@gene.sis It is true that it isn't a perfect mechanism that works every time and yeah we do have the aspect of us being sentient beings that can go against our evolution. My point was more that the root of why incest is considered such a taboo is that evolutionary aspect, you then have the social structures that build up around that. I do think that, because it is so taboo, it is the reason why people find it appealing, it is fun to do things that are taboo and incest is one of the biggest taboos around. However, much like most taboo fantasies, I don't think most people would ever actually want to follow through on it. The morality of incest is...tricky, when you do have a real link to sexual abuse then it adds an extra layer. Personally, what two consenting adults want to do is fully up to them, be it a no strings fuck or something more serious. I may not see the appeal of it but if we limited what you could do based off of what I personally liked then it would be a very limited world.
Well, no... There are some who say that killing of murders is morally right... And some who thinks that women are property, not humans... You could also say that there's nothing wrong if poor people steal food to survive. Well, there is another theory which says that people more likely choose partners which look similar to their parents. (Though the Westermarck Effect seems to focus on siblings, not parents.) This implies that taboos seem to be appealing in general. I don't find it appealing at all to scream at a cemetery or eat humans. Sexual taboos might be quite appealing, though the reason could just as well be the sexual component and not because it is considered taboo. And I think that taboos rather hide the reality. If something is taboo, people will just hide their preference for it. (Which can cause more pain than being able to live it openly.)
For me it's always been about the breech of the standards of relationships. Ideally, you relate to your mother, and father, and siblings in ways that prepare you to interact with the world. Family is the first foundation of the broader community, and society. If your family life is at least tolerable, then the relationships with your family establish the baseline by which you initiate and gauge relationships in the future. I'm a chemist, so let me use an odd metaphor. Incest is spiking your standard, and expecting to still get accurate readings on your samples. Maybe you can. Maybe you can't. Maybe some people can do it better than others, but no matter what, something is lost in the process. Beyond that, I think sex comes with biological reactions and associations. It's a motivator to ascend social hierarchy. The old idea that our partners make us better than we are in our desire to be worthy of the ideal we model around them. As well, our sexual identity is a large part of our broader identity, and the value we attribute to ourselves. So for example, a mother who's ideally empathetic, and non-judgmental, and caring, and nurturing that also tries to provide sexually for her children would be stunting the very motivators of their childrens development, and undermining their sense of earned self worth. It's Lysa Arryn suckling Robin. Robin should have learned to feed himself, and so drinking from his mothers breasts is a gross image of his failure to mature and achieve autonomy. Expounding on the above, I think most people naturally seek a separation from their family, and where as parental or sibling relationships persist through this period, and frequently grow stronger as the child better understand the wisdom of the parent, or siblings learn to help one another contend with the difficulties of life, sexual relationships run contrary to this separation, and either the sexual relationship, or that natural development to autonomy, must be sacrificed. Beyond that, there's the simple utilitarian fact that the incestuous societies didn't make it. If it don't work, don't do it. Though I'll add that I'm still pretty libertarian about this, and think that accommodations can and should be made for eccentrics and oddities. I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with the kink, and the fantasy. But I think there's a lot of sexual and developmental factors that can become damaged based on the actions you take.
Yes, normative ethics is in some ways prescriptive. Definition according to Wikipedia: "An axiom or postulate is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom) This is what my university professor said. If you get sex at home, you will not go out and start a new family. Yes, maybe there is a "forbidden fruit" aspect. I don't enjoy doing things that are amoral. But since I don't understand why incest is amoral, it's just a social taboo. Yes, and maybe that's the key to the whole topic. Maybe incest cannot be separated from abuse. You never know if the other person perceives it as abuse or not. There could also be subconscious dependencies, which only become known years later. Well said! Yes, but that would be subjective morality, since it is not applicable to all people. After all, two people cannot kill each other and then think it is right. Likewise, two people cannot be each other's property at the same time. Two people cannot steal from each other (for example, everyone steals 10 dollars from the other and ends up with the same thing). This is a good point. However, effective contraceptives have only been around for a few decades. Before that, sex was linked to reproduction.
Property is a concept of certain societies. If there is no "property" you don't steal. So you can't apply that to everyone. Objective morality is a nice concept but what counter-measures would you have if someone does something immoral?
Came across this article totally by chance today while searching for something else... https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-an-oedipal-complex-2795403 https://www.verywellmind.com/freuds-stages-of-psychosexual-development-2795962 PS: I thought these were quite interesting compared to some of the boring pages on wikipedia.
Which societies had no property? Isn't property the automatic consequence of life? As soon as you adopt something from nature, you get ownership of it. Do we need enforcement action? After all, it's morality and not law. But that would open up a completely different debate (anarcho-capitalism or similar). Edit: @fikka Thanks! I'll read that!
I agree, in the real world almost all cases of incest seem to be a result of abuse or similar trauma. The main exception being siblings that aren't raised together then form a relationship as adults. I know of at least a few cases where couples like that were deemed to be okay, legally speaking. It's true that axioms can be useful time savers but when you are dealing with something as messy as human behavior there's a pretty good chance that any assumptions you make are going to run into a black swan. For example, it may seem obvious that fucking leads to babies but not all societies associate sex with reproduction. Or they think that a child can have multiple fathers. Or any number of equally bizarre (to us) beliefs. I also feel like I should point out that Freud was a liar and a fraud. His work has been comprehensively discredited for decades. His practice was built on justifying the bad behavior of the wealthy men that paid him and victim blaming. Citing his theories in earshot of actual psychiatrists will result in angry yelling and a lecture (probably with a power point presentation).
Yes and yes. Maybe. Beliefs are secondary to reality. Or, will result in thoughtful discussion of the merits of his study. His methodology and results were surely flawed, but concepts of subconscious and ego took the mind of an artist to rationally convey - and hold weight today. Good psychologists might remember the starting points that he contributed to their ultimately soft science, and morally forgive the weaknesses that he unfortunately, academically, forgave himself.
I'll be upfront in saying I have zero background knowledge on Freud. However, having said that the article does list a prominent reviewer at the top which should lend some credibility to it. Ditto.
Are all axioms valid? Can anyone stipulate any axiom and it has to be received as true? How do you evaluate and justify a particular axiom? For an axiom to be true, I would argue, it has to be: Objective (not coming from individual opinion), logically internally consistent and corresponds to reality. It has to have a transcendental foundation for its justification.
All axioms are valid, until they're not. 1+1=2 everywhere in all circumstances, we assume. We could be wrong but for the sake of argument we all agree that we're not.
This guy's theories sound weird... now even more than when I heard them the first time Indeed... I thought of smaller groups like a clan, tribe or family, though, even if most things belong to everyone, that doesn't apply to everything. And even then, there might be others who aren't "allowed" to take everything they need (or want). So you would have to walk around naked and eat the fruits of nature like an animal. (You would directly consume from nature.) Actually, you couldn't have enforcement actions and law without being immoral as it would include doing something which you wouldn't want for yourself. So you don't need enforcement actions and rules. But in the end, I guess, you have to decide if you want to be morally right or dead.
while I have to agree with the rest of your post I have to disagree with this as I have learned in sociology, that while morals are there they do not guide laws, our laws are formed on what our society values not what a society thinks is moral...most of the time they are different things
Is my statement contradictory to that? I mean, my post kind of expresses that having laws/rules makes it impossible to stick to (universal) morals.
yes it is..you state that the rules are created by morals...so technically we don't need rules, at least thats how it reads to me.so if you meant something else your clarification in the post is not clear
I didn't mean that rules are created by morals. I just think that it doesn't make sense to have morals if you don't plan to stick to them. And universal morality doesn't allow that as you'd end up dead sooner or later.
