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The necessity of natural law for medicine

Recently this extremely poor piece came out by Jason Lee Steorts, the managing editor of National Review.

In passing: A little googling has not turned up much about Steorts's previous history, so perhaps my readers will know. Is this turn to the left on the issue of marriage any sort of surprise, or has Steorts always been a shallow social liberal, at least on this issue? All that I was able to find in a brief search was the fact that he has freaked out a couple of times at his own writers (once at Mark Steyn and once at Kathryn Jean Lopez) for their "rhetoric" in the vicinity of the issue of homosexuality. I suppose that was warning sign enough, but I still wonder if this is considered some kind of earthquake in conservative circles. It is, in any event, a sickening comment on how low National Review has fallen. So much for standing athwart the course of history crying, "Stop!"

The article as a whole is so jejeune that I am going to resist a temptation to fisk it. The temptation isn't that great, anyway. It just doesn't deserve the time that a fisking would take. A central aspect of Steorts's "argument" is the dismissal, with a flick of the wrist, of the entire natural law tradition by the magical invocation of the is-ought distinction and the name of David Hume. Really. See for yourself. Gosh, it's just that simple.

As I was musing on Steorts's cavalier treatment of natural law and wondering what sort of response might be effective with someone this dismissive, I remembered this post of mine from a few months back. Rather surprisingly, it didn't get any comments, so here I will try to make the connections to current issues explicitly yet again.

Steorts's dismissal of natural law arguments against homosexuality purports to be based on the difficulty or impossibility of deriving an "ought" from an "is." But no one is saying that one can take any random "is" statement and derive an "ought" from it. For example, no one is saying that, from the fact that male lions tend to kill the cubs of other male lions, it is good for male lions to kill the cubs of other male lions.

What Steorts and others who dismiss the natural law tradition en toto really need is the much stronger statement that no teleological understanding of the human body has any normative force whatsoever. What the shrugging rejection of natural law arguments implies is total skepticism about the proper goods of the human body.

I submit that such a premise completely destroys the medical profession.

If we have no way of looking at the human body and telling how it ought to be functioning based on teleology, then on what basis do we say that it is good for eyes to see, ears to hear, and legs to walk? Why should a doctor commit himself to healing an infection rather than encouraging the infection? Why should physical therapists help people to regain muscle tone in a weakened limb?

We could of course back everything up to the mere fact of human desire. People want to be able to see, to use their limbs, or not to have a fever, so physicians should help them attain these personal goals. But that would completely trivialize the profession. It would remove entirely the distinction between cosmetic or even harmful surgery and the healing arts. On such a view it would be no more a good medical act to re-attach a detached retina (if that is what the patient wants) than to gouge out a working eye (if that is what the patient wants). That view of medicine is ethically insane. And there is no reason in any event why doctors should use their skill to be mere robotic technicians actualizing arbitrary patient desires.

The practice of medicine requires the assumption that there is such a thing as healing and physical proper function.

To be sure, there are cases in which debate is possible. For example, suppose that a patient's leg is healthy in some ways (it is not infected or misshapen) but unhealthy in another way (it is paralyzed due to failure of nerve conduction). Is it medically legitimate to cut off the non-working leg and replace it with a prosthesis so that the person can walk? What are the proper uses and limits of ventilator use and intubation? When is plastic surgery appropriate? It is not as though medical ethics is all decided by a simple formula once we admit teleology into our understanding. The point, however, is that without teleology, understood as a guide to "ought," we have no sane, normative way whatsoever to understand the medical profession and its ends.

Once one admits that looking at the human body does tell us something about "ought" and "should," however, one cannot simply shrug off the natural law argument against homosexual acts. If there is some way that our bodies should work and a way that they shouldn't work, if there are things that it is legitimate to do to and with the body and things that should not be done, then perhaps homosexual acts are wrong because they are an abuse of the nature of the human body.

Of course, advocates of the homosexual agenda will likely respond to this proposal with ridicule, much as Steorts ridicules (without substantive argument) the notion that, once we admit as normative the claims of a "sexual orientation" to homosexuality, we similarly ought to respect the claims of a "sexual orientation" to polyamory. But ridicule is not argument, and at a minimum, the medical point should give pause to anyone who thinks he can use the is-ought distinction as an everlasting check to all natural law claims about human sexuality.

As I pointed out in the earlier post, an acceptance of teleology is important to the pro-life position as well. I have no idea whether Steorts considers himself pro-life or not, though he attempts in this pro-homosexual "marriage" piece to talk like he cares about the good of children. But consider: If it is a hard and fast rule that we have no way of telling an "ought" from looking at the human body, then why should we consider it important that unborn children are of the same species as ourselves? That is a mere "is" statement. Perhaps the only "ought" statement is that we ought not deliberately kill innocent people who can talk, or reason, or do differential equations. If there is no natural law, no claim upon us from our embodied nature as human beings and from what we are meant to be, then the fact that the unborn child is the type of being that will normally develop the ability to talk (if not, in every case, the ability to do differential equations) is either unimportant or meaningless. What do we mean by "normally"? What if this particular unborn child has deformities or disabilities that mean that we do not expect him, in particular, ever to talk? If we don't believe in a human nature and in the "ought" of teleology, then it is extremely difficult to say why the fact that he is a member of the species homo sapiens should have any claim upon us.

The same is true of born humans as well. To be sure, if this newborn baby is cared for he will (probably) grow up and become more like those of us who are capable of carrying on this debate, but so what? That is just an "is" statement. Some parents love and cherish their children; other parents want to get rid of their children. Who is to say which "is" statement yields an "ought"? Should the wishes of the parent who wants to kill his child be given any less consideration than the wishes of the parent who wishes to care for and raise his child?

The complete abandonment of human teleology yields ethical chaos.

I admit that the acceptance of human teleology does lead, reasonably, to the conclusion that Someone made us and is the ultimate origin of the "oughts" that are built into our embodied nature. But one can begin with the intuition that we ought not to kill baby humans, ought not to hack off humans' healthy limbs, and, yes, ought not to engage in homosexual acts without assuming as a premise that Someone made us and put a Law into our nature. The natural law can be perceived and used as a premise to conclude that there is a Creator and a Lawgiver.

Those who wish to say that natural law arguments are stealth religious arguments, religious arguments that deny their religious nature (Steorts does this, inter alia), and that they can therefore be airily dismissed by those who don't accept their religious underpinnings, do not realize the ethical consequences of abandoning the natural law. One would like to think that, were this pointed out to them, they would think again. I am not sanguine in Steorts's particular case, but I give you the argument from medicine in case you should find it useful.

Comments (30)

My suspicion is that Steorts is a closet SJW. Time and again we've seen people who show sympathy for causes like this or who "evolved" were in fact lying and held those views from the beginning. There's a powerful Gramscian element to how they operate on these issues. The only sensible solution for dealing with him is for NR leadership to terminate him and anyone who came in with him.

One thing I've never understood about conservatives and natural law here is the fear of polygyny becoming legal if gay marriage is legal. Polygyny is just ordinary marriage with multiple wives; it maintains the natural purpose and function of marriage. It's damn near just quibbling compared to the revolutionary attack that is "gay marriage." What this suggests to me is that many conservatives' instincts on gay marriage are simply not moored in a biblical or natural law perspective.

Well, I don't know about "fear," and I'm not terribly interested in debating with someone who thinks polygyny is _good_, but I am inclined to agree with you just that polygyny is less _unnatural_ than homosexuality. However, it is wrong and is not the original plan for marriage, and I think this can be seen in a variety of ways. Hence the ambiguous treatment of it in the Old Testament followed by Jesus' clarification of one-man-one-woman marriage in the new. Polygyny was in any event dying out of its own accord in Jewish society by that time.

I have always thought it odd for conservatives to speak of polygyny as the "next step" in the slide down the ethical hill after homosexuality, though if all they mean is that, as it happens, it is not as widely approved now as homosexuality, that is true as a purely sociological fact. Morally, though, and in terms of nature, it would have made more sense in a way for heterosexual polygyny to have received approval _before_ homosexuality. It is merely a matter of the chances of history that it hasn't--perhaps the association of polygyny with unpopular religions (such as Mormonism) and the resistant force of feminism in Western culture.

Having multiple "wives" is nonetheless morally wrong, an abuse of human sexuality, unworthy of mankind, and should not be legally recognized.

That's a basic problem with (re-)defining the scientific method in terms of methodological naturalism. By banishing teleological explanations from nature, there's no longer such a thing as a genetic defect or congenital heart defect or degenerative condition. There's no standard of comparison for how the body ought to work. Body parts and organs aren't *for* anything. There's nothing they are supposed to do.

Medicine is like bioengineering. A physician must assume the viewpoint of an engineer. View body systems from a means-ends perspective.

And, of course, you have a parallel problem with naturalistic evolution. What does "adaptation" mean absent teleology?

"Polygyny is just ordinary marriage with multiple wives;..."

"Morally, though, and in terms of nature, it would have made more sense in a way for heterosexual polygyny to have received approval _before_ homosexuality."

Not if human flourishing is better achieved through neo-local pair bonding and if that is the case then only experience will show us if bringing same sex, neo-local pair bonding under family law is a good thing.

We, however, do have much experience with polygyny, polyandry, and male - female unions in which one partner's natal household is maintained. Objectification - usually of the woman - seems to be inevitable.

Polygyny seems to wind up with older, more powerful men trading younger (often far, far younger) women like trophies and, at least in the United States, younger men (often teenagers) being driven into homelessness.

"If there is no natural law, no claim upon us from our embodied nature as human beings and from what we are meant to be..."

Perhaps we should first have to make the case that our "embodied nature as human beings" trumps (sometimes or always) our nature as mammals. Or, for that matter, if there is anything beyond our ability to imagine and enforce with brute force the concept of our being exceptional.

Sure, ridicule isn't argument -- a point that's worth keeping in mind when breezily dismissing the "medicine is justified by human desires" objection as "ethically insane." First of all, it's not obvious that there is in fact a coherent distinction in kind between cosmetic procedures and other types. Reasonable people have seemingly interminable disagreements about how to classify treatments -- human growth hormone supplements for idiopathic short stature, surgery for cleft palate or lip (in cases where the condition doesn't cause other pathological conditions), or even (though admittedly more controversially) hearing aids and cochlear implants for people (or the children of people) who strongly identify with the deaf community -- indicating that there's not necessarily some fact of the matter to appeal to.

In any event, the "human desires" objection doesn't necessarily have to rest on the patient's desires. It can also be based on, for example, societal consensus on what types of conditions are desirable, or some mixture of the patient's desires and societal views. It seems pretty trivial to construct a criterion along those lines that'll adequately deal with cases involving patients who want to have their eyes gouged out and so foth.

In related news, the head of the Boy Scouts wants to end the ban on gays. As I said, just expel them. Keeping them around, marginalized, is like cutting a tumor off from the site it was formed and letting it stay in the body.

In any event, the "human desires" objection doesn't necessarily have to rest on the patient's desires. It can also be based on, for example, societal consensus on what types of conditions are desirable, or some mixture of the patient's desires and societal views.

Why should I care about that?

It seems pretty trivial to construct a criterion along those lines that'll adequately deal with cases involving patients who want to have their eyes gouged out and so foth.

And equally trivial to construct a different criterion. Why should I consider one better than the other? And how should members of society form their opinions about what conditions are desirable with no reference to teleology?

If social consensus about goodness constitutes goodness for the human body and goodness in medical practice, then in principle social consensus could make it the case that the only good Indian is a dead Indian (that, for an Indian, a good heart is a non-beating heart, and that doctors should make Indian hearts cease to beat) and that a good female foot is one that has been tightly bound from earliest childhood. These would then become good in virtue of social consensus.

Which is one way in which I, for one, identify ethical insanity.

Not if human flourishing is better achieved through neo-local pair bonding and if that is the case then only experience will show us if bringing same sex, neo-local pair bonding under family law is a good thing.

Why should we do that? Homosexual "pair bonding" doesn't result in a marriage, and homosexual sex acts don't result in families.

It can also be based on, for example, societal consensus on what types of conditions are desirable, or some mixture of the patient's desires and societal views.

Is "desirable" code for good (as opposed to bad) or right (as opposed to wrong)?

An alert reader points out to me that Steorts has been promulgating nonsense on this subject for quite a while. I had just forgotten his name in connection with it:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/263672/two-views-marriage-and-falsity-choice-between-them-jason-lee-steorts

Bill Luse ably fisked the earlier version here:

http://wluse.blogspot.com/2012/06/gay-marriage-and-denigration-of-women.html

So obviously NR has kept Steorts on board in the intervening four years, even if that was the first time he had given his views.

The point, however, is that without teleology, understood as a guide to "ought," we have no sane, normative way whatsoever to understand the medical profession and its ends.

Baloney. You are simply assuming that natural law theory and something like preference (subjective desire fullfillment) utilitarism are the only possible candidates in town. You should know better. Why is it good for eyes to see, ears to hear, and legs to walk? Because these things tend to contribute to an objectively happy and fulfilling life. If someone wants to get rid of her proper functioning eyes, ears or legs - which rarely, if ever, happens, by the way - she is deeply wrong about what's objectively good for her. It's so simple than that. How do we know what's objectively good for us? That's a difficult metaethical question, to be sure, but certainly the telos of our biological nature doesn't (always) give an answer, and sometimes may lead us terribly astray.
Suppose you had the anatonomy of an ant queen. Your telos would be an immobile life as a birthing machine, laying hundreds of eggs an hour. Wouldn't it be a good thing for you if you could overcome that telos? That's exactly what human culture is providing. It gives us the opportunity to be more than just the slaves of our biological/teleological nature.

Some evolutionary biologists think rape behavior in male humans is a fitness-enhancing adaptation. They may be wrong about this, but whether they are is an empirical question. Their thesis has at least some initial plausibility, so let's suppose, for argument's sake, they are right. Wouldn't it follow, that the telos of my genitals consists, besides other things, in the sexual assault on women? And that, therefore, raping women is morally permissible, and refraining from rape under all circumstances immoral? This would be insane indeed.
Your lion cubs example shows that you are aware of this problem. But isn't it completely arbitrary for you to say that nature should be our ethical guide in some cases, but not in others? If homosexuals tend to use their genitals contrary to the ways they are 'intended' by nature (It's not clear to me that this is true, but let that pass), because this seems to them - correctly in my mind - to contribute to an objectively happy and fulfilling life, aren't they perfectly in their right to make their arbitrary decisions as you are to make yours? Natural law theory is of absolutely no help here to settle the issue.

Suppose you had the anatonomy of an ant queen. Your telos would be an immobile life as a birthing machine, laying hundreds of eggs an hour. Wouldn't it be a good thing for you if you could overcome that telos?

That telos doesn't exist in isolation from considerations about what is good for the rest of the colony. Changing her to give her normal mobility might be good for her, but disastrous for the rest of the colony. Therefore even if it is good for her, it may not confer any right to change her biology.

If homosexuals tend to use their genitals contrary to the ways they are 'intended' by nature (It's not clear to me that this is true, but let that pass), because this seems to them - correctly in my mind - to contribute to an objectively happy and fulfilling life, aren't they perfectly in their right to make their arbitrary decisions as you are to make yours?

According to natural law theory, they are not for the simple fact that the telos of their reproductive system is superior in moral ordering to their subjective wishes.

If someone wants to get rid of her proper functioning eyes, ears or legs - which rarely, if ever, happens, by the way - she is deeply wrong about what's objectively good for her. It's so simple than that. How do we know what's objectively good for us? That's a difficult metaethical question, to be sure, but certainly the telos of our biological nature doesn't (always) give an answer,

I certainly agree that if someone wants to get rid of proper functioning ears, eyes, or lets, he doesn't know what is objectively good for him. You are doubtless aware that many who identify themselves as transgender believe that it would make them objectively happier if they got rid of their biologically well-functioning genitals, and that doctors have lent themselves to this project as necessary technicians. My examples are not merely hypothetical. The example of cutting off healthy limbs is also not merely hypothetical, since BIID also exists and is in some countries "treated" in precisely this way.

To say that the telos of a biological nature doesn't always give an answer is not the same thing as saying that telos is irrelevant to what is objectively good for us. I acknowledged in so many words in the op that teleology doesn't make the answer to all questions drop out of a formula. Don't confuse epistemology with metaphysics. The fact of the matter may not always be simple to discern, but it doesn't follow that teleology has nothing to do with what is objectively good for us, which is what one needs to _dismiss_ the natural law argument out of hand with the is-ought distinction as Steorts does.

and sometimes may lead us terribly astray. Suppose you had the anatonomy of an ant queen. Your telos would be an immobile life as a birthing machine, laying hundreds of eggs an hour. Wouldn't it be a good thing for you if you could overcome that telos?

This is a truly bizarre example. Presumably there is a reason why the ant queen does not have a central nervous system (never has one, it not even being in her nature to have one) capable of sustaining boredom and deep unhappiness as a result of her immobility and the monotony of her life. To take the _mental_ capacities natural to homo sapiens and graft them onto the _physical_ nature natural to an ant and then use this as a counterexample to teleology as a guide to ethics is unhelpful in the extreme. It's on a par with a little kid's saying, "I'd sure hate to be a hammer, because it would hurt to get pounded against things." This tells us nothing about teleology as we actually find it in the world.

Some evolutionary biologists think rape behavior in male humans is a fitness-enhancing adaptation. They may be wrong about this, but whether they are is an empirical question. Their thesis has at least some initial plausibility, so let's suppose, for argument's sake, they are right. Wouldn't it follow, that the telos of my genitals consists, besides other things, in the sexual assault on women? And that, therefore, raping women is morally permissible, and refraining from rape under all circumstances immoral? This would be insane indeed.

Nothing that I have said in the main post or elsewhere is meant to endorse the theory that "Whatever is is right." It would not follow that the telos of your genitals consists in rape, because telos is not a simplistic function of "whatever is evolutionarily efficient." Teleological thinking, for one thing, has to take into account the psychological and emotional nature of human beings as well. For example, the bonding effects of sex, both for men and women, are also a clue to normative facts about sex, and obviously are completely at odds with rape. The need of human children for long-term protection is another such clue. We begin by assuming that there are normative facts, and biological truths about our natures, conceived teleologically, are part of how we figure out what those facts are.

Moreover, it's pretty easy to see that even human nature has a kind of bifurcation between things that come _easily_ (and therefore we sometimes say "come naturally") and yet are _wrong_ and things that seem to be natural in the normative sense. I would say that our perception of this bifurcation is actually evidence best explained by something like the Judeo-Christian notion of the fall of man. Man seems to have been "intended" for good, great, and high things but to have turned away from this, and we see this in all manner of facts of human history.

But this doesn't make it impossible to discern that eating dirt is bad for you and cutting out your working eye is (as you have said) not objectively good for you.

I submit that your perceptions in these areas are being guided by teleology even though you deny it.

I submit, further, that the idea that male-female sexuality is some kind of _aberration_ from normative human nature which homosexuals are _correcting_ or _transcending_ (as, e.g., a male urge to rape women is an aberration from normative human nature), is obviously false.

Your lion cubs example shows that you are aware of this problem. But isn't it completely arbitrary for you to say that nature should be our ethical guide in some cases, but not in others?

No, because (and we can tell this) humans are morally responsible and lions aren't. That's also part of the difference between human nature and lion nature.

If homosexuals tend to use their genitals contrary to the ways they are 'intended' by nature (It's not clear to me that this is true, but let that pass), because this seems to them - correctly in my mind - to contribute to an objectively happy and fulfilling life, aren't they perfectly in their right to make their arbitrary decisions as you are to make yours?

But if that is your take, then I don't see why you make the judgement that someone who wants a working eye cut out (because it seems to him that it will contribute to an objectively happy and fulfilling life) isn't perfectly within his right to make that decision.

Some evolutionary biologists think rape behavior in male humans is a fitness-enhancing adaptation. They may be wrong about this, but whether they are is an empirical question. Their thesis has at least some initial plausibility, so let's suppose, for argument's sake, they are right.

No, let's not. I reject the hypothesis ought to be considered seriously.

Any proposed teleology of MAN that does not respect his intellectual nature, and his social nature, his foresight, and his orientation toward a good conceived as universal and eternal, is not dealing with MAN but with a cardboard cut-out. And once we include all of man and not just bit parts, we can grasp that a marital union not just physical, and not just emotional, but of minds and wills oriented in permanent friendship and total self-giving (including the gift of fertility) is a good of another order altogether than that of sexual physical fitness adaptions. Natural law isn't simply biological, though it includes biology as the material base on which man expresses his good. Evolutionary biologists that imagine rape is an enhancing behavior in males are ignoring what is best in man.

Wouldn't it follow, that the telos of my genitals consists, besides other things, in the sexual assault on women?

That ought to have been the second to last step in a reductio, Grobi. I will supply the final step.: "Which is ABSURD. Therefore, rape is not a fitness behavior in men." Failure to perceive the absurdity is a failure of humanity in the observer.

Lydia,

Great post -- I think the medical analogy is fruitful and particularly interesting as an argument to use with our more secular friends who don't know much about natural law thinking. Related, I like the efforts of our friends in the ID movement to show how much basic biology is shot through with teleological concepts, even when the biologists themselves explicitly deny this!

Meanwhile, for those who may not be familiar with some of his work, this is a classic post on the subject that responds to many of the tired objections to natural law thinking Grobi mentions from our old friend Ed Feser:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/10/whose-nature-which-law.html

Here is a taste:

Now, none of these examples involves moral goodness or badness, because morality involves intellect and will, which grass, trees, and squirrels all lack. Rational creatures like ourselves are capable of moral goodness or badness precisely because we do have intellects and wills. The will itself has as its natural end the pursuit of the good, and determining what is in fact good is part of the natural end of the intellect. Morally good action thus involves the will to do what is good for us given our nature, while morally bad action involves willing contrary to what is good for us given our nature. And to the extent that the intellect knows what is good for us we are culpable for these good or bad actions. To will to do what is “natural” for us thus means, in classical natural law theory, something like to will to do what tends toward the realization of the ends which, given our nature, define what it is for us to flourish as the kind of things we are. And to will to do what is “unnatural” thus means something like willing to do what tends toward the frustration of the ends which, given our nature, define what it is for us to flourish as the kind of things we are.

If a squirrel were rational, it would be natural and good for him to will to escape predators and to gather nuts for the winter and unnatural and bad for him to will to offer himself up to predators and to eat only toothpaste or stones. And the latter would be unnatural and bad for him whatever was the reason why he willed these things -- brain damage, genetic anomalies giving rise to odd desires, bad squirrel upbringing, squirrel peer pressure, the influence of squirrel pop culture, arguments from squirrel philosophers who were hostile to natural law, or whatever. They would also be unnatural and bad for him however strongly he wanted to eat the toothpaste and offer himself to the predators, and even if he found the idea of eating nuts and fleeing from predators repulsive. The provenance and strength of the desires wouldn’t show that they were somehow natural (again, in the relevant sense) but on the contrary indicate instead how deeply distorted and unnatural the squirrel’s character had become -- like a hose that’s gotten so many kinks in it that it is hard to get water through it anymore, or a vine whose growth pattern has gotten so twisted that it ends up choking itself to death.

To clarify, I was taking "fitness-enhancing" in Grobi's claim to mean something extremely narrow, like "resulting in passing on one's DNA to large numbers of offspring." Obviously I was _not_ even granting for argument's sake that rape is "fitness-enhancing" in any broader sense such as "overall good for men."

"Why should we do that?"

Simple fairness and justice, perhaps? Justice Scalia was actually right for once (or twice - Smith). Once gay folk were able to form relationships without fear of legal harassment, it seems only natural that they would seek the same protections that exist for heterosexual couples as their relationships face exactly the same situations as those formed by the latter - i.e. property, children, and major life decisions around healthcare. That sort of defines Equal Protection.

Anyway William, all this is moot. When the resort is to creaky things like theology, natural law, and teleology, one should know that one has lost. A good analogy is one we encounter in economics when folks seek to draw macroeconomic conclusions from situations facing individual households. A very interesting thing has been the lack of any good arguments on your side once this got into court.

The political realities are more interesting and confirm those studies that show that politicians don't care about what the bottom and middle want. You've lost this one because folks at the top love their children, cherish their friends, and value their businesses and productive employees far more then they care about theology and arguments that conflate what's good for populations with what's good for individuals.

"Homosexual "pair bonding" doesn't result in a marriage [as defined by some]..." (edited for clarity)

Agreed, however the definition that matters (unless you are right and Judgment Day is at hand :)) is the one in the legal code.

"and homosexual sex acts don't result in families."

They don't result in pregnancies. Family formation is a broader concept.

"and homosexual sex acts don't result in families."

They don't result in pregnancies. Family formation is a broader concept.

No, they don't result in families. Homosexual persons may go out and arrange to get children, but it is not their sexual acts that result in their having families.

When the resort is to creaky things like theology, natural law, and teleology, one should know that one has lost...A very interesting thing has been the lack of any good arguments on your side once this got into court.

No, there are some perfectly good arguments. The judges simply refuse to countenance them because they don't like the results. Can't help it if people reject sound arguments because of illogic and emotional commitments to distorted ideas of the good.

Agreed, however the definition that matters (unless you are right and Judgment Day is at hand :)) is the one in the legal code.

What a stupid sort of thing to say, Al. The definition that matters for what purpose is the legal one? Why, for (attempted) enforcement at law. But there are other purposes to consider than that. One is whether a real marriage is contracted - so for ontological purposes. And even before Final Judgment Day, each person who dies will have his own judgment as to his behavior, that matters for some purposes.

You've lost this one because folks at the top love their children, cherish their friends, and value their businesses and productive employees far more then they care about

Another stupid comment. The "folks at the top" didn't change the culture about accepting gay behavior because they "value their businesses and productive employees." That's hogwash. Long before gay rights had any momentum at all, employers "valued their businesses and productive employees" all without giving any recognition to any gay agenda, and never had a moment's concern that failing to give gays so-called "rights" was damaging to their businesses. Even after the gay agenda gained a small foothold, businesses really didn't care all that much. You've got the cart before the horse in your account.

There is a psychological pathological condition whereby the afflicted person falsely believes that a perfectly normal limb "doesn't belong" to himself, isn't a proper part of his body. Frequently, these people will try to get a doctor to amputate the limb -- until recently, no doctor in the world would consent to be so used (*) (**) -- and, failing to get that "help", they may do things to injure themselves, so as to force a doctor to amputate the limb to save their lives.

(*) I became aware of this condition several years ago following news reports that some so-called doctor (in Britain, as I recall) was putting forth the claim that doctors *should* do the amputations, rather than to seek to get the person the mental-and-spiritual help he really needs.

This is a perfect example of what Mrs McGrew is talking about.

(**) I expect that Gentle Reader can see the similarity to "sex reassignment" surgery for (as Kathy Shaidle calls them) "mentally ill castration fetishists", such as Bruce Jenner.

Yep, it's called "Bodily Identity Integrity Disorder." I was mentioning it in a comment above (BIID). The resemblance to gender reassignment surgery (and hormone use, etc.) is very clear. What's interesting to me is all the people on the left who will scoff (as in this very thread) at the notion that abandoning teleology leads to medical chaos, while presumably those *same people* use the T in the GLBTQ alphabet soup without irony, thus pledging their allegiance to the wonderfulness of gender reassignment!

When it comes to medical chaos, the train has already left the station for their side of the political aisle. This is not merely theoretical. They have denied the existence of teleology, and this _does_ mean that they actually support people's cutting off healthy body parts because the people are so messed up that they think this will make them happier. But the leftist view is that we can't say those people are "messed up" or tell them that they cannot thus abuse their bodies and that no one is permitted to help them abuse their bodies. Instead, we have to play along with their confusion or else we are bigots. The lunatics are already running the asylum.

What's interesting to me is all the people on the left who will scoff (as in this very thread) at the notion that abandoning teleology leads to medical chaos, while presumably those *same people* use the T in the GLBTQ alphabet soup without irony, thus pledging their allegiance to the wonderfulness of gender reassignment!

Indeed. And Steve Frank commenting at Crisis demonstrated that "T" shows the utter incoherence of the LGBT position:

It’s also interesting to observe the cognitive dissonance that goes on in the Left when it comes to what they believe about gender in the contexts of SSM and transgenderism respectively. When it comes to SSM, gender differences between men and women must be minimized. In order to argue that two Dads, two Moms, or a Mom and a Dad are all equally beneficial arrangements for a child, the Left must argue that there isn’t much difference between a male and a female except a few body parts. All other apparent differences between the sexes are due to cultural pressure to conform to traditional gender stereotypes, or so we are told. But then when it comes to transgenderism, the Left switches gears and suddenly they are arguing in such a way that gender differences are heightened. To support the cause of the transgendered, they will argue that gender differences go far deeper than body parts…the differences between the genders are so stark they will say, that it’s simply cruel to allow a female to remain trapped in a male body or vice versa, thus justifying drastic “cures” that involve mutilation of body parts and ingestion of powerful drugs. So the Left has to speak with a forked tongue when it comes to gender…minimizing gender differences when arguing for SSM, while maximizing the differences when arguing for the cause of transgenderism. Which all goes to show that the pop psychology we are being fed by the “experts” when it comes to LGBT issues is driven by politics, not science or facts.

According to Al:

"Why should we do that?"

Simple fairness and justice, perhaps?

Sums up perfectly the reasoning of SJW types.

"I certainly agree that if someone wants to get rid of proper functioning ears, eyes, or lets, he doesn't know what is objectively good for him. You are doubtless aware that many who identify themselves as transgender believe that it would make them objectively happier if they got rid of their biologically well-functioning genitals, and that doctors have lent themselves to this project as necessary technicians. My examples are not merely hypothetical. The example of cutting off healthy limbs is also not merely hypothetical, since BIID also exists and is in some countries "treated" in precisely this way."

Do you recall this story (the link is to the UK's Telegraph newspaper) from 2013 in Belgium, wherein a woman had been given a "sex change" operation so that she could pretend to be a man. When that failed to solve her problems, she was given "mercy".

Why should I care about that?

Because the form of your argument -- at least as I understood it -- was something like this: Some people claim that the distinction between "is" and "ought" statements dooms natural law. But anyone who thinks that "is" statements can't imply "ought" statements will have great difficulty justifying current medical practices -- at least without also justifying medical procedures that most people object to.

If there's a non-teleological standard that can justify standard medical procedures without also endorsing things like doctors helping patients gouge their eyes out, then people who endorse the is-ought distinction don't need to be troubled by the possibility that they're either unable to justify the healing arts or have to justify amputating limbs.

And equally trivial to construct a different criterion. Why should I consider one better than the other? And how should members of society form their opinions about what conditions are desirable with no reference to teleology?

You needn't consider it better than any other. The point is that the person who has a strong intuition that "is" statements can't imply "ought" statements can avoid having to bite the bullet and accept physician-assisted eye-gouging by picking a criterion like, "Medical procedures are justified if they're consistent with the patient's desires, unless the procedure would be horrifying to the vast majority of people in the doctor's society." The criterion doesn't itself need to be justified; it just needs to avoid being itself unpalatable.

For the same reason, it doesn't matter for purposes of the argument how members of society decide what procedures are horrifying. They could form those opinions for religious reasons, some pet ethical theory, or just brute intuition.

I don't follow. You can't get an ought from an is, but if the vast majority of people think something is horrifying, then it is, and I ought to think so too?

by picking a criterion like, "Medical procedures are justified if they're consistent with the patient's desires, unless the procedure would be horrifying to the vast majority of people in the doctor's society." The criterion doesn't itself need to be justified; it just needs to avoid being itself unpalatable.

But it IS unpalatable - to the person who wants to have his eyes gouged out.

And, just for the record, the "unless the procedure would be horrifying to the vast majority of people in the doctor's society" is precisely the kind of justification - or rather, the failure to justify - that gets us into these problems to begin with, and happens to undermine the ENTIRETY of things like having protections for human rights that are protections regardless of whether the vast majority of people in society want them protected.

Such a concept of justification is no better than "might makes right", where having the vast majority in your corner is what gives you the might - the might of the mob. Civilization, on the other hand, recognizes that there are better concepts of justification than "we'll beat you up because we have the mob behind us."

Because the form of your argument -- at least as I understood it -- was something like this: Some people claim that the distinction between "is" and "ought" statements dooms natural law. But anyone who thinks that "is" statements can't imply "ought" statements will have great difficulty justifying current medical practices -- at least without also justifying medical procedures that most people object to.

If there's a non-teleological standard that can justify standard medical procedures without also endorsing things like doctors helping patients gouge their eyes out, then people who endorse the is-ought distinction don't need to be troubled by the possibility that they're either unable to justify the healing arts or have to justify amputating limbs.

RK, your proposed "standard" is completely arbitrary. I already counterexampled it with my "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" example and my foot-binding example. It is no answer to my argument to say that one can make up an _arbitrary_ standard that _might_ not require one to endorse patients' gouging their eyes out. After all, given your suggestion, it could happen that the majority endorsed gouging the patient's eye out! This "standard" obviously cannot ground _objective_ right and wrong, since it could arbitrarily go either way.

I could just as well pretend that it is a response to my argument to say, "Ah, well, no worries. We could have as a 'standard' that right and wrong in medicine are whatever the aliens say they are, and then let's _surmise_ that the aliens won't endorse doing anything horrible to patients."

That is not an answer to my point at all.

Anyone who believes that "is" cannot imply "ought" is going to have a lot of problems anyway. The presence of authentic hunger implies that you ought to eat. Anyone who cannot even agree with that would do us all a service by taking their opposition to the extreme on a hunger strike.

Oh, the old, "Is-Ought," nonsense. There are three level of laws (from highest to lowest): Divine, Natural, and Human. After proving that God exists by other means, the refutation of the is-ought mess proceeds easily. God, by his Divine Simplicity, has no distinction between is and ought, so the problem is meaningless for the Divine Law. When God says that this is the way it is, not only is it that way, but it ought to be that way. Nature has no choice in how it operates on its own (Nature can't change how gravity is going to work) and being derivative of Divine Law, inherits the is equals ought relationship from the Divine Law. Man, on the other hand, can neither change the Laws of Nature or of God, but can alter his own his own decisions. So, strictly speaking, only for man does an is not equal an ought, necessarily, when applied strictly to human modes of activity.

Now, since the disorder of homosexuality resides in the Divine and Natural Law, primarily, the is-ought problem does not exist. If something is wrong at either of these two levels, it ought to be wrong. If an experiment violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it ought to be wrong, because it is inconsistent.

What homosexual activists want to do is make the homosexual relationship a purely human mode of activity, where it does become an is-ought problem. In essence, they want to pretend that God does not exist, while at the same time appealing to vague notions of His, "Kindness."

This is an epistemological shell game, nothing more. The counter-argument from teleology against not being able to derive an is from an ought, necessarily, is a way to state the distinctions I just made in a linear process fashion, but it is the same set of distinctions, since the Divine and Natural laws govern teleology, primarily, with man only a secondary actor.

Homosexual tendencies should be accorded the same sympathy as any other disorder in man, but the morality of the actions must be judged, ultimately, by a higher order than man, otherwise, it becomes nothing more than a shouting match and a measuring contest for money and influence.

The Chicken

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