Michael Shermer: Provisional Pornography

while on the subject.
a book i did in the 90s is still quite relevant today.
its called 'tales from the clit' (ak press) and is an anti censorship feminist anthology.

its kinda dated now as doesnt include the internet but still a worthwhile read.

cherie matrix
feminists against censorship

tell them i sent ya!

Yes! Have a blank chapbook and two No. 2 pencils ready at 9AM tomorrow. Heh.

Seriously: you think it's too academic? I really like it. Dr. Shermer is one of my personal heroes though, it was me who put him up to writing an article for SG. I think it's a pretty big honor for us that he agreed!

Oh this article is just amazing. I'm a great admirer of the contributions of Michael Shermer, always finding his works a great read and insightful. This article is very simple, it's just that Shermer takes his time to set up his logic constructs necessary for properly addressing the issue. Yes, he writes academically, and that's what he does best, providing great food for thought, and logic, for those with great enough attention spans.

thanks for the article, then, KiethD. i am unfamiliar with Shermer's work, but agree with most of his underlying themes in the text provided, as well as the conclusions.

but...

[begin: tongue-in-cheeck-mode]
did he get a free month's subscription to SG for this!? did he get a tour of the SG inner sanctum!? damnit, i want to be interviewed then!
[end: tongue-in-cheeck-mode]

I read the first paragraph, then decided that if Shermer couldn't even get Paul Reubens' joke at his own expense right, there was no point in reading the rest.

"Heard any good jokes lately?" is what he asked!!

I like how he says he's not a moral philosopher and then goes on for pages about moral philosophy. Besides, science IS a philosophy, so why make the differentation?

Good article.
We should get Shermer to spend a weekend at the CE forum.

Yeah, and after a week he'd say "I quit!" and turn himself in to the nearest mental hospital.

Lemmie see if I can sum up the article...
Looking at porn is perfectly harmless and doesn't hurt anybody, UNLESS you look at it and masturbate everyday, then you're kinda immoral. That whole section on how looking at porn once or twice a year (?!?!) is a 0.1, but blah, blah, blah, just stunk. That was just as much a moral guessing game as the least educated knee-jerk Christian would espouse. Where did the scale come from? Why is masturbating everyday harmful? To be moral, should I only masturbate once or twice a year? Or is it that I should only look at porn once or twice a year? Which SG sets should I pick? Sheesh - good thing I don't care if Shermer thinks I'm immoral.

Read it more closely, the second half of the sentence is key to understanding what he means:

"When the experience of pornography gets to the point of being a daily ritual, is done for masturbation purposes only, and replaces intimacy with one's partner who finds this substitution violative of the relationship, then it might be appropriate to rank that form of pornography as a .9 act of immorality."

Beeeeeeware!



It'll trap ya!

I think this is the first appearance in SG of the term "paedomorphic," at any rate.

Best Pee-Wee Arrest Joke:

Q: Why did Paul Reubens fire his lawyer?

A: He knew he could get himself off.

the pics didn't load when i pulled this up and i saw the words "paul reuben" and thought i had an interview here with my fave person, pee wee. damn.

ruebenS

rEUbenS. shit

yeah, what crazybob said

"heard any good jokes lately?"

Yeah, reading is boring. Learning sucks. Thinking is a waste of time.

Shermer is attempting to define a system of ethics based on objective criteria, with provisional acceptance. This is not a philosophy, by its very definition, thus he is not a moral philosopher.

Science is also not a Philosophy, since it is also based on empirical edification. Philosophy is inquiry via though alone. Plato was the founder of this notion, and Aristotle founder of the contemporary, that of learning about the world through actually examing the world. Aristotle is the father of the modern concept of Science. Plato insisted we could learn all that needed to be learned by merely thinking enough about it.

I'll wait untill for the ADD friendly version of this comes out!!!

[Edited on Jun 09, 2003 by beaker76]

yeah, that was way over my head.
can someone make a corrosponding flash cartoon?

*sigh* I really don't want to slag the guy--it's easy enough to say "boring!" and pass that off as criticism (see above). But this is a lame duck of an article.

The first few paragraphs weren't bad--I think "words matter and language counts" should run in a java applet just above windows like the one I'm writing in now.

But the further I read, the more gaps I had to leap over to continue. Why, I asked myself, is mental pornography not divided into positive and negative sectors in the same fashion as non-mental (substantive?) pornography? And is the Paul Reubens anecdote going to come back to help guide the argument, or was that just supposed to make me think the author's hip?

Then, in a straight-faced appeal to authority he drags in Aristotle for a little cameo. This is the kind of thing I expect in an undergrad's letter to a campus newspaper; in a published article, whatever its venue, such a tactic grates on me.

His conclusion, that pornography should be renamed erotica, is trite at best; furthermore, it's in conflict with his ostensible project of examination instead of prescription. (And the typo in his concluding paragraph--"it's"--was kind of annoying.)

Not that I'm ungrateful for the intellectual fodder. Keep this kind of stuff coming, SG.

I love this site.

This is a little odd, he cuts and pastes stuff from the linked article, into THIS article.