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'Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.'
 
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Mr. Oikos
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Imafungi
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PostSubject: Re: Homosexuality   Homosexuality - Page 4 Icon_minitimeSat Jan 25, 2014 7:51 am

Capable wrote:
Ah ok, it is good to see we generally agree then.

I would still draw the distinction between sexual instincts/pleasure and the potential effects of that instinct/pleasure, they are not the same thing but as you say they are certainly related. I do not ascribe telos to a thing merely because that thing may or must lead to certain effects - basically, I think "functionalism" is bullshit. But obviously pleasure has developed throughout the history of life because in causing the organism to act in survival-aiding ways those pleasure systems inadvertently lead to their own continuing to survive, and even to grow with time. To me that is not indicative of a "purpose" but simply a statement about the conditions under which a thing (in this case, pleasure/pain instinct systems) has developed.

It would sort of be like saying that dirt exists for the purpose of allowing seeds to germinate, to say that sexual pleasure exists to allow for procreation to occur. You see how sexual instincts are tied in with the procreative act as rendering that analogy inaccurate, perhaps, but I do not; I see this connection as incidental only, although obviously real and significant, and quite interesting a subject to explore.

Basically, any time someone says that a thing exists or is made "for a purpose" that person is making an ontological mistake, I think. Except (maybe) when the thing being discussed is something made by a human being .

So if not to aid in procreation, why do you think the qualia of pleasure exists? Why is sex pleasureful? And is this discussion in the context of the physical pleasure of 'release' or are you also evoking abstract pleasures like love?
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PostSubject: Re: Homosexuality   Homosexuality - Page 4 Icon_minitimeSat Jan 25, 2014 1:48 pm

Imafungi wrote:
Capable wrote:
Ah ok, it is good to see we generally agree then.

I would still draw the distinction between sexual instincts/pleasure and the potential effects of that instinct/pleasure, they are not the same thing but as you say they are certainly related. I do not ascribe telos to a thing merely because that thing may or must lead to certain effects - basically, I think "functionalism" is bullshit. But obviously pleasure has developed throughout the history of life because in causing the organism to act in survival-aiding ways those pleasure systems inadvertently lead to their own continuing to survive, and even to grow with time. To me that is not indicative of a "purpose" but simply a statement about the conditions under which a thing (in this case, pleasure/pain instinct systems) has developed.

It would sort of be like saying that dirt exists for the purpose of allowing seeds to germinate, to say that sexual pleasure exists to allow for procreation to occur. You see how sexual instincts are tied in with the procreative act as rendering that analogy inaccurate, perhaps, but I do not; I see this connection as incidental only, although obviously real and significant, and quite interesting a subject to explore.

Basically, any time someone says that a thing exists or is made "for a purpose" that person is making an ontological mistake, I think. Except (maybe) when the thing being discussed is something made by a human being .

So if not to aid in procreation, why do you think the qualia of pleasure exists?  Why is sex pleasureful?  And is this discussion in the context of the physical pleasure of 'release' or are you also evoking abstract pleasures like love?  

Sexual pleasure exists for the exact same reason that any instinct or pleasure feeling exists. It produces an imbalance in the organism's sensory awareness, the part of its consciousness which contains higher-order and more derivative responses to internal and external stimuli. The imbalance is chemical, the consequence of many series of chemical reactions. This is the substructure of everything in the body and brain, changing chemical causality-chains, molecules breaking apart and re-forming again in different ways. This passes along energy as the potential to change other processes further down the line.

Instinct is a way to create a large amount of chemical imbalance in the body in a very short period of time; an "instinct" is just a more or less stable cellular pathway through which such chemical imbalances as cascading molecular changes takes place. This is quite useful to an organism, it allows it to respond to its environment. In the case of emotions and feelings, like sexual pleasure, hormones are involved to produce sudden changes in heart rate, breathing, etc. and to cause blood to flow to different parts of the body in larger quantities. All of these little changes are what we are "feeling" as the sensory awareness of the entire system; we ARE that sensory awareness, as a subjectivity/"I", and the quality or content of our sensory awareness is nothing other than whatever happens to be going on in the body at any given time.

We have interpreted the feeling of hormones being secreted in the stomach (adrenaline) as a feeling of nervousness or butterflies in the stomach, for instance. The sensory awareness, our subjectivity, which is just the most-removed and derivative end of the conscious processes, receives stimuli from these body changes and produces a response within itself accordingly. We are literally feeling all the vast body changes going on in ourselves when we are having an emotion or a feeling. That is all a feeling is, on the biological level, but of course what is most important to us as humans is the QUALIA of that feeling, how we "feel the feeling", how we respond to the response, internally.. how this feeling affects our pre-existing internal structure of sensations, ideas, motives, etc.

Any of these kinds of "feelings" that happened to be created as a consequence of the fact that instinctive-reactive life was developing a more complex central nervous system, and thus a single center-area which receives sensory inputs from all over the body which later became a more derivative, wider and complete perspective upon the body and eventually what we call subjectivity or our awareness, and which happened to produce changes in the organism that happened to allow it to function more efficiently with respect to whatever environmental circumstances were around it at the time, were more likely to pass on to the next generation of forms and thus also lend themselves to the possibility for change via random mutations of existing genes. This is how sexual instinct became so potent over a long period of time, because it happened to be very useful for causing changes in the organism which happened to make that organism more likely to pass on its own DNA to the next generation.

As for the PLEASURE of sex, this is at root no different from any other pleasure we feel; every kind of pleasure as a bit of its own character, its own "feeling the feeling" quality but the structure is the same in all cases. There is always a lot of internal tension, imbalance and "intensity" stored in the body and brain, chemically and physically speaking; when this builds up too much we will feel the excess of that, the pressure of it impacting our proprioceptivity, our self-sensory awareness; this is what we call "pain", such imbalances and too-chaotic shifts in molecular causality for the system to handle normally. Likewise when such tension is removed or decreased, this is what we call "pleasure", the literal feeling of internal tensions/stress decreasing. Like a pressure being taken off the system as a whole, as chemical energy routes itself back to simpler and less affective channels.
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PostSubject: Re: Homosexuality   Homosexuality - Page 4 Icon_minitimeSat Feb 01, 2014 3:40 pm

Fixed Cross wrote:
I think homosexuality rises after a civilization has reached its peak of industrial prowess. For obvious reasons, obviously. Then, I think there are both cool homosexuals and annoying homosexuals. I don't like to see two men kissing. I do like to see two girls kissing.

lol I don't like to see either - though I do believe in live and let live.
What is it with you guys anyway?
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