SUNY professor under review after ‘reprehensible’ video emerges of him supporting pedophilia

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[–]FlippyKing 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

His second premise is invalid on the face of it. When he says "imagine she consented" can not be because she is not able to at 12. It is like dividing by zero. That he is unaware of this is frightening, that anyone takes his class is disappointing, but that he is not teaching middle school is a blessing I guess. He might disagree with that last part though.

[–]Lehman 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

she is not able to at 12

This is not necessarily true, as even mainstream opinion on older prepubescent children now holds that they can give informed consent to life-changing medical procedures. Informed consent will always be an arbitrary legal concept. With regard to sex, even assuming present taboos, simple (yes/no) consent is sufficient enough to predict that outcomes will likely be positive or neutral.

In a study entitled “Assessing competency to consent to sexual activity in the cognitively impaired population”, by Carrie Hill Kennedy, a “Sexual Consent and Education Assessment” instrument was used, with two dimensions, “sexual knowledge” and “safety practices”, indicating the capacity to make safe decisions. Those judged competent had, on average, an IQ of 65 and an adaptive behaviour age of 9.4 years.

If an adult with a mental age of nine has the capacity to consent to sex, it is not obvious why an average child of nine would be lacking in that capacity, especially if provided with the requisite information through sex education.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If an adult with a mental age of nine has the capacity to consent to sex

The mentally handicapped also have the desires of an adult, and they're going to do it anyways. An adult with a child's mind is one thing, a child with a child's mind is another.

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh, you found a study. "The" science is not established on one or 3 studies, but on clear establishment reproducible results. The majority of studies today across many fields are not reproducible. They are BS. The vast majority of studies are worthless, and ones that are not must be reproduced by independent researchers before any truth they might point to can be narrowed down and found. There's nothing "mainstream" about one study that is in crisis. Have you heard about the crisis of irreproducibility and how psych is the most effected field? One study from that fields says more about your hopes than it does about anything else.

Kennedy is a psychologist and the problem of irreproducibility in psych is called a crisis, it might be where the problem is the worst. A study in a field that is overflowing with bad studies to the point where the field is in crisis and some question if it can rightly be called a science anymore should mean nothing unless you are holding out hope that it is right.

Well, thanks for outing yourself as a pervert and a threat to children, "Lehman". At least there's that.

[–]chadwickofwv 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

These fucking paedophiles are the Democrat party. Don't get me wrong, the Republicans are also shit, but we're talking about the absolute, most evil scum on the planet, paedophiles. Over time I've come to the conclusion that there is no separation between communists and paedophiles. Wherever you see someone heavily invested in communism you will eventually find out that person is also a paedophile.

[–]IkeConn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I get a huge shot of /s/Schadenfreude whenever a blue lefty shitstain outs themselves on the internet.

[–]Lehman 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I get a huge shot of /s/Schadenfreude whenever a blue lefty shitstain outs themselves on the internet.

Keshnar is an equal opportunity truth teller. Fox News lied when it told you that he's is a leftist. The dude has argued that races differ in their per capita intrinsic moral value because they have different average IQs, and some of his work has been cited favorably by race realist scholars.

[–]thomastheglassexpert 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The prob as I see it is where do the pedo folks get their "sex partners". Asking a neighbor child in for sex play is likely out as parents would kill him/her and not that many 12 yo street walkers although some places there are so the #1 target would be kids of a relative. That's what happened to my clan when it finally broke what a cousin of my wife was doing released from prison where he got himself a time out and that was naked games with his own daughter and her friend. My own daughter right about 10-11 yo had also been to their home so she and I had a chat and she screwed up her face when I asked some sex questions I might as well have been asking about her having "sex with a dog". I did see him one day at a family event and told him quite clearly my daughter reply to me saved his life. The deserts outside San Diego all the way out to El Centro had plenty room for a body is what I told him. So a real prob of pedo folks is actually finding a kid to have sex with it's what to do when an adult Alpha male related to the kid finds out about it.

[–]Antarchomachus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

I'll play Devil's advocate here...Pedophilia is bad, but I think there is some gray area in terms of defining what this actually means.

When I was 17, I dated a girl who was also 17, but I turned 18 before her. Technically our relationship became statutory rape the day I turned 18, and magically stopped being rape when she turned 18 too. This clearly isn't pedophilia, so its not so simple as Adult + Minor = Pedo.

Also, How much better is a 50 year old legally sleeping with an 18 year old, vs statutorily raping a 17 year old. Its not even clear what type of age gap is necessary for immorality here. Is a 20 year old dating a 17 year old worse than a 40 year old dating an 18 year old? Whats the criteria here?

Now, ill grant the any pre-pubescent activity is CLEARLY pedophilia, having sex with a 9 year old is clearly sick, but the line gets much much murkier if you are talking about a human being sexually mature enough to reproduce.

What is the age of 'consent', and how much do age gaps matter? Bodies are mature in the teens, Brains at around 25...Pedophilia is bad and real, but I don't think its that clear where the line is here. I just don't see the 'magical arbitrary age' as very convincing

Anyways, maybe someone can provide me with a solid definition here, but isnt so clear to me.

[–]FlippyKing 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Don't play devil's advocate here. The Devil is awash in them on this issue already.

The issue is not about comparing 17/18 to 18/50, it's about literally drawing a legal line because it needs to be drawn clearly. How "well" the line is placed or who is on either side of the line is not the point. If anything it is also about the point where parents or older brother can not continue protecting children/siblings.

You make a good point about the brain and 25, but I think what is more important is that we live in a sex-saturated world, some would say a sex-cult (or a whole bunch of them) run everything, and not enough is done to teach self-control and proper ordering of things in our minds and in our lives. That really is a different topic though, but learning to recognize objectifying someone, where because they are seen as an object (to fuck) lying to them and manipulating them all the bs people do become OK. "All fair in love and war" is the opposite of what's true, "very little to nothing is fair in those" is more correct.

[–]Antarchomachus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Perhaps my use of that phrase wasn't the best way to state my intention. In no way do I mean to 'advocate' for pedophilia in any way. I simply mean to say that it is very difficult to draw a line, not just legally, but morally as well.

I think we can all agree a 30 year old sexualizing a 10 year old is immoral - but I think it is hard to talk about pedophilia in good faith if we can't even define it. I'm not opposed to demonizing the behavior of the 30 yr old in our example, but if we start 'cancelling' people there needs to be at least some kind of standards for defining this behavior. My intent was to start a conversation on a moral framework for what this looks like.

I think the heart of this is exploitation as you suggest. It's clear a difference is maturity, either physical or emotional, is what enables this exploitation. However, I struggle to quantify this idea in a meaningful way, and was hoping someone else had some insight into this problem.

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I think drawing a line legally is always too easy, so I don't see that as a difficulty but that might also be a problem just in general with any kind of legalism. Drawing it morally might be only as unclear or difficult as our moral grounding is, which is not to say it is clear for any of us. I think the society we live in makes it unclear intentionally, making us pliable by: what those who run society say, as opposed to what an ultimate moral authority says. I think this is tied to John Henry Newman's idea that, which I have to badly paraphrase as I don't have a quote handy, the various areas of study in universities have all chosen to move through the world over time while on one leg doing a self-imposed balancing act by separating God or religion from academia. He did not live that long ago, but the problem goes much further back. I do think to get a proper handle on the problem we have to look much further back and more deeply. The symptom might be the topic of this discussion, but the root causes might be deeper. So, I know no other way to explore this idea without a ton of typing. Feel free to stop here. This might be long. Also, I need paragraph spacing, but don't know how to do it here. I will bold the start of each paragraph, which makes it all look even more self-satisfied. Sorry.

The rejection of scholasticism by western thought-leaders as a result of the reformation is: 1) as much a revolt of those leader's libidos against any attempt to properly-order it to our higher faculties, 2) as it was a revolt of kings against Rome via religious reform, and 3) as much as it was an actual religious reform. This is because it rejected the attempt, and many successes, of placing Aristotelian reasoning in a framework built by the Catholicism of the middle ages. We ended up with a western civilization in Europe dominated by a somewhat hollowed-out religiosity, subject to the "reason" of the various elites in a few cities, without any firm framework of how it all fit together.

They inverted it. They rejected the placing of Aristotelian reasoning into a Catholic framework at the start of the reformation, only to then put their religion into a rational framework during the "enlightenment". The reinterpretation of history so that people legitimately think there was no scientific progress until the enlightenment is at best a half-truth. The result was a western civilization had popes like Leo XIII running for their lives, and beneath the fight for political power, or political relevance, was a fight for a moral compass few if any on either side remembered how to use anymore. The reformation happened because a shake up was needed, Jan Hus showed that, as did each major saint like Benedict, Dominic, and Francis of Assisi showed it by pointing the good ship catholic back on the right direction. But there was collateral damage. This subject of sexual morality is part of, perhaps the biggest part, of that collateral damage.

I am no expert or scholar. I think aloud most of the time on this while slowly trying to learn about how we got into our current mess. But, I think there are two things at the root of disordered sexuality and thus at the root of the concerns we're wrestling with. Our big concerns in this regard are: protecting children, and assessing problems or grey-areas around what constitutes consenting adults. In assessing what constitutes consenting adults, we're wrestling with determining: which consenting adults get to fuck which consenting adults, what does it mean to consent (even to where people are wrestling vehemently with the question of "if both parties are drunk off their asses, was the guy wrong or both wrong"), and how to resolve disputes when it goes wrong. I think we can all agree on that, as I'm trying to be "socratic" and proceed from agreement. If I'm missing something or wrong, let me know.

These are the problems being wrestled with, and I think two things might be roots of these problems. The two things are: 1) viewing sex as a kind of devouring where part it is knowing or learning what boundaries the other person has or where the border between thrilling and fun switches to oh hell no I don't do that, and 2) the very religious idea of where does the desire for the fun of sex become disordered where we want it and love it more than the things that are to be above it like our place in the world and our love for God and everything else. I think this latter idea can be understood, appreciated, and adopted, by people who do not have this religious view. I think it will take a playing around with the words. God can be seen as the ultimate moral authority, that from which all real universal morality stems.

Even if we can scour the earth and find societies that do not share any sense of the same supposedly universal moral truths, Anthropology should then be the social science that makes sense of these differences. Instead it is used like an art whose goal is to create an enormous menu of cultural practices we can pick and choose from, ignoring the environmental and even geo-political and geographical reasons each specific cultural practice arose in each specific circumstance. Hence we have comfortable kids in big eastern-seaboard cities claiming to be "two-spirit" because they read some misrepresentation of an aspect of some native culture. Going back to John Henry Newman's idea, an properly ordered anthropology, where theology is at the table of decent academia as much as biology and geography etc, would not ever be inclined, or appear, to offer a menu of cultural choices but an understanding of cultures as results.

All this is to say what could be said much more simply, but metaphorically, with: your hammer should have no say in your behavior any more than your actual hammer should dictate how you approach every project you work on. You don't smash everything simply because swinging a hammer feels good. You might gently tap a tiny actual hammer as you put together a bird house, but only when that is needed. You might swing a massive maul but how often is that needed should dictate it, not how good it feels.

Every person we meet is met when they are in a particular place in their on-going development and life-long education. Religiously this could be seen as the process of sanctification. If we consider each other's process of sanctification, then we are not looking to swing hammers but looking at friends well met on the same journey but at different points along it.

Sanctification is something that was also tossed aside by some of the reformers of the reformation when they declared their faith declaration instantly saves them from their sins. This allows Luther to say: sin boldly but believe more boldly. I think that right there is our problem. Sin got pushed back from an injury to the body of Christ (and we're talking about a world at a time when everyone declared faith in Christ so I'm being historical here as much as religious), and offense to God and injury to His creation.

It was recast as something an individual did that separated themselves from God as if it were a break in etiquette with no other consequences. Not fucking everything that moves is not about etiquette. It can't be. The morality that governs it can not be mere etiquette sometimes and real offenses other times.

So, a legalist approach can protect the most vulnerable: children and people drugged by rapists for example. A legalist approach should be drawn in such a way that everyone says "no way, that was wrong" and where those who do not say it-- notice it is filtering out into society via 'scholars' and ted-talks and very crappy social science and humanities professors-- get rebuked by the average person. The "scholar" can explore these ideas because of what John Henry Newman complained about, as they wander halls of universities and rarely get their hands dirty in the real world but instead get their hands dirty being gross. The average person who does not try to live a world of ideas, but of consequences, sees easily how an academic excuse for monsterous behavior is wrong even if they can't articulate it as well as monster-apologists can articulate their deletion of morality and of an ultimate moral authority.

Just as reducing it to etiquette undermines the ultimate moral authority, reducing it to legalism replaces that ultimate moral authority with the state. Both paths are disasterous, but here we are with "desmond"s and "jazz"s obscuring Prince Andrews and Jimmy Savilles and Asia Argentos and the big club they all belong to.

[–]Antarchomachus 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Feel free to stop here. This might be long.

No problem at all, I really wanted to hear a take on this that went beyond the obvious fact that 'pedophilia bad', and talk about our underlying moral values.

You bring up some excellent points about Christianity's influence on western morality. Personally, I hadn't considered some of the subtleties of this, but a few things you said are undeniable:

  • early catholic rejecting Aristotelian logic being problematic for a number of reasons

  • englightenment 'interpretation' of all scientific progress happening at once and the resulting erosion of traditional values

  • 'disordered' sexual morality as a symptom of the greater moral confusion caused by the previous two issues

  • Finally, the idea of 'a la carte' ideology, where you pick and choose incompatible beliefs that do not rest on a firm foundation - this is problematic whether you are looking at it theistically or purely philosophically. Personally I think consumerism is partially to blame for this particular sin.

I think we agree in general on the nature of morality, despite coming from different places. I think I'm just more agnostic about the underlying source of morality, and am more concerned with getting morality 'right' than where it comes from. As you point out, getting morality wrong is disastrous for society regardless of the source of it.

what those who run society say, as opposed to what an ultimate moral authority says.

This allows Luther to say: sin boldly but believe more boldly.

Yes, morality should not be arbitrary, or it ceases to be morality, and there is no moral justification for doing more immoral behavior, that is purely contradictory.

While neither of us seem to have all the answers today, I appreciate you taking the time to discuss some of these underlying issues with me. My agnosticism sometimes leads me to overlook precisely some of the factors you mentioned. You are absolutely right that morality needs both underlying principles, and Aristotelian logic. Without principles we get 'articulate monster apologists' as you say. I can see now how my use of the term Devil's Advocate was alarming in the context of an article about an example of these very monster apologists. I do see now that the question I am posing is perhaps too large for this thread, as it refers to exactly this pairing of a principle with the logical framework in ways that go far beyond just pedophilia, but this is at least more clarity than I had originally on this topic, as I think I was overwhelmed trying to sort out this issue.

[–]FlippyKing 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The Catholicism of the middle ages, and since, do not reject Aristotle at all. This incorporation of Aristotle (Plato was not translated into Latin or around them at this time, so their classical influence was Aristotle with no Plato for a while) into Catholic theology and into their approach to virtues and vices is the hallmark of "scholasticism" and what separates Catholicism from the mysticism and hesychasm of Eastern Orthodox, and one of the big parts that the Reformation rejected in separating themselves from Catholicism.

So in the west, you go from a religion where chastity is a virtue to Luther running off with a (suddenly former) nun, to the early Anabaptist having free love orgies all under the guise of a religious interpretation, and all within the same generation. Luther and countries that favored him needed Rome's help to tamp down Anabaptist anarchy (or chaos, or both) until they underwent their own reformation into the movements they are now (Mennonites being one but less isolationist variations exist also).

But none of it would have gotten off the ground unless rulers in northern Europe did not see an opportunity for increased sovereignty while telling their populations "we're not leaving the church, it left Christ. We're going back to Christ directly". In some cases the libidinous nature of their reasoning could not be more obvious, yes I'm looking at you Church of England. By rejecting a theology of reason for one solely based on faith, there was massive void. Examples are already provided. This led to all sorts of efforts to make sense out of faith, but without all the tools that guided the Catholic trip down this same road.

The enlightenment is complicated for me, because I don't think they knew what they were rejecting or embracing. They probably thought they were finding the real morality of nature, of creation and thus of God without the trappings of Catholicism's traditions. This leads us to the moral relativism of today, and into "conspiracy theory" territory that we do not have to drift into.

The disordered nature of our sexuality goes back long before this, as a survey of any ancient mythology shows. It was maybe a distinction of Catholicism in the west that tried to say "this is not good", where other religions built it into their systems with temple prostitutes being the tamer version of it. One myth that is pretty nasty is about Odin basically trying to learn the secrets of women and what ever secret Frigg kept from him. He tortured the living #*&# out of her, and did everything to her over and over, experimenting, "learning", frustrated, and ultimately getting nothing. To say he objectified her is not even an understatement. He treated her like a dead animal on a table to be dissected. The world is not for our dissection because we have to kill it first. I'm hoping this myth is not about what a guy did to a woman, but a metaphor from the start about the folly inherent in the quest for knowledge. Norse mythology also has the premise that the mind is like a chicken clucking around but afraid of everything and doing nothing good. Anything we treat the way Odin treated Frigg in that story, we kill a little bit at least. That's an extreme example. Also, I'm not saying celibacy did not exist in the ancient world but it was always an odd fit and made little sense culturally. Did men in the cult of Celine (I think it was), like Attis really castrate themselves? Or (hopefully) their celibacy (assuming they were) made their devotion seem castrated? I have no answer.

You make an excellent point about consumerism. The idea that anything we want can be had, which I think is also tied to liberalism and capitalism as that mass production and consumption was made possible by it. Without consumerism the impulse would not be there among the masses to try out these other cultures. It would be among the elite, as the Greek soldiers were aghast at Alexander adopting Persian ways (also, fertile ground for seeing in a mythical sense about how we are more like our enemies than we think or how we take on traits of those we fight, even though it really happened)

I think getting morality "right" needs a source, because it is like a compass. It needs a true north (I say as our magnetic poles are converging and getting ready to flip. hmmm ...) Otherwise it will be as moral ... well as it is. We do need to see it as separate and above legalism and academic rationalization, men in women's locker rooms and queer theory prove those points every time. Interesting how there was all kinds of writing about "queering" aids and making it normal, but none of the dare say the same about covid. Too soon? Or they know who writes the checks to universities? Wow, that was a tangent.

Without an ultimate source that is above us, what is morality? What are "rights"? Rights are not permissions granted by government, otherwise they do not exist. I'm paraphrasing someone who debated Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues but rights can not be just the rationalizations of the powerful, but without a higher source they kinda are just that. So are morals, that's why we get the idea of "well, if they can afford it then it is OK for them to do it/have it/dissect it/rape it", the last flow from the first because it's all just rationalizing the way Henry VIII rationalized his need for a male heir into a few beheadings (Oh, hi Odin. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nice "codpiece", yeah you look like the head of a religion with that).

When I complained about "devil's advocate", I meant it colloquially and not literally, though the number of such advocates are filling professorships is too true. But, yeah, it does apply literally too as you caught and I lost sight of.

Sorting this out is overwhelming. That's why I loved reading what you wrote, and I hope we all get closer to sorting it out both for ourselves and for society.

I get the sense you were angling towards a "last word" on this, and I jumped back in. I did want to clear up the relationship between Aristotle and Catholicism and how that was severed by the reformation. I hope to leave the last word to you if you want it.

[–]Antarchomachus 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Hey FlippyKing, wasn't so much angling towards a last word, as acknowledging my original line of dialogue on this was unlikely to be fruitful. I'm more than happy to continue this broader discussion. I definitely see that the relationship between the Greek philosophical tradition and Catholicism is more complicated than I realized.

Your point about the disordered nature of sexuality going back further than this is duly noted. At the very least, this has made me re-evaluate the way I approach morality. I think the very age-old nature of these moral questions is perhaps what makes me want to view these questions independently of the underlying theology. However, I am sympathetic to your point about getting morality 'right' requiring a source of some sort. Personally, I'm not really quite sure how to rectify these seeming contradictions. My instinct is to try to take the middle ground position, and view morality as a kind of 'natural law'. Possibly divine in origin, but nonetheless subject to inquiry by non-theological means like the law of gravity. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking and a relativist trap, as I admit I have no ontological justification for this position other than 'faith' in methodology (which I admit is a little ironic coming from a theological agnostic).

Sorting this out is overwhelming. That's why I loved reading what you wrote, and I hope we all get closer to sorting it out both for ourselves and for society.

Definitely agree with you on this, and the feeling is mutual. It is important to sort this out, and I think dialogue with others can help us see the blind spots in our thinking.

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not really quite sure how to rectify these seeming contradictions.

None of us are! Placing its source in an ultimate moral authority doesn't really sort it out, but it does give a different perspective on it that I think is probably most useful. Certainly more useful than "well here's what I think/feel/want about it" as the latter will always get in the way when it needs to. Even if it comes down to having our behavior checked by peers. Another aspect of how Catholicism is supposed to work is that by confessing sins and by seeking guidance and penance and all that, we make ourselves less fully in control of how we assess these things.

There's some guy on here in this thread who just replied to me that he found a study saying 12 year olds can consent because the study found people with the brain of a 9 year old can and he further says that it is reasonable than an 8 year old can, so he probably has some very dangerous desires and he found an authority to justify them in a study by a psychologist (the worst field for how the crisis of irreproducibility has basically invalidated the majority if it's work).

I think the words you chose had a lot to do with the discussion, so they served a great purpose neither of us could have predicted. Divine guidance can not be ruled out, I say with tongue slightly in cheek.

For more about how Catholicism uses Aristotle, check out Thomas Aquinas. he is the big poster child for this and for scholasticism, which is hated by its detractors as much as it is loved by those who use it to rightly order their lives (something so very lacking today). Just as there are modern stoics who present those ancient writers (not so much Aristotle specifically, not that I'm aware of, but stoicism for sure) and their approach to life in modern languages and for our times, there are many people who are reintroducing Aquinas' ideas to us today.