Natural vs Unnatural

TheMadFool

There are some topics like sexuality that lead to people making the natural-unnatural distinction.

Many people find this dichotomy problematic with some saying that "unnatural" makes no sense at all. After all if it's happening in this universe then it must be natural. What else could it be?

I'd like to offer a very simple analysis of the issue for your valuable comments.

1. If you look at the dichotomy from a statistical (quantitative/mathematical) lens then the natural-unnatural distinction is valid. A measurable parameter follows the normal distribution and the majority of a given population will lie within 2 standard deviations of the mean. What lies outside is the minority which can be described as "unnatural". Consider the case of homosexuality. They're a minority group and if we look at the stats we can say that they're unnatural. Note: I'm not a homophobic and would like readers to simply concentrate on the natural-unnatural distinction.

2. If you now avoid math and do only a qualitative analysis you'll see that nature manifests in different ways. Variety is an essential feature of nature and quite aptly the LGBT community's symbol is the rainbow. There are many colors in the rainbow but no single color is more natural or unnatural than the other.

Comments

Artemis

↪TheMadFool

You're confusing natural with normal.

3017amen

↪TheMadFool

I'll just make one salient point and you can run with it. The Christian Bible has misinterpreted and mistranslated or otherwise is in error on its conclusion to essentially judge & discriminate against LGBT.

Example: at the time the Bible was written phenomena such as ambiguous genitalia babies were either not historically recorded or ignored. Again we need new paradigms... .

uncanni

↪TheMadFool

I totally agree that if it's happening in the cosmos, then it's natural, but I've begun to perceive much of what human beings do as unnnatural. However, it's almost an exercise in futility for me to say that because human instincts do not compare to other animals' instinctive behavior. Their instincts--and I'd say the same of the plant kingdom--guarantee preservation, while human activity is currently guaranteeing global disasters.

khaled

"Natural" and "Unnatural" often just translate to "Do this" and "Don't do this" respectively. They have nothing to do with nature. We are part of nature so obviously everything we do is "natural". People often call things they dislike unnatural

Terrapin Station

↪TheMadFool

My comment is why should what's statistically common be treated as a normative in the sense of what anyone should be doing? X is statistically common. Y is statistically very uncommon. What gives x and y any comparative value, especially so that x is preferred? What would be the justification for that?

Hanover

I'm not a homophobic and would like readers to simply concentrate on the natural-unnatural distinction. — TheMadFool

You've presented a homophobic argument, so the personal disclaimer appears inconsistent. The term "unnatural" carries a negative connotation, so your definition, which only references objective statistical claims, cannot attach to that word. It's like saying "fucked up" means those behaviors that fall outside the statistical norm, so therefore gays are fucked up (as are Jews, pianists, and philosophers, to name just a few).

3017amen

↪Artemis

I agree wholeheartedly. Unnatural and normal are two different things to parse. Some behavior is not normal. That does not make it bad.

Artemis

↪3017amen

Exactly. And vice versa, people usually equate good or morally acceptable with normal and natural, e.g., it's "normal and natural" to eat meat, therefore it's ethically justified.

Harry Hindu

I agree that "unnatural" is an incoherent term. If it is part of the universe, and the universe is "natural", then anything that happens within the universe is natural - including everything that humans do and create. Humans and their societies and inventions are natural outcomes of natural forces.

Natural selection would promote any behavior that led to more offspring in the next generation. Some members of early human tribes probably abstained from heterosexual competition and formed their own homosexual bonds for their sexual needs. They still participated in the tribe and helped care for the children or hunting. It could have developed as a way of establishing a hierarchy within the male group. There could be a number of reasons why homosexuality could have naturally developed and not be filtered out completely by natural selection.

The problem is more about free speech. It is about rejecting the idea that I have to live in your bubble and use your meaning of words, and that feelings are more important than logic and facts.

TheMadFool

You're confusing natural with normal. — Artemis

Can you elaborate further?

I think even normal-abnormal is a quantitative statistical interpretation. However, a qualitative approach would only see variety. There would be no such thing as deviance if you don't quantify.

You've presented a homophobic argument, so the personal disclaimer appears inconsistent. The term "unnatural" carries a negative connotation, so your definition, which only references objective statistical claims, cannot attach to that word. It's like saying "fucked up" means those behaviors that fall outside the statistical norm, so therefore gays are fucked up (as are Jews, pianists, and philosophers, to name just a few). — Hanover

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that but there really is no neutral choice in natural-unnatural or normal-abnormal distinction. I needed the LGBT rainbow to emphasize the qualitative aspect of the issue. Sorry to all homosexuals.

TheMadFool

My comment is why should what's statistically common be treated as a normative in the sense of what anyone should be doing? X is statistically common. Y is statistically very uncommon. What gives x and y any comparative value, especially so that x is preferred? What would be the justification for that? — Terrapin Station

Harmony? Cooperation is the essence of social creatures. I remember posting about left-handed people and how they find it difficult to live in a right-handed world.

Don't you think the biggest problems humanity has faced, is facing and will face is predicated on distinction or difference? Wars, racism, slavery, sexism all arise from some version of the natural-unnatural dichotomy.

TheMadFool

but I've begun to perceive much of what human beings do as unnnatural. — uncanni

Yes but which kind of analysis have you applied here? Qualitative or quantitative?

Terrapin Station

Don't you think the biggest problems humanity has faced, is facing and will face is predicated on distinction or difference? — TheMadFool

Sure, but the problem is the folks who can't accept difference, not the folks who are different.

TheMadFool

Sure, but the problem is the folks who can't accept difference, not the folks who are different. — Terrapin Station

The former consider the latter unnatural/abnormal.

Terrapin Station

The former consider the latter unnatural/abnormal. — TheMadFool

That's their problem though. There's no normative weight to anything just because it's more common.

TheMadFool

That's their problem though. There's no normative weight to anything just because it's more common. — Terrapin Station

The minority want to belong to the majority. It's not the other way around.

Terrapin Station

The minority want to belong to the majority — TheMadFool

Believe it or not, a lot of people don't have a normative attraction to what's statistically common.

Artemis

↪TheMadFool

When you talk about deviation from a standard, in mathematics or elsewhere, you're talking about normal and abnormal. You're right though, that the normalcy concept is often used in much the same manner as the natural one to (falsely!) justify something being good or bad.

The naturalistic fallacy you set out referring to is the fallacy of assuming that because something comes from nature, our ancestors did it, or it's an inborn/genetic trait that it therefore must be (usually) good or (less common) bad.

They are related in some ways--that which is considered normal often overlaps with what is considered natural--but they are distinct concepts.

Hanover

I'm sorry. I didn't mean that but there really is no neutral choice in natural-unnatural or normal-abnormal distinction. I needed the LGBT rainbow to emphasize the qualitative aspect of the issue. Sorry to all homosexuals. — TheMadFool

The neutral words would be "less common." It's less common to be gay, black, a philosopher, or an Indian chief. Because most people aren't black doesn't make being black abnormal or unnatural in the way those terms are typically used. To say there were 2 normal people in the room along with a couple of blacks would be racist even should you offer the same heartfelt apology to them as you did to the homosexuals in this thread.

If all you mean to say is that homosexuality is a statistically less likely sexual preference than heterosexuality, then just say that and avoid the judgment laden terms. Of course, just stating the obvious wouldn't give you much to talk about.

Artemis

If all you mean to say is that homosexuality is a statistically less likely sexual preference than heterosexuality, then just say that and avoid the judgment laden terms. Of course, just stating the obvious wouldn't give you much to talk about. — Hanover

Except that this thread is all about exactly those terms and how they're used to falsely justify anti-LGBTQ sentiment, etc.

Furthermore, Queer-theorists (self-named) often embrace such terminology because they see the LGBTQ lens as a way to push people beyond their comforts zones of the normal/natural and learn from the "abnormal" and "unnatural".

uncanni

↪TheMadFool

What lies outside is the minority which can be described as "unnatural". — TheMadFool

I wonder what you mean by using the word "unnatural," and I'm trying to avoid jumping to conclusions about what you mean. When I responded to your initial post, I was thinking of completely different issues. Primarily, I was thinking about global warming, which I consider "unnatural" in that it's occurring because of human irresponsibility and unconcern. I definitely consider global warming "unnatural."

But as for deviations from the "norm" with regard to human sexuality, the word "unnatural" seems arbitrary and judgement-laden to me. I don't really get the point of attempting to apply a mathmatical theory to human sexuality. You can see that I'm not into the quantitative analysis of this issue.

TheMadFool

Primarily, I was thinking about global warming, which I consider "unnatural" in that it's occurring because of human irresponsibility and unconcern. I definitely consider global warming "unnatural." — uncanni

On what basis?

Unnatural compared to what and in what way?

uncanni

↪TheMadFool

Hi.

Unnatural compared to environmental conditions prior to the Industrial Revolution.

I am not sure how to answer the part of your question, "in what way"? Do you mean what are the unnatural impacts on the planet and the atmosphere?

BC

Variety is an essential feature of nature and quite aptly the LGBT community's symbol is the rainbow. — TheMadFool

The rainbow, that overworked spectrum, is only the latest symbol for gay people, and anybody that wants to associate themselves with the gay community for whatever reason. It has been debased.

There have been several other symbols for the gay community:

Walt Whitman's suggestion for the gay symbol was the phallic calamus plant, which has nothing to do with calamine lotion.

In 19th century England, a green carnation signaled the faggot, probably because green is not a color in which carnations appear -- it's "unnatural". Lately several flowers like roses, zinnias, and mums have been bred into green.

150px-Lambda-letter-lowercase-symbol-Garamond.svg.png

. In the 1960s-early 70s, the Lambda sufficed.

The Nazis coded prisoners using colored triangles; homosexual prisoners were identified with pink triangles. This was picked up from a play in the early 1970s, Bent. "Bent" was/is a European term for homosexuals.

BC

As Kinsey wisely observed (based on a lot of research)

The only unnatural act is one you cannot perform.

It's natural for a guy to give himself a blow job, (natural if one is sufficiently well hung and flexible). it is very unnatural for anyone to actually do what is often speculated upon, to have one's head up his or her ass. The adult head is too big, for starters, and the neck is neither long enough nor sufficiently flexible.

The woman who thought she was now a man and had announced this to the world, discovered she was inconveniently pregnant. It is impossible for men to become pregnant, so it is unnatural. It is possible for women to think they are men, and visa versa, so that's natural. It's unnatural for women to become men, and visa versa, because what was decreed at conception can't be undone 30 years later. Every cell in the body is marked with its male or female heritage. Men stay men and women stay women, regardless of what pills or plastic surgery are employed. So, actual "trans sexuals" are unnatural - and impossible.

Can we talk about perverse? Polymorphic perversity? Is being "perverse" the same as, better than, or worse than being unnatural? I suppose it depends on whether it's done well, or not. Wouldn't most of us take consummate perversity over mediocre normality?

uncanni

↪Bitter Crank

Yes. As opposed to "straight." But these terms tend to take on multiple and often contradictory meanings as they are used by different voices over time. To be "straight" can also mean to be boring, uptight and puritanical. "Queer" now refers to all sorts of different performances or stances inhabited by both hetero- and homosexuals.

It's dialogically liberating to listen to and understand the same word one uses being used by others in different contexts which generate different meanings. When someone takes a monologic stance on the meaning of some of these terms, they refuse to acknowledge differences in word use and intentionality, or they attempt to impose a single meaning as "correct." I think on forums it's very easy to forget that we all have many different associations and meanings for words and concepts.

uncanni

↪Bitter Crank

Freud's term is "polymorphous"--not polymorphic--perversity.

Theorem

↪TheMadFool

Usually folks who label certain acts "unnatural" will presuppose some kind of "natural law" position. For instance, this is basically how the Catholic Church has defended its position on homosexuality over the centuries. The idea is that the moral law is woven right into the fabric of the cosmos by it's creator via the "essence" or "nature" of each thing. So a "good" triangle is one the one that best exemplifies the "essence" of a triangle - the one that has the straightest edges and that has angles that sum most closely to 180 degrees, etc. Likewise, a "good" human is one that best exemplifies it's god-given human nature (that is, human nature as god originally intended it be, not the sinful one that resulted from Adam's little mistake in the garden). In any event, in systems like these the meaning of the terms "goodness" and "nature/essence" are basically convertible, so that what is good is natural, and what is bad is unnatural by definition.

BC

↪uncanni

Correct: polymorphous. One of those spell-checker insertions. But... I thought you found it "dialogically liberating to listen to and understand the same word one uses being used by others in different contexts which generate different meanings."

I don't find it "dialogically" (do you mean "rhetorical"? liberating to listen to people slinging around the latest cant. it's just annoying.

As I recollect, "queer" didn't develop into the meaning you cite, Queer was ripped off. It was 'appropriated'. "'Queer' now refers to all sorts of different performances or stances inhabited by both hetero- and homosexuals.".

I'm an old fag; I got done discussing all this stuff ages ago. It reminds me of my long-since-past youth.

javra

Yes. As opposed to "straight." But these terms tend to take on multiple and often contradictory meanings as they are used by different voices over time. To be "straight" can also mean to be boring, uptight and puritanical. "Queer" now refers to all sorts of different performances or stances inhabited by both hetero- and homosexuals.

It's dialogically liberating to listen to and understand the same word one uses being used by others in different contexts which generate different meanings. When someone takes a monologic stance on the meaning of some of these terms, they refuse to acknowledge differences in word use and intentionality, or they attempt to impose a single meaning as "correct." I think on forums it's very easy to forget that we all have many different associations and meanings for words and concepts. — uncanni

Reminds me of a joke: "How do serpents move when they're piss-ass drunk? Straight, of course."

So .... um. Does that make all non-drunk snakes naturally queer?

What? It's a philosophy forum!

On a more sober side:

No species has been found in which homosexual behaviour has not been shown to exist, with the exception of species that never have sex at all, such as sea urchins and aphis. Moreover, a part of the animal kingdom is hermaphroditic, truly bisexual. For them, homosexuality is not an issue. — a quote by Petter Bøckman found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Seems natural enough to me.

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