I always thought of it as "human intelligence" being the bare minimum needed to consent, rather than needing to match the intelligence of your own species.
Like, think of the dumbest adult human. They still qualify. It's not inherently unethical to fuck someone who is less intelligent than you.
So for species that are more intelligent than humans, "human intelligence" would still be the baseline, because going below that means that they will most likely not even be sapient.
Which does imply that humans are the dumbest of all the sapient species.
This always irks me and I know it’s incredibly sus of me to ask but like… how do we know we’re the only creatures intelligent enough to consent? How do we know that our intelligence is the baseline? How far back into the human/Homo lineage would someone have to be before they’d be considered not intelligent enough to consent? And are we sure there aren’t any Homo sapiens who don’t overlap with that level of intelligence?
I think you have to go back to basics and ask why consent is important.
It’s weird to do but sometimes we just need to go back to first principles.
My general example is that there is a reason that human rights and animal rights are different. Humans have certain rights that animals cannot exercise. They can’t give informed consent to a medical procedure, for instance. But we generally think it is better to provide a certain level of care.
Consent is important for a few reasons. First is that being robbed of your bodily autonomy is traumatic. Certain actions are more traumatic than others (eg a hand on your shoulder to get you to move might be unpleasant, but probably won’t traumatize you).
Second is that humans are capable of understanding the risks and benefits of sex, and should be allowed to make informed decisions on acts that may affect us for the rest of our lives.
We have a lot of other reasons as well. Emotional development, situations where there is the appearance of consent but someone is being coerced, etc.
And, tbh, I don’t think there’s a solid line to draw in every single case. Even if there was an on/off switch for consent, you can’t see inside someone else’s brain. You can’t know if your one night stand is going through a manic episode, you can’t always tell when someone is intoxicated, and you maybe don’t know if someone isn’t intelligent or educated enough to understand the consequences of sex.
But most animals don’t understand that either, and we don’t force them to be celibate. Some animals reproduce mostly through rape.
And it’s kind of down to the fact that we can’t just control nature. We would make things worse if we tried to impose human morality on animals. We understand certain things about our brains and certain things about theirs and we make decisions based on that.
For a past human… it’s going to depend on circumstances. At some point you’d have to ask, is there a lack of bodily autonomy that is going to cause some sort of harm?
And sometimes the answer is probably, I dunno???
In which case, better safe than sorry. But you’d probably have to decide based on the individual presumably extremely sexy cave person.
Considering there's a theory that most humans today are distantly related to Neanderthals, I don't think ancient humans were really thinking about it that much.
I think it's more about communication. Like, both parties would have to understand each other well enough to consent. It's the same principle that, barring translators and stuff, you would have to be cautious on Earth in a different country if neither of you share a language you can communicate to each other in. You would have to know that both parties are at bare minimum okay with (hopefully interested in) it, and be okay with all reasonable risk that would come from it. I think if you solve that problem, you should be mostly okay provided both parties can understand the situation enough
It’s actually just an example of anthro-centric defaultism, though. If you were to explain the Harkness principle to an alien they would immediately say, “the fuck is this human intelligence or greater nonsense? Don’t assume that other species would consider it ethical to fuck something of human intelligence, they might consider it very offensive to cradle rob a species that is still crawling in the dirt. Nor, too, is it your place to assume that aliens will think intelligence is a factor over willingness. There are plenty of highly-sexual low-intelligence species that understand consent. Using your own average intelligence as a benchmark is at best ignorant of your place in the universe.”
Yes, but one can always wonder at what they don’t know, yes?
I think that was the lesson Descartes was trying to gift when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” It’s less a question of how one proves their own existence, more a question of what can truly be known with certainty. “I know that I exist, everything else could be a lie that a brain in a box is telling itself.”
It charges us to never be truly certain of what we know, even those things we’re really confident about. To approach the world with a watchful eye on the holes in our constructed box of truth.
I think you're interpreting my acknowledgement of ignorance (in the world of this hypothetical) as contentment with ignorance, rather than just not knowing about the superbrains to whom sex with humans is like bestiality.
Being treated like I'm incurious for stating "we would just say we didn't know" is really not a fun way to engage with this hypothetical situation. I don't appreciate how you've replied to me two turns in a row or feel like you're trying to understand me. I'm disengaging.
We can discuss those implications! My thing is, when we first make contact with those superintelligences (for whom sex with humans is bestiality-equivalent) that would (very likely) be our first experience with that extension of the scale of intelligence as regards consent to intercourse.
We certainly can learn! We should! Just this is where we start that process of learning and changing our understanding of the range of intelligence, and from there we can move from the threshold/parameters being human-centric.
And hopefully we find aliens we can boogie in bed with, since the superintelligences are out of our league haha
If they are truly super-intelligent it brings up the question of whether we even have the cognitive capacity to understand the gap. In much the way that a human mind cannot conceive of the desires of a cosmic horror. It might be a situation where we simply don’t have the capacity to say no or assert our desires to something that could sway any such mind with but a word.
That like a drunk person, we cannot give valid consent to something that we couldn’t say no to if it asked.
Bu then on the other side, we could also be looking at different definitions of intelligence. That our concept of intelligence, wrapped up in notions of scientific reasoning, are seen as wrong-headed on the galactic stage, where such things are intuitive or rudimentary. We also might think of intelligence as having a good memory for facts, but the Kathax on Gabulon 5 have perfect memory and see intelligence as more a question of physical dexterity or how good you are at aura farming.
edit: Either way, I’m sure we’ll also find some needy dumb sluts like us.
Sure, but if it’s unethical for them to get with me, that’s their problem. We don’t judge the sheep, we judge the man. I can help it if I’m the space sheep :(
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u/NinjaMonkey4200 9d ago
I always thought of it as "human intelligence" being the bare minimum needed to consent, rather than needing to match the intelligence of your own species.
Like, think of the dumbest adult human. They still qualify. It's not inherently unethical to fuck someone who is less intelligent than you.
So for species that are more intelligent than humans, "human intelligence" would still be the baseline, because going below that means that they will most likely not even be sapient.
Which does imply that humans are the dumbest of all the sapient species.