moral question

[smackerbox]

My name\'s Henry
I have a question.I first learned about Pheromones some one month ago and I got intrigued.I started searching information about this but I still have a doubt.A moral doubt.
What if I used this stuff and it works and I hit on a girl and because of this stuff she gets attached to me.And suppose we get married.
Let\'s say 10 years later she finds out that I \"cheated\" her and that I tricked her with this chemical.
Do you see my moral question?I would appreciate women answering too.
Thanks

[bundyburger]

When a girl wears make-up, is that cheating??
Pheromones aren\'t a magic potion. That girl wouldn\'t be \'tricked\' into going out with you. There are the more modern parts of our brain, the higher intelligence parts, involved that govern the \"primal instinct\" parts of our brain. Or are supposed to. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

They are just another way of improving body odour. Except they can\'t be smelt (kinda). They are only unfair to \'non-wearers\' when you think about it. hehehe

[bivonic]

I had these same thoughts. I think what complicates matters, & this is just my opinion is that the VNO is a 6th sense that we have that 99% of the population are unaware of. So in essense women are attracted to men wearing pheros but probably do not understand why. Other then that they THINK it is because the man smells nice. I have come to the conclusion that it is morally right to wear pheros, think of what women do to attract men, they get boob jobs, they dye their hair, wear makeup, etc... All to appeal to our visual sense. We are just appealing to their VNO sense and as bundy mentioned you cannot wear this stuff & then go pickup a supermodel, the results are limitted within your normal league of women that you could have attracted through NLP albeit good NLP.

[Elana]

Smackerbox-Those are both good answers

[Lucky]

Personally, I put it in the same category as using perfume, toothpaste, deodorant. Ease your mind, should you find the woman you want to marry while using pheromones, by not wearing them all the time - like she might not wear makeup some days. EXPOSE your true love scent!

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Nah. Personally, I think there should be full disclosure. You should exchange notarized papers disclosing the full extent of what you\'ve done to gussy yourself up and influence the other person\'s libido. List out your pheromone recipe, your cologne brand, what hair stuff you use, what soap you use, what after shave, how much extra time you spent on your hair, whether or not your clothes are new or how much time you spent choosing them, etc., any rap you memorized or lines you picked up that are not strictly original, your entire seduction routine. Otherwise you\'re just fooling people and leading their instincts astray without their knowledge.

(Joke, this is a joke.)

[nonscents]

I did think that pheromones raised serious moral issues before I used them. I did think that they were like date-rape drugs. The idea of those drugs is that the aggressor would administer the drug to the target. The target would unknowingly ingest the drug. The target would lose rational control of their faculties. The aggressor then has sex with the target, who would not have chosen to have sex had that target had not consumed the drug.

Is this a valid analogy? One could make the argument that the aggressor administers a drug (pheromone) to unknowing targets who are, because of their lack of knowledge, unable to defend themselves. The drug (pheromone), which the target has unknowingly ingested, absorbed, or inhaled then causes the target to lose rational control of their faculties. The target then has sex with the pheromone-administering aggressor, with whom they would not have had sex had they not been exposed to the pheromones.

In the date rape situation, it appears that there are two immoral acts. One of the acts is to knowingly administer a drug to the target without first informing the target and gaining the target\'s uncoerced consent. The other immoral act is to have sex with the target after the target\'s rational faculties have been impaired by the drug.

With pheromones, one could argue that the first kind of immoral act is being perpetrated. The aggressor administers a powerful substance to the target without the target\'s informed consent. The argument would be that pheromones seriously impair the target\'s judgement and decision-making abilities. One could then argue that an aggressor who takes advantage of the targets subsequent impairment would be guilty of the second kind of immoral act. The aggressor induces the target to have sex. The target would not have had sex had the target\'s rational faculties not been impaired.

It\'s pretty clear to me that I would not choose to live in a society where I knew that people were free to administer powerful mind-altering substances to me which would rob me of my considered judgement and decision-making abilites. If I knew that there were places where such surreptitious administration of such powerful substances was permitted, I would avoid such places for fear that in such places others would induce me to act in ways which were contrary to my own interests.

Now, all the above seems to me to be some real intellectual masturbation. The reason I say that is because in my limited experience pheromones are not powerful, mind-altering substances that induce others to do what I want, contrary to their own interests. If they were, I\'d want them banned.

What if hypnosis really could get people to act as instruemts of the hypnotizer. So, if I wanted to murder my enemy, I would buy a few NLP books on Ericksonian hypnosis, hypnotize my target, and plant the posthypnotic suggestion that the target kill my enemy. The target commits the murder but is wrongfully convicted as they murderer. Clearly the target is not the murderer, I, the hypnotizer, would be.

If such powerful forms of hypnosis were in existence we would either try to ban them or completely revamp our criminal justice system.

If I could really put on \'mones and get beautiful women, who normally wouldn\'t give me the time of day, to sleep with me, that would be wrong. And it would be more wrong than dyeing my hair so women think that I am more attractive than I really am, or getting a nose job or muscle implants for the same reason.

[krtel]

Nah, I think the pheromones are perfectly ethical because you know what, we\'re already producing them, we are just adding on to what we already have. Does that make sense?

- Krish

[upsidedown]

I think some people assume pheromones are more powerful than they are. The don\'t make anybody do anything they don\'t want to do. What I believe they do is make the wearer more attractive to the target. It doesn\'t force any behavior on the target, it only makes you more attractive to them....or so it seems to me.

How they act on this attraction is based on how they would react to anybody they find attractive, with or without pheromones.

At least that\'s my simplistic take on it. Then again, maybe there really is something that does more in those secret LaCroy pheromones, or some pheromones that somehow lower inhibitions...but if there is any kind of pheromone that makes women react totally against their will in crazy and uncontrollable ways, then it hasn\'t happened to me yet.

[Elana]

<Now, all the above seems to me to be some real intellectual masturbation. The reason I say that is because in my limited experience pheromones are not powerful, mind-altering substances that induce others to do what I want, contrary to their own interests. If they were, I\'d want them banned.>

I think that the majority of people would agree with you if this were the case, but because this is not the case, it\'s really a non issue.

[nonscents]

The moral objection in my post above is based on the notion of consent. Consent is a fundamental notion for most liberal conceptions of freedom. Liberal western capitalist democracies are based on the notion of agents freely consenting to engage in agreements with each other. A marraige contract would be an example of such an agreement between consenting individuals. Some feminists have demonstrated the weakness of the notion of consent. Women \"freely\" consent to get married, but the actual circumstances are such that there is enormous financial and social pressure for them to get married. So the notion of consent doesn\'t bear all the weight that liberals would put on it. Likewise socialists point out that workers consent freely to enter into a labor contract with employers. But there is a heavy element of coercion since the workers have no other means to survive except to work for some employer.

I think that there is validity to these critiques of consent. But they are not really critiques of the notion of consent, they are critiques of the degree to which consent really is realized in contemporary institutions which purport to be institutions based on freedom. These critiques say not that consent isn\'t all it\'s cracked up to be, they say that these institutions of the marriage and labor contract are not all they are cracked up to be. The critiques say that there is more coercion and less freedom than meets the eye. They are moral critiques of these institutions based on the inadequacy of the forms of consent embodied in these institutions. So I think that consent still has a lot to offer as a foundational concept for a moral critique. And insofar as pheromones try to subvert informed consent in human relations they should be subject to a moral critique.

[Wolfe]

why is this not in \"Off Topics\" where it belongs!!

[Elana]

because it is a topic related to the science of attraction

[nonscents]

I agree that mones just don\'t seem to be that powerful, so it\'s not really immoral if one uses them.

But I do think it\'s worth addressing the issue: everyone produces mones naturally, so there can\'t be anything wrong with using them.

I think the above is a flawed argument. Everyone produces steroids. But if my son\'s athletic coach told him that he must take steroids if he wants to be a member of the team, I would argue that that\'s immoral. The coach could reply, \"I am just asking your son, Mr. Nonscents, to take a substance which naturally occurs in his body anyway.\" But of course my son would be asked to take a substance in much higher doses and concentrations than naturally occur.

There is a point at which change in quantity brings about change in quality. If it were the case that using mones in concentrations many orders of magnitude greater than occur naturally causes people to lose control of their ability to make sound judgements, I would argue that mones are immoral. They would still be something that naturally occur. But when they occur in unnatural concentrations and quantities they lose the \"protection\" of natural substances.

[upsidedown]

Your comparison to the morality of a larger than natural amount of steroids is a resonable consideration..

But, I\'ve always felt like that I underproduced pheromones big time in my younger years. I sometimes feel like my body produced NO pheromones naturally when I was younger. So now I just look at wearing a larger than natural amount as just making up for lost time.

How\'s that for logic? OK, you can all shoot me down now. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]
We now return you to your regularly scheduled serious discussion.

[Wolfe]

and morals relate to attraction in what way?(other than you wouldn\'t want to date a rapist or a murderer?)

[Elana]

You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther;
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther -
Let\'s call the whole thing off !

You like potato and I like po-tah-to,
You like tomato and I like to-mah-to;
Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to -
Let\'s call the whole thing off !

[Wolfe]

Lick~

[upsidedown]

I think the pheromones cause you to be more attractive to the opposite sex. But, over time, I believe most people tend to fall in love with all the qualities of the other person, not just their looks or phero signature. In fact, looks WILL fade as you grow older as will a person\'s natural pheromone production, but the other qualities are what keep you in love and together.

I doubt there\'s ANY study indicating that people who fall out of love do so because of decreased pheromones in the other person. I just don\'t think it\'s an issue as it relates to the original premise of this thread. I think the pheromones just get your foot in the door with the other person such that they can really get to know the real you.

This is my uneducated opinion obviously. Perhaps JVK might eventually jump in with some more scientific insight on this overall question.

[bivonic]

upsidedown I think you hit the nail on the head. From my experience, it gets your foot in the door & no more. The rest is up to you. You cannot compare \'mones to a date rape drug, there are many levels of magnitude in terms of strength that separate the two. If you try to over do it with \'mones you get the classic OD which turns your target off. If I were to describe the effect of \'mones, I\'d compare it to a nice cologne, it makes a nice conversation starter. If it were the case that every woman I came across would start humping my leg when they got a good whiff of the \'mones I was wearing then it would be a different story. All it does is get their attention - no harm in that.

[marv14yag]

Pheromones =

If you were ABLE to have sex with someone before (they would allow you to) this would have them want to...) If they DO NOT want to have sex with you, or do not like you, they won\'t with pheromones or not...

So, really, wearing pheromnes you wont\' be able to DO anyone you wouldn\'t have already been able to...

The only ADVANTAGE would be that, say theree\'s 20 guys in a club...There are 10 dudes she will do....You are one of those ten...

Becuaes you are wearing pheormones, she will pick you over the other 9.

Now, here\'s another scenario....There\'s 10 guys she\'d do..You AREN\'T one of them....She\'d consider you, she\'d go, \"he\'s ugly\" (not my type, whatever reason) and than she\'d go, he also smells REALLY good, and than, look again, and say, no, he\'s ugly, and move on.

So, as you see, from what i have learned pheromones act more as to get you noticed OVER other guys, but if you don\'t have what she is looking for THEY WON\'T MATTER! However, you still may get noticed in non-sexual ways however, ie, respect and etc...

I have had other dudes open doors for me and s*** for no reason, lol.

But, as you see, pheromones get you noticed, however, her PERECEPTION WON\'T CHANGE!!!

Because there\'s the part of the brain that thinks things out....Ie, considers things, and etc..The visual part will say no, and if the VISUAL is wrong IT ALL IS WRONG! Visual would be the most imporant more than likely.;

I think that there\'s more than just pheromnally conditioned too, ie, your eyes were through evolution made to look left and right and not so much up and down, so could your ideals of women.

However, even WITH pheromonal conditioning the visual will still ourtrule the pheromones EVERY TIME.

In my opinion, pheromones aren\'t really like makeup, that will actually make you LOOK better, they are more like nicer looking clothes....Or a haircut, or, whiter teeth....etc. Because all of those things make you stand out, and look better, but if you are not someone she would go out with before, it won\'t matter so much ( a lot of times a girl would go with you but you DON\'T have those things...)

Bart

[druid]

Look guys. If I take my car and run over little old ladies -- that would be an immoral act. If I take a gun and go on a shooting spree and kill 3 small children, their parents, and a couple of innocent bystanders that would be an immoral act. If I take my car and use it to deliever meals on wheels to little old ladies that would be a moral act. If I took a gun and went hunting and feed that family of 2 parents 3 kids and let the bystanders have left overs that would be a moral act.

It is not the instruement but what YOU do with that instrument. Pheros are instruments -- IMO instrements do not have a moral value. People (or more precisely their actions and the circumstances surrouding those actions) have moral value.

People should be aware of deontigcal (sp?) (detongoly was a branch of ethics that upholds that actions withing themselves are right or wrong regardless of the circumstances -- ie LYING IS ALWAYS WRONG, etc.) thinking. I THINK I read somewhere that Hittler and his upper SS officers were fans of immual kant -- he was a big time up holder of deonotlogy(sp?).

[bundyburger]

That\'s a great way to put it! Instruments don\'t have a moral value. People do.

I\'ve gotten many hits with pheros, and now even greater hits with stronger pheros. But do you know how people I\'ve slept with who have shown a lot of intrest in me (it seems with help of pheros)??? One.
My own personal \'morals\' are not to \'USE\' someone I wouldn\'t consider as relationship material (Well that\'s simplifying it a lot). The pheros don\'t/won\'t change my mind for me about that. I could of gotten layed quite a bit lately if I didn\'t give a sh!t about the other people. But my morals stopped me.

Phero\'s are like a big flashing light on the top of your head. They help you get noticed above the crowd. They help bump you up the list of candidates (when you get the mix right for you)

Nonscents,

What about the poor guys who have big \'bouncer\' like bodys and look intimidating???
Pheromones,it seems in the case of an -none OD, can make girls (and guys) petrified of them.
He could be the nicest guy on the planet!
Would it be inmoral for him to \'fix\' his phero signature to show his friendliness????

[smackerbox]

Thanks guys
My computer measured how many words I received from my question.Altogether 172,325 words.I really did not expect such a reaction.
No, i\'m not convinced at all, at least not yet.

My favorite answer came from a girl called Elana, Thank you Elana, you make me feel very strong with your :

You say eether and I say eyether,
You say neether and I say nyther;
Eether, eyether, neether, nyther -
Let\'s call the whole thing off !

You like potato and I like po-tah-to,
You like tomato and I like to-mah-to;
Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to -
Let\'s call the whole thing off !

Words of wisdom.I\'ll call the whole thing off.

[Wolfe]

LMAO..

[upsidedown]

>>No, i\'m not convinced at all, at least not yet. <<

Smakerbox. About all I know to say now is to just suggest that you just try them. Without you having tried them, I don\'t think you can really understand just how they work. Give them a try, see what kinds of reactions you get, how they differ from your life without pheromones, and how you act on them. Then see how you feel about the whole thing. Then maybe you\'ll have a better basis to form an opinion on this.

Of course, if you want to call the whole thing off as well, that\'s you\'re call.

[belgareth]

I think Druid has hit the nail on the head. You can argue the relative morality of any product or tool. In the end, it is how you used it that matters.

[franki]

\" I think some people assume pheromones are more powerful than they are. The don\'t make anybody do anything they don\'t want to do. What I believe they do is make the wearer more attractive to the target. It doesn\'t force any behavior on the target, it only makes you more attractive to them....or so it seems to me.

How they act on this attraction is based on how they would react to anybody they find attractive, with or without pheromones.\"

I am afraid people who are against pheromones would have good arguments against it. After all they are supposed to affect people\'s brains in a very direct wayand are changing people\'s hormone levels. They don\'t do this in a \"natural\" way I think, because we apply 100-1000x as much pheromones, than we would ever put out ourselves naturally.

Franki [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[TBiRD]

I believe using mones is very moral.
Just think about it , there are men in this world who have very good mone concentrations because of genetics. They get hits from women no matter what they look like.
So if my natural-mone offset isn\'t \"of the hook\" , why shouldnt I take few extra mones in order to be equal ???
Same chances for everybody !
People who don\'t care about mones are either ignorant or they already have good results because of looks/genetics.

[Goddess]

Hell no - all\'s fair in love and war! Did you stop using pheros in the ten years since you got married? If you did was she still attracted? Are you a nice guy or a real sh*thead? Are you a good lover? Who\'s to say you\'ll still be married after 10 years? LOTS more comes into play than what happened when you met!!!!