What have you ever done that was not selfish motivation? Where is the evidence that voluntary expressions of sexuality in 8-10 y.o. does any harm? I think it's only a problem when the parents force this on the girls, no evidence for this. Parents also force sports participation on kids is this exploitation?

The real problem is with adults that have matured in a sexually repressed society(thank you religion). It's not good to have 30 year old men around that have been sexually frustrated by our society and it's 'pure' Christians. That is the real problem.

All motivations are selfish, because that's how brains work.  However, if you will read the definitions, you will see harm is implied in this form of "selfishness"; that's the only thing that could logically set it apart from the first definition, and we have to rely on that for any sense of coherency.

Exploit, in the context in which we are discussing it, must benefit the exploiter, and cause harm to the exploited.

Benefit, in whose opinion?  Harm in whose opinion?  Those are the relevant questions.

They seem most logically answered by those to whom the properties are applied- benefit in the opinion of the person benefitting, and harm in the opinion of the person being caused harm.

However, we could ask ourselves:  Could you be exploiting something without knowing that you are exploiting, or must you know that you are causing harm?

If the answer is no, then they could both be considered in the opinion of the exploiter, and likely then the word would be very rarely applied indeed.

It seems, however, in common usage that one can unknowingly be exploiting another and realize it later, or be told one is doing so- in such a case, it makes more sense to consider the harm relative to the one being harmed.

No, we're taking an objective one.

No matter how much you want it to be, and no matter how many people agree, there is no objective qualification for "harm".

Advice:  Drop this.

Hah!  Moral intuition tells most people that moral absolutism is correct.  Moral intuition is overwhelmingly wrong on matters of fact and real application.

This only really serves to highlight my point- morality is subjective, and people are idiots with the tendency to believe otherwise.

Again, my best advice:  Drop it before you get seriously pwned on this topic.

This is neither consequentialist nor utilitarianism, this is objective realism.  Morality is subjective, and we are making no judgments here, but instead deferring to the judgments of those who are relevant in the situation.

But you did not think that way at the time.  Please pay attention.

There are no universal, absolutist opinions of harm to draw from- only what is ocurring.  If we take into account what people might feel in the future, laws that allow women to walk around without burquas could be considered exploitation because some day one of those women may become Muslim, and consider it harmful.

Is any of this resonating at all?

These things are ill defined and do not exist respectively; you're speaking jibberish in attempting to rationalize some absolutist mindset.

Strongly suggested action:  Drop it.

(one of) My original points:I can point my finger at people all day, they can point theirs at me, and no one will have achieved anything with debating the issue.

We'd talk past each other nonstop!

It is?

You didn't?

You have? You do?

I myself have been exploited (the unpleasant and dishonest kind) and manipulated many times by hundreds of grown-up individuals and particularly nasty children and vicious teenagers. At age 10 (or there abouts) I even had a VERY interesting encounter with A YOUNG ADULT WOMAN in a public restroom, once!

Do I dwell on it, become frustrated with it, let it rent out room in my head, or grind an axe over it all?

NO. Why should I?

(And if you still think I haven't "Done my fucking research" because I misattribute one word, well... you need to get up a LOT earlier in the morning! )

Ok, mocking the silly bleeding hearts and "misguided idealists" aside, (even though it's a shitload of fun!)...

My original point stands about how "You can't rape the willing"

 "In a hypothetical situation where a girl is raped while unconscious without being harmed, and doesn't catch any diseases or get pregnant, has she really been hurt? That's a philosophical question of whether it's true that 'what you don't know can't hurt you'" (blake, post 37).  You are judging an action purely by its outcome. That is literally by definition a consequentialist approach to the issue. I'm also not really taking issue with a consequentialist approach to exploitation, I am taking issue with your definition of harm. All I am saying is that you can harm someone while still making them happy. You can do this because we can value other things intrinsically besides happiness. If you are making me happier but are also simultaneously taking away my freewill (or something else i value) without me realizing it (through deception etc), then I would classify your actions as harming me. 

 Moral intuition shies away from moral absolutism more than you would think. And because everyone has a moral intuition, in order to be persuasive most philosophers will address the relationship between their theories and moral intuition. Just because you may not agree with it doesn't mean it is not important. 

So people can never be mistaken? I would think that if I was trying to exploit someone, the first thing i would do would be to get them to agree with me to make them easier to manipulate. Deception is considered a form of exploitation so if your definition does not take into account deception then it is lacking. If someone is being deceived and is happier because of it, their happiness does not take away from the fact that they are being exploited especially if other things they value are being taken away. 

Let me sum up the arguments if you think i am not getting it right:

You define exploitation as "2. Selfish use; e.g. that which hurts another and benefits oneself

seriously, there are so many people on this website that are just as smart if not not smarter than you are. acting like you are the authority on everything just makes you seem like an asshole. Don't try to turn this into an argument about who is more qualified to talk about this subject; Its meaningless on an anonymous website.

p.s. i am NOT a moral absolutist. I am a virtue ethicist which is probably what you are if you think that morality is subjective. That doesn't mean that absolutists don't make some good points though.

I just don't let it hold me back. Like, at all. I'm having trouble understanding why anyone else would, however.

edit; (I'd understand it for those who have PTSD, Depression, etc)

Consequentialism can definitely take account of someone's intention to perform an act which they are aware is very likely to have harmful consequences for another person. It does support the principle that such intentions are wrong, and to be strongly discouraged by appropriate actions.

There is a danger in allowing action against someone based on assumption as to their intentions,  in that it may be based more on imagined intentions and consequences and harm which are nowhere near as likely as believed. It allows prejudice and dogma to get into the act, which may lead to unjustified punishment, ie bad consequences, harm, to a person, based on mere suspicion.

So one must have strong justification, evidence, before punishing based on assumed intentions, or it can lead to more harm than it avoids.

Judging morality of actions by their actual or likely degree of harm and/or suffering caused to another person or group of people, assuming there is no net benefit to that person, to exclude the pain inflicted as part of a medical procedure, is, IMHO, the only sound basis for ethics.

Now see, why is it so hard for people to post and still keep their cool about them, like Renee has?

This reminds me of the feminist Andrea Dworkin  who said "all heterosexual sex is rape". She helped convince women they had raped and exploited when they previously thought it was consensual.

The girls never thought they were explointed until all the moral outrage of this.

Actually, by nature, we are sexual in the womb. In utero, and all the way up to death, we tend to touch ourselves sexually. I think that's significant, no? Knowing the stigma of infancy and sexuality, though, most parents stamp out any "inappropriate" touching that little kids do.  It's understandable considering our society; I don't want to go to my friend's house and have his 3 year old touching herself in front of me. But what parents end up doing is just stamp out the activity altogether, and push THEIR stigma/dysfunction onto the kid (and of course delay any sexual honesty/communication until it's too late). Then we have entire generations of women who have never had an orgasm, or men who contemplate suicide because they can't escape their "dirty" thoughts.

I don't know what the balance is, or how to be the perfect parent that can teach a kid to be responsibly sexual at all levels of maturity, but I know we are sexual from the very beginning.

Why don't you try to think logically before stretching your extremities to your keyboard? Or how should your serotonin reuptake inhibitor induced statements be interpreted by those of us who find them nearly indecipherable? You said you can't rape the willing and kids can be willing.

Clearly people may differ in their opinions of what is exploitative, but this is not the question. Beyond what you believe to have occurred there is a separate question of what actually did occur. If you believe you were cheated when in reality you were not, your belief doesn't make you exploited. Your belief that you've been exploited must be reasonable and true, otherwise the hypothetical victim who dreams of being raped was exploited. If the belief must be true then it's true whether you are yet aware of it or not, and it is not dependent on your state of mind.

Agreed.  There must be some harm in order to claim exploitation.  The major question seems to be, what constitutes harm?

Where we are getting in problems is if the harm is not physical or financial and the exploitation is legal.  Back to the girls dancing.  They are not being harmed physically or financially.  The dance is considered legal in the US.  Their parents have to consent to the dance, the costumes, and the exhibition of the dance.  The girls are obviously enjoying themselves, going all out on the moves, faces relaxed and happy.  Are they being exploited?  I say no.

There was some comment earlier in the thread about people who change their mind.  One of the girls grows up and decides she was exploited by dancing in skimpy costumes in dance contests as a child.  She will have little legal recourse.  It was legal, she consented and her parents consented.  She will have to find some way to reconcile her adult life with her childhood.  She may feel as if she were exploited, but whether real harm was done, only she can tell us.

It is easy to determine if exploitation happened if the harm was physical or financial or if the person was a child at the time.  It gets really hard to determine if the harm was intellectual or emotional and the person was an adult at the time.

Which leads us to LiberatedAtheist.  He says he was exploited intellectually (and emotionally?) by religion as an adult.  He consented and actively participated in the religion at the time.  But he said he wanted someone to have intervened.  I say, I couldn't.  It was legal, he was consenting.  That he now feels exploited does not change the fact that he didn't feel exploited previously.

I say his belief that he was exploited is valid.  A person's beliefs are always valid to that person.  But we can not interfere with adults who consent to a legal activity.  Bringing me back to - if you do not feel exploited at this time, you aren't.  If you feel exploited later, you were.  Belief matters.

Non-consenting adults is a whole 'nother ball of wax, legal or not.  Being forced against your will is always exploitation.

I understand - and I agree to a large extent.  Religion is, however, legal.  And even if exploitative, if the activity is legal, I have no right to interfere or intervene.

I do disagree with the idea that a person must be conscious of the true nature of the other person's actions before they can consent.  Using your example, there is a third option.  The old guy may just want some pretty arm candy and he doesn't care what the arm candy thinks of him or his money. From this viewpoint, it may be the arm candy that is being exploited.  And if they are exploiting each other-they both agree, consent and are adult-what is the harm?

I don't know, I think this could get to be very complex.  Two people are on a date, they both want to have sex, but neither one probably knows all of the true nature of their own desires, let alone the other person's desires.  Seems to me there would have to be a whole lot of discussion or soul searching before anything could be negotiated between two or more people.  "What are we fixing for dinner?" could take a week to resolve.  The corporate world would come to a grinding halt.  Government wouldn't change, however.

I agree with your general thrust; that is, the exploitee is the final judge, but I don't really go for the legalistic argument. The stuff I see in Toddlers and Tiaras should be illegal, and I could make a compelling case for it. I know it's legal, so it's legal, but that doesn't mean they aren't being exploited.

I also see LA's view, too, so you two definitely are both correct in my mind. there ARE people who don't know they are being exploited while it is happening, and that is a moral and ethical problem, and not a small one. If someone was abused, but found a way to deal with it and not act like a victim, then not only are they an enlightened person, we can make the perhaps controversial argument that the trauma was beneficial in some way (life is ****** up that way). I was abused sexually as a kid, but we were both kids, making the results/implication/blame all a complicated morass. I too do not dwell or identify as a victim, or seek vengeance... but I would fully understand someone who went through the same experience and did come out with PTSD, long term damage, etc.

In other words, you are both right. A victim doesn't always have to be a victim, but someone can be an unknowing victim, and it is a problem.

Alright, I am glad we are sort of coming to an agreement.

If the arm candy wasn't aware that the guy was just using her for arm candy than yes she is being exploited. If she was aware of his intentions and accepted them then she is obviously not being exploited. In for her consent to mean anything she has to understand the true nature of what she is consenting to. If i consent to give you all of my money thinking youre going to donate it to charity but you use it selfishly then my consent is meaningless because it was predicated on a lie. If her consent to marry the guy was predicated on the lie that they were in love, then her consent is meaningless because she doesn't understand the true nature of the marriage and therefore she was exploited. Also, two people can mutually exploit each other and each case can still be considered exploitation

I acknowledge that there is an obvious epistemological problem when it comes down to punishing or handing out reparations for exploitation. Only I can know my intentions. Therefore the government is only going to be able to step in for blatant cases of exploitation. Legally I don't think it would be right for religion to be outlawed or viewed as exploitative because we are never going to be able to know for certain if it is true or not, and i think the government has no right to decide those things. However on a more personal level based on my own convictions, religion is certainly exploitative and whenever someone seems open to it, i'm going to do everything in my power to deconvert them.

I don't like the entire beauty pageant thing, not even for adults.  I make the distinction about legality because of the possible responses available to a person who is not comfortable with the activity.  The only recourse if the activity is legal and you don't want it to be is to change the law.  Just remember you will be trampling on other people's "fun hobbies", "religious freedoms", "entertainment". 

An unknowing victim is unfortunate.  It is a problem.  The magnitude of the problem will vary depending on the amount of harm done to the individual or to society.  Some days I can't fix a rainy day.

Well, my belief that religion is exploitative is predicated on the assumption that religions are factually false, that god doesn't exist. yet this is not a cold hard scientific fact. Because it is not a certainty the government has no right to legislate on it, at least in my opinion. As rational beings that are part of a society we have a responsibility to propagate rationality yet it would be overstepping the boundaries of government to allow it to outlaw something that is not definitely false. I hope that makes sense?

I don't mind doing that! I'm not big into moral relativism. If a group claimed they need to kill people because sacrificial rituals are vital to their religion, well guess what's going to happen. I would take similar tack to clitoral circumcision. A lot of our law is based on the supposition that kids cannot consent to anything, so you would only have to make the case that the beauty pageants are exploitative, or obscene... I think I might be able to make the case I think the main thing is that definition of consent. Someone can consent to themselves being defiled/exploited, independent of morality. But we don't consider a child to be capable of consent.  

Agreed. Like you said, it is hard when we try to define harm and differentiate degrees of harm, but I think we've done a fairly reasonable job so far...

Moral relativism is a whole other thread, I think.

I can see outlawing the pageants for children.  While some will hit the roof, well, I think moms who push children into these activities need to be smacked.  Which is sort of strange, because I don't have the same antipathy to the dance troupe.  Hm, I never claimed to be consistent.  How boring to be predictable----

Well, much of Blake's harangue is muddled and/or filled with "I am right because I'm smart" and ironically scolding someone for making up definitions, then going on to make a totally arbitrary condition concerning exploitation. Why must every perpetrator be "in on it" for it to be considered exploitation? An unaware abuser is still an abuser! It's also not correct to say the exploitee HAS to consider it exploitation at the time. Consider...

Let's say a guy makes up a religion. This guy is a total charlatan: let's call him H Ron Lubbard Anyway, despite him knowing the crap he's peddling is completely imaginary, his cult takes off, and hundreds of years later people are still devoting their lives to it. Can we say the priests themselves are guilty of exploitation? No, it is mostly not their fault. But the average lay person IS being exploited, even it's from a sort of regression that leads back to Mr. Lubbard. Even the priests are being exploited, because everyone is devoting precious time/energy/abstinence to a lie they did not create. This is the aspect of exploitation that can be objective, and this is where the "exploitation is only possible through the subjective lens of the exploitee" breaks down, besides the earlier example of someone not being able to comprehend being exploited, through some sort of lack of knowledge or lack of consciousness.

Likewise, a kid CAN be exploited without being aware, specifically if they are sexually abused (which they have ZERO knowledge about), and are told it's a normal, loving act.

We can apply this concept to institutions, like slavery, for example. I can imagine the average slave owner thought himself a human, while his slave was nothing more than a semi-communicative animal. Actually paying his slave to work in the fields would have been as logical as paying his cat to catch mice. Now, since he knew nothing of exploitation, can we argue then that it didn't happen? The slave wasn't being exploited? What if the slave didn't even think he was being exploited, and believed in the inferiority of his own race (mistakenly, of course)? No, he was still being exploited, being worked to death for pure economic profit, even if his overseer wasn't aware of it.

So, Blake, how can you ridicule LA's logic, when yours is so faulty? Harm is NOT necessarily an opinion (it has varying degrees that are not merely subjective). Exploitation can happen independent of opinions of the abused (especially considering the passage of time), or intention (the perpetrator might not be aware of the exploitation they are carrying out).

We live in a world of cause and effect, as you said. We also live in a world of solid objects, with actual observable actions, not the relativist ooze you seem to want to exist in.

"Harangue"... that's one I don't see used often, but it'll suffice.

"I am right because I'm smart" -attitudes like Blake's aren't that difficult to understand or... even sympathize with. It's easy to get cocky when you're smarter then 99.5% of the world population.

I think you won the thread cj.

Was he exploited?  Sure, because he feels like he was and has a rational argument for that being the case.  Should anything be done?  No, because he was a consenting adult.  Tough titty.

I don't know how the thread got so lengthy.  Maybe it is because atheists are ornery.

My qualifications of exploitation are no more arbitrary than are the dictionary definitions I referred to in constructing them.

"I am right because I'm smart"... yes, and your point?

Knowing otherwise is necessary for it to be considered a lie (and I used this less ambiguous word).  If you consider lying to somebody innately harmful, then the person must actually be perpetrating that act upon you in order to be causing harm by that metric.

It must be considered harmful in order to be exploitation.

If they (the "exploiters" ) believe it's true, they're just wrong- they aren't lying, as per the hypothetical metric of what you would consider harmful to you.

Maybe you didn't mean lying, or the general deliberate definition of deception, maybe you just meant conveying any fact that is incorrect?  If so, please be more clear on this matter.  Go ahead, ad hoc more.

Yes, unless the nature of that abuse (such as lying) requires awareness and deliberateness of the act itself in order to exist as such.

Again, did you mean conveying facts that turn out to be incorrect, and not lying/the common definition of deception which implied intent?

It is good that you can at least understand this- that is a step in the right direction.

It would only be exploitation if they considered being lied to to be inherently harmful and Mr. L. Ron was still alive.

As it stands:

1. Most people do not consider being lied to inherently harmful (see opinions of lying to children about Santa)

2. Mr. L. Ron is dead, and has nothing to gain from the continuing propagation of his lies (unless you postulate that his consciousness still exists and is benefiting); this eliminates the selfish motivation that may have existed while he was alive (money, fame, etc.).

Again, only if they had a problem with being lied to and L. was alive.  The resources they are expending may very well be considered by them to be less of a loss than their personal gain from believing.  It's their opinions that matter here.

You don't seem to be respecting this simple notion-- Not everybody shares your views, and your views on morality are not objectively right across the universe.  Stop trying to elevate yourself into some kind of 'god' of absolute moral agency.

What the f*ck?  Are you paying attention at all?

Obviously not.  Either that, or you're just f*cking with me, and you do understand, but are playing dumb.

All of your latter examples are appeals to emotion, and the majority of them I have already addressed- some of your scenarios beg the question as to whether you have read anything in this thread at all.

If anybody with an iota of intelligence is reading this and actually wants me to address any of those hypothetical situations of exploitation, I will be happy to do so for his or her benefit- at this point I seriously doubt you would be willing to understand them.

Yes, it is.

We live in a world of relatives, not because we want to, but because that's how the universe works- this is not a place of black-and-white objective universal morality that poorly conceived moral intuition would falsely suggest.  That is the kind of backwards primitive thinking that leads to theism.

Graduate from your preschool concepts of morality- it will do quite a bit to help you understand the world you live in, and be less confused about things in general.

If these kids were on the beach in non sexual bathing suits without dancing and gyrating this would not be an issue.

I don't have a problem with "age appropriate" lines. I think however "innocent" the participants parents might have thought this was, for me at least doesn't change that this is a bit too young.  I don't care if we are talking about adults or children in any state of dress, in the end no one has the right to act on their sexual impulses and then blame it on the person wearing such clothing.

Children are not adults, be the subject about sex, or quantum mechanics, drugs or religion.

There are differences in the maturity of individuals and rates which humans mature. Most certainly. But just like I woudn't buy beer for someone under 21 I woudn't let a child dress like those in the video.

It would be nice in an ideal world that humans didn't act on their impulses but state of dress is never an excuse to harm someone, especially not a child. I think our evolution bares that out that we protect our young. An unfortunate part of reality is crimes involving sex.

I think these parents don't mean for it to perceived in such a way, but I certainly would advise against it because we cant treat a child like an adult in all cases.

There are sickos out there, even in regards to adults who will act on their impulses.

I think it is OK to teach a kid that sexuality is normal, but you cant teach a kid quantum mechanics before they can do addition. I think adult sex and adult dress is not something you throw someone into anymore than you'd give a beer to a 3 year old.

Our brains as a species dont outpace our bodies. There was a time when getting to pregnancy as quickly as possible was paramount to our species evolution. The downside is that evolution has never been about good vs bad, but getting to the next generation. THAT does not justify all things sexual. It is a mere observation of evolution.

Rape also happens outside the human species. We can also observe the reaction of the female species of other animals in reaction to the force upon them and see that they are reacting negatively to the impulsive behavior to the male of that species. Crime is part of nature, but that doesn't mean crime is moral. Otherwise a female ape would not fist fight it's rapist.

No matter how innocent I think these parents who allowed this think it might be, there is still the reality that crime is part of our species even though we don't want it to affect us. I would simply advise them not to do it. This is too young.

Mind you there is a HUGE difference between an explination of human behavior and an excuse. We know that cancer exists, but that doesn't mean we want it affecting us. There are kids that grow up too quickly and get into things that screw them up because they are too young to understand what they are doing.

I can say that as a kid, even outside the issue of sex there are things I wish my parents had stopped me from doing. But I thought I knew everything. Again kids brains are not adult brains even when they start to have sexual impulses. It is a nasty reality of evolution.