Are pheromones unethical?

Pheromone Science Pheromone Theory & Molecules
21

No mones are not unethical. There do influence but they do not take away free will or the ability to choose.

They are just like any other enhancer, no different them makeup a pushup bra or whatever guys do to look hot.

Read this to understand who mones work…

What pheromones can and can't do: realistic expectations for newcomers

Causing something is done by your behavior not by phenomonal influence. Pheromones work on the subconscious to induce feelings.

If you use mones and they arouse someones interest that act of arousal is not what makes him/her have sex. Its the behavoir leading up to that moment that will do this. Mones make you feel more. Your behavior is still controlled by your conscious mind.

Tisha

22

Pheromones aren’t a date rape drug or anything. Both natural and synthetic pheromones can make us feel attracted but they cannot force anyone to act on that attraction.

There was this guy I suspect of having a signature very much attractive to me. No idea if it was natural or sprayed on. When I would be sitting next to him, I’d feel super calm and happy, and after we were separated, I’d feel down. I’d also be having sexual fantasies about him. I guess that could cause one to think it was infatuation. I knew it was not because after 2 days of not seeing him, I did not think about him at all.

He had a girlfriend so anything romantic was out of the question and he never knew about the effect. Other than me enjoying his company. If we were both single, and he asked me to see a movie or something, I’d likely respond favorably and that would be partially due to the signature. He was pretty much my type, a friendly guy with an admirable character, but a bit less attractive visually than what I usually date, so the signature could well have been the thing to tip the balance. So to that extent, I think pheros can be useful for people looking to date.

Now, just as I have hard limits about not messing with someone who is involved with another, I have hard limits about not having sex with a guy early on. Pheros won’t change that. I don’t go to a man’s apartment on my own, I live with my parents, so there is no opportunity until later. I also never drink to the point of doing things I’d regret.

I do know some girls want to wait or feel obligated to wait but do put themselves in situations that make it difficult for themselves. That’s not very clever. They may also not be deeply committed to keeping their limits, especially if it was more the idea of the parents than the girl. Enforced chastity is not something I believe in. Chastity is a beautiful thing, but it must be something you are determined to practice, it must come from within. If it does, you will avoid situations that make it very difficult.

I also know some guys put girls in such situations with the goal of having sex, and are thus taking advantage of the naiveté of those girls. I also know a subset of those guys use deception to get girls into their apartments, to get girls to drink more etc. Some guys also deceive girls about their feelings and the nature of their relationship. Some imply that they are in love, some imply there will be a future together. Guys like that know full well that the girls they sleep with may well regret doing so. There is a whole gray area between two people who really want to be together and a guy slipping a pill into a girl’s drink. Where you draw the line between ethical and unethical is up to you. It all depends on what sort of man you want to be.

23

I’m not sure why you’re bringing any of that up. It doesn’t seem to follow.

Really? When do you expect to publish? I’d be interested to hear the preliminary results of your research. Assuming you used SPECT scans or something similar and extensive fluid analysis, I’d also be curious to know who funded that.

I’m not sure I understand exactly how you’re mentally separating morality and ethics, but in a lot of your post you seem to be assuming that ethical relativism is correct. I don’t agree that the value of actions exists only in the mind of the individual. There’s A LOT of literature on the ethical relativism and the relativist fallacy, so I won’t spend more time on that particular divergence.

Concerning the allegation that this is a crusade against the use of pheromones, completely false. I’m personally experimenting with several different phermones. I simply don’t think it’s appropriate to accept that since phermones don’t reach out and put a gun to a person’s head and absolutely force them to do an act, that anything is fair game. I think their appropriate use warrants thought and examination, which is never a bad thing.

24

Again, I disagree with this. The fact that they have a direct biological effect makes them categorically different than an appearance enhancement. The implications of that are open to discussion, but it’s really a fallacy to say that they’re no different.

From a behavioral neurology standpoint (and this is a simplification,) a decision to do an impulsive behavior or not do it is essentially a contest between the limbic system (think emotions) and the frontal cortex (think inhibitions.) Chemical messengers (such as testosterone, discussed in a previous post in this thread) have been shown to affect the decision making process, in this case tipping the odds in favor of the limbic system. While the effect of pheromones on humans is not as well established as it is in animals, it is probable that they lower the threshold for certain behaviors.

Thus it’s overly simplistic to think of the cognitive process of decision making as a simple, on/off, black and white process in which an abstract “conscious mind” always reigns supreme and is beyond the influence of emotions, whether natural or chemically stimulated or enhanced.

25

Not sure how I missed this post. Interesting thoughts.

I disagree with two of them:

Again regarding “style” type enhancements vs. pheromones, while it’s entirely possible that wearing a suit could trigger an identical neuroendocrine response to that elicited by a certain phermonone, one is a conditioned response while the other is a direct biological action. It’s kind of murky how this difference actually affects the ethics of using pheromones.

To reiterate, there’s a range of substances with direct biological modifiers. For example, you could give someone a testosterone/estrogen cocktail to drastically ramp up their sex drive without their knowledge. Pheromones are obviously not as severe as that, but they do seem to fall under the the same category. Is one action ethical and the other unethical? If so, why?

Secondly, I’m inclined to agree with your speculation that a pheromone isn’t going to drastically alter firmly established emotional responses. But I don’t think it’s as cut and dry as “you wouldn’t do something unless you’d do it under normal circumstances.” We all have urges to do things that we know we shouldn’t do, whether it be sleeping with our best friend’s attractive signifant other or punching our boss in the face. Being an adult isn’t about not having urges to do things you know you shouldn’t do, it’s about resisting them.

So, how do pheromones play into that? If you get drunk or take anabolic steroids and do something you wouldn’t normally do, it’s your own fault because you knowingly chose to do the preliminary action that led to the facilitation of the undesirable action. But what if the external neuroendocrine influence is a pheromone worn by someone else rather than a substance you’ve chosen to administer to yourself? Are you as much at fault as you would be if you did the same action without the influence of pheromones?

26

First off, I think this is a good thread. Yes, it covers ground that has been covered before but a great many threads do so.

What exactly about pheromones do you believe makes them act more direct biologically than someones appearance? Does the appearance of an attractive couple having sex in a porn video have a direct biological effect on most people? I would argue that it does. Does the sound of a musical composition have a direct biological effect? The smell of Grandma’s oatmeal cookie recipe? The taste of quinine? The feel of a massage?

Pheromones, any way you cut it, are sensory stimuli. They operate on a sensory organ from outside the body. We can argue until we are blue about whether they operate through the VNO or some other mysterious organ or through the same olfactory organs that normal smells work through, but they do operate through a sensory organ.

The very words you are reading right now are acting on your endocrine and neural system in the same way pheromones do. The written word may stimulate you in a way that you are more consciously aware of than TAA does, but it’s a sensory stimulus all the same. :slight_smile:

27

Well I am not really in the mood to argue with you about it. You really cant come to a conclusion by using them a few times There are a great many things in the world that people think are unethical and if your afraid that mones are unethical dont use them. Simple as that.

I can tell you I have used them a long long time and they have never made anyone do anything they didnt want to do in the first place. If they did believe me I would be dirty stinking rich right now. I think your giving them a lot more power then they truly have.

Tisha

28

It is different because pheromones evolved as and function as an inter-individual form of communication, whereas hormones are not ever transferred from one adult person to another under any kind of normal circumstances. When a person wears pheromones he/she is merely augmenting chemicals already being put out by their body.

Your example is also not a valid comparison because giving someone testosterone and/or estrogen would have many very serious potential health implications, some permanent. To my knowledge, sniffing a little bit of extra androstenol has no long term harmful effects.

The effects of pheromones are subtle enough to provide ongoing doubt among biologists as to whether these compounds we call pheromones here are, in fact, pheromones at all. This is not the case at all with hormones.

29

“Direct” may have not have been the best word to use. What I meant is that you could raise someone in a bubble without having any human contact or exposure to media, ever, and they’d still react to a pheromone. My evidence is that laboratory animals have preset reactions to pheromones that do not need to be conditioned.

Conversely, you can condition at least some of those responses. I.e. you could probably make a rat associate the song “Rock Lobster” with sex, and trigger the same neuroendocrine response as you’d see from copulins or whatever pheromones rats use as a sexual cue. So you do have a point I guess. While pheromones are categorically different from the things you described (well, maybe not a massage or porn, but I digress,) it’s not completely clear how they’re ethically different in all cases.

One thing that comes to mind is that people aren’t aware of pheromone use, where they are aware of the other things you listed.

30

Exactly, and that is the issue :slight_smile:

The more you analyze an ethical\moral issue, or any issue for that matter, the more fundamental issues arise and the original concern becomes more and more ambiguos, leading to individual interpretation to be the only real dilemma.

In the other threads, which touched on this issue, this was always the end point which could not be overcome, and I believe, never will.

Dominick

31

I’ll have to give this more thought, but what about the fact that under normal circumstances people are not aware of pheromone use? If someone puts on a nice suit, you know they’re wearing it and can be somewhat conscious of the effect it might have on you. If a pheromone has a similar effect, you can’t really process it the same way because you’re unaware of it.

32

But to the degree that what you say above is true*, it is true for natural pheromones as well as synthetic ones. So is walking around with one’s natural pheros also an ethical dilemma?

Personally, I think people are in general very uncomfortable with the idea that, despite their best intentions, they are not 100% rational in their behavior. The idea that our behavior, moods, physiology, and emotions may be partially controlled by chemicals being put off by other people is difficult to accept.

33

Your natural pheromones aren’t an ethical issue because you don’t willfully excrete them, i.e. there are no ethical implications when there is no choice involved. I suppose you could intentionally avoid showering, but there are other side effects to that. :stuck_out_tongue:

I think you’re right about discomfort with respect to the idea of incomplete free will. The possibility that human cognition as a whole is just a sum of chemical processes is about as bizarre as you can get, and raises a whole slew of difficult issues.

Also, I suspect that others are simply uncomfortable with the possibility that they may have to acknowledge that some of their actions are unethical if they give the idea too much thought.

34

It all goes back to intent. Some people use charm and pursuasive words in deceitful ways; this doesn’t make charm and words unethical.

35

It’s funny. Usually people are arguing if they work, not the ethics.

I don’t mean to dismiss any of the spirited discussion, but pheros don’t take away free will. At best, they influence others, but nothing more.

36

Agreed. A molecule doesn’t have the capacity to be ethical or unethical. Specific uses of it do. So, in what sitautions do you feel it would be unethical to use pheromones?

Selling a product that you may or may not be aware doesn’t live up to your company’s claims?

Trying to sleep with someone whom you suspect might not sleep with you without pheromone use?

What else?

37

Are you trying to make an argument that “free will” is something that’s on or off, i.e. completely intact or completely nullified? What’s your evidence for this? What about the previously mentioned evidence that certain chemicals can lower the threshold for certain types of behavior, indicating that free will is a continuous rather than a discrete, binary variable?

38

Actually, one could change their diet, to intentionally alter their output of pheromones, and even stop wearing deodorant. In fact, one might only need to stop wearing deodorants\antiperspirants, not necessarily have to discontinue showering, to have a higher pheromone output, and therefore, affect others behaviors without them being aware.

Then the issue becomes, is it ethical for someone to have a large amount of celery in their diet, because it raises the output of androstenone, a sexual pheromone, produced by the body. Would we then have to limit our food intake to feel we are not wronging anyone?

The fact that these pheromones are synthetic, vs naturally produced, really should not be seen as all that different if we can easily change what pheromones we can emit, and how much, naturally.

Dominick

39

That’s difficult, but I suppose it’s the same if you’re doing it explicitly for the purpose of affecting someone’s behavior.

40

Now, you’ve brought this up multiple times, please, explain what it is you mean by this, exactly, because the way you phrase has it makes it appear as though pheromones are comparable to a date rape drug, as you have even made that comparison. I can see how pheromones could give you an edge, if attraction exists on some level, but to totally alter another’s type, and attribute it to pheromones, that is unreasonable.

For example, if I am in no way attracted to another person, any amount of sexual pheromones they are emitting, synthetic or otherwise, will not make me want to have sex with them, or make them more attractive to me for that matter. If anything, that would make them less attractive to me. Another example, a women is really attracted to you, but you are totally unattracted to her. Now, lets assume that same women is giving off a very sexual vibe when around you, how do you think you’d feel? :roll_eyes:

So, ethics, really only should come into play if that edge, gives you the leverage you need to ‘tip the scales in your favor’. But then, that argument is then, in that light, comparable to using PUA techniques to do the same, and that utilizes psychology, rather than molecules. It’s most certainly how that resource is used, rather than it’s existence, that makes it ethical or unethical, as you, and others, have pointed out. And that reasoning, is why it is comparable to an aesthetic change, such as a suit or haircut.

Dominick