Before reading these two posts I was always questioning this stick to what I believe if it has to do with my morals or always keep an open mind. I can see now that there are some situations where no matter how open you are to both sides your morals should always influence you in your decision making.

I think your responses are kickass. Sorry about being a busybody.

You aren't a busy body.

What you are, however, is a chick on vacation! GO! Make your own porn! *smooch*

Also, how mad am I??? Spirit is having an airfare sale that it works out that Joe and I and Em could fly to Michigan for

drum roll

$418.80

TOTAL.

FOR ALL THREE TICKETS.

For the weekend of the Con. Grrrr.

TOTAL.

FOR ALL THREE TICKETS.

Whoa!

Also, Aims, I like how you have way better sentence structure than she does. And understand the nature of paragraphs. And can capitalize.

She also spelled my name wrong.

One can use critical thinking to decide that porn is a boon to our economy, and then morally oppose it and, if they're really living according to their moral lights, find solutions to take the place of porn's economic impact.

My assistant used to come back from her break with live lobster or crab. I'd be talking with her and the bag in the corner of her office would twitch. Very disturbing, and yet I miss it.

Just like the movie Audition!

Porn Propoganda Where can I get me some of that? I'm picturing a whole new meaning for "Chick Tracts"

One can use critical thinking to decide that porn is a boon to our economy, and then morally oppose it and, if they're really living according to their moral lights, find solutions to take the place of porn's economic impact.

I completely agree that they can. But from my classmate's and my professor's posts, it reads as though they aren't critically thinking, they are resting on their morals to think that it's bad.

Aimee, both your prof and this student responding to you are making unproven assertions in their statements that porn is bad, and they are making those assertions due to personal anecdotes that are laden with emotion, all of which are the exact opposite of critical thinking.

The unproven assertion is simple -- that all porn is bad in all cases, which is not only a huge leap to make, but can easily be proven untrue with just a little bit of thinking it through (they are not only making unproven assertions, they are not following their assertions all the way through to the implied conclusions), and with a little bit of research. And, as has been previously pointed out, they are using very broad terms ("porn" "bad") without defining them, something antithetical to critical thinking.

The emotion laden anecdotes are utterly irrelevant. That's not to nullify their personal experiences, particularly that of your fellow student and her relationship, but personal experiences by nature carry emotional connotations, which critical thinking must ignore simply because the emotional baggage of claiming "my very personal experience with porn was very bad for my relationship" only reinforces the overly broad and undefined terms of "porn" and "bad" by not only not defining them, but making the incredibly faulty assumption that all porn experiences are identical to her own experience, and that they too all had identical bad outcomes.

I think you would do well to drift away from the inclusion of personal morals in this particular part of the debate, and focus on the fact that their continued use of broad, vaguely defined terms and personal anecdotes are inhibiting any critical thinking (an assertion probably backed up by whatever course text or materials you've already been using together as a class).