Translate

Monday, February 14, 2011

Peter Singer Defends Consanguineous Sex

In his native Australia, Princeton Professor Peter Singer defended sex between close relatives (“incest”). Michael Cook was less than pleased, as he wrote here.
The Jerry Springer of modern philosophy was in good form when he addressed a packed crowd on Wednesday evening in the Great Hall of the University of Sydney.

Singer is an Ivy league Professor. He deserves some respect, not an apparent dig like likening him to Jerry Springer.
Most philosophers count themselves lucky if their mother appreciates their work. But Singer is regarded - by journalists, at least - as the most influential living philosopher. In fact, at Sydney Uni, he was introduced with the fulsome praise normally reserved for superannuated television stars: “If we had a collection of national living treasures, Peter would certainly stand tall amongst them.”

This means he can advance the freedom of closely related consenting adults to love, sex, and marriage.
Imagine a brother and sister, he said. They are on a summer holiday and decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. There’s no chance of offspring because she is using the pill and he a condom. It brings them closer, but they never do it again.

Is this wrong?

Of course it isn’t wrong. This happens much more than some people realize. And there are lasting, spousal relationships as well. These people are your neighbors, you coworkers, and quite possibly your family.
Singer then took show of hands and found that half of his listeners thought that loving, contraceptive incest was cool – which makes one-child families sound like a good idea for the next generation of Sydney Uni graduates, doesn’t it?

Why? The writer doesn’t give a single reason why the position is wrong, yet advocates, however jokingly, taking away the reproductive rights of those who hold it.
The other half thought that even ideal incest was wrong.

If they thought about it for more time, a lot of them would change their minds. Their objections have probably been answered here.
Look, he explained, our instinctive revulsion at incest is merely an evolved response which protected human communities against inbreeding.

Actually, I think it probably had more to do with a desire to form bonds between clans, rather than avoiding inbreeding. Men would give their daughters to another clan like she was some sort of property. And not everybody should be included in "our," as some people have no revulsion against consanguineous sex.
But such intuitions are not authentically moral reaction because they lack a rational justification. They are evidence of our bondage to obsolete emotions. These conferred a survival advantage when we lived as hunter-gatherers, but not necessarily in the 21st Century.

That’s a good way of looking at it.

I remind my readers that today, Valentine’s Day, you should remember that there are people who still don’t have the freedom to marry, including loving couples living as spouses but banned from marriage under the law because they are close relatives.
— — —

4 comments:

  1. Disturbing that people consider him clever or worth listening to ! Common sense tells you that situational ethics are a recipe for disaster .... God help us all if this is how the coming generation are being taught !

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous, thank you for taking the time to read and comment.

    Put aside catch phrases lke "situational ethics" and explain to me why consensual sex between anyone should be a criminal matter.

    ReplyDelete
  3. From what article did you get the quote "Imagine a brother and sister, he said. They are on a summer holiday and decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. There’s no chance of offspring because she is using the pill and he a condom. It brings them closer, but they never do it again."?

    ReplyDelete

To prevent spam, comments will have to be approved, so your comment may not appear for several hours. Feedback is welcome, including disagreement. I only delete/reject/mark as spam: spam, vulgar or hateful attacks, repeated spouting of bigotry from the same person that does not add to the discussion, and the like. I will not reject comments based on disagreement, but if you don't think consenting adults should be free to love each other, then I do not consent to have you repeatedly spout hate on my blog without adding anything to the discourse.

If you want to write to me privately, then either contact me on Facebook, email me at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, or tell me in your comment that you do NOT want it published. Otherwise, anything you write here is fair game to be used in a subsequent entry. If you want to be anonymous, that is fine.

IT IS OK TO TALK ABOUT SEX IN YOUR COMMENTS, BUT PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY AS I WANT THIS BLOG TO BE AS "SAFE FOR WORK" AS POSSIBLE. If your comment includes graphic descriptions of activity involving minors, it's not going to get published.