reason for cultural differences the behavioural theory is all that's left to explain them. Behaviourists, as applied to humans, work the exact same way as they do with animals. They post that learning, either classical or operant, is responsible for difference rather than biology.

You have far too narrow a view of what 'cultural' means. If you think 'cultural' is a phenomenon unique to humans based upon some form of behaviour (presumably, you're inferring, biology) which isn't present within animals then you'll need to show this. When psychologists say that something is culturally learnt, be it in humans or animals, the operative word is 'learnt' i.e. cannot be explained by biological processes.

A fallacy I didn't commit. The subject brought up was incest. I brought up the Westermarck Effect, in which apparent anti-incest behavior arises even in cases where the taboo of incest doesn't apply, and pointed out that since social factors provide no explanation, it's reasonable to assume biological cause.

'Taboo of incest' is used here to slant the perspective towards human learning. Animals could learn not to find their parents directly sexually attractive and learn what to find directly sexually attractive, as shown with Bowlbean imprinting with chickens. Certainly they would not experience human moral taboos, but they could experience classical or operant conditioning (although I appreciate I haven't shown how this could be the case, it isn't discounted and since you haven't shown why biology is a preferable explanation; it's at an impasse).

Of course they weren't present in the study. They studied one thing, and therefore could reasonably conclude that a commonality of human culture is bias against unjustified killing or harm. I could add myself that another commonality of human culture is the desire to live as one's culture chooses. The question then becomes...so what? What's the applicability of that? The only possible answer I can think of is trying to establish a universal moral system, which I'd point out is quite clearly an impossibility.

Considering your stance against cultural relativism, I'm sure you can come up with an explanation for how exactly these two overarchingly vague concepts can be turned into effective communication tools, and how all of the "small aberrations" (social dynamics and belief systems) that form the basis of human culture are ultimately meaningless.

No, they didn't study one thing. That was the one thing which differed persistently between rural and urban Mayans. I was a part of that experiment, it had a massive scope of morality which largely focussed on action vs inaction, but in many forms. It showed that in only two cases (the two pages out of tens of pages of moral conundrums) morality consistently differed between rural and urban Mayans, suggesting a very high heritability in morality. Showing that there's some cultural variation in morality isn't the same as showing that morality isn't largely homogenous, this would be akin to me citing that Gottesman showed that Schizophrenia has a 46% concordance and ergo isn't biologically heritable because 54% of the time MZ twins don't exhibit concordance, but this ignores the fact that 46% is far higher than the P-value of <= 5 for statical significance.

Showing that there's not a 100% concordance rate isn't the same as showing that there's no general concordance.

Also, if "Morally right" and "Morally wrong" is to be interpreted as "Morally alright with the majority" and "Not morally right with the majority" then that could be paraphrased to "Against" or "Not against" the law, which, in turn, would also make the law "always right" in matters of morals.

Ah, but herein lies the issue. This is why I included the RIAA point, because paradigms occur. For their generation, the RIAA are probably representative i.e. "Piracy is theft". For the modern generation this probably isn't representative, yet the law favours the moneyed generation so it doesn't represent the public as a whole, but the tax paying portion of it. That's not true morality, that's wealth-biased morality.

 

[nuba km]

you guys do realise the reason why most people don't find close relatives attractive isn't because it's against nature and wrong but nature has found that genetic verity mean that a species is more likely to survive that's why most plant's have figured out how not to self pollinate because that would basically make plant clones that have the same weakness lets say a certain virus if that virus hits all of those plants die.

 

[s0denone]

Also, if "Morally right" and "Morally wrong" is to be interpreted as "Morally alright with the majority" and "Not morally right with the majority" then that could be paraphrased to "Against" or "Not against" the law, which, in turn, would also make the law "always right" in matters of morals.

Ah, but herein lies the issue. This is why I included the RIAA point, because paradigms occur. For their generation, the RIAA are probably representative i.e. "Piracy is theft". For the modern generation this probably isn't representative, yet the law favours the moneyed generation so it doesn't represent the public as a whole, but the tax paying portion of it. That's not true morality, that's wealth-biased morality.

RIAA does not represent any form of value or moral. RIAA represents the interests of their clients(Recording industry distributers). RIAA is not favoured by the law. The law simply states that there is a thing known as "copyright"(The right to make something, patent it, and then own the rights to that product.) and that certain things are in violation of this.

This isn't a thread about piracy, but the answer to your moral "conundrum" is very easy. Piracy is stealing. It isn't stealing in the literal sense, since there is no physical object, or money, being stolen. But it is stealing a product of which someone else has the sole right to copy and distribute.

I could easily argue that piracy equals stealing. It could be defined as "Theft in a metaphysical sense". That's not being very specific, I know, but your problem doesn't require it to be. Your counter-argument isn't much of an argument.

I mean, surely it is in the interest of the majority to uphold copyright laws? Yes... And therefore "Yes", RIAA indirectly represents the majority, when they battle piracy.

In addition, you are working under the assumption that "It probably isn't representative of the "modern generation". I would argue that it is, which I've just done, and I have made arguments as to why.

Have you any arguments why the general public should form consensus that copyright is a bad thing? If not, then RIAA does represent the majority of any generation, modern or otherwise.

 

[NeutralDrow]

...wait, so you're using "behavioral" to mean "cultural?" Sorry, when you brought up chickens, I assumed culture was off the table.

Then you didn't counter my argument at all. This sort of behavior exists in places where a cultural explanation doesn't exist.

Of course I'm using behaviour to mean cultural. If we accept that biology isn't the reason for cultural differences the behavioural theory is all that's left to explain them. Behaviourists, as applied to humans, work the exact same way as they do with animals. They post that learning, either classical or operant, is responsible for difference rather than biology.

You have far too narrow a view of what 'cultural' means. If you think 'cultural' is a phenomenon unique to humans based upon some form of behaviour (presumably, you're inferring, biology) which isn't present within animals then you'll need to show this. When psychologists say that something is culturally learnt, be it in humans or animals, the operative word is 'learnt' i.e. cannot be explained by biological processes.

I'll concede that my choice of terms was poor concerning "cultural behavior" versus "learned behavior."

A fallacy I didn't commit. The subject brought up was incest. I brought up the Westermarck Effect, in which apparent anti-incest behavior arises even in cases where the taboo of incest doesn't apply, and pointed out that since social factors provide no explanation, it's reasonable to assume biological cause.

'Taboo of incest' is used here to slant the perspective towards human learning. Animals could learn not to find their parents directly sexually attractive and learn what to find directly sexually attractive, as shown with Bowlbean imprinting with chickens. Certainly they would not experience human moral taboos, but they could experience classical or operant conditioning (although I appreciate I haven't shown how this could be the case, it isn't discounted and since you haven't shown why biology is a preferable explanation; it's at an impasse).

You yourself pointed out that the chicken thing was an argument for the biological explanation for sexual attraction being far stronger, as the chicken in question immediately found others of its species to be attractive in spite of sexually imprinting on the glove.

And slanting the perspective towards human learning is perfectly valid when humans are the subject of what I was talking about. Unless you're suggesting that behavioral theory functions independently of biology and culture in the case of humans, the case of humans reverse imprinting on each other within a critical period, both strongly enough to overcome genetic sexual attraction and in spite of no cultural stimulus, is plenty of reason to prefer biology as an explanation.

Of course they weren't present in the study. They studied one thing, and therefore could reasonably conclude that a commonality of human culture is bias against unjustified killing or harm. I could add myself that another commonality of human culture is the desire to live as one's culture chooses. The question then becomes...so what? What's the applicability of that? The only possible answer I can think of is trying to establish a universal moral system, which I'd point out is quite clearly an impossibility.

Considering your stance against cultural relativism, I'm sure you can come up with an explanation for how exactly these two overarchingly vague concepts can be turned into effective communication tools, and how all of the "small aberrations" (social dynamics and belief systems) that form the basis of human culture are ultimately meaningless.

No, they didn't study one thing. That was the one thing which differed persistently between rural and urban Mayans. I was a part of that experiment, it had a massive scope of morality which largely focussed on action vs inaction, but in many forms. It showed that in only two cases (the two pages out of tens of pages of moral conundrums) morality consistently differed between rural and urban Mayans, suggesting a very high heritability in morality. Showing that there's some cultural variation in morality isn't the same as showing that morality isn't largely homogenous, this would be akin to me citing that Gottesman showed that Schizophrenia has a 46% concordance and ergo isn't biologically heritable because 54% of the time MZ twins don't exhibit concordance, but this ignores the fact that 46% is far higher than the P-value of <= 5 for statical significance.

I don't think you answered my questions. So rural and urban Mayans share some deep-seated moral values that they share. What exactly is that supposed to mean? Since you're explicitly contemptuous of cultural relativism, enough to completely deny the validity of the statement

"Morality depends on culture, society and their views. It's not a constant."

I'm assuming there's something in that study that will explain why Chontal Maya, Sinhalese, and Turks (not to mention historical societies like Yuan Dynasty Mongols, pre- and post-Islam Arabs, etc.) came up with massively differing and often conflicting moral systems. I'm half acting under the assumption that you're working towards "those other cultures are wrong," but willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if you deny it.

 

[MakeLoveNotWar]

If it's consensual and everyone's over the legal age limit, then, have at it. I don't see a real problem.

Exactly my view on it, but I would never do it myself. It's like homosexuals. I don't want to be one, but I have no problems with them.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

The majority is always right.

That is called the "Tyranny of the Majority", something any proper democratic society attempts to deal with by laws in which prevent the majority from oppressing the minority. The majority is not always right, the majority can sometimes be utterly wrong. The majority of Germans in Nazi Germany thought the Jews were the source of all of their problems. Were they? Fuck no. A good majority of people opposes gay marriage in the United States, does that mean gay marriage is inherently immoral because they are a majority in that opinion? Fuck no.

So you invoked Godwin's law. Good for you.

Is there anything else you would like to add to the discussion, friend?

In this case? No. You won't seem to listen to anything else if it even in the slightest opposes "Majority is always right. Legal is right, illegal is wrong. Anyone that thinks differently is a fucking idiot.". In your own words there, really. I won't waste my breath. Though you do need some serious thought with yourself if you think whatever the majority thinks is always "right", no matter what. As has been proven rather false throughout the course of history.

 

[Kagim]

first other animals (if you don't remember humans are animals)and plants have incest all the time does it cause great genetic mutation not more then if they had it with something not related. all human are related anyway you only have to go back about 200 years. so if they have a babie it's not going to be mutated and if it has a mental disability MOST people these days have mental disabilities I'm dyslexic and have autism (asperger to be precise) it doesn't unlock genetic flaws if you have genetic flaws they were always there and if you babie has genetic flaws but you don't have these genetic flaw it is your sperm or egg that has the problem. the problem with incest is keeping the genes less unique not mutated meaning that one virus could kill everyone or that everyone would have asthma or be allergic to nuts.

No, it wouldn't be mutant, like fish people. However all potential genetic flaws are doubled.

If your family is prone to a hereditary disease then breeding with your brother or sister, who has a near identical genetic table, You have twice as much chance for that genetic illness to develop.

It doesn't 'unlock' certain negative traits but rather makes them more likely to develop. All genetic strains have faults. In a healthy child that fault simply does not show up.

For a more simpler way of thinking about it take a big white piece of paper. Now take four pieces of paper, two small(recessive) two mediumish(Dominate). Throw a dart at the white paper. Did it hit one of the red papers? If so then the child will be born with a genetic defect. Now. Double the pieces of red paper. Throw the dart again. It more then likely hit one this time didn't it?

Now for each illness in your family genetic line add 8 pieces of paper. Throw a dart.

Did it hit one?

I know that's a very simplistic explanation but its been four months since my classes on that and I am in a hurry to type this as i have to go.

I know how genetics work but I was reading this thread and some people just don't seem to get the fact that inbreeding doesn't make mutants or extremely ugly people (I knew someone that had a there that the elephants mum and dad were brother and sister I never saw the movie or read up on the real elephant man so he could be true but that wouldn't be the cause of that face) you also double the chance of your child having the same genetic flaws by having a child with someone from a different family that has those genetic flaws so this isn't something unique to inbreeding (is it just me or is inbreeding an ugly word).

I know that genetic faults are just as likely between families with the same genetic faults.

For example, both me and my wife have the recessive gene for diabetes. Meaning our child has a larger then i would like chance of developing diabetes, despite neither of us having diabetes ourselves.

However if i were to say, breed with my sister, not only is the chance of diabetes heightened but so is the chance of every single other genetic fault. Where as with my wife there isn't anywhere near as many. As well since my genetic fault for one illness might exist in a different way then my partners, it lowers the chance of it happening. So instead of rolling a four sided dice once and if it lands on a one or two they get the affliction its like rolling the same die twice but it has to land on 1.

Say we both have potential for colon cancer. However the fault in my genetic table for colon cancer is in a different place then my wife's. So while there is still a higher chance of colon cancer then if i were to breed with someone without it if i were to have a child with my sister the gene would exist in the exact same place.

While yes, my child has a many physical and mental defects that could effect him or her inbreeding makes all these problems more likely as its like mixing two exact tables.

And yeah, a lot of people have some odd ideas on how inbreeding would screw up peoples physical appearance. That's kinda silly i agree. However the risks of inbreeding versus breeding with someone with similar illnesses are markably higher against incest.

 

[BGH122]

You yourself pointed out that the chicken thing was an argument for the biological explanation for sexual attraction being far stronger, as the chicken in question immediately found others of its species to be attractive in spite of sexually imprinting on the glove.

Yeah, but I wasn't trying to show that behaviourism > biology. I was trying to show that behaviourism can, if only temporarily, override biological impulse which proves it's both separate from biology and can successfully conflict with it.

And slanting the perspective towards human learning is perfectly valid when humans are the subject of what I was talking about. Unless you're suggesting that behavioral theory functions independently of biology and culture in the case of humans, the case of humans reverse imprinting on each other within a critical period, both strongly enough to overcome genetic sexual attraction and in spite of no cultural stimulus, is plenty of reason to prefer biology as an explanation.

No, slanting the perspective towards humans presumes that there's some qualitative difference between human and animal learning which you haven't shown. Furthermore, my entire point is that what we call culture/cultural influence is simply an expression of behavioural learning. There isn't biology, culture and learning, there's biology and learning. Culture is a human form of learning, due to our pro-social structure.

I'm half acting under the assumption that you're working towards "those other cultures are wrong," but willing to give you the benefit of the doubt if you deny it.

I'm not working towards 'those cultures are wrong' (and ergo inferior), that would just be ethnocentrism. I'm not a racist, please don't assume this of me. Moral realism doesn't entail that Western morality is right, it entails that there is a moral right upon which all humans would agree if we all agreed on the facts, even if we haven't yet reached this point. I'm not using the study I cited as the basis of my belief in moral realism, rather as support. I'm not a hardline moral realist either, I just prefer it to moral relativism. Moral relativism places far too great an emphasis on the importance of behavioural learning (culture). I believe, as I have not seen any a priori nor a posteriori reasoning to refute this, that basis of morality is biologically endowed in a human pro-social tendency (feelings of guilt and empathy are evidence of this).

I appreciate that this seems really, really contradictory since it appears I've been arguing for the importance of learning (behaviourism) all this time, but I've just been arguing for the existence and undecided importance of learning, not that learning trumps biology. I have explained above how different cultures can have, seemingly, vastly different moral norms; they're differing prioritisations of universally shared moral axioms. If one society considers chastity so important that it stones adulterers this simply reflects that they place a greater value upon chastity than Westerners, though we both value chastity. I predict that even in polygamous societies fidelity to one's chosen polygamous partners is a moral value but is redefined from 'not breaching monogamy' to 'not betraying partner' (I've seen no contrary evidence, I'd be interested to read some).

Basically, I think moral relativists are taking far too reductionist approach to what is meant by 'morality'. They're treating it like it's one's moral laws, but I'm arguing that we all share these laws, just with different prioritisation. That appears to be evidence of homogeneity of underlying moral values, but difference of expression of said values which renders relativism wrong.

As a side note, it's interesting debating with you.

 

[BGH122]

RIAA does not represent any form of value or moral. RIAA represents the interests of their clients(Recording industry distributers). RIAA is not favoured by the law. The law simply states that there is a thing known as "copyright"(The right to make something, patent it, and then own the rights to that product.) and that certain things are in violation of this.

This isn't a thread about piracy, but the answer to your moral "conundrum" is very easy. Piracy is stealing. It isn't stealing in the literal sense, since there is no physical object, or money, being stolen. But it is stealing a product of which someone else has the sole right to copy and distribute.

I could easily argue that piracy equals stealing. It could be defined as "Theft in a metaphysical sense". That's not being very specific, I know, but your problem doesn't require it to be. Your counter-argument isn't much of an argument.

I mean, surely it is in the interest of the majority to uphold copyright laws? Yes... And therefore "Yes", RIAA indirectly represents the majority, when they battle piracy.

In addition, you are working under the assumption that "It probably isn't representative of the "modern generation". I would argue that it is, which I've just done, and I have made arguments as to why.

Have you any arguments why the general public should form consensus that copyright is a bad thing? If not, then RIAA does represent the majority of any generation, modern or otherwise.

I couldn't disagree more with your definition of piracy as stealing. Again, it seems we're equivocating moral and legal rules. Piracy doesn't qualify for moral theft since the moral definition of theft requires someone to lose something unfairly and to suffer as a consequence emotionally and/or physically. None of these conditions are fulfilled by piracy. In a legal sense it's theft, but this is irrelevant. If I magically got into power tomorrow and chose to make black hair illegal this couldn't then be used as an argument for why it's morally wrong to have black hair and it's morality we're debating here, not legality.

Nor is it valid to argue that copyright is good for society. To refresh the age old argument against copyright, had the English alphabet been copyrighted then you and I wouldn't even be talking to one another. What does it even mean to 'own' an idea when ideas are just bundles of information which have been informed by others' ideas and shared sensual experiences? Do I owe Mill money for the fact that I've been heavily influenced by Millian philosophy? Do I owe Schrodinger money for having been influenced by his theories on quantum mechanics? Do I owe you money for having used your theories on piracy to make this rebuttal? Intellectual property is just an oxymoron.