Status Updates From Very Practical Ethics: Enga...

I’m gonna have to send the smoking chapter to my uncle who notoriously does not allow smokers on his property and has kicked out guests who had lied about being smokers

This is wild. Apparently if you take casual sex as a serious ethical theory (sex needs not have any romantic significance in order to be morally permissible) it is impossible to explain why certain sexual deviations (like ped or necrom) are morally wrong. Are we all liberate sexual icons living a big fat lie?? Thanks Adam for the suggestion, I’ll forgive you for buying Swedish shredded mozzarella cheese

Chapter 9: Bullshit
[nothing special going on here]

Chapter 7: Language / Chapter 8: Humour
In these chapters, it felt mostly like Benatar wanted to put up defenses against "wokeism". He discusses slurs and asks us to distinguish between "usage" and "mentioning". In his discussion on humour, I'm reminded on the ancient dictum - as soon as you explain a joke, it ceases to be funny. Good discussions throughout but a little to out of depth here to be fair

Chapter 6: Consuming animals
While this chapter was good, it was all familiar stuff. Would be a very good introduction to food ethics, since it covered practically all the arguments in the literature. (TDLR: Don't eat animals if you don't have to for your own survival.)

Chapter 5: Giving Aid
A very extensive (and good) discussion of Peter Singers "Drowning Child"-thought experiment. Benatar claims that the premises of the argument are dubious and that the conclusion does not always follow. He argues that while we have duties to alleviate poverty, they are not as strong as Singer claims they are.

Chapter 4: Smoking.
Benatar argues that smokers are not permitted to smoke in the presence of non-smokers (if these do not consent). He discusses the harm argument and the offence argument, and concludes that they are both strong, but that the offence argument is actually the strongest one because it can sidestep some objections to the harm argument.

Chapter 3: Environment.

Nothing revolutionary is presented in this chapter. Unger argues that individuals with a large carbon footprint have a duty to lower their emissions but that this duty is limited if others are not also doing so. The best way of doing this? Eat plants, go car-free, don't have kids (shocker). Not particularly impressed by this chapter.

Chapter 2: Sex
Benatar at length discusses two views of the morality of sex, the romantic view and the casual view. While the latter seems to be the currently prevailing view, and can explain why promiscuitiy is not morally wrong, only the romantic view can explain the moral wrongness of things like pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, etc. It does, however, entail that promiscuity is to some ectent morally wrong.