. If not, then please give me the logical theory in which it is derivable from or an axiom of — Bob Ross

Take a look at my present thread on Russell's paper. It is on exactly that topic.

Oh, you can't do that, that's "gish gallop".

I take it that you now accept that your account derives an ought from an is, which is progress, of a sort.

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. — Bob Ross

So you reject the whole, but accept each of the parts... or just those that suit your religious zealotry?

Can you elaborate? — Bob Ross

Apparently I'm not allowed to, that again being "gish gallop". But what more is there to elaborate on, since I already pointed out that

...the very definition of (S5) is that every possible world may access every other possible world. — Banno

What part of that needs further explanations? Maybe Google it yourself, and save the "gish gallop".

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? — Bob Ross

Yes, the actual world is a possible world. No, existence in the actual world does not entail existence in every possible world. “It exists, therefore it’s possible, therefore it’s necessary” leads to modal collapse.

Can we agree on this — Bob Ross

No. You just moved your goal post. You still want gender to be "an epistemic symbolism of society’s understanding of the ontological reality of sex and its tendencies", and so grounded in your "ontological reality" and not in social reality. You still want trousers to be like the three sides of a triangle, the "symbol of an ontological reality".

Pointing to external sources is not engaging in argument. You simply haven't engaged in argument, such as responding to posts like <this one>. — Leontiskos

...argues against pointing to external sources by pointing to an external source...

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

I don't think so.

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. — Bob Ross

There is no real basis in sex is my point of view. There is also no such thing as degenerate sex, nor do people with different kinks have different mental diseases. But then...

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

Is a false dichotomy. On the basis of queer history -- the lived experience of peopled is recorded in their histories. It's not a personality archetype, and it's not ahistorical. It's rather a third thing.

j

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 this pretty much follows by your first argument.

Many of your arguments have been similar -- so I'll bite the bullet and let it be clearly stated that sex is not unnatural -- where you are incredulous to the conclusion I am welcoming to the conclusion that love is not a perversion.

In addition, sex is also very complicated and interesting. Much more so than some kind of binary between the essence of man and woman, from my perspective. Your viewpoint for natural dispositions and what-not simply isn't how I see the world at all.

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

I'm not an essentialist, and I tend to see notions of 'male' and 'female' as evolving and changing over time. As I’ve said, I'm not a gender theorist. What matters most is recognising that trans people are here to stay. We need to learn how to live with this reality, not suppress it or label it deviant, just as much of the world has come to accept homosexuality as part of the spectrum of normal human experience.

Sex is a creative act, it’s not limited to procreation. It can be a flight of fancy, a search for pleasure, a quest for meaning, a release of tension, intimacy, a form of recreation, a duty, even a way of avoiding responsibility. I'm not going to put a fence around it.

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

No I'm not objecting to that at all. I am a moral realist. My objection is to his waffling on about essence and nature and spirit as if he speaks with authority, when he clearly doesn't have even the authority of a coherent tradition. If you wanna give us that old-time religion, at least get it halfway right!

No I'm not objecting to that at all. — unenlightened

Okay, I appreciate the correction. :up:

I think provided a much-needed disambiguation of "natural," so I'll leave that issue alone.

@Bob Ross's account does not appear to do justice to neo-Aristotelianism. He uses the language of Aristotle, but a neo-Aristotelian such as Kit Fine would firmly distinguish what it is to be a thing of a certain kind from what might follow from that essence in normal conditions. So having a human essence doesn’t mean you must display every typical human trait. Bob takes an essence-like structure (“male nature”) and treats those empirical tendencies as normative obligations.

Bob also equates essence with a set of tendencies or traits. But neither Aristotle nor neo-Aristotelians consider essence as a cluster of properties; rather it's what makes something what it is, as distinct from any properties it might have. That's what is behind their ejection of Kripke's account of essence, not a half-baked rejection of possible world semantics.

Now to be sure, I can't see a way to make this neo-Aristotelian view coherent; but the account Bob provides is an odd hybrid between neo-Aristotelianism and Kripke. It treats empirical tendencies as essences, essences as moral laws, and social conventions as expressions of biology.

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)??? — Bob Ross

Nope. I recognize nothing essential about masculinity in the way you conceive of it. At best, I will say that by virtue of being a man I inherit certain tendencies which are statistically more likely in males than in females. The urge to procreate with women is biological, and the fact that it is found in men more than women is not merely a result of gender norms.

But humans are nothing like geometric primitives. Group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities. Humans are complex and exhibit a vast spectrum of individual variation. As shocking as it apparently seems to you, there are men and women who have no urge whatsoever to fuck the opposite sex. Factually, this is human variation, nothing more. It requires your sort of moralizing to transmute minority behaviors into normative violations.

Most humans are aversive to extremely spicy food. I absolutely crave it. The majority behavior is not mere preference, it is rooted in the hard facts of biology. Capsicum mimics substance p, for pain, which is involved in the neural system responsible for pain transmission. It evolved to deter the wrong kind of animal from eating this fruit (everyone except birds). And so avoiding this food is an expression of a basic, innate human tendency to avoid pain. Does this mean that the preference for bland food flows in an Aristotelian sense from human nature, and therefore my eating habits are wrong, deviant, a kind of mental illness? No, that is obviously absurd, what I eat is just a personal difference, which happens to be at variance with mean preference.

The core difference here between dietary and sexual preference does not lie in the preference itself, but in the interest of moralizers to regulate and discipline one above the other.

If I've understood all that, you are saying that what is natural is what god wills?

Well, at least the divine origin of the normative is explicit here.

↪Count Timothy von Icarus
If I've understood all that, you are saying that what is natural is what god wills? — Banno

Not sure what the Count holds in mind, so I'm not commenting on his behalf nor am I commenting to him. But if "The Good" were to be interpreted as equating to "a singular deity which wills all stuff into being" (to god in this sense of the term), then all westerner neo-pagans (most of which are either nature-worshiping polytheists or pantheists) would be contra the will of god and hence utterly unnatural, as too would be all Buddhists, all Hindus, all Inuits, and so forth. Even when they are utterly ethical (maybe especially by comparison to all self-proclaimed Christians who don't give a rat's ass for what JC said and wanted but only crave that their cultural traditions rule the entirety of the planet.) Witch-burning times, basically.

All this not being an understanding of the natural which I uphold, lest it wasn't clear. And I do uphold what gets to be termed "the Good".

But if "The Good" were to be interpreted as equating to "a singular deity which wills all stuff into being"... — javra

One might go a step further and puzzle over how anything could be unnatural, given that presumably nothing can occur that is against the will of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That is, equating the will of god with what is natural carries the problem of evil into the problem of the natural.

(There's a literature here, too, stemming in a large part from a paper by that pesky David Lewis. We are apparently not to mention such things.)

If I've understood all that, you are saying that what is natural is what god wills?

Well, at least the divine origin of the normative is explicit here. — Banno

If the idea you have is a sort of voluntarism or "divine command theory," then no, quite the opposite. I'd argue that divine command theory is itself a sort of moral anti-realism.

The natural law is ontological. It has a "divine origin" insomuch as everything (being itself) has a divine origin. There is not, however, a distinctly normative command that sits outside or is projected onto the being of things (a sort of sui generis "moral goodness.")




I'm not sure if I understand this. How could one be "utterly ethical" and at odds with Goodness itself?

The basic idea here is not unique to Christian thought. One can find it all over the Pagan philosophers, in Jewish, Islamic, etc. thought (this is indeed the broader tradition I was referring to). The Good itself (i.e., being qua desirable) is the formal object of the will, just as truth (being qua intelligible) is the formal object of the intellect. That's in more Western scholastic terms, because I thought they were appropriate given the topic of this thread, and because I think the language is clearer, but you can find the same essential idea back in Plato for instance. To be "rational," to participate in the Logos, is to be ordered to the True and Good (and so Being itself, in its fullness). So, whatever is rational by nature (crucially man in this case) is ordered to the Good and True.

"Natural" here is conceived of in its original context, as relating to the phusis by which mobile/changing being changes (i.e., acts one way and not any other, the principle of cause and intelligibility in change). Man changes, but is rational.

IDK, Boethius does a pretty good job explaining this without any appeal to special revelation. It is not that revelation is unimportant, but it is also not an insight that, in its basic assumptions, is unique to any particular tradition of revelation (or even the West).

The problem remains - if everything has a divine origin, then how could something be unnatural?

Isn’t this the point where many theists refer to the Fall, human imperfection, and, if they’re particularly ardent, Satan? Which gets me wondering: Is evil unnatural? Is Satan the god of the unnatural?

Seems to be what was referenced by . Eating of the fruit supposedly introduced the unnatural...?

The problem of what is natural and unnatural seems more difficult than the problem of good and evil, since the handy answer of free will is unavailable. Again, if everything has a divine origin, then how could anything be unnatural? Either not everything is of divine origin, or the term "natural" has no opposite.

The Fall appears to be both within the scope of God's will - at least, foreseen and permitted - and yet somehow outside of his will, in order that it introduce the unnatural.

But it's not up to you and I to make sense of this mythology.

As Tim asks,

How could one be "utterly ethical" and at odds with Goodness itself? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It appears that there is here also a variant on the Euthyphro...

I dropped some of this into GPT and uninvited, it proffered the following amusement:

A good example here is reason. Reason is ordered to truth. But reason can be instrumentalized and ordered to lower desires. And this would be "contrary to nature." Likewise, cancer is contrary to nature in that it is a misordering of body.

But "nature" here is used in its original sense, as principle. I fear there is a sort of lexical drift here that makes a sort of "translation" necessary.



More broadly, evil, as a privation, in unnatural. That, I think, is more straightforward. What a thing is cannot be a privation (what it is not).

As noted above, the problem here is that the term "nature" was radically redefined during the Reformation and we are the inheritors of the latter tradition. I almost wonder if a different word should be used, such as logoi/logos or phusis, but I am also sometimes annoyed by other traditions refusal to translate key terms so I am ambivalent about that.

The problem of what is natural and unnatural seems more difficult than the problem of good and evil, since the handy answer of free will is unavailable. Again, if everything has a divine origin, then how could anything be unnatural? — Banno

Well, in the latter traditions you will sometimes see the rough language of natural law ("unnatural") used, but against a backdrop where "morality" relates to a sui generis "moral good" that is wholly "supernatural" (a new category) in origin.

This is, BTW, exactly Alasdair MacIntyre's key thesis. The old moral language, e.g., "unnatural," "virtue," etc. is utterly incoherent in the modern context and carries on in a sort of bizarre zombie form through sheer inertia, getting rolled out in the way Warhammer 40k "techno priests" use technology they have almost no understanding of by holding to strict religious rituals that happen to coincide with their use.

One might go a step further and puzzle over how anything could be unnatural, given that presumably nothing can occur that is against the will of an omnipotent, omniscient being. That is, equating the will of god with what is natural carries the problem of evil into the problem of the natural. — Banno

True. Add to this notions of the Devil, in parallel notions of the flying (not yet slithering on Earth) serpent whose will to awaken all to right and wrong was contrary to the will of the so-termed "lord" of genesis 2 onward, and one sinks neck-deep into inconsistencies if not worse. This as part and parcel of equating the Elohim of genesis 1 to the lord of genesis 2 onward. Heretical to say they couldn't have rationally been the same, so I won't here say it.

I'm not sure if I understand this. How could one be "utterly ethical" and at odds with Goodness itself?

The basic idea here is not unique to Christian thought. One can find it all over the Pagan philosophers, in Jewish, Islamic, etc. thought (this is indeed the broader tradition I was referring to). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right. I generally agree with this, as previously alluded to. But one would need to grant that such is the traditional interpretation of many a major Abrahamic tradition, more specifically of many a major realm of Christendom, as well enough documented for at least the past 500 years in Western Europe. It's naturally feasible to go through spiritually ecstatic experiences (as long as they are not devil-governed) but it is utterly unnatural to cast spells and be in communion with the spiritual worlds via such means (especially if you happen to be a woman, even one that thereby serves as healer, i.e. medicine man, within the community). Take Joan of Arc as one well enough known example of this. And when did she become unethical? Never; quite the contrary. But she was accused of and killed for her devil-worship as soon as the authorities no longer benefited and thereby liked her life-long doings. And this specific mindset of natural vs. devil-business is, to my knowledge, in fact unique to Christian thought.

"Natural" here is conceived of in its original context, as relating to the phusis by which mobile/changing being changes (i.e., acts one way and not any other, the principle of cause and intelligibility in change). Man changes, but is rational. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can have a general feel for this and sympathize with it, but it yet doesn't resonate with me in a lasting way. For the spiritual folks amongst us, the supra-natural (same meaning as supernatural) is merely the many realms of spiritual being which subsist in manners tethered to the natural, physical world without being as constrained by the physical limitations which humans (and all other physical life) find ourselves bound to.

Then, just as there are some humans that are generally ethical and some that are generally not ethical, so too in "the above". In Christian realms, hence the angels and devils. Or, as an example from different spiritual realms, hence the enlightened incorporeal Buddha-spirits (each a deity) on the one hand and those incorporeal beings which are ignorant and thereby bring about wrongs and unrighteous calamities.

My main intent to all this being that there is yet a partition between the corporeally physical world and the incorporeally spiritual realms of the cosmos - both subject to the cosmic logos but in different ways. Saying that everything ethical is natural whereas everything unethical is unnatural would then greatly alter this partitioning beyond any recognition.

I much prefer associating "nature" with "inborn-ness". But that can get very complex to properly express. Still, at the end of the day, in appraising that all sentience has the Good inborn into its very core, one can yet then arrive at the perspective that the Good is our true, ultimate nature. (Of which we dualistic egos often enough stand in the way of.)

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Except gays aren't mentally ill. That went out of style 50 years ago. So lumping them in with pedophiles and alcoholics and pyromaniacs does indeed seem like rank bigotry.

...argues against pointing to external sources by pointing to an external source... — Banno

But that's not true at all, is it? A post within this thread that you've failed to respond to is not an external source. Your claim that I have pointed to an external source is something we all know to be false.

A good example here is reason. Reason is ordered to truth. But reason can be instrumentalized and ordered to lower desires. And this would be "contrary to nature." Likewise, cancer is contrary to nature in that it is a misordering of body. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So is a thing unnatural because it is not "oriented to God", as you seemed to first say, or because it is contrary to a things internal order... Or are these, for you, the same? Presumably, it is only we limited creatures who see things as evil or unnatural, since everything must ultimately fit god's plan...?

So at least for god, if not for us, nothing is unnatural, or misordered?

I suppose it comes down to faith.

The urge to procreate with women is biological, and the fact that it is found in men more than women is not merely a result of gender norms.

But humans are nothing like geometric primitives. Group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities. — hypericin

But if the urge for men to procreate with women is found more in men, and is not merely a result of gender norms, then how can you claim that "group tendencies in no way determine individual proclivities"? If that were true then such urges would simply not be found more in men.

To repeat an argument that everyone has avoided:

Suppose we take the male sex and the social role of begetting/impregnating. Begetting is not merely a social role, but it is also a social role. If we say that social roles pertain to gender, and gender is separate from sex, then we would not be able to say that the social role of begetting/impregnating is uniquely performed by males. But that seems entirely incorrect, doesn't it?

And again, the argument is not that every male must perform the act of begetting/impregnating in order to be a male, but rather that begetting/impregnating is a male role which is inaccessible to females, and therefore there do exist social roles restricted by sex. One cannot beget/impregnate without being a male and one cannot become pregnant without being a female. In Aristotelian language we would say that males have the power of begetting/impregnating precisely in virtue of their maleness; precisely in virtue of their sex. — Leontiskos

The fact that males can fertilize ova actually does bear on what individual males do. It means that more males fertilize ova than females (because females can't do it). Contrariwise with pregnancy, more females than males get pregnant (because males cannot get pregnant whereas females can). To deny this, one would need to deny that even though X can do Y and Z cannot do Y, nevertheless an individual X is no more likely to do Y than an individual Z.

Then in an evolutionary or teleological sense, hormonal and strength-based differences between males and females flow, in part, from their procreative natures. A pregnant female is more vulnerable than a non-pregnant human being, and therefore the society which values reproduction must devote more resources to protecting her than it devotes to protecting non-pregnant human beings. It makes sense that males are stronger and tend towards protection given that they are never vulnerable in this way for extended periods of time (because they cannot become pregnant). Once one understands how human beings reproduce, one also understands why males are naturally stronger and more "protection-oriented" than females. Other similar facts follow, such as the fact that the mother who has personally committed a great deal of energy to the pregnancy will be more "attached" to the newborn than the father, and this goes hand in hand with the breast feeding that will sustain the infant's life.

These are a few of the reasons why it is altogether implausible to hold that differences between males and females do not flow out into the social lives of human beings. The sex difference plays a significant role in human life, including human social life. It is also why the position which says that fertilizing ova and becoming pregnant should not "count as" social roles has nothing to be said for it, and has not received any actual defense within this thread.

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). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would have preferred to leave such tangential topics to the side, but given that @Banno has jumped on the tangent, I will say something. What I find is that this focus on "the nature/supernature distinction" is a kind of canard in Eastern Orthodox circles: a form of polemic against Western theology. Whatever merit such a critique has is usually greatly exaggerated.

Beyond that, the reason such a move is usually a quibble is because it doesn't often amount to anything in the hands of traditional Christians, at least when it comes to questions of morality and politics. Avoiding the "Euthyphro" objection requires adopting the same sort of moral epistemology that a nature/supernature theory adopts, namely a moral epistemology in which non-Christians are able to recognize and follow moral truths. It only becomes more than a quibble in the hands of non-traditional Christians, who are desirous to leave that moral epistemology behind. In effect, the danger with bringing up such a rarefied theological debate is hair-splitting in relation to the context where anti-religious hobbyists are keen to try to turn everything into a so-called "Euthyphro" debate.

Aquinas' own position where the natural law is not the whole of the divine law is a very sound position, and it's not clear that @Bob Ross has deviated from this.

Looks like this thread is revealing itself as the Conservative Christian echo chamber that it at first pretended not to be. No doubt it will go for another forty pages of theological babble.

No need for others to provide the walls. But it remains a puzzle as to why such stuff is permitted in a philosophy forum.

That went out of style 50 years ago — RogueAI

So a mental illness is whatever "the professionals" or "society" says it is? IIRC, there was a somewhat successful push to normalize and legalize pedophilia in Western Europe within that time frame as well, but, had it been more successful, I am not sure if that success ought to the determining factor as to whether being a "minor attracted person" is a sort of "disorder" or not. Likewise, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had their own particular way of defining "mental illness" that I don't think most people would like to affirm. But if the definitions of secular Western liberal democracies are better than those of other parts of the world, or of Western liberal democracies not so many years ago, then presumably it is in virtue of something other than that such definitions are "current."

At any rate, I didn't lump anyone in with anyone else. Plus, taking umbrage at being "lumped in" with pyromaniacs and pedophiles (who surely didn't choose to be such) might itself be called a sort of bigotry, no? They would certainly say so.

Yet, my point was that the entire idea of a "mental illness" presupposes some sort of standard of health, and the notion of "pathologies." However, I don't see how this makes the notion of mental health intrinsically "bigoted." Appeals to contemporary or prior norms are sort of beside the point; rather that standard ("health") should be the criteria for "illness." Otherwise we would be forced to say that homosexuality was an illness, ceased to be so (in some select places), but might very well become one in the future, which seems a little odd, no?

More broadly, I would say every society, to varying degrees, has issues with making vices into "virtues." Today, you see this more with acquisitiveness, and perhaps also with male aggression and license. And while it's a tricky subject, since a "proper order" might vary by cultural, historical, and social context, it seems somewhat obvious to me that the "ideal human ordering" is not simply "what most people say it is," nor a function of "what the many think and feel," and so there is a standard/goal to which one may come closer or fall further away from. And the various ways of "falling short" would be how I would classify "mental" or "spiritual" illnesses.

One would not be so desperate to get a thread shut down if they thought they possessed rationally persuasive arguments against the positions with which they disagree.

Sure, although I am more familiar with Catholics criticizing that distinction to be honest. I only brought it up because "natural" in the common, secular philosophical usage tends to exclude any sort of "transcendent" end (I do not like the term here, but it is how it is usually labeled). And this tends to simply exclude the rational appetites such that there are only "intellectual pleasures" to the extent that one finds "activities of the mind" (be they literature, philosophy, or video games) "pleasing."

But if we take "natural" in this sense and speak to the natural law we end up with a weird sort of mismatch because there aren't really higher and lower appetites anymore (or I would argue, rational freedom) but just a sort of plurality of "natural goods" that are natural just in that they are "things men enjoy."

Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. I only meant to get at a mismatch in terminology because if you begin speaking about goodness and truth as formal objects, people nowadays immediately jump to "transcendence" often understood as "supernatural," which then seems to make the law primarily revelatory rather than immanent in being, if that makes sense.

The fact that males can fertilize ova actually does bear on what individual males do. It means that more males fertilize ova than females (because females can't do it). Contrariwise with pregnancy, more females than males get pregnant (because males cannot get pregnant whereas females can). To deny this, one would need to deny that even though X can do Y and Z cannot do Y, nevertheless an individual X is no more likely to do Y than an individual Z.

Then in an evolutionary or teleological sense, hormonal and strength-based differences between males and females flow, in part, from their procreative natures. — Leontiskos

A little head’s up: Many (quite many, actually) of us men and women do not engage in sexual behaviors with others with the intend of procreation in the form of begetting offspring. Especially since many of us consider overpopulation to be very problematic for all of humanity, and hence for ourselves as well. And, unlike most if not all lesser animals, we nevertheless joyfully engage in sexual activities knowing full well consciously that they could serve a the one and only means of so begging children.

There is 0-point to both oral and anal sex (yes, this, here, among heterosexuals) were procreation to be the sole purpose to sex—this as one might quite telling find in the society expressed by Orwell in his book 1984 (to not bring into this past religious motifs). Yet we quite willingly with a lot of ardor and amore long for at the very least oral sex to be given and taken. And, no, it need not be a prelude to anything else. It doesn’t even need to lead toward an immediate orgasm. Being given oral sex with gusto by one’s adored partner however does provide one with a great deal of worth (fully psychological in its nature) in addition to the physiological pleasures involved. Why else do we nowadays term it “getting/giving head”.

As to men being the (natural) procreators/begetters. Physically, materialistically, yes. But then we are and have always been a bit extra. Psychologically, spiritually, women historically have and are well able to yet procreate and beget ideas, cultures, paradigm shifts, etc. into the minds of biological men just fine. And the power of cultures always tends to outweigh the power of individuals within them.

Masculine being to penetrate, i.e. as per the yang of things; feminine being the penetrated, i.e. as per the yin of things. And conceptions can either be physical or purely psychological. Is a men's gaining of a novel concept from a woman, his conceiving the concept till fruition and then his giving birth to it into the world, to be deemed unnatural? I deem it rather sickly, and hence very unhealthy, to so consider.

To affirm that there is no teleological scope to the evolution of minds per se, this via their penetrating and being penetrated by other minds, toward the Good is a bit too bogus for me to take seriously. And to consider only men able of penetrating due to our physiological biology is just too damn materialistic.

:up:

So, if I've again understood all that, mental illness is not only a social label, but includes a measure of human flourishing. Looks fine to me.

I've a bit to do with disability advocacy, using the social model of disability. A classic example is that steps prevent a wheelchair user from accessing services. Steps - something hat is not essential, but convenient - prevent the chair user from flourishing. So there is a good argument for putting in ramps.

Similarly, a mental illness prevents the individual from flourishing - perhaps the voices and paranoia make social interaction problematic. Unlike the stairs, the problem is a direct result of the disease, not a an imposed social consequence.

In the case of of homosexuality, is what prevents the individual from flourishing more like the stairs or the voices? Is it a direct result of their homosexuality, or is it imposed by the attitudes of others? Is it intrinsic or socially imposed?

Homosexuality was removed from the DSM because, unlike mental illnesses, it does not intrinsically impede an individual’s ability to flourish; any barriers arise from social prejudice, not from the orientation itself.

@RogueAI, :victory:

Sure, although I am more familiar with Catholics criticizing that distinction to be honest. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair. Although I see a lot of Orthodox picking up de Lubac's thesis nowadays, it is still primarily Catholics.

I only brought it up because "natural" in the common, secular philosophical usage tends to exclude any sort of "transcendent" end (I do not like the term here, but it is how it is usually labeled). And this tends to simply exclude the rational appetites such that there are only "intellectual pleasures" to the extent that one finds "activities of the mind" (be they literature, philosophy, or video games) "pleasing."

But if we take "natural" in this sense and speak to the natural law we end up with a weird sort of mismatch because there aren't really higher and lower appetites anymore (or I would argue, rational freedom) but just a sort of plurality of "natural goods" that are natural just in that they are "things men enjoy." — Count Timothy von Icarus

True. I am familiar with Ungureanu's work, and he does make interesting genealogical arguments to this effect.

Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. I only meant to get at a mismatch in terminology because if you begin speaking about goodness and truth as formal objects, people nowadays immediately jump to "transcendence" often understood as "supernatural," which then seems to make the law primarily revelatory rather than immanent in being, if that makes sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It does make sense, even though Banno took it in the exact opposite direction. But presumably with a more generous interlocutor it may have been different.

Or to put it another way, I'd say natural law presupposes a certain anthropology that tends to be not so much denied today as utterly unknown. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'd say yes and no. Such was Ratzinger's thesis, and I think it works up to a point. Yet early in the thread my claim that women do not beget/impregnate in the way that men beget/impregnate was seen as contentious, and cases like those seem to be transparent to natural law. We see the same thing with social issues such as males competing in women's sports, where natural law really does seem sufficient to answer the question.