I am in agreement with Agustino's views on philosophical theology (as distinct from his views on politics, which I don't share.) In the areas that tend to touch on both, I am also at odds with Agustino, for example in respect of the rejection of religious pluralism. In that sense, I respect 'diversity', although not endless diversity.

But I read most of the objections to traditionalist morality in this OP, as being the expressions of Western liberal individualism to what it sees as the intrusive and authoritarian morality of Christianity, generally. That's because for liberal individualism, when it severs connection from the Judeo-Christian culture that gave rise to it, there is 'no higher truth than self' - nihil ultra ego. In other words, the individual is the sole arbiter of what is right and true.

Now, that last statement would not be foreign to some phases of Christian thought, with the caveat that the Christian would implicitly or explicitly accept the ethical framework of the Church. I think individualism, in that sense, is based on the very Christian notion of the supreme importance of the person; Christ, after all, died for persons, sinners, not for an abstract notion. That can be contrasted with some rather impersonalist interpretations of other religious cultures, particularly Asiatic examples, which regard person-hood as illusory. However, notice that also in Christianity, the divine command that 'he who loses his life for My sake will be saved'.

Agustino, I invite you to respond to the host of objections I've raised in this thread. Hopefully my portrayal of your position has been accurate enough to warrant an OP of this length.

Per forum format, I also would like to invite everyone else to comment and discuss!

Cheers for now! — VagabondSpectre

I consider this post inappropriate and I've flagged it. We'll see if the powers that be agree.

The fact that you set up the discussion to focus on a particular forum member and their beliefs without their participation makes me suspicious that the purpose of the post is to humiliate rather than to enlighten. For you to authoritatively interpret what Agustino believes is insulting and disrespectful. You should stop.

I hope it's allowed within the rules: there are a few posters on here that have a somewhat developed personal philosophy (@apokrisis, Augustino, @Banno if he still believes roughly what he believed four years ago), and I want an excuse to eat my bodyweight in popcorn.

Actually now you say that, I do agree, if the mods want to delete this thread including my comment on it, no objection from myself.

I hope it's allowed within the rules: there are a few posters on here that have a somewhat developed personal philosophy (@apokrisis, Augustino, Banno if he still believes roughly what he believed four years ago), and I want an excuse to eat my bodyweight in popcorn. — fdrake

Agustino and I have many differences, but I respect his commitment. Even if I didn't, I would want him to be treated with more respect than I think this discussion provides.

I don't fault you for your thirst for blood (and popcorn), but it actually kind of makes my point for me.

I consider this post inappropriate and I've flagged it. We'll see if the powers that be agree.

The fact that you set up the discussion to focus on a particular forum member and their beliefs without their participation makes me suspicious that the purpose of the post is to humiliate rather than to enlighten. For you to authoritatively interpret what Agustino believes is insulting and disrespectful. You should stop. — T Clark

I don't exactly see a need to respond to this comment but here goes:

If you think taking pains to describe, appraise, and criticize a set of ideas because some people happen to hold belief in them, then you're in the wrong place. Ideas are fair game.

If you think it is improper to address the moral views of Agustino, who expresses them openly and in detail on a philosophical forum meant designed to create dialogue, within a thread designed to create (continue actually) dialogue, then you're in the wrong place.

If you think that attacking ideas is wrong because it humiliates those who hold then, then i regret to humiliate respectfully inform you: sparing critical thought to spoil the ego rots the mind.

If I haven't been clear enough, I think it's utterly ridiculous that anyone here should think this thread improper merely because it is informally addressed to a particular poster.

If any of you linger in doubt, consider the fact that myself and Agustino have conversed on this subject to such extents that threads have been hijacked and shut down by just the two of us. I promised him this thread several months ago to get to the bottom of our disagreements and now I'm delivering...

So spare me your victim cries; I asked for discussion about the subject matter my OP addresses, and Agustino is more than capable of rising to his own defense.

So spare me our victim cries; I asked for discussion about the subject matter my OP addresses, and Agustino is more than capable of rising to his own defense. — VagabondSpectre

If Agustino responds and says it's ok, I have no objection. I agree he is capable of handling your interpretations himself. I think there is a good chance he will welcome this opportunity. It's not a question of whether it's appropriate to hold people accountable for their positions on this forum. Of course it is. That's the whole point.

I still think the post is inappropriate for this forum. I am comfortable the moderators can decide.

It's not a question of whether it's appropriate to hold people accountable for their positions on this forum. Of course it is. That's the whole point.

I still think the post is inappropriate for this forum. I am comfortable the moderators can decide. — T Clark

Why exactly is this post inappropriate? Does it break any rules written or unwritten?

Have I not to the best of my ability described Agustino's genuine position with some degree of detail?

Have I relied on ad hominem or some other fallacious reasoning to outline my objections?

Is my post rife with grammatical or spelling errors?

Have I attacked him personally in any way, or have I attacked ideas he openly shares? I just don't get it. Don't you think encouraging debate is intellectually healthy and stimulating?

Should I have written this entire thread about Agustino's moral framework in the abstract, not ever mentioning that it's Agustino who maintains it, for some pretense of ego preservation?

"Humiliate" you said...

Do you hear that Agustino? I know you won't let him get away with that :D !

Do you hear that Agustino? I know you won't let him get away with that :D ! — VagabondSpectre

As I said, if Agustino speaks up and is fine with this, I have no problem. He's a pain in the ass, but he's one of us.

But I read most of the objections to traditionalist morality in this OP, as being the expressions of Western liberal individualism to what it sees as the intrusive and authoritarian morality of Christianity, generally. — Wayfarer

@VagabondSpectre, I consider this post inappropriate and I've flagged it...

... For you to authoritatively interpret what Agustino believes is insulting and disrespectful. You should stop. — T Clark

↪T Clark, Actually now you say that, I do agree, if the mods want to delete this thread including my comment on it, no objection from myself. — Wayfarer

I read these objections to traditionalist dialogue as being an expression of fear for the future of Christianity from what it sees as the continual erosion of it's once unchallenged moral authority...

This traditionalist morality that I can only assume you subscribe to describes those who do not adhere to it as sinful and immoral; it's used to persecute. I'm not against sexual conservatism per se, but I AM against the moral/ideological supposition/enforcement that sexual conservatism is morally obligatory.

That's because for liberal individualism, when it severs connection from the Judeo-Christian culture that gave rise to it, there is 'no higher truth than self' - nihil ultra ego. In other words, the individual is the sole arbiter of what is right and true. — Wayfarer

You make it seem like our entire epistemic foundation comes crashing down the moment we cease appealing to Christianity... What is right is, as I have described, more complex a matter than merely what the self wants (it's in fact about reconciling the many wants of many selves). As far as what is true goes, the only people who seem be the arbiter of their own reality are those with standards low enough to accept things without evidence, such as creation myths and pseudoscience.

As far as what is true goes, the only people who seem be the arbiter of their own reality are those with standards low enough to accept things without evidence, such as creation myths and pseudoscience. — VagabondSpectre

Well, that nails the possibility of further discussion closed, but as I said above, should have thought more before responding in the first place.

Agustino's moral views are not predicated on creation myths or pseudo science, and I'm fully confident that we can agree on some standards for evidence... The prospects for the discussion I'm intending to have are unscathed.

But if you get to casually disregard the objections I've raised by describing them as expressions of western liberalism opposed to what it sees as authoritative Christian morality where the individual is the sole arbiter of what is right and true, then I get to bring up actual examples of belief without evidence, such as the numerous creation myths we have, as well as the numerous pseudosciences and superstitions that too many humans subscribe to. This thread isn't about Christianity though, it is a mere footnote and afterthought.

Metaphysical solipsists believe that they are the arbiters of what is true, and I am not a metaphysical solipsist. I did try to wait and respond more properly to your post, but before I could give it the time it seems to require you chimed in to advocate for the deletion of this thread. Perhaps I felt the need to respond promptly in-case my entire thread got deleted...

If Agustino responds and says it's ok, — T Clark

Nah, he's clearly going to love the attention and soak it all in. ;)

"Telos", Greek for "purpose" is the object of "teleological study"; the study of purpose. — VagabondSpectre

It is better to think in terms of final causes instead of purpose. (Purpose is only a specific instance of final causality in conscious agents). Aristotle identified final causes as necessary in order to account for the directionality of all causes towards their effects. If you remove teleology, then you can no longer make sense of induction for example, and then you end up with Hume's problem of induction. Final causes are that in virtue of which causes have a tendency to produce a specific range of effects and only that range. Someone like apokrisis would conceive of final causality as constraints on action, which effectively guide the cause towards the production of a certain limited range of effects, and this is not very far off from the Aristotelian understanding.

Aquinas states: "every agent acts for an end: otherwise one thing would not follow more than another from the action of the agent, unless it were by chance" (ST I.44.4)

Note that agent refers to any causal agent, not any conscious or self-aware or self-determining agent.

Final causes are observed in everything in nature - there is nothing in nature, not even "random" events that scientists tell us lack 'efficient causation' (in the modern non-Aristotelian sense) such as radioactive decay - can avoid it. For suppose that there is a heavy atom - this heavy atom has a formal and a material cause which are directed towards the production of a probabilistic decay, with a specific probability and only that specific probability. This directedness towards only a specific range of effects is final causality.

And indeed teleology is the central piece in the puzzle of any metaphysics, because in it inheres the whole metaphysical apparatus, which is why Aquinas calls it "the cause of causes".

Your rejection of teleology is not illogical, but you have to provide an alternative metaphysical construct which can account for what we observe in nature. You need to explain why causes are directed towards a specific range of effects only. You have to solve the problem of induction that is created by this rejection. Without final causes, constant conjunction of events is random and mysterious - it remains unexplainable.

Hume and all the moderns that followed were not capable to solve these problems. They tried to reconceive of efficient causality as pertaining to events which are ordered in time, not to things, but this distorts the Aristotelian picture even more and gives full force to the problem of induction. If events are efficient causes, and they are temporarily separated from one another, it is indeed conceivable that there is no necessary connection between causes and their effects. It becomes a mystery why a billiard ball striking another causes it to move instead of turn into a butterfly.

But if we return to the common sense Aristotelian view, this becomes easily explainable. Things are causes, so the ball causes the other ball to move. The cause - the ball pushing into the other ball - and the effect, the other ball moving - are simultaneous, not temporarily separate. In other words, the cause and the effect exist within one and the same event, so it is not conceivable that they are separate at all. We clearly perceive the necessary connection between them.

So if you want to reject this clear metaphysical view which depends on final causality to account for reality, you should propose another one, preferably one which is simpler and can account for all the observable phenomena that we see without producing left-over strands such as is-ought gaps, problems of induction, and the like that cannot be solved.

So I would be careful if I were you with identifying teleology with the study of purpose. It's the study of final causality.

the telos of a watch has to do with keeping track of time, or, the telos of a cup is to hold liquid and be used for drinking. — VagabondSpectre

Because you conceive teleology solely within terms of purpose, you only think of man-made objects in your examples. But the moon has a final cause of revolving around the Earth too - it is directed towards the production of this effect and not other effects such as transforming into a cute butterfly.

By looking at the "purpose" of a thing, and whether or not the thing in question effectively performs that purpose, Agustino judges whether or not that thing is "morally good". — VagabondSpectre

No, this is a misrepresentation. "Moral good" exists only for agents that possess free will. A watch is not morally good, but it is a good or a bad watch. A moon isn't a good or a bad moon - the distinction doesn't exist because the moon doesn't "choose" its purpose, and its purpose is given by the First Cause, which it follows unaware of it as it were. So it can never be "bad" - it can only be good. That's why the distinction doesn't exist there. It only exists in agents that possess free will.

So, a cup which holds and delivers liquid well is a good and moral cup, and a watch which tells time effectively and accurately is a morally good watch... — VagabondSpectre

This is just BS.

Discerning the telos of cups and watches is straightforward given that we can appeal to the design (agent or "efficient/moving cause"; the intent of the designer) and purpose ("final cause") which we ourselves have imbued them with. — VagabondSpectre

Watches and cups have all four causes as well. They have a final cause - their purpose - they have an efficient cause, that which brings them about, they have a formal and a material cause such as they can be directed towards the production of the effects their final cause directs them towards.

For everything else, Agustino employs the Aristotelian concept of "Formal cause" which roughly means "the form/nature of a particular thing" in order to determine it's end purpose. — VagabondSpectre

Here you probably just mean that all the causes are related to the object's final cause in the end. Which is true. That's why the final cause is the "causes of causes".

For example: since all life reproduces, Agustino argues that it is inherent to the human form, and therefore inherent to human purpose, and that reproduction is therefore morally obligatory to seek out in order to exist as a morally good human. — VagabondSpectre

I never claimed reproduction is morally obligatory. Not actualising a potency is different than frustrating the said potency by acting contrary to its final cause. Not actualising the potency - not reproducing - isn't immoral.

To be human is in Agustino's view to be a creature with a form and telos that is categorically universal to all humans; a set of forms and purposes we all share. — VagabondSpectre

Well if we are human, aren't we human in virtue of having something together which is the same? All triangles, whether isoceles, scalene or equilateral have something in common by virtue of which they are triangles and not rectangles. So do human beings. I hope you're not going to reject this, otherwise I will ask you what makes us all human beings ;) .

To deviate from the standard form is to be broken and to undermine the standard and universal "human purpose", and to frustrate directly these universal purposes is to undermine our direct source of "moral goodness"; it is to be immoral... — VagabondSpectre

Yes, it is rather that the choice of a free agent to frustrate his potencies is ultimately a choice of self-rejection and abnegation. There's also a reason why the later Christians conceptualised this as disobeying the Will of God. Doing something that frustrates your own nature is equivalent to disobeying the Will of God.

Agustino is notably Christian, but instead of his moral views being directly informed by Christian ideas, it is his moral conclusions (that align with (many?) Christian moral positions?) which supports his acceptance of Christianity itself. — VagabondSpectre

What makes you think "Christian" ideas are different from the classical views? They actually are not. All cultures and religions that have ever existed on Earth are remarkably close in their prohibitions and rituals. For example, prohibitions may differ, but they all centre around murder, theft, worship, coveting, and sex.

Is the above an accurate overview of your moral framework? — VagabondSpectre

Not really.

It could be that behaving in ways that are contrary to human telos are in fact more morally good or morally praiseworthy — VagabondSpectre

Yeah, just like the sun could suddenly disappear tomorrow, vanish :B - it's not sufficient to tell me something could be logically plausible, you have to justify why it actually is the case in practice, not only in theory. You tell me acting contrary to human telos could be morally praiseworthy - what do you mean by that? What is acting contrary to human telos? What is human telos? What is moral praiseworthiness and how is it determined? By what criteria do we determine moral praiseworthiness? In arguing this with me, you need to provide an alternative framework. If you cannot solve the same theoretical difficulties that my metaphysics solves without creating new ones, then you have not shown the:

lack of theoretical validity of Agustino's "moral goodness from telos" — VagabondSpectre

Exactly what makes a functional watch a "morally good" watch instead of just a "good" watch? — VagabondSpectre

Nothing, it is just a good watch.

Intuitively, functional watches have no moral component of their own; merely performing a designed function does not make a thing worthy of moral consideration or able to offer any. — VagabondSpectre

Right, because the watch isn't capable of itself to do otherwise. It follows its purpose unawares. Now you're starting to understand that free will is required for morality.

If a functional watch was randomly assembled by the pounding of the waves and washed up on shore, would it be immoral to smash that watch given it has no owner? — VagabondSpectre

Generally destroying things for no reason would be irrational and hence immoral yes.

Rationally, "fulfilling of formal ends equates to moral goodness" is a prior assumption without reasoning behind it. — VagabondSpectre

It's not a prior assumption, it is in its non-strawmanned version a conclusion of a line of reasoning starting with metaphysics.

The main persuasive appeal of Agustino's entire moral framework is what he claims his positions can offer in practice: health and happiness — VagabondSpectre

No, I do not claim that being moral can guarantee health and happiness - just that it maximises the chances of health and happiness given whatever your external circumstances are. You may still be very miserable though if your external circumstances aren't much good.

Agustino claims to know that reproduction is a necessary moral objective because of his analysis of biological life, but he can only persuasively argue this is the case by trying to convince you that pursuing it is the best or only way to live a complete and happy life of "actualized potential"... — VagabondSpectre

Well, you are a biological creature so long as you have a body, so if you ignore your body and biological life you are repressing a side of yourself. Just like if you ignore your spiritual longings you are repressing a side of yourself. That's just an objective fact, which you cannot deny. There is, as Plato would say, a metaxy that must be maintained between matter and spirit.

Promiscuity of any kind is deemed immoral by Agustino because he believes it is counter-productive to forming a life-long heterosexual and monogamous relationship. — VagabondSpectre

No, there are many reasons why promiscuity is immoral, and those reasons exist on multiple levels.

First, there are psychological reasons. Engaging in promiscuity trains your mind to be in the habit of looking at others as objects that are there ready for you to use in whatever ways suits your purpose. It denies the personality of the other, and by virtue of that action it denies your own personality. You cannot use others as objects without you yourself becoming an object. And this is what happens in the promiscuous relationship - both partners use the other unaware that the other is using them. Mutual flagellation. By lying to yourself in such a way, you ultimately destroy the very foundation of your rational faculty, leading to the effects of what Plato termed "the lie in the soul". You are no longer capable to distinguish truth from desire and falsehood.

There's also social reasons. Promiscuity has always been legislated against because it leads to rivalry, and rivalry leads to violence and death - the inability to enjoy the object of desire, and the fascination with the model and the rival. Why are you interested in PUA? Because you are fascinated with the model and the rival that is the obstacle that stands in the way of the object of desire. The removal of the law hasn't removed the obstacle - the law was never an obstacle, it never scandalised you. But the other becomes an obstacle, and they scanadalise you once the law has been removed. At least the law is impersonal and applies equally to all, and thus prevents rivalry and conflict. Hence the growing trend of rising divorce rates with dwindling sexual mores.

Then there's also the spiritual reasons. Promiscuity frustrates the ability to develop intimacy and spiritual union with the beloved. It closes this aspect of existence to the practitioner, instead forcing him to remain in the chains of lust.

And finally, we have evolutionary needs. Promiscuity is counter-productive to the aims of reproduction, especially for humans where the human infant spends a very long period of time being defenceless and requiring others for its survival. In fact, the human infant is special amongst all other animals in requiring such a long time until it can survive on its own. In addition, the female also requires protection during pregnancy in order to survive - it cannot fend for herself.

The family is thus rooted in our biology as much as it is rooted in our psychology, society, and soul.

Agustino's strategy of offering happiness is a persuasive one, but since his view of the optimal human lifestyle has become so narrow, he winds up offering moral prescriptions and proscriptions which range from inadequate for a few to inadequate for most in terms of happiness and well-being... — VagabondSpectre

You are under a mirage if you think the law is more narrow than the state of nature. Freedom is the law, and the state of nature is precisely slavery.

Rather than acknowledging the range of variance in human form and human behavior (i.e: what makes different individuals happy/"fulfilled"), Agustino will state that deviations and anomalies from his defined norm are aberrations akin to broken or incorrectly designed watches. On theoretical grounds he argues that such individuals should seek to correct, normalize, or fix themselves to adhere to the standard teleological form, but persuasively this fails utterly because the people who deviate from his very puritanical norms are not made happy or fulfilled by pursuing them rather than their own desires. — VagabondSpectre

The point that different individuals have different desires that they think will be fulfilling does not invalidate what I've said with regards to a common human nature. It is already a well-known psychological fact that humans are more often than not deceived in what they think will make them happy - in their desires. Desire is indeed, on many psychoanalytical grounds, a blind alley for determining the good. This isn't to say that I think people should be forced to be good - precisely because by being forced they wouldn't be able to be good. Being morally good requires freedom of will as its presupposition. Rather people should question their own desires honestly.

The assumption that lifelong monogamy and premarital chastity are the best or only methods of successful reproduction ignores the many historical and contemporary social arrangements which do exist and might have different adaptive strengths in different environments. — VagabondSpectre

I've never stated that. Rather I've stated that lifelong marriage and premarital chastity are the only way to reconcile the otherwise contradictory impulses and tensions that are found in the soul. This means reconciling the biological, spiritual, psychological and social aspects of the human being into a harmonious whole.

The very idea that everyone personally needs to try to reproduce is also counter-intuitive to the adaptive needs of a species in a similar way. — VagabondSpectre

Yep, that's why that was never my idea :B

It's their personal way of being happy or "fulfilled" (which again is why this framework holds no persuasive power over them) — VagabondSpectre

Maybe it may be their personal way of trying to be happy and fulfilled, but how do you know they really are? You'd have to analyse their life by some objective standards, you wouldn't be able simply to take their word for it - they may be repressing certain aspects of their personalities for example.

If groups can function more cohesively and successfully by allowing homosexual relationships to exist (for instance), then that might indicate some inherent genetic capacity for it. — VagabondSpectre

>:O In light of what we know about anthropology and psychology, this is so wrong that it's funny. On the contrary, homosexuality in many of its forms is known to arise out of a certain fascination with the rival and model and intensification of desire which decouples it from the biological object and shifts it to the model. The object is always desired because of the model which is imitated. 99% of human sexuality is mimetic. You want that woman because other men want her. You want others to know that you have sex with her. And so forth - it is the others which end up becoming fascinating, not the object. This is because desire always projects a fullness of being onto the other - if the other wants this object it must be because it is really valuable and they know - it must be because this object can grant you a similar fullness of being to the one that you imagine they must be enjoying. And the more you want it, the more they want it. At a certain point of intensity, desire decouples from the object, and attaches unto the model and the rival, since it is perceived that they are the source of the object's value. This is homosexuality - when desire hypostasizes the rival and decouples the normal teleology of the sexual impulse from the biological level onto the mimetic one. In some forms it can be latent - such as in Dostoyevsky's Eternal Husband who is always fascinated with his rival, who always has sex with the women he likes, including his wife.

Thus homosexuality far from being an element that illustrates the stability of a society, is an element that illustrates its instability. That is why in the Bible Sodoma and Gomorrah are shown the be unilaterally destroyed on the background of the inversed scapegoat victim Lot, who alone escapes. The community effectively erupts in violence of all against all as desire spirals out of control and the model becomes more and more rival, and hence violence escalates. Homosexuality is hence a sign of the proximity of violence and the dissolution of all social structure into unanimous violence which eradicates all differences reducing everything to identity, which is exactly why religions have almost universally prohibited homosexuality in an effort to prevent desire from spiralling out of control in their communities.

Of course, the violent recourse to ending homosexuality through violence is also nothing more than the re-enactment of the scapegoat mechanism which alone seems capable to resolve violence by uniting the community against the victim.

The evolutionary explanation for great diversity in every heritable human trait and genetic predisposition is that it increases the chances that at least some individuals in a given group can successfully adapt to a given or changing environment, where overtime the more successful behavioral and genetic regimes become more popular. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, but you've ignored the evolutionary explanation for the great similarities between humans. Namely that the fundamental biological structures that constrain our existence will not change and have not changed for millions of years. The so-called environmental changes you mention have been, so far, minor in comparison to everything that has stayed constant. The need to eat is still there. The need to have sex to reproduce is still there. The need to take care of infants for a very long time is still there. The fragility of life is still there. The need for others to survive is still there. The presence of disease and infirmity are still there. And on and on. These structural needs of our biology remain unchanged, and hence they have solidified in virtually one way of being in certain regards (including the sexual arrangements in this case).

Likewise, the choice to engage in sexual activity prior to monogamy and marriage is not inherently unhealthy; in fact many people feel that not having sex prior to marriage is risky because ideally you marry someone who is sexually compatible with you, and no sex prior to marriage can be a dice roll in that regard. — VagabondSpectre

It is inherently disordered because it promotes tendencies that are likely to disintegrate the marriage. There is a reason why we observe that statistically, the most stable marriages are those of people who have never had other partners before. Do not underestimate the violent effects upon the psyche of promiscuity and of looking at the other as object. If you look at the first woman as an object, what would prevent you from seeing your wife in the same way? It is now a habit of your mind. "Many people feel that" is just a rationalisation - these same "many people" also divorce at a 50%+ rate.

Marriage isn't a dice-roll if you are open with the person, including about your sexuality. You don't need to have sex with them to be open about your sexuality.

it still would not bridge the is-ought gap in an objective or satisfying manner: why should "whatever we evolved to be" become the objective basis for moral values? — VagabondSpectre

The is-ought gap does not even exist on my metaphysical framework. It only exits on your Humean and impoverished metaphysics as a problem that you desperately cannot resolve because you have rejected teleology. But in my system of metaphysics, there is no is-ought gap, or better said, there is no gap between facts and values, and hence no gap between is and ought. Values are in-built already into facts, and this has been realised in modern times too by writers like Anscombe or even Phillipa Foot in her essay Natural Goodness. Or MacIntyre for that matter - his genealogy of morality is quite good in the first half or so of After Virtue.

For example. It is the essence of triangularity that makes us conclude that a squiggly triangle with jagged edges is a bad triangle. And this judgement is objective. It really is a bad triangle because it fails to instantiate what it seeks to instantiate through its telos, namely triangularity. The value - fact distinction only comes into play if we assume a priori that values are subjective and not rooted into the objective nature of things, which is precisely what I don't assume. It's what you assume - hence you raise up the dust and then complain that you can no longer see... For me the good is objective, we have objective standards by which we can determine it. We see that it is objective.

If Agustino's moral advice was truly followed, mankind would cease evolving and cease adapting. Like the Quakers who believed that the technology and way of life they currently had and loved was the one best way of living, he presumes that anything other than his one good set of standards is imperfect, inferior ,infernal, immoral. — VagabondSpectre

I am all for evolving and adapting, but evolution and adaptation need to be intelligent, not blind at the human level. Purposefully trying to enact tendencies which we know are bad since they go against our permanent biological structure which has remained unchanged are useless. Instead, we should focus on variation and adaptation where there is room for it - variation that depends on our immediate and changing environment. Not everything about us needs to change and to vary since there are some unchanging elements in our environment.

" how to fairly get along in a world of diverse and sometimes competing subjective desires"... — VagabondSpectre

You'll never solve this problem until you look at what the underlying facts are. This is what you refuse to see by saying that they are subjective, and there are actually no facts to see there.

How can you rebut the evolutionary necessity of divergence and deviance, especially in terms of sexual behavior, for adaptive progress? In a static and homogeneous environment we might be able to identify a universal-enough standard for us all to strive toward, but the world itself is diverse and constantly changing; we too must be diverse and constantly changing to continue to reliably exist upon it. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, the world is diverse and changing, but it is also constant and unchanging in other respects. We still need to eat. That's constant. Babies still require protection for a long time until they can live on their own. That's still constant. Pregnancy still takes 9 months for a woman - that's still constant. And so on so forth. You cannot deny the constancy of these facts of our biological existence, and hence the idea that there is one way to be adapted to these constant facts that is the best way is actually entirely rooted in our evolutionary history.

individual happy — VagabondSpectre

There are no individuals. See this is the problem, you come up with all sorts of unquestioned metaphysical presupposition - like the individual :s . What the hell is the individual?! Desires are learned, most of them aren't inborn.

If a group of people are locked in a room, a village, an island, a nation, a planet - whatever - and they all only consider their own individual happiness, then before long their competing and conflicting desires might cause chaos and result in far less happiness and well-being overall (or likely very little for the average individual). — VagabondSpectre

No, what would happen is that they would imitate each other's acquisitive desires, since human beings are mimetic, and soon the whole society would erupt in a violent conflict of all against all. Then this violence will transfer unto a victim who is chosen at random from them, who will be deemed responsible for all this conflict and they will all unite against the victim and kill him or her. Then the victim, because of the peace it has brought unto the community, will be sacralized as a god. Then both rituals - re-enactment of the murder - and prohibitions against desire - would be installed in place, and they would be identical to those that you consider to be religion. They would aim at the prevention of unanimous violence.

There are no "individuals". Because, as Aristotle said, man is the most imitative of all animals, all humans are inter-individuals because they take desires from each other. So there would be no question of what they would consider, there would simply be the fact of the matter - they will imitate each other's desires, and when these desires land on the same object - as they are BOUND 100% to land, there will be conflict, which will only intensify desires on both sides unless something external - like the law or the scapegoat, intervenes to stop the process.

Hopefully my portrayal of your position has been accurate enough to warrant an OP of this length. — VagabondSpectre

:B

Nah, he's clearly going to love the attention and soak it all in. — Noble Dust

Of course, and I knew that. There's an old joke about the church being against bear baiting not out of consideration for the bear, but because of the pleasure it gives the baiters.

This traditionalist morality that I can only assume you subscribe to describes those who do not adhere to it as sinful and immoral; it's used to persecute. I'm not against sexual conservatism per se, but I AM against the moral/ideological supposition/enforcement that sexual conservatism is morally obligatory. — VagabondSpectre

Wait there's a problem here because labelling an activity or a group of people as sinful or immoral isn't persecution, that's just a matter of fact. Persecution is actively mistreating a group of people based on their moral failings (such as stoning gay people), and I would support you in being against that where it happens. Ironically, it is precisely Christianity that has revealed persecution and has always taken the side of the victim, identifying precisely that the victim is likely to come from the category of the sinful. If there was no Christianity, you wouldn't be standing here today condemning the mythological treatment of the victim as deserving death.

There is a reason why we observe that statistically, the most stable marriages are those of people who have never had other partners before. — Agustino

Correlation does not imply causation. It could be that those with promiscuous desires just aren't as suited to long-term monogamous relationships as those without them. It could be that whether or not they act on these desires makes no difference, e.g. someone who wants to sleep around but chooses not to or isn't able to has a less stable relationship than someone who doesn't want to. Opposing pre-martial sex on the grounds of "preserving the sanctity of marriage" or whatever might be a non sequitur.

In light of what we know about anthropology and psychology, this is so wrong that it's funny. On the contrary, homosexuality in many of its forms is known to arise out of a certain fascination with the rival and model and intensification of desire which decouples it from the biological object and shifts it to the model. The object is always desired because of the model which is imitated. 99% of human sexuality is mimetic. You want that woman because other men want her. You want others to know that you have sex with her. And so forth - it is the others which end up becoming fascinating, not the object. This is because desire always projects a fullness of being onto the other - if the other wants this object it must be because it is really valuable and they know - it must be because this object can grant you a similar fullness of being to the one that you imagine they must be enjoying. And the more you want it, the more they want it. At a certain point of intensity, desire decouples from the object, and attaches unto the model and the rival, since it is perceived that they are the source of the object's value. This is homosexuality - when desire hypostasizes the rival and decouples the normal teleology of the sexual impulse from the biological level onto the mimetic one. In some forms it can be latent - such as in Dostoyevsky's Eternal Husband who is always fascinated with his rival, who always has sex with the women he likes, including his wife. — Agustino

This seems like nonsense. Attraction is just due to brain chemistry. A physiological response to certain types of visual (or other) stimulation. In most people that stimulation is the opposite-sex body, but in others its the same-sex body (and in some, no kind of body). Although there is certainly a certain degree of nurture involved (e.g. desensitisation), it's nothing like the above.

Thus homosexuality far from being an element that illustrates the stability of a society, is an element that illustrates its instability. That is why in the Bible Sodoma and Gomorrah are shown the be unilaterally destroyed on the background of the inversed scapegoat victim Lot, who alone escapes. The community effectively erupts in violence of all against all as desire spirals out of control and the model becomes more and more rival, and hence violence escalates. Homosexuality is hence a sign of the proximity of violence and the dissolution of all social structure into unanimous violence which eradicates all differences reducing everything to identity, which is exactly why religions have almost universally prohibited homosexuality in an effort to prevent desire from spiralling out of control in their communities.

And that's definitely just rubbish, especially given that your "evidence" is a fictional story.

Yeah, have to agree, it's a very weird bit of armchair psychobabble as far as I can tell.

It could be that those with promiscuous desires just aren't as suited to long-term monogamous relationships as those without them. — Michael

Obviously, but why aren't they? This clearly would have something to do with promiscuous desires themselves.

It could be that whether or not they act on these desires makes no difference, e.g. someone who wants to sleep around but chooses not to or isn't able to has a less stable relationship than someone who doesn't want to. — Michael

Sure, even in that case the lack of stability would be due to the presence of the desires themselves.

In either scenario, you have failed to present an alternative hypothesis.

This seems like nonsense. Attraction is just due to brain chemistry. — Michael

>:O >:O It feels good living in neuroscientific stone age no?

Unfortunately for you, the discovery of mirror neurons which fire both when an animal acts a certain way and when they perceive the said action in another animal, scientifically validates the mechanism of mimetic desire. However, even in the absence of this neural correlate, we would still have grounds to justify mimetic desire by virtue of everyday observations - someone posts a picture of feet here, and many others start posting one too (or at least desire posting one).

So your statement that attraction is just due to brain chemistry is an obfuscation. The real issue is that brain chemistry is not individual, but it is mimetic. What other brains desire impacts what your brain does - so attraction is a function of the desire of others, which was the thesis presented above. No more obfuscations now please.

In most people that stimulation is the opposite-sex body, but in others its the same-sex body (and in some, no kind of body). — Michael

Right just by chance in some people it is the same-sex body :-} .

I've outlined the mechanism through which this can happen, and the mechanism actually is scientific and does account for everything that hypothesising a homosexual drive would account for (as Freud did) while also being simpler (since it doesn't need two drives, it only needs mimetic desire). So is psychoanalysis also nonsense to you?

And that's definitely just rubbish, especially given that your "evidence" is a fictional story. — Michael

>:O Yeah, sorry, I cannot go through an in-depth analysis of the world's mythologies and religions to point you to thousands of other examples. But I can give you sources which do that if you want.

Also, let's not forget that most psychological theories, including Freud's are created on the basis of exploration of mythology and literature in search for perennial human experiences which outline these psychological mechanisms. Where do you think Freud got his Oedipus Complex from or his view of narcissism, including 'intact narcissism' if not from myths and literature?

The other theory is ridiculous. According to it, people persecuted gays in the past because they were stupid and didn't know science. We're more enlightened now, so we don't. I call that an ad hominem, not a theory, sorry to say. You cannot even account for why mythology, ritual and prohibitions around things like homosexuality arose in the first place - according to you it must be because your ancestors were retards who couldn't tell their left hand from their right hand, and you're smarter than them.

Yeah, have to agree, it's a very weird bit of armchair psychobabble as far as I can tell. — StreetlightX

I will give you credit for one thing. You did say "as far as I can tell".

You cannot even account for why mythology, ritual and prohibitions around things like homosexuality arose in the first place - according to you it must be because your ancestors were retards who couldn't tell their left hand from their right hand, and you're smarter than them. — Agustino

The actual argument has to do with how people were position by the economic and social systems of control to be adverse to homosexuality-- it breaks the "natural" account people are automatically attracted to the opposite sex and destined to have a family. The issue isn't really that a certain section of the population will spend their lives with people of the same sex, but rather that certain social organisations cannot effectively assert power within the context of gay people being accepted.

You lose, for example, the ability to spilt social roles in an exclusive dichotomy between men and women, the account that humans are destined to have a heterosexual relationship and children, etc. Gay people are the scapegoat for a concern for power and economics. So it's not that people in the past cannot see their left hand from their right, it is they are ignorant by their own greed for wealth, social power and domination. They would throw gay people under a bus to dominate others.

The only reason being gay appears "unstable" is because those in power think and tell everyone so, such that a stable social environment it understood to exclude them.

A note on terms. I do think you confuse the Greek ergon with the Greek telos and that this matters. The ergon is the function of something: a cup cups, a crocodile predates in swamps, a human...? It is a puzzle what humanity's ergon is. For Plato it's what only people among animals can do, all this thinking stuff. For Aristotle it's the reasoning part of the soul in practical action. For both of them ergon is linked with arete or excellence alias virtue: Plato is led to arete as dike, usu tr as justice, because it distils what humans are uniquely good at; Aristotle is led to a phalanx of virtuous acts. Telos in all this is the end, which for some is the act in itself (athletes run), and for others is the product of the act (the sculptures of sculptors).

I would have preferred to read Agustino's outline as his own statement: I find these intricate answers very hard to follow when I've got a lot of difficult reading to do in the rest of my life! For instance, 'promiscuity is immoral for x reasons' seems to me the antithesis of virtue ethics, it's importing a rule from a Kantian system itself based on Christianity and then claiming virtue for it. But I don't know that I've understood the basic argument aright as it's only expressed as an answer to an accusation in this thread.

It is better to think in terms of final causes instead of purpose. (Purpose is only a specific instance of final causality in conscious agents). Aristotle identified final causes as necessary in order to account for the directionality of all causes towards their effects. If you remove teleology, then you can no longer make sense of induction for example, and then you end up with Hume's problem of induction. Final causes are that in virtue of which causes have a tendency to produce a specific range of effects and only that range....

...

So if you want to reject this clear metaphysical view which depends on final causality to account for reality, you should propose another one, preferably one which is simpler and can account for all the observable phenomena that we see without producing left-over strands such as is-ought gaps, problems of induction, and the like that cannot be solved.

So I would be careful if I were you with identifying teleology with the study of purpose. It's the study of final causality. — Agustino

Teleology such as you wield it can be a kind of strategic assumption which you use to skip over the problem of induction, sure, but it's not actually solved by it. I'm not opposed to using empirical observations to classify the behavior of energy and matter (which is inevitably inductive), but why employ Aristotle's antiquated "four causes" model to do so rather than the approach to knowledge of modern science? Aristotle's model is cumbersome, for instance: we don't need to know the "designer" of something, nor how something came into existence, for us to classify or understand the material/formal and final causes of a thing. We often ask specific origin questions, especially concerning natural things, but in some ways things are not defined by their agent cause. I'm not explicitly interested in classifying things so much as I am interested in understanding things; there are many possible ways to classify and delineate things and sets of things from one another, and the enduring problem with doing so is that when we become accustomed to our own discrete categories (which are oft haphazardly constructed and notably incomplete) we have a hard time recognizing things which don't fit neatly into one category or the other. Spectrums become unobvious.

"What agent designed it" must have been a naturally attractive question for Aristotle because he lived in a world so utterly bereft of evidence based explanations for how all the variance in heaven and earth came into existence. If Darwin could have explain it to him, Aristotle probably would have altered his model radically. Agency would have been replaced with complex worldly forces and factors (with a necessary case study into each instance), "moving cause" would eventually be as it is today: is it's own massively complex melange of physics and biophysics, "formal cause" would be that same melange of biophysics with taxonomical dilemmas added on top, and final cause would be the an accompanying cacophony of behavioral and evolutionary sciences.

A major nuance that the 4 cause model seems to lacks is the fact that in different environments particular "forms" can exhibit drastically varying behavior. The complexity of the human organism makes it too difficult to comprehend all the ways in which we are evolutionary designed to react and adapt (behavior is final cause). The limitation with identifying a specific range of effects is that we also must identify how that specific range changes over a range of changing environments. Once we start considering multiple environmental factors, the intuitive ease of the 4 cause model breaks down due to complexity and variance in outcomes.

Final cause as an account for reality ormetaphysical bottom floor is a ruse. We can use physical evidence to infer physical law and regimes of physical behavior, but we cannot make that magical leap into the non-land of metaphysics and absolute certainty (or even mere robust certainty, which we could all settle for) from weak appeals to tradition and scare scarce physical evidence (and in the case of our moral disagreement, the presence of contradictory evidence).

Because you conceive teleology solely within terms of purpose, you only think of man-made objects in your examples. But the moon has a final cause of revolving around the Earth too - it is directed towards the production of this effect and not other effects such as transforming into a cute butterfly. — Agustino

Since your moral argument hinges on formal and final cause I'm trying my best to illustrate what is relevant: the final cause of something is what that thing does (or as you might argue on a case by case business, what it's form implies it should do, or creator or designer intends it to do).

No, this is a misrepresentation. "Moral good" exists only for agents that possess free will. A watch is not morally good, but it is a good or a bad watch. A moon isn't a good or a bad moon - the distinction doesn't exist because the moon doesn't "choose" its purpose, and its purpose is given by the First Cause, which it follows unaware of it as it were. So it can never be "bad" - it can only be good. That's why the distinction doesn't exist there. It only exists in agents that possess free will.

So, a cup which holds and delivers liquid well is a good and moral cup, and a watch which tells time effectively and accurately is a morally good watch... — VagabondSpectre

This is just BS. — Agustino

This was legitimately how you put it to me in a past thread, but to clarify, what then is your argument that performing one's function well equates to moral goodness? If a functional watch is a good watch, then a functional human is a good human, but not necessarily a moral human, right? Even if you could define the truest teleological assessment of humans, what would make adhering to it's conclusions the moral course of action?

Here you probably just mean that all the causes are related to the object's final cause in the end. Which is true. That's why the final cause is the "causes of causes". — Agustino

Well yes and no. We can offer up some robust quality of assessment when we look at cups and watches because they are easy to understand and categorize, and we don't even need these colloquial categories to be especially robust. With cups we can say "Here's why it was designed, why it was created, how it can be used, and what it's used for". With something so complex as biological life though, it's more like "The complexity of how life was designed is beyond our current level of understanding; the origin and full scope of life and reproduction are beyond our current level of understanding; the adaptability, variance, and data contained in the human genome is beyond our current level of understanding; extreme variance of human behavior is evident and defies classification of humans by final cause, but we do know that variance acts like an experimental force that drives evolution, and that evolution itself is an ongoing process" (further frustrating even mere taxonomical issues, let alone full descriptions of actual organisms.). Yes I understand that your 4 causes model flows through "final cause", but my point is that your explanation for what amounts to moral human behavior is merely your personal analysis of "how humans behave/what humans do". You generalize behavior to determine purpose because it's too complex to reason from agent cause (design; evolution),efficient cause, and formal cause (biology; more evolution), and so your supposedly objective moral conclusions are rife with your own personal and cultural bias. Human is as human does, correct?

Well if we are human, aren't we human in virtue of having something together which is the same? All triangles, whether isoceles, scalene or equilateral have something in common by virtue of which they are triangles and not rectangles. So do human beings. I hope you're not going to reject this, otherwise I will ask you what makes us all human beings ;) . — Agustino

It might be persuasively in my favor to reduce our entire discussion to this question (and to convince you what we're all not) but really looking at this as an epistemic dilemma in the first place is what I would prefer. Humans are identifiable by having a human set of genes, basically. There is a lot of variance within what we call "the human genome" so there are some nuanced issues even with this basic assertion, (but it seems to be robust enough for us to try out). But what if we spliced frog DNA into a fertilized human ovum? Would the child be human if it had mostly human DNA? Would it depend on how the child turns out? Would they not be human? What if doses of a certain hormone would suppress all expressions of the frog DNA, making them appear and function as a normal human in every way? Would a person with 95% human DNA have a 95% human telos?

At what point does speciation occur? To what extent are ethnic distinctions meaningful or impactful on "final cause" such that they differ?

Triangles are incredibly simple. Three straight lines enclosing a space. What do ALL humans really have in common? We're alive? Most of us want to continue to be alive and to be free? Beyond that it's mostly too complex with too much variance; that's why humans are so hard to define.

Yeah, just like the sun could suddenly disappear tomorrow, vanish :B - it's not sufficient to tell me something could be logically plausible, you have to justify why it actually is the case in practice, not only in theory. You tell me acting contrary to human telos could be morally praiseworthy - what do you mean by that? What is acting contrary to human telos? What is human telos? What is moral praiseworthiness and how is it determined? By what criteria do we determine moral praiseworthiness? In arguing this with me, you need to provide an alternative framework. If you cannot solve the same theoretical difficulties that my metaphysics solves without creating new ones, then you have not shown the:

lack of theoretical validity of Agustino's "moral goodness from telos" — VagabondSpectre — Agustino

I understand If I'm to actually persuade you in this discussion that I need to unpack an alternative, but with only a slight modification (a reduction perhaps) of your present framework I think that we could come into moral agreement on most issues: You base your objective standards on a supposed universal human form, but the overwhelming evidence shows that deviation from any standard is actually an ingrained biological mechanism (which helps to ensure adaptability through variance), and there are overwhelming numbers of deviant humans. Many of your standards aren't objective because they simply don't apply to everyone; what you consider to be harmful or abhorrent is actually not harmful or enjoyable to some people. You can recognize that your morality will never persuade or appeal to them in any way (because it describes them as merely broken and offers them nothing; doesn't apply to them) OR you can recognize that you're working with a set of overblown standards that may apply very well to you and your sentiments about what is harmful, but that they are not shared by everyone. The answer is to work with better starting premises (as universal starting moral values) rather than such contested ones.

We have to come up with moral positions using much more general but broadly accepted (nearly universally, as I like to say) tenets that are actually shared by all of us. Things like "the freedom to go on living" is an excellent starting value because it appeals to almost every human, and generally those who do not want to go on living don't care how the rest of us get on with life (in truth they do, but suicidal persons in need of help aren't going to be harmed by moral arguments in favor of saving lives).

Accept that pursuing happiness even by frustrating one's own reproductive potency isn't inherently harmful if that's what makes the consciousness happy, and that their freedom to choose how to look and how to live is an acceptable variant of the very wide (and widening) range of human behaviors. The indeed authoritarian approach of old world moral systems have themselves become harmful in the modern environment.

Yes, it is rather that the choice of a free agent to frustrate his potencies is ultimately a choice of self-rejection and abnegation. There's also a reason why the later Christians conceptualised this as disobeying the Will of God. Doing something that frustrates your own nature is equivalent to disobeying the Will of God. — Agustino

Don't you see how this looks one big overblown appeal to nature vis-a-vis cherry picked norms?

Generally destroying things for no reason would be irrational and hence immoral yes. — Agustino

For enjoyment? What if it would impress a woman and get her to agree to enter into a lifelong monogamous sexual relationship with me?

You deny or abandon the "good watch - moral man" position, so we need not go further down this tangent. But you will still be left with an empty persuasive bag at the end of this if you cannot demonstrate that there is an objective sexual puritanical standard we all morally (or otherwise) ought to follow.

Now you're starting to understand that free will is required for morality. — Agustino

Let's not get into the free will debate just yet; watches cannot make moral decisions (free, coerced or otherwise determined) and feel/perceive nothing, which I think is what makes them not moral agents and not worthy of moral consideration.

Well, you are a biological creature so long as you have a body, so if you ignore your body and biological life you are repressing a side of yourself. Just like if you ignore your spiritual longings you are repressing a side of yourself. That's just an objective fact, which you cannot deny. There is, as Plato would say, a metaxy that must be maintained between matter and spirit. — Agustino

"Spirit" aside, "repressing a side of yourself" doesn't seem to be a clear case of harm or immorality. Which "sides of ourselves" (what is a side of ourselves exactly?) should we repress and which should we encourage? Why is repressing the reproductive side of ourselves actually harmful? Just because we have genitals and can reproduce we morally should "not frustrate our own reproductive potency"??? What logic are you using...

What makes embracing the allegedly objective human sides of ourselves and repressing the objectively broken parts of ourselves (per your assessments) morally good? What reasoning are you using to establish that generic human function objectively indicates moral value?

No, there are many reasons why promiscuity is immoral, and those reasons exist on multiple levels.

First, there are psychological reasons. Engaging in promiscuity trains your mind to be in the habit of looking at others as objects that are there ready for you to use in whatever ways suits your purpose. It denies the personality of the other, and by virtue of that action it denies your own personality. You cannot use others as objects without you yourself becoming an object. And this is what happens in the promiscuous relationship - both partners use the other unaware that the other is using them. Mutual flagellation. By lying to yourself in such a way, you ultimately destroy the very foundation of your rational faculty, leading to the effects of what Plato termed "the lie in the soul". You are no longer capable to distinguish truth from desire and falsehood. — Agustino

Actually, I'm not a mentally dissociated (by proxy) Pavlovian trained homunculus who has become sociopathically unable to distinguish between myself, others, desires, and "truth", after allowing myself to have casual sex. Thanks for the warning though, I'll be on the look out for sudden urges to treat people and myself like objects and for the sudden unexplained destruction of the foundation of my rational faculties...

Are you..... Wait..... Are you just describing your idea of what sex is like? Just because the penis goes into the vagina, the woman, and the man by proxy, do not become "objects" ; The only lapse of rational faculty would be due to sexual ecstasy during an orgasm...

There's also social reasons. Promiscuity has always been legislated against because it leads to rivalry, and rivalry leads to violence and death - the inability to enjoy the object of desire, and the fascination with the model and the rival. — Agustino

The model o.0? Like... Purty womerns?

This seems kind of like a silly objection though. Rivalry drives progress in addition to creating inevitable losers. It's the economic basis of Capitalism! I don't know why promiscuity leads to inability to enjoy the object though. I like my packaged gifts and my anticipation for opening them in equal parts please!

Fascinated with the rival?

I'm confused.

Why are you interested in PUA? Because you are fascinated with the model and the rival that is the obstacle that stands in the way of the object of desire. — Agustino

Actually no, my interest in PUA stemmed mainly from my interest in persuasion and the surrounding pseudo sciences which, yes, peddle a lot of bull shit, but also do offer some interesting information. As a man I found it interesting and entertaining that people are out there using quasi-rigorous systems for "pulling" women, and I admit I've used a few of the confidence and presentation tricks that the PUA crowd will peddle, but no, I'm not a PUA. I read a few PUA e-books in the years before it became rather ubiquitous online...

The removal of the law hasn't removed the obstacle - the law was never an obstacle, it never scandalised you. But the other becomes an obstacle, and they scanadalise you once the law has been removed. At least the law is impersonal and applies equally to all, and thus prevents rivalry and conflict. Hence the growing trend of rising divorce rates with dwindling sexual mores. — Agustino

You act like divorce and dwindling sexual mores are the worst thing since paganism. The freedom that results in social obstacles (obstacles toward obtaining a faithful wife?) is the same kind of freedom that results in innovation, but more importantly, happiness.

A law which guarantees the same for all in such a freedom restricting manner seems counter-productive. The sexual market filled with rivalry of conflict produces some big winners and many losers, but many people do not wish to live a society where they cannot be free to make their own sexual decisions for the marital sake of others.

Then there's also the spiritual reasons. Promiscuity frustrates the ability to develop intimacy and spiritual union with the beloved. It closes this aspect of existence to the practitioner, instead forcing him to remain in the chains of lust. — Agustino

Maybe.... Maybe some promiscuity enhances one's ability to develop intimacy... Why is intimacy a zero sum game where we only have so much of it to dole out in one life-time?

And finally, we have evolutionary needs. Promiscuity is counter-productive to the aims of reproduction, especially for humans where the human infant spends a very long period of time being defenceless and requiring others for its survival. In fact, the human infant is special amongst all other animals in requiring such a long time until it can survive on its own. In addition, the female also requires protection during pregnancy in order to survive - — Agustino

You do realize we don't live in the jungles of Darkest Africa, right?

We aren't out on the plains with spears in hand to abate the savage beasts, with sore backs and calloused hands as in our evolutionary past. Our environment has changed. You can appeal to evolutionary needs, but you cannot give the reason why evolutionary needs equate to moral needs even if you can actually show monogamy is essential.

it cannot fend for herself. — Agustino

:D

It can defend itself, it can go to Lamaze class with a friend, it can puts the lotion on it's skin, all the things it requires to survive...

The family is thus rooted in our biology as much as it is rooted in our psychology, society, and soul. — Agustino

Why not polygamy given the fact that males have higher rates of death than females (so there are more women to go around) and the fact that the few very successful men can provide better for more women than many men can provide for one?

Doesn't our biology also root polygamy in our souls?

What if... What if death due to child-birth caused a deficit of females.... Shouldn't we then be polyandrists (multiple husbands to one wife)?

What if women are capable of rearing children on their own?

What if.... What if MEN are capable if rearing children on their own!?

*Gears clanking...*

*The steep descending stairway suddenly changes into a greased slope, and our hero is sent tumbling inexorably downward into the darkness...*

You are under a mirage if you think the law is more narrow than the state of nature. Freedom is the law, and the state of nature is precisely slavery. — Agustino

Can you clarify what you mean by this? I'm not talking about law but rather your constrictive moral positions concerning what amounts to proper sexual behavior. They're too strict for everyone to be happy with, so what can you offer to those people?

The point that different individuals have different desires that they think will be fulfilling does not invalidate what I've said with regards to a common human nature. It is already a well-known psychological fact that humans are more often than not deceived in what they think will make them happy - in their desires. Desire is indeed, on many psychoanalytical grounds, a blind alley for determining the good. This isn't to say that I think people should be forced to be good - precisely because by being forced they wouldn't be able to be good. Being morally good requires freedom of will as its presupposition. Rather people should question their own desires honestly. — Agustino

Whenever people on this forum say "It is a well known fact that..." it always seems to be not a fact, but an aphorism at best, and vague and untrue at worst.

" Humans are more often than not deceived in what they think will make them happy". Bullocks! I'm sure humans often wield naive desires, but to say that we're mostly deceived about what will make us happy is a very suspicious claim indeed. Are you formally putting happiness up as a main offer then? (not a guarantee sure, but at least a probabilistic incentive?)

It's an aphorism that when we get what we want we find something new to want, but i'm pretty sure getting what we want tends to make us happy, if only temporarily.

I've never stated that. Rather I've stated that lifelong marriage and premarital chastity are the only way to reconcile the otherwise contradictory impulses and tensions that are found in the soul. This means reconciling the biological, spiritual, psychological and social aspects of the human being into a harmonious whole. — Agustino

And just how do you quantify the "soul"? I don't know how you know so much about souls...

Maybe it may be their personal way of trying to be happy and fulfilled, but how do you know they really are? You'd have to analyze their life by some objective standards, you wouldn't be able simply to take their word for it - they may be repressing certain aspects of their personalities for example. — Agustino

So you're just doubtful that promiscuous or gay or trans or any sexually deviant person can actually be happy?

Can you source this doubt in anything other than appealing to vague culturally informed perspectives like "casual sex is harmful" and "monogamy is necessary for fulfillment"?

this is so wrong that it's funny. On the contrary, homosexuality in many of its forms is known to arise out of a certain fascination with the rival and model and intensification of desire which decouples it from the biological object and shifts it to the model. — Agustino

This really seems like jargon filled nonsense, so let me put it into common vernacular:

"Homosexuality of all kinds results from an obsession with hot men and women and increased sexual desire which causes heterosexual attraction to shift to homosexual attraction".

I feel like I need to dumb this down even further to appraise it:

"Too much sex and you'll grow hair on your penis become homosexual"...

I don't know why but I'm skeptical of this... Were it true, why should we even care morally speaking?

You want others to know that you have sex with her. And so forth - it is the others which end up becoming fascinating, not the object. This is because desire always projects a fullness of being onto the other - if the other wants this object it must be because it is really valuable and they know - it must be because this object can grant you a similar fullness of being to the one that you imagine they must be enjoying. And the more you want it, the more they want it. At a certain point of intensity, desire decouples from the object, and attaches unto the model and the rival, since it is perceived that they are the source of the object's value. This is homosexuality - when desire hypostasizes the rival and decouples the normal teleology of the sexual impulse from the biological level onto the mimetic one. In some forms it can be latent - such as in Dostoyevsky's Eternal Husband who is always fascinated with his rival, who always has sex with the women he likes, including his wife. — Agustino

You had to throw a cuck in there didn't you? :D

So all of this pseudo above board psychoanalysis is well and good and all, but it doesn't address my point about "evolutionary needs". I brought up the fact that homosexuality has very plausible benefits in certain social environments. The strange and mysterious sexual process you describe is secondary to the fact that humans, genetically speaking at least, have the capacity for homosexuality; all it takes is a really hot woman and a man standing next to her according to the above...

Thus homosexuality far from being an element that illustrates the stability of a society, is an element that illustrates its instability [CITATION NEEDED]. That is why in the Bible Sodoma and Gomorrah are shown the be unilaterally destroyed on the background of the inversed scapegoat victim Lot, who alone escapes. The community effectively erupts in violence of all against all as desire spirals out of control and the model becomes more and more rival, and hence violence escalates. Homosexuality is hence a sign of the proximity of violence and the dissolution of all social structure into unanimous violence which eradicates all differences reducing everything to identity, which is exactly why religions have almost universally prohibited homosexuality in an effort to prevent desire from spiralling out of control in their communities. — Agustino

I think you've read a bit too far into the connection between homosexuality and societal collapse. I also wouldn't call the bible a reputable source of information. I think that the writers of Christian doctrine may not have wanted any sexual deviance to ensure "fruitfulness" (which helps explain the popularity of the religion), but we shouldn't take it for granted that homosexuality results in god turning innocent women to salt pillars and committing genocide...

Yes, but you've ignored the evolutionary explanation for the great similarities between humans. Namely that the fundamental biological structures that constrain our existence will not change and have not changed for millions of years. The so-called environmental changes you mention have been, so far, minor in comparison to everything that has stayed constant. The need to eat is still there. The need to have sex to reproduce is still there. The need to take care of infants for a very long time is still there. The fragility of life is still there. The need for others to survive is still there. The presence of disease and infirmity are still there. And on and on. These structural needs of our biology remain unchanged, and hence they have solidified in virtually one way of being in certain regards (including the sexual arrangements in this case). — Agustino

Our need to eat is irrelevant to our moral disagreements; the desire to go on living is the broad value which covers it, and I expect we agree it is a valid starting moral value.

There is a need to have sex to reproduce, but not everyone needs to reproduce for the species to carry on, and I don't see any reason why individuals are obligated to contribute to the propagation of the species in any case. What's so immoral about them fucking off?

The fact that children take a long time to raise doesn't lead to necessary or sufficient harm by permitting the existence of promiscuity or homosexuality (in fact homosexuals can be great parents... *A trap door above you slams shut*).

So as long as people don't starve or freeze, and we think of the children, where's the moral beef?

It is inherently disordered because it promotes tendencies that are likely to disintegrate the marriage — Agustino

"Promotes tendencies"? Am I a child or a dog incapable of reasoned thought and self control?

The marriage is not all. I don't think it a significant or even high penalty risk, I'd rather enjoy life.

There is a reason why we observe that statistically, the most stable marriages are those of people who have never had other partners before. — Agustino

You ever consider that the same sort of culture which had them marry their first sexual partner also has something to do with keeping them together?

Continued due to character limit...

Do not underestimate the violent effects upon the psyche of promiscuity and of looking at the other as object. If you look at the first woman as an object, what would prevent you from seeing your wife in the same way? It is now a habit of your mind. "Many people feel that" is just a rationalisation - these same "many people" also divorce at a 50%+ rate. — Agustino

This whole "objectifying" shtick is intellectually bankrupt. At no point when my penis consensually enters the vagina of a woman (even during casual sex) do I cease to perceive that the woman is a person rather than an in-animate object or cattle-like beast of burden. I in fact retain my cognitive faculties even during sex. You're operating on the ridiculous myth of rape culture peddled by third wave feminism.

The is-ought gap does not even exist on my metaphysical framework. It only exits on your Humean and impoverished metaphysics as a problem that you desperately cannot resolve because you have rejected teleology. But in my system of metaphysics, there is no is-ought gap, or better said, there is no gap between facts and values, and hence no gap between is and ought. Values are in-built already into facts — Agustino

Whether or not you acknowledge the gap, I can still attack your conception of what is as inaccurate. Your immensely peculiar description of homosexuality when queried on it's evolutionary counter-productiveness is testament to that inaccuracy...

For example. It is the essence of triangularity that makes us conclude that a squiggly triangle with jagged edges is a bad triangle. And this judgement is objective. It really is a bad triangle because it fails to instantiate what it seeks to instantiate through its telos, namely triangularity. The value - fact distinction only comes into play if we assume a priori that values are subjective and not rooted into the objective nature of things, which is precisely what I don't assume. It's what you assume - hence you raise up the dust and then complain that you can no longer see... For me the good is objective, we have objective standards by which we can determine it. We see that it is objective. — Agustino

I cannot for the life of me figure out why you bring up "good triangles" to try and illustrate why morality is built into an objective human nature unless you think that the "good" in "good triangle" is the same as "good" in the moral statement "good man". Being a good human in the same sense that a triangle is a good triangle doesn't make us moral... Someone with the cranial pathology of a serial killer could be effective at doing murder, a "good serial killer"... You could even say that's what fulfills them. Does that make them moral?

I am all for evolving and adapting, but evolution and adaptation need to be intelligent, not blind at the human level. Purposefully trying to enact tendencies which we know are bad since they go against our permanent biological structure [CITATION NEEDED] which has remained unchanged are useless. Instead, we should focus on variation and adaptation where there is room for it - variation that depends on our immediate and changing environment. Not everything about us needs to change and to vary since there are some unchanging elements in our environment. — Agustino

Evolution and adaptation use chaos for progress. Human invention and innovation uses intelligence, but evolution is precisely blind at individual level.

It's currently a part of our permanent biological structure that anal sex (and pleasure derived from it) is possible. Yes it's gross, I know, but it's there thanks to evolution. Bonobo monkeys engage in non-stop casual sex, including homosexual sex, as a way to relieve stress. It's an adaptation which reduces rivalry and conflict (something you are opposed to right?). Human behavior evidently shares some possible component and permutation of homosexuality, and so you cannot really say it's unnatural or counter-evolutionary.

You'll never solve this problem until you look at what the underlying facts are. This is what you refuse to see by saying that they are subjective, and there are actually no facts to see there. — Agustino

I'm not saying any facts are subjective, I'm saying the facts you thrust are inaccurate (i.e: promiscuity is inherently harmful to everyone). The fact is that not everyone is happy to abide your strict sexually puritanical standards despite your insistence that it is unhealthy for them to be disregarded.

Yes, the world is diverse and changing, but it is also constant and unchanging in other respects. We still need to eat. That's constant. Babies still require protection for a long time until they can live on their own. That's still constant. Pregnancy still takes 9 months for a woman - that's still constant. And so on so forth. You cannot deny the constancy of these facts of our biological existence, and hence the idea that there is one way to be adapted to these constant facts that is the best way is actually entirely rooted in our evolutionary history. — Agustino

How do you go from "humans have a 9 month gestation period" to "therefore promiscuity will collapse society" without your massively overblown slippery slope of trumped up harm, spiritual self-neglect, sexual hysteria, and sense of entitlement to a guaranteed wife and nuclear family of your own?

Something like this: Promiscuity makes you emotionally incapable of staying with a spouse, so alleges the statistics, and divorce causes harm to the children, which causes them to grow up and be more promiscuous, which amplifies the cycle of promiscuity, which leads to divorce and homosexuality, which undermines the entire institution of marriage, until finally society collapses into one big orgy pile of it's own foul and aberrant bodily fluids...[i/]

There are no individuals. See this is the problem, you come up with all sorts of unquestioned metaphysical presupposition - like the individual :s . What the hell is the individual?! Desires are learned, most of them aren't inborn. — Agustino

I'm an individual and you are an individual. If your desires are learned thoug, what's so unhealthy about different humans learning different desires? Should we all be encouraged to have the same desires to that society is neat and homogenous, because, reasons???

No, what would happen is that they would imitate each other's acquisitive desires, since human beings are mimetic, and soon the whole society would erupt in a violent conflict of all against all. Then this violence will transfer unto a victim who is chosen at random from them, who will be deemed responsible for all this conflict and they will all unite against the victim and kill him or her. Then the victim, because of the peace it has brought unto the community, will be sacralized as a god. Then both rituals - re-enactment of the murder - and prohibitions against desire - would be installed in place, and they would be identical to those that you consider to be religion. They would aim at the prevention of unanimous violence. — Agustino

Oh sweet sweet lord. No Agustino, when you look people in a room they do not essentially replicate the mythical formation of Christianity. Nice try though, you almost snuck that one past me for true...

There are no "individuals". Because, as Aristotle said, man is the most imitative of all animals, all humans are inter-individuals because they take desires from each other. So there would be no question of what they would consider, there would simply be the fact of the matter - they will imitate each other's desires, and when these desires land on the same object - as they are BOUND 100% to land, there will be conflict, which will only intensify desires on both sides unless something external - like the law or the scapegoat, intervenes to stop the process. — Agustino

I assure you Agustino, there ARE individuals. Sometimes people have the same desire and sometimes there is conflict as a result, but there are individuals. For example, us!

As far as replacement metaphysics goes, nobody needs metaphysics. Absolute certainty is not the flavor of science or any self-critical philosophy...

As far as the commonalities between humans goes, I've touched on this a few times before: there are a handful of nearly universally agreed upon values which provide ample enough moral complexity for us to work through without employing highly contested values for people's own good.

How many gay people do you actually know? (aside from Bitter Crank that is!) What's so unhealthy about their lifestyle besides not contributing to already severe population growth by frustrating their reproductive potency?

Teleology such as you wield it can be a kind of strategic assumption which you use to skip over the problem of induction, sure, but it's not actually solved by it. — VagabondSpectre

What do you mean not actually solving it? How isn't the demonstration that the problem doesn't exist in the first place a solution to it? It resolves the entire conundrum that arises out of it.

I'm not opposed to using empirical observations to classify the behavior of energy and matter (which is inevitably inductive), but why employ Aristotle's antiquated "four causes" model to do so rather than the approach to knowledge of modern science? — VagabondSpectre

We should employ Aristotle's "four causes" model because this model enables us to do ontology and metaphysics - in other words it enables us to understand the structure of reality and the way things fit together with each other. The approach to knowledge of modern science is opportunistic - it aims to create models of the world which enable predictability and which can be translated into mathematical terms. This isn't a problem so long as all you do with it is calculate and predict - but it is a problem if you are trying to understand the nature of reality. The motivation of the activity you engage in will alter the decisions you take, which can lead you to become blind to certain other truths.

The scientific approach, for this reason, offers merely useful models, but there are problems with those models when you attempt to abstract an ontology from them without any other theoretical alterations. They don't much care for coherency except in-so-far as it is required for predictability. This is exactly the disagreement MU and I are having with apokrisis in another thread - the metaphysics science adopts is opportunistic and does not much care for coherency.

Aristotle's model is cumbersome, for instance: we don't need to know the "designer" of something, nor how something came into existence, for us to classify or understand the material/formal and final causes of a thing. — VagabondSpectre

Well, I think you've picked on the wrong cause from Aristotle's model. That cause, the efficient cause, is actually precisely the one science says we do need to understand a thing. Efficient causes are important to understand because they show the link between causes and effects. The efficient cause of a statue is the sculptor. In this case, knowledge of the efficient cause shows us how the state comes about, and that it is the effect of another cause. But this efficient cause doesn't necessarily have to be external to the formal cause of an object (or to its essence) - such as in the case of radioactive decay.

for us to classify or understand the material/formal and final causes of a thing. — VagabondSpectre

Well, the causes are all related to each other. Without an efficient cause, you cannot understand how the material and formal causes are related together towards the production of the final cause. How would you make sense of them then?

I'm not explicitly interested in classifying things so much as I am interested in understanding things; there are many possible ways to classify and delineate things and sets of things from one another, and the enduring problem with doing so is that when we become accustomed to our own discrete categories (which are oft haphazardly constructed and notably incomplete) we have a hard time recognizing things which don't fit neatly into one category or the other. — VagabondSpectre

Well this appears quite contradictory because just above you said that material/formal and final causes are required to classify things and we should keep them, and now you say you're not really interested in classifying things as much as you are interested in understanding them :s . Aristotle went over this, but basically understanding one particular aspect of existence is always performed by placing it in connection with all other aspects of existence and seeing how it connects. Like a piece within a puzzle. You cannot understand the piece except by classifying it in its proper context.

Also, the slight suggestion above that categories prevent differences and variations isn't the understanding Aristotle had. Obviously, a particular triangle isn't the same as triangularity. But a particular triangle is a particular instantiation of triangularity, even though it may have features that only approximate the nature of triangularity. So there's obviously differences between particular things and universals.

"What agent designed it" — VagabondSpectre

Design is the wrong way to put it, much like purpose was the wrong way to think of teleology before. The reason for this is that design, much like purpose, only applies to a particular group of agents, and implies conscious volition to make a certain thing a certain way. Rather it's better to think in terms of efficient causality than design.

for Aristotle because he lived in a world so utterly bereft of evidence based explanations for how all the variance in heaven and earth came into existence. — VagabondSpectre

:s - this isn't at all true. I don't know why you conceive of Aristotle as some idiot savage that couldn't tell his right hand from his left hand and couldn't see that there exists variation between animals, that children don't inherit all the traits of their parents, and so on. He clearly did know this, in fact, Aristotle was the first to dissect a chicken egg and analyse the embryo and how it develops, including identifying that the embryo has a heartbeat. Doing so, he analysed exactly the evolution of the particular animal and noticed that this process was somewhat different and not exactly identical except in certain forms (patterns of organisation), between different particular eggs.

Aristotle was as scientific as you get in terms of mindset. In fact, he criticised Plato's Academy for spoon-feeding students imaginary things about Realms of Forms, etc. and not anchoring them in concrete and multi-faceted reality as his Lyceum did.

If Darwin could have explain it to him, Aristotle probably would have altered his model radically. Agency would have been replaced with complex worldly forces and factors (with a necessary case study into each instance — VagabondSpectre

Darwin's understanding is not at odds with Aristotle's model of causality. First of all, it couldn't be, because Aristotle's model is metaphysical anyway. It's important to understand this distinction between physical facts and metaphysics. But more importantly, the "complex worldly forces" are nothing but causal agents themselves, which fits perfectly into Aristotle's model.

A major nuance that the 4 cause model seems to lacks is the fact that in different environments particular "forms" can exhibit drastically varying behavior. — VagabondSpectre

Sure, different efficient causes would lead to different effects.

The complexity of the human organism makes it too difficult to comprehend all the ways in which we are evolutionary designed to react and adapt (behavior is final cause). — VagabondSpectre

I wouldn't say an organism's behaviour, in this case, is its final cause. No, not at all - it's final cause is that for the sake of which it behaves in the first place. And there's nothing in an organisms adaptability to its environment that stops us from comprehending it using the 4 cause model. Indeed, it is only within this model that we can understand how and why the organism uses its environment the way it does.

The limitation with identifying a specific range of effects is that we also must identify how that specific range changes over a range of changing environments. Once we start considering multiple environmental factors, the intuitive ease of the 4 cause model breaks down due to complexity and variance in outcomes. — VagabondSpectre

Efficient causes can result out of the simultaneous action of multiple agents, what's wrong with that? It's perfectly comprehensible.

We can use physical evidence to infer physical law and regimes of physical behavior — VagabondSpectre

Yep, Aristotle inferred his four causes out of an analysis of motion and change.

the final cause of something is what that thing does (or as you might argue on a case by case business, what it's form implies it should do, or creator or designer intends it to do). — VagabondSpectre

No, as I said above, the final cause is that for the sake of which the thing acts. This is not the same as what the thing does.

If a functional watch is a good watch, then a functional human is a good human, but not necessarily a moral human, right? — VagabondSpectre

To a certain extent yes, not necessarily a moral human. Why not? Because certain things that make a good human being - such as health for example - aren't entirely within one's control. So if a human being is sick, they're obviously not immoral, even though they are a bad human being in-so-far as they are sick, since they do not choose to be sick. That's why morality involves the application of free will with regards to teleology.

Even if you could define the truest teleological assessment of humans, what would make adhering to it's conclusions the moral course of action? — VagabondSpectre

The obvious fact that non-adherence to it would logically imply choosing to harm one's self in more or less damaging ways.

With something so complex as biological life though, it's more like "The complexity of how life was designed is beyond our current level of understanding; the origin and full scope of life and reproduction are beyond our current level of understanding; the adaptability, variance, and data contained in the human genome is beyond our current level of understanding; extreme variance of human behavior is evident and defies classification of humans by final cause, but we do know that variance acts like an experimental force that drives evolution, and that evolution itself is an ongoing process" (further frustrating even mere taxonomical issues, let alone full descriptions of actual organisms.). — VagabondSpectre

Well no, it's not entirely beyond our current level of understanding. Extreme variation of behaviour (more extreme in humans than in other animals) is easily accounted for by the form of the human being - man is a rational animal and as such has freedom of choice. Out of freedom of choice we would indeed expect to see very varied behaviour. All people are teleologically oriented towards the same end - eudaimonia as Aristotle would say - but they each think there are different ways to get there. This does not mean that each particular human being is as wise as he can be in any way or that the ways he chooses are the right ones. The presence of choice and reason make chosing the wrong thing entirely possible in ignorance.

Humans are identifiable by having a human set of genes, basically. — VagabondSpectre

No, just like the reductionism that Michael attempted before, this actually obfuscates the issues. Saying that we're identified merely by a set of genes may be, strictly speaking, correct, but it gives off the idea that we can be reduced to those genes in isolation, just how for Michael, sexual attraction can be reduced to the chemical happenings in one brain, in isolation from other brains. This is wrong.

At what point does speciation occur? To what extent are ethnic distinctions meaningful or impactful on "final cause" and there "difference in purpose" of the distinct ethnic groups? — VagabondSpectre

Speciation would obviously occur when the substance of the organism is altered, meaning more specifically that its form is altered. Form does not depend on its material constituency directly - in the sense that changing one gene would not necessarily change the form - because form is a pattern of organization that holds the set of genes together as it were in one organism. So some genes can be altered, without altering this pattern of organisation that determines the overall coherency of the organism. How much they can be altered doesn't have a clear answer in all situations.

What do ALL humans really have in common? We're alive? Most of us want to continue to be alive and to be free? Beyond that it's mostly too complex with too much variance; that's why humans are so hard to define. — VagabondSpectre

A lot of things. They are negentropic biological systems far from equilibrium, which means they need to take in nutrients and pass out waste products (these are absolutely constant, it cannot ever be otherwise given our physical laws), humans are rational creatures with free will, we are subject to disease and aging (which are also inevtiable), women have to be pregnant for 9 months, it takes a long time for the human being to develop from birth to adulthood, etc. - there's a lot of invariant structures in what makes a human being human - much more than there are in triangles actually ;)

You base your objective standards on a supposed universal human form, but the overwhelming evidence shows that deviation from any standard is actually an ingrained biological mechanism (which helps to ensure adaptability through variance), and there are overwhelming numbers of deviant humans. — VagabondSpectre

The presence of variation though does not in any way affect what the objective standard is. There's also sick people in the world, does that mean that sickness is an objective standard of goodness, or that we cannot understand that sickness is bad? :s Of course not. The presence of variation in terms of health does not prevent us from understanding what a healthy human being is, and that health is good. In fact, it is precisely an understanding of human form, however vague, and of human teleology, that enables us to universally accept that health is good and to be desired, and illness is bad and to be avoided. And if some human being freely chose to be ill, we would classify them as diseased, not as normal.

There's many crooked and imperfect triangles around the world, does that mean we cannot distinguish in them, however badly, triangularity?

Some variation is also irrelevant. Whether you play tennis or play golf has nothing to do with whether you're a good human being. But whether you are obese or about the right weight does have to do with whether you're a good human being. Whether you're sick or healthy has to do with it and so on. And in-so-far as these things pertain to your free will and personal choice, they also show whether you're a moral or immoral human being.

Variation is exactly what we would expect, especially given the form of human beings which allows for freedom of choice, even when that freedom of choice goes against the organism's interests. Human beings all have the same human nature in-so-far as this is universal and not particular (there are of course also particular elements), and the same teleology. But because of freedom of choice, the means they choose to achieve their telos differs. As Aristotle said, all men desire to be happy, but they pursue this in different ways. Aristotle does analyse the question and determines that happiness (or eudaimonia to use the Greek term) is the same for all men.

Accept that pursuing happiness even by frustrating one's own reproductive potency isn't inherently harmful if that's what makes the consciousness happy — VagabondSpectre

No, I cannot accept that, because it implies that feeling happy is all that happiness consists of. That's wrong. A murderer can feel happy, it doesn't follow from that that he really is happy. Indeed, the more happy he is, the more unhappy he is in reality.

their freedom to choose how to look and how to live is an acceptable variant — VagabondSpectre

Yeah, freedom to choose is actually part of what it means to be human - you know, those invariant structures of being human that you don't really want to accept.

For enjoyment? What if it would impress a woman and get her to agree to enter into a lifelong monogamous sexual relationship with me? — VagabondSpectre

I'm not sure what kind of women you know would be impressed by seeing you destroy an extremely precious artefact, which is a watch created all alone by Mother Nature...

"Spirit" aside, "repressing a side of yourself" doesn't seem to be a clear case of harm or immorality. — VagabondSpectre

That's like saying that willingly putting your hand in the fire doesn't seem to be a clear case of harm and immorality. It's just playing with words. By definition that is a case of harm and immorality. Repressing a side of yourself by definition is harming yourself - that's what repressing it means - forcing it to stay quiet, disregarding it, not caring for it.

Which "sides of ourselves" (what is a side of ourselves exactly?) should we repress and which should we encourage? — VagabondSpectre

You shouldn't repress any sides, rather you should bring all of them into harmony.

What makes embracing the allegedly objective human sides of ourselves and repressing the objectively broken parts of ourselves (per your assessments) morally good? — VagabondSpectre

I cannot follow this. It confuses a lot of things, amongst which the relationship between freedom of choice, brokenness, etc.

Actually, I'm not a mentally dissociated (by proxy) Pavlovian trained homunculus who has become sociopathically unable to distinguish between myself, others, desires, and "truth", after allowing myself to have casual sex. Thanks for the warning though, I'll be on the look out for sudden urges to treat people and myself like objects and for the sudden unexplained destruction of the foundation of my rational faculties... — VagabondSpectre

Well no, things are more gradual and less black and white than that.

Just because the penis goes into the vagina, the woman, and the man by proxy, do not become "objects" — VagabondSpectre

No, I didn't describe a situation of just the penis going into the vagina. So trying to reduce it to that is stupid, as if the penis went into the vagina without any other context, it just randomly found itself there :s

The model o.0? Like... Purty womerns?

Fascinated with the rival?

I'm confused. — VagabondSpectre

Yeah, I can see that you are confused. Probably because you haven't much studied psychoanalysis before.

This seems kind of like a silly objection though. Rivalry drives progress in addition to creating inevitable losers. It's the economic basis of Capitalism! I don't know why promiscuity leads to inability to enjoy the object though. I like my packaged gifts and my anticipation for opening them in equal parts please! — VagabondSpectre

It's not rivalry that drives progress but rather the suppression of it. We build our societies precisely by suppressing rivalry (or at least re-directing it towards the unwanted, the "sinful", etc.) - if we didn't, then we'd all kill each other.

All rivalry leads to inability to enjoy objects. It's very simple how. The rival is an obstacle to your enjoyment of the object - by definition. Capitalism leads to the concentration of wealth in a few hands, hence the inability of the many to enjoy wealth. Promiscuity leads to the gradual impossibility of intimacy and sexual fulfilment. And so forth.

So rivalry doesn't need any law to prevent enjoyment. It does so by itself. It is the law that restrains rivalry and permits for enjoyment of the object.

Actually no, my interest in PUA stemmed mainly from my interest in persuasion and the surrounding pseudo sciences which, yes, peddle a lot of bull shit, but also do offer some interesting information. As a man I found it interesting and entertaining that people are out there using quasi-rigorous systems for "pulling" women, and I admit I've used a few of the confidence and presentation tricks that the PUA crowd will peddle, but no, I'm not a PUA. — VagabondSpectre

And what is this if not fascination with rivals in the sexual game? :s

The freedom that results in social obstacles (obstacles toward obtaining a faithful wife?) is the same kind of freedom that results in innovation, but more importantly, happiness.

A law which guarantees the same for all in such a freedom restricting manner seems counter-productive. The sexual market filled with rivalry of conflict produces some big winners and many losers, but many people do not wish to live a society where they cannot be free to make their own sexual decisions for the marital sake of others. — VagabondSpectre

That's not freedom. Again, rivarly is the dissolution of freedom - it is the restraining of rivalry through laws, both social and moral, that permits there to be freedom in the first place. To be under the impression that rivalry is freedom is nothing else but to buy into a mythological and sacrificial society which demands the expulsion of certain "guilty" victims in order to secure peace and prosperity for the others. It is exactly what Christianity has fought against, and what paradoxically enables you to be critical of certain versions of Christianity today.

Maybe.... Maybe some promiscuity enhances one's ability to develop intimacy... Why is intimacy a zero sum game where we only have so much of it to dole out in one life-time? — VagabondSpectre

Yes that is a logical possibility, you have yet to show that it holds in practice. Furthermore, intimacy isn't some kind of currency that you have a limited amount of, so until you formulate a clear understanding of intimacy it is pointless to discuss this.

You do realize we don't live in the jungles of Darkest Africa, right? — VagabondSpectre

Right, even in our society we do need families in order to adequately take care of infants. Some people can do without this, precisely because the majority doesn't do without it.

Why not polygamy given the fact that males have higher rates of death than females (so there are more women to go around) and the fact that the few very successful men can provide better for more women than many men can provide for one? — VagabondSpectre

No, I don't think they can provide better for more women. They may be able to provide better from a strictly economic point of view, but that's not what's under discussion now, since there are other aspects which are just as important if not more important. You do realise that those women will be exceedingly rivalrous with each other don't you? I hope you're not under the imagination that those women would be happy to be shared.

Doesn't our biology also root polygamy in our souls? — VagabondSpectre

No, because polygamy isn't a way to harmonise all aspects of our soul together. That's precisely the problem. You may solve an economic issue through polygamy, but you do that by neglecting other issues.

What if... What if death due to child-birth caused a deficit of females.... Shouldn't we then be polyandrists (multiple husbands to one wife)? — VagabondSpectre

Maybe, but that wouldn't be a good situation to be in. It would be like having a sickness that one doesn't have much choice about. So not immoral, but not good either. It would be a temporary solution at most.

They're too strict for everyone to be happy with, so what can you offer to those people? — VagabondSpectre

They're not going to be happy with lack of strictness either. People are woefully bad at determining what will make them happy.

" Humans are more often than not deceived in what they think will make them happy". Bullocks! I'm sure humans are often wield naive desires, but to say that we're mostly deceived about what will make us happy is a very suspicious claim indeed. — VagabondSpectre

It's a true psychological fact, virtually unanimously accepted in psychoanalysis for example. If you look at most people's lives you will see this as well. Most people aren't exactly happy - they always find reasons to complain, new desires, etc. Everyone is neurotic to a certain extent or another, not everyone is pathologically neurotic. Freud for example differentiated between an ordinary Oedipus Complex (which all people have more or less) and an abnormal one, which is pathological.

And just how do you quantify the "soul"? — VagabondSpectre

How exactly do you quantify pleasure?

So you're just doubtful that promiscuous or gay or trans or any sexually deviant person can actually be happy? — VagabondSpectre

Happiness comes by degrees, they can achieve some degrees of happiness, I'm sure of that.

Can you source this doubt in anything other than appealing to vague culturally informed perspectives like "casual sex is harmful" and "monogamy is necessary for fulfillment"? — VagabondSpectre

Yes, mental health issues are frequently more commonly seen amongst the trans, gay, etc.

"Homosexuality of all kinds results from an obsession with hot men and women and increased sexual desire which causes heterosexual attraction to shift to homosexual attraction".

I feel like I need to dumb this down even further to appraise it:

"Too much sex and you'll grow hair on your penis become homosexual"...

I don't know why but I'm skeptical of this... Were it true, why should we even care morally speaking? — VagabondSpectre

No, that's not what that says. It's a complete misrepresentation, in both cases.

You had to throw a cuck in there didn't you? :D — VagabondSpectre

Well yes, the cuck is latently homosexual. He has reached the stage of desire where the sexual object can only be enjoyed in the presence of the rival.

I think that the writers of Christian doctrine may not have wanted any sexual deviance to ensure "fruitfulness" (which helps explain the popularity of the religion), but we shouldn't take it for granted that homosexuality results in god turning innocent women to salt pillars and committing genocide... — VagabondSpectre

This doesn't follow, they would not prohibit homosexual sex in that case, just people being entirely homosexual.

"Promotes tendencies"? Am I a child or a dog incapable of reasoned thought and self control? — VagabondSpectre

Well yes, most people are incapable of too much self-control. Another psychological fact.

You ever consider that the same sort of culture which had them marry their first sexual partner also has something to do with keeping them together? — VagabondSpectre

Oh, so it was a successful culture. Good!

This whole "objectifying" shtick is intellectually bankrupt. At no point when my penis consensually enters the vagina of a woman (even during casual sex) do I cease to perceive that the woman is a person rather than an in-animate object or cattle-like beast of burden. I in fact retain my cognitive faculties even during sex. You're operating on the ridiculous myth of rape culture peddled by third wave feminism. — VagabondSpectre

It's not peddled by third wave feminism, the argument is as old as Kant, and perhaps even older. But it is not intellectually bankrupt. Of course you don't actually treat her exactly like an inanimate object. The point is that there is a gradation from treating someone as a person to treating them as an object. You are lower down towards the object end in this case, but obviously not as low as raping her for example.

Being a good human in the same sense that a triangle is a good triangle doesn't make us moral... Someone with the cranial pathology of a serial killer could be effective at doing murder, a "good serial killer"... You could even say that's what fulfills them. Does that make them moral? — VagabondSpectre

No. You confuse what they think will fulfil them and hence what they do, with what would actually fulfil them.

The fact is that not everyone is happy to abide your strict sexually puritanical standards despite your insistence that it is unhealthy for them to be disregarded. — VagabondSpectre

Sure, I don't expect them to. People are free, hence we expect them to make wrong choices amongst others.

No Agustino, when you look people in a room they do not essentially replicate the mythical formation of Christianity. — VagabondSpectre

It's not the mythical formation of Christianity, it's the mythical formation of all societies. There's a lot of studies done about this in anthropology, for example, Levi-Strauss comes to mind, as well as René Girard and Eric Voegelin.

I assure you Agustino, there ARE individuals. Sometimes people have the same desire and sometimes there is conflict as a result, but there are individuals. For example, us! — VagabondSpectre

No, we're not individuals either. Just look at when someone posted a picture of feet in the Shoutbox - everyone else started to do the same. Just because people around here have a higher IQ doesn't mean they're less prone to succumb to mimetic tendencies which are biologically inherent in us.

As far as replacement metaphysics goes, nobody needs metaphysics. Absolute certainty is not the flavor of science or any self-critical philosophy... — VagabondSpectre

Metaphysics isn't the same as absolute certainty. That's what Descartes thought, and he was wrong.

Nobody needs metaphysics to do what? You do need metaphysics if you want to understand reality, it's inescapable if that's what you want to do.

For instance, 'promiscuity is immoral for x reasons' seems to me the antithesis of virtue ethics, it's importing a rule from a Kantian system itself based on Christianity and then claiming virtue for it. — mcdoodle

I noticed you have this misunderstanding of virtue ethics (at least of the Aristotelian kind) ever since we discussed MacIntyre in another thread. You seem to think that virtue ethics cannot say X is wrong, because that somehow has to do with Kant's categorical imperative.

The actual argument has to do with how people were position by the economic and social systems of control to be adverse to homosexuality-- it breaks the "natural" account people are automatically attracted to the opposite sex and destined to have a family. The issue isn't really that a certain section of the population will spend their lives with people of the same sex, but rather that certain social organisations cannot effectively assert power within the context of gay people being accepted.

You lose, for example, the ability to spilt social roles in an exclusive dichotomy between men and women, the account that humans are destined to have a heterosexual relationship and children, etc. Gay people are the scapegoat for a concern for power and economics. So it's not that people in the past cannot see their left hand from their right, it is they are ignorant by their own greed for wealth, social power and domination. They would throw gay people under a bus to dominate others.

The only reason being gay appears "unstable" is because those in power think and tell everyone so, such that a stable social environment it understood to exclude them. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes and no - you're carrying out a Foucauldian / structuralist analysis. What this analysis blinds you from seeing is precisely the origin of those economic and social systems - what is their origin? Why have they necessarily structured themselves around the expulsion of the victim, with prohibitions on one side and ritual on the other? What was there before the structuration?

You assume that there is a natural account that people "automatically" give. You assume that power structures result out of the planning of the greedy and power hungry who would throw gay people under the bus to dominate, etc. This structural analysis, far from being a revelation of the hidden mechanisms of society, is nothing else except another myth, built on scapegoating and victimage, just like the myths of the past. Just the victim has changed, but not the fact that the victim is guilty - that has remained the same.

It's the fault of those who are in power, the 1%, the greedy, the power hungry, etc. - they must be expelled from society and thrown under the bus, just like the homosexuals were in the past, then things will be aright.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. — Matthew 23-29:31

People enacted them. That is their origin. For the most part, they are not planned at all, but driven by an instinctual response to the presence or absence of a particular status. Would be kings are fooled into the scapegoating by their own instinct to dominate society. There must be an image to hang their power on, to generate and keep their interest above anyone else, regardless of any actual threat posed by a scapegoated community.

But leaders do not get anywhere on their own. They must be believed by others. Contrary to your claim, it is not merely the in power who are at fault, but rather everyone-- those who would fall for the whispering of the snake, those who would raise the scapegoat to the powerful out of disgust or fear in the first instance, those who would take an image of morality rather than address morality itself.

I don't assume this is the account people usually give. Indeed, it rarely is. Most people are caught up in the culture and traditions of their own rule. They will steadfastly deny their are any victims in the face of their traditions-- even someone like yourself, who is supposedly aware, don their Pharisee garb announcing gay people are immoral by their nature rather than recognising your argument as a scapegoating of them in favour of your traditions of power. Recognising the victims present in power reaction often hard won though effort and study.

What's prior to a given structure depends on the states if the world prior to it's development. In the case of a particular issue, this may well be entirely different for the particular people in question-- e.g. gay people going about their business in whatever society before the new religious leaders come down announcing homosexuality is the scourge to be wiped out, indigenous populations holding property and being valued community members prior to being overtaken in colonisation, etc.

These analysis of power are not myths. They are descriptions of the movement of values and structures in relation to populations. In any of them, the expulsion of the victim was only necessary to achieve the will and power of the dominating group. It's not merely the fault of the 1% in power at all. Such notions mistake the context of the structural analysis.

These aren't causal accounts of structure, but rather accounts of being of structure and power. For any structure, there are a multitude of causes (leaders, masses, instincts, fears, circumstances of power, in some rare cases, deliberate planning by an elite, etc.), which are not addressed in this analysis. In this analysis, the point is about what is done to a particular people under structure, regardless of how it might have been caused.

How is 's moral philosophy different from natural law theory?

Just asking this because I have a few issues with natural law theory that would seem to be applicable to Augustino's views if it is indeed the case that Augustino is a natural law theorist.

Just asking this because I have a few issues with natural law theory that would seem to be applicable to Augustino's views if it is indeed the case that Augustino is a natural law theorist. — darthbarracuda

My ethics bears a family resemblance with other strands of Aristotelian virtue ethics (and by extension to some strands of natural law theories), but it's not the same on certain points. One point of difference, for example, is in my conception of sex as having two purposes, intimacy and reproduction, and so long as one of them is met, the activity isn't immoral - with the former taking precedence over the latter if they ever come in conflict.

I don't like the terms "natural law" by the way - it makes it sound as if the "laws" are external to one's being.