I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

But you've nailed it. You've absolutely nailed it.

There's certainly something to all of what Dr. Feser is saying...but to some extent (and here I'm stirring up a hornet's nest), isn't this to a large extent a good thing?

Here's another way of reading the progression:

1. There's a group of people who are discriminated against/oppressed/ridiculed, whatever (women, blacks, gays, people who like to have sex with animals) because they're importantly different from the mainstream group.
2. Some people think we shouldn't discriminate against/oppress/ridicule said group. There's a struggle, and the people arguing against discrimination win.
3. Now the mainstream has to _tolerate_ said group--the government isn't allowed to officially discriminate against them, and private employers aren't allowed to fire them just for being members of said group.
4. Some people think we should do more than tolerate said group--we should accept them. There is a struggle, and the people arguing for acceptance gradually win.
5. Now people no longer have to just _tolerate_ said group, they have to _accept_ them--they have to admit that the differences that exist between the mainstream and said group are completely morally irrelevant and are morally (and sometimes legally) obliged to refrain from saying certain negative things about said group, are encouraged to make friends with members of said group, and are further encouraged to stop even thinking certain negative thoughts about said group.

This seems to me to be, in many cases, a good thing. It seems like the moral community expands ever-larger and people can start feeling their dignity and get respect, both from themselves and others.

As Bill O'Reilly would say, tell me where I'm wrong.

Thanks Steve!

Bobcat,

Thanks for your comment. But with all due respect, I'm not sure how to respond to such a question. It appears we just speak different moral languages, as it were. (And that is increasingly the case between liberals and traditionalists: the former accuse the latter of all sorts of oppressive schemes -- even as they themselves work feverishly to drive the latter back into the catacombs!)

But let me try. First, most everything you say just blatantly and utterly begs the question. You insinuate, as if it were obvious and unvcontroversial, that e.g. racial differences on the one hand, and differences in patterns of sexual behavior on the other, are morally on a par, and indeed are equally "morally indifferent." You also insinuate, again as if it were obvious, that ceasing to "ridicule" behavior like "having sex with animals" somehow respects the "dignity" of the people who indulge in such behavior. And so forth.

Well, says who? Sure, most liberals seem to believe these things, but why should traditionalists care about that? From the traditionalist POV they are simply wrong (indeed mad) to believe such things. You might not personally be convinced by the arguments traditionalists would give in defense of this claim -- natural law arguments of various sorts, Kantian arguments of the sort Scruton defends, Burkean traditionalist arguments, or whatever -- but they are hardly less rationally defensible than liberal arguments. So how can you pretend that the liberal POV on such questions is a settled result that the rest of us ought to just roll over for?

The first problem with your view, then, is that it seems to assume, quite without argument -- and quite falsely in any case -- that traditional views about sexual morality are not only mistaken, but as rationally indefensible as believing in elves. (Why you would think a contributor to Right Reason, of all blogs, would just concede this straightaway is beyond me, but let that pass.) Yet if the traditionalist view is correct, or even just defensible, there is certainly a strong prima facie case for maintaining the status quo that liberal policies of the sort Steve was talking about seek to undo.

But let's suppose, just for the sake of argument, that the traditionalist arguments in question are no good. It still doesn't follow that the sorts of policies Steve was referring to are anything less than horrific. Many libertarians -- and, thank goodness, at least a few liberals even these days -- rather famously argue that even views that "progressively" minded people personally consider odious ought to be allowed the same right of free expression as their own views, lest we close ourselves off to the discovery of truth in the arrogant delusion that we have it already. (Haven't you ever heard of Mill's On Liberty?) In other words, there are (again, rather well known) "progressive" arguments for strenuously opposing the suppression of traditional views about sexual morality (or about anything else for that matter). Again, you might not agree with these arguments, but you pretend that they do not even exist, and that no one could possibly see any danger in the sort of suppression in question.

You seem baffled that I do not think the trends Steve described are a "good thing." Frankly, I'm baffled that you're baffled.

There are so many things wrong with Bobcat's narrative that I don't know where to start. So, I will just say this: the moral community does not expand in this narrative, it merely fluctuates at best and diminishes at worst. First, it excludes the unborn in order to apparently empower women. But if in fact the unborn ought to be protected because they are members of the moral community, this legal regime encourages women to not act virtuous toward the children, reinforces the culture of the dead-beat dad, and human beings (the unborn) die unjustly. Second, many people believe that the wrongness of racism is linked to our understanding of human nature and its intrinsic purpose and dignity. So, we think racism is wrong because all human beings--regardless of appearance--share the same nature. However, acts that people perform--from works of mercy to engaging in sex--may be judged as right or wrong precisely because human beings may exercise moral agency, a power that is imparted to them by virtue of their nature as human beings. Even if one believes that homosexuality is not immoral, one likely believes that some type of consensual sex is immoral, e.g., adultery, adult incest, anonymous sex. But this means that sexual practice is not like race at all, for there is no "race" that can be wrong. So, by lumping together race and sexual practice, Bobcat allows for the possibility that there is a wrong race (if we analogize it to sexual practice) or that there are no wrong consensual sex practices (if we analogize it to race). Neither option is attractive.

Thanks Dr. Feser,

No, I'm not baffled or anything like that. I don't even expect you to concede anything. Moreover, I'm not entirely sure I agree with what I wrote. It was more like an alternative narrative of things.

Why, then, write it? Well, it seems to me that people are such that there's no way of achieving liberal neutrality. That is, whichever policy a government endorses, it's going to offend some people's values. So I don't know that there's any way of doing political philosophy other than by arguing, "I think we should have a law against behavior X because behavior X is morally wrong, and the costs of criminalizing X is not particularly great."

Given the above view--which I admit, is oversimplistic--then I rather despair of politics being anything other than plays for power.

Why just power? Why not reasoned discourse? Well, I'm pessimistic that people in general, especially in politics, are all that interested in trading reasons. Moreover, there are so many interests that are threatened if law X or Y gets passed that they would be much more interested in trading reasons than in influencing people through spin.

Dr. Beckwith,

Thanks for your comment. Certainly the liberal response to the abortion narrative is that fetuses are not human beings because they don't have rationality, consent, etc. On the other hand, the liberal response to animals is toward greater and greater inclusion (the great ape project, laws against animal cruelty, etc.). So I think these two trends are at loggerheads--either liberals should be more respectful of fetuses (which is what I think should happen) or they should be less respectful of animals.

I tend to identify Kantianism, or rights-theory, more with liberalism than utilitarianism, but it's Kantianism/rights-theory that would push against respect for animals/fetuses (as neither have rationality). (And of course, very young, live infants don't have rationality, either.)

My guess is that something like an animals-rights based approach is going to prevail, so that people will say things like, "animals have rights, because they can can feel pain [or whatever] whereas fetuses don't have rights because even though they can feel pain, they still intrude on the mother's right to do whatever she wants with her body, so into the fires with them." That way, liberals will be able to have their cake (unlimited abortion rights) and eat it too (strictures against malign treatment of animals).

As for Dr. Beckwith's second point, I certainly agree that there are distinctively homosexual acts, whereas there aren't distinctively "African-American acts", but the important thing about homosexual acts is that they are not (or not simply) perverted, because gays have a genetic predisposition towards them. Consequently, homosexual acts express who gay people are in an extremely deep way, in a way that (say) adulterous sex is not.

I'm guessing I missed Dr. Beckwith's point on this second one, so please illuminate me if I did.

Dear Bobcat:

"Now people no longer have to just _tolerate_ said group, they have to _accept_ them--they have to admit that the differences that exist between the mainstream and said group are completely morally irrelevant and are morally (and sometimes legally) obliged to refrain from saying certain negative things about said group, are encouraged to make friends with members of said group, and are further encouraged to stop even thinking certain negative thoughts about said group."

This seems to be unreasonable as a legal requirement even in the case of genuinely morally irrelevant differences, like racial ones. We have very few legal requirements affirmatively requiring anybody to say anything (the one major counterexample is if you are called to a witness stand), and we never have a legal requiremens (as far as I can tell) for anybody to say anything that they believe to be false. A legal requirement to admit that some differences are morally irrelevant would surely be out of place, even when these differences are morally irrelevant.

Besides this, there is the fact that there are no good moral arguments for the moral permissibility of sex with animals, apart from consequentialist ones.

"homosexual acts is that they are not (or not simply) perverted, because gays have a genetic predisposition towards them"

It seems quite clear that having a genetic predisposition towards an act is neither a necesssary nor a sufficient condition for an act's being perverted. We could imagine someone with a genetic predisposition towards, say, coprophagy (sorry for the example, but I wanted something that isn't a subject of any present controversies)--for all I know, there may even be such people, and if there aren't, we could probably one day produce such people by inserting dog genes--but that would make coprophagy no less perverted. Likewise, if Jones has no genetic predisposition towards heterosexual sexual relations but decides to marry a woman he loves for the sake of companionship and procreation (assuming he is physically capable of reproductive sexual acts), his activity would surely not be in any way perverted.

The whole genetic predisposition thing is clearly a red herring. Abnormalities can have hereditary aetiology or environmental aetiology or both. Some behavioral abnormalities are perversions, and these, too, can have either hereditary or environmental or mixed aetiology.

In fact, there is only point of view from which I can see the inference from "genetically caused" to "non-perverted" as a plausible one, and this is a naive theological view that one's genes are the product of direct divine choice (antecedent will rather than consequent will, to be precise). Such a naive view has unacceptable consequences in the case of those with genetically grounded physical disabilities. Apart from such a theology, I do not see why the genetic question should be thought to be of much if any relevance.

Moreover, complex attitudes like sexual interests are pretty clearly a product of both heredity and environment, as can be seen by the differing standards of sexual attractiveness between cultures. It would be a great surprise if the tendency to be attracted to thick or thin people had largely environmental aetiology while the tendency to be attracted to male or female people had solely genetic aetiology.

I agree with Alex that genetic predisposition tells us nothing morally important. After all, it seems that if Darwinism is true, then certain affections are the result of their survival value for the species, and among those affections may be "love of one's own," a condition that may predispose one to racism and/or xenophobia. But it would not follow from this that racism or xenophobia is good or desirable, even if one finds comfort and companionship with others who share one or both of these sentiments.

To require that we have rightly-ordered affections on racial matters even if we feel otherwise means that there is at least one moral principle that cannot be trumped by sentiment. If there's one, maybe there are others.

Dear Dr. Pruss,

You write that there is no legal requirement to accept morally irrelevant differences. I agree; when I said that people are forced to move merely from tolerating morally irrelvant differences to accepting them, what I was getting at was a social norm: nowadays, people are supposed to accept morally irrelevant differences, in the sense that those who don't (say, Mel Gibson) are condemned by society and ostracized, until they have the right moral attitudes (or if they don't, they aren't allowed into 'polite' society again; this is, I take it, similar (of course, not identical) to the practice of "shunning" practiced by the Amish). My point was that, as society progresses, people are no longer socially/morally obliged just to tolerate certain differences, but to accept them.

The second (small) point, about sex with animals: you write that the only good moral argument for its permissibility is a consequentialist one. I'm not sure what you mean by a "good moral argument" here, given that you're not a consequentialist. It couldn't simply be one that is internally coherent, so what do you mean?

Anyway, another possible argument is a Kantian one, inspired by Christine Korsgaard, Allen Wood, and Thomas E. Hill, Jr. (though none of them, so far as I know, have said that sex with animals is permissible), is this: the only thing that is objectively valuable is rational nature, as shown by the regress argument: (1) whenever people act for the sake of some end, they take that end to be objectively good; (2) but the ends of inclinations cannot be objectively good in themselves, because if you didn't have the inclinations, or if you weren't constituted in the way you are, those ends would not be valuable to you; (3) therefore, insofar as you are committed to seeing some end as objectively good, you are committed to its being objectively good not because of how it is in itself, but because you are the one valuing it; (4) so, whenever an agent acts for the sake of some end, he is committed to the view that his rational nature is objectively good, and that other things have their objective goodness 'transferred' to them by a rational agent's valuing them.

On this value-regress argument, having sex with animals would be good for the agent who values it, and because having sex with an animal doesn't treat any end in itself (any rational nature) as a mere means, it is morally permissible.

(I'm guessing that the value-regress argument as I've stated it is invalid, or at least unsound, but certainly some people are convinced by it, and anyway I think it expresses how a lot of people--the 'enlightened', educated classes--think about morality.)

Finally, on Dr. Pruss's last point:

I suppose the problem I'm having with the question of whether something is perverted depends upon what you mean by perverted. I think a lot of people (like myself) who haven't given perversion much thought tend to think of it as usually somehow freely willed, along the lines of the following model: (1) a person looks at pornography, or has sex in a certain way, or something like this, and does it so much that what he looks at or does starts to bore him; (2) in order to re-titillate himself, he looks at or engages in more abnormal sex acts; (3) finally, he reaches a point where the sex acts that arouse him are so entirely beyond the pail that we call him perverted.

This is, I think, how some perversion is thought of. The relevance to homosexuality, of course, is that if homosexuality is genetic, then homosexuals are not attracted to members of the same sex through this kind of habituation (at which point during the habituation, mind you, a person could become disgusted with himself and just stop looking at or engaging in the abnormal sex acts); rather, the homosexual attraction is primitive. That's why I brought up genetics.

Now, another kind of perversion, though, are sex acts that morally abuse people: rape (though I'm not sure whether people standardly call rapists perverted--"perverted" seems to tame a term), child molestation, sado-masochism, perhaps some weird kind of serial adultery, etc.

The thing is, homosexual sex acts don't seem to fall into this category either. So, based on the way many people (I think) use "perversion", homosexuality doesn't qualify.

Now, there might be a third, much more straightforward approach to perversion: a sex act is perverted if it disgusts people. The problem with this, though, is that what disgusts people will change over time, and that what disgusts one large group of people might not disgust another large group of people.

I'm sure there's a natural law-based definition of perversion, but I don't know natural law theory, so I can't come up with it.

I think one aspect of Ed's post is not addressed at all by Bobcat's narrative (on which I agree with the rest of you, esp. Alex): Isn't one of Ed's points that there's a deceptiveness in the liberal's Stage 1? Wesley Smith talks about this sort of thing in areas like assisted suicide--e.g. the pretense that it's only supposed to be for the terminally ill, made by people who actually want assisted suicide virtually on demand for anybody. Isn't part of the problem that people move incrementally in the political realm while not admitting that this is a deliberate incremental movement towards an end from which most would recoil?

In this area, I think it's very important that radical pro-lifers like me be honest that we want all unborn children protected. But I don't think any of us pro-lifers want private school curricula to be government censored so that they don't teach the opposite view. Which leads to a different question about Bobcat's narrative. Isn't there a major difference between "shunning" and having the government censor parochial school textbooks?

Lydia,

You make a good point. However, I don't think too many liberals can be accused of deceptiveness at stage 1. The thing is, while they're at stage 1, I think many of them honestly believe what they say. For instance, I take Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch to be sincere in their belief that they're against polygamy. Heck, when polygamy is legalized, they might even try to argue against it.

The reason why I don't believe in neutrality is because I don't think these things could ever be left well enough alone. After gay marriage is the law of the land, people will start to buckle to polygamists' demands--this, despite the fact (at least, I take it there's a fact) that there are important, morally significant differences between gay marriage and polygamy. The thing is, the political-psychological logic of it will lead to polygamy, by hook or by crook. (And I'm sure you can think of other examples besides just gay marriage and polygamy.)

Oh yeah, and I do think there's a morally relevant difference between shunning and censoring parochial school textbooks. I just think that as liberal society progresses, more and more people will see the continued propagation of beliefs that are critical of certain aspects of the liberal orthodoxy as themselves threats to it by their very existence, so they will take whatever measures they can, within reason (in some sense), to stop them.

I think this is really unfortunate, by the way. And I'm probably being way too oversimplistic and pessimistic, but I suppose it's the simple model of human psychology that currently convinces me.

I have been reading this blog for a while, but have never thought of responding to anything. I am not an expert on any of these topics, so please forgive me for any mistakes, but I would like to expand on something Alexander Pruss was talking about. I believe it was implied (not by Alexander) that homosexual acts could not be immoral, or at least not perverted, because such acts are genetically determined. I want to argue against such an argument. When actions are judged to be either moral or immoral, it is the action itself that must be judged and not the underlying causes of those actions. For example, the act of murder is wrong independent of any casual factors, whether the factor is a product of genes, brain function, or environment. Murder is not excused simply because an individual has a pre-disposition towards violence. The virtue of any behavior must be judged independently, and this would include homosexual behavior. Therefore, I feel it is appropriate to judge the appropriateness of homosexual behavior independent of the underlying causes for behaving in such a manner.

Now to call something a perversion implies that that something has an objective purpose. Therefore, the idea of any sexual perversion implies that there is an objective purpose for sex. Unfortunately, I feel that too many in our culture believe there is no such purpose, outside of one’s own subjective pleasures. A common response given to me is “all things are permissible is the default position, and the burden of proof is thus on those wishing to restrict behavior.” In other words, there does not need to be an argument for the permissibility of anything. For anyone who does make such a claim, I wonder when the burden would be overcome.

Anyway, I enjoy the forum.

KV,

Surely masturbation is a perversion on your definition? But if so, what legally is supposed to follow from it? Moreover, is polygamy perverted? IF so, how? If not, why not permit it?

Masturbation may or may not be a perversion. I did not want to argue what the objective purpose or purposes for sex are. I only wanted to point out that a perversion, by definition, implies a proper way of doing something. If there is no proper sexual behavior, then there are no sexual perversions. Surely if we reduce the purpose of sex to procreation, I suppose masturbation would be a perverted act. This, however, does not mean anything legal should take place. Many things are wrong, such as lying to your parents, yet have no legal repercussions.

Polygamy as a perversion also presupposes that marriage has an objective purpose. Is there a specific purpose that only a monogamous heterosexual relationship can have? Maybe. If marriage has no specific purpose, or polygamy fulfills that purpose, then I suppose it should be permitted. I presume there is a reason government sanctions marriage, otherwise, why sanction any relationship?

I'm curious about Ed's five stages for "conservatives." At which one are they doing something really stupid and/or unprincipled? Stage 2 could just be an understandable misreading of the political auspices. But let's say that X is something really bad that they shouldn't accept morally and politically. That means that by stage 4, we're off the track. What about stage 3? I think that's the interesting one, because it all depends on what's meant by "adjust to" the "grim new reality." Does it mean "get mentally ready to fight it in the last ditch for the rest of our natural lives" or does it mean "learn to live with it without making waves"? In fact, that very ambiguity might be where the conservatives take a fork in the road to certain defeat.

Bobcat:

"(2) but the ends of inclinations cannot be objectively good in themselves, because if you didn't have the inclinations, or if you weren't constituted in the way you are, those ends would not be valuable to you"

It seems quite clear that (2) is false. The ends of some inclinations are clearly good. Thus, we have an inclination to prevent pain from happening to animals (when we can do so without undue cost). The end of this inclination is plainly good.

I know that Kantians have a story about how humane attitudes towards animals are called for because of our own self-respect, but that gets things the wrong way around. The reason our self-respect calls on us to prevent pain from happening to animals is because it is bad for pain to happen to animals.

But suppose that the Kantian digs in her heels and insists that it is our own self-respect that grounds the duty to act humanely towards animals, and this has nothing to do with any supposed mind-independent badness of animal suffering. But then exactly the same thing can be said about bestiality--and Kant probably said just that ( I don't have enough texts at hand; I do know that he says this about masturbation)--namely, that bestiality is contrary to our own self-respect.

The claim that something is valuable for me only if I value it also seems clearly false. The case of things that have instrumental value is the easiest counterexample (I may not value physical exercise, but it would be valuable to me instrumentally). But the claim is false even when restricted to non-instrumental goods. Thus, being justly punished is non-instrumentally valuable (this is actually Kant's idea!) But often those punished do not value their being punished. In general, the lives of children, and perhaps of adults as well, are filled with non-instrumental goods which they do not value.

An argument that starts with a clearly false premise isn't a good argument. Now you may say that the premise isn't seen as false by some smart folks. Maybe, though I actually have some doubts whether these smart folks' beliefs are all consistent with (2) and (3)--the phenomenology of sympathetic response to the pain of an animal is not compatible with belief in (2). I also suspect that sometimes these smart folks may only accept that premise because they've already bought into the conclusions of arguments based on the premise.

I also suspect that atheism or agnosticism is going to be an implicit part of one's reasons for accepting (2). If theism holds, then (2) is exceedingly implausible. For if theism holds, then it seems that anything that God values is valuable, whether or not we value it. Now there is really only one at all plausible argument against theism, and that is the inductive problem of evil. However, in the end I think that fails, too.

Alex

p.s. I am not claiming that bestiality is wrong because it causes suffering to animals. Sometimes it causes suffering, sometimes it doesn't, but it's wrong in either case. I am using the case of animal pain simply as a counterexample to (2).

It seems to me that a basic part of our concept of perversion is that of departing in some significant way from the natural purpose of something. The fact that some sexually-charged act is deeply immoral, as in the case of rape, is not sufficient to establish the fact that the act is perverted. And it is controversial that one can infer that something is immoral from a claim that it is perverted. Given many natural law theories one can make that inference, but apart from natural law this is not obvious.

There are also derivative concepts of perversion, where the purpose is not natural but, say, social. Thus, it is perverted for a nurse to torture patients, because a central social purpose of a nurse is to relieve suffering. (On the other hand, it is not perverted for a soldier to torture an enemy soldier, since doing so does not go against the central social purpose of the soldier. Nonetheless, even though such torture is not perverted, it is still wrong.)

Anyway, the question whether some form of sexual activity is perverted depends on what the natural purposes of sexual activity are. If John Paul II is right that the central natural meaning of sexual activity is generous marital self-giving, then rape is perverted. It is irrelevant here whether a predisposition to rape is genetically based or not.

Whether homosexual behavior is perverted or not depends, then, on what natural purposes sexual behavior has. And the question what natural purposes a behavior has is independent of questions about whether the causes of or predispositions towards that behavior are genetic or environmental or voluntary or some combination of these.

It also occurs to me that the transition from
"(2) but the ends of inclinations cannot be objectively good in themselves, because if you didn't have the inclinations, or if you weren't constituted in the way you are, those ends would not be valuable to you"
to
"(3) therefore, insofar as you are committed to seeing some end as objectively good, you are committed to its being objectively good not because of how it is in itself, but because you are the one valuing it"
is logically invalid.

For (2) only implies the claim that an end is good only if one values it. But (3) requires the claim that good ends are good solely because one values them.

A piece of paper is legal tender in the U.S. only if it has the word "dollar" printed on it. But it is false that a piece of paper is legal tender solely because it has the word "dollar" printed on it. (Exercise: Take a sheet of paper and handwrite "dollar" on it. Then try to pay with it in a store.)

And it would likewise be logically incorrect to move from (2) to the claim that an end is good if one values it. But that is what this argument for bestiality requires: it requires that someone's valuing of an end, viz., bestial behavior, be sufficient for that end's being valuable. But all that (2) yields is that someone's valuing of that end is necessary for that end's being valuable.

Moreover, there is yet another fallacy in Bobcat's argument, and this is in the implicit move from the claim that sex with animals is good for the person who does it to the claim that sex with animals is permissible for the person who does it.

It is plain that some things are good in one way and bad in another way and overall wrong. Thus, taking a stranger's wallet is good in one way (you get the money) and bad in another (you do an injustice to the stranger). So from the claim that some activity is good (in some way) it does not follow that it is right. At the very least we need the claim that the activity is good overall or good all things considered. But that claim is not justified. For even if we grant, though we should not, that what an agent values is valuable, it does not follow that whan an agent values is valuable all things considered.

And Kant will say that there is another error. He will insist that from the claim that some activity is good all things considered it does not follow immediately that it is right. For the good and the right are distinct, he thinks. (I would not make this criticism myself, though.)

Dr. Pruss,

The argument I gave was one I just sort of threw out there--I was just trying to approximate Korsgaard's value-regress argument. I myself don't think it works either. That said, I think there are a few things to respond to in your posts above.

First, when you write that "The ends of some inclinations are clearly good. Thus, we have an inclination to prevent pain from happening to animals (when we can do so without undue cost). The end of this inclination is plainly good", surely this begs the question against the Kantian (and whenever I mention "Kantians", I mean Kantians of the Thomas Hill/Christine Korsgaard/Allen Wood variety). Moreover, it begs the question against Gilbert Harman, J. L. Mackie, Mark Timmons, Allan Gibbard, Simon Blackburn, Richard Joyce, and Catherine Wilson, just to name some relativists/non-cognitivists/nihilists off the top of my head. I think this just gets down to a question of the burden of proof. People who don't believe that certain ends of inclination just are good, regardless of what anyone thinks about them, are going to say that they don't understand what it could mean for something to be objectively good, or that there's something 'queer' about values that are both describable and also intrinsically motivating, or that things that exist are shown to exist by the scientific method, and that mind-independent goodness is not something we need to posit to make sense of people's attributions of goodness to things. Instead, we can just say that people see things as good because they are in the grip of an emotion, or desire, or endorse a norm, or whatever.

[On a side-note: if noncognitivists could satisfactorily overcome the Frege-Geach problem, and could explain our attributions of goodness to things as the result of being in the grip of a desire/emotion, or endorsing a norm, would you think that non-cognitivism had any advantage over cognitivst views? (Just a small advantage, not necessarily a decisive one.) Or would you say that no matter how well they can explain _why_ we value the things we do, and the phenomenology of value, as well as moral reasoning, that they are still hopeless views because we all know, deep down, that certain things are good regardless of what anyone says about them?]

That all said, I think the reason the Kantian would say that pain seems so obviously bad is because almost everyone who experiences it disvalues it--i.e., it causes certain sensations that most people take con-attitudes to?

And what do you say about the person (described in Damasio's book, _The Feeling of What Happens_) who undergoes an operation after which he can still feel pain, but no longer cares about it? Is his pain still objectively bad, even if it is not a sign of tissue-damage (and in his case, he had a rare condition that made him feel extreme pain at the slightest touch)?

As for the Kantian argument against cruelty to animals, it goes like something this (as you know): (1) treating animals cruelly makes us insensitive to their suffering; (2) if we become insensitive to their suffering, we will become insensitive to the suffering of human beings; (3) if we become insensitive to the suffering of human beings, we are more likely to treat them as mere means; (4) therefore, we shouldn't be cruel to animals.

The relevant question is: why on earth do most of us see treating animals as bad in the first place? The commonsense answer is: we see it as bad because it is bad. But I hope you admit that there are at least prima facie problems with, say, Moorean non-naturalism about the good, even if those problems are at the end of the day surmountable. And this view--that we just intuit real badness in the world, which is why we think cruelty to animals is wrong, or at least bad--seems to fit most naturally with Moorean non-naturalism. So there are problems with the commonsense answer.

The Kantian response, by contrast, is less successful at dealing with the phenomenology than the Moorean, but it deals more successfully with the epistemological and metaphysical problems of value-attribution. For the Kantian says, "the reason we you see animal suffering as bad is that you are hard-wired, or habituated, to see animal-suffering as bad. Without this genetic predisposition or habituation, you would not see animal suffering as bad."

Now, what about bestiality? How does engaging in bestiality diminish self-respect? Well, I think the vast majority of us see bestial acts as deeply disgusting. But there might be some of us who are hard-wired or habituated not to. Now, unless their hard-wiring/habituation gives rise to other problems that make it interfere with self- or other-respect, the Kantian has to say that there's nothing wrong with it.

Obviously, you can see the relevance of this to perversion: for the Kantian, the natural purpose of a sex organ doesn't matter, so long as using it in a certain way doesn't lead to lack of respect for oneself or others.

Hi Lydia,

My point wasn't that the various statements representing each conservative stage (or even each liberal one, for that matter), in themselves and considered in isolation are _necessarily_ "stupid and/or unprincipled." (Almost) any of the particular statements (minus the comical bits I threw in) could in principle be held by this or that well-meaning individual conservative or liberal.

The point was rather to illustrate a certain kind of transition in the thinking of liberals considered as a group or conservatives considered as a group (or at least of a large subset of each group) which is so radical and relatively swift that one cannot help but suspect that certain non-rational and/or morally questionable factors are involved in the thinking of at least many of the people in question.

With some people, the transition might be a matter of sheer political opportunism, with the earlier stages never having been sincerely held in the first place; with others it might involve an unwillingness to continue standing for once sincerely held principles in the face of changes in public opinion; with still others there might be a sincere change of opinion that nevertheless contradicts other beliefs the person still holds to, and which again is at least subconsciously motivated by fear of being too far out of sync with shifts in public opinion rather by than clearly thought-out rational considerations; and so forth.

Bobcat:

1. Well, first of all the non-cognitivist/relativist move is a dubious one for someone who wants to impose on the general population the acceptance of members of some discriminated-against group G. For unless that discrimination is actually wrong (unjust, unfair, etc.), then the general population can simply respond that their moral feelings/desires do not match that of the G-advocate, and they have no reason to listen to the G-advocate who by her own admission is only expressing her feelings/desires.

2. As for the Kantians, whether insensitivity to the pain of animals makes one insensitive to the pain of humans is clearly an empirical question. Suppose we develop a drug, Sensitera, that instills sensitivity to the pain of humans (there is good reason to think that our sensitivity to the suffering of others depends on how much these others are like us; so the idea of a drug that differentially improves sensitivity to the pain of humans is not absurd). Then on the Kantian view there would be nothing at all wrong with hurting animals for fun, as long as one took enough Sensitera (e.g., afterwards or at the same time) to counteract the effects. That seems clearly false.

3. I think we can be much more confident about the wrongness of certain things, such as the wrongness of causing pain to animals for fun, than we can about the grounds of various ethical theories. We can see this wrongness just as we can see the roundness of the moon. Does that beg the question? Perhaps.

4. I should note that if Kant was a Kantian, then it is false to say in general that for a Kantian the natural purpose of a sex organ does not matter. Remember Kant's argument against committing suicide to avoid pain. The natural purpose of a faculty of pain, Kant said, was to preserve our life. Thus, to commit suicide to avoid pain would be to make the faculty of pain cause the opposite of its natural effect. Kant next applies the universal law formulation of the categorical imperative. It would be contradictory to make into a universal law of nature something that contradicts nature.

5. As for self-respect, remember that for Kant this is not a mere feeling. So when Kant says that masturbation is opposed to self-respect, he is not saying that masturbation makes the agent feel dirty, or makes the agent feel out of sync with public opinion, etc. Rather, it is that masturbation makes one into a means to one's own pleasure.

6. We might then say the following two things. First, that it is natural for sexual relations to be between equals or at least con-specifics. If so, then bestiality is wrong either because either it goes against the equality in sexual relations or because it is contrary to self-respect through equating oneself with an animal (and hence objectifying oneself). To treat oneself as the sort of being that is sexually satisfied by a brute animal is to treat oneself as a brute animal.

7. There is at least a question to be asked about the appropriateness of imposing on the general population of a democratic society something (acceptance of G) for which one argues on grounds that the general population rejects or at least does not accept, especially when one is trying to impose not just a negative duty, but a positive one. I am not saying that such imposition is always wrong. But there is a question to be asked about it, particularly if the advocate of this is someone who is fallibilist about ethics and hence has to admit that she might be wrong (in a way in which a religious person might not).

8. It's also worth noting that the neo-Kantian position you describe is extremely implausible if God exists (and the vast majority of the members of our society believes that God does exist). For if God exists, then we have conclusive reason to do what his commands say (note: I do not say that we have conclusive reason to obey God; that is a different question; see Mark Murphy's An Essay on Divine Authority). The reason may or may not be moral. It might just be prudential either on an individual or a social level.

If God exists, then, first of all, it is very plausible that there are goods and bads in the world independent of our will. A work of art, even on the neo-Kantian position you describe, has a value deriving from the work's being an expression of the artist's will. But if God exists than our world is a divine work of art. Moreover, we would have no right to interfere with the divine art, being ourselves the products of it, having a duty of gratitude to its creator, and knowing that any considerations that we might have in favor of interfering with the divine art have already been taken into consideration in omniscience.

Secondly, if God exists, he will know consequences of actions where we can guess only dimly. Thus God might see that the sorts of social changes that would result from widespread acceptance of bestiality are overall harmful, and thus he might forbid bestiality.

What this shows is that to have a reason to think bestiality morally acceptable, one must also have reason to deny that God has not forbidden bestiality. One way to have such reason would be to think that God does not exist. But an argument based on the non-existence of God is not going to convince many in our society, apart from some elites. Another way would be to argue that even if God did exist, he did not forbid bestiality. To make that argument, one would have to argue that all the religions that claim he forbade it are false. And that is a non-trivial task.

Bobcat asks: "if noncognitivists could satisfactorily overcome the Frege-Geach problem, and could explain our attributions of goodness to things as the result of being in the grip of a desire/emotion, or endorsing a norm, would you think that non-cognitivism had any advantage over cognitivst views?"

Here there is an ambiguity in "can explain"--the word may be a success term or not. If it is a success term, then from "p can explain q" we can infer that p is true and q is true and there is a genuine explanatory connection between p and q. Alternately, by saying "p can explain q", one might mean that if p and q were true, and if they had some alleged relationship, then p would be an explanation of q. Thus, in the non-success sense I can say that a vast conspiracy of cyclists attempting to stop people from driving cars "can explain" high gas prices, but I cannot say this in the success sense.

All that said, I think that even on the stronger reading of the antecedent of your conditional, I reject the conditional. I reject it because I think desires and emotions are like perceptions. I can, and should, say that my attribution of roundness to the moon is a result of my perceptions, and saying this does not in any way make me a non-cognitivist about the moon's shape. Our desires and emotions may well be how we know moral truths.

A similar thing can be said about "endorsing a norm". But more can be said there. In fact, the moral cognitivist certainly can say that she is just endorsing a norm--an objective moral norm. Now I suspect that what you mean by "norm" is something else--you mean something that is merely used by society as a guiding rule or something like that. But I deny that such rules are actually norms--I deny that there is any normativity there absent some moral norm like "you should conform to society when such conformity is not wrong". This is very controversial. (In fact, I think all genuine norms are derivative from moral norms.)

If we assume that X is something that conservatives were right to oppose in the first place, then it seems to me that the conservatives are sensible and principled at their Stage 1 and have abandoned their principles or become too accommodating at Stage 5. You're certainly right, Ed, that it's difficult to pinpoint just how that happens by focusing on one stage. But I do think there's something to be said for locating a significant shift at 3. Otherwise, 4 is just an abrupt abandonment of principle, going from seeing X as bad to trying to convince oneself it isn't bad. It looks to me like 3 shows a kind of despair, a "this is the way it is and we have to accept it," and that this leads to the attempt to make a virtue out of necessity in 4.

I realize this may seem like over-analyzing, and really the piece is sadly funny, as Steve said at the beginning. But I think there's an insight in seeing despair of changing a situation and urging others to to "learn to live with it" as the first step in trying to convince onself that X isn't so bad after all. So your stages, Ed, are humorous but can actually sustain some pretty detailed examination and analysis.

I wanted to see how Bobcat's arguments panned out before I got into the fray, but I did want to add my meager two cents.

Dr. Feser, as usual, makes a very perceptive point in his first comment and then unlike his customary practice, backs away from its implications. Namely, "...we just speak different moral languages, as it were." That is what is interesting about the dynamic being described in the post. In particular, Stage 3 for the conservative is a recognition that the current moral language has shifted. While Stage 4 for the liberal is a revision of historical language. Why each of us has a different moral language or that it should be prone to revision is the intriguing question to examine.

Also in reference to the post, if I recall correctly it was Dr. Feser who told me that NLT does not forbid slavery in principle, but that in practice the moral hazards are impossible to overcome. So this particular example actually does have some friction with more traditionalist paradigms.

Although Dr. Pruss makes many good points, I don't particularly see why God has to be brought into the equation to justify a conservative POV. If God does need to be brought in, that requires a nontrivial proof that God exists in all the ways that theists propose He exists, including a demonstration of infallibility in our understanding of God.

Hello Step2:

I'm on my way out the door, so just a quick correction/clarification: NLT _does_ in fact forbid _chattel_ slavery even in principle. What it leaves open at least in principle is some lesser form of prolonged servitude (as, say, punishment for a crime), and even then only under certain conditions. But, as you say, it holds that even this practice is too fraught with moral hazards to be defensible in practice.

Step2: "I don't particularly see why God has to be brought into the equation to justify a conservative POV. If God does need to be brought in, that requires a nontrivial proof that God exists in all the ways that theists propose He exists, including a demonstration of infallibility in our understanding of God."

I did not claim that God had to be brought in. But I did claim that unless one knew that God did not exist, one could not discount the possibility that God forbade bestiality.

Note, too, that the epistemic standard required by Step2 is clearly unfair, at least for political purposes. We do not have to have "proof" that, say, green-eyed men are persons in order to extend basic rights to brown-eyed men. (I don't know how such a proof would go. Sure, there is a strong analogical argument: I am a person, green-eyed men seem very similar to me, and my own blueeyedness does not seem relevant to my personhood. But that's not a "proof".) All we need is that on the balance there be good reason to think that green-eyed men are persons or, perhaps, all we need is that there be no good reason to doubt that they are persons. Requiring "proof" is clearly too much.

And it certainly is asking for too much to show "that God exists in all the ways that theists propose He exists". We need only show that God has the qualities needed for a particular argument--omniscience and perfect goodness suffice to make it be the case that we have decisive reason to do what God says. And we do not even need omniscience and perfect goodness to have extremely good reason to do what God says--all we need for that is that God be wiser than all of us individually and collectively and that God be better than all of us individually and collectively.

And why "infallibility" is needed is beyond me. Almost all of our public policies are based on quite fallible judgments.

All that said, it's not all that hard to show the existence of God. :-)

Hello Dr. Feser,

I did not remember the exchange correctly. It was extended servitude and not slavery that was mentioned for NLT. Your reference to slavery in the original post is what got confused in my memory. Sorry about that.

Dr. Pruss,

When you replied to Bobcat, "...if the advocate of this is someone who is fallibilist about ethics and hence has to admit that she might be wrong (in a way in which a religious person might not)," it was indicating that a religious person may not have to admit they might be wrong about ethics. My objection is just that this is an incredibly strong claim to make.

For example, if someone believes in Allah and thus feels perfectly justified in making an appeal to God as his source of ethics when it comes to polygamy, would you consider that the proper end point of the debate?

I will be happy to limit the proof to whatever attributes are needed to justify the argument. As an appeal to authority, which is what I consider these types of appeals to be, a proof is authentic and unambiguous. If God is to be a clear source of moral authority, it makes sense to examine His characteristics.

I meant that a fallibilist about ethics has to admit by her own lights that she might be wrong. Whether a religious person has to admit by her own lights that she might be wrong is less clear (hence "might not").

Whether a religious person would be justified in relying on a faith claimed to be infallible depends on a lot of hard questions. (I think Plantinga's reformed epistemology gets this issue roughly right.)

From what I understand of it, Plantinga is trying to say that religious beliefs cannot be questioned because they are properly basic. He bases this on a human tendency to believe in God as well as a refutation of evidentialism. But his own examples revolve around inspiring events or perceptions, which only justifies saying that humans can be inspired, nothing about assigning that inspiration to God.

Plantinga thinks that, barring defeaters (an issue that makes it impossible to use Plantinga's theory directly for my purposes--I only said it gets things "roughly right"), we are warranted in believing the content of inspiring perceptions when they in fact come from God, even if we have no independent evidence that they come from God. If the content is: "God has forgiven me my sins" or "This flower has been created by God", then, barring defeaters, I am warranted in believing that God has forgiven me my sins or that this flower has been created by God. I can then draw the logical conclusion that God exists, since I cannot be forgiven by God and that flower cannot be created by God unless God exists.

Dr. Pruss,

Thanks for explaining Plantinga's position. If your analysis is correct, it seems like he puts the cart in front of the horse. If what is at stake in his argument is whether belief in God's existence is warranted, to say at the beginning that inspiring content does in fact come from God presupposes the answer. The way "fact" is used in this case is remarkably strange. Normally I think of facts as being, at least in principle, open to evidence and observation. I am disinclined to say that other types of fact represents something independent of our minds, although that effect may be enough to qualify as a form of social reality.