Right Reason: Reply to Sullivan on natural law

Andrew Sullivan, in his new book The Conservative Soul, offers some criticisms of natural law arguments for traditional sexual morality. Robert P. George is one of his specific targets, and I am another one. Sullivan quotes some passages from one of my Right Reason posts on natural law from May of 2005, and seems to think that George's arguments and mine are more or less the same. As Ramesh Ponnuru points out over at The Corner (as did David Gordon in his review of Sullivan's book for The American Conservative), this is a mistake. The version of natural law theory that I described in the posts in question is the traditional sort familiar from pre-Vatican II manuals of ethics and moral theology. George, as is well known, follows Germain Grisez and John Finnis in rejecting this approach in favor of what has come to be called the "new natural law theory." (I mentioned the difference between these approaches in the very post Sullivan quotes from, so it is odd that he does not take note of it.)

The more traditional natural law approach I described takes Aristotelian essentialism, as interpreted within the Thomistic tradition, to be crucial to a proper understanding of natural law. In particular, it holds that human beings instantiate an immutable essence, form, or nature; that they have a natural end (namely the beatific vision) and that their various distinctive capacities (from reason to sexual reproduction) also have natural ends or final causes; that they possess immortal souls; and that taking note of these metaphysical facts about human nature is essential in determining the grounds and content of morality. By contrast, the “new natural law” approach eschews any appeal to these specific (and obviously highly controversial) metaphysical claims, and seeks to reconstruct natural law reasoning in a way that needn’t involve rejecting most of the standard metaphysical assumptions operative in contemporary intellectual life, as, of course, anyone committed to classical Aristotelian or Thomistic metaphysics necessarily must do. (I do not say, by the way, that the theory does not make any metaphysical assumptions at all - “new natural law” theorists seem sensitive about this charge, which is indeed false - but rather that they do not make the particular metaphysical assumptions just mentioned.)

This is by no means a minor disagreement, a mere family squabble that can be ignored by someone concerned only to present the natural law position for a popular audience. For criticisms of the one approach do not necessarily apply to the other; indeed, part of the point of the “new natural law” is to evade the standard criticisms made of the traditional version. As Ponnuru points out, many of the things Sullivan says about George’s arguments really apply only to the traditional version of natural law I discussed in my posts, a version George himself firmly rejects. So, for example, Sullivan says that natural law theory holds that an “ought” can legitimately be derived from an “is.” This is correct as a description of traditional natural law theory but incorrect as a description of the “new natural law theory,” which appears to endorse the Humean contention that any such derivation must be fallacious. (From the point of view of traditional natural law theory, this just assumes, quite mistakenly, a modern mechanistic conception of nature. For on an Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of nature, since goodness is convertible with being, there is no gap between what a thing is and what is good for it, and thus no necessary gap between “is” and “ought.” “Value” is built into the very structure of “fact.” See David Oderberg’s lecture on “The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law,” which I linked to in a previous post, for a defense of this traditional metaphysical view against the “new natural law” approach.)

In any event, Sullivan’s objections fail even when directed against the traditional version of natural law, as we will see in what follows. (A more thorough description and defense of the theory is to be found in a series of earlier posts, including the one Sullivan cites. See here, here, and here. Many questions that might be raised by what I say below are dealt with in detail in those earlier posts, and in my replies to various readers’ remarks in the comments sections of those posts.)

Biological function and morality

Though Sullivan acknowledges that I took note in the post he cites of the obvious twofold biological function of the penis (to urinate and to deposit semen into the vagina), he nevertheless seems to think that natural law theory assumes that every organ or biological capacity must have only one function, or at least only one “core” function. Accordingly, he also seems to think it is somehow problematic for the natural law approach to sexual morality that “urination is far more common than ejaculation” (p. 83). For, he argues, “while a human male can be sterilized and render the penis incapable of producing semen, he cannot easily relinquish the urination function if he is to survive. In that sense, the penis is really for expelling toxins, not making babies” (ibid.).

There are several problems with this argument. First of all, and most obviously, there is simply nothing in natural law theory that requires that any organ or capacity can have only a single purpose. On the contrary, it is perfectly possible for something to have more than one natural purpose. (Why wouldn’t it be?) In the case at hand, the answer to Sullivan’s objection is clearly that the penis is “really for” both “expelling toxins” and “making babies.”

Second, when something does have more than one natural purpose, it does not follow that this poses any urgent need to discover which is the “core” purpose, as long as there is no obstacle to fulfilling both purposes. This is obviously true in the case at hand, since men have no difficulty both urinating and copulating. The point is unaffected by the fact that it is not possible to do both of these things at once, since there is nothing in natural law theory that has the absurd implication that if you currently have both an urge to urinate and an urge to make love to your wife, then you had better find a way to do both at the same time unless you can determine which is the “core” function. For the theory doesn’t necessarily require that you follow any such urge immediately or even at all; it requires at most only that, when you do follow such an urge, you do so in a way that does not frustrate the natural end of the capacity in question. (If you’re wondering, my advice in the present case would be to think about baseball for a few minutes so that you can go urinate first.)

Third, even when there is an obstacle to fulfilling both purposes at once, traditional natural law theory holds that there are principled ways of determining which one should take precedence. For example, while it would be immoral to remove one’s ovaries so as to avoid pregnancy, it would not be immoral to do so because they have become cancerous and threaten one’s life. For even though removing them would destroy one’s reproductive capacities, the proper functioning (and thus continued existence) of the whole organism of which these capacities are a part is prior to the proper functioning of the part itself. (And of course, in this case the part itself is no longer properly functioning anyway.)

A fourth point is that, contrary to certain standard objections to traditional natural law theory, there is nothing in it that requires that it treat all biological functions (such as urination and reproduction) as of equal moral gravity in the first place. Some critics allege, for example, that the theory has the absurd implication that an innocuous action like removing the earwax from one’s ears must be immoral, since it presumably frustrates nature’s purposes in lining the ear canal with wax.

Now it is true that the theory would have the implication that such actions are contrary to the good of an organism, in the most general sense of “good.” For if nature gives us a certain capacity, then (the theory says) it does not do so in vain, so that to frustrate it must surely be in some way contrary to our flourishing. And that is in fact so in the present example: earwax serves an important function, and repeatedly removing it before it has a chance to coat the inside of the ear canal can result in irritation of the ear canal, greater propensity to ear infection, and the like.

Still, the traditional natural law theorist needn’t conclude from this that the overly enthusiastic Q-tip user is guilty of serious moral failing, or even any moral failing at all. He could say, for example, that while it might not be prudent regularly to remove the earwax from one’s ears, and while prudence is a virtue and imprudence a vice, the imprudence involved in this case is so minor that it barely detracts at all from one’s overall moral character. Alternatively, he could even argue that there is no genuinely moral failing here at all (even a minor one), but merely an activity that might be inadvisable in some trivial and non-moral sense.

Now, how could the traditional natural law theorist take either view, consistently with his commitment to the idea that it is always contrary to our good to act in a way that is contrary to a natural capacity or function? The first thing to keep in mind is that not all matters of goodness are matters of morality. To take an obvious example, while it is part of the good for a squirrel that it gather nuts for the winter (or whatever), a squirrel that fails to do so is not immoral for the simple reason that, not being a rational agent capable of free choice, it is neither moral nor immoral in the first place. It is only where the good for a free, rational agent is concerned that morality enters the picture.

Even then, though, it doesn’t necessarily follow that every aspect of what nature determines is part of the good for a free, rational agent entails a serious moral obligation. In the case of human beings, what is most crucial to the good for them, and thus to their moral obligations, are those elements of their nature that set them apart from other kinds of thing. Man is a rational animal, and a free one. That sets him apart from every other animal. Man is also a social animal, where “social” connotes not just the sort of grouping behavior that characterizes birds, bees, apes, and wolves, but the capacity for a kind of interpersonal interaction, and the cultural behavior and institutions that this generates, of which non-rational animals are incapable. Those aspects of our animal nature that participate in this rationality, freedom, and sociality are thus of crucial moral significance, while those aspects that do not so participate lack the same level of moral significance.

Hence sexual reproduction - tied as it is in human beings (but not in other animals) to a set of desires possessing a highly complex interpersonal intentional structure (as described in books like Roger Scruton’s Sexual Desire), associated with an intricate network of social and cultural norms and attitudes, and crucial to the well-being of society and the human race as a whole - has overwhelming moral significance. By contrast, earwax production and urination have no such similarly crucial links to our rational and social nature, and thus are of far less moral significance, if any. It is plausible, then, that even on a traditional natural law approach to morality, a failure to use these latter capacities in accordance with nature’s intentions does not necessarily constitute a serious moral failing, or even (at least in trivial cases) a moral failing at all. (Yes, the theory no doubt would have the implication that someone who for some odd reason refuses ever to urinate, and thus either bursts his bladder or in some other way ruins his health, is guilty of a serious moral failing insofar as this threatens his own well-being or that of people who depend on him. But common sense would agree with this specific judgment, so this is hardly a problem for traditional natural law theory.)

No doubt all of this raises many questions, but the point for now is just that it is a mistake to assume (as Sullivan seems to) that someone committed to traditional natural law theory must regard every biological function as having equal moral significance. Hence, even if there were a conflict between biological functions in the case Sullivan cites (as there is not) this would not necessarily pose a problem for the traditional natural law approach to sexual morality.

“Nonprocreative sex”

Sullivan offers several more direct objections to the natural law claim that it is immoral to engage in sexual acts while frustrating their procreative function. None of these objections is very impressive, and some of them seem to rest on a poor understanding (or at least poor exposition) of both traditional natural law theory and Catholic teaching.

For example, Sullivan describes a “Catholic married couple who live their lives according to natural law in every respect” as one who “never engage in any sexual act that does not result in the penis depositing semen in a vagina” (p. 84). If what he means by this is that the Catholic Church or natural law theory forbids acts like fellatio and cunnilingus even between married people, he is mistaken. What is forbidden is taking fellatio to the point of orgasm, or taking cunnilingus to orgasm outside the overall context of a completed act of intercourse; it is not necessarily forbidden to indulge in them as foreplay to an act of intercourse that results in ejaculation within the vagina. Perhaps Sullivan realizes this, but if so he should have expressed himself more clearly, since he is bound to give unwary readers the impression that natural law and Catholic teaching are more restrictive than they really are.

He also expresses himself badly when he gives the impression that the Church and natural law theory hold that after pregnancy, a married couple need “to refrain from any sexual activity in those nine months, to avoid activity ‘contrary’ to nature” (ibid.), a teaching whose justification he says is “hard to see” (p. 85). It should be hard to see, since neither the Catholic Church nor natural law theory actually teaches any such thing. Both allow that sex between a husband and his pregnant wife is perfectly legitimate. Again, it may be that Sullivan realizes this, and that what he is really saying is that even though the theory does allow this, it cannot do so consistently with its prohibition on contraception. And again, if so, he should make this clear, because readers unfamiliar with Catholic teaching or natural law theory would definitely get a misleading impression from Sullivan’s text.

In any case, the main problem with Sullivan’s objections to natural law theory (whatever specific claims he thinks it is committed to) is that he relentlessly equivocates on the expression “nonprocreative sex.” For example, he says that “exclusively procreative sex [insofar as it leads to pregnancy]… naturally necessitates continual nonprocreative sex [if couples were to indulge in it after pregnancy]” (p. 84). What precisely his argument is supposed to be isn’t clear. But if we interpret him charitably, and in particular if we assume that he realizes that natural law doesn’t rule out sex during pregnancy, then his aim seems to be to show that natural law theory involves a contradiction, since it both forbids nonprocreative sex before pregnancy, but allows it after pregnancy.

The problem is that “nonprocreative sex” in the first case (i.e. the kind of sex natural law theory forbids) means “sexual acts that involve the intentional frustration, on the part of the one performing the acts, of the natural function of the sexual organs,” while “nonprocreative sex” in the second case means “sexual acts that do not in fact lead to pregnancy.” Natural law theory does indeed forbid the first kind of “nonprocreative sex” and allow the second, but precisely because the senses are different, there is no contradiction. The possibility of contradiction would exist only if the theory both forbade and allowed “nonprocreative sex” in the same sense, e.g. if it forbade the use of contraceptives or ejaculation outside the vagina before pregnancy, but allowed them afterward.

In fact, of course, the theory forbids the use of contraceptives or ejaculation outside the vagina even during pregnancy, and indeed even if the wife is known to be infertile. One reason for this is that in the latter cases no less than the case of sex before pregnancy, the acts in question involve an intentional frustration of the function of the sexual organs, which, if it is intrinsically immoral at all (as the theory says it is) is immoral even when one knows that the sexual organs will not in a particular case achieve their natural end anyway. What matters is that one does not oneself try to do something that frustrates the function - that something outside one’s control is going to frustrate it anyway is irrelevant.

(Yes, there is more to it than this - I said this is “one reason” why the theory holds the acts in question to be immoral, but, as my remarks above about the earwax example indicate, the mere frustration of the biological function is by no means the end of the story. There are also the psychological and sociological effects on attitudes toward sex that are bound to follow from indulging in acts that are intended to frustrate natural processes for the sake of attaining a certain kind of pleasure, and so forth. But the point for now is just to note that the contradiction Sullivan seems to think exists in natural law theory isn’t there at all.)

Sullivan also argues that the fact that the penis is so easily stimulated and is capable of ejaculating several times a day would show, if we accept natural law theory, that it cannot be intended merely to get semen into a single woman’s vagina (i.e. one’s wife’s) (p. 85). But here he is simply doing something so many critics of traditional natural law theory falsely accuse the theory itself of doing, namely taking too crudely mechanical a view of human biological function. For the natural law theorist does not focus exclusively on any particular organ or capacity, in isolation, in determining its function, even if this may be the natural starting point. It also takes account of the overall psychological and social context, and in this case of such factors as the tendency of human beings toward jealousy, the long-term need of human offspring for a stable family life, and the need of women for stable financial support and companionship both during their childbearing years and beyond (when, having devoted so many of their years to raising children, they will be at a serious disadvantage to men in supporting themselves once the children are gone). So while a focus on the mechanics of the penis alone might suffice to tell us that its biological function is to get semen into a woman’s vagina, it is the larger social context within which human beings operate that tells us just how many women at a time nature intends, and specifically that it intends just one. (Certainly ideally - some natural law theorists would allow for the possibility that polygynous marriage might under certain circumstances be morally legitimate in principle, though far inferior to monogamy, unwise, and in practice best prohibited altogether.)

Sullivan also claims that since a man can impregnate a woman without giving her sexual pleasure, “the very existence of the clitoris is therefore a living rebuke to those who argue that nature itself - the way our bodies have been constructed - dictates a certain and necessarily procreative sexual morality” (p. 86). This is, I submit, manifestly false. Even if we stay, once again, at the crude mechanical level, it is blindingly obvious that if a woman enjoys sex - as she is more likely to do with a clitoris than without it - then she is going to engage in it more often and more willingly than she otherwise would, in which case the procreative function of the sexual organs is more likely to be fulfilled. So Sullivan’s argument is just a non-starter.

He also suggests that menopause shows that nature does not intend to rule out nonprocreative sex (p. 86). Once again, though, this involves a misunderstanding of what sort of “nonprocreative” sex the theory says is contrary to nature, and a failure to consider the larger psychological and social context that must always be kept in mind given man’s nature as a rational and social animal. First of all, and to repeat, the theory does not say that sexual acts are immoral when they happen not to result in conception; it says they are immoral when the agent performing them intentionally acts in a way that would tend to frustrate their natural purpose. So the theory does not contradict itself by allowing for sexual acts between a husband and his now-infertile wife, since the couple in this case have done nothing themselves to frustrate the natural purpose of the sexual act. (And, again to repeat - and also to further underline the consistency of the theory - it does hold that even in this case, the couple is not permitted to use contraception, engage in coitus interruptus, or otherwise complete the act other than with ejaculation in the vagina.)

Secondly, it is a commonplace that, in general, age brings on a decrease in sexual desire (though not, of course, its disappearance). That nature tends to link together a wife’s fertile years with a relatively higher level of sexual desire in her and her husband, and her infertile years with a relatively lower level of sexual desire, surely reinforces the idea that sex is primarily intended by nature for procreation.

Of course, sexual desire, however decreased, is still present in older people, which raises the question of why nature would allow this given that procreation is no longer a question. Here we need to recall what was said earlier about the need of children and women (and men too, I should add, though for reasons that are not as biologically obvious) for stable family life, and of women for support beyond their childbearing years, given that those years last long enough that most women will be at a severe disadvantage to men in supporting themselves if abandoned after the children are grown. For this to be realized, it is necessary that a bond of deep affection, or at least firm commitment, characterize the relationship between parents, and this is not likely to occur if people think of it as a temporary contract “only until the children are gone.” It must instead be conceived of as a lifelong covenant, and this covenant will be stronger if the very act which represents the procreative point of marriage continues on even past the point at which it can fulfill its biological function, reminding the partners of their youthful love and helping continually to renew it until death parts them.

“The unitive function”

This brings us to the “unitive function” that natural law theory says the sexual act also serves, and which it holds can never be legitimately be fulfilled in a nonprocreative way (in, again, the sense of “nonprocreative” given above). Sullivan has some things to say about this too, but they involve repetitions of the same mistakes already noted. He asks, for example, why, if menopausal sex can be “unitive” despite its being “nonprocreative,” sexual acts that do not result in ejaculation of semen into the vagina cannot also be unitive (p. 87). Once again, this simply ignores the fact that what natural law theory says is immoral is not any sexual act that happens to fail to result in pregnancy (even if this is foreseen), but rather an act in which the one performing it himself intentionally tries to frustrate it from fulfilling its natural end. Once we keep this in mind, the answer to Sullivan’s question is obvious. Natural law theory says that we can never intentionally attempt to frustrate the process that results in depositing semen into the vagina. It also holds that part of the function of this process is unitive. So the reason it allows unitive sexual acts between infertile married couples, but does not allow “unitive” acts of coitus interruptus, fellatio (to orgasm), and the like, is that the former are not cases where the people involved themselves attempt to frustrate the process in question, while the latter cases do involve such an attempt.

One might want to object to this view on a number of grounds - I’m not claiming to give it a thorough defense here - but there is no inconsistency in it, contrary to what Sullivan implies. Once we get clear on the distinction between the two senses of “nonprocreative” - a crucial distinction that Sullivan ignores throughout his entire discussion - the alleged contradiction disappears.

Metaphysics and natural law

Let me note in conclusion one final error that Sullivan makes, when he suggests that according to natural law theory, “there is… no notion that being moral on Earth will make one unhappy for the present but ripe for salvation” (p. 81). Nothing could be further from the truth, at least where the traditional approach to natural law is concerned (and definitely where Catholicism is concerned, since Catholic teaching has always emphasized that to live righteously is not only intrinsically difficult given the effects of original sin, but guarantees persecution to boot).

As J. Budziszewski argues in his important First Things article “The Second Tablet Project,” the traditional system of morality grounded in natural law is often very hard to follow, and this is one reason why it is so important for natural law theorists to emphasize (as traditional natural law theorists do but “new natural law” theorists do not) the centrality of our knowledge of God’s existence (and of other metaphysical truths like the immortality of the soul) to sound moral thinking and practice. (And I do mean knowledge here - on the traditional natural law approach, the existence of God is something that can and must be rationally demonstrated, not merely a postulate of practical reason a la Kant or something to be taken on blind faith.) For unless we keep in mind that our behavior in this life is but a prelude to eternal life - if instead we suppose that this life is all there is, or all we can know with any confidence, or all that is relevant to determining our specific moral obligations - then certain natural law moral precepts and prohibitions can seem too unrealistic and onerous to be worth trying to follow. It can also be dispiriting, indeed crushing, to consider how rarely justice is rewarded and injustice punished in this life, especially when justice is conceived of in terms of classical natural law (which entails a “thicker” conception of justice than the rather thin conceptions associated with liberalism in its various forms). For both reasons, even if the intellect can be convinced of the correctness of natural law theory’s specific moral conclusions, the heart can find it hard to follow them if the rewards and punishments for doing so are conceived of in entirely this-worldly terms.

It is hard to resist wondering whether this might be another factor in Sullivan’s own hostility to natural law, despite his avowed Catholicism. For as the rest of his book makes clear, Sullivan’s theology is minimalist indeed, and there is in his view very little that we can have in the way of genuine religious knowledge, or any metaphysical knowledge at all for that matter, as opposed to mere opinion or sentiment. (He also has a regrettable tendency to throw the scare word “fundamentalist” at anyone who disagrees with this view - as if Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Leibniz were on all fours with William Jennings Bryan.)

I think he is quite wrong about this, and that it can be demonstrated that he is wrong about it. But Sullivan’s view is nevertheless the conventional wisdom among contemporary intellectuals, whether it deserves to be or not, and there are few who challenge it. Too many religious intellectuals - including, sadly, too many professing advocates of natural law - pretend that it is possible effectively to combat the moral rot that afflicts our society without identifying and challenging the metaphysical presuppositions that have led to it. (See here for a discussion of the presuppositions I have in mind, and what I think they should be replaced with. And, again, see Budziszewski’s piece linked to above.) Too many religious non-intellectuals have bastardized the language of “faith,” replacing reason with sentiment and throwing away the intellectually muscular, metaphysically robust, and morally austere Christianity of Augustine and Aquinas for a trashy therapeutic pottage.

If Sullivan and those of like mind remain unconvinced by arguments for traditional morality, then, the fault is only partially theirs. For those arguments have their full force only when understood against the background of a traditional metaphysical picture of the world - a picture with a long line of illustrious defenders in the history of philosophy (including the roll call from Plato to Leibniz alluded to above) but with precious few defenders among contemporary conservative public intellectuals. Religious intellectuals have for too long been the unwitting enablers of the conceit that naturalism, scientism, and related philosophical doctrines constitute the rational default position in serious intellectual life, because they have refused to challenge these doctrines in the public square. They have let stand the lie that “religious” and “metaphysical” entail “non-rational” and therefore “out of bounds in moral and political debate.” What they should do instead is revive the grand tradition of natural theology, and take back the mantle of reason that is rightfully theirs. Until they do, the Andrew Sullivans of the world will always win the rhetorical and political battles, however often they lose the substantive ones.

Comments

Good stuff!
It occurs to me that one can only believe you cannot get an "ought" from an "is" if one loses sight that God designed living creatures to function in a certain way. There is a mind behind the design, it is not a product of random chance.
When that premises is accepted (and that's Christian orthodoxy) - "ought" flows logically from "is".

Posted by: Kevin V. | October 31, 2006 6:52 AM

Professor Feser:

Smaller issue:

"Alternatively, he could even argue that there is no genuinely moral failing here at all (even a minor one), but merely an activity that might be inadvisable in some trivial and non-moral sense." I think this solution is problematic, because it re-establishes the is/ought difficulty that traditional Natural Law (NL) theory shouldn't have, except that now it is a difficulty of bridging the gap between a non-moral sense of going against the organism's function and a moral sense of doing so. I think a much more promising approach is what you in fact do below this quote, where you argue that trivial acts may be wrong, but have low moral gravity, though you do go back and forth between the two approaches.

Bigger issue:

I'd love to hear a precise formulation of a frustration-based principle that would prohibit unnatural sexual acts. I actually think it is easiest to give an NL argument against contraception, because there the frustration is clearest. An act with a certain teleology is being done, and the couple is frustrating the teleology of the act done. (This is like lying, where one frustrates the truth-directed teleology of assertions.) So, to rule out contraception, we can formulate the principle in this way: "It is wrong to both engage in an action and frustrate the natural teleology of that action."

This is the easy part (and I think this is the way it should be--it is intrinsically more clear that contraception is wrong than that same-sexual activity is wrong, because contraception is more clearly anti-life). But the frustration-principle phrased in this way does not seem to rule out same-sex acts. The problem is that it is not clear that, say, anal intercourse has any natural teleology at all. If it does not, then the principle does not apply to it.

One might try to argue that a part of the action of anal intercourse is the "action" of ejaculation, and in engaging in this action in this context, one would be frustrating the teleology of ejaculation. But triggering a process in a context in which it cannot fulfill its telos is not the same as frustrating that process--the case of infertile heterosexual intercourse shows that.

One might try to say that triggering a process in a context in which one does not intend it to fulfill its telos is the same as frustrating that process. But the problem is that here a distinction has to be made. "One does not intend it to fulfill its telos" can take the weak meaning of "it is not the case that one intends it to fulfill its telos" and the strong meaning of "it is the case that one intends that it not fulfill its telos." On the weak reading, the infertile heterosexual couple who is not intentionally seeking pregnancy would count as frustrating the process, so the weak reading of "does not intend" does not do the job. On the strong reading, however, we do not get a prohibition of anal intercourse in every case, because same-sex couples engaging in it might not positively intend that the ejaculation not fulfill its telos--they might just do not care about the telos.

So I am personally stymied in trying to come up with a frustration principle that would rule out both contraception and same-sex relations. My preferred approach is the personalist one of starting with the idea of unity, arguing that the romantically appropriate unity is a unity in and through biological reproductive striving, and concluding that same-sex sexual acts (or contraceptive opposite-sex ones) produce an illusion of unity without the unity itself, a self-deception in the most important matters, namely in matters of love.

But if there was a good way to formulate a good frustration-principle, i.e., a principle about what counts as the illicit frustration of a process, that would be very helpful. Help would be appreciated.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | October 31, 2006 6:59 AM

Hello Kevin and Alexander:

Kevin:

In principle an appeal to Aristotelian essences and final causes suffices to do the job of bridging "is" and "ought." So one doesn't need to appeal directly to God. Still (and as I discuss in the second of my original posts on natural law linked to above), for the reasons set out in Aquinas's Fifth Way, the existence of final causes points back to God as their explanation. Maybe that's what you have in mind.

Alexander:

Re: the earwax example, I agree with you that the other solution is preferable. My thought was that if one wanted to argue that there is a non-moral sense of "prudence" (as many seem to think insofar as they contrast "moral" and "prudential" reasons), then this would seem to allow for a (non-moral) prudential sense of "good." But it's probably a mistake to think there is such a sense of "prudence," given a broadly Aristotelian approach to ethics. What there are instead are just serious lapses of prudence and non-serious ones.

Re: unnatural sexual acts, I'm not sure what the problem is. When we consider the physiological facts, it's clear that the function of the penis, and of the whole sequence from arousal to climax, is to get semen into the vagina specifically (they fit together like key and lock), that sperm are for ova (and not for Kleenex or the inside of anuses) and so forth.

You write that "triggering a process in a context in which it cannot fulfill its telos is not the same as frustrating that process--the case of infertile heterosexual intercourse shows that." The problem isn't triggering a process in a context in which, as it happens, it cannot fulfill its telos. The problem is triggering a process and then deliberately doing something oneself that tends to frustrate its telos -- which coitus interruptus, sodomy, etc. all involve, but sex between infertile spouses does not.

Posted by: Edward Feser | October 31, 2006 11:56 AM

You write:

"This is, I submit, manifestly false. Even if we stay, once again, at the crude mechanical level, it is blindingly obvious that if a woman enjoys sex - as she is more likely to do with a clitoris than without it - then she is going to engage in it more often and more willingly than she otherwise would, in which case the procreative function of the sexual organs is more likely to be fulfilled. So Sullivan’s argument is just a non-starter."

It seems to me that one can alter Sullivan's point. How's this? If traditional natural law theory is true, then it appears that it is immoral to aim at giving one's wife an orgasm.

The point of the clitoris seems only to be to encourage the wife to have sex. But there still seems to be a capacity for pleasure that -- if we ordered the aims of the genitals in the way that traditional Catholics suggest -- would go largely unactualized.

To put it another way, it is hard for men to bring their wife to orgasm through vaginal intercourse, if not impossible for some men. If we must aim primarily at reproduction in the sex act (I don't know if that's got to be an explicit intention or not), then it seems like there's a problem because we're not bringing a capacity for pleasure into use.

Is that a problem?

Two brief questions:

1) Do *acts* have teloi? I thought on the Thomistic view teloi are indexed to objects or agents.

2) You say that human beings have the beatific vision as their final end. Aquinas' view is that we only have the beatific vision as our supernatural end, bestowed upon us by grace. Our natural end is much as Aristotle described it (in fact, on Aquinas' view, that's what we come to achieve in limbo). I think this alters the way we should evaluate the teloi of our parts. For instance, the point of our lives and thereby the point of our parts may alter once we enter into grace.

Posted by: The Octagon | October 31, 2006 3:27 PM

Octagon: Processes can be teleological.

"The problem isn't triggering a process in a context in which, as it happens, it cannot fulfill its telos. The problem is triggering a process and then deliberately doing something oneself that tends to frustrate its telos -- which coitus interruptus, sodomy, etc. all involve, but sex between infertile spouses does not."

This is clearly right in the case of coitus interruptus. But it is not clearly right in the case of same-sex sexual acts. For what is the additional act that frustrates the telos then? How can the telos not be frustrated then?

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | October 31, 2006 5:29 PM

In responding to Dr Pruss, Dr Feser says, "The problem is triggering a process and then deliberately doing something oneself that tends to frustrate its telos."

I'm not very knowledgable about fine-grained points of Natural Law and/or Roman Catholic ethics, so if I'm simply demonstrating my ignorance, please bear with me. But, what of the process of arousal, the generation of an urge to engage in sexual activity with one's spouse? If one intentionally supresses this desire, perhaps by taking a long, cold shower, is one acting immorally? Or, would that depend on the network of social and cultural norms in which one is enmeshed? (It also seems problematic that so much of that network appears to serve primarily to restrain the expression of natural tendencies and inclinations.)

Posted by: bob koepp | October 31, 2006 6:07 PM

Mr. Koepp:

I think to answer your question one needs an account of desire. In my view, desires are cognitive: they provide information (just as information from sensory perception, it may be incorrect) of a normative sort and in a certain way. What the information that sexual desire conveys is is not clear, but for simplicity let us suppose it is something about the value of uniting with the other. (The details will not matter for what I am going to say.)

If the information provided is correct and, furthermore, sexual union would be appropriate under the circumstances, then to suppress the desire is wrong.

Suppose, however, that the information is incorrect--that union with the other would not, in fact, be valuable (for instance, because the other is a sibling). In such a case, sexual desire is mistaken, and hence should not be acted on. There is, further, nothing intrinsically wrong with suppressing a mistaken desire, just as there is nothing intrinsically with amputating a diseased limb. (There may be other considerations that might make it wrong, which is why I said "intrinsically.")

The harder case is where the sexual union that the desire presents to one is indeed valuable, but is not appropriate under the circumstances, say because the spouse is too tired. If the sexual desire merely informs one of the value of sexual union, it is doing its job, and suppression of it seems inappropriate. On the other hand, if the sexual desire is insistent, impelling one to act contrary to one's better judgment, then it is a faulty drive, and then it can be acceptable to act against it.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | October 31, 2006 7:39 PM

Octagon:

Sorry, I don't see the problem here at all. The clitoris is obviously designed for sexual pleasure. So, equally obviously from the natural law POV, there is nothing wrong with using it in a way that results in sexual pleasure, including orgasm. The only question is what means of doing so are legitimate, and the theory says that it can only happen in the context of an act of intercourse. (Whether before or after the husband ejaculates is not essential, nor are manual or oral means of bringing it about immoral, as long as the overall context includes intercourse.)

Is your problem that doing something to stimulate the clitoris does not necessarily involve an intention to procreate? That is irrelevant. Natural law theory doesn't say that you have to intend to get pregnant every time you make love; it says only that you can't do, or intend to do, something that frustrates the teleology of the organs and capacities involved.

Re: the beatific vision, my point is just that the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the inherent "directedness" of the soul toward God are knowable through pure reason from the traditional natural law POV, and thus should inform our moral reasoning.

What I'm saying, to put it crudely, is that the telos of the process is inherently "vaginal," if you will; so to act in a way that causes it to end anywhere but in a vagina is necessarily just to frustrate the telos of the process. It's like starting up your car, revving the engine, and then slamming it into the garage door rather than pulling out into the street.

Re: Bob Koepp's question, we can also use the car analogy. To slam your car into the garage after starting and revving it is perverse; but to decide you don't want to go for a ride after all, and thus turn the engine off and get out, is not perverse.

Similarly, to "start your engine," sexually speaking, and then end the drive in a Kleenex or an anus or anywhere other than a vagina is perverse or contrary to nature, from the natural law POV. But to decide not to go for the drive after all, and thus to "cool the engine," is not inherently perverse or contrary to nature. (Of course it might be, and very often is, unwise, and even unwise to the extent of being immoral, for other reasons -- hence natural law theory and Catholic teaching urge great caution for married people in indulging in "foreplay"-like behavior apart from the context of intercourse. The point is just that the theory does not entail that all such behavior, or all suppression of sexual desire, is intrinsically contrary to nature.)

(Boy, who ever said natural law theory is boring, huh?)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 1, 2006 4:05 AM

Ed, a question about your Aristotelian response to Kevin: Would reasoning "through" the proposition that we have been benignly designed be a way to get, as it were, an Aristotelian-like conclusion in a non-Aristotelian way? One might, for example, be a good Modern and deny that objects always have "value built into the structure of fact." But one might decide by way of other reasons that animals (human and others) were deliberately designed by someone good who had a purpose in mind for the parts of their bodies and that it is our duty to discern that purpose when we can and not deliberately to go against it.

Posted by: Lydia | November 1, 2006 6:35 AM

LOL!

Actually, this kind of undermines the point a little bit. Since sexual intercourse is a very jealous, desire-oriented type of activity, to overly concern ourselves with rational teleos and natural order seems a bit of a mood killer.

Posted by: Step2 | November 1, 2006 7:09 AM

I'm still having some difficulty understanding how Natural Law theorists view arousal. First, while I do, indeed, start the engine of my car, I assume we're dealing here with artificial functions rather than their natural analogs. In my experience, I don't start my "sexual engine" -- it seems to start without my intention to do much of anything. And I have pretty good reasons to think that it's functioning quite naturally when it kicks in. How could suppression of the desire that arises be anything but a frustration of the natural end toward which the state of arousal points?

Posted by: bob koepp | November 1, 2006 7:14 AM

Where does evolution fit in this? Over the course of evolutionary history, biological structures & functions have been co-opted and have adapted to use in situations where they were not originally utilized. Biological 'telos' would seem to be a moving and uncertain target. Can we distinguish biologically selective adaptions from things that conform to 'Natural Law'? Are they coincident?(Aside: Hopefully people appreciate how hard it is to discover the *specific* selective forces at work in the history of any particular adaptation).

I assume that 'purpose' can change over time or be multidimensional. If something is used 99.5% of the time for purpose 'X' and only 0.5% of the time split among purposes 'Y' & 'Z', does that allow one to differentiate which use is 'natural'?

I suspect these questions have been addressed many times before and as Edward Feser notes, it always seems that some form of religious, 'supernatural' presupposition must always get tucked into the answers: The physical (i.e. scientific) understanding required for evaluation of a Natural Law decision being often completely ambiguous. So, from my perspective, the difficulty of determining biological 'telos' in specific instances makes the Natural Law enterprise seem pretty limited for moral justification. The biological component is too fuzzy and attempting to mate specific, sharp, divine guidelines with concepts like biological 'use' just makes the whole attempt fuzzy in the end.

Posted by: Unsympathetic reader | November 1, 2006 8:38 AM

I do not see why the fact that a religious presupposition mght be needed is at all a problem for the Natural Law theorist. The existence of God is a truth of reason. :-)

I don't think evolution defines function. Evolution gives an "is", not a normativity. Facts about function are normative.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 1, 2006 9:16 AM

Edward:

I still would really appreciate a precise statement of the frustration principle you are using.

Observe first that typically in male-male homosexual relations, there is no vagina nearby. Thus there is no positive act of preventing the process from reaching its telos. There is no way for the process to reach its telos under the circumstances. But we do not want to say that it is wrong to start a process under circumstances where it cannot reach its telos, because that would rule out all infertile sex.

It seems to me that to run the kind of argument you're running, you need some concept additional to that of a telos. Let me use the term "natural conclusion". The "natural conclusion" of an orgasmic act is, let's suppose, the transmission of seminal fluid from a man's reproductive system to a woman's. Then the frustration principle you are using is that it is wrong to begin a process that cannot reach its natural conclusion.

If that is the principle, then one needs a clarification of the notion of a "natural conclusion" (or whatever other term you might use in place of it). That's going to be tough. One might say that a "natural conclusion" is a non-ultimate telos (I mean, a telos that acts as a means to a further telos), but then it is unclear why it is wrong to start a process that cannot lead to its non-ultimate telos while it is not wrong to start a process that cannot lead to its ultimate telos.

Moreover, it seems like there are natural processes which it is licit to begin even though the process cannot be brought through to its natural conclusion. "The natural conclusion" in the sexual case seems to be something like a potentially proximate cause of the accomplishment of the telos. Take another process, speech. There the telos is either communication or articulation of sounds. The natural conclusion of the process is, let us say, the modulation of sound with the tongue--that is the last thing done before the telos. The process begins with various nerve impulses being sent from the brain. Suppose that Bob lacks a tongue. It does not seem immoral in any way--not even trivially immoral--for Bob to start the speech process (e.g., by straining in the way that normally would result in speech, but cannot in his case) in circumstances in which the process cannot be brought to its natural conclusion. In such a case, Bob will make some inarticulate noise, but there is nothing immoral about making an inarticulate noise.

So a principle that prohibits beginning a process that under the circumstances cannot achieve its natural conclusion will not do.

One might try to posit a principle that prohibits beginning a process that one isn't trying to get to achieve its natural conclusion. But is tongueless Bob really trying to modulate sounds with his tongue, given that alas he does not have one? If yes, then a male homosexual couple might argue that they are by the same token trying to deposit genetic material in a female reproductive system, but alas they do not have one.

So I'm still stuck trying to figure out a general frustration-principle. Do you have one?

Personally, I find it much more promising to argue that pleasure (whether one's own or that of another) is not an independent end--pleasure is only good when it is a reflection of a deeper good--and that genuine interpersonal union is not constituted by pleasure. Romantic love seeks a thoroughgoing physical union. In same-sex cases, such a union is not possible--all that is possible is for organs to be stuck together, but these organs do not work cooperatively together and hence are not united, except in the way that two people holding hands are (romantic love seeks more than hand-holding!) However, orgasm provides an illusion of such union, and hence orgasmic sexual activity outside of the context of a thoroughgoing physical union is a wrongful self-deception.

Alex

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 1, 2006 9:45 AM

I tend to think that even if facts about function are not taken to be by definitely normative, there's still something highly counterintuitive about the ex post facto nature of the evolutionary concept of function. Take the heart, for example. When one says pre-theoretically that the function of the heart is to pump blood, one means to be (I think) saying something about what the function of the heart *has been from the first appearance of the heart*. But on the evolutionary view of function, I suppose that when the first blood-pumping heart appeared, it was as yet indeterminate whether this really was its function. If the animals having one had died out rapidly, or if the organ had changed so as to do something different and no longer pump blood over the long run, then it would somehow turn out to have been false that the function of the heart was to pump blood. Yet this doesn't seem to be what people mean by 'function'. This notion--that function is most naturally thought of as attributable to a part of a living being from the first appearance of the part--is one of the stronger arguments, it seems to me, for Ed's Aristotelian metaphysics, though I'm not convinced to adopt them yet. The reason it seems to be an argument for it is precisely because the mere naturalness of taking an organ to have a function from the outset doesn't "sound" like a statement about a personal designer. It "sounds" neutral on the design issue. This would fit with the notion that somehow (and it's the somehow that causes my modernist mind to boggle) the teleology of the organ is inherent in the organ, a part of the nature of its very existence, *and would be even if there were no designer*--that is, this teleology is a fact of nature independent of reasoning about a personal designer.

Posted by: Lydia | November 1, 2006 9:49 AM

"How could suppression of the desire that arises be anything but a frustration of the natural end toward which the state of arousal points?"

First of all, in cases of perversion, arousal is confused, and points towards an unnatural end.

Second, even in non-perverted cases, arousal's directedness can go wrong in degree--it may be too insistent. In such a case, partial suppression is appropriate, in order to make the desire go to the rationally appropriate level. (And by double effect one might tolerate some acts that entirely remove desire, as long as the intention is to make the desire go to the rationally appropriate level.) It would be wrong to intend for the desire to decrease below the rationally appropriate level.

You might wonder what rational appropriateness has to do with desires at all. Well, I take desires to be things that impress on our mind the value of doing something. When the value that the desire puts on something is out of sync with how valuable the thing in fact is, the desire has gone wrong.

Given the Fall, desires go wrong quite often. (So does reason.)

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 1, 2006 9:50 AM

Lydia:

Let's start by noting that moderns reject two of Aristotle's four causes, namely formal and final causes, while keeping material and efficient causes (in altered form, since in Aristotle these are understood as complements of formal and final causes).

The problem with the suggestion that we can just go straight to the intentions of the designer and bypass formal and final causes is that without formal and final causes we cannot demarcate what it is exactly that we are trying to find the function of, what it is that God has a particular intention for.

In particular, without formal causes we cannot in a principled way distinguish this parcel of matter as, objectively speaking, of one kind and that parcel as of another kind. And without final causes, we cannot identify any necessary connections between the elements of a chain of efficient causes, since no one element is intrinsically "ordered to" another. Species become conventional, causes become inherently "loose and separate"; or at any rate it's very hard to avoid this result. But if the way objects, events, and the like get carved up, classified, and put together is ultimately conventional and (human) interest relative, then the classifications are useless for determining God's intentions. We can't "read off" God's intentions from nature since we don't have a way of determining what counts as "nature" or "natural" in the first place. We can't say "This is what God made Xs for" because we have no grounds for identifying the category X as anything other than our own invention in the first place.

At best, we'll have to appeal to divine revelation -- to the idea that God just tells us in holy writ what kinds exist objectively and what he has in mind for them -- and thus give up the idea that natural law can be known via pure reason. And we'll have to appeal to divine rewards and punishments as the point of following the precepts of natural law, rather than human flourishing as defined by formal and final causes.

This is, in my view, the key difference between a Lockean and a Thomistic conception of natural law. Locke abandons the Aristotelian apparatus and thus tries to appeal directly to God's ownership of us (and thus our obligation to respect God's property) as the ground of natural law. But for the reasons given the strategy can't work, and it is no accident that modern "natural law" has come to be identified in many people's minds as inherently resting on a sheer appeal to divine will. This is inevitable once we abandon Aristotelian metaphysics (as are all sorts of disastrous results for natural theology).

Anyway, I explain this in more detail in my forthcoming (February 2007) book on Locke.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 1, 2006 1:06 PM

Unsympathetic reader:

I say a few things about this in my post "Natural ends and natural law Part II." As I explain there, one can construct something loosely parallel to final causes in evolutionary terms, and base conclusions that are loosely parallel to natural law conclusions on them. (Michael Levin does something like this in his writings on homosexuality.) But what results is not natural law per se but only something loosely parallel to natural law; in particular, since the "functions" on this sort of account are (for the reasons you allude to) much less hard and fast, so too are the conclusions one can draw from them, and the practical force of the conclusions is pragmatic rather than strictly moral (or at least what an Aristotelian or Thomist would regard as genuinely moral).

So, as I also say there, for a genuine natural law theory one really needs some kind of classical realist (i.e. Platonic, or Aristotelian, or Thomistic) metaphysics. This might seem like a major problem for natural law theory, but I would say (a) Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics is _true_, so it's no problem at all, and (b) _no morality at all_ is possible anyway without some kind of classical metaphysics -- all the alternatives fail miserably, or collapse into mere conventionalism or something equally amoral and anti-climactic -- so there's no special "problem" for natural law here. (Large claims, I know, but what the hell, I'm on a roll...)

Re: evolution, from an Aristotelian point of view, the evolutionary story only gives you the efficient causes of species and their various attributes, not their final causes, and it's the latter that determine "function" in the sense relevant to natural law. It's just a mistake and a muddle, from the Thomistic POV, to think you can know all there is to know about the empirical world, including the biological realm, via the sorts of reductionistic-mechanistic methods that modern empirical science (or at least the cartoon textbook model of modern science) applies. All of that is extremely important, of course, but it is not the end of the story, and has to be interpreted in the context of a sound metaphysics.

I do mean "metaphysics," by the way. I have no problem with the words "supernatural" and "religious," if these are understood to refer to the sorts of things that can be given a precise analysis a la classical metaphysics. But of course, many people use these terms (incorrectly) to mean "non-rational," "based on wishful thinking or blind faith" etc., and of course classical natural law theory is nothing of the kind.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 1, 2006 1:30 PM

"At best, we'll have to appeal to divine revelation -- to the idea that God just tells us in holy writ what kinds exist objectively and what he has in mind for them -- and thus give up the idea that natural law can be known via pure reason."

Couldn't the revelation be embedded in our minds, in the voice of conscience, etc.? I know that that is a very unsatisfactory solution, but at least it is an option.

For the record, I expect we agree close to 100% on metaphysics, but I am not a natural law theorist as regards to ethics, except in a broad sense.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 1, 2006 1:42 PM

Hi Alex,

I suppose in principle it could be so embedded, but then (a) it's hardly plausible that everything we'd need to know to ground natural law conclusions is in fact so embedded, and (b)even in this case we'd be appealing to a human faculty, which raises questions of proper functioning and the like that bring us back to the need for an Aristotelain metaphysics.

I intend to reply to your other points, by the way, but it will take longer to do so, and I need to run to class just now! So, later this evening...

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 1, 2006 2:02 PM

Two similar objections:
One, if a man and wife in a poor country, let's say Africa, are barely able to subsist on the economic activity of the male, they seem to be required to totally abstain from sex or to have children that they knowingly cannot support. Either way, they seem to be caught in a moral trap from which there is no escape.

Two, if a man decides to wait until he is much older and more secure in his finances, he will often seek out a younger wife to procreate with. Natural law would seem to encourage this and in earlier societies it often was encouraged. To my eyes however, that May-December romance is at least on the same footing as the same sex couple in terms of deceptive desire. Whatever biological complementation they have is disrupted by a lack of psychological and social equivalence.

Posted by: Step2 | November 1, 2006 2:28 PM

Ed, would you say something similar about "carving up the world conventionally" regarding non-living objects like rocks, hunks of carbon, or (even more interestingly) auto motors?

Isn't there a third option besides a) saying that the difference between "rock" and "non-rock" is purely conventional or b) taking on the whole Aristotelian metaphysics regarding rock-ness? I'm not saying I have this in hand, but this seems like a pretty strong either/or.

And in particular, it seems like when we start talking about human-made machines we have a perfectly good non-Aristotelian fact of the matter regarding what the auto motor is for, how its parts function to that end, and so forth. Or are all auto mechanics tacit Aristotelians? I bet you're gonna say, "Yes, they are." Grin.

Posted by: Lydia | November 1, 2006 2:47 PM

This is probably not the time or place to rehearse critiques of Aristotelian metaphysics, but the pared down metaphysics underlying modern science has proved itself more fruitful than its predecessor, at least in conferring some modicum of control over empirical reality. And while such control might not suffice to ensure that nature is being carved at its joints, it certainly shouldn't be ignored.

Posted by: bob koepp | November 1, 2006 3:26 PM

Step2:

First of all, in agricultural societies, children are likely to be an economic plus.

Secondly, I am guessing that Edward, like most natural law theorists, accepts periodic abstinence (Natural Family Planning) as morally licit, since the modus operandi of periodic abstinence is abstinence, and there is no duty for a married couple to engage in sexual union if for a serious reason they mutually agree not to.

Periodic abstinence has been shown to be quite effective in third-world conditions (in fact, one study found success rates that look to me higher than those typically found in developed countries; the effectiveness of periodic abstinence is closely tied to motivation, and so it may be that in such conditions there is stronger motivation), and has lower on-going costs than either barrier or hormonal methods of contraception.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 1, 2006 10:13 PM

Bob:

"the pared down metaphysics underlying modern science has proved itself more fruitful than its predecessor"

Actually, this is a controversial claim for two reasons. First, you are restricting attention to a particular kind of fruit, namely the finding of scientific theories to predict and explain observable phenomena. It is not clear, however, that it has been fruitful, say, in explaining ethical phenomena, or in deepening our theological understanding, etc.

Second, it is not clear how much Aristotelian metaphysics has been rejected. Certainly, Cartesian mechanistic theories rejected Aristotelian metaphysics. But Cartesian mechanistic theories were a failure scientifically. As Leibniz notes, the concept of a conatus (a drive or force) needs to be added, but this concept is in significant ways an Aristotelian one.

Or consider the scientific success of principles of least action, energy minimization, etc. Yet, as Leibniz noted, the use of such principles is precisely an attempt at explanation via final causes.

Or take what was seen as the epitomy of enlightenment science--the rejection of "occult (i.e., hidden) qualities", like the virtus dormitiva that Moliere ridiculed. These qualities are back, having been briefly banished in the the heyday of mechanistic explanation. We give them names like "charge" and "mass". We can characterize their effects much more precisely than the scholastics were able to characterize the effects of qualities, but their inner nature is just as hidden (i.e., occult), only made knowable by the effects. Without such qualities, what we would have is Cartesian or, at best, Leibnizian mechanism, and all the forms of mechanism in the end were scientific failures.

And how "pared down" the metaphysics of quantum mechanics is is an open question. :-)

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 1, 2006 10:28 PM

Hello Alex:

You write that "typically in male-male homosexual relations, there is no vagina nearby. Thus there is no positive act of preventing the process from reaching its telos. There is no way for the process to reach its telos under the circumstances. But we do not want to say that it is wrong to start a process under circumstances where it cannot reach its telos, because that would rule out all infertile sex."

Fine, but there's also no circumstance forcing anyone, say, to ejaculate within a rectum either, the way circumstances do in fact force infertile couples from conceiving. So the cases are obviously different. You have to take a positive step to ejaculate within a rectum, but not to be infertile. Compare the car example again: A car is "for" driving on streets, not for crashing into the garage door. You have to take a positive step to do either one -- either to get the car to fulfill its telos or to get it to act in a way positively contrary to its telos. But you do not have to take a positive step in order to keep it from acting in accordance with its telos when you start the car knowing, say, that it will run out of gas in 30 seconds. It won't fulfill its telos in that case, but not because of any positive step you've taken. It's not analogous to crashing it into the garage.

Now, you say that the principle I'm using must be something like "It is wrong to begin a process that cannot reach its natural conclusion." Not so. As the examples just given illustrate, the principle is actually something like "It is wrong to begin a process and at the same time positively act to bring it to something other than its natural conclusion." (Where the "natural conclusion" in the case at hand is, again, ejaculation within the vagina.) This rules out contraception, sodomy, masturbation, etc. but not intercourse between spouses one or both of whom is infertile for reasons outside their control.

Re: the other examples you give, they are irrelevant because they don't involve _actively bringing_ a process to _something other_ than its natural conclusion, which natural law theory says is immoral. Instead, they involve merely _failing_ to act in a way that does bring it to its natural conclusion, which natural law theory does not say is necessarily immoral.

It's this active element that you seem to me to be missing. A same-sex couple has to _do_ something to get the process to end in the way it does in their case -- no one just up and finds his penis in someone's rectum (lo and behold!). A contracepting couple has to do the same: no one just happens to find a condom on his penis (whaddaya know!) or an IUD in her uterus. By contrast, an infertile couple, in the sort of case we're describing, does just find themselves infertile. This is the reason the contraceptive case and the cases of sodomy, masturbation, and the like are, according to traditional natural law theory, relevantly parallel, while the infertility case is not. And it is also why rhythm and NFP are in principle legitimate.

True, one can abuse them -- a couple who used NFP throughout their marriage to avoid children would certainly be acting contrary to natural law. But the reason is not because any individual act of refraining from intercourse on the basis of NFP calculations is inherently immoral. The immorality in this case would derive from higher-order principles. To be sure, it is pretty clear from nature (as I argued in my earlier posts) that it intends large families as the norm, whether or not there may be grounds for exceptions here and there. But it is plausible that the rhythyms it has put into the body can in principle licitly be kept in mind when deciding whether or not to make love on any particular occasion, just as one can licitly take account of headaches, the need to get up early tomorrow, the fact that your husband has acted like a jerk all day, and so forth.

In any case, the approach I've described is, I think, superior to the appeal to what is or isn't "anti-life," which I think is a pretty imprecise standard. You said earlier, for example, that contraception is more clearly "anti-life" than same-sex behavior. But that's hardly obvious. For one thing, even contraceptive behavior very often fails to prevent conception, while same-sex behavior is absolutely guaranteed never to result in conception. Secondly, there is the empirical fact that lots of people who use contraception also have several children, indeed sometimes lots of children, and usually their own biological children; while a same-sex couple has children relatively rarely, and never as a result of the combination of their own genetic material. Third, it is hardly implausible to suggest that the psychological link between sexual behavior and procreation, however badly attenuated among modern heterosexuals, is even harder to maintain when one's sexual behavior is mostly or exclusively homosexual. And so forth.

Furthermore, is it "anti-life" to fail to strive to maximize the number of children one has? Is the couple with seven or eight children who've spaced them using NFP more "anti-life" than the couple who take every effort to achieve another pregnancy ASAP after the last one, thus having fifteen or twenty children? Is someone who decides not to marry and to live a life of chastity, even though he or she has prospects for marriage, necessarily acting "anti-life"?

I would say: nature itself tends toward life, and when we live in accordance with the natural law, lots and lots of new lives will come into existence. We don't need to want every one of them to come (whether or not we should want this); we just need to keep from interfering with nature's designs, and they will come anyway whether we want them to or not. As long as we keep from interfering, we've done our duty (even if we should sometimes go beyond our duty).

This seems to me to entail a more realistic and humane ethic than a lot of "personalist" thinking seems to entail. Most people who have ever lived cannot relate to or live up to the high-falutin' ethos that a lot of Catholic writing on this subject in recent years seems to imply, quite falsely, is essential to morally licit marital relations. To hear some people talk, you'd think that unless you begin each sexual act with a recitation of the Song of Songs, while Puccini (or indeed Bach) plays in the background, you've just "used" your spouse as an "instrument" for pleasure. Most marriages, historically speaking, have been far from this romantic, even though perfectly chaste.

The guy down at the pub can understand "Your penis is made for _this_, pal, not for _that_." Tell him that he's "using his body as an instrument" if he masturbates or sodomizes the fellow next to him, or that he's in a state of "self-deception" vis-a-vis the "unity" he thinks he's achieved, and he won't have a clue as to what you're talking about. (If it seems to him that his body can be an "instrument" at all, it can seem equally so when he's "using" it, quite chastely, to give pleasure to the wife he loves. By contrast, he can feel just as much "unity" with a same-sex lover -- at least, I would argue that there's no way to explain why the unity is illusory unless somewhere along the line we appeal to natural function.)

Should we aim for something higher than just refraining from interfering with nature's purposes? Of course. But we shouldn't pretend that those who fail to do so -- which is most people -- have somehow failed to do their moral duty. Personalistic arguments are valuable as a supplement to traditional natural law ones, but they cannot replace them. Grace builds upon nature; the perfect shouldn't be made the enemy of the good; or... [insert your favorite cliche here]. In its practical applicability, then, and not just its theoretical superiority, traditional natural law theory has the edge, or so I would argue.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 2, 2006 3:24 AM

Alex - My reference to a pared down metaphysics should probably have been more carefully circumscribed. I was responding to remarks about Aristotle's account of causes, which I think needs some paring. That's a far cry from endorsing a billiard ball model of causal action. And I was at least moderately careful to limit my claim about fruitfulness to control of empirical reality, which doesn't come close to exhausting reality.

Posted by: bob koepp | November 2, 2006 6:57 AM

Thanks for such a detailed answer! Two points.

1. As for perfection, it is a moral duty of every person in every act to express love for God. A sexual act done for the sake of pleasure alone is condemned by the predominant tradition of the Church. Now the unitive intent need not be very explicit--it can be "just to do what married couples do" (in the same way as baptismal intent need only be "just to do what the Church does"). But something other than pleasure is needed. There need be no recitals of the Song of Songs, but the love of God does need to be implicitly present in sex, just as it must be implicitly present in everything else one does. I don't think we disagree.

The great advantage of personalism is that it takes seriously the central ethical teaching of the New Testament that Christian ethics all derives from the commandments of love.

2. "So the cases are obviously different. You have to take a positive step to ejaculate within a rectum, but not to be infertile." Described this way, the cases look different different. But consider the following redescription: "Just as you have to take a positive step to ejaculate within a rectum, you have to take a positive step to ejaculate within the vagina of an infertile woman." The two seem parallel from a certain point of view. Now of course you and I agree that there is a difference, because the positive step in the first case is unnatural while in the second it is natural. But since we're trying to come up with an account that explains why the first is unnatural and the second is natural, we cannot appeal to this difference.

I think the most promising classical NL approach here is to embrace the notion of a "natural conclusion", which is distinguished from the telos (in the cases where the telos is achieved, the "natural conclusion" is the proximate cause of the achievement of the telos).

So let's look at your principle "It is wrong to begin a process and at the same time positively act to bring it to something other than its natural conclusion." I find the principle quite plausible, at least when we restrict to human processes (otherwise a lot of animal-based experiments are wrong), as long as it is clear that the beginning of the process and the diversion are different acts. This is the case in contraception, and we agree that contraception is ruled out by classical NL arguments. No problem there.

But there does seem to be a problem over same-sex acts (and to a lesser extent over opposite-sex "unnatural acts"). For in those cases, the beginning of the process and the diversion of the natural conclusion may be one and the same act. And when the two are the same act, then it seems like this is precisely a case of beginning a process that cannot lead to its natural conclusion, and you rejected the proposed principle that it is wrong to begin a process that cannot lead to its natural conclusion. (But maybe you can un-reject it, and then say something about the case of the tongueless guy.)

Best wishes,
Alex

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 2, 2006 9:03 AM

I misread what you said. Mea culpa.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 2, 2006 9:06 AM

Hi again Alex:

Re: perfection, we do agree. And of course you are right that "a sexual act done for the sake of pleasure alone is condemned by the predominant tradition of the Church." But what does this mean exactly? A standard answer in the manuals is that the sign of someone who seeks pleasure alone is that he or she is obsesed with sex, demands it of the other spouse at inopportune times, tends to strive to maximize the amount of pleasure attained in sexual acts, etc. This doesn't entail that the average person -- including the average non-Christian (this is natural law we're talking about here, after all, not a theological ethics based on scripture) -- who looks over at the spouse and thinks "Boy, do I want him/her right now!" is guilty of moral failing if he dosn't immediately go on to say to himself "Oh, um, and I want what happens next to glorify God. OK, now let's get started..." The key is rather that the mindset of the person not be one that tends to look at the sexual act as merely a means to pleasure. This doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with desiring intercourse simply because it seems desirable at the moment.

What's ruled out, I think, is rather an attitude in which e.g. someone seeks the pleasure of sex per se and not one's spouse -- anyone would do in principle, but one's spouse just happens to be the one one can "legally" do it with. Here one treats one's spouse as a prostitute, in effect. Rather than wanting to make love to one's spouse, what one really wants is just some sexual pleasure, to which the spouse is but a means.

Here I think personalistic analysis may indeed be helpful in spelling out exactly what is ruled out and what is not by prohibiting acting for the sake of pleasure alone. My point is just that it goes too far to pack in a lot of distinctively Christian symbolism here (e.g. the relationship between Christ and the Church) so long as what we're aiming at is a natural law analysis. For the system cannot have the implication that, say, a married Confucian couple who know nothing of Christianity cannot possibly fulfill the natural law vis-a-vis sex because there's nothing going on that obviously corrresponds to seeing their lovemaking as glorifying God, picturing the love of Christ for the Church, etc. Whatever involves distinctively Christian themes must be part of a higher and more complete overall sexual ethic, but not a part of basic natural law duties.

Re: natural conclusions: You say "the beginning of the process and the diversion of the natural conclusion may be one and the same act." OK, but the act is still one that by its nature involves actively directing a natural process (arousal, etc.) to something other than its natural conclusion. So natural law rules it out. So what's the problem, exactly?

From something you said earlier, it sounds like you might be thinking that the problem is that acts like this must have some other natural end than the sorts of acts natural law allows. But this is not the case. Sodomy has no "natural end," because it is inherently unnatural. It's not that nature intends something different for it, but then somehow still commands us not to do it; rather, nature doesn't intend anything for it at all. (The person doing it may intend something, but that's irrelevant.)

Moroever, when an act of sodomy is begun, it's not like the problem is "Gee, now I can't bring this to a natural conclusion," as if the problem were that someone gets aroused and then just finds himself in the middle of sodomy. He's got to do something to get there. It isn't that he just can't get to the natural conclusion, or even that he's put himself in a situation where there's no hope of doing so; he's positively done something to get it specifically to something other than the natural conclusion.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 2, 2006 11:08 AM

I think this is closer to working. We still need a clear notion of natural conclusion, though maybe my proximate cause suggestion will do the trick.

Now the question is whether it is always true that it is wrong to direct a natural process to something other than its natural conclusion. For personalism reasons, I think that even if it is not in general wrong to do this, it is wrong to do this in the case of sex, because the connection between sex and love implies that higher moral standards apply, and the connection between sex and the body implies that one should not act against one's body while engaging in sex. So what I say below does not affect the argument against homosexual acts, but is still of theoretical importance.

Is it always wrong to direct a natural process at something other than its natural conclusion? And is it always wrong to interrupt a natural process? (In my last post I answered "yes" to the latter question, but now I am not so sure.)

A couple of cases:

1. The natural conclusion of putting food in one's mouth seems to be swallowing (the telos, then, is nutrition). But it is quite licit to put some tough meat in one's mouth in order to chew it up enough to feed it to a baby (assuming other food is unavailable). This is an interesting case because the nutritive process is actually being interrupted, and a good that could have happened is prevented.

2. The natural conclusion of breathing is filling one's lungs with oxygen (the telos, then, is oxygenation of the blood stream). But it is licit to breathe in helium as a scientific demonstration.

3. The natural conclusion of swallowing is placing food or drink in one's stomach. But it is licit to swallow a camera for the purposes of scientific research.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 2, 2006 2:09 PM

Alex:

Is there a way to spell out what it means to "act against one's body" that doesn't involve an appeal to natural function a la the sort of natural law theory I've been describing? (I gather that you aren't yourself committed to saying there is, but it seems that other personalists and/or new natural law theorists wouldn't want to make such an appeal.)

Re: your examples:

1. Here it seems we have a case of simply using your teeth for something other than (but not contrary to) their function, just as we would if someone tapped out a song on his teeth. No problem with that. Yes, it's food you're softening with your teeth, but in the case at hand that's no different than if you were using your teeth to pull the string off a package. You didn't put it in your mouth to eat it, any more than you are trying to eat the string. It isn't parallel to a case in which you _were_ trying to eat it and then vomited it up or spit it out so that you could get the pleasure of eating without gaining weight -- which _would_ be to frustrate the process and be at least mildly immoral (an example of gluttony).

2 and 3: these aren't analogous to the unnatural sexual case. There one is trying to get something that should be one place (the vagina) into some other place (a rectum, say). Here one is not doing that, but rather only using the organs in question for someting other than their natural end, which, again, can be legitimate. These cases would be parallel only if (I guess) they involved trying to breathe or eat in a way that gets the air or food somewhere other than the lungs or stomach (whatever that would involve). As it is, they are at most parallel to putting something into the vagina other than what would usually go there -- a finger, say, during foreplay, which is not immoral.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 2, 2006 3:17 PM

Dear Ed:

Your last response assumes that in an important sense what the homosexual couple is trying to do is the same as the heterosexual couple is doing in natural intercourse.

If this assumption fails, then they could just say that they are simply using their sexual organs "for something other than (but not contrary to) their function". (It's worth noting that that would already be an important concession from them. After all, if homosexual acts are acts of a completely different sort from heterosexual ones, then equality arguments for gay rights are significantly weakened.)

Let me put it differently. I admit that you are right that pulling helium into one's lungs is not breathing and swallowing a camera is not eating. I was wrong there. But what if the defender of same-sex sexual activity says: "Likewise, anal intercourse is not sex in the same sense as heterosexual sex, but a different use for the penis and rectum."

If you think this is entirely hypothetical, James Allison, a former Dominican priest, has argued that homosexual activity might be permissible on the grounds that same-sex desire might be something of a completely different kind from opposite-sex desire rather than a distortion thereof.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 3, 2006 8:04 AM

"I do not see why the fact that a religious presupposition mght be needed is at all a problem for the Natural Law theorist. The existence of God is a truth of reason. :-)"

I'm curious about this statement, because when I hear the term Natural Law, it's usually being cited by a theist to explain why those who don't share their religious beliefs can still ethically be held to some of the same ethical standards that their religion espouses. That is, a distinction is made between religious dogma and "natural law."

If your Natural Law theory requires belief in a God and I, as an atheist, find all reasoned arguments that purport to prove the existence of a God to be unpersuasive, then I should categorically dismiss your Natural Law arguments as well.

Posted by: Phil | November 3, 2006 8:00 PM

Edward Feser:
"...to act in a way that causes it to end anywhere but in a vagina is necessarily just to frustrate the telos of the process. It's like starting up your car, revving the engine, and then slamming it into the garage door rather than pulling out into the street."

Wouldn't a more accurate analogy (at least if we're speaking in terms of such things as Kleenex, rectums, and mouths) be this: It's like parking your car in a barn or shed, instead of in your garage..? That is, you are intentionally putting your vehicle someplace where it fits, and you're not causing it physical harm, as you are in the "slamming into a garage door" analogy.

Posted by: Phil | November 3, 2006 8:30 PM

Phil:

We need to distinguish between natural and revealed religion. Natural religion involves attributing to God all the attributes that reason can show God to have. The most obvious of these (at least if one's argument for the existence of God is along the lines of a cosmological or teleological argument) is God's being the creator, and it may follow from God's being creator (depending on what exactly is meant by this doctrine) that we owe him the sort of gratitude we owe our parents.

As to the sense in which belief in natural law requires the existence of God, plainly atheists typically accept many propositions of natural law without accepting the existence of God. Thus, they believe the good is to be pursued and the bad to be avoided (the first of the first principles of NL); most of them, I expect, believe it is good for a human being to be a part of a community (another one of the first principles of NL), and so on.

Ultimately, there is a kind of inconsistency in an atheist's believing in an objective ethics, because objective norms must come from God. But on at least one of the approaches to NL, the inconsistency in being an atheist and believing in an objective ethics is no greater than that in being an atheist and believing in the existence of physical objects. Yes, there ultimately is an inconsistency in being an atheist and believing in physical objects, because nothing could exist were it not for God, and so there could not be physical (or any other) objects without God.

But nonetheless one can know that there are physical objects without knowing that God exists (one is simply ignorant, then, of the fact that the existence of physical objects entails the existence of God). And, likewise, I expect one can know some objective moral norms without knowing that God exists.

However, there is a debate within NL circles as to the exact way that God is involved. For instance, some lay an emphasis on the idea that Natural Law is LAW, and that law requires a lawgiver. Some others, however, stick to the concept of naturalness, without putting this kind of emphasis on the word "law".

Aristotle believed that things had objective purposes without believing that there is a God.

In fact, I think we had better think that some things have objective purposes. For something to be a mind, I suspect, the attainment of truth has to be one of its objective purposes. Thus, if there are minds, there are objective purposes. Of course this is controversial.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 4, 2006 6:50 PM

Alexander,
I think that the way one interprets this discussion hinges on the specific ways that we interpret the terms used. For example, you say

"Yes, there ultimately is an inconsistency in being an atheist and believing in physical objects, because nothing could exist were it not for God, and so there could not be physical (or any other) objects without God."

As an atheist, my instinct is to reject your statement, or to mock it ("Somehow, physical objects manage to exist even though there is no God.") But if I try to interpret it the way you might intend it, I think our views are not far apart. If we define "God" as "the sum of all forces which allow physical objects to exist" then yes, of course there is a God.

Many mainstream notions of "God" involves several noncoincident beliefs: a belief in a Creator God, a belief in a Moral God who has opinions about whether our human actions are right or wrong, and a belief that our conscious selves will continue to exist after we die.

If I'm not mistaken, your intepretation of the "natural" part of Natural Law refers to "the nature of a thing," and not "the laws of nature." In this, however, I'll propose that the following is axiomatic: Our understanding of the true nature of a thing will always be imperfect.

The purpose of a penis, for example, may be to urinate and ejaculate. That doesn't seem to support traditional sexual morality, so many natural law theorists continue the statement of purpose to be "ejaculate semen into a vagina."

That's fine, but it's just one possibility of many. If we believe it's important to elucidate the true nature of things based on their function in our species, then the true purpose of a penis is to urinate and to ejaculate into as many vaginas as possible. Certainly, that's the goal evolution intended.

...which is not to say that it is the "correct" way to describe the telos of a penis. Instead, I'll just suggest that, per the axiom I describe above, no evidence exists to support one definiton over another, nor can any evidence exist to do so, if our goal is indeed to determine the "true" nature of a thing.

Posted by: Phil | November 4, 2006 9:07 PM

Alex,

I'm very sympathetic to the view that an atheist who affirms objective purposes holds a position no closer to inconsistency than the atheist who affirms the existence of any contingent object. In fact, a sensible atheist ought to affirm both things. To argue that there are no purposes in the universe other than _human_ purposes is a pretty hopeless position. If there were no non-human purposes, then human beings would be themselves composed of nothing but purposeless processes. However, this would mean that human beings lack minds -- including the faculty of forming intentions or adopting purposes. As your comments seem to imply, the very possibility of belief presupposes the existence of cognitive faculties with the intrinsic purpose of seeking truth. Similarly, the very possibility of intentions or purposes presupposes the existence of cognitive faculties with the intrinsic purpose of supplying deliberation with goals. Human will cannot be the source of all purpose (function, value, etc.), since brain processes can constitute the human will only by having the appropriate intrinsic purposes (and functions).

Posted by: Rob Koons | November 4, 2006 10:07 PM

Rob:

As regards logical consistency, that's right. (It may still be the case that objective purposes yield a further argument for the existence of God that the existence of contingent objects does not. For as far as I know there is no non-theistic explanation of the normative transitions between species.)

There is, however, a further question about the transition from objective purposes to morality. Aquinas thought there was no transition there: the right and the natural for human beings are one and the same. But Scotus, I think, thought there was a real transition there--God has to legislate the duty to obey our nature in order that our nature be morally binding on us.

(Where do I stand? With neither, because I am not a natural law theorist, though I think natural law reasoning is correct in many circumstances.)

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 5, 2006 9:35 AM

You wrote:
For example, Sullivan describes a “Catholic married couple who live their lives according to natural law in every respect” as one who “never engage in any sexual act that does not result in the penis depositing semen in a vagina” (p. 84). If what he means by this is that the Catholic Church or natural law theory forbids acts like fellatio and cunnilingus even between married people, he is mistaken. What is forbidden is taking fellatio to the point of orgasm, or taking cunnilingus to orgasm outside the overall context of a completed act of intercourse; it is not necessarily forbidden to indulge in them as foreplay to an act of intercourse that results in ejaculation within the vagina. Perhaps Sullivan realizes this, but if so he should have expressed himself more clearly, since he is bound to give unwary readers the impression that natural law and Catholic teaching are more restrictive than they really are.

That seems to be a rather picky point, but if you're going to be picky about it, I'd like to register an objection. You might be right that certain acts like fellatio are not considered absolutely out of bounds. Perhaps they are justified or excused when they further the aim of procreation. Presumably, most people ask for oral sex because receiving it is quite pleasurable. Surely if the aim is the production of pleasurable sensation apart from the aim of procreation, this is the sort of thing that would be condemned by the moralists when the rest of us are left scratching our heads thinking there's something quite silly about that. If the problem with Sully is that he fails to appreciate that you need a justification for getting head, you've got an uphill battle to fight.

This point seems particularly unpersuasive:
In fact, of course, the theory forbids the use of contraceptives or ejaculation outside the vagina even during pregnancy, and indeed even if the wife is known to be infertile. One reason for this is that in the latter cases no less than the case of sex before pregnancy, the acts in question involve an intentional frustration of the function of the sexual organs, which, if it is intrinsically immoral at all (as the theory says it is) is immoral even when one knows that the sexual organs will not in a particular case achieve their natural end anyway. What matters is that one does not oneself try to do something that frustrates the function - that something outside one’s control is going to frustrate it anyway is irrelevant.

If I'm reading you rightly, I can knowingly have sex with a pregnant woman so long as I try to ejaculate inside her because such acts are non-procreative per accidens rather than non-procreative per se. This isn't a particularly plausible view to hold. I'm assuming that what you're trying to register here is something about the moral significance between the intended and foreseen of the sort that is captured by the doctrine of double effect. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem with the view I take it you're defending is that if you know that the function is frustrated by an outside agent, you know that you've lost the justification for succumbing to sexual desire that you would have had if there was a reasonable chance of procreation. If DDE-type reasoning is applicable to this situation and we assume it could justify having sex with a woman who you know is preggers, we have to identify the good that is aimed at if we are to justify bringing about the foreseen evil and when you know that you're sex acts are non-procreative, whether per accidens or per se, you know that as a matter of fact, there cannot be the greater good so there cannot be a greater good being aimed at. As a consequence, you cannot properly describe the intentions of someone who knows they are having sex with a pregnant woman as someone who intends the good but merely foresees the bad. Maybe this isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I'm already of the opinion that oral sex needs no justification (yes, even if the aim is to bring the receipient to orgasm) so if you add that you're theory is committed to denying that you can have sex with a pregnant woman permissibly, I can't say things have gotten much worse at this point. I'll note that point would seem to be relevant to your remarks concerning the unitive function. You block Sully's objection by trying to uphold the moral relevance of the per se/per accidens distinction, but only by abusing the intend/foresee distinction in just the sort of way that leads many to think that the DDE and similar principles are just nonsense on stilts.

Posted by: Clayton | November 5, 2006 1:12 PM

Clayton:

Whether your argument about sex with a pregnant spouse succeeds depends on what the intended good is. If the intended good is reproduction, of course the argument succeeds. But it is not Ed's view that sex must be done only for purposes of reproduction.

Suppose union is also a licit goal, as the Catholic Church teaches. In such a case, sex with a pregnant spouse can be aimed at that good. Moreover, in this case there is no evil at all being realized by the action, so double effect does not even come up. For what would the evil be? Absence of procreation? But the sex does not contribute causally to absence of procreation (abstinence does not cause procreation, and sex generally does not cause non-procreation). So the act done does not cause the bad event (or, more precisely, the absence of the good), and hence double effect does not even come up. On the other hand, if the couple are rendering themselves infertile through contraception, then the act of taking contraception does cause the absence of procreation, and is intended to do so, and so double effect will not excuse the act.

Now you might say that the evil in question is not the absence of procreation, but "sex not leading to procreation". However, it is not clear that the NL theorist needs to say that "sex not leading to procreation" is at all an evil as such. The absence of procreation is an evil, but that sex occurred maybe does not make that evil any bigger. I suppose one might argue that there is something bad about a process's failing to achieve its telos--maybe it is somehow worse when a seed fails to grow into a flower than if there is no seed there in the first place. But there double effect does apply: the couple intends sex but does not act against the connection between sex and reproduction.

As for oral sex, I think you may be assuming that pleasure is an independent good. It's clear to me that "empty pleasures", i.e., pleasures in the absence of an independent good that is taken pleasure in, are indeed empty and to seek them is almost as harmful to one's character as it is to seek to take pleasure in something bad.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 5, 2006 9:35 PM

Hi, Alex,

I'm with Aquinas on the source of moral authority. I think Scotus's notion that natural function isn't enough was the first, but fatal, step on the road of voluntarism that led ultimately to Nietzsche and Sartre. Our duty to obey God is itself dependent on our being created in such a way as to find our natural fulfilment in such obedience. (It may be metaphysically impossible for any rational creature not be so constituted, but there is still a rational distinction to be made between moral obligation and divine command.)

I'm curious, if you're not an NL theorist, you do an awfully good imitation of one (in this thread, at least). Where, roughly, do you part company with NLT?

Best,

Rob

Posted by: Rob Koons | November 5, 2006 9:47 PM

As I understand the dialectic, we're being told that certain types of sexual acts that are non-proccreative per se (NPPS) are morally impermissible. I'm told that I'm not to have anal sex with another man or woman and that the impermissibility of such actions doesn't depend upon the intention with which I act because there is no legitimate aim such acts could serve. The objection that Sully raises is that it's not held that sexual acts that are non-procreative per accidens (NPPA) are morally impermissible. He cries foul. It strikes him (and me) as rationalizing at its worst.

Someone could say that the reason that someone can knowingly perform acts that are NPPA is that they need not stem from an intention to pursue empty pleasure and need not stem from the intention to thwart the aim of reproduction as they might serve some further legitimate aim such as the unitive function. At that point, I don't see what's wrong with an action that is NPPS since it is serving one of many perffectly acceptable aims. If I'm having anal sex with my partner because it will strengthen a loving relationship, it seems to serve the unitive function no less well than vaginal sex carefully planned to take place during menstruation or with a pregnant woman.

If the per accidens/per se thing is going to carry moral weight at all, I would have thought that it would in the context of an appeal to something like the DDE. On some views (maybe not Aquinas') anytime you succumb to sexual desire, that is wrongful but it is a prima facie wrong that can be overridden if the agent pursues the good of reproduction. It seems to stretch the spirit of the DDE to say that someone who knowingly performs a token NPPA can be described as aiming at the good (Unless, of course, we work with a more expansive conception of what a good aim might target in which case the NL theorist seems to lose grounds for objecting to anal, oral, and so on).

Posted by: Clayton | November 5, 2006 11:27 PM

I'll let Ed speak for himself.

I have a specific account of what "unitive" means in the sexual context (http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ap85/papers/notlust.html), and this is not a merely psychological union, but a biological union. On this account, NPPS acts do not produce union. If sex is licit only when unitive (as I think), then NPPS acts are always wrong.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 6, 2006 10:39 AM

I use NL theory the way one might use standard quantum mechanics. We know that standard quantum mechanics is false--it fails to cohere with General Relativity. But for a lot of phenomena, it is the best we've got, and so we use it in the hope that the situations in which we use it are the ones where it is approximately true.

I find attractive John Paul II's version of NL theory on which our nature is not rational animality but self-givingness, but in the end I want to move away from obligations being grounded in our nature, towards something more Platonic, like the idea of love as the primary obligation of all that exists, insofar as it is capable of love, or maybe at least of all persons.

My picture of an ideal Christian ethics is that it starts with the obligation to love all persons, or maybe to love everything that exists (my preferred formulation, but further from Scripture). It then analyzes the concept of love and derives all specific moral obligations from conceptual truths about the nature of love conjoined with facts about ourselves and others.

The facts about ourselves and others here, however, will include teleological facts, since to love x requires (but perhaps does not reduce to) the appreciation and pursuit of x's good, and what x's good is depends on teleological facts about x.

I suspect that the answers one will get will be pretty close to classical NL theory, with some exceptions.

For instance, on classical NL theory, one has greater duties towards those more closely related to one. Since the closest relation is identity, it follows one has the strongest duties towards oneself. But if this were so, then one should be criticized if one sacrificed one's life for another, just as one should be criticized if one sacrificed the life of a relative for a stranger.

Likewise, I reject the claim that the fact that some event E would further my own eudaimonia gives me a different kind of reason to act from that given to me by the fact that E would further the eudaimonia of someone else. I know that Aristotle and Aquinas have a well-developed account of how the eudaimonia of beloved others is our own eudaimonia, but the thought that the eudaimonia of others is our own is a thought too many. I am one of the few people who is convinced by the central argument of The Possibility of Altruism.

But I have no developed metaphysical and ethical theory that does justice to all this, and so I use NL theory when I need to.

And despite all these high-minded views, I remain a selfish sinner, hoping in the mercy of God.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 6, 2006 11:03 AM

Hello everyone. I've been out of town for a few days, and haven't had a chance to go through all the most recent comments. So I'll reply a little at a time.

The intentions of the couple, homosexual or otherwise, are not relevant in this case. They may be relevant in other cases, but even then they are of secondary importance. What fundamentally matters in every case are _nature's_ intentions (in the sense of Aristotelian final causes). Anal intercourse has no "use" at all in the relevant sense, different from vaginal intercourse or otherwise, because it has no _natural_ use -- no final cause or natural teleology -- at all. (This or that individual might have uses for it, but that's not the question.) And when taken to climax it is positively against nature, in the sense and for the reasons given above.

(I add the qualifier "when taken to climax," because some traditional natural law theorists would seem to allow at least the theoretical possibility of anal penetration as part of foreplay within marriage, if not taken to climax -- though they would also, I think, all be for various reasons doubtful whether this could be morally safe -- not to mention hygienic -- in practice.)

Re: the former Dominican priest you mentioned, well, what can I say -- priests (especially "former" ones) say the darnedest things these days. In any event, I think his suggestion is a non-starter. From the traditional NLT point of view, the teleology of sexual desires must be understood in the light of the overall organism, and the kind to which that organism belongs. So, since the natural function (in an Aristotelian sense, in case some naturalist comes into this conversation late) of the sexual organs is clearly heterosexual -- penis and sperm made for vagina and ova, etc. etc. -- sexual desire itself is in turn naturally ordered in a heterosexual way. (Again, in the Aristotelian sense, in which it is nature's intentions that are fundamental, not the subjective intntions or desires of this or that individual.)

So, from this POV, homosexual desires are just objectively disordered, whether or not they are genetically grounded. (One may not be culpable for them if they are so grounded, but that doesn't change their objective character, and thus doesn't change the fact that they ought not to be acted upon.) The case is analogous to any physical defect that has a genetic cause. So, e.g. clubfoot, I believe, has at least a partial genetic basis. That doesn't change the fact that it is a defect -- indeed, it just means that the genetic cause is itself a defect. And it would be silly to say that a clubfoot has a different natural use than a normal foot. A clubfoot _per se_ does not have a different natural use, because it has no natural use at all. Rather, nature's intention for the foot has just been partially frustrated in this case. Similarly, from the NLT point of view, nature's intentions for sexual desire are frustrated in the case where someone has, for whatever reason, sexual desire for members of the same sex.

(This is, of course, why the "God made me this way" argument has no force -- it would equally well "show" that God wants some people to have clubfeet, autism, and the like. That God _allows_ certain flaws to exist doesn't mean he positively _intends_ them. Why he allows them is of course another question, but the existence of homosexual desire is no _more_ of a problem for NLT than the existence of clubfeet, autism, a possible genetic basis for alcoholism, etc. are.)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 6, 2006 1:27 PM

Parking a car in a barn or shed isn't contrary to the function of a car, but slamming it into your garage is, since it damages the car in a way that keeps it from getting to the road, etc. That's why I used that example.

Of course, the analogy isn't perfect, precisely because cars are not "natural" objects, but depend for their function on our intentions. So if we decided that we thought a good use for cars is to slam into garage doors, then that would change their function. Natural functions are not like that, not only because they don't depend on us for their functions, but because their functions follow from their form or essence, which is immutable.

The existence of objective and immutable forms or essences -- the central claim of Aristotelian essentialism -- is also crucial to understanding the role of God in traditional NLT theory. To know the natural end or function of something, we do not, on NLT theory, need to appeal to God's will, but just to the thing's form or essence, which is directly knowable through reason together with observation. Of course, for Thomism, the existence of things with particular essences needs to be explained in terms of God's creative action, but that isn't necessarily something we need to know for the purposes of ethical inquiry.

Now, what this entails is that we can know what is good for us without appealing to God's will. That still leaves open the question of what makes it the case that we _ought_ to do what is good for us -- what makes pursuing our good a matter of _obligation_. And here, in the view of some traditional natural law theorists, is where God comes in, insofar as they would argue that the normative force of a law can only derive from a lawgiver who issues the law with a certain intention in mind, who will punish violations of the law, etc. So, if we take this view, at least part of NLT involves an appeal to God.

But again, not the part that involves knowing whether this or that action really is good for us -- that can be known apart from God's will. (And, I should add, even where God comes in, this does _not_ involve an appeal to faith, since for NLT, the existence of God can be known through pure reason.)

On the other hand, and as Alex noted, it is one of the first principles of NLT that we should pursue the good and avoid the bad. Indeed, not to follow the good would be contrary to reason, since the natural end of theoretical reason (on an Aristotelain view) is to grasp the essences of things, which includes grasping what is good for them, and the natural end of practical reason is to determine what actions it would be good to pursue, which must necessarily be actions consistent with the good for one as a human being having a certain essence. It would follow, then, that even if God didn't exist, it would still be the case that failing to follow the natural law would be contrary to reason.

Anyway, I discuss all this in more detail in my earlier post on "Blackburn on Anscombe and natural law."

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 6, 2006 2:01 PM

Whoops. "NLT theory" should read "NL theory." (Since NLT means "Natural law theory," "NLT theory" is redundant.)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 6, 2006 2:03 PM

I'm worried about the difference between unwittingly performing an action that is NPPA and knowingly performing one. It is the actions that are knowingly non-procreative (whether per se or per accidens) that seem to be the source of trouble since it seems implausible to characterize the intentions of someone who acts in this way as aiming at something good (unless that good is unitive in the non-biological sense). I know you think that NPPS actions are always wrong, what I'm concerned with is your response to the counter-argument which runs as follows:
(1) It's not wrong to knowingly perform actions that are NPPA.
(2) There's no principled difference between such actions and actions that are NPPS.
(C) There's no principled objection to actions that are NPPS.

As for Ed's natural law theory, I take it that if panda's were rational agents, they would have been wrong to use that wrist bone as if it were a thumb, no? Wrong, like, my having anal sex just for the fun of it, yes? [Pre-emptive plea not to say that there might be a matter of degrees here. I want to know whether it is wrong to assign novel uses to parts of my body whether it's my penis, my wristbone, my earlobe, etc...].

Posted by: Clayton | November 6, 2006 3:03 PM

Edward,

"Parking a car in a barn or shed isn't contrary to the function of a car, but slamming it into your garage is, since it damages the car in a way that keeps it from getting to the road, etc. That's why I used that example."

I'm aware of that, which is also why I used the example of parking the car in a barn or shed. Putting a penis into a mouth and slamming it into a car door are in no way analagous. However, while you might first balk at parking your car in your barn, at the end of the day, you'll find that it fits and no harm has been done.

Please excuse my transgression into nonphilosophical matters, but my perception of NL theory has always been that it is a type of "reverse engineering." That is, learned people (say, Catholic intellectuals) use it to justify the moral beliefs that they already hold, or in the case of Catholics, the beliefs they are required by their religion to hold. Nothing in this discussion has shown me otherwise, even if atheists also find much to like in NL theory.

As I mentioned, there is no way to know the "actual" nature or purpose of a thing, absent supernatural decree. I submit that it is axiomatic that such a thing is unknowable. So, like a bad round of college parliamentary debate, the real meat of the argument comes from the definition of terms. In defining the penis (with the functioning of urinating and depositing semen in a vagina) NL theory, as you explain it, ignores both nature (evolution designed the penis to fertilize as many eggs as possible) and God (since, as you acknowledge, God may create homosexuals.) Since marriage, as we understand it, does not exist in nature, you'll forgive me in taking the cynical view that NL theory is just a philosophical-sounding way to support existing religious and social beliefs. It reminds me of the way social scientists will cite Einstein's theory of relativity as if it actually means "everything is relative," or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to support the idea that "everything is uncertain." It sounds smart, but the evidence doesn't really support the claims. The evidence _cannot_ support the moral claims made, ever, because we cannot know the true nature or telos of a thing, and we never will.

Posted by: Phil | November 6, 2006 3:45 PM

As I said, the analogy isn't perfect, but it is good enough for the specific purpose to which I was originally putting it, namely to illustrate a point pertaining to Alex's suggested "natural conclusion" analysis. For that purpose I needed an example that involved a decisive conclusion to a process, but one that is obviously contrary to the function of the process. Stopping a car in the parking lot of a supermarket -- or for that matter in a barn or shed -- isn't contrary to the function of the car (to get you to and from home, say), but smashing straightaway into the garage is.

Your problem with the example seems to be that smashing a car into a garage seems more like damaging a penis than it is like using a penis for anal intercourse. But this ignores the specific "natural conclusion" point I was making in response to Alex, for which, again, the example is perfectly fine. The damage to the car per se is not what is important in the example; what is important is that driving it into the garage door is a way to "conclude" the driving process that frustrates the function of the car, and it does so even if it luckily turns out that the car is undamaged by the crash.

Yes, obviously damaging a penis is contrary to its natural function in a way that is different from sticking it in an anus. If my point had been to draw some parallel between sodomy and something else that would illustrate natural law claims in a completely general way, then I would have chosen another example. But again, that was not my point; I was just trying to reply to a specific set of objections from Alex. (If you want something more general, please read the three preceding posts I have written on this subject, along with what I say in the comments sections, in which I have gone into all of this in detail.)

Re: your claim that NLT is merely used by its defenders "to justify the moral beliefs that they already hold, or in the case of Catholics, the beliefs they are required by their religion to hold":

Setting aside the ad hominem/well-poisoning element to this objection, it would only be plausible as a criticism if there were no reason independent of Catholicism of NLT to think e.g. that there could be a sense in which the sexual organs have procreation as their function. But such a suggestion would be absurd: you hardly need ever to have heard of Catholicism or NLT to think that the sexual organs have a procreative function. Sure, you might think this has no moral significance, that functions are often hard to demarcate sharply if one accepts Darwinism as a complete story, etc. etc. You might even think the idea is ultimately mistaken. But the basic idea that there is an intuitive sense that certain organs -- the heart, the lungs, the eyes, the sexual organs -- have objective functions is quite obviously one that has occurred to a great many people, indeed, probably most people who have ever lived. And when you add it together with Aristotelian essentialism and the rest of the Aristotelian apparatus it quite naturally suggests the sorts of conclusions drawn by NLT.

A reasonable person could, of course, think that all of this is still mistaken. But to suggest that no one could find it plausible apart from some theological bias or vested interest is, I submit, unsupportable.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 6, 2006 8:16 PM

I might be stepping in a bit over my head, but it would appear to me that one the problems of natural law theory is the legitimate variation in opinion regarding the nature of essences or ends.

As Phil alludes to, our knowledge of ends/essences may be imperfect. Take a medical example. For years the thymus was thought to be a redundant organ. Discoveries mid century confirmed that it was vitally important in immunological processes. Now prior to this knowledge it may have been morally neutral to remove the thymus, since removing it from the body constituted no injury to the percieved "form". Yet in light of subsequent knowledge, it is clear that those who did so--while morally not culpable--were still doing wrong. Other historical examples are the self evident inferiority of Negros and Women. Imperfect knowledge of forms/essences/ends would then lead to an imperfect morality. Perfect knowledge would lead to perfect morality. As perfect knowledge seems to elude flesh and blood we have to rely on a Divine Being. Hence we arrive at Robert Koons' position.

The more I mull on the matter of Natural Law theory, the more I feel it a second degree morality masquerading as empirical fact. First define the good as that which conforms to the ideal and then assume the knowledge that one has of the ideal as perfect. Those who disagree with you have imperfect knowledge. Now I am not saying that one has to have perfect knowledge before one can start acting morally but one should be cognizant of the limitations of our knowledge.

In my view Christian sexual morality seems to suffer from the above. The mainstream legitimacy of the "unitive" aspect of the sexual act seems only to have been recognised in the last 100 years or so. I am afraid that with Christian tradition a bad example in this matter, I feel the whole area needs to be re thought out again.

Posted by: The Social Pathologist | November 7, 2006 5:23 AM

Of course there is a principled difference between actions known to be infertile per accidens and ones known to be infertile per se. For instance, in natural intercourse, the reproductive organs are cooperating for reproductive purposes, but fail to succeed. In acts that infertile per se, there is no reproductive cooperation at all. I suppose the organs on their own may be striving for reproduction, but they are not doing so cooperatively.

The agent's knowledge can affect the nature of an action, but it does not affect the nature of natural processes. Thus, if a natural process is of a certain type when the agent doesn't know something about its outcome, then it is also of the same type when the agent does know about it.

Thus, digestion has nutrition as its natural goal, even if the person is sick and is going to throw up mid-way through the digestive process. Moreover, the natural purpose of this digestive process is unaffected by the agent's knowledge or intentions--even if the agent intends to throw up and knows she will do so, nonetheless her digestive system is attempting to nourish her. Note, however, that if she is intending to throw up her food, then she is setting herself against her digestive system's functioning, and is acting wrongly. (The case where the food is poisoned is different, because to throw up poisoned food is to have the same ultimate goal that the digestive system does, namely the good of the body. There is an interesting disanalogy between digestion and reproduction: most bodily processes have as their natural goal the good of the organism in which they occur, but reproduction has as its natural goal the good of another organism, a new organism.)

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 7, 2006 9:04 AM

The Moral Epistemology of Natural Law:

Here are some questions for Ed, Alex, and maybe Rob if he's still around:

It has been claimed that we needn't appeal to God in order to know the structure of morality on NL Theory. I think that *if* we can have sufficient evidence to justify our beliefs about teloi or natural ends or essences, *then* that is true.

But what's our moral epistemology?

I think the natural reply goes like this: The NL moral epistemology is just a subset of NL epistemology generally. You can abstract a particular's essential properties from observation on the Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophical anthropology. We can thereby make similar abstractions about the purposes of things.

My Questions:

1) People disagree about natural ends. How do we know who is right and who is wrong? What's the method? Science clearly has one. But how do we make these decisions on what are admittedly largely conceptual matters?

2) How do we have knowledge that natural ends are *normative*? In other words, how do we *know* that we should *care* about, say, the natural ends of our body parts? The traditional Aristotelian story involves coming to see how the natural end of some feature of our lives comes to play a role in our final end. But how do we have *knowledge* about that? It seems like a reasonable person could have a concept of her flourishing and think that part of her flourishing ends up involving disregarding the natural end of one of her parts.

I think part of the answer has to involve God syncing up our basic moral framework to attune us to the structure of the good. Probably, God is required to have knowledge in general, actually [Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism does the job here, I think.]

I think that it is very, very hard to be both a moral realist, believe in moral knowledge, and think that knowledge can be had independently of appealing to the existence of God. We don't have any other way to know that our faculties are reliable. If we take fallibilism seriously, we have to rely on God for knowledge. Plantinga's got me convinced.

A Thomist metaphysics, I think, needs an Augustinian epistemology of illumination.

Posted by: Octagon | November 7, 2006 1:04 PM

I generally don't know how I know things. In regard to knowledge of natural ends, I think some are as undeniable as clear testimony of the senses, for instance that one of the purposes of the eyes is to capture visual information. I don't know exactly how I know this, but I also don't know how I know that there is a laptop on my lap now, and it seems equally hard to deny either.

As for method, I think that for most organs, most people are agreed on at least one of its functions. Thus, nobody who knows the non-normative biological facts of the matter seriously doubts that seeing is a natural function of the eyes, pumping blood is a natural function of the heart, oxygenating the blood is a natural function of the lungs, grasping truth is a natural function of the doxastic faculties, and reproducing is a natural function of the genitals. Now there are difficult questions as to what other functions these parts might have, but these positive claims seem nearly impossible to deny.

I do not have a full-blown story about how we know these things, though I can give a piece-meal defense of a number of them by argument. For instance, in cases where the accomplishment of something is for the most part necessary for the survival and reproduction of the organism, then most organisms of this type will have some organ which has that accomplishment as its natural purpose, and which for the most part accomplishes it sufficiently for the survival and reproduction of the organism. Thus, biology tells us that for the most part, oxygenated blood is necessary for the survival and reproduction of a human. It follows that in most humans there will be an organ whose function is to accomplish that and which for the most part accomplishes it sufficiently for the survival and reproduction of the organism. If so, then it is clear which organ that is--the lungs.

Now you may ask how I know that natural purposes match up with the non-normative needs of the organism, why, for instance, we don't have organisms which are so mixed up that it is the function of one organ to fulfill a function, but another, whose function it is not to fulfill it, actually fulfills it. This is logically possible. However, it seems to be a sceptical hypothesis which we have no reason to suppose. It may be that only in a theistic system can we ultimately be justified in rejecting sceptical hypotheses like this one, but if so, then the problem has nothing in particular to do with NL, but applies to all empirically-informed knowledge.

For some functions, the argument may have to be different. It might even have to be holistic: positing that this organ or process has such-and-such a function best fits with the rest of our biological and philosophical knowledge. (I have no epistemology of philosophy.)

The traditional Thomistic epistemology involves a highly non-naturalistic account where the form in the thing known causes the existence of the same form in the knower. This seems strange, but on the other hand it may be our only hope for solving the problem of intentionality. If so, then the problem is alleviated.

As for the question of why we should care about our natural ends, it may be a conceptual truth that the good of the parts is partially constitutive of the good of the whole. Moreover, it seems pretty clear that health is a part of flourishing, and health is nothing but the flourishing of our body, and the flourishing of something with natural functions is nothing but its fulfillment of these natural functions.

I don't know what to say to someone who admits that her body is a part of her but claims not to care about the good of the body, just as I do not know what to say to someone who does not care about her good simpliciter.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 7, 2006 1:30 PM

Dr. Feser,
I have some questions related to my own understanding (or lack thereof) between Aristotle's philosophy and NLT. First, Aristotle's telos of man generally is given to be happiness in accordance with virtue. He then explains how that knowledge of virtue is achieved through rational determination, prudential judgements based upon an individual accounting of the context and consequence. His system was not meant to calculate a protective, narrow middle course, which is exactly what seems to be the case with NLT. Additionally, what strikes me about his system is that he seemed focused on control of irrational intent rather than acts per se. When he does mention acts, it is in a circular argument that practice of virtue makes us virtuous. NLT, as you've explained it, takes a different approach and determines intent based upon acts. The problem with this approach is that it really does not allow prudential judgements to occur, since the act itself is forbidden under all circumstances.

Dr. Pruss,
The phrase, "Too much of a good thing," seems to lurk right behind the natural flourishing argument. There may in theory be a simple diet that is absolutely the healthiest diet anybody could consume. If those were the only foods we could purchase though, the black market for forbidden foods would make Prohibition look trivial by comparison.

Posted by: Step2 | November 7, 2006 2:48 PM

An aside: I debate quite a bit with conservative Protestants who mainly rely on Scripture to argue against homosexuality, but also like to have their non-Scriptural bases as well. They tar homosexuality with terms like "unnatural" and "abnormal" -- two terms that are related, but not identical concepts. On the "homosexual sex is unnatural line," I simply repeat the traditional natural law argument as put forth by Feser: Homosexuality is unnatural like a teenage male masturbating or a married Christian couple having contracepted sex is unnatural. And they almost never endorse that theory, as it seems self-evidently "absurd."

Some then try to construct a "natural law" type argument, essentially trying to "have their cake and eat it too" (most just give up at that point), which states homosexuality is unnatural but a married contracepted sex is not. But such arguments never stand on logical grounds.

My own thoughts are it seems insane to tell couples not to use contraception as such "mastery" of nature greatly reduces poverty and elevates standards of living in nations who do this. Indeed, it is downright irreponsible for a couple to have more children than they can support. Some couples who don't use contraception will have upwards of 10 plus children in over the course of their marriage. Unless you are very rich, most couples can't afford this many children and ought not have that many.

Posted by: Jon Rowe | November 7, 2006 3:17 PM

Just swamped with work, so some brief replies:

Like Alex said, NLT does not say that anyone must intend to procreate whenever having intercourse. It says only that one must not act in a way that frustrates _nature's_ intentions (in the sense of "frustrate" I've explained here and in earlier posts, and in the Aristotelian sense of "nature's intentions," i.e. final causes). An infertile couple who have intercourse do not frustrate nature's intentions -- sure, the intentions are frustrated anyway, but the people involved aren't the ones who frustrated them. By contrast, someone who deliberately ejaculates outside the vagina does something which frustrates nature's intentions. The two cases are thus very different. You might think the difference isn't morally relevant -- to answer that claim would require a detailed exposition of NLT (for which see my previous three posts on this issue). But it is a real difference all the same, and one that PDE and the like aren't relevant to in the way you seem to think.

Re: the question whether "it is wrong to assign novel uses to parts of my body" etc., as I've said many times in previous posts on this subject, NLT does not say you can't use a bodily capacity _other than_ for its natural function; it says you can't use it in a way that is _contrary to_ or frustrates its natural function.

Social Pathologist:

Sure, people disagree over this or that natural functions. But NLT doesn't claim we have perfect knowledge of _every_ natural function in the first place. What matters in the case at hand is whether we know what the natural function of the sexual organs is, if thay have any function at all. And I defy anyone to deny with a straight face -- rationalizations are surely no less possible for critics of NLT than for its defenders -- that IF these organs have any natural function at all, it is procreative (and, as I have said, also to excrete waste, in the case of the penis).

Yes, you can deny that they really do have any function at all; or you can argue that if naturalism is true, then conjoined with Darwinism it implies that there are only ersatz functions which do not have the cut and dried character Aristotelians ascribe to functions; or you could even argue that in addition to the procreative function, the organs have a function to give pleasure, etc. And of course you can say that if we accept naturalism, biological function (such as there is) is irrelevant to morality.

Fine. None of that is relevant to the claim at hand, which is that IF Aristotelian essentialism is true (as traditional NLT says it is), then it follows that (a) the sexual organs do have natural functions, (b) those functions are determinate, (c) they do not conflict, and (I, along with traditional NLT theorists in general would argue) (d) they are unavoidably relevant to morality. Since procreation is the most obvious of these functions (does anyone really doubt this -- _really_? -- any more than anyone really doubts that the heart serves the function (if it serves one at all) of pumping blood?) it follows that whatever other functions it has cannot be carried out in a way that conflicts with this particular function. Hence if these organs function in such a way as to give pleasure (as they obviously do) this pleasure must only be sought in a way consistent with the procreative function ("consistent" in the sense explained many times already, i.e. in a way that doesn't involve deliberately frustrating their functions). (And of course, it's pretty obvious that the pleasure is only there to get people to reproduce -- even on a Darwinian account, it's hard to see why else nature would have put it there.)

If you want to reject all this, fine. But understand that Aristotelian essentialism (in which the whole question of determining the essence of a thing is treated very differently than it would be on naturalistic assumptions) is part of the package, and that the theory cannot properly be understood or evaluated except in terms of it.

1. See above.

2. See my previous three posts on this subject.

Traditional NLT of the sort I've been describing doesn't claim to be merely a duplication of Aristotle's own thinking. It claims to be a logical development of his thinking (and, obviously, one which has taken account of the development of Aristotelian themes in the millennia since Aristotle was around.

Yes, NLT holds that certain actions are intrinsically immoral, but it doesn't follow that it leaves no room for prudential judgment. Quite the opposite is true. Read a good pre-Vatican II manual of ethics or moral theology and you'll see just how complex (and often subject to prudential judgment) moral issues can be from a NLT point of view.

Jon:

I think there is no consistent way to criticize homosexual acts from a NLT point of view without also criticizing the other practices you name. So I agree that the sort of Protestants you refer to are "trying to 'have their cake and eat it too'" -- not to mention contradicting centuries of natural law theory, Catholic and Protestant, and 1900 years of unbroken Christian teaching. It was only in the 1930s, after all, that ANY Christian body -- the Anglicans, in particular -- began to toy with the idea of allowing contraception. The Catholic Church may be the only one left upholding the traditional view without qualification, but it was once the common teaching of all Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 8, 2006 4:17 AM

Ed,

I hate to be uncharitable, but sometimes charity is a matter of holding people responsible...

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that anyone who tries to draw a moral distinction between my aiming to ejaculate outside a woman's vagina and aiming to ejaculate within it in part because I know the woman cannot become pregnant as a consequence in the service of trying to explain why homosexual conduct is immoral is engaged in a desperate attempt to justify judgments that, quite frankly, I take to be quite offensive. Color me unimpressed.

Posted by: Clayton | November 8, 2006 8:27 AM

"in the service of trying to explain why homosexual conduct is immoral"... Are you supposing that Ed's and my primary concern is with homosexual conduct? Whether you are or are not, I do want to say a few things about this. Frankly, I don't care all that much about homosexual conduct. Yes, it's immoral, but masturbation, marital contraception and heterosexual oral sex are probably much more widespread.

Of these, on natural law grounds, masturbation is the most perverse, because it represents the greatest departure from natural man-woman intercourse. (That it is the most perverse does not imply it is the most immoral. Immoral activity that involves another person is worse insofaras it includes a very serious offsense against charity, since there is no greater harm one can do to a person than to induce him or her to act wrongly.)

Marital contraception is, arguably, the most harmful of these, because married couples have a special responsibility for witnessing to the value of life, and their neglect of this responsibility is deeply harmful in many ways, not least because it particularly belongs to parents to transmit values to the next generation. Marital contraception empties sexual union of a significant part of its meaning, and hence is an attack on a great good. Moreover, speaking theologically, in the case of Christian couples, marital contraception is an offense against the mystery of marriage, a mystery that is an image of Christ's fruitful love for the Church, and hence has an unfortunate theological significance.

Furthermore, it is not implausible to see a connection between contraception and the high divorce rate, if John Paul II was right that contraception is not just an attack on the procreative aspect of marital relations but also on the unitive aspect. We cannot prove that there is a causal connection there, but at least there seems to be a correlation. Note, for instance, the temporal correlation between the wide-spread introduction of contraception and the increased divorce rate. Observe, too, that the divorce rate for Catholic couples that use natural family planning seems to be about ten times smaller than for other Catholic couples. Of course, none of this is a proof, but it all fits well with the theory that contraception is an attack on the unitive aspect of sex.

It's worth noting that there are arguments against marital contraception that do not apply in the homosexual and autosexual cases (though all of these behaviors are seriously wrong, and there are good arguments against each). One such additional argument is the Finnis-Grisez argument that marital contraception is an intentional attempt to interrupt a process aimed at life. Another is the theological considerations tied to Christ's fruitful love for the Church.

For these reasons, I am personally much more worried about marital contraception than about homosexual behavior. At the same time homosexuality is the issue de jour.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 8, 2006 9:34 AM

Acknowledgment: The observation about the special responsibilities of married couples comes from a private correspondent (I do not know if s/he wants to be identified by name in a public forum).

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 8, 2006 9:36 AM

Dr. Feser (or Pruss):

Perhaps one of you would be kind enough to clarify the following:

An infertile couple who have intercourse do not frustrate nature's intentions -- sure, the intentions are frustrated anyway, but the people involved aren't the ones who frustrated them. By contrast, someone who deliberately ejaculates outside the vagina does something which frustrates nature's intentions. The two cases are thus very different.

I don't see any difference at all. If intent is irrelevant, what is to prevent me from using this reasoning to form the following argument: Two men who have sex do not frustrate nature's intentions -- sure, the intentions are frustrated anyway, but the people involved aren't the ones who frustrated them (i.e., it's the fault of neither one that men can't get pregnant).

It seems to me that all these attempts to twist natural law around itself in the service of morally privileging heterosexual sex must necessarily devolve into an axiomatic claim that sex should only be between a man and woman. Period. If that's the case, why attempt to use any moral schema to justify it? Just assert it and be done with it.

Dr. Pruss, I would take issue with your statement:

We cannot prove that there is a causal connection there, but at least there seems to be a correlation. Note, for instance, the temporal correlation between the wide-spread introduction of contraception and the increased divorce rate. Observe, too, that the divorce rate for Catholic couples that use natural family planning seems to be about ten times smaller than for other Catholic couples. Of course, none of this is a proof, but it all fits well with the theory that contraception is an attack on the unitive aspect of sex.

Of course, these facts are supportive of multiple interpretations, the least probable (IMO) of which is the one you mention. The point in time when contraception and divorce seem to correlate was one of great social upheaval. There's simply too many variables to even warrant such a guess without some studies to back it up.

Moreover, the lower divorce rates you note for Catholic couples who use NFP could easily be due simply to the fact that such couples are likely to be more involved with their church. Lower divorce rates for (non-evangelical) couples who are heavily involved in church or other similar social activities have been previously demonstrated. To pin such correlation on NFP would also seem unwarranted, especially where another, known, correlation that could explain the phenomena already exists.

Posted by: Bill Snedden | November 8, 2006 11:47 AM

I don't think that the primary concern is with homosexual sex, but I don't think that matters. It's an aim and that's bad enough. I'm trying my best to be charitable and see those who believe that it's immoral as having views grounded in reason rather than protected through rationalization serving something dark and ugly, but it becomes increasingly hard to do when I see the 'reasons' being offered.

Just look at Ed's recent comment:
Re: the question whether "it is wrong to assign novel uses to parts of my body" etc., as I've said many times in previous posts on this subject, NLT does not say you can't use a bodily capacity _other than_ for its natural function; it says you can't use it in a way that is _contrary to_ or frustrates its natural function.

I have no idea how ejaculating into someone's hand, mouth, or anus is used in a way that 'frustrates' a natural function or is contrary to its function once there's a difference between acts known to fail to fulfill a function and those that frustrate that function. I know _why_ people want to say things like this (it's why I tend to think they're bad people), but when I try my best to see them as harboring reasonable (albeit mistaken beliefs), their reasons strike me as utterly opaque. It's hard not to conclude that what we have is an odd moral theory (NL) being abused to justify unjustifiable prejudices. But maybe there's a 'natural' way of drawing the line between walking on my hands (even if it cuts them up) and anal or oral sex with someone I love.

Posted by: Clayton | November 8, 2006 11:53 AM

There are (at least) two issues here. The first issue is: Is there a _metaphysical_ difference between (a) actions that involve deliberately frustrating a natural purpose, and (b) actions that do not involve this, even though the purpose is going to be frustrated anyway due to factors outside the agent's control. The second issue is: Is this metaphysical difference of any _moral_ significance or not?

I have been primarily addressing the first issue and not the second, because that is the issue that Sullivan's discussion focuses on insofar as he does not even seem to realize that NLT makes a distinction here. It is also the issue that Alex and I have been debating insofar as we have discussed whether specifying what Alex calls a "natural conclusion" to an act is part of specifying its natural end or purpose and what counts as frustrating that end or purpose.

What you are criticizing me for, though, is not having dealt with the second issue to your satisfaction - something I haven't even been trying to do, and something that involves an enormous number of questions that have been addressed only tangentially in this post. To address it adequately would require, for instance, discussing: the conception of value that prevails in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and ethics (a conception that is radically different from the subjectivist conception most people have these days, and which they unreflectively tend to assume is the only possible conception); the A-T conception of reason (which differs equally radically from the Humean means-end conception that, again, most people today seem to think is the only possible conception); the relationship between the biological functions of various bodily organs and capacities on the one hand and the higher psychological and social aspects of human nature, which I've only briefly addressed; and so forth.

I've discussed these issues to some extent in earlier posts, and I don't think it is fair to expect me to repeat it all here. If you don't want to go back and read all that stuff, fine, but in that case please don't raise objections that I've already dealt with several times before in earlier posts, toss off ad hominem remarks, etc.

Re: the latter, I know it gives some people an agreeable frisson of righteous indignation to accuse NLT of picking on homosexuals in particular, but there is just no basis whatsoever for that accusation. As Alex has said, and as I said in response to Jon, NLT equally rules out lots of things that many "conservative" Christians who condemn homosexuality seem to think are OK, e.g. masturbation, contraception within marriage, and oral and anal sex to the point of ejaculation within marriage. Furthermore, it also rules out extramarital sex of any kind, pornography, adultery, divorce and remarriage, direct abortion under any circumstances, and probably a few other things that don't occur to me just now. So there are far, FAR more heterosexuals, including conservative heterosexuals, whose lifestyles it condemns than there are homosexuals. Furthermore, NLT does not at all condemn someone with a homosexual orientation who does not act on it, but it does condemn a heterosexual and otherwise observant Christian who contracepts within marriage. How you can accuse it of singling out homosexuals is thus beyond me.

Add to this the fact that NLT entails all sorts of non-sexual-morality related conclusions that are extremely controversial and disliked even by many right-wingers -- such as, for example, that it is always wrong to lie (contrary to what most people these days think), that it is always wrong directly and intentionally to take innocent human life (contrary to what euthanasia advocates and defenders of fire-bombing Dresden and atom-bombing Hiroshima think), that the state is a natural institution and that we have an obligation in natural law to pay taxes to support its legitimate functions (contrary to what libertarians think), etc. -- and it becomes manifestly absurd to suggest that NLT is somehow motivated by a desire to pick on homosexuals. It is, if anything, an equal opportunity offender.

So, I grant you that NLT is very radically out of step with the times (though it is _not_ out of step with what most people historically have considered common sense morality, even if it sometimes refines that morality in a more austere and consistent direction). But it is out of step with virtually _every_ aspect of our times, not just with acceptance of homosexuality and not even just with the sexual revolution in general. And it is at least an internally consistent system -- with a vengeance, I would say -- and, as I have suggested, a quite natural view to take if one buys the whole Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical story it rests on, and apart from which it cannot be properly understood. Take it or leave it. If you leave it, though, please spare us the nonsense about how it's just a rationalization for "homophobia."

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 8, 2006 1:10 PM

One more thing, Clayton: I should add that until you make an attempt to grapple seriously with all the complex metaphyscial and moral details of NLT, and indeed of the entire structure of traditional sexual morality that it enshrines (a system of morality that is hardly unique to Christianity), your references to "bad people," "unjustifiable prejudices," etc. are simply, and quite obviously, question-begging. So what's the point of making them? (Suppose I said "And furthermore, I consider anyone who rejects NLT to be a moral reprobate, and to be motivated by a desire to rationalize his immoral practices." You would rightly dismiss this as mere question-begging ad hominem well-poisoning. But I see no difference between that and the sorts of comments you've been making.)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 8, 2006 1:22 PM

Like I said, I'm making an honest effort here to understand how someone like you or Alex who seem to be otherwise reasonable people could think that the heterosexual lifestyle is morally compulsory. And, as I said, your attempts to do so have struck me and others as failed attempts at rationalization. They've not struck as the slightest bit persuasive and at some point, you think that the persistence of the attitude is due not to the strength of the reasons, but something else.

You wrote, "How you can accuse it of singling out homosexuals is thus beyond me". How you can think I've accused you of that is beyond me. Maybe you've not bothered reading carefully what I've written. An implication of your view is that certain forms of sexual conduct are immoral, I think that people shouldn't harbor such attitudes, and I'm calling you on it to defend or disown the attitude. Your response is really quite odd. The idea that someone with silly attitudes about lots of things can't be criticized for some of those attitudes in particular is ludicrous. Can't I criticize racists by pointing out that their attitudes about blacks are irrational? I'm criticizing you because I think your attitudes about homosexuals are irrational. I also think your attitudes about those other issues are irrational, but what matters to me is the way that some will condemn homosexuals because their experience in contemporary life is quite unlike the experience of those who masturbate.

I'll read your old posts if you think there's something in them that will address the questions I've asked, but given what I've seen in our exchanges thus far, I suspect I'm not going to find the answers you're telling me I'll find. I think this because I think you're not being particularly careful in how you take my objections. As you see it, I'm just rejecting NLT out of hand. I think it should be rejected, but I'm not rejecting it in questioning you. I'm accussing you of abusing what is good about the theory. I'm not saying that NLT is out of step with the times, I'm saying (as others have said) that your _application_ of it which issues permissions for some acts and prohibitions for others is problematic. You draw a distinction between assigning novel functions and using something in a way that is contrary to its function, and I think that's a great distinction, but one that saves the NLT from (what I regard as) repugnant implications. You, however, seem to take it as saving the implications. I just don't see it.

So, simple questions I thought you should be able to answer without having to send me on some possibly fruitless search through your old posts. Is walking on your hands when you know they'll be damaged in the process wrong on your view? It seems that it goes beyond assigning them a novel function, it seems that you're using them in a novel way in a way that you know frustrates their function. It doesn't seem wrong (not even to Aquinas). Aquinas (as I'm sure you know) responded to this worry by saying that certain sexual behaviors injured the good of man (not the organ) to handle this worry, but seemed to be forced to make assumptions about the good of man that we have little if any reason to accept. At least he made an honest effort, albeit one that failed.

As for your follow-up, I said what I said about "bad people" and "unjustifiable prejudices", because I wanted you to understand why I'm interested in your answers. More often than not, I'm inclined to say that there's no more point trying to reason with someone with the belief that homosexuality is morally wrong than there is reasoning with someone with the belief that interracial sex is wrong. More often than not, I'd not be inclined to shake hands with someone who harbored either attitude. I'm making an honest effort here to overcome that and try to understand your views. We're not making progress, I'm afraid.

Posted by: Clayton | November 8, 2006 3:46 PM

Calling the views associated with NLT "silly," "irrational," "rationalizations," etc. is, again, just question-begging, since part of what is at issue in the dispute between conservative morlists (like NLT advocates) and their liberal adversaries is precisely what ought to count as the rational default position where sexual morality is concerned. It isn't just that the specific theoretical results differ; it's that the pre-theoretical intuitions differ too. You think that any traditionalist who can't convince you in a blog post that NLT is a live option must be "rationalizing," has deep seated irrational prejudices, etc. But by the same token, a traditionalist could say that anyone with liberal views on sexual morality who isn't at least moved to consider NLT as a live option is himself rationalizing, so deeply in thrall to depraved desires that he no longer has even an intuitive grasp of what is natural, and so on and so forth. Indeed, I think when the metaphysical apparatus behind NLT is spelled out, it has precisely the latter implication. But obviously there'd be no point in making such a claim as part of a _defense_ of NLT, since unless the theory is first established, this claim (about the corrupted moral sense of anyone who doesn't find traditional sexual morality at least prima facie plausible) will just sound question-begging. Similarly, just asserting -- as if it were obvious -- that anyone who doesn't convince you of the plausibility of the NLT view must be rationalizing, in thrall to prejudice, etc., is question-begging in exactly the same way.

And yet most people who have every lived -- certainly most religions -- would find NLT views about sex closer to their own opinions than they'd find liberal views. That might mean that mankind has long been in a darkness of prejudice from which it is only now emerging. But it could also mean that it is modern man (or at least modern Western man) who is now sinking into moral darkness. Part of what is in dispute between NLT and liberal sexual morality is which of these interpretations of recent cultural history is correct. And if anything, it is traditional morality, having what Chesterton called the "democracy of the dead" on its side, that has the intuitive advantage -- IF, that is, you want to play this game of shouting "prejudice" at your opponent. That's rhetorically effective only if the mob you're shouting it in front of agrees with your intuitions about what counts as prejudice. A liberal can plausibly assume this, to be sure, of most living Western audiences. But a traditionalist, who cares more about fidelity to the lasting inheritance of his forebears than the fleeting passions of today's mob, is "playing" to a very different audience. In either case, though, however rhetorically effective or ineffective all of this is, it is philosophically worthless.

So, the debate goes far deeper than you seem to realize -- deep enough that by crying "prejudice," "rationalization," etc. you really shouldn't expect to impress anybody who doesn't already agree with you. Indeed, to traditionalist ears, such cries sound _themselves_ like prejudice -- liberal prejudice, the prejudice that assumes that having a desire to do something gives the person having it a presumption in favor of doing it, a presumption that can only plausibly be overridden if someone else is "hurt" by it (and where "hurt" usually connotes some physical harm or extreme psychological harm).

Traditional moralists have always taken a very different default presumption, namely the presumption that there is something in the nature of things -- not in individual desire, nor merely in the requirements of mutual advantage, say, but something external to every individual point of view and every collection of individual points of view -- that forms the ultimate ground of morality. Some of them would find this external grounding in a realm of forms or essences (Aristotelian or Platonic), some in the will of God, some in tradition, some in the Tao or the Logos or the World-Soul, some in a combination of these elements. But they'd agree in finding it odd that anyone should think that if it "doesn't hurt anyone else" -- especially in the sense modern liberals would attach to these words -- then that by itself entails that there is a presumption in favor of its being morally unproblematic. They would say that the deeper question is whether it conforms to our nature, which some actions might not do even if performed in isolation and outside human society, a la Robinson Crusoe.

Again, maybe you think all this is hooey. Fine and dandy, but just _saying_ it is cuts absolutely no ice whatsoever. Nor does tossing out judgemnts about what is prima facie "silly," "irrational," etc. that simply _presuppose_ liberal morality, rather than giving its critics any reason to endorse it.

For what it's worth, though, I'd be quite happy to shake your hand if you should ever offer it. Not knowing you, I can hardly presume to know whether deep down you are motivated by intellectual dishonesty, irrationality, moral depravity, etc. or rather just well-meaning intellectual muddle. It would be nice -- and certainly allow for more fruitful debate -- if you'd extend the same level of charity to people who disagree with you.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 8, 2006 5:42 PM

I admitted that I thought your views were silly and irrational. I still think that. I've not begged any questions by saying that because that's not how I argued that your views are incoherent. I argued that your views are incoherent on wholly separate grounds (grounds that show that the charge that your beliefs are silly and irrational is prima facie plausible). I'm giving you the opportunity to show me and my kind that we are wrong to do so. Yes, I confess, I'm disposed to think that the belief that homosexual behavior is wrong is beyond the pale, like the belief that interracial dating is wrong. You might think I'm being dismissive, but you'll note that this isn't the first time I've asked you to explain how you're not relying on bogus distinctions and misapplying your own moral principles. I've noticed that this isn't the first time you've decided to focus almost entirely on some aside comments I made instead.

Posted by: Clayton | November 8, 2006 5:59 PM

Well, I'll go out on a limb and say that walking on one's hands is not really a locomotive act. That is, it isn't really done for the purpose of getting around but as some other sort of act--gymnastics, exercise, showing off--something like that. But every homosexual act is, by definition, a sexual act. So in that sense homosexual acts are _alternative_ to heterosexual acts in a way that walking a few feet on one's hands is not an alternative either to the ordinary manipulative use of one's hands or to the ordinary locomotive use of one's feet. So the analogy just doesn't hold. If someone, otherwise able to walk on his feet and write with his hands, started defining himself as a "hand-walker" and trying to walk everywhere on his hands and write his checks with his feet, I'd say there was something wrong there.

But that's just by the way and perhaps not helpful to the discussion.

Posted by: Lydia | November 8, 2006 9:26 PM

I haven't ignored your criticisms. Like I said before, I have already dealt with all of them in excruciating detail in this and previous posts, which is the reason I said you ought to go and read them if you're really interested in understanding NTL. Otherwise I'll be spending all week just re-writing things I've already said elsewhere, simply because you can't be bothered to read what I've written before tossing off some objection I've already answered many times, and throwing in a snotty ad hominem to boot. Sorry, I've got better things to do.

But let me briefly try one more time. Let's take, for example, your statement that you "have no idea how ejaculating into someone's hand, mouth, or anus is used in a way that 'frustrates' a natural function or is contrary to its function once there's a difference between acts known to fail to fulfill a function and those that frustrate that function." Here you just repeat a question I've answered many times: the difference is that in the one case the agent himself _positively does_ something to interfere with the process and in the other case he does not. In other words, in the first case the person frustrates the process, while in the second, no _person_ frustrates anything -- it's just that due to forces outside the agent's control, the process won't have it's normal result. But the agent isn't culpable for this, so he does no wrong in acting anwyay. Now, you don't say what's wrong with this answer, or incomplete about it, or anything of the sort; you just repeat ad nauseum that you don't see the point, etc. etc.

Well, at least two further things can be said -- I've already said them, and elaborated at great length here and in previous posts, but I'll summarize yet again. First, the relevant teleological facts don't just involve the penis getting sperm out of the body; they also involve such things as the design of the penis as something evidently made to fit into a vagina specifically, the evident "directedness" or "ordered-ness" of sperm toward ova specifically (rather than Kleenex or anuses), and so forth. All of this supports the judgment that the function of ejaculation isn't just to get sperm _out of_ the body, but also to get it _into_ a woman's vagina.

Second, on the A-T conception of value, good is correlative with being, so that what is good for us necessarily follows from our essence, and thus includes whatever natural ends or functions are inherent in the biological side of our nature. Thus, it is just a necessary truth that it can never be rational for us to choose to act contrary to a natural end (unless, as I noted earlier, it is a subsidiary end and we're acting to preserve the life of the organism as a whole). So, since to ejaculate outside the vagina would be to frustrate nature's intention of getting sperm into it, one can never legitimately choose to do this.

That doesn't mean we can't act, though, if something outside our control keeps some natural end from being realized. So, for example, it can never be rational or moral for a person deliberately to throw up his food (and thus interefere with a normal eating process) simply so he can keep eating, or keep his weight down, etc. But if a person has a condition that causes him involuntarily to throw up his food, but keeps eating anyway in the hope some of it will stay down, he does not act immorally in doing so -- even if, as it turns out, his weight therefore does stay down or he ends up being able to eat more of the food he likes. In the former case, the person is deliberately trying to frustrate nature's intentions; in the second case he isn't. So while the first action can never be morally licit, the second can be.

Of course even the second _might_ be morally illicit; if the guy thinks "Cool, I can do what I always wanted to, only now in a morally legitimate way," then he does act immorally. But here the problem is with his intentions, not with the act per se. Similarly, if a man marries a woman who is infertile _simply because_ he wants to have sex without having any children, NLT would say he acts immorally. But it isn't because knowingly marrying and sleeping with a woman who just happens to be infertile is immoral -- it isn't -- but rather because the specific intention with which one does so in this case is immoral. One shows oneself in this case to be the sort of person who would happily violate nature's intentions if one could "get away with it" -- and it can never be moral to _want_ to violate nature's intentions.

(In these unique cases, one's intentions can be relevant, but they are not relevant to the question at issue here in the completely general way you seem to imply in your earlier comments. In particular, what's wrong with most of the sexual acts NLT condemns as immoral is not that one does not intend to procreate, but rather that the acts are just inherently unnatural and thus -- given the A-T metaphysics of value -- contrary to our good, whatever one's intentions.)

Now maybe you think the sort of example given above shows that NLT advocates have a "silly" "prejudice" against bulimics and Roman bacchanalians too. Or maybe you think Aristotle et al. came up with the metaphysical part of the theory so that Christians could later use it to "rationalize" their "silly" "prejudices." Or maybe you even think Aristotle came up with it to "rationalize" his _own_ comparison of homosexuality to eating dirt. Who knows, who cares. I do hope, though, that you'll first read the Metaphysics, and maybe Aquinas's commentary on it, before deciding breezily to dismiss a centuries old and well-worked out metaphysical system -- otherwise, you know, someone might unfairly accuse you of rejecting it simply because you've got some agenda.

Another example: You ask about whether it is immoral to walk on your hands if you know they'll be damaged. If you really have read what I've said in this post -- not to mention the earlier ones -- it should be obvious what my answer is to that. First, if you're doing it to save your life, say, then of course it's not immoral (for reasons I've given many times -- a subsidiary capacity can be sacrificed to save the whole). It's also not immoral if you're trying to save someone else's life, say (though here we need to go into more detail about why man's social nature allows for the sacrifice of one's health or life for the sake of another). If, however, you're doing it just to be cute, and your hands get seriously damaged as a result, then -- as what I said about the "earwax" example in the post above quite obviously implies -- it might on NLT be at least mildly contrary to the virtue of prudence, and thus mildly vicious. And it would be even more mildly so, or even not vicious at all, if the damage was trivial or fleeting. (Again, I explain why in my discussion of the "earwax" example above.)

Third, re: Aquinas and the function of the sexual organs vis-a-vis the "good of man," I have also already said -- and again, many times if you'd just _look_ already -- that the mechanics of the biological organs is not the end of the story but only the beginning, that the higher psychological elements of human nature and associated social consequences are particularly relevant to evaluating the seriousness of misuse of the sexual organs, etc. etc. Yes, Aquinas "made the attempt" to deal with this question, and so have I. You, however, have made no attempt whatsoever to find out what I've actually said before flinging smug accusations around.

Here are three examples, then, where -- as I said in an earlier reply to you -- I have already answered your objections, as you would know if you read earlier posts. Out of exasperation, I have now repeated (part of) the answers here because you have demanded it -- indeed, demanded that I do so in enough detail that you feel _personally_ satisfied that I am not just trying to "rationalize" my "silly" "prejudices" (though I'm sure I've still failed the fearsome Clayton test) -- even though you apparently can't bothered to do the less time-consuming work of checking out the archives for yourself, or even checking out the post above for that matter.

That's it, though. If you _really_ want any further answers, check out those other posts -- and my replies to the myriad comments made to them -- and see if I've already given them, because I probably already have. If not, then please don't waste my time or yours any further. I'm happy to reply to serious and even harsh critics, if they are fair-minded and polite. Trolls are another matter.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 9, 2006 1:18 AM

Bill Snedden:

As with Clayton, you simply raise an objection I've already answered many times in previous posts, and indeed in the comments section of this post. And as I say in response to him, the relevant facts in this case involve such things as the design of the penis as something evidently made to fit into a vagina specifically, the evident "directedness" or "ordered-ness" of sperm toward ova specifically (rather than Kleenex or anuses), and so forth. All of this supports the judgment that the function of ejaculation isn't just to get sperm _out of_ the body, but also to get it _into_ a woman's vagina.

Furthermore -- and, again, as I've already said above, in reply to Alex -- one has positively to do something to get a penis into an anus. It doesn't just up and happen. So the men in your example can't claim that they are not responsible for frustrating nature's intentions. They deliberately put themselves into a situation in which the act cannot reach what (to use Alex's expression) is its "natural conclusion" of ejaculation in the vagina. An infertile couple does nothing parallel to this. Yes, pregnancy cannot result, but that's not relevant here, because they did nothing themselves to prevent this. Furthermore -- and more immediately relevant here -- they did nothing to prevent the "natural conclusion" of the specific process in question by, say, deliberately putting the penis somewhere other than the vagina at the point of climax.

It seems to me you are missing this point because you are focusing on the fact that two men can't get pregnant any more than an infertile couple can. That's relevant to the overall NLT story about sexual morality, but not to the specific point at issue here, which concerns the "natural conclusion" to _the process of arousal through to ejaculation_. And when we keep this in mind, the difference between the two cases (two men vs. infertile heterosexual couple) is obvious.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 9, 2006 2:57 AM

Give'm hell, Ed!

Posted by: Max Goss | November 9, 2006 6:30 AM

"I'm making an honest effort here to understand how someone like you or Alex who seem to be otherwise reasonable people could think that the heterosexual lifestyle is morally compulsory."

I do not think the heterosexual lifestyle, whatever that exactly is, is morally compulsory. On the contrary, I think marriage, while a great good, is still only second best, after celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

Let me argue for a weaker claim, that it is not unreasonable to think homosexual and contraceptive acts to be at least morally problematic. (In my language, "morally problematic" means something like "there is a prima facie consideration against the action.") If so, then the moral or epistemic outrage is unjustified.

Four arguments.

The first is very simple. There are no good arguments in favor of the innate permissibility of homosexual activity or of contraceptive acts. The reason for this has little to do with the case at hand. In fact, there are precious few arguments for the permissibility of anything, unless we can establish the thing to be obligatory. Since homosexual activity and contraceptive acts are not obligatory--one is morally permitted to be celibate--we cannot move from obligation to permission here.

The way we generally establish something to be permissible is to refute the arguments to the contrary and make use of a general presumption in favor of permissibility. But rarely can we give positive arguments for the permissibility of something. Take something that seems fairly clear: it is permissible for me to shave. I have no idea, however, how to give a good argument for the permissibility of this. The only thing I can do is to say that I do not know of any good objection to it.

This means that there is a presumption in favor of the permissibility of something like homosexual or contraceptive activity. But it is clearly only a weak presumption, since no positive argument can be given. Now the natural law arguments, or the personalist ones, even if they are not completely persuasive, nonetheless can be not unreasonably judged to have a bit of epistemic force. NL ethics helps explain a great many things about our moral life. There are no knock-down counterarguments to them, or at least one can be not unreasonable in judging so. And the bit of epistemic force is all that is needed to overcome the weak presumption in favor of permissibility. Hence, it is not unreasonable to think the weak presumption in favor of permissibility has been overcome.

The second argument is substantial, so I will only sketch it. It is reasonable (not just not unreasonable) to think that sexuality is something of great objective importance. Otherwise, for instance, we cannot explain why rape is objectively so much more wrong than non-sexual assaults that cause the same physical and psychological damage (think of a rape of a comatose victim, without any "violence", without anybody finding out, and without any possibility of pregnancy or disease transmission). Now one of the hypotheses about why sex is objectively important is that it derives its meaning from its connection to reproduction. There may be other hypotheses (not very good ones, I might add), but it is not unreasonable to judge the reproductive hypothesis as the best one. But it is reasonable to accept the hypothesis one judges to be best. Hence, it is not unreasonable to accept the reproductive hypothesis of why sex is very important. And, I think, it is not unreasonable to move from the hypothesis that the connection to reproduction is what makes sex so very important to the view that contraception is wrong, since contraception is a direct move against what on this hypothesis gives the main significance to sex. It is reasonable, given these assumptions, to see homosexual activity as a way of inducing in oneself or another the physical feeling of having engaged in the very significant activity of sex. Without the activity really having that kind of significance, however, this is a kind of deception, and as such morally problematic. Now, an argument whose steps are not unreasonable may lead to an unreasonable conclusion. But the conclusion is not unreasonable, since all that we have against it is a weak presumption and no positive argument (see argument one).

The third is more theological. It is not unreasonable after reading the New Testament to make a positive judgment about the character of Jesus and the authors. That positive judgment makes it reasonable to conclude that when Jesus claimed to be God, he was saying the truth. His being God entails that his statements are true, and apparently among these statements are promises of divine guidance to the Church such as to rule out the possibility of massive errors in the teaching of morals. One of the teachings of the Church has always been that all orgasmic activity that is not an instance of biological mating is wrong. Thus, we are led by an argument, none of whose premises it is unreasonable to believe, to this conclusion. Now you might argue that the conclusion is absurd, and hence should be taken as a reductio of the initial claims about the veracity of the New Testament. But the conclusion is not absurd--see my first argument. Moreover, we know that actions have consequences we cannot foresee. It is possible that God might foresee bad consequences of homosexual or contraceptive activity, and we cannot give any good argument against this possibility.

The fourth is lived experience. Some people move from contraceptive or non-procreative-type activity to engaging only in procreative-type sexual activity, and find that as a result their appreciation of the depth of meaning of sexuality has greatly increased, in such a way that their earlier activities were a kind of devaluing of sex. It is not unreasonable on the basis of such an experience in oneself or another, to conclude the value judgments here are correct. Of course, lived experience arguments can go both ways. However, absent other considerations against the values apparently supported by a particular lived experience story, it is not unreasonable to find one such lived experience story more plausible or deeper or more insightful than another.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 9, 2006 8:58 AM

You wrote: "But every homosexual act is, by definition, a sexual act."

Why? (This is an honest question.) Is it because it involves arousal? (But is the intentional content of same-sex arousal the same as of opposite-sex arousal?) Is it because it involves the feeling of orgasm, and orgasm is the same kind of thing in the heterosexual and homosexual cases? (This is plausible, but it doesn't show that it is a sexual act in a deep way, since it is possible to have a sexual act that does not involve the feeling of orgasm--for instance, procreative intercourse by a couple unable to feel orgasm.) Is it because it involves the activation of the reproductive organs qua reproductive? (I think this is the best story, but it may be question-begging in this context.)

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 9, 2006 9:03 AM

Well, Alex, I suspect that most homosexuals would agree that homosexual acts are sexual. They satisfy the sexual urge of arousal or are at least (if not carried all the way to the end) responses to that urge, done because of that urge. I realize that you've brought up this possible idea that homosexual acts are a "whole different kind of thing." I _understood_ that you weren't advancing that idea yourself but bringing it up just a possible line for the homosexual advocate to take. As you yourself pointed out, that would have disadvantages for them, though, as "marriage" on the basis of a relationship that is deemed to be not even sexual in type would make little sense, especially demanded as a right. And I doubt that you'd find a lot of homosexuals who would find that it passes the laugh test to say that their desires and actions are not sexual. Indeed, the homosexual movement tends to flaunt the sexual nature of their actions.

My idea was to say that this line of thought is far more plausibly applied to walking on one's hands, as it is a gymnastic type of thing, not meant to satisfy the urges (e.g. to manipulate things, to get around efficiently) that we have for the uses of our hands and feet.

Posted by: Lydia | November 9, 2006 10:35 AM

So it's out of my control whether I ejaculate inside a pregnant woman rather than abstain? Fascinating. If that's the best you can do with NLT...

Posted by: Clayton | November 9, 2006 11:10 AM

You have an astonishing knack for missing the point, or pretending to miss it.

The point is this: ejaculating inside even an infertile woman does involve bringing the process of arousal-through-to-ejaculation to its "natural conclusion"; ejaculating inside an anus, a Kleenex, etc. does not. So, if you deliberately choose to do the former, that is not inherently immoral; but if you deliberately choose to do the latter, that is inherently immoral. The point isn't that it is in your power to choose the one and not the other; it's that, while it is in your power choose either, the one involves a choice to bring a process to something other than its natural conclusion, and the other doesn't involve this.

It's obvious that that's what I've been saying, and that your "objection" is therefore worthless.

I suspect your next move will be to ask me now why it matters whether the sperm gets in the vagina, or why it matters whether it's an anus or an infertile woman, or make some other remark that simply ignores (without refuting) answers I've already given many times, begs the question, or in some other way takes us around in circles yet again. Then you'll throw in another snide ad hominem and call it a day.

Don't bother. Your shtick is long past getting old.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 9, 2006 1:48 PM

Apologies, in naively thinking that to comply with your eminently reasonable moral principles it would be wrong to ejaculate inside an infertile vagina rather than abstaining or ejaculating in a fertile one, I had forgotten that the infertile vagina needs watering.

Posted by: Clayton | November 9, 2006 1:58 PM

Sounds like this thread has about reached its final cause.

I still don't understand how the is/ought gap is being bridged by this Aristotelian essentialism thing. Why should I live to achieve my essence? What's in it for me? Happiness? Life everlasting? I mean, what motivates me to be moral in the natural law sense of the word? (Sorry if my questions are egregiously amateurish).

Posted by: Morgan | November 9, 2006 6:13 PM

Deep breaths. Now entering the flame war. :-)

Clayton,
Although I am sympathetic to your general argument, I have two points to make. The first is that no matter how anachronistic NLT is, Dr. Feser and others do hold those beliefs sincerely, not as mere rationalizations for something sinister. To follow up on that point, in any highly structured system the semantics will usually seem like nonsense unless you grasp the underlying belief structure. After being here almost two years, I still don't have a firm grasp on it, although there is a strong Platonic sentiment to it that views the material world as shadows of something pure. Thus the concerns with piety, order, tradition, etc.
The second is that a comparison of miscegenation to homosexuality only works as an analogy when we talk about aesthetics. Although I reject the ‘purpose' argument of NLT, it is impossible to deny that one of the functions of a penis is procreative. That doesn't mean that is its only function or its primary function, it just means that a differentiation between procreative and non-procreative sex is a legitimate philosophical point.

Dr. Feser,
Since I am unsympathetic to your general argument, I have two points to make. The first is that there is a difference between the way married couples using contraception are treated as opposed to the way homosexuals are treated, which is to say that from a rhetorical standpoint conservatives have been much less vocal in condemning contraception and masturbation as unnatural or an abomination, although they do sometimes condemn them. This may be because gay marriage is the issue de jour as Dr. Pruss notes, or it may be because the marketplace of popular antagonism to "deviant" behavior is irrational and inconsistent. If it is irrational and inconsistent, I don't know how useful logical arguments are in solving the conflict.
The second is that when discussing the rhythm method, it is pretty obvious they are in fact frustrating the procreative function. They expect the female to be infertile, so it is designed to avoid the ultimate end of aiming at new life. You could say that this is nature's way of allowing the unitive function to occur, but that is a pretty thin argument to hang your hat on. I find it hard to accept that one's active intent to avoid pregnancy all of a sudden fades away so long as it is a natural versus artificial infertility. If pragmatic considerations are allowed into the equation, it should allow pragmatic solutions like contraception. From the collapse of the contraception argument, it is pretty easy to dissociate procreative from recreative functions and thus make masturbation and homosexuality permissible, even if that acknowledges they are not aimed at the "ideal" form of sexual expression.

Posted by: Step2 | November 9, 2006 7:12 PM

"The point is this: ejaculating inside even an infertile woman does involve bringing the process of arousal-through-to-ejaculation to its "natural conclusion"; ejaculating inside an anus, a Kleenex, etc. does not."

I think, reading this, I understand better my own problems with the act of determining the essence of a thing, or determining the "natural conclusion" of a process.

The act of determining the telos/nature/etc. of a body part involves more than one step. (Hereafter, I'll refer to this as determining your "definitions." And I'll use quotation marks, even though that looks a little to precious.) The first is "figuring out" or "assigning" (depending on your level of cynicism) meaning to a body part. But a second, crucial, step is figuring out how important that meaning is. These acts are done with minimal evidence, and instead involve deduction and assumption.

Natural Law Theorists build their arguments logically, as if they were dealing with geometric shapes and constructing a proof. But in Euclidean geometry, we begin with an "essence:" a circle, a square, a line, a parallelogram. These are abstract concepts, and by manipulating them in our heads, we can understand how to deal with sloppy, real-world objects that don't conform to perfect abstract definitions, but are close enough.

NLT does the opposite: it begins with sloppy, real-world objects (like penises and vaginas) and then attempts to deduce their abstract essence and function. For the first step of this process, only observation and guesswork exist, and for the second step--assigning importance--no evidence exists. This process is therefore influenced heavily by the mindset and motives of the person doing it. In this sense, an attempt to understand the motives and influences of the person who makes an assertion regarding Natural Law is not question-begging, it is just one way to gather evidence about the accuracy of his "definitions."

The uncertainty in determining "definitions" is, to me, an insurmountable problem in treating Natural Law Theory as a logical exercise like mathematics. Instead, it more resembles sketching. You say, "maybe this line goes here," and "maybe this line goes there." The moral conclusions at which natural law theorists arrive, are the result of hundreds of "maybe this line goes here" decisions. The result is one of many possibilities.

A sloppy real-world example of why I think this is a problem: it seems obvious to me that the purpose of human pubic hair is to draw attention to the genitals. It would seem to me that covering--or shaving--the pubic hair is immoral, as this thwarts the natural conclusion of what the pubic hair is there for.

If that seems a little ridiculous, I submit that it's not because my "definition" is inherently wrong, but because of the second step I mention above--figuring out how important each "definition" is. Pubic hair is viewed as obscene but unimportant in American society, just as a man's nipple might be in another culture.

All of this is not to say that NLT is worthless. All systems for determining morality are inexact, except for systems which rely on faith and nothing else. I find those systems unpersuasive, and I admit that my own biases color my views of all philosophies. However, the use of Natural Law to "prove" a tenet of religious faith (as the Catechism of the Catholic Church attempts to do, on occasion), is illogical. Further, I hope I've established why, in my opinion, the motives and intents of an NL theorist are not immaterial, but are of paramount significance in discussing the theory.

Posted by: Phil | November 10, 2006 12:05 AM

Morgan:

No, that's a fair question. The short answer is this:

The first principle of practical reason is that "Good ought to be pursued and evil avoided." This is just part of the structure of reason, which, like every other natural capacity according to Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, has a natural end or function. Now by itself this principle is pretty useless, since it doesn't tell us what the good is. But our grasp of Aristotelian essences does that, since on A-T metaphysics the good is convertible with being. A good X is just an X that fully instantiates the nature, form or essence of Xs, and a bad X is one that in some way fails to do so (badness or evil being, on the A-T account, a privation or absence of good). So to grasp the nature of an X is to grasp what the good is for it, and to understand what detracts from X fully realizing its nature is to grasp what is bad for it.

When we know through theoretical reason that some specific thing A is good for us and some other specific thing B bad for us, and through practical reason that we ought to pursue the good and avoid the bad, it follows that we ought to pursue A and avoid B. Not to do so would be contrary to reason. There is no "is-ought" fallacy here, because that fallacy is committed only when one goes from premises not containing "ought" statements to a conclusion that does contain an "ought," and there is an "ought" in our premises in this case.

Here we see one of many examples of how abandonment of A-T metaphysics has had radical consequences for other areas, in this case ethics. If final causes are real, as A-T holds, then there is a theoretical basis for holding that the knowledge and pursuit of the good is built into the very structure of reason as its final cause or natural function. But if there are no final causes, it is hard to avoid a Humean conception of reason on which it is silent about ends, and on which the "is-ought problem" seems insurmountable. Ethics, I would argue, no longer makes sense without final causes. (Indeed, _nothing_ makes sense without final causes, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I say more about this in the previous posts alluded to above.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 10, 2006 1:15 AM

Hello Step2:

You are, of course, right that there is a difference between how contraception and homosexuality are treated by most conservatives. And there is no doubt that NLT theory condemns both, so that there is, from the point of view of NLT theory, anyway, no justification for this double standard.

Why does it exist, then? One reason is probably that homosexuality is more public than contraception. Even though we know that most heterosexuals use contraception, no one could tell this from any individual heterosexual's overt behavior in public. But if two people of the same sex go out in public as a couple, hold hands and kiss, etc., then everyone notices. Also, of course, there are gay pride marches, gay days at Disneyland, and so on and so forth, but no contraception marches or the like. So, one reason -- this isn't a justification, just an explanation of the phenomenon -- might be that public displays of homosexuality are seen as a more blatant "thumbing of one's nose" at traditional sexual morality, and thus draw greater attention from conservatives.

A second reason might be that homosexual acts are just perceived as even further from the norm of nature than contraceptive acts are, since at least in the latter case a woman is still involved, penile-vaginal intercourse usually takes place, etc. So perahps they are, again, perceived as being more blatantly subsersive of traditional sexual morality and thus draw greater attention.

On the other hand, NLT itself and the Jewish and Christian traditions are _very_ hard on contraceptive acts too, as well as on masturbation and other acts involving ejaculation outside the vagina. Just read Aquinas on these topics, or the story of Onan. (For a refutation of the now fashionable but stupid idea that the story of Onan "isn't really" about masturbation or coitus interuptus per se, see this article by Fr. Brian Harrison:

http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=2940

The main reason for this double standard, though, is just that many self-described conservatives have simply taken on board much of the sexual revolution, and to this extent aren't really "conservative" at all, just less liberal than self-described liberals. They fornicate, "live together" outside marriage, commit adultury, divorce and remarry, masturbate, indulge in fellatio to the point of ejaculation, and of course contracept, just like everyone around them. The disapproval of homosexuality is for them just a vestige of traditional sexual morality, and it too seems to be fading among more affluent and media-savvy conservatives.

It is a commonplace within NLT that this sort of thing is inevitable once the ban on contraception is abandoned, and that traditional sexual morality is a unified whole that cannot survive unless it is defended in its entirely. Pope Paul VI (and writers like G.E.M. Anscombe) famously warned that if contraception were allowed, there would be no barrier to the acceptance of sodomy, masturbation, fornication, and on and on. In those days people said "Oh, how ridiculous! Don't be so alarmist!" Now they say, "Fine, it does lead to these things, so what?" -- thereby “refuting” the reductio ad aburdum argument by embracing the absurdity. (It seems even Paul VI and Anscombe didn't predict "same-sex marriage" -- perhaps they figured it would sound just _too_ ridiculous and paranoid to suggest that this might follow too. It might also be noted that the Washington Post, no less, warned in the 30s of the dire moral consequences the Anglicans threatened the world with by allowing contraception. They don't make the liberal media like they used to...)

Re: the rhythm method and NFP (or "natural family planning"), we might draw the following analogy. Nature intends for us to eat and drink, and often, and so it gives us appetites for food and drink. But it leaves it pretty open-ended when exactly we do this -- how many meals a day, in what variety, etc. -- as long as we don't it in a way that frustrates the natural functions of the organs involved (by vomiting up food so we can keep eating, etc. -- see my remarks on this sort of case above). And of course, special health problems would justify an unusual eating regimen. If overall we eat in a way that suffices to preserve health and doesn't pervert some natural faculty, then we are acting in accordance with nature's intentions, whatever the frequency with which we do it. But if we become overly obsessed with food, eat too much too often, and so on, we begin to frustrate those intentions and fall into vice.

Similarly, it is pretty clear, if one buys the NLT view, that nature intends large families as the norm, and for this reason has made us so that we like to have intercourse and want to have it often. Still, as with eating, it leaves it open when exactly we do this and exactly how frequently. And as with eating, and for the same reasons, special health risks could justify an unusual frequency (e.g. abstaining for very long periods of time if pregnancy entails a risk of death for the mother). Since there are natural periods of infertility in a woman's cycle which can be known by reason (though hardly perfectly, as anyone familiar with NFP knows), a couple does not act against nature by waiting for these periods before having intercourse -- they seem to be part of the natural package, as it were -- as long as overall they act in accordance with nature's evident intention that large families be the norm.

This is why, even though NLT and the Catholic Church allow NFP, they do not hold that a couple can in normal cases use it indefinitely, much less use it to avoid children altogether. NL theorists and theologians differ over the details, but paradigm cases of a legitimate use of NFP would be to space children in a way that allows the wife's body to recover after pregnancy, spacing them to cope with severe economic hardship, and the like. Paradigm illegitimate uses would be to avoid children altogether, to minimize the number of children so as to maintain an affluent lifestyle, and so forth.

In every case, though, what is key is that one is working with and within aspects of the natural processes themselves, and not frustrating them. To the extent that there is some natural "slack" in the processes (e.g. how frequently we eat or copulate) there is to that extent a degree of "slack" in our application of NLT moral principle. But the "slack" isn't very great, certainly not by liberal standards. And it can never justify either using organs in a way that frustrates their function, or acting (except e.g. to preserve the life of the overall organism for which the capacities exist, etc.) in a way that frustrates the overall point of the bodily capacity in question (e.g. by an overall eating pattern that is detrimental to health or an overall pattern of sexual intercourse which undermines the aim of having a large family). So it cannot possibly justify the other practices you mention.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 10, 2006 2:39 AM

You say that: "NLT ... begins with sloppy, real-world objects (like penises and vaginas) and then attempts to deduce their abstract essence and function. For the first step of this process, only observation and guesswork exist, and for the second step--assigning importance--no evidence exists."

Would you say that it is "guesswork" to suggest that the heart is for pumping blood and the lungs for breathing? Are the heart and lungs "sloppy"? Presumably you would not say this, and certainly it would be totally implausible to do so. But is it any less implausible to deny that the sexual organs are for reproduction? (They are, of course, also for other things, like urination. No one denies this either.) And is it plausible to deny or doubt that procreation is extremely important indeed, given that the very existence of the species depends on it?

I submit to you that no biologist, no matter how hard-nosed an atheist and Darwinian, would deny or doubt these things. Indeed, critics of NLT, like Sullivan, typcially don't deny them either. They might deny that these facts have any moral significance; they might deny that the function in question is more important than other functions; they might say that there are some other organs whose functions it is less easy to determine. But almost no one would deny that at least one of the functions of the sexual organs is procreative -- because it is blindingly obvious that it is, and because you couldn't even give a Darwinian explanation of _anything_ unless you could identify some organs as reproductive.

So I fail to see what is gained by trying to deny the obvious, and indeed trying to deny what critics of NLT themselves tend not to deny. The question isn't whether the sexual organs have a procreative function. If anything has any function at all, in any sense of "function," then the sexual organs obviously have a procreative function. The question (or rather questions) are (a) whether this has any moral significance, (b) if so, whether it can be legitimate to use these organs in a way that frustrates their natural functions, and (c) how morally serious such frustration is, if it is immoral in the first place. To answer these questions, NLT appeals to an A-T metaphysics and its associated conceptions of value and human nature. Those, I think, would be more appropriate targets for critics of NLT to aim at, if they are seriously to challenge the theory.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 10, 2006 3:14 AM

Hi Dr Feser,

I apologise for the long post but If you’re still in for the fight, I wonder if I could make a few points?

One of the problems I seem to have with TNL theory is as I alluded to before was the correct apprehension of the “essence” of the thing in question.

Now as you rightly state the sexual organs are geared towards procreation; totally agree. However there seems an awful lot of evidence which suggest that they may be geared towards self pleasuring. If, as you say, the natural functions of things can be know through observation. i.e. empirical means, why the selective reading of evidence?
Indeed if I was to define the “end/form/essence’ of the penis is-- to ejaculate when stimulated-- why would your version of the essence of the thing have higher authority than mine? My view would not invalidate its procreative capacities and would permit a hell of a lot more. Circumstantial evidence would tend to support my view rather than yours. Or to take a more traditionalist view one could rightly say that since the sexual organs are complementary to each other, then the penis should always be stimulated by the vagina. I get the impression that your view is that a certain amount of pre orgasmic stimulation by other organs is acceptable.

Or to use a non sexual example; Years ago, a light bulb factory which had a reputation for producing good light bulbs was bought by a new owner. People who subsequently purchased light bulbs from the company noticed that they didn’t last as long. Their impression was that the new owner was producing bad light bulbs. However the new owner had changed the specifications so that the light bulbs would not last as long in order to stimulate sales. The light bulbs were working exactly to design. The light bulbs were “good” light bulbs as they were conforming to their designed form, yet the company got a reputation for producing bad light bulbs.

I suppose the only objective way to determine if the light bulb is any good or not is to ask the designer.

As I see it TNL is an effort to define morality by empirical methods. The problem with this is that different observers will come to different conclusions about the ideal in question even they accept a classical metaphysic. Who is right? Public opinion; including the opinion of the dead: The visionary or the prophet? The danger I see is that imperfect understanding of the form/essence/end can lead to precisely those ersatz forms that are present in evolutionary interpretations. Traditional sexual morality was highly critical of the sensual component of sex; it’s only recently that this component was regarded as legitimate. The previous understanding was in error: Father forgive me my sins for I enjoyed it too much. For the sake of brevity I won’t pursue this further.

For the record, I subscribe to the traditional Aristotelian metaphysic with divine revelation as guide to these forms/essences/ends. I think that you need some input from the designer.

Now I also think that the traditional Christian understanding of sex has quite a few problems still. Firstly I don’t understand why sex can’t be simply for the pleasure of it. Dr Pruss has alluded earlier traditional sexual morality took a dim view of seeking sex for the pleasure of it alone. As I see it, most natural law proponents would say it is permitted provided the couple has not done anything to prevent fecundity. Or to put it another way the agents are inculpable because the act is involuntarily imperfect. In other words the ideal is a fecund act and a non fecund act; imperfect. But as I see it, the designer allowed sex to occur during fertile and non fertile times. By design both acts are perfect. The intention to have sex with your partner and not have children during periods of infertility is a good thing, not an inculpable bad thing.

Taking this approach gets rid of all the traditional guilt with regard to sex. Instead of the pleasure of sex being tolerated as a reluctant add on to the procreative capacity it is seen as a good thing in itself. It also justifies sex during pregnancy, post hysterectomy or infertility without any appeal to moral inculpability. This line of reasoning also has benefits which I feel could be explored in further postings.

As for the personalist approach I’m with you on the matter. The perosnalist approach seems to too abstract and far removed for the average individual and would seem to multiply the potential “sins” individuals could be guilty of.

How can I be sure if I am not using my partner as an instrument?
Does this act glorify God?
Am I open enough to life?

Personally I find meditating on religious matters quite off putting during the “marital embrace”. Indeed it’s a bit of an intellectual contraceptive.

As for openness to life what objective norms do you use?
If I may ask Alexander a question, who is more anti life:

The couple who practice NFP to have only one child or the couple who are quite prepared to keep the children of any contraceptive failures?

Or Is a wife who is thinking of the washing while engaged in the “conjugal act” guilty of not giving herself completely to her husband or is she guilty of using herself as an instrument?

I think the personalist approach complicates matter far too much. As I said before more thought needs to be put into the matter.

Posted by: The Social Pathologist | November 10, 2006 5:03 AM

"Firstly I don’t understand why sex can’t be simply for the pleasure of it."

Pleasure isn't an independent good. One doesn't just have a pleasure. Rather, one takes pleasure in something. And that something had better be good, or else the pleasure is empty or worse.

"who is more anti life: The couple who practice NFP to have only one child or the couple who are quite prepared to keep the children of any contraceptive failures?"

Suppose the contracepting couple have a child due to contraceptive (method or user) failure. Then the following is true of them: They had done something positive that is opposed to the existence of this child (namely, they contracepted). In other words, their history includes a positive opposition to the child.

Suppose the NFP couple have a child due to method or user failure. Then they haven't done anything positive that is opposed to the existence of this child. For what had they done? They had sex on one day and abstained on another. Their sex was not opposed to the existence of this child: they did nothing to decrease the fecundity of the sexual act that they actually did. But likewise their abstinence was not something positive that was opposed to the existence of this child, for two reasons, the first of which is the more significant. (1) Abstinence is a refraining, not a positive act. (2) Had they not abstained, they would probably not have had a greater chance of conceiving this child--rather, they would have had a greater chance of conceiving another, since THIS child would not have been conceived on another day.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 10, 2006 12:16 PM

"Does this act glorify God?" Yes--we do need to either think about this or have thought about this ahead of time. Every single action of a human being should glorify God. We are to love God with our whole mind, heart, being and strength. That does not mean that every action needs include explicit thought for God. But every action must be at least implicitly a prayer, since St. Paul commands us: "Pray always."

And we do glorify God when we act in accordance with the nature that he has bestowed on us.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 10, 2006 12:20 PM

Hello, Social Pathologist:

The trouble with your suggestion is that, even on a purely Darwinian view, it seems pretty clear that the capacity for sexual pleasure only exists in the first place as a means to get us to reproduce. So the pleasure element is subsidiary to the reproductive one -- it exists _for the sake of_ the reproductive one. There is no reason why it would be there if the sexual-reproductive element wasn't there. Organisms that don't reproduce sexually don't have orgasms, becuase there is no reason why they should.

Furthermore, as I've said before, the biological facts about how the penis is structured to allow it get into a vagina specifically, about how sperm are "directed" or "ordered" toward ova, how semen exists to allow them to swim around inside a woman's reproductive organs, and so forth, all indicate that the penis isn't made merely to "ejaculate when stimulated," but specifically to ejaculate _within the vagina_.

Just from a "raw" biological POV, then, nature clearly gave men penises specifically because she wanted them to ejaculate inside women. The penis wasn't put there as some kind of self-contained entertainment device. Now if someone wants to suggest that nature's purposes are irrelevant to the moral question of whether masturbation is OK, well, fine, that's a different question. What it is not reasonable to deny is that nature's purpose in giving us the capacity for sexual pleasure was to get us to reproduce, and that that capacity wouldn't exist otherwise.

There is nothing "selective" in this "reading" of the evidence, nor anything that presupposes NLT. It's just standard textbook biology. Nor do you need the designer to reveal these specific functions to us -- everyone has always known about them, because they're obvious, just like it's obvious that the reason nature gave us an appetite for food was to get us to eat. So, as I've said in replying to Phil, I really fail to see the point in trying to make the anti-NLT stand here. The real issue is what moral relevance these biological facts have or don't have, and to settle this question requires getting into metaphysics. (Thus NLT does not, as you imply, claim that morality can be read off from empirical facts alone; it reads them off from empirical facts together with metaphysical ones.)

By the way, NLT doesn't merely "tolerate" sexual pleasure, "reluctantly" or otherwise. It says that sexual pleasure in itself is natural and positively good. What is unnatural and bad is seeking it in a way that frustrates nature's intentions for it.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 10, 2006 3:14 PM

Thanks for your reply Alexander;

The problem I see with the personalist approach is --at least to me--the central questions concern not the acts themselves but the intentionality of the agents. The openness to life seems to imply not a passive acquiescence of new life but a positive desire to will it into being.

My understanding of moral theology is that positive acts of wrong and negative acts of omission both constitute moral culpability. The contracepting couple offend the first criteria while the NFP fail the second: they are not open to life, at least in intent.

The TNL approach would be the agents are culpable if the act is not done according to design. The personalist approach adds another layer to the moral calculus.

My understanding of John Paul II analysis of the situation was that contraception was a sort of "holding back" or less than full commitment to the marriage.

I think that you missed what I consider the most important example that I listed: The woman who is thinking about the washing during the sexual act.
As I see it, she has not given herself fully to her partner. Her body is in it, but not her soul. She is using her body as an instrument. She is morally culpable.

By the personalist approach criteria, women who have given in to their husbands desires half heartedly have sinned. The personalist approach keeps piling on the sins.

Posted by: The Social Pathologist | November 10, 2006 3:40 PM

I only want to make a remark about your contention, Ed, that the penis--or whatever physicial feature--possesses a natural purpose, from a Darwinian or "raw" biological point of view. I'm not sure what you are claiming really when you discuss purposes from a Darwinian perspective, but I know that you resisted such talk in one of your earlier posts. From your post, Natural Ends and Natural Law, Part II:

The difficulty is this. As John Searle has pointed out in criticizing various 'biosemantic' theories of intentionality, there really is no literal sense to be made of talk of 'natural functions' from a Darwinian point of view. Strictly speaking, teeth do not have the 'function' of chewing food; or at least, to talk about the 'function' of teeth adds nothing to saying that creatures with teeth tended to pass on their genes with greater frequency than those without. Having teeth caused greater reproductive success, and that's it. The notion of ?function,? along with related notions like 'purpose,' 'natural end,' and 'design,' drop out as otiose. Indeed, that's the whole point of Darwinism: to allow for a way of explaining biological complexity without having to appeal to teleological notions at all. Various organs and capacities may well operate as if they have natural functions, and it will undoubtedly be useful in determining how they evolved to think of them as if they do; but they don?t literally have functions at all.

I just add this for clarity. I am not saying that your comment in this thread is inconsistent with your previous comment, but it would probably help to interpret your remarks with the excerpt here in mind.

Other than this (pedantic?) point, I have nothing to add, since my differences with the sort of natural law you are defending surround metaethical issues that have been set aside in the discussion. But, I will say that my primary reason for dissatisfaction relates to the point raised by Morgan regarding motivation. Your reply to her here (and to me in a previous post) has not really supplied the kind of answer that (I think) is required. Your ethics just seems entirely too divorced from the mind--and, more specifically--mental experience, which is problematic to someone like me who believes that value is fundamentally mind-dependent. I imagine you disagree with that position, and I think it is one of the reasons the comments in this thread tend to talk past one another.

Posted by: dpw | November 10, 2006 4:33 PM

Hello dpw:

As the Searle reference indicates, when I (like Searle) use "function" in a Darwinian context, it is intended as just a shorthand for complex patterns of efficient causation, rather than (as for an Aristotelian) connoting an irreducible final cause. So, in saying, in a Darwinian context, that pleasure has the function of getting us to procreate, what is meant is something like "The capacity for sexual pleasure exists in us because creatures who found the procreative act pleasurable had an evolutionary advantage over those who did not."

Even someone like Searle, who thinks "function" talk has no reference to anything more than this, would grant that it is indispensible in biology and elsewhere -- that we first have to describe things in terms of what function they would serve (in the robust sense of "function") if they really did serve one, before going on to show how this allegedly ersatz function can be reduced or eliminated in favor of a description in terms of selectional advantages and the like.

Re: Morgan's reply, you are right that the key to the dispute is that NLT does not regard value as mind-dependent. Indeed, for this reason the word "value" isn't really a good one to use in discussing the theory, because it sounds like something necessarily subjective (a "value" sounds like something that doesn't exist apart from one who values). This is why NLT speaks instead of "the good," which, as I've said is convertible with being.

But as this talk of the good being "convertible with being" indicates, we're very far here from anything close to a modern Humean/subjectivist/naturalistic conception of morality. We are instead in the realm of classical metaphysics a la Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. It's because most people take the former (Humean, subjectivist, naturalist) assumptions for granted, and don't know much about the latter sort of metaphysical view (and there's always a temptation for them implicitly to translate it into something they're more familiar with) that parties to this sort of discussion often do, as you say, talk past each other. Most critics of traditional NLT don't understand it at all, and don't understand that they don't understand it, because they are blissfully unaware of the metaphysics that underlies it. (This is certainly true e.g. of Don Herzog and Simon Blackburn, to whom I was replying in the earlier posts on this subject I made on RR.)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 10, 2006 6:23 PM

"Would you say that it is 'guesswork' to suggest that the heart is for pumping blood and the lungs for breathing? Are the heart and lungs 'sloppy'? Presumably you would not say this, and certainly it would be totally implausible to do so."

I would call them "sloppy," in the sense that they do not exist as abstract essences. In the same way, any circle, even the moon in the sky, is "sloppy" compared to a perfect circle. I don't mean the term in a way that belittles the heart and lungs. It was just a convenient term.

I think that you find alternate definitions implausible perhaps because you are less interested in immoral activities involving the heart and lungs. But in answer to your question, yes, I would say that it is guesswork. It's probably _good_ guesswork. I, too, think the lungs are for breathing. But consider the alternatives.

Lungs are for breathing. Lungs are also for coughing, since coughing helps expel foreign matter from the body. Lungs are for talking, and a steady stream of air from the lungs, compressed by the surrounding muscles, is vital for singing. If I stop at "lungs are for breathing," I might conclude that singing is contrary to their natural function. If anything, singing--especially long, held notes--prevents breathing.

Further, the function of the penis was defined earlier in this thread as "depositing semen in the vagina." If we're going to be specific, we could say that lungs are for breathing _air_. Air is a gaseous combination of elements. Breathing smoke seems contrary to the function of the lungs...but what about breathing pure oxygen, for medical or recreational purposes? It doesn't hurt the lungs or the body, at least for short times, but neither does masturbation hurt the penis.

If I say that the function of a penis is "to deposit semen into as many vaginas as possible," as an evolutionary biologist might, I would be thwarting that function by remaining in a monogamous relationship with a woman.

If I define the function of a penis as "to ejaculate semen," and leave it at that, then I can see masturbation and homosexual sex as morally neutral acts.

The question of whether the frustration of a function is important, yes, and a worthy subject for criticism. But I remain convinced that the building blocks of NLT are appropriate targets for criticism.

Posted by: Phil | November 11, 2006 1:23 AM

Hello Dr. Feser,

I think you may be correct to add the context of having large families to support a degree of "slack" in the application of NLT moral principle. However, that causes more problems than it solves. First, it makes lifelong celibacy morally suspect, which I doubt you want to do. Second, it makes the moral significance of any particular act subservient to the larger context. If you want to consider context in your arguments, my arguments get the same consideration.

Lastly, I want to make a controversial claim for a different function of the sex act. Since the urinary tract is closely tied to the reproductive organs, there may be an instinctual element of marking territory involved in sex. When I think about the close connection between jealousy and sex, the more I like this theory.

Posted by: Step2 | November 11, 2006 10:54 AM

"I think that you missed what I consider the most important example that I listed: The woman who is thinking about the washing during the sexual act.
As I see it, she has not given herself fully to her partner. Her body is in it, but not her soul. She is using her body as an instrument. She is morally culpable."

We rarely do things purely out of love. Hence, we sin frequently, at least venially.

But whether this is so in the case you describe is not clear. To give oneself completely is to give oneself and hold nothing back. It is not clear that anything is being held back here. After all, the woman is fully the man's (just as, one hopes, the man is fully the woman's). Self-giving is a matter of objective action (action is always to be understood in intentional terms, of course), of commitment, and of readiness, rather than in terms of feelings or particular acts of thought.

Thinking about the washing may itself be a part of the total self-giving, if the washing is done for the good of the household.

I do not see how thinking about the washing makes the body be used as an instrument. The body is a gift, not an instrument. Of course, if she sees her body as simply a means to the giving of pleasures to her husband, rather than a giving of herself, then there is a problem. But this problem will be present on every moral view that recognizes pleasure as a dependent good.

That she is also thinking about something else is not a sin if it does not hold something back from him that she could give him. After all, it surely would be no sin if she were praying at that time.

At the same time, an inattentiveness to one's beloved in the act of love can be morally problematic, just as it is problematic (indeed sinful) to allow oneself to be distracted by temporal concerns while at Mass.

By the way, while one can sin by omission, one does not sin by omission simply by omitting to pursue a good. For an omission to be a sin, the good one omits pursuing must be a good that it was one's duty to pursue under these circumstances. However, one is not permitted to act against a basic good.

Hence, omission and commission are not exactly parallel. One may not act directly against a basic good by commission, but one may omit pursuing basic goods. Suppose that five innocent people are to be executed by a dictator, and I am told that if I murder one of them, the other four will go free. I may not do this, since in doing so I will be committing an act directly against a basic good (or, more precisely, an act directly against love). But suppose, on the contrary, that a terrorist is about to execute an innocent hostage. Suddenly you appear on the scene as a special ops soldier, and you find a way of rescuing the innocent person. However, the terroristannounces if anyone rescues this innocent hostage, he will execute five others, whom he will otherwise let go. While it would be wrong to murder one in order to save four, it is not wrong to omit rescuing one in order to save four. In doing so, one fails to pursue the good of the life of the one that one fails to save. But it is not always wrong to fail to pursue a basic good.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 11, 2006 11:18 AM

Hello Phil:

OK, by "sloppy" you seem to have in mind something less contentious than what I assumed you did -- not that there is no clear function of such organs at all, but rather only that they lack the perfection of an abstract essence.

But my point was just that, even pre-philosophically, we can know that some organs and capacities have clear functions (breathing, procreating, etc.), whether the organs are "sloppy" in your sense or not. (And as I've said before, some of them, including the penis, have several functions -- no one denies that.) Adding A-T metaphysics to the mix is what tells us that the essences things instantiate are perfect and unchanging, have moral implications, etc.

(Though it is important to keep in mind that A-T metaphysics doesn't say that this or that heart, lung, penis or whatever is perfect and unchanging; it is the essences that they (imperfectly) instantiate that are perfect and unchanging. Furthermore, these essences are abstractions -- they don't exist apart from the things themselves, since what we're dealing with here is Aristotelian realism rather than Platonic realism.)

Anyway, it's because the A-T metaphysics is what allows us to go on to make these further claims that I said that it is the more appropriate target for critics of NLT. Again, that the sexual organs have a procreative function (among others) is clear; the specific NLT conclusions about sexual morality follow only once we add the metaphysics.

Re: masturbation, no, it doesn't hurt the penis, but that's not the point, for reasons I've already given many times -- given the whole NLT metaphysical picture, anything that involves using an organ in a way that frustrates its purpose is necessarily contrary to our good (in the A-T metaphysical sense) and thus contrary to reason.

Re: "saying that the function of a penis is 'to deposit semen into as many vaginas as possible,' as an evolutionary biologist might," well, again, you have to keep in mind that NLT is not limited to evolutionary theory in analyzing the functions of things, but incorporates A-T metaphysics too. And as I've noted many times, it also factors in considerations about man's rational and social nature, his distinctive psychological traits, etc., and doesn't _just_ consider the mechanics of an organ. And it is on the basis of these latter considerations that it argues for monogamy.

You say: "If I define the function of a penis as 'to ejaculate semen,' and leave it at that, then I can see masturbation and homosexual sex as morally neutral acts." Well, yes, IF you define them that way it might seem that that conclusion follows. But if you do so, you're just ignoring the other considerations I mentioned (the way the structure of the penis makes it suitable for a vagina specifically, the way sperm are clearly made to be put in the presence of ova, etc.), and there is no justification for ignoring them.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 11, 2006 1:18 PM

No, it doesn't make celibacy suspect, because celibacy just involves a failure to use one's sexual organs in a sexual way at all. It doesn't involve using them sexually but in a way that deliberately frustrates the natural end of sex. NLT only rules out the latter. It doesn't say that you have to get married and have sex. It says only that if you get married and have sex, you cannot have it in a way that involves your deliberately frustrating the purposes of sex. (And of course, it also says you can only have sex within marriage, if you have it at all.)

Re: "making the moral significance of any particular act subservient to the larger context," NLT doesn't imply that an act's moral significance is _entirely_ subservient to its context. It isn't situation ethics. There are certain things it says are intrinsically and absolutely wrong (e.g. intentionally and directly killing an innocent person, sodomy, lying, and many other things -- not that these are of equal moral gravity), and other things it says may or may not be wrong depending on a larger moral context (bombing an enemy munitions plant in a just war when this might have the death of innocents as an unintended side effect, refraining from intercourse during infertile periods so as to avoid pregnancy, using a broad mental reservation to avoid revealing everything one knows, etc.) And it has principled reasons for making this distinction -- a distinction pretty much any moral theory makes and has to make, since even clear-cut moral principles often have to be applied in circumstances that are complex and messy.

So, it won't do to say "If you can take account of circumstances in deciding whether to apply NFP, it follows that an appeal to circumstances could justify sodomy, masturbation, etc." (if that's what you were implying). That just doesn't follow at all.

Re: marking one's sexual territory, I think I don't want to ask what that might involve!

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 11, 2006 1:35 PM

I have a feeling that a good deal of this debate is about the significance of the distinction between committing and omitting. It is essential to any plausible NL theory that the distinction be made, since we all the time have to omit pursuing various goods.

If one has consequentialist or do-gooder intuitions that imply that there is no difference between committing and omitting, then a lot of the NL-based reasoning will seem implausible.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 11, 2006 8:13 PM

Hello Dr Feser and Alexander:

Firstly let me thank you both for staying the distance in this rather long discussion.
Once again sorry for the excessively long post.

Secondly, Alexander;

“We rarely do things purely out of love. Hence, we sin frequently, at least venially.”

This is precisely my point. The Personalist approach multiplies the sins considerably because it raises the bar--without justification--I might add. The one big point I took away from the --“Give unto Caesar what is Caesars …….”—was the surprising fact that God did not demand exclusivity with regard to all of our obligations. Hence all our actions were not meant to be “God centered”. Every act did not have to glorify God by intention. A man does not sin by going to the Pub to have a drink with his friends, if he fails to meditate on the Psalms along the way. What the Personalist approach seems to be heading towards is a new Puritanism.

The Natural Law approach believed that a man did glorify God by acting according to his nature. Though acting according to nature was hard. There was room for beer, wine, song and legitimate lust. In fact the natural law approach seems to be the more “Human” of the two approaches.

Now in the real world, there is a massive difference in the sex drives of men and women. Men want it far more often, many instances women have only half heartedly agreed. The NL approach does not condemn these women; the Personalist approach does.

“After all, it surely would be no sin if she were praying at that time”.

Dude that freaks me out. If my wife was to break out in the Magnificat during the conjugal act, it would be a frustration of the act per se. I imagine most run of the mill traditionalist Catholics/Protestants/Lutherans/Baptists would tend to concur with me on this one. There seems something decidedly wrong in thinking about religion during sex.

Thirdly, Professor Feser;

With due respect, I do not feel that you have grasped what Phil and I have been trying to get across. It is not the imperfect instantiation of the essence; rather it is the misapprehension of the essence which is the problem.

Now let us take as a given, that sex is for reproduction
Let us take as a given, that sperm must be deposited in the vagina.

Prior to Casti Connunbi there was a considerable traditionalist view that to deliberately have sexual intercourse in a morally licit way with the express aim of not having children was acting contrary to nature. In other words NFP was morally wrong. The Lefebrvists still have this view. The issue was finally settled by the Pope. Now this would appear to many to be an arbitrary decision. Now IF you accept the Catholic position that the Pope is infallible on such matters(when he speaks ex cathedra) and as such speaks the word of God-and therefore is giving us the information with regard to the true nature of the essence-- it is clear that this rigid traditionalist view was quite simply wrong. The hard core traditionalists misapprehended/misunderstood the essence of the act.

Which is the point that I am trying to get across; that even in an environment where everyone is trying to do the right thing and has been philosophically trained in the right way there may be still legitimate differences in opinion regarding the nature of things which will have profound consequences on morality, even if one interprets these things through the traditional metaphysic.

The consequences of a Natural Law analysis of an act/thing is profoundly dependent on the understanding of the act/thing. Unfortunately there seems to be a wide variety of opinion about just about everything including sexual matters. Why your view of a thing takes precedence over mine is beyond me. This is why we are forced to return to some kind of revelation as to the true nature of the thing; reason is not enough. Many non Catholics—who otherwise accept the classical metaphysic-- lack sympathy for the natural law arguments because quite simply, “value” is loaded into the premises of the analysis. This is what I feel is the weakness of the NLT.

The purpose of sex is for reproduction. This is a “value” loaded premise
Reproduction occurs through the process of sex. This is a non value loaded premise.

Plug each statement in at the beginning of a natural law analysis and you get a different answer.

As for NLT being pro sexual pleasure—well theoretically this is true. But, if one was to say that during orgasm a man’s mental faculties are impaired and since reason is one of the distinguishing features of man; a natural law analysis would lead to the conclusion that orgasm is bad (as it is a temporary privation of reason as in drunkenness) or that it is good in that it gets them together but not good when they get there. As I understand it this is why the Church had such a negative view of sexual pleasure in the past. But I might be wrong about that one.

Once again thanks both Alex and Prof Feser for your patience.

Posted by: The Social Pathologist | November 12, 2006 1:20 AM

Hello again Social Pathologist:

I don't think I was misunderstanding your (and Phil's) point. What I was saying was that there can be no reasonable doubt that one of the functions of the sexual organs is procreation. I wasn't saying -- and would not say -- that there couldn't possibly be reasonable doubt about any of the specific moral consequences of this fact, such as whether NFP is morally licit.

So, yes, I would say that the most defensible conclusion from the point of view of NLT is that NFP is permissible. But that doesn't mean that that conclusion is so blindingly obvious that no one could ossibly fail to see it. With NLT, as with every other moral theory, there can be reasonable disagreement over how to apply it. (The role of the Church's authority in interpreting NLT adds a further complication, of course, but someone could accept NLT without being a Catholic, so for now I'm just talking about NLT considered as a purely philosophical approach.)

I don't see why this is a problem for NLT. _Every_ moral theory has been claimed to lead to different conclusions on at least some specific questions of detail, depending on who's defending it, even though every theory has obvious and undeniable implications where the big picture is concerned. I don't see why NLT should be any different. As Aristotle said, we can't expect more precision from a theory than its subject matter allows, and human life is complicated enough that ehtics is bound to contain some ambiguities here and there.

(It's because these ambiguities sometimes have to be resolved that the Catholic Church claims divine authority to interpret the natural law. But again, that's a separate theological claim that one needn't accept in order to accept NLT.)

Re: the "value" that you say NLT "loads into" the premises of the anlaysis, I would say that the value is there once you accept the A-T metaphysics at all -- it isn't NLT that "loads" it, it is nature herself that does so. There's nothing arbitrary about this. It just follows from the general classical realist (Platonic or Aristotelian) conception of good as convertible with being. So (admittedly to oversimplify a bit) if you buy the metaphysics at all, it seems to me you would have to buy (traditional) NLT, and if you buy traditional NLT you have to buy the metaphysics. They seem to stand or fall together. (The "new natural law" theory is a different story of course, but that is very different from what has traditionally been understood by "natural law," and nothing I've been saying is intended to apply to it.)

Re: sexual pleasure vis-a-vis reason, your concludion doesn't follow, because the capacity for orgasm is itself something nature put in us. So if it temporarily clouds reason, then it follows that nature intends (or at least allows) that our reason can temporarily be clouded. This is no different in principle from dreams and sleep in general, where reason is also clouded or even altogether non-functioning.

(That doesn't mean we can deliberately cloud it in other cases, e.g. by trying to get high or get drunk. For in the cases in question, nature herself, rather than we, is the one who temporarily clouds reason in the context of our doing other things -- copulating, sleeping -- and things that she herself intends for us to do.)

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 12, 2006 1:46 PM

Prof Feser,

I poorly explained myself. What I was trying to say is yest I agree that while NLT has "value" built into the system, an observer bias implicitly loads the "is" with value.

Anyway its late and my head hurts. I think I will partly cloud my reason with a drink. Cheers.

Posted by: The Social Pathologist | November 12, 2006 2:48 PM

Thanks for the explanation. You wrote, "...celibacy just involves a failure to use one's sexual organs in a sexual way at all." From the NLT perspective, it seems like the purpose of having the desire and the equipment is to create large families. If one is not attempting to fulfill this purpose by getting married, etc., one is acting contrary to nature.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that you have to make a much stronger argument in favor of your position than I do for mine. You have to show that it is always mandatory to engage in the form/type of procreative sex, even when the known or intended result is not procreative. That's not an easy task, and you have already admitted to a degree of slack in the application of principle.

Posted by: Step2 | November 12, 2006 5:16 PM

Well, the natural law already allows for independent reasons that it is often permissible to sacrifice a good for the sake of a greater good or for the sake of someone else's well-being. For example, one person might sacrifice some of his resources or even his life for another person. But the standard reason for choosing celibacy is for the sake of becoming a priest or nun, say, which involves both a greater good than marriage and a sacrifice of something good for someone else, i.e. sacrificing marriage for God. So one is not, even prima facie, acting contrary to the natural law at all in this case.

Re: the slack you mention, remember that the slack involved a very specific case, and derived entirely from the nature of that specific case, i.e. an appetite. Appetites -- for food, sex, sleep, etc. -- are different from actions. They come and go, can come at inopportune times, can be excessive or deficient, etc. So from a moral POV, they must be analyzed differently from the way individual acts are. That's why the "slack" exists in the specific case at hand (NFP) -- it derives from the fact that we're dealing with an appetite, which is inherently a "loose" or "slack" kind of thing, not from any looseness in NLT principle itself. And in _no_ case involving an appetite -- whether eating, sex, sleep, or whatever -- does NLT imply that we must always follow an appetite's promptings. So there is no double-standard here with respect to sex.

Posted by: Edward Feser | November 12, 2006 10:20 PM

"The one big point I took away from the --“Give unto Caesar what is Caesars …….”—was the surprising fact that God did not demand exclusivity with regard to all of our obligations. Hence all our actions were not meant to be “God centered”."

Caesar has his authority from God.

We are to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our might. We are to pray always. Caesar owns some of what is in our wallet, but we belong to God entirely (as does Caesar). This does not imply that God has to be explicitly mentioned twice a minute (not that there is anything all that wrong with that--cf. The Way of the Pilgrim).

One might think that any time at which one experiences the goodness and beauty of God's creation is an appropriate time for prayer.

As for religion and sex, Paul does say that marriage is a great mystery, an image of Christ's love for the Church, and the mystics see the Song of Songs as applying both to human romantic love and the love between God and the soul.

Finally, as for the idea that a woman might half-heartedly consent to sex while a man does so full-heartedly (by the way, is there any actual empirical data supporting an alleged difference in strength of sexual drives, or is this based on anecdotal evidence?), I find the idea of acts that have this sort of inequality at least a little repugnant. In such an act, it seems either that the man is at least a little insensitive to his wife's state, or the wife is at least a little deceptive, or the man is primarily interested in neither union nor procreation but pleasure (or some combination of these). In the case where the man is not interested in union, I would be more likely to blame the man and not the woman: she quite possibly has given all that she can under the circumstances.

Augustine thought that sex was always at least venially sinful when not done for the sake of procreation. His reason for thinking this is that he erroneously thought that the only two possible reasons for sex were procreation and pleasure--he didn't realize that union could be an end in itself. However, he was right that marital sex for the sake of pleasure is venially sinful. This has nothing to do with sex (Augustine says something very similar about food): it is always wrong to act for the sake of pleasure taken out of the intentional context of a deeper good.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 13, 2006 9:59 PM

Ooops. I didn't mean to deny that anecdotal evidence was empirical! I meant to contrast anecdotal with scientific evidence.

Posted by: Alexander R Pruss | November 13, 2006 10:00 PM

I take it we should never eat decadent food just for the sheer pleasure of it. These sins, they are multiplying like... (wait for the pun)...rabbits.

Posted by: Step2 | November 14, 2006 2:41 PM

We do in fact receive nutrition from decadent food, and this nutrition is a (very limited) good. The pleasure is not, thus, an empty pleasure: it is a way of taking pleasure in the food, its value as an edible, etc. But if one dissociates oneself from the underlying good, say by intending to disgorge the food as at a Roman orgy, then one is just having an empty pleasure.

Gluttony has always been seen as a sin.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 16, 2006 12:15 PM

"Gluttony has always been seen as a sin." True, but the comparison between gluttony (excess in eating or drinking) and taking pleasure in a rich dessert is tenuous at best. If you allow that decadent foods have a minimal nutrition value, I can just as easily assert that other mutual forms of sex have a unitive value, however minimal they might be. NLT metaphysics avoids this problem simply because it defines procreative sex as the only legitimate unitive form. If you accept unitive intents other than procreative intent, and NFP follows the form but defers the procreative intent, the value or meaning of sexuality is more than just the natural conclusion of coitus, it is an expression of desire and giving for mutual happiness. I would hesitate to call this an act of "empty pleasure", even if it lacks the larger context found in procreative sex.

Posted by: Step2 | November 16, 2006 4:08 PM

Ah, but the kind of unity that I have in mind for the unitive intent is physical union as one biological unit, something that exists only in the case of natural intercourse.

Posted by: Alexander Pruss | November 16, 2006 6:36 PM

If procreative intent has as its fallback position the intent to fulfill procreative demands for unity, it begins to look circular. I am willing to say that the unitive value may be less in nonprocreative sex, but not that it is devoid of value. There is still a physical and emotional connection established and strengthened during mutual forms of nonprocreative sex.

Posted by: Step2 | November 17, 2006 8:54 PM

Professor Feser, I am thrilled to encounter the clearness of your philosophical explanations, and I am urged to ask you a question. I consider myself both very religious and an adherent to what I understand to be "natural law". In my understanding, I cannot imagine how things could be any other way, and really, I do not understand how a case can be made for virtually any moral issue without it.

However, I have struggled with this supposed natural law conception of sex. Your explanation that sexual acts are "immoral when the agent performing them intentionally acts in a way that would tend to frustrate their natural purpose" makes sense to me, in that it is a consistent and coherent argument.

However, it is that "natural purpose" statement that I must take issue with. In my world, as a father and an American suburbinite, children are expensive. I have no statistics at hand, but I assure you, children are a drain on family resources in a way that my grandfather would never have understood. I could tell you horror stories on this subject if you cared to hear them.

In any case, I had a vasectomy when I was 29 years old. My choices were to threaten my livelihood and the upbringing of my suburbanite daughter, or to stop making love with my wife at that young age. Is this the choice that your ethical system would force upon me? I understand that there are "the psychological and sociological effects on attitudes toward sex that are bound to follow" from my act, or which might have influenced my act. But really, how much of these are my responsibility, and does your theory not have any place in it for such as me?

In danger of rationalizing, how about this: As you point out, a belief in natural law presupposes or requires a belief in the transendent supernatural force, the "beatific vision" as I think you called it. Love is a potent motivator for any human, as potent in the human realm as any comparable universal force; just as capable of causing birth or death. I am sure you know more about the "beatific vision" of love than I. Do you really mean to tell me that I, by thwarting the supposed "natural" functioning of my body, out here in the 'burbs, where things are all dance classes and heroin overdoses and Mustangs and divorce courts, that I have thwarted "natural law" by taking steps to make sure I could express my corporeal love to my own wife? Is that what you are really trying to say??? And if so, may I ask you this: Do you really think that this philosophical holding of yours has anything of value to offer someone like me, who agrees with virtually everything else you have to say?

I have made my objection personal, but of course, this is essentially a leftist, non-natural rights-conception. Stories abound of the victimized woman who births children every nine months at the behest of her victimizing spouse. Unfortunately, these stories have traction because they are quintessential. Humans use children and conception to control each other, and they do it for their own selfish reasons, for good and for foul.

Natural law gives us intellects, and intellects enable us to control our own reproductive capacities--QED, given the realities that we human individuals face out here in the real world, vasectomies, tubal ligations, birth control pills, and condoms are moral. Evolution in the face of external threats is necessary, and the precepts of natural law require them. Fundamentally, God does not want me to be an idiot.

Posted by: George | December 19, 2006 1:21 AM

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