xRafafa00

xRafafa00 t1_izua87u wrote

>> Once you include my feelings as a source or metric of value, you end up on a very slippery slope.

What about the trolley problem? If subjectivity has no place in moral philosophy, why even ask the trolley question? If we're throwing feelings out the window and measuring by objective value, then we're valuing human life by how many people are alive. In that case, if 3 people died instead of 1, which creates 2 excess deaths in a "value pool" of 8 billion people, that's a .00000000025% loss of value. That is so negligible that it renders the trolley problem silly and not worth thinking about.

Even if you upped the stakes and put 4 billion people on a trolley track, it still wouldn't mean much from a purely objective standpoint. We've done just fine in the past with far less people than that, and it's not even close to the brink of extinction, so objectively, the trolley problem doesn't matter, and neither does death in general.

The reason that death and the trolley problem are important is because of the subjective feelings of the loved ones left behind by the people who got run over. They're not your loved ones, but the problem expects you to empathetically consider the people who would be affected emotionally.

Similarly, if a street cleaner were to find your finger painting, they would have a moral obligation to use empathy, recognize that a kid's finger painting may hold sentimental value to someone, and do what they can to return the finger painting to that someone. If they are incapable of returning it, that's that, they did what they could. But it would be immoral to throw it out immediately with no second thought.

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xRafafa00 t1_izb1ol1 wrote

I agree with your second paragraph, but I'd like to provide different reasoning - yes, certain aspects of body type are indicators of fitness and survivability, but that's only considered attractive in modern society. A few hundred years ago, skinny people were viewed as undesirable because they were poor and couldn't afford food. Now the people who can't afford healthy food are overweight. But being overweight isn't unattractive to everybody. Some people have unconventional "types". Some people have perfectly conventional types. Some have no type.

Her main assumption (and yours) about sexual hierarchies is that everyone has a type, and that statistics can effectively predict what everyone's type is. That's not true, as nobody has a purely identical sexuality as someone else, so no amount of statistics can predict what or whom someone is sexually attracted to. Widespread, uniform sexual selectiveness is neither the result of social pressure nor evolutional markers of fitness; it just doesn't exist. There simply is no widespread uniformity to sexuality.

Thing is, that's already widely accepted in western public discourse, especially within social circles that would be inclined to read this article in the first place. Basically, this article isn't philosophy, it's reaffirming the beliefs of its likely readers, while decrying a problem that is already in the process of resolving itself.

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xRafafa00 t1_izavjw3 wrote

I would say the article reads more like a celebrity interview on a wide range of topics than a philosophical exploration of the topic of sex.

>> Feminism isn’t an idea or a theory or a belief

Feminism is certainly a noun. A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. So by process of elimination, she must be asserting that feminism is a person, place, or thing. I can't talk to feminism, I can't get directions to feminism, and I can't reach out and touch feminism. So her fundamental assertion requires circumventing logic to understand.

And I personally cannot take seriously a well-to-do Bahrainian Hindu born in 1984 who attempts to use the American Civil Rights Movement as support for any philosophical claim.

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