Tag: Aporia

  • Aporia: Sex Work

    by Jason Stotts Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it. I’m working on revising chapters from Volume 2 to get it ready for publication and one helpful criticism I got on an early version of my chapter on…

  • Aporia: Erotic Character and Sexual Virtues

    by Jason Stotts Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it. When thinking about the details of what it would mean to live a good sexual life, a thought occurred to me: shouldn’t there be something like an “erotic…

  • Aporia: Dispositions

    by Jason Stotts Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it. In this Aporia, I want to inquire into the nature of dispositions. While this outline is undoubtedly not of general interest, it will be of interest to some…

  • Aporia: Pleasure

    by Jason Stotts Aporia (ἀπορɛία): an impasse, puzzlement, doubt, or confusion; a difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it. In this Aporia, I want to inquire into the nature of pleasure. In Eros and Ethos, I made the claim that: Now, I want to explicitly make the…

  • Aporia: Sexual Orientation

    by Jason Stotts Aporia (Ancient Greek: ἀπορɛία: impasse; lack of resources; puzzlement; doubt; confusion) In philosophy, a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement;  In rhetoric, a rhetorically useful expression of doubt. Sexual orientation is a confusing subject.  So confusing that some people have taken to the idea that your sexual orientation is whatever you want it to be, that whatever you self-identify as…

  • Aporia: Is Physical Beauty Itself a Value?

    by Jason Stotts I often get asked, because I advocate that sexual attraction is a response to values, whether physical beauty is a value.  The intention of the question is, of course, to see if I think that physical beauty is a sufficient value to justify sexual activity.  I’ve always thought this was an interesting…

  • Aporia: Prostitution

    by Jason Stotts I’ve been thinking about prostitution a fair amount recently and I must admit that I’m baffled by it.  On the one hand, people have sex all the time for free, so why is it different when money is involved?  On the other hand, aren’t there some things that should just not be…

  • Aporia: Threesomes

    by Jason Stotts I’ve long been interested in the moral ramifications of a threesome and for just as long I have been unable to come to any firm judgement on the issue. Frankly, as I sit down to write this, I have no idea if a threesome is moral or not; which is not really…