People enacted them. That is their origin. — TheWillowOfDarkness

True, but very superficial. Why did they enact them?

For the most part, they are not planned at all, but driven by an instinctual response — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree with this, but not with what immediately follows it.

Would be kings are fooled into the scapegoating by their own instinct to dominate society. — TheWillowOfDarkness

And their own instinct to dominate society is in-born? :s

But leaders do not get anywhere on their own. They must be believed by others. — TheWillowOfDarkness

So if leaders don't get anywhere and they must be believed by others, how does it happen that they are ever beleived in the first place and so gain power over them?

even someone like yourself, who is supposedly aware, don their Pharisee garb announcing gay people are immoral by their nature — TheWillowOfDarkness

No, I wouldn't say that. For someone to be immoral, they have to be immoral by choice in the first place, so obviously not by nature.

scapegoating of them — TheWillowOfDarkness

Claiming that their behaviour is immoral isn't the same as scapegoating them. It is true that scapegoats are often accused to immorality amongst other things, but the primary accusation is responsibility for the ills of society.

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. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Idyllic.

These analysis of power are not myths. — TheWillowOfDarkness

They are myths, because they scapegoat the powerful.

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. — TheWillowOfDarkness

To me, all this ignores the spontaneous power of violence that would otherwise destroy a community in its natural state. Scapegoating is the spontaneous, unplanned, instinctual response of transferring the destructive violence of the community onto a scapegoat who is held responsible for it and guilty, deserving death. This allows the community to unite around the scapegoat, who is thus both guilty of the violent crisis of the community and also responsible for its settlement. That's why the victim is often sacralized and perceived to be a god - we have this evidence in abundance in available anthropological research. It is only after this event 0 that structures start to form - rituals, prohitibitions, political institutions (kings, etc.).

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

Yes. I also believe causing any enthropy is immoral. You should be more careful with rhetorical questions.

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. — Agustino

Virtue ethics can't, I feel, import a rule from a rule-based system and claim, without further ado, that it can be renamed a virtue. The medieval Christian compromise was to have the sort of mish-mash that MacIntyre tries to clear away. When I read your responses to others it seems to me that you have the same sort of mish-mash. But I don't believe I've seen you arguing the case from first principles, so obnviously I may misunderstand your view.

I certainly think 'promiscuity is wrong' places itself outside virtue ethics, because it names the type of activity in a pejorative way at the outset, in a way that no Aristotelian would. The judgement has already been made before the discussion begins, by the very naming of having multiple sexual partners as 'promiscuity'. But perhaps this is shorthand for some other more complex argument you have that would fit into the virtue/vice framework, I don't know.

renamed a virtue — mcdoodle

:s Aristotle had already looked into chastity (called continence). Nothing is imported and renamed a virtue. Chastity itself is a virtue. And it's not so because of any rules.

'promiscuity is wrong' — mcdoodle

No it's not, it's effectively saying that chastity is a virtue - promiscuity is the opposite of that.

And what does promiscuity mean if not having multiple sexual partners?

I enjoyed your explanation and defense of first cause, it was rather eloquent.
I simply lack the time to keep up with all these interesting threads, unless I devoted myself to keep up with them to expense of actually reading philosophy. I'll try to follow as I can.
The biggest thing I've learned so far is that the best I can hope for with a philosophy (in my case Monism) is one that is streamlined and internally consistent and which offers a plausible explanation for experience. You're thought does that, so I'm taking notes. Thanks!

Aristotle had already looked into chastity (called continence). Nothing is imported and renamed a virtue. Chastity itself is a virtue. And it's not so because of any rules. — Agustino

This is not correct. Continence is not a virtue and incontinence (akrasia) is not a vice; they are ways of dealing with one's knowledge and motives. Neither of them for Aristotle, have anything to do with sexual continence or incontinence. You have just misunderstood, you must be reading Aristotle at second- or third-hand.

It is perfectly possible to argue for a conservative sexual morality from Aristotelian principles, I'm not disputing that at all. Roger Scruton is the popular one that I know. But not by this shortcut you propose.

And what does promiscuity mean if not having multiple sexual partners? — Agustino

You miss my point. 'Promiscuity' does indeed mean having multiple sexual partners. But so does 'free love'. 'Promiscuity' defines 'free love' in a critical way from the outset. It would be like a leftie like me claiming to have an even-handed argument about capitalism by saying our agenda is exploitation and the evil of capitalism: it marks the philosophical card with a deep bias before we start.

Neither of them for Aristotle, have anything to do with sexual continence or incontinence. You have just misunderstood, you must be reading Aristotle at second- or third-hand. — mcdoodle

I suggest you pop out the Nichomachean Ethics and check what it says about continence. Doesn't continence involve self-restraint and self-control, the opposite of promiscuity? Isn't licentiousness (including sexual) closely associated with incontinence? :s

Promiscuity' does indeed mean having multiple sexual partners. But so does 'free love'. — mcdoodle

Promiscuity is the same as free love, just a different name. When the name is dirty, you change it for another one, hoping to trick some people.

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. — Agustino

Assuming that your present teleological distinctions represent complete descriptions is the same inductive leap which you accuse Hume of fumbling... I don't get how you you actually demonstrate that there is no induction problem...

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. — Agustino

The problem with ontology and metaphysics though is that they tend to prevent us from doing good science:

In constructing your categories and classifications, you imbue your prior assumptions about "the structure of reality and the way things fit together" into their framework and case-work .

People like to point out that today's science might be tomorrows pseudo-science due to new evidence... This is actually a good thing though; science creates categories and descriptions like "mass" and "electron" but it does not open with the assumption that these labels and categories necessarily represent objective, complete, and universal truth (such as in many ontological approaches). Science leaves room for it's initial assumptions and place-holder models to continuously improve, whereas the assumptions involved in the four cause model are either permanent or quite difficult to alter.

So I guess your induction jump, and is ought gap transfer (yay skateboarding!) goes a little something like this:

P1: There are objective categories and classifications that things belong to, and homo-sapien sapien is one of these categories.

P2: observing humans allows me to define elements of the objective homo-sapien sapien category

P3: humans who willfully deviate from the objectively human set of behaviors are bad/immoral humans

P4: promiscuity is not an objectively human behavior

C1: it can be stated with objective and normative certainty that willfully engaging in promiscuity is immoral

Premise one isn't so controversial, but as I've pointed out there are issues with assuming that the human category will be clean and straightforward like cups and watches. Premise two is where the induction problem rests, and I don't actually see how you demonstrate it doesn't exist by assuming it doesn't. Premise three I think is controversial mostly because it works from a limited (narrow) conception of the human category and the assumption that all humans must share every element from an objective list of properties. Deviation is a mechanism of progress and evolution which is not in and of itself harmful or immoral (if we're to include evolution in our understanding that is). Rather than a linear list of elements, the human category actually is more akin to a list whose elements are intentionally varied across individuals and depending on the environment we happen to exist for the specific purpose of ensuring the success and survival of our species.

If we really whittle down the definition of human to what is truly essential and universal, we're left with almost nothing useful. Is a mutated still-born fetus a human? Genetically, mostly or yes, but does it bear any other resemblance to what you would thrust as "essentially human"? What truly makes a human human? Are human vegetables human? If so why do we call them vegetables? Is to be human merely to be the thinking analyzing kind of creature that we pride ourselves in being? What does merely "is a thinking and feeling creature" tell us about what we morally ought to think or the astounding variance in what humans actually do think? What objective moral standards can you draw from these basic observations of what is universal?

It's more difficult to reason from a basic principle instead of a more specific one like "monogamy is essential to intimacy and fulfillment and promiscuity prevents monogamy", but the end results are moral positions which are more universally applicable and more universally universally persuasive.

The coherence of science doesn't come from starting premises which indicate objectively certain knowledge though. It' coherence comes from the fact that it continuously expands and improves it's existing theories, models, and predictive powers, such that overtime it begins to approximate objective truth. The approximately objective truths that science has been known to produce don't come with the guarantee of objective and absolute certainty, but they do come with the guarantee that they're more useful and robust than the "truths" that every other methodology or school of thought has produced (save perhaps mathematics). The body of science coheres over time, and as a whole it's already more useful, coherent and sophisticated than anything that has come before it.

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. — Agustino

We want to understand what things are, and generally we need to understand how they came about in order to do that, but in some cases it's irrelevant. In order to understand how given computer works, you need to understand it's design (it's form), but you don't need to know who designed it or the processes involved in actually designing it. You also don't need to know how it was physically fabricated in order to have useful mastery over it's actual workings (our predictive power). Science is concerned with the non-agent that is the physical world.

I'm curious though; do you just take the accepted and cutting edges of science transmute them into your overall teleology? That is to say, does science actually do all the real work of classification and discovery while you sit back and cherry pick it's descriptions to hit with the "objective telos" stamp?

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? — Agustino

Well we could start by not assuming we know the full extent of "final cause" (which then forces us to bend interpretation to fit our expectations), and we could let the various fields of science slowly do the work for us of proposing models (models which don't necessarily conform to the 4 cause rubric) that have predictive power (and are thus falsifiable), where over time stronger and more detailed theories will be developed which can basically answer every question you might have about birds or bees.

Until deeper and more fundamental models are constructed (reductionism) science humbly asks you to settle for place-holder theories (future pseudo-sciences) that happen to have stronger predictive power in their subject than anything else we have available.

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. — Agustino

Understanding what something is made of, versus how it came into existence, versus how it actually functions can be almost entirely discreet from one-another. I'm not saying we should never ask one or more of these questions, I'm saying we shouldn't labor under the assumption that by connecting these arbitrary dots we come to ultimate and objective truth.

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. — Agustino

When things exist on a spectrum (color, mass, distance, quantity, IQ, force, devotion, etc...) and we arbitrarily delineate categories (like red-blue-green, light-heavy, near-far, few-many, stupid-smart, weak-strong, purposeless-fulfilled), we can have a somewhat difficult time noticing when something actually falls in-between categories rather than cleanly into one or the other. It could just be because we need more delineation between points on the spectrum, but because unknown spurious factors might be giving rise to variation that we're not even noticing, we therefore never need to explain and alter our theories. So my point here is that you have essentially created the two categories natural, and unnatural, and because of your hard and fast assumptions about what lands you in either category you have wound up failing to understand more than half the population who in so many ways exhibit behavior that doesn't meet the standards of your definition of what humans objectively ought to do.

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. — Agustino

Guesstimating four causes and calling it objective truth was the best Aristotle could do because he didn't have what modern science had: breakthrough discoveries and instruments. Understanding how the sun formed, or the goings-on of microbiology (including the ramifications of a genetically proven evolutionary biology) were not accessible to him. I'm not hating on the guy, I'm just saying that his four cause model seems like what a laymen would come up with had they never been introduced to the methods and tools of empirical science. The four cause model won't get you a better understanding of the physical world than science will; you can put metaphysical lipstick on science's prized inductive pig, but it's still an inductive pig.

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. — Agustino

So what then does the leap into your metaphysical world actually grant us other than a frail excuse to claim the objectivity ("coherence") that you deny is a product of science?

My understanding of metaphysics is admittedly fraught with bias: I conceive that it is like some hypothetical external-external reality where concepts can be tangible facts, where morality and the laws of physics are actually written in stone, where some kind of ultimate and certain truth dwells, and where physical evidence doesn't matter because we have no direct access to that realm anyway...

Metaphysics can be whatever you want them to be. Certain, uncertain; changing.

What is so important to you about adding or preserving a metaphysical component to your world view?

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. — Agustino

Not all human action is directed towards reproduction though. If only by evolutionary accident, many humans are born destined to never reproduce. Our behavior doesn't necessarily obey our biological imperatives. The conscious and intelligent mind which makes humans so unique ensures that we have many chances of not simply living for the sake of reproduction. People choose to live for the sake of living; living is the final cause: the freedom to behave as we choose. You're missing the point though: you cannot authoritatively interpret what evolutionary mechanisms exist in humans because you understand too little evolutionary theory and too little human biology. You assume that sexual monogamy is the method of reproduction we were designed for but in reality life-long pair bonding is just one of many sexual and social arrangements that human biology is capable of expressing and sustaining. Genghis khan supposedly impregnated thousands of women, so what might that say about the biology of his descendants?

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

So Aristotle thought that if you ask and answer a few basic and obvious questions when confronted with a world of change using prima facie observations, that he could catalog and therefore understand all objects in existence? It feels vaguely scientific, but it's child's play compared to the breadth and complexity of empirical science. "Humans" aren't just a category of thing with four tidy or digestable causes, they're a thing of immense complexity whose function and behavior we're still working to comprehend, and which entails the comprehension of countless sub-theories and parts (which themselves have sub-theories and parts) with no end in sight.

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. — Agustino

People consciously have sex because it feels good, not necessarily because they want to reproduce. You can say they're frustrating the evolutionary purpose of sex, but why should they give a fuck for evolution? Aren't the ends of the moral agent more important than the ends of evolution or their efficient cause?

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. — Agustino

Now I know what you meant by nature is slavery: you think that if we consciously act in any way which you can conceive as counter-productive to our evolutionary trajectory that we're being immoral, and so to be moral must be slaves to our biology by living conservative monogamous lives and create a new generation so it can create another generation which can then create another generation which can then create anoth-....

What's so morally obligatory about marriage and reproduction again? The sake of the species?

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

If you could legitimately flesh out the harm in the things you decry as unnatural you would actually persuade me to agree with you. I happen to currently hold the position that the level of sexual repression you advocate for is too harmful for too many (in terms of both health and happiness) to justify the bump in successful marriage rates.

It's harmful because it frustrates their telos, because frustrating their telos is harmful. [INSERT ARBITRARY TELOS HERE]

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. — Agustino

"Humans have freedom of choice, therefore variance". Are you saying that variance is naturally built-in to the behavior of humans via reason?

If the variance that results from our evolutionary caused rational minds is part and parcel with it's function, design, and well-being, why do you contest that variance from some arbitrary standard is necessarily harmful. (I.E, irreversible vascetomies are immoral becausechildren are too important to try to not have, promiscuity is immoral because it appears to threaten standard western monogamy, tattoos are immoral because permanently marking your body damages it's purity, and having casual sex is immoral because it harms the intimacy that you might have with a future spouse).

You cannot just assume what the proper human telos is and then state that whatever goes against that telos is harmful and therefore immoral.

I can't tell when you're reasoning that something is harmful because it's unnatural and when you're reasoning it's unnatural because it's harmful

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. — Agustino

Why would evolution endow us with enduring variability if there was only one correct answer to how to live?

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. — Agustino

Obviously a fingernail isn't a human, but this is my point. We cant adequately reduce or summarize "human" into a consistent and universally applicable category because we're simply too complex and diverse.

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), — Agustino

Settle down there Spock...

humans are rational creatures with free will — Agustino

The illusion of free will, sure (you won't believe it's not real free will!), but some of us are more rational than others... Does that mean rational blokes like you and me ought to be getting a lion's share of the reproductive opportunities?

The reason and choice thing is more or less what gives rise to moral questions in the first-place, but it doesn't clearly point us in any objective moral directions.

we are subject to disease and aging (which are also inevtiable), women have to be pregnant for 9 months, — Agustino

*sigh...

The 9 month gestation thing again...

What is it about a 9 month gestation period that makes it useful for deriving normative arguments about healthy living again? That women need help giving birth?

Is that really the breakthrough understanding of the universe that Aristotle had in mind?

there's a lot of invariant structures in what makes a human being human - much more than there are in triangles actually — Agustino

And humans are born with feet usually, and eyeballs too, usually, and we like a body temp of around 37 Celsius...

If we put all these basic facts about humans into your moral calculator, what results do we get? That we need to live monogamously to rear children successfully for the sake of propagating the species under the delusion of a scape-goat-god who forgives us for our natural god-given deviances, thereby alleviating our guilt and emotional distress which allows us to live truly free and moral lives?

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. — Agustino

Your insistence that the arbitrary standard you have identified is the objective one, and that any deviation from that standard is like a sickness, encapsulates the main fault with your reasoning... Just because something is not practiced or approved by the majority, or you, doesn't make that thing inherently sick or harmful or immoral.

You should abandon teleology as a moral framework altogether and just stick to arguing that your objective standard is the universal best and that deviating from it is harmful.

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. — Agustino

You would classify someone with a tattoo as self-harming and immoral, all because you have made the logical leap of accepting that your teleological assessments have some ultimate and metaphysically objective quality; they're based on your own personal sentiments.

...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.... — Agustino

You allude that things are against an organism's interests, and you will say this is because it goes against their teleology (their final cause of reproduction and your vision of mental and sexual health) but at no point do you actually explain how things like homosexuality/promiscuity are actually harmful except in terms like "it frustrates their interests" or some unsubstantiated and unpersuasive hokum about intimacy and ludicrously slippery slopes ending with the fall of western society. You will give examples like "suicide" and "cannibalism" to illustrate how choosing to engage in harmful things is immoral, but you will never actually show in detail why the things you claim are immoral are actually themselves harmful. It's ultimately circular: X is harmful because it goes against our telos, X is against our telos because it is harmful.

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. — Agustino

It follows from the statement "a murderer feels happy" that "the murderer is happy".

"The more happy he is, the more unhappy he is" is just nonsense.

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. — Agustino

Sounds like you are saying humans are invariantly variant.

Got it. Nine months in the womb, we eat shit sleep and die, and we're invariantly variant. 10/10 definition; would actually employ.

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. — Agustino

Which side of myself is the natural one, the side of intimacy or the side of promiscuity? Why do you get to decide which is healthy and unhealthy?

Don't you see the circularity in saying "repressing a side of yourself is by definition a case of harm and immorality" when you have yourself subjectively and haphazardly chosen what is to be repressed and what is not to be repressed based on your own puritan like sexual standards?

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

So much of psycho-analysis is bull-shit, I really don't see why buying into facile theories like your model/rival scenario is worthwhile...

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. — Agustino

Oh me.. Oh my...

So you're against capitalism then I take it?

In any case, in my experience promiscuity actually leads to sexual fulfillment and intimacy (maybe even life long monogamous intimacy). But these platitudes and maxims do not objective arguments make.

"Promiscuity leads to the gradual (and harmful) impossibility of sexual fulfillment"...

Without saying "because it's true", please explain why the above isn't bull shit?

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

Fascination with persuasion in a social and intellectual ideas game. I wanted to know all the ways in which people are actually persuaded to change or develop their beliefs so that I can myself be more resistant to irrational forms of persuasion and utilize fully what rational forms of persuasion are available (and maybe the irrational one's on occasion, but I know you wont hold that against me!).

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. — Agustino

You have yet to show that "promiscuity prevents intimacy" holds in practice, and since you're the one making that normative claim, the burden of proof is on you to actually demonstrate the strength and validity of your position with reason and evidence Once you show that promiscuity does destroy intimacy, then you can begin trying to show why intimacy is required for health and happiness in the first place.

I raised the question to show how easy it is to make a weak claim about what is possible and reveal how utterly unsupported the centerpieces of your moral stances on sex and sexuality are.

If I can say "well gee golly, what if casual sex isn't actually harmful and stuff?" and you're response is "that's possible, prove it" It makes your position seem very weakly defended. You should be able to prove to me why casual sex is harmful. I know I've asked you to explain it many times, but it always comes out as a string of hasty assumptions on a slippery slope which ranges from intimacy problems to the collapse of western society.

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. — Agustino

You mean the masses cannot take advantage of the massive daycare/nanny industry that is the public school system?

I hope you're not under the imagination that those women would be happy to be shared. — Agustino

Depends on the culture and the person unfortunately... There are many accounts of genuinely non brainwashed women who have no negative feelings because of the polygamous relationship they're in. Assuming that we all need to live and behave in this one way to be happy is the endemic problem with your stances toward sex.

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. — Agustino

Harmonize all aspects of our soul?

Aug, that's nonsense.

Whatever your idea of harmony and souls and togetherness is, it's not necessarily shared by everyone else. The idea that you know the best sexual practices for everyone else is a delusion

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. — Agustino

And if no solution were found and polyandry became tradition, what then? Then would it be moral?

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

Maybe, but they're woefully great at determining what will make them woeful. Being told to conform in ways that are ultimately displeasing is enduringly painful.

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. — Agustino

(what's a true fact?)

It's a true homeopathic fact, virtually unanimously accepted by all crystal energy healing dealers, that bad energy needs to be sucked out of each and every human as often as possible using shiny and collectable rocks. Show me a single psychoanalyst who isn't high on their own cocaine conjecture...

What is desire and happiness in the first place? I'm sure it's fun to run wild with intuition and all hat but it's not clinically reliable. Homosexuality isn't just some "rival/model" confusion explainable from your fireside armchair...

Psychoanalysis is stupid, experimentally unsubstantiated, and clinically unreliable: it's mostly pseudo-science. There, I said it...

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

But not that special monogamy kind of happiness right? Which is the real fulfillment right?

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

Derrrrrrr................... Gay people have more mental disease so gayness must cause it........

Derrrrrrr?

Trying to get a gay person to be un-gay I reckon is more harmful than letting them live as a gay person, so how does the gayness cause actual harm?

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. — Agustino

Leave it to the extreme variance of human beings to come up with retarded psycho-analytical explanations for cuckoldry that sound like some english lecturer explaining the life-cycle and reproductive habits of some obscure foreign bird...

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

Or maybe they were just intolerant ignorant bigots who thought we needed to kill gays or else the world would soon come to an end? Yea that.

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

This isn't a psychological fact, it's vague, imprecise, ambiguous, and not obviously true.

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 — Agustino

Why didn't you make this dubious gradient clear before and instead communicted in sloppy and innacurate absolute terms in the first place? No matter...

At what point do I begin to begin to harm a woman by treating her as an object on this descending gradient? How do we actually quantify or measure this "object" treatment and at what point does it become immoral?

How do we know when casual sex will cause someone to treat people like objects?

I don't care if Newton himself discovered sexual objectification, it's absolutely stupid to suppose that casual sex magically makes people behave harmfully towards one another. The only people peddling that idea these days are the third wave feminists.

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

You confuse what you think would fulfill you with how everyone else is morally obligated to behave.

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. — Agustino

Do you have so little standards for consistency that you allow yourself to employ the notion "there are no individuals" as a part of whatever argument?

It's all great well and cool that people copy each-other, but obviously we have somewhat original thoughts and freedom right?

"There are no individuals" is useless...

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. — Agustino

I'm not saying that metaphysics is the same as absolute certainty, I'm saying you invent a fictitious sense of absolute certainty by presuming that your personal assessments of human telos are grounded in metaphysical truth. Your metaphysics amounts to an assumption that your categories and classifications are the objective truth to begin with.

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. — Agustino

How do we come to know the telos of something like sex? How are we to know if we have the correct interpretation? Do we simply look at nature and "recognize" function? How does this work?

How do we come to know the telos of something like sex? — darthbarracuda

The same way we know the telos of any other thing/activity - by looking for the end towards which it is directed. In the case of sex, one such end is clearly reproduction, since it can only occur through sexual intercourse. Clearly, we see that sex is necessary in the economy of nature in order to allow for reproduction. If all pleasure was somehow eliminated from sex, it would still be necessary in order to permit for reproduction.

For human beings, there seems to be another end which is simultaneous to reproduction - and that is intimacy. But that isn't so for animals - just for human beings. That's why human beings attempt to make love, and not just have sex and reproduce. Even the promiscuous, however blindly, are searching for this intimacy, even if they're not aware of it.

Do we simply look at nature and "recognize" function? How does this work? — darthbarracuda

You look at the context in which the action happens and understand how it fits in - how it connects with everything else.

You look at the context in which the action happens and understand how it fits in - how it connects with everything else. — Agustino

By this, do you mean, we identify common patterns of functionality? Does a pattern imply an essential feature, though?

Does a pattern imply an essential feature, though? — darthbarracuda

Not necessarily. They could also be accidental features. That's why you have to conceive of the activity in its context and determine if the feature is accidental in that context or essential. With regards to sexuality for non-human animals, it is clear that something like pleasure is accidental (just a means) and something like reproduction essential (the end). Nature could do without the one, but not without the other.

How do we determine this, though? What is this process?

How do we determine this, though? What is this process? — darthbarracuda

I have already answered that. You have to look at the activity or thing in its full context and how it fits in with everything else. You will detect both essential features and accidental ones when you do that. I've illustrated how that is done with regards to non-human sexuality.

The same way we know the telos of any other thing/activity - by looking for the end towards which it is directed. — Agustino

I'm trying to figure out this concept of telos/purpose.

Isn't the telos of everything (object and person) primarily to exist? It is better to exist than not exist and God delights in their existence.
Squirrels are created to be squirrels (and God saw that was good). Do squirrels serve a telos to also be food for foxes and for methods of distributions of acorns? Or is this not telos? Does God design nuts and squirrels and foxes together on purpose or are they related only by chance?

As for humans our telos is to draw closer to God thru virtue.
Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? Just like love of a parent is a shadow/manifestion/mode of divine love.

Isn't the telos of everything (object and person) primarily to exist? — MysticMonist

Yes, the telos of the whole Creation is God, and as such all Creation attempts to draw closer to God, however unknowingly.

Do squirrels serve a telos to also be food for foxes and for methods of distributions of acorns? — MysticMonist

No, since it's not the necessary end of their existence on any level of analysis.

Does God design nuts and squirrels and foxes together on purpose or are they related only by chance? — MysticMonist

Who's food for whom is probably an accidental feature that emerged along with sin. But obviously, this would be going beyond the virtue ethics of Aristotle.

Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? — MysticMonist

Well - as I said, ultimately the telos of the whole Creation is God. The First Cause is also the end towards which all things are oriented.

However, this all depends on the level of analysis. When we talk about the telos of sex exclusively, we consider it within its immediate and more restricted context - hence intimacy and reproduction are seen to be the purposes. They are the direct purposes of sex - as opposed to indirect purposes which are those purposes that are fulfilled by the purposes of sex themselves.

Obviously, intimacy and reproduction themselves have other purposes, they are not ends in themselves. We are intimate, as you say, as a symbolic representation of our individual and collective union with God. So that is the telos of intimacy. And as we advance through things, at the most general level, the telos of everything put together is seen to be God. God is thus seen as being that which holds everything together.

It is a very good question!

I'm trying to figure out this concept of telos/purpose. — MysticMonist

There's a pretty good encyclopedia entry on telos on IETP

Wouldn't part of the telos of human sexuality be not just intimacy between partners but as a shadow/manifestation/mode of Divine love and our ecstatic union with God? Just like love of a parent is a shadow/manifestion/mode of divine love. — MysticMonist

I'm sure that is the reason why the 'sacrament of marriage' is seen as central to Christianity. It establishes a relationship between 'the divine source' and human individuals 'here below'. Hence the frequent readings of Paul's epistles on love in Christian marriage ceremonies.

as we advance through things, at the most general level, the telos of everything put together is seen to be God. God is thus seen as being that which holds everything together. — Agustino

This was well put.

You mention animals eating one another is the result of sin? That's a curious thought. I want to revisit this later. Anything I should read about this view of sin in the meantime?


Yes Paul does mention this, but so does Torah. I'm coming back around to theism, but I'm far from theologically orthodox Christian. I tend to take a Quranic view on most things. So I don't imply a Christian meaning to anything I say. I'm definitely not a trinitarian. I'm not a fan of Paul

I don't check the 'Christian' box on the census form, but then readings from Paul were read at both mine and my son's wedding.

Fair enough.

I've skimmed through the thread and have a couple comments.

In the case of sex, one such end is clearly reproduction, since it can only occur through sexual intercourse. Clearly, we see that sex is necessary in the economy of nature in order to allow for reproduction. If all pleasure was somehow eliminated from sex, it would still be necessary in order to permit for reproduction — Agustino

This descriptive claim stops just short of a prescription, but I take it you think the former entails the latter. If so, then I have a critique of this sort of natural law theory, or rather, I would present you with Robert P. George's critique of this theory (who is himself a Catholic natural lawyer):

Feser and MacIntyre's arguments confuse the notion of good as a theoretical notion with the notion of good as a directive. Here's the way their basic arguments are supposed to work:

Every act that fulfills human human nature is good.
X is an act that fulfills human nature.
Therefore, X is (so far forth) good.

The problem is that the term good in the premise has the theoretical meaning "what contributes to the fullness of being that is due a thing," or something along those lines. However, for the argument to establish a normative conclusion, the term must have, not its theoretical sense, but its practical sense, namely, "something fulfilling that is to be done or pursued" (and the term will have a practical meaning through its being part of a practical proposition). For if the meaning of the conclusion were merely "X contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being," then we would need to add a proposition to reach the properly practical or normative proposition: one would need the properly practical proposition "that which contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being is to be done or pursued."

This point can be illustrated more clearly by looking at the type of syllogism that is supposed to prove that an action should not be done:

Whatever impedes the fulfillment of one's nature is bad.
Y impedes the fulfillment of one's nature.
Therefore, Y is bad.

Again, this is a valid syllogism, but only if the term bad in the conclusion is taken in a theoretical sense rather than a practical sense.

How would you respond to this?

For human beings, there seems to be another end which is simultaneous to reproduction - and that is intimacy. But that isn't so for animals - just for human beings. That's why human beings attempt to make love, and not just have sex and reproduce. — Agustino

I think this is disputable. Many animals display intimacy, such as penguins and the higher primates. Animals are not simply reproductive robots.

Anything I should read about this view of sin in the meantime? — MysticMonist

Well, it's pretty much the standard view of sin in Christianity - namely that human sin in Heaven affected ALL of Creation which is now corrupt. It's also quite standard in certain forms of Neoplatonic Gnosticism where this world is seen as created by an evil demiurge, and hence also being evil itself. So you should check out those sources of thought. St. Augustune, Valentinius, Plotinus come to mind.

I think this is disputable. Many animals display intimacy, such as penguins and the higher primates. Animals are not simply reproductive robots. — Thorongil

Yes, it may be possible that intimacy is possible for some animals too. I don't have much beef with that, I said human-only because it's just most evident in humans. Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are.

Feser and MacIntyre's arguments confuse the notion of good as a theoretical notion with the notion of good as a directive. Here's the way their basic arguments are supposed to work:

Every act that fulfills human human nature is good.
X is an act that fulfills human nature.
Therefore, X is (so far forth) good.

The problem is that the term good in the premise has the theoretical meaning "what contributes to the fullness of being that is due a thing," or something along those lines. However, for the argument to establish a normative conclusion, the term must have, not its theoretical sense, but its practical sense, namely, "something fulfilling that is to be done or pursued" (and the term will have a practical meaning through its being part of a practical proposition). For if the meaning of the conclusion were merely "X contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being," then we would need to add a proposition to reach the properly practical or normative proposition: one would need the properly practical proposition "that which contributes to the fullness of being that is due a (human) being is to be done or pursued."

This point can be illustrated more clearly by looking at the type of syllogism that is supposed to prove that an action should not be done:

Whatever impedes the fulfillment of one's nature is bad.
Y impedes the fulfillment of one's nature.
Therefore, Y is bad.

Again, this is a valid syllogism, but only if the term bad in the conclusion is taken in a theoretical sense rather than a practical sense.

His accusation seems to be one of equivocation on the word "good", and in the end it's nothing but another attempt to reintroduce Hume's fact / value dichotomy. I'm happy however to grant the first sense of the good both times - I don't see why we need the second.

The point of virtue ethics isn't to form this sort of categorical imperative that you must do what is good. Rather it is, in the end, a free choice, which has to be willed. And beyond that, the good is, of course, the telos of the will itself.

Animals, even the higher primates you mention, are not capable of the same extensive range and nuance of emotions as humans are. — Agustino

Yes, that's better said I think.

Rather it is, in the end, a free choice, which has to be willed. And beyond that, the good is, of course, the telos of the will itself. — Agustino

But it's only an instrumental good, not a moral good. So why should I pursue it? Again, all we're left with is descriptive claims about teloi, not whether we should pursue them.

Maybe you don't wish to prescribe any oughts at all, and so don't wish to propose any normative ethic. That's fine, and is agreeable to me, given that Schopenhauer doesn't really propose a normative ethic either. But the reason he doesn't is because of his determinism, and yet you have referenced your belief in free will in this thread. So what is holding you back from proposing a normative ethic? The only answer I can see is that you don't know how to solve Hume's guillotine.

But it's only an instrumental good, not a moral good. — Thorongil

No, they are defined as moral. You're now confusing morality as it pertains to virtue ethics, with Kantian concepts of morality.

So why should I pursue it? — Thorongil

The question is simply answered by the telos itself. You should pursue it because it is the telos of your being. If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. Now if you answer "so what?", then no other answer is possible - in other words, you would have got to the point where no reason can even be provided. If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason?

So what is holding you back from proposing a normative ethic? — Thorongil

Depends on what you mean by normative. I don't think of ethics as "imperative" - that's why there exists freedom of will. But on the other hand, there is an objective morality out there.

No, they are defined as moral. You're now confusing morality as it pertains to virtue ethics, with Kantian concepts of morality. — Agustino

Explain.

If it is the telos of your being, it means that this is what your being is directed towards, which implies pursuing it. — Agustino

The bolded part is a non-sequitur. It doesn't imply that, for you admit that one can choose not to pursue it. To explain why one ought to pursue it requires a reason other than the telos itself. So you are right to ask the following question, because you do need another reason:

If X being your telos isn't sufficient reason to pursue it, what could, in principle, be that sufficient reason? — Agustino

You tell me! I can only guess based on what I've gleaned of your position. Using Adler, one reason to pursue one's telos might be that it makes one happy (in the Aristotelian sense). So you'd have a syllogism that looks like (I think):

True happiness results in fulfilling the teloi of one's nature.
It is good to pursue true happiness.
Therefore, it is good to pursue the teloi of one's nature.

Explain. — Thorongil

Just that happiness and directedness are not separate from fulfilment of one's telos.

The bolded part is a non-sequitur. It doesn't imply that, for you admit that one can choose not to pursue it. — Thorongil

It would depend. Some ancient Aristotelian would say that since sin is ignorance, you cannot really choose to not pursue it. Even when you're sinning, you are pursuing the good (however blindly). It's only the later Christians who introduced the radical conception of freedom which doesn't disagree with the Greek conception that sin is ignorance, but adds that the will can willfully blind the intellect and maintain a state of ignorance, even when knowledge is offered and available.

To explain why one ought to pursue it requires a reason other than the telos itself. — Thorongil

No, such a reason cannot exist, nor is it needed.

Using Adler, one reason to pursue one's telos might be that it makes one happy (in the Aristotelian sense) — Thorongil

Happiness is nothing but achieving one's telos though. So the pursuit of one's telos just is the pursuit of happiness.

True happiness results in fulfilling the teloi of one's nature.
It is good to pursue true happiness.
Therefore, it is good to pursue the teloi of one's nature. — Thorongil

This is a tautology because of the relationship between happiness, telos, and good. Good and happiness are defined as a function of one's telos. So invoking happiness is nothing but a sophism since it doesn't add anything else - it's just another category which says the same thing as what was already said before.

The below is also absurd:

The good is the achievement of one's telos.
It is good to pursue the good.
Therefore it is good to pursue one's telos.