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May 06, 2005
a skeptical challenge
Don Herzog: May 6, 2005
Today's quiz has just one question. All you have to do is fill in the blank and explain what "unnatural" means. Notice that your account of "unnatural" has to justify the crucial closing clause, "and therefore wrong." I'm happy to make it an open-book quiz, because you'll all fail anyway. Ready? Here goes.
_____________ is unnatural and therefore wrong.
I hasten to note that I am not any kind of skeptic about moral or political argument. My conviction that there is no sound way to fill in the blank here is a targeted skepticism. We have to get along without any appeals to what's natural or unnatural, I think, because those appeals are strictly speaking nonsensical.
Oh, I know we talk this way all the time. I know how we try to fill in the blank. With gay marriage. With anal sex. With abortion. And on and on. All these claims, I assert cheerfully, are just nonsense. The problem is not that nature is a critical standard that supports right-wing judgments. The problem is that it supports nothing at all.
Eager students are cautioned that I will not accept answers suggesting that some moral and political options are unnatural in the sense of being impossible. To pass the quiz, you have to find an account of "unnatural" showing that live options are wrong. Yes, you are allowed to hone in on human nature. I caution you that it's one of theory's great tarbabies, and you will rue the day you succumbed to the impulse that a deeper knowledge of human nature would tell you what we should do. But hey! don't take my word for it. Dive in. Just don't blame me when you come up empty-handed.
I could bore you at great length with the history of why we can't fill in the blank, but still want to. Here's the 78rpm or cartoon version of the story. Aristotle's teleology, on which nature was shot through with purposes or "final causes" and often fulfilled them, offered a unified research program for doing science and morals and politics. But notoriously, teleologists were never able to explain why nature sometimes failed to realize her intentions. And teleology collapsed with the birth of mechanist modern science, but people kept talking about nature in the old, obsolete way. A friend of mine likes to say, "the sun is trying to come out from behind the clouds." Well, no, it isn't.
I'm not even skeptical about Aristotelian talk of flourishing. Aristotle rightly argues that we want our lives to go well and that it's not immediately obvious what that means. Confronted with philistine talk about preference-satisfaction, I reach for my Nicomachean Ethics. But I prune out of it a thought Aristotle couldn't live without: that nature assigns our proper ends. In a mechanist world, there is no point fastening on any alleged unique traits we have and surmising that nature wishes us to use them, or that our good consists in exercising them. "Man is the only rational animal!" Yes, and then there are the later cracks in the tradition, from the likes of Hobbes and Nietzsche: man is the only animal which can break promises; man is the only animal which can behave absurdly. Or my favorite, from Mark Twain: "Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to." So does the good life consist in blushing? or doing things that warrant blushing?
Worse yet, with confusions piled on confusions, is trying to make just-so stories about evolutionary biology ground moral arguments. We're free to reject the morality of rape or promiscuity even if we think it would pay off in gene pool frequencies. And I don't mind talk of natural rights if that means we can argue sensibly about rights without thumbing through the local statute book. But if it means that Nature bestows us with rights, well, I'm afraid I can't wrap my mind arond that. And I suspect that neither can anyone else.
Ignoring the death of teleology, leading conservatives continued to appeal to nature. Here's one of a zillion purple passages from Edmund Burke. Burke is stunned, or anyway pretending to be stunned, by dissenting minister Richard Price's sermon saluting the French Revolution.
Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of his lay flock who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? — For this plain reason: Because it is natural I should; because we are so made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons; because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because, when kings are hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great drama, and become the objects of insult to the base and of pity to the good, we behold such disasters in the moral as we should behold a miracle in the physical order of things. We are alarmed into reflection; our minds (as it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and pity; our weak, unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom.
Burke's language looks explanatory: "Why do I feel so differently?" he demands. But he clearly wants it to be justificatory. He wants to exhibit his "natural" reaction as the right one to have. Not to put too fine a point on it, he thinks Dr. Price and his fellow radicals have perverted judgment. But this is to underwrite his political assessment with no argument at all, just handwaving. (Behind Burke's nature is God. It's a familiar eighteenth-century pairing: recall for instance the Declaration of Independence's nod to the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." But I propose that we leave God out of it for now and focus only on nature.) Yes, plenty of academic commentators get misty-eyed and reverential when Burke writes this way. I'm afraid that does nothing to chasten my skepticism. On the contrary. Nor do I find myself any less inclined to raucous skepticism by imagining the likes of a wide-eyed Pat Robertson mugging for the camera: "these intellectuals on our campuses believe ... that nothing ... NOTHING ... is unnatural!"
Some leading liberals debunked the idea that nature is a critical standard. David Hume mischievously referred to "the definition of the word, Nature, than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal," and went to argue that it's hopeless to enlist nature as a critical standard. If "natural" is the opposite of "rare" and means "common," it has no critical bite. Unless you think it's wrong to excel. If it's the opposite of "artifice" and means "what we haven't altered," it has no critical bite. Unless you think people shouldn't wear eyeglasses. If natural is the opposite of "supernatural" or "miraculous" and means "can be explained in the ordinary ways," it has no critical bite. Unless you think only divine intervention is wrong.
Following up Hume's skeptical lead, John Stuart Mill suggested that we see nature as a homonym courting confusion, not a pregnant critical standard:
NATURE, natural, and the group of words derived from them, or allied to them in etymology, have at all times filled a great place in the thoughts and taken a strong hold on the feelings of mankind. That they should have done so is not surprising, when we consider what the words, in their primitive and most obvious signification, represent; but it is unfortunate that a set of terms which play so great a part in moral and metaphysical speculation, should have acquired many meanings different from the primary one, yet sufficiently allied to it to admit of confusion. The words have thus become entangled in so many foreign associations, mostly of a very powerful and tenacious character, that they have come to excite, and to be the symbols of, feelings which their original meaning will by no means justify; and which have made them one of the most copious sources of false taste, false philosophy, false morality, and even bad law.
It probably remains true today that more conservatives than liberals hanker after nature to ground our moral and political judgments. But again, my point isn't directly political. Except, that is, as it turns out to be political to say we should stop talking nonsense.
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Comments
Posted by: Will
I might define natural as a frank description of the physical world and how its form defines a specific function.
For example, a man's member is perfectly adapted to impregnating a human female. Its form suggests a very specific function. I see nothing *nonsensical* in using this clear form->function observation as one possible foundation for establishing morality. Thus, homosexuality is unnatural and therefore immoral; unnatural because the form of a man's member is being put to a function for which it is not perfectly adapted.
C'est claire, non?
You can disagree that nature should serve as a basis for morality, or you can quibble about what function is connected to what form, but this line of reasoning appears no more unreasonable than that mankind should instead base morality on philosophical rumination -- a method that would be just as tricky IMHO.
Posted by: Will | May 6, 2005 8:51:49 AM
Posted by: john t
One would think that if there is a nature some things would be natural,or should there not be derivatives. Or,on the other hand,are there to be things natural which we can observe,test and measure,and belive in under the name of science but totally reject even an approach to that which is natural in human society. Further,is natural to be used in an all inclusive manner,does an assumption of "natural" exclude any and all exceptions and/or deviations,does the exception therefore totally negate the rule? And is it not possible that SOME exceptions might be natural themselves however they are judged morally,e.g. violence is natural and must be curbed by human constructed institutions,also a natural trait. I observe that this is beat up Burke week,a terrible waste of the effort of wading thru 32 vols. of his work. But speaking of Price and Burke,was the guillotine natural?
Posted by: john t | May 6, 2005 9:07:15 AM
Posted by: Terrier
I refuse the challenge because my tradition requires no justification. For example, one of my favorite sutra passages announces that "the Bodhisattva has learned to dwell without thought-coverings" and in a negative way Nietzsche said "the will to system is the will to weakness." My ultimate problem with Western Religion is that it places so my power the Gods that it is easy for the followers to not feel responsible for their actions. That is what is behind the appeal to Nature - the desire to avoid responsibility. "I'm not a bigot - I'm just doing what God (Nature) tells me." On a lighter note: I have long wondered why people who believe the world will end in an Armageddon would do anything to promote peace? Likewise some Christian here will answer that their tradition requires them to be responsible but if so, does it tell them that the fulfillment of the prophecy of Armageddon will be the responsibility of the people on earth or just the whim of God?
Posted by: Terrier | May 6, 2005 9:11:10 AM
Posted by: john t
I will have a go at Don's fill in quiz, A liberal is unnatural and therefore wrong. Now,now I did allow for exceptions in my first post.
Posted by: john t | May 6, 2005 9:11:51 AM
Posted by: Josh Jasper
Will, if that were so, homosexuality would not occur so frequently in the animal kingdom, because animals do what's natural.
But it does occur. In fact, it occurs frequently in our nearest genetic relatives. Homosexual behavior is clearly passed on in humans, apes, monkeys, and other animals. It happens generation after generation. It is clearly adapted for by evolution, and therefore moral.
Furthermore, the idea of "perfect" adaption *is* nonsensical. The prostate gland is "perfectly" designed to be stimulated by putting someting inside one's anus. Only men have them. The clitoris, however, is "perfectly" designed to be stimulated by the mouth. Only women have them. Therefore, the use of them, by your standards, is moral.
Posted by: Josh Jasper | May 6, 2005 9:14:09 AM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
No problem: That which is wrong because it is unnatural is unnatural and therefore wrong. So, what do I win?
Seriously, though, I might add two points:
First, the logic of your argument, with which I agree, applies with equal strength to various Luddite pronouncements from the ecolatry and PETA-phelia crowd in the perversely anti-human theology of environmentalism.
Second, I have never entirely abandoned the argument from design as a probative but not dispositive influence in the way I think we should weigh various issues with moral implications. (For a more nuanced view of how the argument from design has shifted in the last century, see John Wisdom's brilliant "Gods.") However, as far as I can tell, the whole point of civilization is that it is decidedly and blissfully unnatural.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | May 6, 2005 9:19:50 AM
Posted by: Josh Jasper
Terrier: Armageddonists are *not* promoting peace. You've got the truth there. They're promoting war in the middle east, so as to fulfil prophecy.
Posted by: Josh Jasper | May 6, 2005 9:22:25 AM
Posted by: Josh Jasper
I'll take a stab at the quiz, though.
Genetic manipulations of human beings in roder to improve or frivolously modify our structure (not to cure disease) is immoral. It takes a potential human (not a human for the purposes of this argument) and brings him her or it into full human status to fulfil a goal, thus using that person as a means to an end. It also creates a cetogory of human that has a strong potential of causing social rifts in how they're treated in contrast to how 'natural' humans are treated.
Finaly, genetic manipulation of humans is the *only* unnatural act we can undertake. Even if it's through organized selective breeding for traits. Everything else huimans do is natural, as we exist in nature. Organized genetic engineering subverts nature, and in a moral sense, causes problems.
I'm not sure if this passes, but I do think it comes closest to the professors desired results.
I'd be interested to see Prof J. David Velleman's opinion on my attempt as well.
What do I get if I win, BTW?
Posted by: Josh Jasper | May 6, 2005 9:31:04 AM
Posted by: Dylan Barrell
how about "falling up" that is unnatural and wrong...
think it misses the point? I don't...
but I do have a criticism of the question...why does the unnatural have to be wrong and why does the wrong have to be unnatural? Driving a car is unnatural. Does that make it wrong?
Posted by: Dylan Barrell | May 6, 2005 9:38:46 AM
Posted by: anonymous coward
I have great sympathy for this argument, but one thought that I keep tripping over is the question of the origin of our moral faculties. I certainly have an intuitive sense of right and wrong. By which I do not mean that I am preternaturally just (ha!), but rather that certain actions trigger a sense of justness or injustness within me. These senses are feelings and not the result of a train of moral reasoning. Now, I can often create a reasoned argument about why a given action that has triggered a feeling of justness or unjustness is, as a matter of logical argument, just or unjust. But I doubt that the intensity of my righteous indignation or my feeling of satisfaction is a direct product of the force of my logical argument. I can certainly think of times when I have felt very strongly about the righteousness or lack thereof of something, but been unable to marshal my best arguments, or vice versa. It is of course simultaneously the case that a well reasoned argument can cool or excite the passions.
All this is just to say that there seems to be something natural about human morality, though to what degree it comes from our development as a species and to what extent from our culture, I couldn't possibly say. In either case, I think I'm on safe ground saying that the process of morality, at least, is natural, if we can accept Aristotle's claim that man is a political animal.
How does this get us to the point where we can say _______ is unnatural, and therefore wrong, I'm not sure. And it may well not. Certainly we can say at least that it is natural to think that certain things are wrong; "I think that murder is unjust, and it is natural for me to so believe" in the limited sense that it is natural for me to think that things are unjust and that, for me, torture is one of those things.
Here, of course, we have a problem. We don't really want to be limited to saying only that murder is wrong for me because I believe it to be wrong, because that leaves the door open to another person who might say that murder is okay, because he or she believes it to be. Thus far, I really don't have a lever from which to maintain that murder is wrong generally, even though I and I would think most everyone else would maintain that it is. In fact, I suspect that many people would experience a feeling of injustice if they saw a rational person defending murder as a moral activity.
However, if there is a consensus that murder is wrong, then might this be another way of saying that murder is unnatural, and therefore wrong? By this I mean that if man is a political and a moral animal then it's no surprise that he naturally forms moral judgments and that he naturally forms a consensus with other men, at least on some things. And about other things, we argue. So then, naturally, we form a moral consensus with our fellows about some activities. Can't we then say, at least, that murder, if we have developed a consensus condemning it, is against our nature, and therefore wrong?
At this point, we've fairly well thrown out the traditional distinction between the natural and the conventional. Since consensuses may change with time and also depending upon the community in which one happens to be and so this whole discussion may well be by the by with regard to the original question. And yet coming to a consensus (or arguing) is certainly a natural thing for humans to do, and shared moral consensuses do have a binding force upon us as in the prohibition on murder, not only in the sense that we fear legal sanction, but more importantly in the sense that we know that murdering someone is wrong. And those who do not know that murdering someone is wrong, we denote as insane, which is perhaps the same thing as saying that they do not share in the fullness of human nature.
So I think one might say that murder, for example, is unnatural and therefore wrong because we have come to a moral consensus about it.
Burke, then, was right in being cautious about the dangers of upending traditional moral consensuses. Because they seem to be an important anchor to the wind. To radically change the nature of things seems to run the risk of inviting chaos. At the same time, human nature is changeable and consensuses can shift over time. So, to take a famous example, while at one time it might have been said that slavery is natural, and therefore justified (Aristotle in The Politics) (Though I hasten to point out that without knowing the thoughts of the population of Athens on this subject it is impossible to say within my framework) now we can say that slavery is unnatural and therefore unjustified because the global consensus condemns it.
Posted by: anonymous coward | May 6, 2005 10:27:09 AM
Posted by: JeffS
Raising children (or birds) without parents is unnatural and therefore wrong.
unnatural = contrary to the way a creature is formed to adjust and adapt to its environment
(Yes, I know it's a synonym for "unhealthy" here, but "unnatural" really can be -- that's the word you chose)
Prof., Do you give partial credit if we replace "therefore" with "also"?
Posted by: JeffS | May 6, 2005 10:29:17 AM
Posted by: Tom Perkins
I don't think anything unnatural has ever happened--maybe a few things that are unlikely--but never anythig unnatural.
The questions seems to be beside the point. Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
Posted by: Tom Perkins | May 6, 2005 10:31:20 AM
Posted by: Steve Burton
How would one justify moral disapproval of parent-child incest (even when both parties act voluntarily and take pleasure in the relationship) without at some point mentioning the nature of parents, of children, of the parent-child bond, etc.?
Similarly, could one justify the prohibition of bestiality without bringing up nature?
How about necrophilia?
Common-sense moral intuitions against such practices are about as strong and as universal as moral intuitions get, so any moral theory that expects to be taken seriously had better accommodate them. But good luck doing justice to such intuitions without bringing "nature" into it.
Posted by: Steve Burton | May 6, 2005 10:43:57 AM
Posted by: Mona
Well, since I have been known to issue the same quiz (tho not so cleverly worded or freighted with Burkean passages) in order to make Don's same point, I would not now attempt to succeed where I have always seen (and expected) others to fail.
Will: if any act in which the penis does not ejaculate within a vagina is unnatural, and therefore wrong, then oral sex is wrong, masturbation is wrong, and confounding the "natural" purpose for the intromission by using a condom or other method of contraception, is wrong. Further, doctrines of clerical and nun celibacy are unnatural, since the member and the vagina are never to be put to a use for which they are "perfectly adapted."
Posted by: Mona | May 6, 2005 10:45:44 AM
Posted by: Tad Brennan
Mona--
It's a bit worse than that, isn't it? The mouth was made for eating; therefore speech is unnatural (much less kissing!). The hands were made for grasping things: therefore typing on a keyboard is unnatural. The nose was made for breathing: therefore using it to support eyeglasses is unnatural. And so on.
DH--one caution.
You profess unconcern at the spectacle of a Robertson-esque figure charging you with believing that nothing is unnatural.
But that suggests that you agree (and are blasé about agreeing) with this characterization of your position. But *that* was not your position; you want to severe the link between unnatural and wrong, not deny that anything is unnatural. GIven your larger point, you should be happy to grant that some things are unnatural. You just deny that they are wrong as a result of that fact.
So--when the Robertsonesque figure says "these horrible intellectuals believe nothing is unnatural", your reply should not be a complacent agreement. Instead, you should say "I am happy to grant you that some things are unnatural. I just deny that this feature makes them wrong."
(After all, if you simply *denied* that anything is unnatural, then you would be committed to the vacuous universal "everything that is unnatural is wrong").
Posted by: Tad Brennan | May 6, 2005 11:04:37 AM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Mr. Brennan writes: The nose was made for breathing: therefore using it to support eyeglasses is unnatural.
However,
"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles.
-- Dr. Pangloss, from Voltaire’s Candide
(Disclaimer: I wouldn’t have remembered Candide in a million years but for the fact my son just read it last month for his English class. I do, however, remember that the overture in Bernstein’s opera, Candide, was the theme music to the old “Dick Cavett Show.” So much for my liberal arts education.)
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | May 6, 2005 11:35:44 AM
Posted by: Bret
I'm surprised D.A. Ridgely didn't beat me to this one:
Taxation is unnatural and therefore wrong.
Posted by: Bret | May 6, 2005 11:42:28 AM
Posted by: Mona
Vaccination is unnatural, and therefore wrong.
Posted by: Mona | May 6, 2005 11:49:30 AM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Unfortunately, Bret, I can think of few things more natural than the strong preying on the weak or the many preying on the few.
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | May 6, 2005 11:50:42 AM
Posted by: Tad Brennan
Mr. Ridgely--
Good--I was fairly sure someone would recognize my Candide reference. And of course it was exactly Aristotelian teleology that he was complaining about (or its scholastic descendant).
Thanks for posting the quote.
Posted by: Tad Brennan | May 6, 2005 11:54:32 AM
Posted by: Tad Brennan
As for the connection between unnaturalness and wrongness.
I find myself more willing to countenance such a link than most of you seem to be (you heathen, you). I don't say I have a very clear picture of how it works, but I don't think it's ruled out, either.
Some of you folks seem to think there's an unbridgeable gulf between nature and morality, that could only be bridged if we elevate "nature" to some sort of divine providence. Aristotle might have found that sort of thing plausible, but us hard-headed scientific types don't any longer. So since we cannot inflate nature high enough, we'll never raise it to the heights of morality.
But there's a different approach possible: keep nature where it is, and bring morality down to ground.
What I have in mind is that a lot of claims of "wrongness" are implicitly causal claims about who is going to get hurt and how. If I saw someone sprinkling colorful anti-personnel mines around a toddler park, I would feel outraged and appalled, and denounce the wrongness of their actions in the strongest terms.
Now at least part of what I mean is: if you do that, somebody's gonna get hurt.
That may not be all I mean--I may also mean that you ought to *know* that someone will get hurt this way, or that there is something especially heinous about risking the injury of children as opposed to others. Could be a lot packed in to a claim of wrongness (e.g. maybe David Velleman is right that a claim of wrongness has to have some universality packed into it).
But at least part of it, and maybe a lot of it, is a simple claim about welfare and damages.
And those sorts of claims seem to me sustainable on the basis of claims about nature. In fact, a fairly traditional way to bridge the gap between nature and normativity is by saying that nature specifies some general outlines for human welfare, and human welfare in turn provides the grounding for what is right and wrong. Indeed, this is not an utterly crazy way to read Aristotle (I think it gives insufficient weight to his theistic commitments, but some people like that).
Starting from human nature will probably not get you very much detail about ethics, or solve complicated dilemmas. But it might get you some no-nos.
Now--maybe Mr. Herzog will reply as follows: "I grant you some things are wrong in virtue of their *harmful* properties, to the extent that I'll accept a consequentialist account of morality. But that very fact shows that it's not the *unnaturalness* that explains the wrongness, it is the *damage to welfare*. Wellbeing is doing all the work; appeals to nature are superfluous."
Dunno if DH will go that way or not. If he does, it makes the quiz harder. (Because we now have to show not only that something is wrong in virtue of being unnatural, but that it is also directly and immediately in virtue of its being unnatural, i.e. without any middle term between the two).
I am still open to the possibility that what people mean by these claims is not utterly nonsensical, but rather grounded in the idea that nature sets some broad guardrails for ways that it is possible to live happily, and claims of wrongness are at least in part claims about what sorts of actions will be conducive to or destructive of that same happiness.
Or maybe I've just read too much Aristotle.
Posted by: Tad Brennan | May 6, 2005 12:10:42 PM
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely
Mr. Brennan:
Don’t thank me, thank my far better read (well, for his age anyway) son, who foolishly lets his father read his essays. But wasn’t Voltaire’s primary beef with Leibniz; or am I, as they said at the philosopher’s funeral, putting Descartes before the hearse?
(Meanwhile, I can’t get that damned tune out of my head now!)
Posted by: D.A. Ridgely | May 6, 2005 12:13:00 PM
Posted by: tony
>Similarly, could one justify the prohibition of bestiality without bringing up nature?
I must say, I have NEVER read a blog that mentions bestiality so frequently as this one.
The answer to your question is that there is no justification for the prohibition of bestiality. Holding up something so completely inconsequential as bestiality as a critical question of morality makes a mockery out of morality itself, particularly since those raising the question rarely know anything about the practice.
However, for those whose sexual orientation is as firmly turned towards animals as a heterosexual man's is turned towards women, the prohibition of bestiality is immoral for the simple reason that it makes their lives miserable. And this, in contrast, is not a theoretical argument, since many such people exist.
For that reason, I suggest abandoning bestiality as a moral whipping-post. This repeated reference to bestiality as some ultimate standard of (im)morality is nothing but sophistry. When you see and understand actual sexual relationships between humans and animals and understand their actual implications, then perhaps you will have something to say on the subject.
Posted by: tony | May 6, 2005 12:19:01 PM
Posted by: Tad Brennan
Oh--
and for those of you having a field-day finding counter-examples (e.g. vaccination, taxation, eyeglasses)--does finding such examples settle the question?
DH asked for anyone to provide a true instance of his sentence-schema above. First person to find a true instance wins. (Not sure what you win--something unnatural? No, that's wrong.)
Is anything proved by providing false instances of the schema?
No! says the logician: DH is claiming a universal negation (there are no true instances), and finding particular negations (here is an instance that is not true, and here's another one...) cannot prove the universal negation. DH's opponent should be unphased by your examples; no number of them can prove DH right, but even one positive instance, even one true sentence of that form, will show that DH is wrong.
Wait! says the logician's nephew: doesn't the "therefore" make a difference here? The claim is, it's unnatural, *therefore* it's wrong. The winning instance must be wrong *by virtue of* its unnaturalness. I.e., it must be the case that it is wrong exactly and precisely *because* it is unnatural.
But if unnaturalness had that sort of power to make things wrong--if it brought wrongness with it everywhere it goes--then those other things that are unnatural should also be wrong. And they are not. Eyeglasses and vaccines are surely unnatural. But that unnaturalness brings with it no taint of wrongness. It is perfectly consistent for something to be unnatural and innocuous--and that shows that DH must be right!
Even if we have something that is unnatural and wrong, it cannot be wrong *exactly in virtue* of being unnatural, or the same unnaturalness would have made eyeglasses wrong, too. So even if someone finds something that is unnatural and wrong, this will only show that some unnatural things are right, and some unnatural things are wrong, and what is making the wrong ones wrong must be some further factor, additional to their unnaturalness.
So who's right--the logician or his nephew? Is there any point to racking up more instances of unnatural things that are not wrong--will no number of them help DH's case (as the logician says), or is even one of them sufficient to establish it (as his nephew says)?
Posted by: Tad Brennan | May 6, 2005 12:25:26 PM
Posted by: Mona
tony intrigues with:For that reason, I suggest abandoning bestiality as a moral whipping-post. This repeated reference to bestiality as some ultimate standard of (im)morality is nothing but sophistry. When you see and understand actual sexual relationships between humans and animals and understand their actual implications, then perhaps you will have something to say on the subject.
Would you care to elaborate?
Posted by: Mona | May 6, 2005 12:29:34 PM