Before you so quickly give the thumbs up, look at what Leon is saying. I gave reference to a thread that leads to a book and a whole literature that sets out the difference between brute and social facts, which Leon dismissed as "failing to engage with the topic".

Think about that. Which of us, Leon or I, is failing here.

Like I said before, you are presupposing that it is true that homosexual acts are not ‘morally corrupt’; and then based off of that saying it is not degenerate. I understand from your view that makes sense, but in mine it doesn’t because it is immoral (viz., ‘morally corrupt’). What we would need to discuss is why. — Bob Ross

Yes, I think this is the nub of it.

Would you say that homosexuality falls into this category because, in your view, God is against it? And does your reasoning come post hoc, have you used reason to shore up a religious view you already held?

The problem with reason, for me, is that although it's difficult to escape its use, rationality can be used to justify anything. In the end, it often comes down to whether one is convinced or not and that may be informed more by our affective judgements and intuition than reasoning.

Would it be fair to say that you have an almost Thomist veneration of reason?

A bigotry charge is a serious accusation: why do you think people who disagree with your political views are all bigots? — Bob Ross

Give me a fucking break with your faux innocence. Calling an entire class of people mentally ill couldn't be more bigoted. Try applying that to any other group.

:up:

It's extraordinary stuff.

The etymology of "bigot" is unclear, but etymonline rejects the suggestion that it derives from "By god", preferring instead to link it to "Beguine", a hypocritical religious order who pretended to poverty. The connection to religion is uncontested. The earliest attested uses (Old French bigot, c. 12th–13th centuries) referred to a sanctimonious or hypocritically pious person, which already suggests a religious connection.

That's hitting the nail on the head, it seems. The philosophy here is being forced to be the handmaid of faith. The rejection of core aspects of logic, of Hume's fork, and the adherence to an archaic ontology are all in the service of a belief that is not to be the subject of doubt.

 I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent

At any cost? With any means?

 Suppose instead of tubes connected to me, the violinist was being kept alive from blood running from an open wound on my side into him. Closing my wound would be an action but is your position that closing my own wound would be morally impermissible if it results in the violinist's death?

That’s a good question. I would say that it would be indirectly intentional because their death would be a (bad) side effect of the means (of closing the wound); and the principle of double effect has to be used to determine its permissibility or impermissibility. This is important because this is disanalogous to abortion: an abortion is where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed (analogous to shooting the violinist in the head).

I think, in this case, it would be permissible because it is:

1. A good end;
2. There is no other means to facilitate that end;
3. The means is not bad; and
4. The good end outweighs the bad effect.

In the case of abortion, #3 is necessarily false.

This is the difference between, for example, the permissibility of performing a hysterectomy on a pregnant women with terminal cancer to save her from that cancer which will inevitably lead to the human in the womb dying; vs. an abortion where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed to facilitate the end of upholding the woman’s bodily autonomy.

I'm OK with that. If a psychotic innocent person is trying to kill me, and I directly intentionally kill them in self defense, it's not murder, right?

I would say they are innocent in the sense you mean of ‘not intending to do you harm’ but they are not innocent in the relevant sense of ‘being unworthy of being killed’. This is a really good thought experiment though, as it challenges my idea of innocence.

I would prefer to unplug them and let them die naturally of whatever was killing them before they were hooked up to me, but if shooting them is the only way to do it, it's morally permissible

But, then, you are advocating that murder is permissible in some cases. Wouldn’t you agree that killing them by putting a bullet in their head is murder?

Now a "bigot" is someone "obstinately attached to a belief or opinion" - like someone who would reject a rule of logic in order to insist that homosexuality was degenerate. Hmm.

I didn’t reject a law of classical logic...unless you are suggesting that everyone needs to accept every theory of logic available—including paraconsistent logic?

Likewise, rejecting modal logic does not mean I am obstinately attached to my beliefs: an obstinate attachment is a stubborn and unreasonable attachment to something—you know that, Banno.

Physics is not ethics.

Moral naturalism doesn’t claim that physics is ethics.

You continue to frame the issue as ontological. That's part of your error.

It is ontologically: it is a question about whether or not essences are real. You cannot sit here and claim that essence realism is about whether or not essences are real and hold that it isn’t ontological. That’s what ontology is: the study of reality (being). I am surprised you are claiming it isn’t ontological: what is it then for you? Epistemic?

(1) is blatantly incorrect; the outermost mode determines the overall mode, so it would be possibly necessary → possibly

That’s blatantly not true, my friend! S5 modal logic is the most commonly accepted version of modal logic; and in that theory “possibly necessarily X → necessarily X → X”. In other words, “possibly X” equates to “X exists in at least one possible world”; “necessarily X” equates to “X exists in all possible worlds"; consequently, “possibly necessarily X” equates to “X exists in at least one possible world as necessarily X”; which, in turn, equates to “X exists in at least one possible world such that X a necessary being in it”; which, in turn, equates to “X exists in all possible worlds (since X exists as a necessary being in this possible world)”; which entails that “X must exist in the real world being that it is one of those possible worlds”.

Nor is there a conflation of conceivability with modality. Possible because it is so brief, the reasons given here appear muddled. If you are going to reject an accepted part of modern logic, then you ought provide good, clear reasons.

I gave a clear explanation of an alternative view that is common. Possible worlds are conceivable worlds unless you are suggesting that we have a sound methodology for determining when a world is possible (that I am not aware of).

How odd. So instead you take your own attitudes as being necessarily universal.

That’s not what I said. Moral non-naturalism suffers from being incapable of explaining what the property of goodness refers to exactly because it cannot equate it with a natural property. What is goodness under your view? What ontologically grounds it?

I already have, in the post I already linked.

This gets at your other post:

Before you so quickly give the thumbs up, look at what Leon is saying. I gave reference to a thread that leads to a book and a whole literature that sets out the difference between brute and social facts, which Leon dismissed as "failing to engage with the topic".

I am glad you are engaging in the thread, but you are refusing to explain your theory to me and instead are trying to book-drown me. It is a form of refusing to engage to try to tell someone to “read these 50 books and get back to me, then I’ll respond”. If someone doesn’t understand Aristotelianism and I am conversing with them, there is a difference between me suggesting books for them to read and engaging with them vs. refusing to engage by gate-keeping via trying to force them to read 20 books before I will engage with them.

What a terrible argument. A woman wearing a dress is not like a triangle's having three sides.

I don’t think you are appreciate fully what I said. When a woman wears a dress it isn’t itself a part of their gender: it is the symbol which represents their expression of their sex (i.e., the symbol that represents their gender). You can separate the dress-wearing from femaleness, but you can’t separate the feminine expression of femaleness that it represents from the sex (femaleness) that it represents. That’s the part that is virtually distinct.

Again, you are thinking gender is separable from sex; and this is where your objection really lies here.

It's not baseless. You would oblige others to express only your attitudes. Have a think about why folk might draw this sort of comparison, even if unjustly.

They are drawing it so they can conveniently evade discussing gender theory with me: instead, they find some super vague and unwarranted correlation between viewing transgenderism as a mental illness and horrific deeds done by Nazism and decide to blatantly mischaracterize my views as Nazi. The Nazis were not just viewing transgenderism as an illness to be cured: they were hateful towards them and persecuted them. It is unacceptable to label my view as Nazi. Surely you can see that, right?

Hypericin, my friend, if that is true, then the acknowledgement of any mental illness is bigotry; for every recognition of a mental illness in principle applies to an entire class of people affected. Is that really what you believe?

I am making a very reasonable claim that recognizing something as a mental illness does not entail that one is obstinately or unreasonably or stubbornly attached to a the belief that it is (I.e., is a bigot about it being) a mental illness nor that they hate those who have the illness. This honestly should be a point we can find common ground on.

We seem to now be playing "posts last wins".

The logical law I referenced was Humes' Law - the illicit move from ought to is.

But you rejection of possible world semantics is of a par with, say, accepting algebra but rejecting calculus. PWS is what links model logic to model theory. It is quite central to modern logic. It is the very instrument that demonstrates soundness and completeness. It is quite central to modern logic. Not really optional.

Moral naturalism doesn’t claim that physics is ethics. — Bob Ross

But you are in effect claiming that your preferences are built in to the world. That they re physical. YEs, it's ridiculous, but it is a direct consequence of ethical naturalism. If you do not like the consequences of your own ideas, best reconsider them.

That’s blatantly not true, my friend! S5 modal logic is the most commonly accepted version of modal logic — Bob Ross

You do understand that differentiating S5 from S4 requires possible world semantics, don't you?

Sure, ◇□P → □P is valid in S5, the very definition of which is that every possible world may access every other possible world. It is invalid in other systems such as S4. But further, supposing that ☐P→P threatens modal collapse, if the claim is that P is true in the actual world... S5 assumes that every possible world is accessible from every other world, so if X is necessary in some world, it is necessary in all worlds. That part of your reasoning is formally correct. However, your next step — asserting that ☐P implies that P “must exist in the actual world” — is not automatically justified. ☐P only entails that P is true in all possible worlds; it does not by itself specify existence in the actual world unless P is an existential proposition. Modal logic distinguishes between truth across possible worlds and existence in the actual world. SO yes, it's valid in S5, but at the cost of modal collapse if P is an existential statement.

But good to see you making use of possible world semantics.

‘I can conceive it’→‘It is possible in S5’ is an error. Keep psychology away from modality.

How odd. So instead you take your own attitudes as being necessarily universal.

That’s not what I said. — Bob Ross

It is what your view entails. Again if that is not acceptable, you might do well to reconsider.

(You are) trying to book-drown me — Bob Ross

If by that you mean I am showing you what is problematic in your account by pointing to the literature, then I'm guilty.

When a woman wears a dress it isn’t itself a part of their gender: it is the symbol which represents their expression of their sex (i.e., the symbol that represents their gender). You can separate the dress-wearing from femaleness, but you can’t separate the feminine expression of femaleness that it represents from the sex (femaleness) that it represents. That’s the part that is virtually distinct. — Bob Ross

Muddled. You are here confusing the biological category with its social expression. Here's an idea: lets' seperate the biological category from its social expression - to make this clear, we cpoudl call the former "sex", and the latter "gender"... that will avoid the circularity of “Feminine expression is inseparable from femaleness → therefore feminine expression must reflect biological sex.”

They are drawing it so they can conveniently evade discussing gender theory with me — Bob Ross

No. They are drawing it so that they can continue to discuss gender theory as distinct from biology.

Now RogueAI, instead of dealing with my response, is trying to paint me as a Nazi now (apparently). — Bob Ross

I'm not saying you're a Nazi, I'm saying you're going down an intellectual path of dehumanizing that the Nazi intelegentsia went down to rationalize their actions and support of the regime. If a group of people is naturally defective and deviant, that's just a stone's throw away from subhuman, and once they're subhuman...

I am allowed to remove tubes that were put into me without my consent

At any cost? With any means? — Bob Ross

I'm a consequentialist, so if the fate of the world was at stake and we all die if I unhook myself, then I'm not going to unhook myself, I think it would be immoral to unhook myself, and I would force someone to stay hooked up and compensate them later, if possible. I would also pull the switch in trolley car. Sometimes the innocent person gets fucked over for the needs of the many.

Within the confines of the thought experiment, where there's nothing at stake except a violinist, the kidnapped person is allowed to remove the tubes that were inserted into them without their consent. It would be nice and charitable if they agreed to stay hooked up, but you can't force them. If you force them to stay hooked up, you're setting a hell of a precedent: that it's OK to kidnap people and hook them up to others. You're excusing a gross violation of autonomy. Is that a society you would want to live in? Autonomy rights are incredibly important.

That’s a good question. I would say that it would be indirectly intentional because their death would be a (bad) side effect of the means (of closing the wound); and the principle of double effect has to be used to determine its permissibility or impermissibility. This is important because this is disanalogous to abortion: an abortion is where the human in the womb is directly intentionally killed (analogous to shooting the violinist in the head).

I think, in this case, it would be permissible because it is:

1. A good end;
2. There is no other means to facilitate that end;
3. The means is not bad; and
4. The good end outweighs the bad effect.

In the case of abortion, #3 is necessarily false. — Bob Ross

But we're getting closer to abortion. Closing the wound that's keeping the violinist alive is an action, correct? It's an action that results in his death, right? But it's morally permissible. So, if closing a wound that's keeping the violinist alive is morally permissible, how could it be impermissible to remove the tubes from my body that are keeping him alive?

Regarding abortion, suppose the mother's life is at risk, and the doctor can either save the mother or the fetus, and the mother makes it clear she's the one who should be saved. The only way to save the mother is to kill the fetus in an abortion. Ah, but this violates (3). But your position cannot be that abortion is impermissible if the life of the mother is at stake. So it seems your position falls prey to a reductio absurdum.

I would say they are innocent in the sense you mean of ‘not intending to do you harm’ but they are not innocent in the relevant sense of ‘being unworthy of being killed’. — Bob Ross

Unworthy of being killed? What the hell does that mean? An innocent person in a psychotic rage from an unforeseen drug interaction is certainly "unworthy to be killed", but it's not murder if they get killed in self defense. The fetus that is putting a mother's life at risk if she give birth to it is also unworthy to be killed, but the mother has the right to have it killed to save herself.

But, then, you are advocating that murder is permissible in some cases. Wouldn’t you agree that killing them by putting a bullet in their head is murder? — Bob Ross

No. Suppose you've been kidnapped and while you're locked in the dungeon, you've rigged up a booby trap to kill the kidnapper. A heavy weight will fall on him. So you have one chance to activate your booby trap and the kidnapper comes into the dungeon carrying his sleeping infant son who you know will almost certainly die if you trigger your trap. But this is your one chance to escape. The kidnapper has told you he's going to kill you soon. You trigger the trap and kill the kidnapper and his infant son and you escape. Did you murder anyone?

Also, what about the 12 year old girl raped by her father and pregnant. Do you force her to give birth?

You would have to commit yourself to the absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural. — Bob Ross

Yes, if you did commit to that, you would have to come up with some story about how humans are the exception because they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thereby fell onto sin from their natural, animal, state of innocence - or some other equivalent.

This is no different than how a person can argue that we should try to find a cure and help schizophrenics — Bob Ross

There's a difference between how you're treating homosexuals and how we treat schizophrenics. For one I don't think a schizophrenic is "degenerate" for having schizophrenia.

There is no nature to which a person must conform to be a perfect version of themselves. All an essence is in this case is what the speaker wants something to be like rather than what it is essentially -- it's a normative frame that is different from the medical frame. Rather it seems more like a moral frame where the soul of the person is at stake.

I'm afraid I don't think the soul is at stake in sex. And, really, if you're not going to be the one doing the act why do you care?

The evidence on mental health towards homosexuals indicates that any sort of conversion program only results in harm. But letting people have sex how they want to doesn't result in harm.

From a hedonist's perspective its your category that designates natural sex that's the sin because it results in harm, whereas the reverse does not.

1. The divorcing of sex and gender renders gender as merely a personality type that someone could assume, which is an ahistorical account of gender. — Bob Ross

This is a false dichotomy. Distinguishing between sex and gender is due to there being a difference in sex and gender -- historically speaking, even. We can read queer history rather than resort to a archetype.

2. The very social norms, roles, identities, and expressions involved in gender that are studied in gender studies are historically the symbolic upshot of sex: they are not divorced from each other. E.g., the mars symbol represents maleness, flowers in one's hair is representational of femininity, etc.). If they are truly divorced, then the study collapses into a study of the indefinite personality types of people could express and the roles associated with them.

And so this wouldn't follow since we can follow queer history rather than define people in terms of ideal categories or types that they play out.

When conjoined with liberal agendas, it becomes incredibly problematic because it is used to forward the view that we should scrap treating people based off of their nature and instead swap it for treating them based off of their personality type; which is an inversion of ethics into hyper-libertarianism.

How do we account, then, for gender and sex that is congruent with basic biology and essence realism?

You lose me at essence realism, which makes the account something of a non-starter to me. Why on earth would I want to preserve essence realism if it leads people to be confused about what is a perfectly natural desire?

Seems that your conclusions are a reason to reject essentialism: it confuses people more than enlightens them.

Yes, but they are fully men because they have male souls; and they simply aren’t, in existence, properly living up to their nature. — Bob Ross

How do you know? Did you check their soul for the soul-penis?

I forgot that you are a moral non-naturalist: this OP is presupposing a form of moral naturalism. I don’t accept Hume’s guillotine... — Bob Ross

@Banno is actually contradicting himself with a double standard when he tells you that you can't promote 'oughts' because "ought cannot be derived from is." This is because every one of Banno's posts within this thread are premised on various 'oughts'. For example:

• Bob Ross ought not be discussing this topic.
• Bob Ross' position is immoral (and therefore ought not be held)
• Bob Ross ought not hold to Aristotelian Essentialism

If Banno really thought that 'oughts' were underivable or unassertable, then he himself would not be constantly engaged in ought-claims.

The unargued ought-claims are all coming from your opponents in this thread, and this is because they are expressing moral outrage (which in this case is based on their false perceptions about your position). Moral outrage presupposes ought-claims, and unargued moral outrage presupposes unargued ought-claims.

I didn't want to spend an hour writing a response to it. — RogueAI

What happened is that you contradicted yourself by claiming that an act which is reproductively viable is not better in any way than an act that is not reproductively viable (except you put "better" in scare-quotes, which doesn't help in any obvious way - I explicitly asked what you mean by "better").

You contradicted yourself, I pointed it out, and then you failed to respond. That's what often happens on TPF. Coincidentally, every time someone is faced with their own contradiction they suddenly lack time to respond.

What this means is that we are faced with the question: should I pursue this debate with @RogueAI? If I show him that his position is self-contradictory, he will just ignore my response and walk away from the discussion. Is there any point in pursuing debates with individuals who do that?

You two sound like you're trying to justify treating them as subhuman. — RogueAI

This begs the question. That's precisely what you were trying (and failing) to prove.

I gave reference to a thread that leads to a book and a whole literature that sets out the difference between brute and social facts, which Leon dismissed as "failing to engage with the topic". — Banno

Pointing to books or threads is gish gallop and avoidance of engagement. I could equally point you to books or threads demonstrating my own position, but I don't do that because it is a failure to philosophically engage the points being discussed. You continually fail to engage the arguments presented.

Yes, if you did commit to that, you would have to come up with some story about how humans are the exception because they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and thereby fell onto sin from their natural, animal, state of innocence - or some other equivalent. — unenlightened

But your side of the issue does the exact same thing. There are many different issues being discussed in the thread, but I believe this line of yours pertains to homosexuality. Your side of the issue believes something like, "It would be unnatural for someone who is intrinsically homosexual to act as if they are not homosexual, therefore a homosexual ought not act in such a way."

Double standards are being relied upon when folk tell @Bob Ross that his normative claims are inappropriate. Both sides of every moral and political issue are involved in normative claims. For example, each side in the homosexuality debate is saying, "Homosexuals ought (or ought not) X."

Hi Philosophism, thanks for the reply.

Religions are a great example of group think because most people are not in the religion for clear and rational language. They are there for moral guidance, group and cultural cohesion, and internal desires of how they want the world to be. Rational language alone will not persuade most people out of a religion because they lose so much more than they think they would gain. Usually if you want someone to leave an ideology, its a multi-pronged approach. — Philosophim

Is this form of religion really groupthink? I am a staunch atheist, so I have no skin in this game, but it feels an act of faith differs from groupthink.

Of course, elements of religion are clearly groupthink. But like you said yourself, most people aren't members of religions for 'clear and rational language'.

And most people would see arguing against someone's act of faith as bad form. In situations where it can harm others, sure. On national policy levels, I believe in the separation of church and state. But in private practice?

A clear and rational argument that demonstrates one is not immoral for leaving is very powerful. — Philosophim

I read "Infidel" by Ayan Hirsi Ali in the summer, and she articulates this process powerfully. Although, interestingly, I read she recently converted to Christianity, after a decade and a half of atheism.

Trans ideology has been so effective because it has set itself as a moral one without truly justifying that it is actually moral. — Philosophim

That is not to say that some aspects of transgender ideology are not actually moral. Any good measure of control and manipulation understands that there should be some truth to what one is pushing. Should an adult have the bodily autonomy and right to transition? Absolutely. Just like there are usually good things taken in isolation in any ideology. But what is important is to analyze what an ideology is saying rationally as much as possible without appeal to emotions to be free from the manipulative and prosthelytizing pressures that ideologies put forth. — Philosophim

Right. I think you have a nuanced take on this issue. As far as adults go, I too think 'absolutely', assuming they have been informed of the risks and not pressured or rushed through the process.

With the trans issue, I think we might have a better example of cognitive dissonance in action than we do in the context of religion, or at least the religious beliefs that we generally encounter in WEIRD countries; although the Islam Ali renounced is present in some communities within the WEIRD world, and that produces genuine dissonance as they stakes are so high. And there are similarly fundamentalist communities in other religions.

There is an argument made that 'wokeness' is similar, functionally, to religion. But whatever one makes of this argument, 'woke' certainly doesn't have the centuries of tradition and ritual and shared cultural experiences which may be so much more valuable to the believer than any 'rationality' of belief.

In terms of hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgery, the stakes are pretty high, which seems likely to drive dissonance. Dissonance theory potentially explains the rejection of major challenges to trans orthodoxy - I think of Chase Strangio's war against Abigail Shrier, for example, or dr. Olson-Kennedy suppressing the release of research conducted by her own organization.

I do not believe this is a liberal vs conservative issue. This is a people issue. Politics on either side effectively use what they can to manipulate and convince people that 'their' side is the correct one. The question really is whether it also happens to be that it is more rational to pick one side or the other. — Philosophim

Oh I agree completely. I am just more familiar with progressive examples given that I live in a largely progressive world here in Toronto. I imagine plenty of Republicans, for example, felt cognitive dissonance on January 6th, or when Trump pardoned even the violent protestors from that day. I just didn't really see it.

But in my progressive world, talking to a friend who ran the gay-straight alliance at my last school about the first Muslim-majority city in the US banning pride, I get to see dissonance first hand. As a former progressive myself, I certainly experienced profound dissonance when I started to see some of the sloppy conceptual choices and language you described in your post in the schools I taught at.

I describe myself as a 'conscientious objector' to the culture war, echoing Richard Reeves, and increasingly think a path through the culture war is issue by issue, focusing on the most principled, informed beliefs of both sides of the debate.

Certainly, there are trans people who lost, greatly, personally, from the backlash against certain more extreme ideological stances. I see common ground between the left and right here, (despite being much happier having personally renounced both). Conceptual precision can only help this project.

Hypericin, my friend, if that is true, then the acknowledgement of any mental illness is bigotry; for every recognition of a mental illness in principle applies to an entire class of people affected. Is that really what you believe? — Bob Ross

This is childish sophistry. The mentally ill are, factually, mentally ill. Mere recognition of this carries no pejorative slant. Whereas you, on the basis of a very dubious metaphysics, are diagnosing a group which is not definitionally ill, as mentally ill. As mental illness is universally undesirable, you are saying that membership in this group entails being innately less than the general population. That is just bigotry. Moreover, your "philosophical" conclusions just so happen to coincide with the politically weaponized bigotry against trans people by conservatives in America and elsewhere.

But your side of the issue does the exact same thing. — Leontiskos

My side? Same thing? Can you elaborate a little?

My suggestion is that the allegedly "absurd view that everything a natural organism does is natural." is pretty much the Christian tradition taken from the Story of the Fall in the Bible. It may not be universal, there have been 'legal' trials of animals in medieval times, but it is prevalent, and long-standing. It is not though, a view that I would particularly defend except in a psychological sense, which is not relevant to this discussion. But the idea that the beasts act according to their nature but remain innocent, whereas man has a higher spiritual aspect, and can and should resist his baser animal instincts at times, is really not that absurd in a religious or spiritual account of morality, indeed it is more the standard model, of European traditions.

The term "natural" needs to be defined here. If "natural" has something like its more modern meaning where it is defined over and against the "artificial" or "man-made" than neither homosexuality nor oral, anal, etc. sex, masturbation, etc. is "unnatural" in that they can be observed, albeit rarely, in wild animals. Likewise, if "natural" means "ubiquitous (or even relatively common) to primitive human societies" then murder, rape, slavery, human sacrifice, cannibalism, pedophilia, etc., and of course lust, gluttony, sloth, despair, wrath, greed, envy, and pride would be equally "natural."

Whereas "natural" in the tradition Saint Thomas comes from (if not as much the modern tradition built on his name) sees man, and indeed all rational beings (and so the angels) as essentially and naturally oriented to God in a unique way, through the nous (will and intellect, with Goodness and Truth as their formal object). There is no possibility of an orientation of natura pura vis-á-vis man qua rational here, since to be rational is to be oriented towards the Good, Beautiful, and True by nature.

I think the nature/supernature distinction is one of the grave missteps of modern thought that has unfortunately attached itself to a sort of "Neo-Thomism" (although this strain has largely gone into remission in the 20th century following de Lubac and others). If we think of an end for man that is "purely natural," where "nature" is defined in opposition to the "supernatural," thus sealing off the "natural" from God, and implying a sort of self-sufficiency of ends, then it is hard to see how fornication (heterosexual or homosexual) is a "natural" evil. Afterall, having already sealed off the ultimate target of the rational appetites, the role of the intellect and will now seems to be wholly instrumental and deliberative, and the ultimate ends for which we strive are the "purely natural" ends of man as a non-rational (in the old sense) animal. Hence, sexual pleasure is simply one of the plurality of goods to be sought, and sexual sins become perhaps a sort of "exclusively supernatural" sin.

Anyhow, fornication is, in the earlier context, "unnatural" and a violation of the "natural law," in precisely the way lust, greed, pride, etc. is more generally. It is a misordering of loves and a misordering of what truly fulfills human nature.

However, from the perspective of what Charles Taylor calls "exclusive humanism" which denies all "transcendent ends" (or in the classical tradition, "rational ends"), the "pleasures of the flesh" are just one good among social and intellectual pleasures to pursue.

At any rate, I think the question of "naturalness" in the first sense is a total non sequitur that several posters in this thread seem to be getting led off track by. Murder and rape are natural in this sense but surely they are not just and good. Nor does the fact that some people are "born with a strong inclination" towards something necessarily mean that such an orientation is good and just. Just consider that people are born with strong inclinations towards alcoholism, wrath, pedophilia, etc. Are these thus healthy? Surely they are "natural" in terms of being ubiquitous and present in brutes as well, and in all human societies, but that seems irrelevant to their goodness.

Whereas, under the "natural law," what accords with nature (the "law") is precisely that path that being reveals to us as good and just, leading man upwards towards what can fulfill his infinite desires, and here "what the brutes do" or "what most men do" is wholly irrelevant.

On the cultural issues you raised, I do fear there is a bit of mixed messaging here considering the degree to which heterosexual fornication, pornography, etc. has been not only normalized but even glorified in the broader culture, such that it is plastered in advertisements all over the surfaces of our cities and the media is saturated it (acquisitiveness, pleonexia, even more so, such that it is now a virtue of sorts). This is where the cultural presentation of the "natural law" starts to look outwardly incoherent and arbitrary, because the metaphysical grounding becomes submerged and we instead seem to have a sort of arbitrary, voluntarist pronouncement instead. The equivocation on "natural" doesn't help I suppose, nor do the voluntarist undertones of "law" in our current context. I would rebrand it "moral ecology," or "Logos ethics," or something personally.

Give me a fucking break with your faux innocence. Calling an entire class of people mentally ill couldn't be more bigoted. Try applying that to any other group. — hypericin

Isn't that definitionally true of any designation for any mental illness? Alcoholics are a class of people. Pyromaniacs as well. Pedophiles are a class of people who are classed according to sexual desire, as are zoophiles, etc.

I think the better question is what properly constitutes a mental or spiritual illness. If classifying a group of people according to some desires, behaviors, etc. is bigotry than the concept of a mental illness itself cannot but be bigoted. Yet surely there are such things as mental and spiritual illnesses; from the more diffuse, e.g., acquisitiveness, to the more specific, e.g. schizophrenia.

Is this form of religion really groupthink? I am a staunch atheist, so I have no skin in this game, but it feels an act of faith differs from groupthink. — Jeremy Murray

A follower of a religion is not the same as a follower of faith. Very few read about religions on their own and decide to follow it independently. Most followers of a religion are brought into it by other people, and its a social place where one can belong. Many people who leave religions usually feel they don't belong. A person with intellectual doubts about a religion will likely still stay if the group benefits and sense of belonging are strong enough.

Compare this to the trans gender community. If you check out Reddit and youtube where people go to ask questions, they always try to present it in an extremely positive way that's fun and where you can belong. They even have fun mascots like a stuffed shark, colorful flags, and everyone is going to tell you how proud they are of you, how your mental health issue is perfectly normal, and that you should erase all doubts as bigotry and control. They welcome you with open arms and will be your new family.

I grew up in Christian churches, and I observed much of this first hand. I eventually left the church because I found it to be irrational, but I also had absolutely zero community ties to the church. My parents are extremely invovled in the church like choir, volunteering, and many of their friends are from there as well. For them, leaving would be extremely painful, and they have no interest in even seeing if Christianity doesn't work.

I read "Infidel" by Ayan Hirsi Ali in the summer, and she articulates this process powerfully. — Jeremy Murray

Ah, always fun to hear someone else has a similar take. :)

With the trans issue, I think we might have a better example of cognitive dissonance in action than we do in the context of religion — Jeremy Murray

I can give you a religious example if you would like. "Seek and ye shall fine" is a statement in Christianity which pushes you to question the world. But on the other hand you have pressures from the church that some answers simply require faith. This allows a priest to say, "See, the church supports open thought", but then also when it is convenient to them they say, "You just have to have faith on this one."

There is an argument made that 'wokeness' is similar, functionally, to religion. But whatever one makes of this argument, 'woke' certainly doesn't have the centuries of tradition and ritual and shared cultural experiences which may be so much more valuable to the believer than any 'rationality' of belief. — Jeremy Murray

I could see exploring that argument further.

I describe myself as a 'conscientious objector' to the culture war, echoing Richard Reeves, and increasingly think a path through the culture war is issue by issue, focusing on the most principled, informed beliefs of both sides of the debate. — Jeremy Murray

Sounds like a good approach.

Certainly, there are trans people who lost, greatly, personally, from the backlash against certain more extreme ideological stances. I see common ground between the left and right here, (despite being much happier having personally renounced both). Conceptual precision can only help this project. — Jeremy Murray

I appreciate your thoughts! You make great points.

But the idea that the beasts act according to their nature but remain innocent, whereas man has a higher spiritual aspect, and can and should resist his baser animal instincts at times, is really not that absurd in a religious or spiritual account of morality, indeed it is more the standard model, of European traditions. — unenlightened

We definitely agree on this. :up:

My side? Same thing? Can you elaborate a little? — unenlightened

I was trying to get at the underlying way that "moral non-naturalism" is being leveraged within this thread. One can object to a naturalistic meta-ethics, but at the end of the day both sides of these sorts of issues have substantive, 'ought'-involved moral positions that they are upholding. Or put differently, both sides are moral realists, just with a different understanding of morality. For that reason "deep" objections to Ross' moral realism or his 'ought'-commitments involve a double standard. What is needed is rather something like, "I agree with you that there are binding moral 'oughts', but I think you have misidentified them because..."

But perhaps I have misunderstood, and you are not objecting to Ross' moral realism or the simple fact that he has 'ought'-commitments.

This is childish sophistry. The mentally ill are, factually, mentally ill. Mere recognition of this carries no pejorative slant. Whereas you, on the basis of a very dubious metaphysics, are diagnosing a group which is not definitionally ill, as mentally ill. As mental illness is universally undesirable, you are saying that membership in this group entails being innately less than the general population. That is just bigotry. Moreover, your "philosophical" conclusions just so happen to coincide with the politically weaponized bigotry against trans people by conservatives in America and elsewhere. — hypericin

There are people of good faith who hold traditional positions when it comes to sexual morality. Refusing to accept this is a form of bigotry. There are enormously robust moral, religious, and philosophical traditions going back millennia which ground traditional sexual morality. Trying to write all of this off in favor of some new theory that popped up a few decades ago will not do. The attitude which treats the vast majority of humans who have ever lived as irretrievably confused and irrational is tiresome. That attitude is leveraged to avoid argument, and it has to stop. If one wants to oppose well-established moral and philosophical positions, then they must use reason and argument to do so.

Regarding the "factuality" of mental illness, such a notion changes quite a bit from age to age, and it changes fastest in our own time. For example, gender dysphoria was "factually" a mental illness until 2018, when all of the sudden it wasn't. Similarly, following the sexual revolution, pedophilia was no longer considered a mental illness in parts of Europe, including places in Germany. The "fact" of mental illness is a faux fact which requires argument, not appeal to authority.

Banno is actually contradicting himself with a double standard when he tells you that you can't promote 'oughts' because "ought cannot be derived from is." This is because every one of Banno's posts within this thread are premised on various 'oughts'. — Leontiskos

This is another vexatious post from Leon. Yes, my posts contain "oughts". But no, I do not derive those "oughts" from an "is". And witness:

If Banno really thought that 'oughts' were underivable or unassertable — Leontiskos

Another example of Leon bearing false witness. Of course we can assert oughts.

And this:

Pointing to books or threads is gish gallop and avoidance of engagement. — Leontiskos

Pointing to the literature is failing it engage? Laughing my ares off.

It's tedious. If I said Paris was in France, Leon would insist it is in Germany.

My side? — unenlightened

Philosophy as a team sport...?

Pointing to the literature is failing it engage? — Banno

You misrepresent because if you failed to do that, it would be more plainly seen how little you have to offer. This is what I said:

Pointing to books or threads is gish gallop and avoidance of engagement. I could equally point you to books or threads demonstrating my own position, but I don't do that because it is a failure to philosophically engage the points being discussed. — Leontiskos

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Yes, my posts contain "oughts". But no, I do not derive those "oughts" from an "is". — Banno

From where do they derive? Surely if you think Ross must demonstrate his meta-ethics within the thread, then you too must be held to the same standard?

We've all had enough moral conversations with you to know that you don't have an answer to the meta-ethical questions you put to others. You always end with something that pretends to be an answer but isn't, like, "It's just what we do."

So which is it, am I presenting too much, or not enough?

Here's the guts of it: You and Bob are using an anachronistic ontology in an attempt to defend an immoral position that you actually adopt as a result of your religious convictions, not your philosophical considerations. You are faux philosophers.

The logical law I referenced was Humes' Law - the illicit move from ought to is.

My friend, you have to appreciate that Hume’s Law is not a law of logic. If not, then please give me the logical theory in which it is derivable from or an axiom of; or, better yet, how it is derivable from classical logic.

Moreover, you seem to be insinuating that Humeanism is commonly accepted in metaethics; and I think we both charitably know this is patently false.

But you rejection of possible world semantics is of a par with, say, accepting algebra but rejecting calculus

I reject the possible worlds interpretation of modal logic: I’ve never been inclined to reject all of the operators, axioms, and formulas of it.

But you are in effect claiming that your preferences are built in to the world.

That is true if you are a moral anti-realist, which you aren’t either. Moral realism, both non-naturalism and naturalism, hold, necessarily, that moral judgments are proposition, express something objective, and at least one is true. They do not express something objective if you think that they are preferences.

I am sort of remembering out past conversations about it now: am I correct in remembering that you are just a moral cognitivist and not a moral realist (as described above with the standard three-pronged thesis of moral cognitivism, moral objectivism, and moral non-nihilism)?

That they re physical.

The fact that moral judgments express something objective does not entail that they are grounded in something material (i.e., tangible) nor physical (i.e., mind-independent). Moral properties being natural, likewise, only entails that they are innate to the nature of the thing in question: that doesn’t mean they are physical or material per se. In the case of Aristotelian thought, being hylomorphic, a material being’s form is not material nor truly immaterial (as a separate substance) but, rather, both comprise the substance itself. So if the form of a material being grounds its moral properties then it follows that moral properties are grounded neither in the physical or material as properly understood in modern times.

You do understand that differentiating S5 from S4 requires possible world semantics, don't you?

Can you elaborate? I haven’t brushed up on my modal logic in a while. Most of the operators and formulas I don’t remember disagreeing with: it’s the theory they use to describe it as possible worlds that I quibble with.

Sure, ◇□P → □P is valid in S5, 

Yes, this is a problem; and I think any possible worlds theory of interpretation of modal logic will have to accept S5: I don’t think the previous “versions” are ones we can revert back to.

is not automatically justified. ☐P only entails that P is true in all possible worlds; it does not by itself specify existence in the actual world unless P is an existential proposition. Modal logic distinguishes between truth across possible worlds and existence in the actual world

But isn’t the actual world a possible world in possible world’s theory? I though necessary X entails that X is in every possible world and the actual world is a world that could possibly exist because it does exist: it’s existence proves its possibility under the theory. No?

Here's an idea: lets' seperate the biological category from its social expression - to make this clear, we cpoudl call the former "sex", and the latter "gender"... that will avoid the circularity of “Feminine expression is inseparable from femaleness → therefore feminine expression must reflect biological sex.”

CC: @RogueAI, @hypericin, @unenlightened, @Tom Storm, @Leontiskos, @Moliere

Let’s go with your semantics to demonstrate my point, because semantics here doesn’t matter (philosophically). The social expression, the gender, of sex is not itself ontologically tied to sex: it is an epistemic symbolism of society’s understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies. Gender, in this sense, is just society’s beliefs about sex and its tendencies.

A natural tendency of the particular sex that has a procreative nature (like male and female as opposed to an asexual being) would not be identical to the social expressions: it would be the ontologically upshot of the sex. Society could get its symbols completely wrong about those tendencies and natural behaviors of the given sex and this would have no affect on the reality of those tendencies and would just mean that this particular society got it all wrong. These tendencies, grounded in sex, are what would be called masculinity for males and femininity for females for humans. Someone can mimick each to their liking, but they have a real basis in sex and its natural tendencies.

The sex, as you call it, and the tendencies due to that sex are virtually but not really distinct. If you have a being, no matter how imperfectly instantiated, that is of sex M then they will have tendencies T<M> which will naturally flow, no matter how inhibited or malnourished, from that type of being M. You cannot have a man, in nature, in form, who doesn’t have masculinity flowing from that nature (no matter how imperfectly: yes, this includes super-feminine men!); just as trilaterality and triangularity cannot be found in existence separate from one another.

Can we agree on this (notwithstanding the semantic disputes)???

So which is it, am I presenting too much, or not enough? — Banno

At no point have you been in danger of presenting too much. Pointing to external sources is not engaging in argument. You simply haven't engaged in argument, such as responding to posts like <this one>.

Here's the guts of it: You and Bob are using an anachronistic ontology in an attempt to defend an immoral position that you actually adopt as a result of your religious convictions, not your philosophical considerations. You are faux philosophers. — Banno

More ad hominem fallacies. More nothing-burgers.