As you may recall, I found that argument extremely unpersuasive! I object pretty strongly to this use of sociobiology. So reductive. I understand you think you have a strategy to compensate for that (or elevate it) but I don’t think it works.
Basically it's the old fallacy that it's shameful to be embodied. To be part of living nature is to have instincts shaped by the selfish genes. That has often seemed reductive and degrading to people of a certain philosophical cast of mind, but it's how God made the world, and we shouldn't be too dainty for it.
The character Virtue in C.S Lewis’s The Pilgrims Regress had to learn this lesson
It's not shameful to be embodied, but we are more than just bodies, and if you don't adequately capture that you diminish humans to much less than they are. That's the issue.
Sure, of course we’re more than bodies. You can’t fully understand human nature from sociobiology. Sociobiology is crucial to understanding human instincts. Deciding whether you should use, encourage, or override those instincts is a task for conscience and reason. To override instincts is often difficult and often necessary. But often you’re happiest when you’ve situated yourself so that your instincts steer you towards the good. And understanding other people’s instincts helps you to serve them.
That sex is fundamentally reproductive is very obvious, but whether that truth can do any useful work in an argument is far less clear. Biological function is one thing. Morality is another. Are they connected? Why?
Chickens lay eggs. Eggs have a reproductive function. But our chickens are selected to lay eggs when there's no rooster and reproduction is impossible. And in any case, we take the eggs from them and eat them. Some chickens, by design, lay lots of eggs, none of which result in any offspring. I assume that you agree with me that this is innocent.
And half of agriculture can be described in the same way. Cows' milk is for calves, biologically, but humans remove the calves and keep pumping the milk, for a different purpose. Apple trees tend to consist of a graft between a fruiting variety and a rootstock. The biological function of the root stock is nourish a tree of its own type, and produce that kind of fruit, but thanks to human intervention it doesn't do that. The corn we grow is profoundly transformed from its natural state, so that it's uncompetitive in the wild, but super efficient for our purposes. We grow seedless watermelons and seedless grapes. The biological function of watermelons and grapes is to be the bearers of seeds, but we override that.
It's not at all clear why this overriding of biological function should not be equally innocent in the case of human sexuality.
Now, I agree that the reproductive function of sex is morally relevant, only but the only moral relevance I see is indirect, via (a) how it shapes human instincts, and (b) how it differentiates the sexes.
A lustful man might apply the Golden Rule as follows: I'd love it if she seduced me, so I should do unto her as I would have her do unto me. That's wrong because sex doesn't have the same significance for, and effect on, men and women. It's not just that she might get pregnant, but that she would be devalued in the eyes of other men, of her relatives, and of herself. He might walk away quite easy in his mind, but he'll create a frustrated attachment in her. It's asymmetric, that's the key.
Your argument has to address that frankly. There is no rational case for chastity that doesn't take that as its starting point.
The agricultural take doesn't hold. We also kill and eat chickens and cows, and consider it morally different from doing likewise to humans. Why? Because it's obvious (to most people) that there's something qualitatively different about humans from all other animals. So it's logical to see that the biological realities that create new humans are different from the ones that create new cows or new chickens.
Okay, but it seems to me that the human body should be more morally consequential than an animal’s. When we kill and eat animals, that’s a case of sacrificing the animal’s good to human good, because humans are higher. What do we owe to our own bodies? What respect is due to *human* organic order? It is actually rather funny how some people insist on having “organic” vegetables and cage-free eggs and yet happily endorse every technological reproductive intervention (from IVF to abortion) in the human case. We need organic cauliflower but not organic humans. More respect for brassica, apparently.
The question "What do we owe our own bodies?" is completely unintuitive to me. Nothing, of course. They're are ours to do with as we like. We shouldn't wantonly destroy them, but that's not because we owe anything to our bodies, but because we owe something to God and our neighbor. We shouldn't wantonly destroy our cars, either. But the body is lower than the soul and can be subordinated to its ends.
So I don't think this works. I agree with the takeaway but not the argument. Start here:
"we need to respect the natural character of sex itself, which is fundamentally reproductive..."
Why? What does that even mean? And if it is accepted, do the rules at all map onto traditional Christian sexual morality?
Should a married couple who know that they're infertile have sex? How can that be reconciled with the principle?
What if a couple has sex before getting married in order to find out whether they're fertile, so that a lifetime of sexual activity won't be in vain? Such a couple is certainly treating sex as reproductive!
Sex can be for pleasure, bonding or the strengthening of affection. Those would seem to be sufficient motives apart from reproduction. As a parallel, when I drive a car, I'm usually trying to get somewhere, but sometimes I just want to see the scenery pass by. Nothing wrong with that.
I think there is a compelling case for chastity, but it doesn't look like this. It's absolutely indispensable to start from the differentiation of the sexes, and the different meaning that sex has for the two sexes. If you try to steer a politically correct course that doesn't treat men and women differently, and then you can't make a case for chastity that's at all persuasive.
Women shouldn't degrade themselves through promiscuous sex. Men shouldn't exploit women through promiscuous sex. It's asymmetric. That's the key.
When I say that sex is fundamentally reproductive, I'm not making a claim about motives. What fundamentally *is* sex? It's how sexually dimorphic creatures breed. How they mate. Because human beings are rational the biological fuses in deep ways with the rational and moral, but on some level we're still doing what squirrels are doing: mating. Perpetuating the species.
Every sexual act need not make a baby, just as (to use Anscombe's example) not every acorn will become an oak. But an acorn is still "an oak in potency" even if it never gets there. And human sex is still "the baby-making thing" even if, for circumstantial reasons, you don't expect to make an actual baby and perhaps don't wish to. You have to respect the fundamental character of the act.
This is far more fundamental than any asymmetries between sexes. Indeed, I don't see how you can make much sense of the differentiation of sexes *unless* you begin with "sex as a baby-making thing" because that's really at the core of those asymmetries.
Driving isn't necessarily a helpful example because it's more artificial, involving technology and potentially (properly!) utilitarian goals. Driving is far less organic and not (by nature) nearly so morally weighty. (It can intersect with morally weighty matters of course, but need not; it isn't morally weighty as such.) To take a less weighty but still more closely analogous case, consider eating. Eating is fundamentally (biologically!) the act of ingesting nutrients. That's what it is; we need energy and that's why our bodies are equipped to eat. But of course it doesn't follow that we either can or should only eat for utilitarian purposes. We're rational and loving beings, and eating potentially (and properly!) takes on lots of other dimensions, and sometimes we eat calories we don't need (and that aren't even good for us) for other reasons: for pleasure, social benefit etc. That's not necessarily wrong. (Though, it can be wrong; gluttony is also a sin.) But eating for pleasure and vomiting it back up (as bulimics do) is messed up. And proper eating should at least be broadly consonant with the body's real needs; we don't have to absolutely optimize but the foundational character of eating as "a nutrient-absorbing activity" should be respected. Otherwise we'll be unhealthy, and undermine our own human powers. Respect the body and its natural rhythms.
"Testing" a potential marriage through fornication is wrong, but probably not because it fails to respect the organic, reproduction-oriented character of sex. It far more obviously violates the other of my two planks: the valuing of persons. That's the beauty (and challenge) of the traditional view: it requires us to preserve the organic character of sex *while also loving like men.*
Traditional Christian sexual mores don’t guarantee a happy life, but it’s a lot more likely than when “consent” ethics rule.
I've written more about this here. https://lancelotfinn.substack.com/p/the-grand-coherence-chapter-12-sociobiology?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=bvjex
That was actually written after a debate we had on a similar subject at Christmas 2 and 1/2 years ago... You might be interested.
As you may recall, I found that argument extremely unpersuasive! I object pretty strongly to this use of sociobiology. So reductive. I understand you think you have a strategy to compensate for that (or elevate it) but I don’t think it works.
Basically it's the old fallacy that it's shameful to be embodied. To be part of living nature is to have instincts shaped by the selfish genes. That has often seemed reductive and degrading to people of a certain philosophical cast of mind, but it's how God made the world, and we shouldn't be too dainty for it.
The character Virtue in C.S Lewis’s The Pilgrims Regress had to learn this lesson
It's not shameful to be embodied, but we are more than just bodies, and if you don't adequately capture that you diminish humans to much less than they are. That's the issue.
Sure, of course we’re more than bodies. You can’t fully understand human nature from sociobiology. Sociobiology is crucial to understanding human instincts. Deciding whether you should use, encourage, or override those instincts is a task for conscience and reason. To override instincts is often difficult and often necessary. But often you’re happiest when you’ve situated yourself so that your instincts steer you towards the good. And understanding other people’s instincts helps you to serve them.
Read the new version, it's written to respond to what you said at that time. Time permitting, of course.
That sex is fundamentally reproductive is very obvious, but whether that truth can do any useful work in an argument is far less clear. Biological function is one thing. Morality is another. Are they connected? Why?
Chickens lay eggs. Eggs have a reproductive function. But our chickens are selected to lay eggs when there's no rooster and reproduction is impossible. And in any case, we take the eggs from them and eat them. Some chickens, by design, lay lots of eggs, none of which result in any offspring. I assume that you agree with me that this is innocent.
And half of agriculture can be described in the same way. Cows' milk is for calves, biologically, but humans remove the calves and keep pumping the milk, for a different purpose. Apple trees tend to consist of a graft between a fruiting variety and a rootstock. The biological function of the root stock is nourish a tree of its own type, and produce that kind of fruit, but thanks to human intervention it doesn't do that. The corn we grow is profoundly transformed from its natural state, so that it's uncompetitive in the wild, but super efficient for our purposes. We grow seedless watermelons and seedless grapes. The biological function of watermelons and grapes is to be the bearers of seeds, but we override that.
It's not at all clear why this overriding of biological function should not be equally innocent in the case of human sexuality.
Now, I agree that the reproductive function of sex is morally relevant, only but the only moral relevance I see is indirect, via (a) how it shapes human instincts, and (b) how it differentiates the sexes.
A lustful man might apply the Golden Rule as follows: I'd love it if she seduced me, so I should do unto her as I would have her do unto me. That's wrong because sex doesn't have the same significance for, and effect on, men and women. It's not just that she might get pregnant, but that she would be devalued in the eyes of other men, of her relatives, and of herself. He might walk away quite easy in his mind, but he'll create a frustrated attachment in her. It's asymmetric, that's the key.
Your argument has to address that frankly. There is no rational case for chastity that doesn't take that as its starting point.
The agricultural take doesn't hold. We also kill and eat chickens and cows, and consider it morally different from doing likewise to humans. Why? Because it's obvious (to most people) that there's something qualitatively different about humans from all other animals. So it's logical to see that the biological realities that create new humans are different from the ones that create new cows or new chickens.
Okay, but it seems to me that the human body should be more morally consequential than an animal’s. When we kill and eat animals, that’s a case of sacrificing the animal’s good to human good, because humans are higher. What do we owe to our own bodies? What respect is due to *human* organic order? It is actually rather funny how some people insist on having “organic” vegetables and cage-free eggs and yet happily endorse every technological reproductive intervention (from IVF to abortion) in the human case. We need organic cauliflower but not organic humans. More respect for brassica, apparently.
The question "What do we owe our own bodies?" is completely unintuitive to me. Nothing, of course. They're are ours to do with as we like. We shouldn't wantonly destroy them, but that's not because we owe anything to our bodies, but because we owe something to God and our neighbor. We shouldn't wantonly destroy our cars, either. But the body is lower than the soul and can be subordinated to its ends.
So I don't think this works. I agree with the takeaway but not the argument. Start here:
"we need to respect the natural character of sex itself, which is fundamentally reproductive..."
Why? What does that even mean? And if it is accepted, do the rules at all map onto traditional Christian sexual morality?
Should a married couple who know that they're infertile have sex? How can that be reconciled with the principle?
What if a couple has sex before getting married in order to find out whether they're fertile, so that a lifetime of sexual activity won't be in vain? Such a couple is certainly treating sex as reproductive!
Sex can be for pleasure, bonding or the strengthening of affection. Those would seem to be sufficient motives apart from reproduction. As a parallel, when I drive a car, I'm usually trying to get somewhere, but sometimes I just want to see the scenery pass by. Nothing wrong with that.
I think there is a compelling case for chastity, but it doesn't look like this. It's absolutely indispensable to start from the differentiation of the sexes, and the different meaning that sex has for the two sexes. If you try to steer a politically correct course that doesn't treat men and women differently, and then you can't make a case for chastity that's at all persuasive.
Women shouldn't degrade themselves through promiscuous sex. Men shouldn't exploit women through promiscuous sex. It's asymmetric. That's the key.
When I say that sex is fundamentally reproductive, I'm not making a claim about motives. What fundamentally *is* sex? It's how sexually dimorphic creatures breed. How they mate. Because human beings are rational the biological fuses in deep ways with the rational and moral, but on some level we're still doing what squirrels are doing: mating. Perpetuating the species.
Every sexual act need not make a baby, just as (to use Anscombe's example) not every acorn will become an oak. But an acorn is still "an oak in potency" even if it never gets there. And human sex is still "the baby-making thing" even if, for circumstantial reasons, you don't expect to make an actual baby and perhaps don't wish to. You have to respect the fundamental character of the act.
This is far more fundamental than any asymmetries between sexes. Indeed, I don't see how you can make much sense of the differentiation of sexes *unless* you begin with "sex as a baby-making thing" because that's really at the core of those asymmetries.
Driving isn't necessarily a helpful example because it's more artificial, involving technology and potentially (properly!) utilitarian goals. Driving is far less organic and not (by nature) nearly so morally weighty. (It can intersect with morally weighty matters of course, but need not; it isn't morally weighty as such.) To take a less weighty but still more closely analogous case, consider eating. Eating is fundamentally (biologically!) the act of ingesting nutrients. That's what it is; we need energy and that's why our bodies are equipped to eat. But of course it doesn't follow that we either can or should only eat for utilitarian purposes. We're rational and loving beings, and eating potentially (and properly!) takes on lots of other dimensions, and sometimes we eat calories we don't need (and that aren't even good for us) for other reasons: for pleasure, social benefit etc. That's not necessarily wrong. (Though, it can be wrong; gluttony is also a sin.) But eating for pleasure and vomiting it back up (as bulimics do) is messed up. And proper eating should at least be broadly consonant with the body's real needs; we don't have to absolutely optimize but the foundational character of eating as "a nutrient-absorbing activity" should be respected. Otherwise we'll be unhealthy, and undermine our own human powers. Respect the body and its natural rhythms.
"Testing" a potential marriage through fornication is wrong, but probably not because it fails to respect the organic, reproduction-oriented character of sex. It far more obviously violates the other of my two planks: the valuing of persons. That's the beauty (and challenge) of the traditional view: it requires us to preserve the organic character of sex *while also loving like men.*