Ship of Fools: Natural Law and Playing God

Thread: Natural Law and Playing God Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=027047

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

There are some areas which, when Christians discuss them, sooner or later someone is bound to object that by doing X you would be going against Natural Law, or you would be playing God. Only recently has it struck me that these arguments only seem to come out with issues at the start or end of life: abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, euthanasia. While recognising my memory is dodgy, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say: "My doctor had identified the very beginnings of cancer which could easily be removed. However, my body was not designed to be cut open, so surgery is out of the question. Besides, if I'm meant to die from cancer, trying to avoid it would be playing God."

If I am wrong, and reasoning like this does get used, then I am sure Shipmates will be quick to point out my error. If I'm right, and these approaches are confined to the areas mentioned above, why is that?

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

RobertArmin: Yes I think you are wrong, but I'm not an expert on Natural Law which is a type of argument used more by those of an RC persuasion.

You've missed out any mention of gender assignment, even though many would bring Natural Law arguments against homosexuality, and attempts to physically intervene to re-assign gender.

This may also apply to stem cell research, experiments in cloning and in combining genetic material across species.

There may be others.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say: "My doctor had identified the very beginnings of cancer which could easily be removed. However, my body was not designed to be cut open, so surgery is out of the question. Besides, if I'm meant to die from cancer, trying to avoid it would be playing God."

Clearly you don't know any Christian Scientists.

(that's "adherents to the religion known as Christian Science", not "scientists who are also Christians"!)

Posted by *Leon* (# 3377) on :

I've also been somewhat confused by natural law. It seems like a bit of a cop-out when people want to ban things on religious grounds but don't think the bible is on their side.

As I understand it, the idea is that certain moral truths are obvious when you observe the world. That's a fine idea. However, nowadays it raises the big question of the relationship between these observations of the world and the observations of the world made by science. Is there some fundamental difference between the way you observe the world to determine natural law and the way you observe the world to do science? If there is a difference, what is it and why is it different. If not, it should be possible to determine the scientific ideas that are the basis of any given natural law idea in order to determine when there are better observations of the world, which the morals might need to be updated to allow for.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

I am broadly in favour of natural law approaches to ethics, and broadly in disagreement with the usual Roman Catholic application to sexuality. (Playing God is I think a different argument.)

It seems to me reasonably obvious that you have to make ethics for language-using placental mammals, rather than for pure disembodied reasons or for utility machines. That seems the basis of the natural law approach. However, the argument that 'X is THE function of Y and therefore Y must never be used except to do X' seems to me ungrounded.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

Surgery is allowed by "double effect", which really is a different topic. Basically, it is the intention of the surgeon to remove the cancer, a good thing, and that he has to cut through healthy tissue to get to the cancer and thus to do evil to you is predictable but unintended per se (if he could avoid cutting you, he would, cf. "keyhole surgery"). The unintended evil of cutting you up is then allowable by the intended and greater good of getting rid of the cancer.

A more common, yet of course mistaken, complaint against natural law logic would be to rail against glasses. The basic problem here is that the term "natural" is ambiguous, and in "natural law" is not intended to mean "that which we happen to observe in nature (the physical world)" but rather "that which is according to the nature (essence) of something". According to the former (that which is found in nature), it would seem that we should leave badly sighted eyes as they are, because that's how we find them in nature. But according to the latter (that which is of the nature of things), we first realise that eyes are made for seeing. And then it follows that glasses are a good thing because they actually restore these particular defective eyes to what they should be in essence, namely means for seeing (clearly).

So the first core mistake people make in talking about natural law is to leave out the analysis step that extracts the nature of a thing ("eyes are for seeing, that is their natural function"), and instead remain at the level of observing nature and perhaps simple statistics ("there are blind and badly sighted people, therefore having bad or no sight is natural").

The second core mistake people make in talking about natural law is the assumption that "natural" means "easy to grasp". This is somewhat weird, since this is really just a "moral" version of the "physical" search for natural law. And few people think that physics must be "easy to grasp", or it is wrong. We could talk about the underlying psychology why this is the case, but the essential point is this: there is no assumption in natural moral law that everybody will intuitively understood its claims, or even that everybody will be intellectually up to the task of carrying out an appropriate natural moral law analysis. Sometimes natural moral law can be very easy, sometimes it can be very difficult, and like with all things that can get challenging some matters are really only accessible to experts who have studied hard to get to the point where they can carry out the analysis properly. There is also no claim that all question can be satisfyingly answered now. It really is the moral equivalent of physics.

So the second core mistake people make in talking about natural law is assume that the necessary analysis must be easy and intuitive to everybody, and that consequently democratic consensus rather than expert judgement is the best way in which the natural moral laws can be determined. To stick with our eye analogy: While most people can determine what an eye is good for, and hence for example can understand that glasses are good things, most people do not know what the subthalamic nucleus is good for and when deep brain stimulation targeted at it with invasive surgery makes sense.

If one avoids these two core mistakes, then discussions about natural moral law can be fruitful. Otherwise, not so much.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Very nice, IngoB.
And all simply says interpretation.

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say: "My doctor had identified the very beginnings of cancer which could easily be removed. However, my body was not designed to be cut open, so surgery is out of the question. Besides, if I'm meant to die from cancer, trying to avoid it would be playing God."
Clearly you don't know any Christian Scientists.

(that's "adherents to the religion known as Christian Science", not "scientists who are also Christians"!)

You're right - I'm afraid I had forgotten about the Scientists. When I was at school I had a friend who was CS; haven't been aware of them since then.

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

Jesuits at my little red schoolhouse used to tell of a, perhaps apocryphal, story of a final examination in Moral Theology.

The examination, in toto, was this:

quote:
Natural Law: neither natural nor law.

Discuss.

Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :

I think a lot of people use natural law arguments without using the term natural law.

If you believe in universal human rights, by which I mean rights that you possess regardless of whether the country you live in actually grants them to you, then you probably believe in natural law. If you don't think these rights derive from human institutions or are rooted in some social contract, but come directly from just being human, then in my opinion that's a natural law argument.

Posted by Yonatan (# 11091) on :

My understanding of natural law is that it is based in a large part on Aquinas' use of Aristotle's idea of 'final causation' i.e. the goal toward which something is directed towards. E.g. the final cause of the heart is to pump blood around the body, the final cause of an eye is to see. If this is the case, then we can often distinguish between medical or scientific interventions or developments which aid something to achieve its final cause e.g. spectacles for seeing or a pace-maker to keep the heart pumping and ones which don't e.g. contraception and abortion.

Posted by HughWillRidmee (# 15614) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yonatan:
My understanding of natural law is that it is based in a large part on Aquinas' use of Aristotle's idea of 'final causation' i.e. the goal toward which something is directed towards. E.g. the final cause of the heart is to pump blood around the body, the final cause of an eye is to see. If this is the case, then we can often distinguish between medical or scientific interventions or developments which aid something to achieve its final cause e.g. spectacles for seeing or a pace-maker to keep the heart pumping and ones which don't e.g. contraception and abortion.

Sometimes the question of "final goal" may be unclear?

Thinking, as religions all seem to assume that their god(s) incessantly do, of sex. One could argue that sex's final cause is procreation but the truth is that we have evolved other outcomes, albeit they may be part of the encouragement to procreate. I'm thinking of the mutual support and comfort element that, I suggest, validates sexual behaviour even when procreation is not possible.

Is the validity of "final causation" limited only to the current generation and is it applicable only to the person rather than the species? Abortion and/or contraception may inhibit immediate procreation, but they may increase the chances of existing or subsequent children surviving long and well enough to, themselves and therefore their descendants, procreate - which would, if true, be in the interests of the final causation of the species would it not?

IngoB - your confidence in the reliance on authority is valid only if that authority can explain the situation well enough to obtain informed consent - it is not carte blanche for those claiming "expert judgement" to dictate what might be biased or irrational opinion disguised as wisdom.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Sometimes the question of "final goal" may be unclear?

As a general statement, that is correct.

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Thinking, as religions all seem to assume that their god(s) incessantly do, of sex.

Let it be noted then that it was you thinking of and mentioning sex first here. Any further discussion of sex is hence on your head.

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
One could argue that sex's final cause is procreation but the truth is that we have evolved other outcomes, albeit they may be part of the encouragement to procreate. I'm thinking of the mutual support and comfort element that, I suggest, validates sexual behaviour even when procreation is not possible.

Let us avoid the first core mistake I mentioned above. The question is not what we see sex being used for in nature (in this case: in human behaviour), not even in a statistical sense. The question is what we can analyse out of such observations as the essential purpose of sex. It's not "what sex do we find in nature" but "what is the nature of sex". As you acknowledge in tune with basic biology and evolutionary theory, the essence of sex, what it is about, is procreation. If we were reproducing asexually, then we would have neither genitals nor sexual pleasure nor specific sexual partnership behaviour.

This does not mean that there is no significance to these secondary factors. Specific sexual partnership behaviour, for example, is an "essential accident" of sex in various species. That is to say, just what for example humans, bonobos or spiders do when they have sex is "accidental" (differs widely from one species to the other without impacting what sex essentially is about), but they all have to do something or the other, that is "essential" (it is not optional to have some sexual behaviour).

But the way one gets an "ought" from an "is" in natural moral law does not allow a replacement of the essence (of the primary function) by attendant factors, even if these are essential accidents. Rather, these attendant factors further specify the moral good. Beyond being ordered to procreation, sex in for example humans, bonobos and spiders acquires further criteria of goodness due to how these species have sex. Humans ought to not eat their partner after sex, like (some) spiders do. Humans ought to pair bond with one partner through sex, rather than group bond by having sex with everybody as bonobos apparently do. One can likely make such additional natural law arguments based on essential accidents of sexual behaviour in various species, but they do not replace the core argument concerning procreation.

However, failure to realise a specific good comes in two different flavours in free-willed creatures. Like non-sapient beings, I can fail to realise a good simply because it is not in my capability to achieve it, even though it would be in my nature. If I break my legs, then I cannot run, even though locomotion is the essential function of my legs. This is as true for me as for a cheetah. These kinds of failure are morally neutral. Moral concerns rather arise where it is in my capability to achieve a good, but I choose not to. That is, where I set my free will against a good essential to me. If I keep kicking a pillar with my leg until my leg breaks, then I have chosen to behave in a manner that destroys the essential good of my leg. That is morally illicit, an evil, i.e., a free-willed privation of good. I should not do that.

I really do not want to go through another thread arguing about artificial contraception, but it should be clear from these remarks that one certainly can attempt to differentiate between "sex after menopause" and "sex with a condom" in natural law arguments. Moral evil is not in the privation of the good as such, but in how it comes about.

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
Is the validity of "final causation" limited only to the current generation and is it applicable only to the person rather than the species? Abortion and/or contraception may inhibit immediate procreation, but they may increase the chances of existing or subsequent children surviving long and well enough to, themselves and therefore their descendants, procreate - which would, if true, be in the interests of the final causation of the species would it not?

Indeed, one can argue along those lines towards the moral good of "spacing children", rather than just popping them out as rapidly as physiology allows. That is exactly the argument Humanae Vitae makes to say that it can be morally licit, even good, for families to limit the number of children that they have. However, you run here into another moral principle, namely that "one may not use evil to achieve good". Since the RC natural moral law argument has artificial contraception as a moral evil disrupting wilfully the primary procreative purpose of sex, it becomes illicit to use that evil to achieve the good of spacing your children. (Ten times over so for abortion, which to RC teaching is simply a specific form of murder...) Hence the conclusion of Humanae Vitae is precisely that while the intention to limit the number of children one begets can be (not "always is") good and right, one may not use artificial contraception for that purpose, because that particular means is evil in itself.

quote:
Originally posted by HughWillRidmee:
IngoB - your confidence in the reliance on authority is valid only if that authority can explain the situation well enough to obtain informed consent - it is not carte blanche for those claiming "expert judgement" to dictate what might be biased or irrational opinion disguised as wisdom.

Sure. However, there is a difference between the RCC attempting to sway you as a non-RC, lawmakers, the general public, etc. and the RCC teaching RCs. In becoming RC, in my case a free choice I made as an adult, I have already chosen to submit to the RCC as moral authority. Hence while it is still a good thing if she explains herself to me in her moral rulings, it is not necessary in the same sense as in dealing with "outsiders". If I tell my son to do something, and he asks "why?" then "because I say so!" is not a particularly satisfying answer. But all parents know that sometimes that is a necessary answer to break through gridlock, either because the proper answer is just too difficult to give right this minute, or because the proper answer will not be given a proper hearing. In a practical sense, natural moral law arguments are a tool of communication within the RCC, they are not the foundation of the moral authority of the RCC to her members.

Personally, I think natural moral law arguments face two difficulties. First, they generally only work well as long as one addresses "qualitative" question, but become hard as one tries to give "quantitative" answers. Second, they often have a "just so" character, where the argument appears to be just a bit too clean and predictable, too constructed after the fact. I do believe that natural moral law has a point. But I'm not sure how far it extends beyond a basic realisation that we all can and do arrive at "oughts" from what "is", and that hence some moral argument can be made universal, rather than relying on the prior acceptance of specific moral authorities.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Precarious.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I have quite a lot of trouble with the argumentation that makes the law/legalism being a general and specific good. Was the law made for humans or for God? How much law and how much love is in the Christian balance scale? Can you have have love and law on the same side? This might seem a rhetorical question, and I think in talk it is, but actual behaviour, I see the law being rigid and the justification of things that offend Love.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

No, there's another area where most people use what is at root Natural Law which is so universally accepted that they aren't even aware of it.

There's a widespread - and in my view completely correct - view that there's a difference between ethical principles that are built into the species, the way things are, and commands that enforced by the state simply because it has enacted them.

Most people take it for granted that murder, theft, adultery etc are wrong in a way that speeding or not complying with building regulations are not. Adultery is not a crime but it's immoral to betray one's spouse, even if you can get away with it, or she or he will never find out.

Speeding is a particularly convenient example to use. There's no inherent moral difference between 29 mph and 31 mph. It is illegal but not inherently immoral to drive safely at 31 mph. It is however immoral to drive dangerously, to put your neighbour at risk, whether at 29 or 31 mph.

There may be a few dogmatic positivists who would say that there is no such think as morality, just laws imposed by the state. There may even be Christians who would go from what St Paul says about the powers that be being ordained by God to say that complying with all legislation to the letter becomes a moral issue.

Most of us though would say that,
a. That is nonsense,
b. That it would make life unliveable, and
c. That it gives no tools for dealing with an immoral state.

So IMHO, even if there's some debate about where the boundaries are of Natural Law, as a concept, it is unavoidable, indisputable and essential.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

Am I misunderstanding IngoB's argument here?
First surgery is the acceptable use of evil to achieve good, or was it that it was a unfortunate consequence of doing good? Then it's good to limit family sizes but not if you use an evil to do so.
No, me head's wrecked with this. Please square the circle for me, I can't figure out how an evil, surgery becomes an acceptable cost if the outcome is good, removing the cancer while contraception remains evil even if it the cost of achieving a good, limiting or spacing offspring?
I suppose it's because unlike surgery their are other options but you know what? I'm not convinced, the other options are not cost free and are just as much an evil as contraception.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
However, failure to realise a specific good comes in two different flavours in free-willed creatures. . . . Moral concerns rather arise where it is in my capability to achieve a good, but I choose not to. That is, where I set my free will against a good essential to me. If I keep kicking a pillar with my leg until my leg breaks, then I have chosen to behave in a manner that destroys the essential good of my leg. That is morally illicit, an evil, i.e., a free-willed privation of good. I should not do that.

You could do it even more easily by just standing still. Since you're not engaging in locomotion, you have acted counter to natural law.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Since the RC natural moral law argument has artificial contraception as a moral evil disrupting wilfully the primary procreative purpose of sex, it becomes illicit to use that evil to achieve the good of spacing your children.

Yes, in much the same way that standing still or, even worse, sitting or lying down, is "disrupting wilfully the primary [locomotive] purpose of [legs]". There doesn't seem to be any "natural" explanation as to why it's acceptable to voluntarily control your legs but controlling your ovulation cycle is horrendously evil.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
There doesn't seem to be any "natural" explanation as to why it's acceptable to voluntarily control your legs but controlling your ovulation cycle is horrendously evil.

Legs are naturally subject to voluntary control. It is built in to their function - to carry you in whatever direction and at whatever speed you prefer, or not to do so.

Humans do not ovulate on demand.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
There doesn't seem to be any "natural" explanation as to why it's acceptable to voluntarily control your legs but controlling your ovulation cycle is horrendously evil.
Legs are naturally subject to voluntary control. It is built in to their function - to carry you in whatever direction and at whatever speed you prefer, or not to do so.

Humans do not ovulate on demand.

Well it was IngoB's chosen analogy so that was what I had to work with, but as the OP pointed out, the distinction between voluntary and involuntary action doesn't really seem to be taken into account in any other context. For example, the beating of the heart is not "subject to voluntary control", yet most people don't take it as a violation of natural law to interfere with its functioning by installing a pacemaker. Likewise the immune system functions without conscious volition, yet very few worry about violating natural law by artificially inducing antibodies through vaccination rather than through the "natural" method of pathogen exposure.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:

No, me head's wrecked with this.

This is because IngoB is tying himself in knots trying to defend the indefensible.

Humans do unnatural things all the time. Talking to him on this medium is hardly natural!

Therefore it's simply up to us to decide if contraception is right or wrong, it's not in the least convoluted or complicated.

Since it's women's bodies which are the ones primarily affected by contraception it should be up to women to decide. Not a Church which is led solely by men.

Posted by Grokesx (# 17221) on :

quote:
You could do it even more easily by just standing still. Since you're not engaging in locomotion, you have acted counter to natural law.

A similar thought occurred to me, which led me on to thinking that kneeling down to pray would be "..morally illicit, an evil, i.e., a free-willed privation of good."

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:

No, me head's wrecked with this.
This is because IngoB is tying himself in knots trying to defend the indefensible.

Humans do unnatural things all the time. Talking to him on this medium is hardly natural!

Therefore it's simply up to us to decide if contraception is right or wrong, it's not in the least convoluted or complicated.

Since it's women's bodies which are the ones primarily affected by contraception it should be up to women to decide. Not a Church which is led solely by men.

Lets not get caught up in a dead horse, contraception isn't my target, IngoB brought it up, Me and him are in agreement that doing evil to achive a good is not acceptable. We must always try to do the good and if as an unavoidable consequence we cause an evil then that's part of the fallen nature of this world.
Where we part company is the idea that an evil is something that twart's the natural purpose of something. almost all of our technology twarts some or other natural purpose, most of it also enhances that natural purpose. the internet enhances our ability to talk to each other by corrupting our natural limitations on talking over distance and time.
We have been using things to avoid or exaggerate the natural purpose of things for a long time.

I wonder if natural law isn't just a way to apply ethics and morality to things that don't directly involve people. We are trying to find an underpinning set of laws that make morality an objective truth rather than the subjective truth it is.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:
No, me head's wrecked with this. Please square the circle for me, I can't figure out how an evil, surgery becomes an acceptable cost if the outcome is good, removing the cancer while contraception remains evil even if it the cost of achieving a good, limiting or spacing offspring?

code:

Surgery (double effect):

intended: cut diseased tissue (good) ---------
          ||                                  \
       requires                                ===> intended: fight cancer (good)
          ||                                  /
          \/                                 /
not intended: cut healthy tissue (evil)  ----


Artificial contraception (doing evil to achieve good):

intended: make conception impossible (evil)    ===> intended: space children (good)

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You could do it even more easily by just standing still. Since you're not engaging in locomotion, you have acted counter to natural law.

Nonsense. Perhaps if you wanted to go somewhere, but unreasonably refused to use your legs for doing so, then that would be a kind of moral evil.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Yes, in much the same way that standing still or, even worse, sitting or lying down, is "disrupting wilfully the primary [locomotive] purpose of [legs]". There doesn't seem to be any "natural" explanation as to why it's acceptable to voluntarily control your legs but controlling your ovulation cycle is horrendously evil.

Actually, it is morally acceptable to track the ovulation cycle in order to avoid pregnancy, by abstaining from sex during fertile periods. The moral difficulty arises not through a lack of use, but through an intentional use against purpose.

If you want to critique the natural moral law approach, then you should rather ask why it is morally licit to run on a treadmill. That is indeed rather similar to screwing with a condom. In both cases you exercises the proper function (locomotion / procreational action), but use an artificial means (treadmill / condom) with the aim to realise a secondary good (fitness / pleasure & bonding) without the possibility of the realising the primary good (displacement / kids). As I've mentioned before, I think natural moral law as far as I understand it (without having studied it properly!) has problems with supplying a quantification scale. If you have decided that sex is morally very important, whereas moving about is not, then natural moral law tells you that you shouldn't use artificial contraception, whereas you will shrug at the treadmill. But is seems much harder to come up with this fundamental moral distinction in a purely objective way. Instinctively I know that sex is a "bigger deal" than running around, but instincts are attackable as pre-rational.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For example, the beating of the heart is not "subject to voluntary control", yet most people don't take it as a violation of natural law to interfere with its functioning by installing a pacemaker.

Please consult my comment above. This is not a valid objection to natural moral law at all, but simply an instance of the first core mistake that people make in talking about natural moral law. By standard natural moral law reasoning, a pacemaker definitely is a good thing (if needed to maintain the function that one has analysed to be essential to the heart).

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Likewise the immune system functions without conscious volition, yet very few worry about violating natural law by artificially inducing antibodies through vaccination rather than through the "natural" method of pathogen exposure.

Once more, this is core mistake number one: confusing what is of the nature of a thing, with simple occurrence in nature. Please see above. Technical enhancements of the primary purpose of something are welcome as improving their good, they are not evil.

I think that there probably are some serious issues with natural moral law reasoning. I do not at this point in time trust it to supply an "objective" justification of all of RC morality. But until you upgrade your criticism to deal with what is actually being claimed by natural moral law theory, there is no real point to this discussion.

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Humans do unnatural things all the time. Talking to him on this medium is hardly natural!

And once more, core mistake number one strikes. There simply is no problem as such, by natural moral law reasoning, with a technical extension of the human ability to talk with each other. Where you could make some kind of natural moral law case is rather where the technical means does not sufficiently accommodate the human ability, leading to a possible disruption of the primary good of human communication by technical limitation. That could be considered a kind of moral evil.

For example, in a text-based medium it might not be readily apparent that the constant repetition of the ever same errors concerning natural moral reasoning - even after they have been explicitly and carefully explained - frustrate me mightily. Text is much more limited than tone of voice and body language in conveying the emotional backdrop to semantic content. In partial response to this, as it happens, smilies were invented. So just to avoid any moral evil by lack of full communication here, let me just add that the incessant repetition of the same core mistakes concerning natural moral law reasoning makes me feel like this: [brick wall]

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

IngoB, I think I see the difference, not between your examples but between us.
You postulate that the intention of contraception is to prevent conception therefore it perverts natural law. I would contend that the intention of contraception exactly the same as your recommended methods, abstinence.
The difference is that contraception allows the other natural benefits of sex to remain whereas abstinence removes them. A greater perversion of sex.
Anyway this isn't about contraception but the basis for deciding whether something is a secondary effect or an intended effect.
If I were to use a method of contraception that permanently removed the possibility of conception what conditions would I have to meet to fullfil the secondary effect rule? Would having completed my family count? Would the cost of further children burdening my already limited family count?
It's not as black and white as you present. The lack of a sex life might stress a marriage to the point of breakdown, the fear of pregnancy could impinge on a normal sex life and so on, all evils.
Isn't the secondary effect rule in fact nothing more than 'first do no harm'? The problem is defining where the harm occurs.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Humans do unnatural things all the time. Talking to him on this medium is hardly natural!
And once more, core mistake number one strikes. There simply is no problem as such, by natural moral law reasoning, with a technical extension of the human ability to talk with each other. Where you could make some kind of natural moral law case is rather where the technical means does not sufficiently accommodate the human ability, leading to a possible disruption of the primary good of human communication by technical limitation. That could be considered a kind of moral evil.

Ah, but having children is not always a "primary good". Having children is good when the time is right and when we are able to provide for them and care for them.

There is nothing good about a woman with few choices anyway having to pop out nine children and try to provide for them.

There is nothing morally evil about having no kids or fewer kids than would be "natural".

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

Seriously, people, do we have to do artificial contraception every single time natural moral law comes up? The concept wasn't invented for that case, and we have discussed artificial contraception so often already...

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:
You postulate that the intention of contraception is to prevent conception therefore it perverts natural law. I would contend that the intention of contraception exactly the same as your recommended methods, abstinence.

Not using something is not in general a form of abuse.

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:
If I were to use a method of contraception that permanently removed the possibility of conception what conditions would I have to meet to fullfil the secondary effect rule? Would having completed my family count? Would the cost of further children burdening my already limited family count?

None of these would count. In all these cases, you are directly doing evil to achieve a good. Your intention in all these cases just is to disrupt the primary function of the sexual act you are engaging in, because you want to avoid exactly the outcome it can bring about: having more kids.

If you want a case of double effect involving the sexual act, then something like this would work: A woman requires hormonal treatment for a disease. As it happens, this very hormonal treatment also disrupts her fertility, i.e., is basically identical with the hormonal impact delivered by the pill (and indeed may in medical practice be achieved by giving the pill). Question: Is the woman allowed to have intercourse with her husband while the treatment is going on? Answer: Yes. While the contraceptive effect of the hormonal treatment is predictable, it is neither intended nor avoidable. The resulting evil of artificially removing her fertility is (we can assume) less than the good of her being treated for her disease. Consequently, double effect allows sex in this case.

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:
Isn't the secondary effect rule in fact nothing more than 'first do no harm'?

No, it is something quite different.

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Ah, but having children is not always a "primary good". Having children is good when the time is right and when we are able to provide for them and care for them. There is nothing good about a woman with few choices anyway having to pop out nine children and try to provide for them. There is nothing morally evil about having no kids or fewer kids than would be "natural".

I agree with all of this, and so does Humanae Vitae. (Well, to quibble: "no kids ever" is not a valid intention of marriage/sex as a whole.) The question how many kids we should have simply is a different question to what the primary purpose of sex is.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You could do it even more easily by just standing still. Since you're not engaging in locomotion, you have acted counter to natural law.
Nonsense. Perhaps if you wanted to go somewhere, but unreasonably refused to use your legs for doing so, then that would be a kind of moral evil.

I'm not sure I can take seriously the proposition that buses are inherently evil.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Yes, in much the same way that standing still or, even worse, sitting or lying down, is "disrupting wilfully the primary [locomotive] purpose of [legs]". There doesn't seem to be any "natural" explanation as to why it's acceptable to voluntarily control your legs but controlling your ovulation cycle is horrendously evil.
Actually, it is morally acceptable to track the ovulation cycle in order to avoid pregnancy, by abstaining from sex during fertile periods. The moral difficulty arises not through a lack of use, but through an intentional use against purpose.

I'm not sure I see the distinction between using one form of human artifice (counting and calendars) versus another (using hormones to interrupt the ovulation cycle). Is it just that that the former are much older forms of technology, so they don't count? At any rate, "abstaining from sex during fertile periods" seems just as much an "intentional use against purpose" as any other method of avoiding an unwelcome pregnancy. It's certainly intentional, and that intent is to allow "use against purpose" (i.e. sex without pregnancy).

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Instinctively I know that sex is a "bigger deal" than running around, but instincts are attackable as pre-rational.

And it seems rather dependent on having the perspective of someone who has never had to worry about his ability to run around. Someone who had lost the use of his legs might have a different perspective on which of those is "bigger deal". Which is rather the problem with arguments from natural law. My experience is that it tends to dress up prejudice and tradition in seemingly "objective" functional arguments.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For example, the beating of the heart is not "subject to voluntary control", yet most people don't take it as a violation of natural law to interfere with its functioning by installing a pacemaker.
Please consult my comment above. This is not a valid objection to natural moral law at all, but simply an instance of the first core mistake that people make in talking about natural moral law. By standard natural moral law reasoning, a pacemaker definitely is a good thing (if needed to maintain the function that one has analysed to be essential to the heart).

I'm not convinced that you can analyze the "essential function" of natural phenomena without importing all kinds of assumptions. For example, one could say the function of the human heart is "to pump blood". On the other hand it could just as accurately be argued that the function of the human heart is "to pump blood for approximately seventy years and then stop". That's a somewhat more complete picture, but most of us don't care for the ". . . and then stop" part, despite the fact that mortality seems to be a built-in part of human physiology. On the other hand, we don't seem too worried about the ". . . and then stop" part when it comes to ovulation, mostly because of a lot of rarely-explicitly-stated assumptions. Likewise the essential function of eyes, which you mentioned earlier, is fairly dependent on perspective. Humans regard their function as "for seeing", for various blind cavefish eyes are minor glands that produce a few not terribly important chemicals, and for vultures eyes are a delicious, jelly-filled treat to be pecked out of skulls.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Likewise the immune system functions without conscious volition, yet very few worry about violating natural law by artificially inducing antibodies through vaccination rather than through the "natural" method of pathogen exposure.
Once more, this is core mistake number one: confusing what is of the nature of a thing, with simple occurrence in nature. Please see above. Technical enhancements of the primary purpose of something are welcome as improving their good, they are not evil.

The question of what constitutes an "enhancement" and what's "interference" seems to rely fairly heavily on a bunch of not-terribly-obvious pre-existing assumptions.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

If you want a case of double effect involving the sexual act, then something like this would work: A woman requires hormonal treatment for a disease. As it happens, this very hormonal treatment also disrupts her fertility, i.e., is basically identical with the hormonal impact delivered by the pill (and indeed may in medical practice be achieved by giving the pill). Question: Is the woman allowed to have intercourse with her husband while the treatment is going on? Answer: Yes. While the contraceptive effect of the hormonal treatment is predictable, it is neither intended nor avoidable. The resulting evil of artificially removing her fertility is (we can assume) less than the good of her being treated for her disease. Consequently, double effect allows sex in this case.

I'm well aware of this loophole, I live in Ireland and their was a time when the pill was prescribed to regulate periods at a rate that should have attracted some investigation as to why so many Irish women had such irregular periods. Possibly the rain and lack of sunshine.
Yeah it's a pity this has centred on contraceptive morals but it highlights the essential problem with the natural law idea. It seem to be around the notion of new ways to do old things. And moreso how people don't agree with the definition of what is the essential purpose of a thing.
What you don't address is the harm reduction angle, choosing the lesser of two evils. I suspect you will say never chose an evil. lesser or greater but I'll counter with failing to chose can be an evil in itself.
A Sophie's Choice.

[Edited to fix link. -Gwai]

[ 14. April 2014, 17:07: Message edited by: Gwai ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure I can take seriously the proposition that buses are inherently evil.

Nobody has proposed that. Once more, technological enhancements simply are not a problem to natural moral law reasoning. We use buses to achieve a larger range of motion than we could with our legs alone. However, if you have a perfectly fine pair of legs, but refuse to use them ever, relying on an electric wheel chair instead until your legs have atrophied to uselessness, then you are committing a weird kind of moral evil.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure I see the distinction between using one form of human artifice (counting and calendars) versus another (using hormones to interrupt the ovulation cycle). Is it just that that the former are much older forms of technology, so they don't count? At any rate, "abstaining from sex during fertile periods" seems just as much an "intentional use against purpose" as any other method of avoiding an unwelcome pregnancy. It's certainly intentional, and that intent is to allow "use against purpose" (i.e. sex without pregnancy).

Abstaining from eating is different from eating and then bringing oneself to vomit. This is so even if in both cases the ultimate intention is the same, losing weight, and if the effect achieved, a lack of calories added to the fat reserves, is the same. Lack of use is not generally the same as abuse. And using one's knowledge of food to make sure that one eats but still loses weight is also different from eating high calorie food but vomiting it up again. That one can cleverly organise the lack of food intake so as to minimise the discomfort, while still attaining the goal of losing weight, does not make the "clever lack" of dieting equivalent with the abuse of vomiting. The abuse consists in shoving the fingers down the throat after eating, thus in both acting and counter-acting as far as the primary function of eating (nourishment) is concerned. The difference is precisely in the nourishment-denial, in first stuffing yourself with calorie-rich foods and then stopping the food from having the effect on your hips that it should have by vomiting. The dieting also brings less calorie intake, but you do not deny the nourishment of the food that you do eat. You merely systematically eat less food, and food that nourishes you less. Of course, these two can become de facto similar if you hunger yourself into an unhealthy state, whether by dieting or throwing up does not make much difference then. But that's because the state you are in then is the main problem, so the method you used to get into that state is not so important any longer.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Which is rather the problem with arguments from natural law. My experience is that it tends to dress up prejudice and tradition in seemingly "objective" functional arguments.

Maybe. I have stated, and I will says so now again, that I doubt that natural moral law reasoning can in fact be used to reason people into traditional RC morals. It has is points, good points, but I do not think that it is sufficient. However, it does not help if you insist on repeating critiques that simply do not touch actual natural moral law reasoning at all. Again, there are (at least) two core mistakes in talking about natural moral law, and I have explained them above (as I understand them).

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not convinced that you can analyze the "essential function" of natural phenomena without importing all kinds of assumptions. For example, one could say the function of the human heart is "to pump blood". On the other hand it could just as accurately be argued that the function of the human heart is "to pump blood for approximately seventy years and then stop". That's a somewhat more complete picture, but most of us don't care for the ". . . and then stop" part, despite the fact that mortality seems to be a built-in part of human physiology.

Ageing is a somewhat tricky example in a Christian context. But if we adopt a more "evolutionary" picture here for now, then what we see there is simply a competition of two goods. It is then the primary function of the heart to pump blood, and the primary function of age to kill off the old generation to make room for the next generation. Cases of competing goods are notoriously difficult to resolve, because they require weighing one good vs. another, and what is the quantitative measure there? (Whereas weighing good vs. evil is a qualitative judgement.) However, we can from this come to conclusions like: "It is not morally licit to invest endless medical resources into the prolongation of individual life, even though this aids the good of the function of this individual organism. For that also thwarts the common good of ageing, by impeding the natural changing of generations." This does not tell us just how much we should invest medically into the prolongation of life, but it does tell us that the answer is not "infinite" and indeed may not be "as much as humanly possible".

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
On the other hand, we don't seem too worried about the ". . . and then stop" part when it comes to ovulation, mostly because of a lot of rarely-explicitly-stated assumptions. Likewise the essential function of eyes, which you mentioned earlier, is fairly dependent on perspective. Humans regard their function as "for seeing", for various blind cavefish eyes are minor glands that produce a few not terribly important chemicals, and for vultures eyes are a delicious, jelly-filled treat to be pecked out of skulls.

Humans tend to worry a lot about the end of ovulation, as it happens. And it is not a bug, but a feature, of natural moral law reasoning that it is "perspective-dependent". Indeed, the good of eyes to blind catfish is not the good of eyes to us. Likewise, the secondary goods of sex in humans and spiders, as mentioned above, are different. Human sexual partners are not supposed to serve as nutritious snack that helps to offset the energy expenditure of procreation. Vultures would regard their own eyes much the same as humans do, if they were sapient. And both eat the eyes of other animals occasionally (though vultures do so more frequently). This is no argument against the natural moral law analysis. Natural law morals pertain to the will of a sapient being aligning with its own essential good, they do not extend directly to the good of other creatures. Hence it is not morally evil for humans to breed and slaughter cows to eat them.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The question of what constitutes an "enhancement" and what's "interference" seems to rely fairly heavily on a bunch of not-terribly-obvious pre-existing assumptions.

Not really, no. However, natural moral law is not simply some kind of moral mechanism that could operate without the input of human knowledge and insight. The query about age above, for example, was reasonable. And so was, I hope, the answer. Those in fact are exactly the sort of discussions that one can and should have in a natural moral law context. It is not bad that one needs to think through things in this way, that just is the case (for humans). Sure, it would be better if we knew all the answers without having to ask any questions, in a way. But it is not so. But that's not really a failure of natural moral law. It just means that that method is not magic.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Nonsense. Perhaps if you wanted to go somewhere, but unreasonably refused to use your legs for doing so, then that would be a kind of moral evil.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure I can take seriously the proposition that buses are inherently evil.
Nobody has proposed that. Once more, technological enhancements simply are not a problem to natural moral law reasoning. We use buses to achieve a larger range of motion than we could with our legs alone. However, if you have a perfectly fine pair of legs, but refuse to use them ever, relying on an electric wheel chair instead until your legs have atrophied to uselessness, then you are committing a weird kind of moral evil.

You really love shifting those goalposts, don't you? First it was wanting to go "somewhere" but not going there via walking or running (or possibly skipping or strutting, or some other leg-based form of locomotion) was "a kind of moral evil". Then you change from going "somewhere" to going anywhere at all.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure I see the distinction between using one form of human artifice (counting and calendars) versus another (using hormones to interrupt the ovulation cycle). Is it just that that the former are much older forms of technology, so they don't count? At any rate, "abstaining from sex during fertile periods" seems just as much an "intentional use against purpose" as any other method of avoiding an unwelcome pregnancy. It's certainly intentional, and that intent is to allow "use against purpose" (i.e. sex without pregnancy).
Abstaining from eating is different from eating and then bringing oneself to vomit.

What about eating but also boosting your metabolism? That would seem more analogous to most forms of artificial contraception, performing the same actions but changing the physiological context. Does that count as "moral evil"? This seems like a weirdly puritanical fear that people might enjoy themselves and not suffer later.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
On the other hand, we don't seem too worried about the ". . . and then stop" part when it comes to ovulation, mostly because of a lot of rarely-explicitly-stated assumptions.
Humans tend to worry a lot about the end of ovulation, as it happens.

Not as much as they do about the end of cardiac function. I may have missed it, but I'm not sure there's much work being done on the ovarian equivalent of the pacemaker, something that could extend ovulation into old age. Given the physiological challenges of gestation and birth I'm not sure such tampering would be beneficial, even if natural law says it would.

[ 14. April 2014, 19:23: Message edited by: Crœsos ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:
What you don't address is the harm reduction angle, choosing the lesser of two evils. I suspect you will say never chose an evil. lesser or greater but I'll counter with failing to chose can be an evil in itself. A Sophie's Choice.

Rather, I would suggest that Sophie did not do any evil in making the decision. Neither in actually selecting one child, nor in making some kind of evaluation of her children's lives to arrive at the selection. The evil of the murder belongs to the murderer, not Sophie. He cannot pass on the responsibility for this murder to Sophie by forcing her to decide who gets murdered. It is not an available choice to Sophie that nobody gets murdered, and that somebody gets murdered is the choice of the murderer, not Sophie. Such a forced decision between different murders does not establish culpability for the murder. Furthermore, it many be deemed as some kind of moral wrong to judge the life of one of your children against that of another. But if that kind of evaluation is a moral wrong at all, rather than just romanticism, then it is a mild one. The real evil in this situation is not this evaluation as such, but rather making the outcome of such an evaluation determine life and death. That is deeply wrong, and where somebody can be blamed for that, evil. And that once more is not Sophie's fault, it is the murderer who makes it so.

Now, the murderer is of course playing here to human psychology, not to cool-headed moral analysis. And I do not expect that Sophie would draw comfort from what I have just said, though it might provide a skeleton to be fleshed out by a more appropriate engagement with Sophie. But not every moral dilemma is a dilemma for moral theory, sometimes it is merely an emotional dilemma for the moral agent.

In a more general sense, "lesser evil" scenarios that we did not bring about and where we cannot choose to avoid doing evil, and where we do not wish for any of the evils to be committed, are unfortunate and perhaps emotionally devastating, but not morally problematic - for us. The responsibility for the evil then always lies elsewhere. That we are put on the spot makes us causally responsible for what happens next, but not morally, if we choose what appears as the lesser evil to us (or indeed if we choose randomly, in case we cannot see any difference).

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
And it seems rather dependent on having the perspective of someone who has never had to worry about his ability to run around. Someone who had lost the use of his legs might have a different perspective on which of those is "bigger deal". Which is rather the problem with arguments from natural law. My experience is that it tends to dress up prejudice and tradition in seemingly "objective" functional arguments.

Bing bing bing bing bing. Jackpot.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

In reply to IngoB, this forum needs a thank you for posts to remove the need for posts like this!
Thanks for that last post. I won't quote it (you do long posts).

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You really love shifting those goalposts, don't you? First it was wanting to go "somewhere" but not going there via walking or running (or possibly skipping or strutting, or some other leg-based form of locomotion) was "a kind of moral evil". Then you change from going "somewhere" to going anywhere at all.

I have not moved any goalposts, and you are misrepresenting what I have said. You apparently find my statements here unconvincing, I certainly find your critique thereof meaningless. Best I can tell, there is not sufficient good will present here to attempt a resolution. You are welcome to blame that on me, since I for one certainly blame it on you. Let's leave it at that.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
What about eating but also boosting your metabolism? That would seem more analogous to most forms of artificial contraception, performing the same actions but changing the physiological context. Does that count as "moral evil"? This seems like a weirdly puritanical fear that people might enjoy themselves and not suffer later.

First, my analogy is certainly better for barrier methods. Yours may be better for hormonal contraception. Second, the analogy to weight loss or gain starts to fray a bit there, because having kids is a proper end in itself, whereas metabolism is not really an end in itself but more the "engine" for the various ends of life. So let me put this more precisely. Let's say we are talking here about a pill which 1) will increase the energy consumed by the body, but 2) will not convert this energy into any particularly useful form (like greater muscular performance), but merely into by a measurable but not necessarily unhealthy increase of body temperature. Then indeed it would generally be immoral to eat a lot of food but use this pill to dissipate the superfluous calorie intake as body heat. Basically one would still be wasting food. One would still disconnect the process of eating from the process of sustaining life (nourishment in a higher sense than merely "driving metabolism"). One would still try to have the pleasure of eating, a secondary good intended to make organisms obtain the primary good of nourishment, without the natural consequences thereof (powering life's activities or weight gain). The difference would just be that all this is more subtle than vomiting. It is obvious what is happening when one vomits up food, but if one pointlessly burns it into a small but persistent raise of body temperature then this is difficult to detect. And just the same can be said about the difference between barrier methods and hormonal contraception. What a condom does is readily apparent once you pull it off after use. What the pill does is subtle and not obvious to the naked eye. But both are in the end doing the same sort of thing.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I may have missed it, but I'm not sure there's much work being done on the ovarian equivalent of the pacemaker, something that could extend ovulation into old age. Given the physiological challenges of gestation and birth I'm not sure such tampering would be beneficial, even if natural law says it would.

Again, you keep pretending that the application of natural moral law is some stupid mechanism, rather than the application of reason. Yes, it is generally good, or at least morally neutral, to extend human motion capabilities by technical means. Not, it is not good if that means accelerating them at 20 g, because that squashes humans. Likewise one can have various worries about extending ovulation, of biological and social nature. Just those worries would then also shape the natural moral law calculus about that.

(And while the extension of ovulation in particular is perhaps not the focus of current research, extending the ability to procreate somehow past the age where that is readily achievable by merely regular vaginal intercourse of the partners is very much on the medical agenda.)

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You really love shifting those goalposts, don't you?

I'm no great proponent of natural law, but Ingo isn't doing any goalpost-shifting here.

quote:
What about eating but also boosting your metabolism? That would seem more analogous to most forms of artificial contraception, performing the same actions but changing the physiological context. Does that count as "moral evil"?

Well, are we talking about boosting your metabolism through taking exercise, or boosting your metabolism by taking weight-loss drugs?

Because in the latter case - taking drugs so that you can gorge yourself but not gain weight, then I think we do find a natural law transgression. It's functionally the same as stuffing yourself and vomiting in true Roman style.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yonatan:
My understanding of natural law is that it is based in a large part on Aquinas' use of Aristotle's idea of 'final causation' i.e. the goal toward which something is directed towards. E.g. the final cause of the heart is to pump blood around the body, the final cause of an eye is to see.

You're right in saying this, and it's much easier to quote you than to extract a line from one of IngoB's essays. Have to admire the man's stamina, but the smartphone I use can't cope with posts of that length.

Seems to me that a number of respondents Enoch, Dafyd & others) are in favour of natural law being natural (i.e. an objective morality that doesn't depend on revelation, that can form the basis of agreement with moral atheists and virtuous pagans). I share their view.

I'm unconvinced that the inherent purpose/nature/function of things forms a sound basis for such an objective morality.

Purpose is tied up with intention. Just as only beings who are agents can intend, only agents can have purposes. The purpose resides in the mind; it is not an inherent property of the thing being discussed.

Anyone who's ever played the "game" (actually it's more of a test of creativity) of how many different uses you can think of for a brick will know that things can have many functions besides that for which they were originally designed. A brick may be used for various morally-wrong purposes (criminal damage, greivous bodily harm) but what's morally wrong with them is not that they don't involve building a wall.

Aquinas uses the idea of an "essential nature" of things. That's a useful way of distinguishing inherent properties of a class of thing (dogs bark) from "accidental" properties of individual things (if my dog has laryngitis that doesn't make it a non-dog).

But it's a misapplication of this idea if
- you reify the "nature" of a dog into a thing-in-itself that's distinct from what dogs observably do, or
- you take as inherent properties of dogs things that people traditionally do with them (put them on leads and take them for walks. Some cultures don't - instead they eat them.)

Ironically, an emphasis on what God intended (His purpose) as the function of dogs (or legs or sex or anything else) can only divide the believers from the atheists and the pagans.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by QJ (# 14873) on :

natural law
wouldn't that be to sin? god gave one rule, don't eat from this tree.
now i have only two really important rules and i can't keep them. if we are actually spiritual beings trapped in the flesh for the moment, is there really anything all that important about keeping our flesh natural? distractions? we see so much of this world that it clouds our hearts vision of the next.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

quote:

Russ ;
Purpose is tied up with intention. Just as only beings who are agents can intend, only agents can have purposes. The purpose resides in the mind; it is not an inherent property of the thing being discussed.

This.
This is what I was struggling to say.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Purpose is tied up with intention. Just as only beings who are agents can intend, only agents can have purposes. The purpose resides in the mind; it is not an inherent property of the thing being discussed.
This. This is what I was struggling to say.

This is, of course, deeply false. In a sense trivially so, as any discussion of biology or medicine reveals within seconds. However, it is also the central falsehood of modernity, a nonsense by now so deeply ingrained into everybody that it is near impossible to unthink. Times are changing though, and just like this falsehood was once invented in the academe and then spread slowly through the culture, so it is for the correction. Give it a few hundred years...

Anyway, as far as the natural moral law discussions go at this point in time, you can employ the same trick that biologists and clinicians use if they feel scrutinised about their obedience to the cultural dogma of absent final causes: Just put scare quotes around everything, and blame it all on that great intellectual placeholder for any "just so" explanation, evolution.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
I'm unconvinced that the inherent purpose/nature/function of things forms a sound basis for such an objective morality.

Purpose is tied up with intention. Just as only beings who are agents can intend, only agents can have purposes. The purpose resides in the mind; it is not an inherent property of the thing being discussed.

This is, I think, not true. One is perfectly able to say that the purpose of the kidney is to eliminate poisons from the bloodstream. And yet that resides in the mind of no agent. Kidneys were fulfilling their purposes perfectly well before anyone knew any biology or anatomy.

Where I think conservative Roman Catholic applications go wrong is that they dissociate the purpose of the organ from the purpose of the organism that has the organ. While it's true that the purpose of the organ doesn't require any conscious intention in the organism's mind, it is also the case that the organ only has a purpose within the flourishing of the entire organism. In fact, it's strictly speaking wrong to say that kidneys expel toxins from the bloodstream: human beings expel toxins from their bloodstream using their kidneys. As such it is wrong to prioritise the proper purpose of any organ over the flourishing of the whole.

Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :

IB:

quote:
Seriously, people, do we have to do artificial contraception every single time natural moral law comes up?

That was part of my reason for beginning this thread. I only come across the concept of natural law in discussions of contraception, abortion and euthanasia, and that puzzles me. Insofar as I understand Natural Law it seems to me that it should have application to all sorts of situations, so why is it often reserved for these three areas?

NB I'm not complaining about how the thread has developed. Having been around for a little while, I recognise that the Thread Starter has no responsibility or rights over how the discussion develops after she/he has submitted the OP.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
That was part of my reason for beginning this thread. I only come across the concept of natural law in discussions of contraception, abortion and euthanasia, and that puzzles me. Insofar as I understand Natural Law it seems to me that it should have application to all sorts of situations, so why is it often reserved for these three areas?

I think it's partly because that's where it obviously differs from other ethical systems. Utilitarianism, Kantianism, social contract theory, and natural law are all united on not killing adult human beings, not stealing property under most circumstances, etc.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

quote:

Dafyd;
This is, I think, not true. One is perfectly able to say that the purpose of the kidney is to eliminate poisons from the bloodstream. And yet that resides in the mind of no agent. Kidneys were fulfilling their purposes perfectly well before anyone knew any biology or anatomy.

It could be a lack of clarity in language but I think you are confusing function with purpose.
Without agency a thing has no purpose, it has a function, something it's designed to do as part of a system.
Purpose implies intention.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
What about eating but also boosting your metabolism? That would seem more analogous to most forms of artificial contraception, performing the same actions but changing the physiological context. Does that count as "moral evil"? This seems like a weirdly puritanical fear that people might enjoy themselves and not suffer later.
First, my analogy is certainly better for barrier methods. Yours may be better for hormonal contraception. Second, the analogy to weight loss or gain starts to fray a bit there, because having kids is a proper end in itself, whereas metabolism is not really an end in itself but more the "engine" for the various ends of life.

Actually the analogy between metabolism and ovulation (not "having kids") seems pretty good. You seem to regard the (roughly) twenty-eight day cycle as something inviolable and any attempt to either decrease or increase that frequency as inherently evil.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
So let me put this more precisely. Let's say we are talking here about a pill which 1) will increase the energy consumed by the body, but 2) will not convert this energy into any particularly useful form (like greater muscular performance), but merely into by a measurable but not necessarily unhealthy increase of body temperature.

We don't have to posit an hypothetical pill. Exercise is probably the best way to boost metabolism. So we've come back to your "treadmills are immoral" position.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Then indeed it would generally be immoral to eat a lot of food but use this pill to dissipate the superfluous calorie intake as body heat. Basically one would still be wasting food. One would still disconnect the process of eating from the process of sustaining life (nourishment in a higher sense than merely "driving metabolism"). One would still try to have the pleasure of eating, a secondary good intended to make organisms obtain the primary good of nourishment, without the natural consequences thereof (powering life's activities or weight gain). The difference would just be that all this is more subtle than vomiting.

The same would seem to apply to exercise for the purposes of weight loss, but possibly not for exercise undertaken for other purposes. Once again we're back at intention, where the same activity is considered evil if done with one intention, but acceptable if done with another.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Why is it assumed that Natural Law = what the RCC say it is = agreeing with the RCC on ethics. Therefore if you are not RCC = you can't agree with any notion of Natural Law = your ethics have to be based on either some sort of religious equivalent of positivism, or a belief in infinite human ethical fluidity. These are all non sequiturs.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:

quote:

One is perfectly able to say that the purpose of the kidney is to eliminate poisons from the bloodstream. And yet that resides in the mind of no agent. Kidneys were fulfilling their purposes perfectly well before anyone knew any biology or anatomy.
It could be a lack of clarity in language but I think you are confusing function with purpose.
Without agency a thing has no purpose, it has a function, something it's designed to do as part of a system.
Purpose implies intention.

I don't think that one can sustain a distinction between function and purpose in this context.
The OED, for what it's worth, defines 'function' in the relevant sense as:

quote:
The special kind of activity proper to anything; the mode of action by which it fulfils its purpose.

That suggests that purpose may be used in connection with any context where function may be used, whether of intentional agents or not.

Posted by lapsed heathen (# 4403) on :

So a useless term for the purpose of moral divination?
But I suppose we are assuming that natural law is a sort of built in regulation placed their by God and intended to show us His intention.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
We don't have to posit an hypothetical pill. Exercise is probably the best way to boost metabolism. So we've come back to your "treadmills are immoral" position.

Fascinating how my explanation that something like treadmills really is a problem for natural moral law reasoning in your hands becomes my purported position that treadmills are immoral. But anyway, the problem with considering exercise here is that it has goods independent of the simple burning of calories. For example, strengthening of the cardiovascular system, increased muscular power, improved oxygenation of tissue, better coordination... This is precisely how exercise is sold as ideal "weight reduction mechanism": you lose fat and get fit. Where the getting fit part is not merely a consequence of the losing of fat (though that contributes). But in artificial contraception, any secondary benefits depend precisely on the avoidance of procreation. Or at least other benefits (like "improved skin condition") are for most people minor and not really the main point of taking the pill. Whereas of course a lot of people exercise even if they do not have any need to lose weight. This messes with the moral analogy. Artificial contraception is good in peoples' eyes by and large just because it allows having sex without having kids. In analogy, we need something artificial that is good in peoples' eyes by and large just because it allows eating without getting fat. Exercise does not really fit that bill, because it is good also for other reasons. My hypothetical diet pill does fit that bill, because it just burns off calories without any other good.

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The same would seem to apply to exercise for the purposes of weight loss, but possibly not for exercise undertaken for other purposes. Once again we're back at intention, where the same activity is considered evil if done with one intention, but acceptable if done with another.

If we can think of an exercise that does nothing but inducing weight loss, then that would indeed be the equivalent of my diet pill. Given human physiology and psychology, finding such a "pure" weight loss exercise frankly would be more magic than developing my hypothetical diet pill.

However, I fail to grasp why you think that intention has to be eliminated from the picture for natural moral law reasoning. Like for any moral reasoning, it is essential also there. What is special in natural moral law reasoning is rather how one arrives at judgements what one can have intentions about.

So in the concrete case, intention can indeed supply the magic that physiology cannot. That is to say, if your intention is indeed solely focused on "calorie burning" in the exercise, even though there may be other goods physiologically, and if you then use this exercise simply for the purpose of being able to eat more, then indeed you are committing a moral evil in analogy to contraception. You eat, presumably for the pleasure of eating, but use exercise to remove the nourishment this would deliver to your body. And you do not intend any of the other goods that the same exercise may do you. So by intention, you have completed the analogy.

Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :

quote:

originally posted by Enoch

Why is it assumed that Natural Law = what the RCC say it is = agreeing with the RCC on ethics.

Exactly. Basing your opinion of natural law on whether you agree or disagree with Catholic sexual ethics is missing the point. Aquinas is just one strand in the history of the idea. If you don't like him, look at Cicero, the development of English common law, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson. They weren't Catholics nor were they writing particularly about the ethics of the beginning and ending of life.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Artificial contraception is good in peoples' eyes by and large just because it allows having sex without having kids. In analogy, we need something artificial that is good in peoples' eyes by and large just because it allows eating without getting fat. Exercise does not really fit that bill, because it is good also for other reasons.

If you wish we could hypothesize some variety of low-calorie sweeter that allows the enjoyment of eating without the attendant caloric intake. That would be roughly analogous to your fears of people having sex for pleasure and intimacy without producing children. The formulation here seems to be that enjoying flavors without nourishment is evil in much the same way that enjoying sex without having children is, because it subverts the "essential purpose" involved.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by lapsed heathen:

quote:

One is perfectly able to say that the purpose of the kidney is to eliminate poisons from the bloodstream. And yet that resides in the mind of no agent. Kidneys were fulfilling their purposes perfectly well before anyone knew any biology or anatomy.
It could be a lack of clarity in language but I think you are confusing function with purpose.
Without agency a thing has no purpose, it has a function, something it's designed to do as part of a system.
Purpose implies intention.
I don't think that one can sustain a distinction between function and purpose in this context.
The OED, for what it's worth, defines 'function' in the relevant sense as:

quote:
The special kind of activity proper to anything; the mode of action by which it fulfils its purpose.
That suggests that purpose may be used in connection with any context where function may be used, whether of intentional agents or not.

Language is complicated sometimes.

If I say that the function or purpose of the egg in this recipe is to help the cake to rise, then
- at one level that's just a description of what the egg does - a functional description in terms of physics and chemistry. That's a truth about egg that doesn't imply intention on the part of the egg or anyone else
- at another level it's about the role of the egg in a wider system; had the cook - the agent - decided differently then the same egg would be playing a different role in a different recipe
- at another level it's about the usefulness or value of the egg in this recipe, which implies a someone to whom a well-risen cake has value
- at another level it's about the intention of the author of the recipe.

If these levels of meaning get confused, so that helping cakes to rise becomes the purpose of egg and any other use is therefore immoral then there would be no lemon meringue pie !

Best wishes,

Russ

Ps: thought about "raising agents", didn't go there

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The formulation here seems to be that enjoying flavors without nourishment is evil in much the same way that enjoying sex without having children is, because it subverts the "essential purpose" involved.

So what you're saying is that if Roman Catholics are right that contraception is morally wrong, then the modern fast food and processed food industry is also morally wrong? I can see a problem with this line of argument.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If you wish we could hypothesize some variety of low-calorie sweeter that allows the enjoyment of eating without the attendant caloric intake. That would be roughly analogous to your fears of people having sex for pleasure and intimacy without producing children. The formulation here seems to be that enjoying flavors without nourishment is evil in much the same way that enjoying sex without having children is, because it subverts the "essential purpose" involved.

Other than falsely attributing Puritan motivations to me, this is basically correct. In particular if that "sweeter" did not just provide sweet flavour without calories, which in itself would be at most a marginal moral concern, but somehow stopped the digestive system from extracting the calories from all the food eaten together with this agent. As for the evaluation of the evil, I repeat my stated opinion that it is not easy to argue for an objective measure. That is to say, while I agree with the basic moral analysis that there is a problem with using your sweeter to enjoy food without calorie intake, I struggle coming up with some "objective" argument that would tell me just how bad this practice would be. Do I have to recoil in horror or can I shrug it off as somewhat naughty but no big deal? I know not how one could get an answer to that which does not simply parrot my own "moral instincts".

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Have we really got down to arguing about whether it is immoral to eat food with ingredients in them which make them taste nice but give no nourishment?

There is a case for saying that all decisions involve a moral element, but in very many cases, the moral element is 'does this ethically matter?' The very answer 'No' is the ethically significant conclusion.

On the food question, I think the answer is virtually certainly 'No'. Upsetting though this will be to IngoB, I suspect that the use or non-use of contraception by people who are married to each other may fall in the same category.

As I've already said, further up the thread, if one is looking at whether there is Natural Law or what its scope is, there are much more interesting things about it to discuss.

[ 16. April 2014, 12:36: Message edited by: Enoch ]

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

I disagree that a substance that stopped your body from extracting all calories from food would be bad. To the extent that being overweight is a health problem, and because losing weight and keeping it off is phenomenally difficult, anything that might help in weight loss would be welcome because of the health benefits it could bring. Don't make out people who are overweight to be sinners because we apparently have messed up our "calories in < calories out" equation. It's one heck of a lot more complicated than that.

I am perturbed by this moral calculus that purports to have a correct ethical answer to everything. It seems to me that it is not given to us to know everything so solidly. Also, spending excessive amounts of time conceiving of oneself as an ethical warrior getting all the rules exactly right seems like focusing in the wrong direction.

[ 16. April 2014, 14:37: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:

I am perturbed by this moral calculus that purports to have a correct ethical answer to everything. It seems to me that it is not given to us to know everything so solidly. Also, spending excessive amounts of time conceiving of oneself as an ethical warrior getting all the rules exactly right seems like focusing in the wrong direction.

Moral intuition is fallible, in that wrongs against ourselves or against those we identify or sympathise with tend to strike us as larger, more obvious, more important than wrongs against those who are more "other", more strange to us.

So it's good to have moral principles that indicate what's right and wrong regardless of who's doing the wronging.

And well-founded moral principles are better than principles based on philosophical errors (medieval or otherwise).

So I don't have any problem with putting a bit of effort into considering what are good principles, and if that means a more extended discussion of low-calorie sweeteners than a reasonable person's level of interest in the topic would normally warrant, so be it.

If your criticism of the position that IngoB is putting forward is that it assumes a level of knowledge (knowing the purpose of everything) that we just don't possess, then you're understating the case. It's not that such knowledge exists in some Platonic realm and that we've only succeeded so far in gathering some of it. The problem is rather that the whole notion of objects having an objective purpose is wrong.

If you believe in a creator and believe that He is the sort of character that never does anything without a good reason, then it follows from the existence of something (such as arthritis) that He must have had some purpose in mind in creating arthritis. But if that s what is meant, then the claim amounts to knowing the mind of God.

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:

If you believe in a creator and believe that He is the sort of character that never does anything without a good reason, then it follows from the existence of something (such as arthritis) that He must have had some purpose in mind in creating arthritis. But if that s what is meant, then the claim amounts to knowing the mind of God.

Interesting.

Many things like arthritis are simply due to wear and tear - ie, growing older.

If (when?) a cure for growing older is found
then we'll be up against real moral issues!

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
... So it's good to have moral principles that indicate what's right and wrong regardless of who's doing the wronging.

And well-founded moral principles are better than principles based on philosophical errors (medieval or otherwise).

So I don't have any problem with putting a bit of effort into considering what are good principles ...

How about "Who am I hurting when I do this?"

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
How about "Who am I hurting when I do this?"

It's a good principle.

Is it a sufficient principle ?

Is anything that doesn't hurt anyone thereby automatically morally OK ? Is something that does cause a certain amount of pain thereby necessarily not-OK ?

I tend to think that the complexity of life requires a certain amount of complexity in one's moral principles.

"Double effect" has something to be said for it - it does at least consider both consequences and intention.

Where I think it fails to be adequate is:

a) there's a missing dimension of consent - doing painful things to others with the best of intentions and net beneficial consequences may violate their autonomy if consent is lacking (is that "playing God" ?)

b)the traditional formulation retains the idea that actions can be good- or bad-in-themselves, without reference to the reasons that make them good or bad. Such reasons, when examined, usually seem to amount to either some statement about consequences or intention, or to some statement that these things just have to be accepted on authority. But maybe I've just never met someone who can explain it right...

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Where I think it fails to be adequate is:

a) there's a missing dimension of consent - doing painful things to others with the best of intentions and net beneficial consequences may violate their autonomy if consent is lacking (is that "playing God" ?)

I don't see why that is a missing dimension. It's like saying that the doctrine doesn't say that murder is wrong. The doctrine of double effect is formal rather than substantial. Consent is a substantial matter. Indeed, the absence of consent would be one of the things that could qualify some action as intrinsically bad - you might say that an action that violates someone's autonomy is something that should never be intentionally done.
There are three possible positions here:
a) Strict deontology: you may never take an action that violates somebody else's autonomy.
b) Double effect: you may never intend to take an action that violates somebody else's autonomy, but you don't necessarily have to obtain consent from everyone whom your action might affect if your intended aims are more important.
c) Consequentialism: other people's consent is only important as it affects the overall results of your actions.

A doctrine of double effect problem: it's ok for the government to allow people to drive cars, knowing that statistically a few people will be killed in road accidents each year, given that the overall benefit to human life of using cars is great enough. It's not ok for the government to deliberately set the laws in such a way that a certain number of people will statistically be killed to keep the population down.

quote:
b)the traditional formulation retains the idea that actions can be good- or bad-in-themselves, without reference to the reasons that make them good or bad. Such reasons, when examined, usually seem to amount to either some statement about consequences or intention, or to some statement that these things just have to be accepted on authority.

Again, that's because the traditional formulation isn't about that. The reasons that make an action good or bad are substantial, and the doctrine is formal. When it talks about actions that are good or bad in themselves it presupposes that reasons for their goodness or badness can be given. i.e. killing people is wrong because of the value of human life, or because it violates other people's autonomy, or because it cannot be properly made into a universal law of reason, or because no human can seek their proper good in a community in which they can be permissibly killed.

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

Russ, I can't logic-chop all the possibilities in response to you. I think you have missed the point of my post.

I'm glad there are people to think through the ins and outs of what might be moral and what might not be. I agree that it's worth putting thought into because just flying by the seat of our pants isn't necessarily going to come up with a good answer. And I think an extended investigation into the morality of artificial sweeteners is perfectly fine. Heck, I joined in that investigation in making my post.

What astonishes me, and the underlying point of my post, is that amidst all the self-righteous judgement going on of people who eat too much, everyone involved in the artificial sweetener discussion so far seemed to be coming to the wrong conclusion. Despite their oh-so-advanced and self-important logic-chopping on the issue.

[ 22. April 2014, 13:30: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

Is it mainly a matter of tone ?

Or are you saying that there's something inhuman in a system which doesn't count satisfying human desires (in this case the desire for sweet-tasting food) as a significant good ?

Is everyone really reaching the wrong conclusion ? I thought people were arguing against the traditional philosophy by attempting to show that it leads to an obviously-wrong conclusion...

(still thinking about a good reply to Dafyd)

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

I can't discuss in those terms. I'm simply incapable of it.

Everyone seemed to be agreeing that being able to enjoy food without extracting all the calories from it was bad. Everyone. And enjoying showing off their intellectual muscles by how carefully reasoned their conclusions were.

I think that's a wrong conclusion.

Maybe you're all playing a different game, which I don't understand.

I'll leave you philosophers to get on with it.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
Or are you saying that there's something inhuman in a system which doesn't count satisfying human desires (in this case the desire for sweet-tasting food) as a significant good ?

Let's make a case.

Temperance is traditionally a virtue. Temperance is being able to enjoy moderate pleasures rather than over-indulging.
One of the shifts in the history of ethics is that between pre-capitalist and capitalist societies. In pre-capitalist societies avarice is defined as wanting more money than you need. In capitalist societies it's defined as wanting more money than you can earn within the spirit of the law. Capitalist ethics rejects the idea that there is any limit to what one may reasonably desire beyond health and what one's bank balance. I think capitalist ethics may be inherently problematic.
The processed food industry sets out to stimulate people into eating more food than they would otherwise intend. Generally they do so by mixing fat and sugar and salt into other foodstuffs so as to stimulate the appetite without sating it. Now in capitalist ethics a desire that is deliberately stimulated by advertisement or food-loading is as ethically neutral as any other desire. But there seems to be something wrong with that. Is stimulating other people's desires really an ethically neutral act?

(To avoid misunderstanding about the overall position I'm taking: I'd make a distinction between ethics and that particular subset of ethics which is concerned with one's benefits and harms to other people called morals; moral condemnation only applies to the immoral.)

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

Deliberately giving someone an addiction - hooking them on something that they then needmore and more of and derive less and less pleasure from - seems pretty evil to me. So to the extent that what you're describing is a lesser form of that, it seems like a bad thing.

But advertising could be good or bad or neutral. Telling you about the ways that my widgets are better than other people's widgets - seems like it should help you make a choice that's better for both of us.

Russ

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The doctrine of double effect is formal rather than substantial. Consent is a substantial matter...

...When it talks about actions that are good or bad in themselves it presupposes that reasons for their goodness or badness can be given. i.e. killing people is wrong because of the value of human life, or because it violates other people's autonomy, or because it cannot be properly made into a universal law of reason, or because no human can seek their proper good in a community in which they can be permissibly killed.

On reflection, I think you're right. That it's better to treat an outcome, in which someone's consent should have been sought and wasn't, as an evil consequence. Rather than trying to bring the issue of consent into the formal rule somehow.

However, "killing people is wrong" is just a good rule of thumb. It's what you might say to someone not yet of an age to grasp the doctrine of double effect.

But double effect is about the morality (or ethics - not sure I fully grasp the difference) of actions which have both good and bad consequences. And in analysing that way, "killing people" is not an action - using words thus is choosing to describe an action solely in terms of the evil consequence, and thus dodging the question.

Yes, as double effect tells us, it's wrong to intend someone's death, either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end.

Under double effect, actions that result in loss of life may be morally permissable if the loss of life is unintended and the good consequence is of comparable or greater weight.

I'm allowed to fire a gun at you, with your death as a foreseeable likely consequence, if my intent is good and I achieve thereby a foreseeable likely benefit of greater import (such as stopping you from murdering someone).

Trying to attach the evil consequence as an inherent characteristic of the action isn't conducive to clear reasoning. Self defence follows from double effect, rightly applied.

Unless of course you know better...

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
On reflection, I think you're right. That it's better to treat an outcome, in which someone's consent should have been sought and wasn't, as an evil consequence. Rather than trying to bring the issue of consent into the formal rule somehow.

I don't think that's what I was saying. Lack of consent can't make an action wrong because it has evil consequences; it has to be a deontological prohibition on treating people in certain ways without their consent. This is because I don't see how you can build the fact that someone didn't consent to an outcome into the wrongness of that outcome except by saying that it's the outcome of a wrong action. That's essentially a formal prohibition masquerading as consequentialism.
So there would be a formal ban on intentionally taking certain types of action without the consent of the people affected. Double effect merely means that the formal ban isn't absolute when applied to unintended side-effects of one's action.

Otherwise, I think the rest of your analysis seems correct to me. Although I think the right to self-defence isn't derived from double effect. I'm not sure here - but it seems to me that the intentional link between harming the assailant and defending oneself is a bit too direct. I think it's just that one's right to preserve one's life takes precedence over one's duty to preserve the life of people trying to take your life away. The same principles of proportionality apply as in double effect though.

[ 24. April 2014, 23:52: Message edited by: Dafyd ]

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Autenrieth Road:
I can't discuss in those terms. I'm simply incapable of it.

Everyone seemed to be agreeing that being able to enjoy food without extracting all the calories from it was bad. Everyone. And enjoying showing off their intellectual muscles by how carefully reasoned their conclusions were. ...

No we didn't. Everyone would include me. I thought I'd said clearly that
a. the ethical issue here was whether this was an ethical matter or not, and
b. this one isn't.

Posted by Autenrieth Road (# 10509) on :

Sorry, Enoch, I missed that. I'll go back and reread.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0