It seems as though that over the past few days I’ve had more run-ins with pornography than what I would usually expect in a day. I watched a movie where an atheist couple’s video store is shut down in the early 90’s or some time like that because of their “adult video section”, a couple of friends and I were hunting around “porno tube” for kicks, I saw the wheelchair accidental pornography and ran into Sage’s post about porn.

I’ve always wanted to write a feminist post about my views on porn. If it increases rape, if it belittles women, if it should be for 21+, 18+ or even 16+… If certain things should be banned from porn, if porn should be sold pretty much everywhere, if sold should be in libraries… etc. But the fact of the matter is, my answer to all of these things is “I don’t know”. Truth be told, I really don’t watch porn, I always thought that maybe I’d “grow into it” but I have yet for that stage in life to happen. I have watched porn, but with friends, when we all laugh at it.

After days of contemplation I have decided that porn is speech, and people shouldn’t be afraid to let out information that they like that speech, or have been involved with that speech. I think porn stars should be able to freely list it as previous job on their resume and that people should be able to rent it without feeling ashamed when they walk up to the counter at the video store.� Sex is natural, sexual arousal is natural and needing help to become sexually aroused is completely normal. I obviously think child porn is wrong… If I lived in the States, my argument would thus be that porn is completely within the coverage of the First Amendment.

The fact that pornography strikes up debates within feminist groups, and raises issues and ideas about class, gender and race shows that pornography conveys and communicates ideas and a premise therefore it should be protected as free speech.

When someone watches porn, they may not realize it or make the connection, but they are is mediated thought. The viewer is aiming at a particular frame of mind, and the intention of having the pornography is to control the thoughts. A law that prevents shooting up heroin is protecting people from a body disabling and physically disastrous abuse, rather then preventing a person from thinking.

I don’t believe that casual induction into pornography will disable a person’s social skills. I also don’t think a husband who reads playboy is tearing apart a family, I think there are some communication issues - but if that’s where he wants his thoughts to be, that’s where they are going to be. Some of the most celebrated movies, pieces of art and compositions of music have been created out of the freedom of thought, and out of the ability to allow one to stagger into dangerous areas of the mind. Sexuality, in this same idea, can be seen as an art form to a person, and pornography is a way to lead your thoughts into areas of exploration resulting in something more enjoyable, more exciting and more interesting.

We don’t confine an artists mind from exploring the darkest corners, so why should we put shame on those who want to wander into the unknown world of sexuality and get help with being sexually aroused? We shouldn’t.

This isn’t to say that I don’t have problems with porn. I think a lot of pornography puts women in to a submissive role. It also gives false ideas about what sex is like in real life… (women don’t have an orgasm giving the guy a blow job, believe it or not.) There are also direct inflictions on racial differences and discriminations which I don’t agree with. I’ve read many papers exploring the racial discrimination in Hustler magazines… with black men looking big, mean, controlling and extremely in power, were has a white man would look small and insignificant. The black man would basically rape and pillage what appears to be a woman belonging to the white man - I don’t think stuff like this is all that appealing.

Its hard to draw a line between art - speech - racism - misogyny. It depends on context and viewer. A picture of a visible racial discrimination in a Hustler magazine is going to portray a much different meaning and understanding than a picture of a visible racial discrimination in an art gallery. So for that reason, I will recognize that pornography can be harmful.

In regards to a submissive woman, I am fully aware that pornography will also show men in a submissive position - again, fine lines and who am I to call whats right and wrong? But it is a fact that pornography industries will willfully deceive consumers - so it is up to the consumer to be conscious of what they are looking at and what sort of understanding they should/are taking from it… Which I know, is a bit much to ask of a man who is whackin’ it, he’s a little preoccupied.

But that also says a few things about our society…� and how people are raised and what not… Anyway, my point is - porn is okay - to condemn and prevent it is to condemn and prevent growth of ideas and the mind … in a way…Also, I had a really hard time finding a picture to go with this post.

I think if I thank her once more she’s never going to speak to me again in fear that the only thing I can say anymore is "thank you so much!!" but, I’ll try my luck…thanks again!! The following link is for the interview I did with Lindsay earlier today.

The more I listen to it, the more I think I did a pretty horrible job, and at around the 30 minute mark the sound card of the computer went wonky. By wonky I mean it slowed the recorder down to 1/2 pace and dropped our pitched by about 2.5 whatevers.

I tried to fix it, and I got it pretty close, but if we start to sound a little funny - its because my boss won’t listen to me when I say "We need a new computer in the news room."

I also pronounced a ‘p’ on ‘pseudo’ more than i pronounced the rest of the word, even. And I was so nervous that words over 7 letters long never came out properly. Ha ha ha.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy it. Love it. Embrace it. Listen to it again, and the rest of my show tomorrow night, 5 -6 (8 -9, east coast darlings!) at the CFUV site.

Download Lindsay2.mp3 (15947.8K)

In 1992 countries met at the Earth Summit
to crack a strategy for dealing with the environment. There was one issue that
was the ‘key’ issue which was not on the agenda at all… population growth. It
was left off because the Vatican and various Muslim countries didn’t want it on the agenda.

There is controversy to what extent growing
population is the cause of environmental degradation. Economic growth is
arguably more of a threat than population growth in itself.

Nevertheless it is true that population
growth has boomed. 2000 years ago, 200 million people lived here. 200 years
ago, it was at 1 billion. By 1950 it was at 2.5 billion. By 1990 it doubled.
1990’s another 1 billion net increased occurred. It’s predicted that by 2020
there will be about 8.5 billion, by 2050 there will be about 10 billion people
on the planet and should level off between 11 and 14 billion around 2100.

Why will it level off? Part of the reasons
is that there are limited resources which could bring about a crash or
something like that, but the rate of replacement will decrease by this time. As
people become more educated and as there are more social services, and with
women’s rights and birth control increase there will be dramatic decreases of
the birth rate.

Even in developing countries the birth rate
is already decreasing, but even so there are still billions of people that are
under reproduction age, and they won’t start reproducing for a few years, so even
with the decrease of the population birth rate, there will still be a shoot up
before the number levels off.

The controversy is progressively becoming
less controversial as we can see that carbon levels have dramatically increased
as the population dramatically increases. Also, logic says the more people
there are – the more resources we’re going to use.

What are our obligations to the environment
then? Animals share certain characteristics with human beings in particular
they are conscious. They have desires and such therefore we ought to apply some
level of moral standards that we apply to humans. But what then of all those
elements that are not sentient? The rational dividing line was always the
ability to suffer. If you can’t suffer then you have no interests to take into
account. But there have been various environmental ethicise that say we need to
expand our obligation to the non-sentient world.

Rachel Carson opened us up to the
scientific side with Silent Spring, where Aldo Leopold looked at the philosophical
side. His book Sand County Almanac came out in 1949, around the time he died
and in it Leopold argues that we have to expand the circle of moral considered
to the biosphere or ‘the land’ as he refers to it. An ethic ecologically is an
ethic as it pertains to consciously putting limits on our behaviour. We ought
not to kill each other; we limit that behaviour within ourselves. He suggests
that we need to extend these ethics to include the ecosystems as these also
struggle for life. This extension of ethics is an evolutionary possibility and
an ecological necessity.

It is also something that advances our own
possibilities of survival. Leopold sees the extension of moral obligations to
the ecosystems is in line with our moral obligation to evolution. It is also an
ecological necessity because of the impact we’re having on the natural
environment. The land ethic enlarges our community to include soils, waters,
plant, animals and particularly communities of creatures. He says that the land
ethic requires a psychological shift from the idea that we are conquerors of
the land to the fact that we are just citizens of the biotic community. We are
parts of the evolutionary ecosystems, therefore just as the way to treat other
human beings to respect them, we must respect other aspects of the natural
world. The economic system, as presented by Max Baxter, is invested in self
interest and is thus lopsided, it tends to ignore and thus eliminate anything
that lacks commercial value. It assumes falsely that economic parts will
function the same as the non-economic parts, it is all necessary for the
functioning of a whole.

It is not good enough to leave this up to
governments, Leopold argues. It is something that we all have to take on as a
personal responsibility. We have to internalize this ethic, and understand the
capacities of ecosystems. Therefore his key line is “a thing is right when it
tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.
It is wrong when it tends otherwise”.

Now, this in a moment’s reflection will
show that this is a holistic environmental ethics. It is not focused on the
intrinsic values of individuals, it is not a Kantian ethic in that sense, and
it focuses on the health of eco-systems. It is in some sense, akin to
utilitarianism, as it promotes the health of the whole; however that health has
nothing to do with experiencing happiness. Basically Leopold asks us to simply
stop thinking of the environment in purely economic terms. This anthropocentric
approach, however, is more realistic because this is how people think.

So is the land ethic realistic? Or
hopelessly idealistic?

Ones own self interest is to have clean
water, not to have clean water for the bees and the pine trees. People will
rarely do the right thing, unless they see a direct benefit in it for
themselves. In some sense there no real big difference between Baxter and
Leopold. The basic line comes down to conservation for the benefits. If you use
Baxter’s argument, you’ll be more likely to fulfill Leopold’s bottom line.

Leopold’s bottom line does raise some
challenging and perplexing questions…

Doesn’t nature evolve with constant change?
Why is it good to preserve stability? And what is beauty? Is a desert as
beautiful as a horse? In regards to animals such as the Pere David deer, do we
have an obligation to reintroduce these species back into the environment? What
if humans hunted zebra for their pretty stripes, would it then be wrong if we
can genetically engineer them to have no stripes to stop the hunting? We’re not
preserving the beauty, but we’re still preserving the animal.

J. Baird Callicott of the University of North Texas takes on the task of defending the land ethic. What’s surprising is that UNT is a hotbed for environmental philosophy. The journal of environmental ethics is
published here and has attracted many environmental philosophers, to

Collicott has written extensively on
environmental ethics, particularly defending the land ethic. He points to the
fact that generally speaking the study of morality has been seen as uniquely
human. It has set us apart from the rest of nature. What gives us the capacity
to be moral creatures is reason. This is like Kant; who, as we know, argued
that our ability to be moral rational agents set us apart from the rest of
animals. The general idea is that humans are moral beings and this gives us a
special worth in the world. And our language is also something that sets us
apart; we can hold one another accountable and live by moral principles.
(Sorry, I have to say it… Raptors had the ability to reason and communicate and
were probably smarter than humans…)

Collicott later pulls on Darwin. One idea of morality is that it came
from god; god gave us the difference between right and wrong. However
supernatural explanations are literally nothing, the purple unicorn in the
corner can’t vouch for your theory. Collicott makes the point that reason seems
to depend on language, and that language would not have developed apart from
humans living in society. So if reason can not evolve without linguistics and
linguistics could not have happened without being social beings, in order to be
these social beings we must have had limitations on our actions, before being
these rational moral agents. Being social beings, we already have ethical
limitations on our behaviour. If reason depends on being social and being
social depends on having limitations it can’t be the case that reason gave rise
to morality. Hence we must have become ethical before we became rational.

This is where Darwin comes in. Darwin, like Hume and Smith (*shudders* I
detest Adam Smith, I have read waaaay too much of his stuff), argue that ethics
rest on feelings or sentiments. The basis of our systems and notions of reality
is sentiment, it is built within us. We have a natural disposition to apply the
golden rule and empathize with others in their suffering and their well being.
This sentiment with other people is the basis of morality. This is then
informed by reason. Darwin takes this and argues that morality is to be found in many animals that are
social by nature. Whether they be crows or lions, animals that live together in
families or groups develop a sense of well being for others – it is naturally
selected for.

We all sort of know Darwin’s basic idea of evolution but, I’ll
just do a quick reminder – any species, different individuals have different
characteristics, he noted that in any population there is an excess of those
born or produced than what survive. The question is then, which are likely to
survive? The ones that have a characteristic that gives them an advantage in
their particular environment. The individuals which are better adapted are more
likely to pass on those characteristics to the offspring which will ultimate produce
a ‘better fit’ population in the future.

For animals that live in groups, coming to
one anothers aid gives the individuals a better chance for survival, so that
mutual aid and sentimental attachment to one another is selected for by nature.
The origins of ethics is not with human reason, it starts before humans become
humans. It can be found today in crows or bunnies.

Darwin’s account begins with the affections between parent and children
common to perhaps all mammals. Darwin does not say that hyenas have the same level of morality of humans, but the difference between humans and non-humans is in a degree.

Collicott takes all this and says that
Leopold’s land ethic’s basis is a Copernican cosmology, in other words, we are
not at the centre at the universe. He tries to argue that the land ethic of
Leopold is in line with evolution, particularly in line with the evolution of
morality. We are one species on the earth, which is one planet, which is in one
solar system, which is in one universe…of many universes. The extension beyond
human concern is rooted in the natural history of ethics. The logic of the land
ethic is that natural selection has equipped us with an effective moral
response to identity. The land is a community, so a land ethic is not only
possible, but is also necessary because we have developed the ability to
destroy the integrity of it.

This then indicates that Singer and
Reagan’s previous arguments toward animal rights are inadequate. The boundaries
of the moral communities in cahoots with sentience do not take into account the
interaction with the non-sentient world. Ethics like those of Singer or Reagan
are based on extending the egotistical concern for ones self. The contemporary
animal liberation rights and ethics of the kind in Singer and Reagan extend the
classical paradigm of Kant and Bentham and extend it to non-human beings.

But
this standard is too traditional, and bases too much consideration on modern
capacities. This provides no moral consideration for holes, and ecosystems.
Species do have interests as species. Endangered species, the biosphere of its
totality, ecosystems and holes having no psychological experience, it doesn’t
suffer or reason so it has no mental capacity thus we can’t deal with our
obligations to the natural environment based on these ethics. Nature is not
amoral, intelligent moral behaviour is natural. 

We are not rational beings in spite of, but
in accordance with nature.

So is the land ethic deontological? Or
credential? It is both, self consistently both. It applies to someone who has
absorbed the ethical view of nature and will internalize this attitude. The
land ethic is a set of principles to follow because it is moral. From the
objective and analytic point of view, there is no other way for land to survive
with man acting irresponsibly, and no way for man to survive without the land.
It is a categorical imperative. It is a moral principle to be obeyed, and it is
in our best self interest to obey it.

I apologize if you read all that thinking I
would have some grand conclusion, but I don’t. That’s it. I do however, realize now that I’ve finished typing all that out, that it is longer than the essay I should have written instead

Okay, so here is the deal. I had my first logic class today, I actually missed 2 of them since I wasn’t registered in the class. (I also didn’t have a working writing utility today…but um, whatever. I wrote my notes in blood. Mwa ha ha… …or, you know, with some guy’s pen.)…anyway, I’m going to attempt at explaining the lecture…. I ended up getting too interested and didn’t really take any notes. So, this may be sort of fragmented and may also…not make any sense.

Introduction
principle: if S is a set of well-formed formulas containing all sentence
symbols and close under all S formula-building functions, then S contains all
the wffs.

Let α be an
arbitrary wff. It is the last number of some construction sequence <e,
…,en.> where en will equal α. 

Introduction
on natural integers to show every number of the sequence in S.
Base Case:
e,. e must be a sentence symbol, so it is in S.
Inductive
step: suppose that for all k<i, ek,eS.
Consider
ei. Either ei is a sentence symbol, so it is in S.

Or ei = Є¬
(ek) from k<i. ei = (¬ek)
Or ei = Є^
(ek,ej) for some ej, k<I ei = (ex^ej)

We know by
the inductive hypothesis that ek and ej are both S. S is closed under the
formula building functions. So ei is in S.

With this,
we can prove basic thing, such as an obviously basic statement as this: show
that every wffs has the same number of left and right parentheses. We call a
wff with this property, balanced.

Base case:
sentence symbols have no parentheses so they’re balanced.
Inductive
step: Suppose α and β are wffs. (This is also our inductive hypothesis.)
Let α have
n left and right parentheses and let β have m.
Case ¬: (¬α)
has n+1 left and right. So (¬β) is balanced.
Case ^: (α^
β) has n+m+1 left and n+m+1 right. So it is balanced.
Since this
is syntax, we can say (α |-| β)
Where |-|
is a binary connective.

So every
wff is balanced.

All of
that, as I said is pure syntax. However, with that and from there we can ask
the thorny philosophical question ‘what is truth’?

A truth
assignment v for a set S of sentence symbol s to be a function. V:s –>
{T,F}
The
objective we want to achieve is a truth about compound statements based on
simple statements.
Define |S
to be the set of wffs built up from sentence symbols in S.
[Suppose
S={A1, A4, A28} |S = all wffs using
these sentence symbols - ie… (¬A1),
(A4 --> (A28^A4))]

What we
want, is to extend v to |v such that |v:|S –> {T,F}

1) For any Ai Є S, |v (Ai)=v(Ai)

2) |v ((¬α)) = {T if |v(α) = F. F
otherwise.}

3) |v ((α^β)) = {T if |v (α) = T and |v
(β) = T. F otherwise}

4) |v ((αVβ)) = {T if |v (α) = T or |v
(β) = T (or both). F otherwise}

5) |v ((α –>β))
= {F if |v (α) = T and |v (β) = F. T otherwise}

6) |v ((α↔β)) = {T if |v (α) = |v (β).
F otherwise}

Now, having said all that, I have about 3 questions, so if you a) understand what I just typed out or b) think you could answer some questions on it well enough to be on the same level as a 3rd year philosophy of logic class - please, comment or message me. My prof isn’t taking appointments right now, and her office hours happen to be when I have a class. Thannnks.