Jason Engwer and Lydia McGrew, among others, recently made several helpful comments about same-sex marriage and related issues. Their comments are well worth reading and taking to heart.
Lydia alluded to natural law arguments against same-sex marriage. Here's Tim Hsiao outlining the general argument:
Thank you for pointing this out - I actually watched the extended interview, and it was very thought provoking.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ryan. I haven't had a chance to watch the extended interview, but I'd like to do that soon, especially after your recommendation!
DeleteHe seems to rely a lot on the premise that "a bad use of something is a use that fails to respect that thing's proper function," but I'm not sure how strong that premise is. The proper function of an egg carton is to store eggs, but it wouldn't be a "bad use" of the carton to use it to store Christmas ornaments instead (e.g. https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/100-life-hacks-that-make-life-easier.html).
ReplyDeleteBut I think you could say that storage/transportation is the proper use of the egg carton, whereas there is no analogous case of intercourse having some broader function
DeleteIt's specifically transportation of eggs though, otherwise it wouldn't be called an "egg carton."
DeleteAlso, there are non-storage uses for egg cartons, such as arts and crafts (https://homehacks.co/stop-tossing-old-egg-cartons-expert-diyer-shares-35-nifty-uses-wouldnt-think/ number 1).
Delete1. If anyone is interested in delving deeper into Tim's argument, he has written papers on it. The papers are freely available to download and read. For example, see "The Perverted Faculty Argument" and "Consenting Adults, Sex, and Natural Law Theory".
Delete2. I think Tim's philosophy is almost entirely indebted to natural law theory (NLT). That's either his greatest strength or his greatest weakness, or something of both, depending on what people think about NLT.
We should probably be willing to add that some proper functions are more important than others. Intuitively, the proper function of the living human body is a more important matter than the proper function of, say, a bicycle. So if you are trapped in a building with a bicycle and you break up the bicycle into parts and use part of it to break your way out of the building, you have indeed broken the bicycle. From the perspective of the proper function of the bike, that's "bad" (that is, it's bad for the bike). But is the proper function of the bike binding upon you morally in that situation? It's hard to see why it should be. On the other hand, if you are trapped somewhere with another human being and you kill him and eat his body because you're hungry, or if you kill him or "break" him so that you can use a part of his body to escap, that obviously has moral connotations. Back on the other hand again, simply breaking a bike *for fun* that belongs to someone else is a problem morally, and that's related to the fact that you have harmed the proper function of the bike. (Just touching a bike that belongs to someone else and spinning its wheel isn't as bad. Borrowing and returning it unharmed without permission is problematic morally but in a different way.)
DeleteSo proper function is a crucial part of the argument but not the whole of it. Ultimately we do have to *care* about the proper function of the human body. Yet it's obvious that we *do* care, and rightly, in many other contexts. Nobody says, "Okay, so that doctor cut out that man's heart in surgery, but who cares?"
I would counter that if you decided to dismantle one of your own bikes that you bought with your own money so that you could use some of the parts for another project, it's not obvious that you did anything bad even though you're using the bike in a way that prevents it from functioning as a bike. Thus, the bike's proper function isn't binding on you morally even if you have no serious reason to take apart the bike.
DeleteFor the "breaking someone else's bike" example, the reason why breaking someone else's bike is wrong because the owner of the bike wants to use that bike for riding, and you breaking the bike prevents that. Just touching the bike and spinning the wheel doesn't prevent the owner from doing what he wants with his bike. If the bike owner handed you the bike and told you that he wanted you to take the bike apart so he could use one of the parts for another project, you would be allowed to do that even though the bike's proper function remains the same.
DeleteI don't think you should invoke the idea of proper function in relation to "behaving irresponsibly" as regards having sex when you can't afford a child. That's pretty nebulous and doesn't seem grounded enough in the body or even the body-soul composite. I'd say that the notion of proper function is fairly clear, and a better question (if one wishes to defend contraception) is whether, in fact, contraception is contrary to the proper function of the human body. It might even depend upon the type of contraception, which gets us into nitty-gritty details that make for uncomfortable discussions.
DeleteThat acts of sodomy are contrary to the proper function of the human body is, to my mind, undeniable. In fact, such acts are also contrary to proper function even when carried out between members of the opposite sex.
A more interesting question is whether the above point that I made about caring about proper function means that the is-ought problem arises again in a new form. Since apparently we can have proper functions that don't matter all that much and that are easily overridden (e.g., it's not morally wrong to pick flowers just to carry them and enjoy them for a while, even though that destroys the proper biological function of the flower), a statement about proper function is apparently not ipso facto an ought statement.
DeletePerhaps what we should say instead is that a statement about proper function is an *axiological* statement, and axiological statements can correctly underwrite moral statements, if the axiological statements are important enough.
There seems to me to be osmething importantly true about that. Why are riots so disturbing? Becuase of the horrible feeling of mob destruction of ordered things. Wanton destruction and damage is not a good thing.
I'm not sure if picking a flower is a bad thing even in an axiological sense. Is it more "valuable" to leave the flower the way it is?
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