Opinions on Bestiality

From cases I've known, mentally disable are socially exempt from it being sexual harassment or abuse since people don't see them as being of 'mental capacity' to understand standard norms and behaviour.
They usually run more on emotion then norm logical thinking patterns and behaviours, so I suppose it is acceptable if it isn't kept in check, but I'd only test that theory if I had to see it in practice.

Classical conditioning whereby a unconditioned stimulus is activated to be used as an conditioned response using a neutral stimulus which is changed into an conditioned stimulus to create a conditioned response. Operant conditioning is the basic reward and punishment system to encourage or discourage thoughts and behaviours. I did 3 years of Psychology, and I know of Genie's case. Like the Wolf Boy type of scenario never having been socialised.
But that's the thing I'm saying, what is abuse then? If conditioning is acceptable by using the stimulus of a leash for a walk or of using treats as rewards to train a dog tricks, when does something become just an instinctual act to being an abusive act? Is there a line?

 

Actually we humans are all conditioned to obedience via "training". We' re social animals, that' s what we do. We can express our thoughts in much more complex manners than the other social animals, which in turn led to much more complex society models, but other social animals are just as capable of making choices or disobeying as we are. They see their master as "the leader of the pack", that certainly doesn' t translate as "superior" to them, my parents' cat can display quite a lot of disdain sometimes.

Violence is no more a requisite to effectively condition animals than it is to condition humans, it is merely the lazy and unimaginative method that many humans chose over actually learning the "language" of the animal they are training. For instance looking directly at cats with eyes wide open means they' d better stay away, while looking at them eyes half-closed would be an invitation to come closer. How many cat owners actually know this ?

Conditioning animals do involve hitting them since we cannot talk to them, but it doesn' t have to actually hurt them. It only has to be strong enough that they can tell it wasn' t a pat, rather a symbolic "what you just did is wrong". When possible symbolically "banning them" is just as efficient.

If you' re curious on this subject you should read this : http://www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/b30animalmorals.php

Now, to get back on the topic at hand, although animals can make choices they' ll never philosophize about their feelings. Their intellectual understanding of the emotions they feel seem to match that of a very young human child at best, that' s why I draw a parallel between bestial relationships and child abuse and would not be ok with it.

 

Conditioning them to the tune that they openly express distaste at your actions and you physically forcing them to do what you want anyway is what I consider abuse. In Genie Wiley's case, I am sure that she did not enjoy being kept in the potty chair and made this obvious, but she was kept there anyway. Using physical force or containment against someone's will is the most consistent definition of abuse in existence.

Manipulating someone using emotions and a punishment/reward system should be kept purely emotional, such that if a child runs away from you, you do not have a right to grab their arm and hold them down. That would be as abusive as if you did it to someone as an adult. The exception is that it would have a much larger impact on the child's development than it would on the adult's.

 

I have yet to look at any of the other posts quoting me, first I must ask... may you simplify the above? The former half of it I had difficulty understanding, with the talk of "classical conditioning", "unconditioned stimulus/response", "operant conditioning" and such. Psychological jargon to anyone who has not taken psychology, or done in depth research of it. I don't know enough.

 

I'm going to try and explain this as briefly as I can since it's effectively like writing a 4 page essay when I'd rather not really. But here goes...

Pavlov, the man who developed the theroy of classical conditional which was latter proved as fact. Hear of the famous case of Pavlov's dogs? Pavlov was able to train his dogs to drool when he wanted them to by ringing a bell. He did this by developing his dogs strictly into a set patterns of stimulus and behavioural responses. I'll use this case as a way to explain the process of classical conditioning.
So Pavlov was testing to see how his dogs would react when he conditoned their behaviour. So, what the process of his expedient went like was almost like this, but altered for easier explanation:

For the first time in the experiment, he would leave his dogs strapped into place in a room, they were unable to move for the experiment. At first he presented in front of the dog some food, the dog started to drool at the sight and smell of it, then took back the food wherein the dogs stopped drooling and he rang the bell. Now 5 minutes later, he would ring the bell again, but the dogs didn't respond.
Now the second time, again the dogs were strapped into place but this time the bell for rung first, then the food was presented and the dogs again drooled and the food was taken away again in which they stopped drooling again. He rang the bell 5 minutes later again, but still no response from the dogs.
However, after repeating step 2 just now several times, when the bell was rang 5 minutes later the dogs started to drool, even without the presence of food.

He was able to get the dogs to associate the presence of food in the ringing of a bell, which in turn would make the dogs respond by drooling.
Basically you have 5 things that are involved in classical conditioning, which are:
Unconditioned Response (UR)
Unconditioned Simuli (US)
Neutral Simuli (NS)
Conditioned Response (CR)
Conditoned Stimuli (CS)

The unconditioned response is the drooling, the natural part of the dogs mind to drool at food.
The unconditioned stimuli is the food, it makes the dog drool at it when it's in it's presence.
The neutral stimuli is the bell, since this stimuli the dogs don't associate it with anything, it's just a bell.
The conditioned stimuli is the bell as well, since ringing the bell before the expedient did nothing, now after conditioning the dog, we are able use this conditioned stimuli to make the dog drool even without the presence of food.
The conditioned response is therefore drooling, since the dogs have now been taught that this is the right response to the conditioned stimuli above.

So, for example, when a dog hears or sees a leash being carried by it's owner it associates the leash with going for a walk and will get excited and ready for a walk as a response. It's one way to teach a dog tricks by voice and signal command since they associate a word or gesture into doing a specific move.

That make better sense?

You're talking in cases of humans, I mean animals sepcifically, of course for humans it can be debatable what is acceptable ways to train children and such to learn norms or basic actions such as learning how to hold your bladder, but what about animals, since that's really the main topic?

 

Is there some deciding factor that makes humans different from animals, or is it just the number of conflicting impulses? I am not talking in the case of humans, because as we have said, conditioning works the same same on all animals. Humans are harder to condition because they are smarter, but that is a matter of communication. It is easier to lie to a dog than a human. Does that mean that a dog is not capable of trust and skepticism just as a human is?

Conditioning a naïve and immature human is very similar to conditioning a dog or an ape. I hold that the only difference between abusing a person and abusing a dog is how well you can communicate with each of them to determine what they consent to.

 

We can fight our own conditioning if we have the willpower and the self awareness to. Animals follow instinctive patterns which humans can certainly do but we realise that we are repeating something over and over I can't always say the same for animals.
Being self aware we are able to make choices, realise our emotions and better control them then an animal can, be able to condition other things ourselves, we learn quicker and faster, we dictate catergories of abuse and of conditioning. Though we are animals, we are very separate from the majority of them, we are the strangest of them all and most distant from any others.

So yes, there is a difference, in terms of conditioning we are able to be self aware. We may realise we are beig conditioned or abused whilst an animal might not even see a difference. So for an animal what is the line between being conditioned to do something or having an instinctual response such as feeling arousal and trying to procure intercourse with a human which is consensual to being abused by said human? They have no self awareness that there is a difference.

 

Self-awareness itself is an illusion because a subjective entity does not get to choose its own inclinations. By definition a human's awareness is limited by the fact that it cannot measure itself objectively, nor can other humans measure them objectively. Furthermore, if you think that having other humans measure you can make you self-aware, then others animals can do that as well so long as they can communicate. Animals are the same way, and they can indeed "realize' when things are not going in a direction they like. Apes especially are smart enough to do this.

Our self-awareness... Or rather, our impulse to analyze ourselves, simply makes us more complex than other animals. We have many more conflicting impulses, but what is the nature of being self-aware? If it is self-reflection and regret, then that is an emotional response, and even dogs have the capacity for it. If it is knowing your own strength and how your body works, then other animals are actually better at it than most humans. They control their movement and dexterity much more efficiently than humans do. If it knowing your own mind, then that is something we do not have; it is merely an impulse to analyze the self while truly knowing the self is fundamentally impossible.

Take a fight or flight response, for example. Both a human and another animal will be faced with the same dilemma.

The dog is stupid and has fewer impulses, so it goes with the stronger one at a second's notice. The only thing that could change the dog's response is extreme behavioral conditioning. It does not have to think.

An ape will take longer and may change its decision based on things it has learned. Apes are shaped a lot by nurture and less by nature than dogs, so one ape's reaction will be different from another's more often.

A human will take the longest of all and will absolutely choose based on things it has learned. Humans are shaped primarily by nurture such that you would have to know the person beforehand to predict what they would do when threatened.

However, the nature of how all three learn is not decided on or truly understood by any of them. How they react to their environments from the start is not under their control, nor are they aware of it by themselves.

When a dog is born and is conditioned, it does not have the capacity to understand why it would drool when the bell rings and such. This is similar to having a low IQ.

You present a dog with a stimulus. That stimulus brings it pain, and its natural reaction to pain is aversion and fear. It does not get to choose this. Its behavior will then be amended because you took advantage of its innate reactions to circumstances.

An ape would be smarter and be able to realize that something was going on that it did not like, but not understand the concept of conditioning. Here is a question: is an ape capable of lying?

You present an ape with the same stimulus. While it is smarter and will reject the stimulus for longer, it will eventually give in. The impulse to stand firm and the impulse to give in were not chosen by the ape, and again you are exploiting their innate reactions to "teach" them something.

A human would be smartest of all and be able to understand most of the process, in other words, the how. However, the human would have a similar reaction to the ape, starting as a child. A human finds a stimulus that makes it happier, or pleases its impulses more than other stimulus and tries to find the most efficient path to getting that stimulus rather than the others.

The human also has no choice in what stimulus it enjoys the most. Thinking of a baby here, and as it gets older, nothing changes; its preferences are built up from that first learning experience and a chain of preferences is created from that first preference that they did not choose to have. That is why humans can be conditioned in the same way as animals; because their innate preferences are based in instinct and they can be exploited like all others.

Human "self-awareness" is just a means for humans to think about how best to achieve their preferences. It is a result of the myriad impulses or "thoughts" conflicting and working against each other in order to find the strongest impulse or "thought". In the same way that humans are self-aware, they can "take themselves out of the equation" so to speak. But even that decision is decided by a chain of preferences that they did not consciously initiate.

Can you think of a human decision that cannot be described as a battle of impulses, like the dog's battle between the flight and fight impulses?

 

I don't know how such a question came up, but oh we'll, the topic is gone for us now.

Most things are impulse based, but that doesn't mean impulse encompasses it all. Simplifying things to just a base of impulse would only make us animals, or at the least barbaric, it's too base to dictate everything we do. We can fight impulse, we can choose to fight it. Do you feel the need to give into all your impulses? Sometimes I want to punch people, or hug and kiss them, sometimes I wish to hold them in such a way or play a joke on them. But do I? No. Because I feel the need to control them.

I don't know exactly what you're trying to say here, but you claim to only say it is all selfishness when it comes down to it. It's just the strongest selfishness that succeds in what they want.

In terms of the actual topic, I would say best, bestiality can be used as some form of sexual 'satisfaction' but in a relationship? I find it unhealthy, unproductive, much like object sexuality. It offers nothing in return.

 

Why would I choose to fight the one impulse? The impulse to give in and the impulse to fight are both impulses. That fight is a fight of impulses. Similarly, the impulse to kill and the impulse to refrain are both impulses. If you choose not to kill, then the impulse to refrain won out. By definition, whatever choice you make is what you wanted to do most at the time. Where does that desire come from if not from impulses?

Selfishness is subjective. It is applied by one selfish animal onto another, but all humans are selfish. The only reason why any human cares about others is because kindness makes them happy. They want that release of feeling that makes them happy when they help others or do something they consider "fair". If it did not make them happy, they would not do it. Humans share and are nice with other humans because human fellowship is essential to survival in human society, and because it makes you attractive to mates. I would not call humans barbaric per se, but LaVey had a bit to say on man's carnality.

7. Satan represents man as just another animal (sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours), who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all.​

What you call "positive" and "nice", I call "good for survival". The more powerful a particular human becomes, the less they care for their fellow men. The drive to kindness and empathy is an evolutionary gambit to survive among equals. Those who are not equals stop being important and you lose empathy for everyone when the majority are not a threat to your livelihood.

Why do you think I am so against hierarchy?

 

And the usual view of people on here KHV hasn't changed for years. Everyone thinks that since it is said to be an evolutionary that it is the only way to live. But evidently it is not and is for ever denying the concept of selflessness.

What for the Guru's of the Sikh religion? For those that sacrificed themselves for their people, the ones who believed in them. Guru Tegh Buhadur took on torture if he would not convert himself and his follows into Muslims, he refused continually until he was arrested beaten and publicly executed for it. What selfishness is that? If he truly cared for his own well being he would have accepted such conditions, instead he did not. He may have had the impulse to say he would convert, but he fought them even in the threat of losing everything.

Alright, I'm leaving it here. You wanna discuss this, VM me or something, too much off topic