Episode 105: Wizards With (Reactive) Attitudes
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Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.
My name's Pitt, and your ass ain't talking your way out of this shit.
The greatest has spoken. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Who are you? Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good man they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention to that man. Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man just a very bad wizard.
Welcome to very bad wizards. I'm Tamela Summers from the University of Houston. Dave. You're a Kantian. Don't you know that it's morally wrong for you to sexually objectify me?
That's wishful thinking on so many grounds. I'm doing bizarre from Cornell University. No, when I make love to you, it's really just to your soul.
Honestly, that's what I thought.
But now pure duty. It's out of pure duty. It's the ultimate Kantian love making.
You're using me as a mere means to your perverted ends.
It's only naughty if you're know yeah. No, it can't be hot if you think it's totally okay.
That's right. No Kant has made finally we have someone that makes sex hot. This is why it's so amazing that you're such a big fan of him is he goes after all your babies. Masturbating, sexual desire.
I'm telling you, it's just hotter that way. All these people raised in these hippie, permissive families where it's okay to have sex with whoever you want as long as you respect them. How do you get pleasure out of that when you don't think it's totally wrong and have shame and guilt afterwards? To me, it's like ramping up the pleasure of the sexual encounter to know that you're going to feel like shit.
Afterwards, to know that you'll have violated the second formulation of the categorical imperative. I may need a few minutes, actually.
Now thinking about go do guilty masturbation and tell me how wonderful it is. All right, now that we're back good at it.
Oh, man, I feel so relaxed right now. That was incredible. So we are referring this thing that both allowed us to individually gratify ourselves is the latest in a series of eon that magazine eon philosophy. Like trolling. Clickbait. It's almost like the fake news of philosophy.
Or it's like a boring buzfeed.
Yeah, right. Buzfeed. I don't even totally believe that they're written by different people because they all have the same structure. You take something natural, you take something totally unobjectionable in every way. One about having children, like having your own children rather than randomly distributing children. And then there is another one about democracy being bad, another one about this right sexual objectification. So this one says that what's the title of it?
Why sexual desire is objectifying. And hence, Morley Rob. And then the COVID art is still of a nude model from the 18 hundreds.
Yeah. In fact, we posted this on Facebook, and yeah, you sometimes think of these models from that period in history, 1839, as maybe, like, not quite meeting our to the standard.
Not to the cosmo standard.
Yeah, but I don't know.
She looks fine. The intent was totally to arouse and then make us feel really crappy for.
Getting I so I felt crappy reading it for not for the reasons right. I posted Facebook, I tweeted it, making fun of it. But it's like, that's what they want. Like, any of these we're playing into their hands.
We're doing exactly what they want. But here's the thing, okay? I don't know if this author knows that he's doing this for eon's trolling purposes.
Are you positive that this is a separate author from the other people that have been writing it? You don't think they just use different names?
I mean, if they did, they went out of their way to actually create a whole web history of did you look guy up? I totally looked him up. And so his name is Raja Hawani, and he actually got his PhD in philosophy from Syracuse University, and he's, like, into the philosophy of sex and love, but in the most unsexy of ways that you can imagine. He's the author of Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage 2010 Can you imagine reading his whole book? But anyway, let's talk about how you played right into their hands and tweeted it and Facebooked it, and now we're talking about it.
Yeah.
And I almost got annoyed. Like, people responded angrily towards it, and I'm like, no, but what did.
I.
If I didn't want that, why would I post links to it?
Exactly. Yeah. So I guess we should just summarize the actual argument. But it's ridiculous because you're the kind yeah. The argument is that it is intrinsically. Like, it is just true of sexual desire that it requires objectification. Like, that's part one of the syllogism. Objectification. Like treating someone as an object is morally wrong, which is therefore sex is morally wrong.
Yeah, because you're violating the second formulation of the categorical imperative, which prohibits using somebody as a mere means. But also, he's saying that sex doesn't just make you objectify your partner, it makes you objectify yourself. Because when I am in the grip of sexual desire so hold that image I also allow another person to reduce me to my body, to use me as a tool. Kant saw this process of self objectification as an equally, if not more serious moral problem than objectification directed outward. I have duties to others to promote their happiness by letting him being used as a sexual tool. But I also have a duty to morally perfect myself, allowing myself to be objectified opposes this precept, according to yeah, according to Khan.
And this gets him out of the potential retort that if somebody is desiring of you to make them into an object, then they wouldn't be like, no, no, because there they are, actually harming.
Themselves and allowing you to harm yourself.
Now that I'm reading this, when I'm in the grip, use me as a tool, it all just sounds like veiled reference.
Yeah. I don't believe this is real. Listen to this. And with no desire, there is no objectification. Not even love can fix it. When the desire is high, when the sexual act is in full swing, my beloved is a piece of flesh. Though love does lead to occasional cuddling, which is nice. I just don't believe that he wrote that.
You wonder about sort of the learning history, like the contingencies in his environment of reward and punishment that led to the writing of that paragraph.
I just think that this is not like an algorithm that writes these, but they all have the same sort of structure, too. It's like you put this ludicrous argument and then you consider an objection, which is the farthest thing from the objection that any sensible person exactly. But really, what's the big deal? That's the objection. Like, you just put forth this completely ludicrous argument and your objection is, okay, you've convinced me that it's wrong, but really, come on, what's the big deal? No, that's not the objection. Worse things have happened and will happen. That's the objection to this ridiculous argument. Every single article has that structure of they consider some objection that concedes the main force of their argument, but pushes back on the magnitude of the conclusion, or something like no, no, you're right.
It follows the structure of argument and imagined audience raising it's. In some sense, good writing should be like it's a parody of good writing. It's like you might think to yourself, surely David Pizarro is wrong because
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