OrangePhilosophy

I'm with you Mark. Chocolate flavored poo is the way to go.

Haha, what a great post! I'd choose the "poo" too. But then my (anti-essentialistic?) intuitions are telling me that if it tastes like chocolate, quacks like chocolate, then it probably *is*... well, not poo, anyway.

Just so I'm clear on what's involved in this thought experiment:

(1) Shape: Does the real poo look like a chocolate bar? Or like little m&ns? Or like chocolate covered pieces of fruits or nuts? Or does the real poo look like a big ol' poo? (You said it has the consistency and texture of chocolate, but what does it *look* like?)

(2) Temperature: How warm is the real poo? Is it steaming? Room temperature? Cold like yesterday's dog pool on a chilled Syracuse Lawn in early January?

Similiarly, what does the real chocolate look like? Does it look like a fresh steaming turd?

I find that I can't decide what to do until your thought-experiment gets a little more fleshed out. I suspect others are in a similar situation.

Kris, you also ask the big questions. Hmmm., it's a bit hard how to stipulate in order to make things somehow 'even'. I think both ought to be room temperature, and both ought to look like a chocolate bar. Irem told me that there's two ways to do the thought experiment, one is my way, by changing what is eaten, another her way, by changing the eater. We might give you a drug that immunizes you from poo infection and switches qualia. In the second case, the chocolate looks just like chocolate and the poo just like good 'ol poo.
But then, her way of fleshing out the experiment does favor her choice a bit (although I'd still eat the poo even in this circumstance). To be fair, my way does favor my choice a bit more.
For the moment, the best I can do is lay out those two situations and ask how you'd choose in either. If I think of a best fair way to lay it out I'll let you know, but maybe someone else can help.

It's pretty clear you've made the right decision and the shame of being called a poo eater is the only drawback. Maybe there would be more trouble with the decision if it were a modification in the eater, rather than the person (as Irem suggests). But, at first glance, I can't imagine reasons to motivate any different decision, much less some fear factor hero that, on principle, will simply not eat poo. What a praiseworthy person that would be...

Ok, including interpersonal communications in meatspace, here's the scoreboard:
poo-eaters: 7
chocolate-eaters: 1
undecideds: 1

I think I would eat the poo, even if it looked like poo. Chocolate-looking poo that tastes like chocolate seems clearly worse than poo-looking chocolate that tastes like poo. At least to me. I would rather be a poo eater than a poo taster any day.

Now back to the debate over what one should be willing to amputate for $1M . . .

(I'd go leg and not jaw but nose seems difficult...If you're worried that the motive is selfish, just think of all the good you could do with $1M.)

I'd eat the chocolate-flavored poo as well. First of all I would rather eat something new that tasted good rather than something common that tasted terrible. There are many delcious dishes out there that we've yet to try and haven't becuase the thought of what animals or plants they're made from scare us. The only problem I would have with the poo is a health realted one. However, the condition in this thought experiment assures me I won't become sick.

I would rather eat poo flavored chocolate. I believe it is all in the power of your mind. For me, it would be easier to think that I ate a really nasty CHOCOLATE, than I really ate human POO. It is all in the mind. There is a justification for every action. It depends on our choice to decide which justification or rationalization would work the best in the given situation.
Bearing this in mind, I would rather eat CHOCOLATE flavored like POO, and justify that I actually did not eat anything nasty in its tru nature. I believe that this rationalization or justification works the best for me.

I'm with Irem on this one. Reading this I kept thinking... "Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie … But I’ll never know, ‘cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherf*cker." Poo may taste like chocolate, but I'll never know because I wouldn't eat the piece of sh*t. Frankly I know that I've already eaten some things that smelled like poo, and while I've never eaten poo, I've eaten plenty of things that tasted bad. It is interesting that for so many of you the disgust of eating something that smells bad overrides the disgust of eating something that passed through someone else's colon and anus. I mean shape, number, and so on are not bad in themselves, but when they come from someone else's butt… come on?!

Connected reading would be Martha Nussbaum's Hiding from Humanity : Disgust, Shame, and the Law.

Ah, so there are some heroes left in the world. Too bad, Mark, this post has gained more popularity than your exciting post on metaphysics a few days ago! By the way, can your diagram easily be converted to something other than powerpoint for those of us who dont have that at home?

I think that POC is the rational choice, and COP is the emotional one. Both my wife and I are poo-eaters, but we're both hyper-rational and cold. Sigh.

I should also point out that this is such an obvious attempt on Mark's part to get a Wonkette link.

Yeah Chuck. I've gone Howard Stern philosophy-wise (well, I probably should have expected no response with that post, in that I went over a lot of material w/o explaining it...but, I though some folk would know more about it and reply). I'll try to convert the file. Alright, w/Matt and Ha Na we've got two more chocolate-eating heroes. I don't quite know what to make of your post, however, Ha Na.

Chuck wrote of us the chocolate-eaters as the heroes. Now, I don't know whether he was being sarcastic or not, but I noticed that there is maybe another axis of disagreement lurking here. I wonder whether there are some poo-eaters who wish they were not so weak. There are things we think would be the right (or the best) thing to do, while admitting that, knowing ourselves, we wouldn't be able to do it. Most of this probably has to do with imperfect duties. But not all. Life-saving scenarios in which you need to choose between saving your spouse or a much younger person unrelated to you may be an example. One might say that partiality is not justified, etc. and the right thing is to save the younger person. Nevertheless, one might continue, "I wouldn't be able to do it. I would save my spouse."
If some poo-eaters are in a similar position, reporting what they think they would do, even as they know fully that that's not the right choice, then I think their reasons (rationalizations?)for eating the poo do not undermine the chocolate-eaters' reasons. (And I'm sure you would agree with me that the analogoue split would not be found in the chocolote-eating camp. It's highly unlikely that one will think eating the chololate-tasting poo is the right choice but fall into the "temptations" of eating something which tastes just like poo.)

I'm wondering if those who would take Matthew's position for his reasons are those more likely to think certain uses of the human body are just plain wrong (for instance, having sex with a dead chicken). If what's wrong with eating poo is merely what's in poo and what it tastes and smells like, then there shouldn't be a problem with eating it if you could remove those features. If what's wrong with it is based in some moral or genuine objective aesthetic value to things related to the use of our bodies, then Matthew's argument makes sense.

I think a lot of people will view the general framework of the argument suspiciously if they don't think our body has some kind of moral or aesthetic value that gets diminished in certain ways if it's put to wrong uses, but that's becoming a much less popular view nowadays even if it's the only thing I've ever heard that can really ground most people's views that sex with a dead chicken is just wrong (in some objective way, either in the moral sense of 'wrong' or the popular aesthetic sense).

I have one word for you all: Staphylococcus.

I think I have to go with Mark and choose the poo.

By the way, has conversation from the graduate student lounge relocated to the orangephilosophy blog for vacation?

I think Jeremy's comment is spot on. As I see it, the only bad things about poo are the nasty properties (smell, taste, sickness) that have been removed in the present scenario. There's nothing intrinsicly bad about poo. In fact, like I said before, I'm not even sure that what's left is 'poo' at all. So the chocolate came out of someone's anus. Who cares?

The opposing camp just doesn't make any sense to me. They clearly have strikingly different values - perhaps what Jeremy describes as the view that "our body has some kind of moral or aesthetic value that gets diminished in certain ways if it's put to wrong uses". Yuk factor aside, however, I just can't see why anyone would think that claim is true.

HAve weighed into this one over on my blog and I am a chocolate eater all the way.....

The one motivation I've seen for this view is that we already seem to hold it with certain things. The sex with a dead chicken example is one sort of thing that many people think is morally wrong or at least objectively bad in an aesthetic sense. Yet there's no harm that can be attributed to the chicken, since it's dead, and presumably any harm to the human already has happened, or they wouldn't be considering such an act.

Another example is the practice in certain parts of Asia (China, I believe?) of eating parts of aborted human fetuses. Apparently this is considered a delicacy by some people. It causes no harm, since the fetus is already dead, but this kind of cannibalism just seems to many to be an abuse of the human body.

Die-hards against this sort of view aren't going to be convinced, of course. Those opposed to intuitionism probably won't accept the very business of using such examples, and some might resist the particular examples by pointing out that people actually do both and so some see it as fine, but most people do think there's something wrong with both actions.

A much more philosophically productive question than the poo / chocolate question is the question of whether it could possibly be philosophically productive to contemplate the poo / chocolate question. Another much more philosophically productive question is the question of whether my first statement is true. A slightly less philosophically productive question is the question of whether my second statement is true. An interesting exercise would be to extend such statements to a quantity approaching n and to graph the philosophical productivity of each one. Would such a graph approach 0 arithmetically or geometrically? Is contemplation of the previous question more philosophically productive than the poo / chocolate question? Are any blog readers still reading to this point in this post? If so, are they more likely to be COP-eaters or POC eaters?

Both Chris and Adrian,
You ignored my stipulation that it won't make you physically ill. If it wasn't for that, I'd eat the poo-flavored chocolate as well, as would probably most folk.

But, just what properties of Poo are left so that we can confidently say it is still poo?

If poo is transformed into chocolate thats a different perspective

Here's a question that Jeremy just grazed in his first comment, but I think no one else has yet posed.

If eating the poo had all the beneficial effects of eating chocolate, and none of the negative effects of eating poo, would there even be a negative stigma associated with eating poo?

No, this isn't postulating that all poo would be like this, just some special poo.

It's definitely sui generis poo (as a friend of mine coined it). And not chocolate transubstatiated poo. I've seen some religious-based arguments hinted at here for COP, but remember, Jesus said it's not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him impure, but what comes out of it (Matthew 15?)...
Anyways, I think I've probably had enough of all this, and I'll wash my hands of it...

I don't even like chocolate that tastes like chocolate, but oh well, I'll answer as if I did.

I sincerely believe that if poo that tastes like chocolate actually tasted like chocolate, then nobody would ever have anything against eating poo. Lets face it people tend to prefer what tastes good then what doesn't. So the only thing that could be held against poo that tastes like chocolate, the stigma that poo is disgusting, would not exist, therefore eating poo would be as normal as what we actually call eating chocolate. Stores would actually sell milk poo, dark poo, Belgian poo, etc. and everybody would love poo, not caring whether it came from a person's anus or not.

This is why I would prefer eating the poo that tastes like chocolate.

I'd choose chocolate flavored poo because I know it's just a weird tasting chocolate, but it's food. I wouldn't eat the poo even if it tastes good since I would get nauseas only by thinking I'm eating human crap.

Stacy, this would be special poo. Most poo would still be the way it normally is. I don't see how this would remove the stigma.

I would choose the chocolate flavoured poo for various simple reasons:

1) I would rather prefer the taste of chocolate than that of poo in my mouth.

2) The poo will resemble the texture of chocolate, and therefore will be more similar to what my mind visualizes at chocolate.

3) The idea that the chocolate was transfered through someone's digestive system does not truly sicken me. It might be human waste, but if it will not make me sick, and will taste like chocolate... I have no true problem with it.

4) If the poo looks and tastes like chocolate, it would be much easier for my mind to accept it as chocolate. Minds can be manipulated, and like Stacy said... if poo would taste like chocolate, we would all love poo. It might be "special poo", Jeremy... but humans tend to accept what tastes good, and not think of where it came from. Most humans ignore the fact that animals are murdered viciously in slaughter houses for thier everyday meals... so I am sure that most humans would find it rather easy to ignore the fact that it came out of someone's anus... as long as it has the taste and the texture of a familiar and loved food.

So... bring on the poo!

I would eat the chocolate flavored poo. As I am a person who adores chocolate; the sensation and flavor of chocolate. So if the poo will have these charactersitics, why should I choose something that is chocolate but does not taste or feel like it really is.

I would definitely eat the poo tasting chocolate. I prefer a thousand times more to eat the chocolate then the actual poo. Whats the point of eating chocolate flavored poo, its still going to make anybody sick because even though your tongue does not know it is poo your mind does and I strongly believe that the mind controls more than a tongue dooes; therefore it the poo would still taste bad for me. On the other side if I eat a chocolate I will have in my mind that it is chocolate and not poo consequently, it would not to be as bad!

I would eat the chocolate flavored poo. I prefer to have a good taste in my mouth and convince my mind that I ate chocolate. There is no way that I am going to try the poo flavored chocolate because it will be a nasty taste and I cant trick my mind when the taste in my mouth is horrible.

Elisa, don't forget that we've stipulated that neither will make you (physically) sick. As for any mental side-effects, that ties in nicely with my next point...

Irem asked: "I wonder whether there are some poo-eaters who wish they were not so weak."

I'd like to turn this around, and ask whether there are some chocolate-eaters who wish they were not so irrational.

It strikes me as plausible that some chocolate-eaters might be like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The victim of OCD is irrational: they feel a compulsive need to (say) wash their hands for a whole hour, despite knowing that - rationally speaking - this is a waste of time, and so not good for them. But they do it anyway.

I wonder if some chocolate-eaters might be like that? They just can't bear the thought of eating "poo", even though they know (rationally) that it would do them no harm. So they suffer through the poo-flavoured chocolate, an awful experience - but they do it anyway, because their disgust is so overpowering that they can't help but be irrational in this case.

yuhuuuuuuu Pooo is the way because i dont like to know what poo taste like, i hope is not (diarrhea) because it would me a chocolate exposed at sun and therefore is melting chocolate ajjaajjaj just joking i would eat the poo.

Richard,by sick I meant like emotionally sick...I think that I would feel like vomiting just by the fact I am aware that I am eating poo despite its flavor.

It is really difficult to decide whether to choose the poo or the chocolate, because if I decide in either of them I am admitting that I am capable of eating poo. If a don't have a choice, and I will have to choice between one of them I would decide on the chocolate that tastes and smells like poo because I know exactly what I am eating and my mind will not play tricks on me letting me feel bad only because I knew that I ate poo.
Another thing is that when I am eating it I would grab my nose so that I wouldn't breathe from it and then I would eat it and then drink a cup of orange juice.

Another thing is that when i am eating it i would grab my nose so that i wouldn't breath from it and then i would eat it and then drink a cup of orange juice.

A few things to note at this point. One, I am glad to be getting some feedback, even though this is somewhat jokey (if you look at some of the links to this post via technorati, you'll note that some people don't realize that the 'I ask the big questions' title is sarcastic, or that this venture might be a bit of fun (vs. serious philosophy), which it is...it took me five minutes to write it). Two, it's some very weird feedback. Third, and most importantly, I still have yet to hear one serious argument in favor of COP over POC (although they are hinted at by some). I have bothered to do some work to motivate POC, and have arguments for it. I am interested to hear about people's reactions, since that was one of the things I asked for. I do think that poll reactions in this regard are somewhat interesting. But, I am really interested in hearing what the actual principles are that undergird COP. I realize that it seems degrading to choose the poo-eating, I think either result is degrading, that's why none of us, I presume, would choose either option in lack of being forced to. But, what is the deeper reason for choosing the chocolate, other than just saying the poo is gross? Of course it's gross, it's crap, for God's sake. But, why is it that genuinely eating crap but forsaking all the bad consequences of eating crap is somehow worse than not eating crap but suffering some of the bad consequences thereof? No one's offered me anything in the way of a substantive reply. While I don't mind mere poll results, I would hope that those COP'ers would have something interesting to say. By 'interesting', I mean, what do you have to say to me that should make ME change my mind, rather than reporting your own attitudes? What exactly am I doing wrong by choosing the poo? Because, you know, it's pretty yummy, whereas that chocolate you COP'ers are eating tastes awful.

It's definitely sui generis poo (as a friend of mine coined it).

OK, question withdrawn. Still, it raises the question: if eating the poo had all the advantages of eating chocolate and none of the disadvantages of eating poo, and if the poo had all the external properties of chocolate . . . then who'd know? Down with COProphagia, I say.

OK, here's my COP argument:

The scenario presents me with a unique opportunity to safely learn something I didn't know, namely, what poo tastes like, and without my needing to actually taste poo. Am I the only person reading all these responses and thinking that everyone seems a bit too sure that "poo flavor" is a horrendous thing? Well, maybe it is, or maybe you all know somehting I don't, and I'm not about to investigate this empirically, but that's exactly because nobody is offering me poo-flavored chocolate!

I'm not saying I'd eat a lot of it, maybe just a little square. I don't hold out much hope that I'd grow to like it, in the way I've grown to like some pungent cheeses which initially repulsed me. Still, I remember many instances of intentionally sniffing things that I knew I would find disgusting, like H2S. I think we are more comfortable sniffing a disgusting thing than putting it in our mouths, because we might be wired up to doubt the safety of eating things that appear disgusting. But here, there is no reason to worry because it's just chocolate with some unusual flavorings. I can experiment with just a (probably) disgusting flavor, not with a (definitely) disgusting substance.

On the other side: It's nice to be assured that I wouldn't get sick from the flavored poo, but I worry that this could be meant as a description of some foreknowledge, not as a reassurance about the harmlessness of the poo itself. Consider people who really eat poo (their own, their lover's, or whatever). Most of the time, they don't get sick. That doesn't mean they ate some sort of innocuous poo. They just got lucky. So I'd worry the chocolate-flavored poo I'm being offered has the same powers to make me sick as ordinary toilet-poo, but that it's simply known that it won't. If that's how it was, I'd stay away from that sh*t, that's for sure! (Hmm, saying why I would is not so easy. Interesting!) And I hope that it would be like this, otherwise this thought experiment loses some bite: The POC people would be eating flavored poo which will potentially make them sick but actually won't. The COP people are eating chocolate which has some nutritional value. Now, if you tell me that the POC people are really eating some sort of sanitized poo which couldn't even potentially make you sick, I'll say that I probably eat such stuff all the time. I mean, what WASN'T poo at some point?

I'd like to invoke modal skepticism at this point and say that I'm not sure I can conceive a world where genuine poo tastes like chocolate or vice versa. Thank God.

hmmmm, anybody ever wondered whether this question is at the bottom of the obesity health crisis?

get it?

For those who haven't gotten enough of the poo-eating, Richard's got some more on this here:
http://pixnaps.blogspot.com/2005/01/chocolate-flavoured-poo.html

Lemma A
1. Deliberately choosing to eat human poo is shameful (prudential considerations aside).
2. If (1), then one should not eat human poo.
3. Therefore, one should not eat human poo. [from 1 and 2 by modus ponens]

Lemma B
4. One should never deliberately choose to acquire phenomenological knowledge of the taste of human poo (prudential considerations aside).
5. If (4), then one should not eat chocolate made to taste like human poo.
6. Therefore, one should not eat chocolate made to taste like human poo. [from 4 and 5 by modus ponens]

Lemma C
7. One must either eat human poo made to taste like chocolate or eat chocolate made to taste like human poo. [primary assumption of the thought experiment]
8. If (3) and (7), then one should eat chocolate made to taste like human poo.
9. Therefore, one should eat chocolate made to taste like human poo. [from 7 and 8 by addition and modus ponens]

Lemma D
10. Therefore, one should not eat chocolate made to taste like human poo AND one should eat chocolate made to taste like human poo. [from 6 and 9 by addition -- Contradiction]
11. Premises (2), (5) and (8) are (or seem to be) necessary truths.
12. Therefore, premise (1), premise (4), or premise (7) is false. [from 1-10 and 11 by reductio and disjunctive syllogism]

Now, Max tries to invoke modal skepticism in order to deny premise (7). If one cannot make chocolate flavored poo or poo flavored chocolate, then the thought experiment cannot even get off the ground. However, the possibility of making such substances is not epistemologically remote – as modal skepticism on any particular issue requires – since we can make things like dirt flavored jelly-beans and the like. For example, see the link on vomit-flavored jelly beans:
http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/3224/details/
If we can manufacture these sorts of things, I don’t see any real problem with making poo-flavored chocolate. So, as I see it, the real contest is between premises (1) and (4).

While most everyone seems to be working with the assumption that (4) is true, David Horacek seems to argue that premise (4) is false. Jeremy Pierce alludes to a way of arguing for premise (1), but all the poo-eaters would (presumably) have to reject any argument in support of this premise. As for myself, my intuitions go back and forth (almost from hour to hour). How much of the poo or chocolate must one eat – and should that make any difference?

Sloan, thank you for providing this Kantian antinomy. I guess we cannot know the poo-an-sich. Again, thank God.

Although we cannot know the poo as it is in itself, we can know the poo as it appears.