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.
I understand that you're looking for ways to express or analogize the way mind and body and soul fit together, but the risk of sociobiology is that it tends to reduce people to the material, and I don't think you've successfully transcended that here. With the meadow and the painting it's really just fairly unclear to me how you see the physical and more-than-physical relating to one another; it seems like you're sort of feeling your way through the dimensions of that problem more than proposing solutions.
"We need to learn not to find genetic competition repugnant so that it spoils the beauty of nature for us. Like oil paints, while it has an unlovely side to it, it is a necessary part of something beautiful."
It has an unlovely *side* to it? Or is that just what the meadow actually is? If it's only a component, how does it relate to other components? Again, it seems to me you're musing on these questions more than answering them.
Then you get here: "Now consider a mother and a baby. The mother is transported with delight at the baby's every movement and sound, and even more, if anything, when the baby is peacefully asleep. She provides for the baby's every need, far more eagerly and urgently than for her own. She loves it with a perfect giving love, wanting it to be happy and to flourish, asking nothing in return. And the baby feels perfect trust in its mother. Her presence makes all fear vanish. It turns to her in every need, and loves to feel the warmth of her body. What could be more wonderful?
And yet it's their selfish genes that are making them behave this way, as one battle in their endless war for market share in the gene pool. The baby is the means by which the mother's selfish genes will invade the next generation."
Far more than in the meadow case, you do now seem to think you've resolved the puzzle, but I'm very far from on board at this point. The first quoted paragraph tells us that the mother loves the baby "with a perfect giving love" while the baby's trust is likewise "perfect"... but then we're told that "it's their selfish genes that are making them behave this way."
So... there's no daylight here between "selfish-gene-driven" instinct and love? None at all worth mentioning? That's just *what love is*, obeying Darwinian impulses to perpetuate one's genes?
No. Reconciling "heart, might, mind, and strength" is always hard but that's definitely not a satisfactory solution.
And this isn't just philosophical "daintiness". It's not compelling. What woman does that first paragraph describe? I've talked to a whole lot of mothers about their early maternal experiences, and none of them describe it like that. That doesn't capture the lived experience of the transition to maternity at all. And as a mom you might be inclined to feel bad about it (because gosh, that woman sure sounds happy and loving, pretty much an angel) until you get to the next paragraph and consider that, actually, she's almost functionally equivalent to a wind-up toy, so maybe you don't really want to be her.
I understand that you could reply, "Look, it's just a quick example, I'm not pretending to capture the full phenomenological experience of motherhood," but then, what are you capturing? You're offering a fully material explanation for a dramatically oversimplified account of an extremely complex human experience and... what does that get us exactly?
Biology is mysterious, but I don't howl with indignation every time someone dips a toe into a physiological explanation of some aspect of human experience. Yes, corporeality is part of being human. But of course we shouldn't allow ourselves to be reduced to cardboard-cutouts, supposedly adequately captured by fully material explanations. That's not about daintiness, but about dignity.
Just in case CS Lewis's explanation is better than mine, here he is in Mere Christianity:
“For example, some people wrote to me saying, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct — by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires — one desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
“Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note…”
So *of course* the point is that the mother won't *feel* like a vehicle of her selfish genes invading the next generation through her baby, nor *is* she *merely* that, but she will feel a while suite of powerful impulses and emotions that are something different from, sometimes wider than, and often more readily motivating than, the mere bread and butter of moral reasoning. And if we analyze those emotions and impulses-- instincts-- against cold-eyed analysis of what behavior would serve the interests of her selfish genes in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, then we'll find a remarkably good fit. That does *not* eliminate or reduce her moral agency *at all*; it's part of the materials she has to work with.
In the normal mother/baby case, she can check her instincts against her moral reasoning sometimes and confirm that she's on the right track. "My instincts are making me love this baby very, very much. Should I do that? Yes, I should. So I'll let the instincts have their way here and enjoy the ride." It's not essential that she frame it that way, but I think it actually is helpful. It's an efficient mode of srlf-understanding. In other cases, such as if circumstances make it the right thing to nurse and care for someone else's baby, the instincts might be less helpful or even actively with against her. Then her moral will must work hard overriding them.
Why is this not landing with you? I don't quite get it.
We have instincts, which arise from our being embodied. It's good to understand them. Sociobiology is the key to understanding them. But we also have supernatural souls. Part of that supernatural soul is reason and moral will. The moral will should be master, and the instincts, a servant. If one has a servant, it's good to understand the servant's capabilities and biases, so as to give better orders and avoid situations where the servant will be tempted to misbehave. Sociobiology is the resume of our instincts. We should understand them in order to put them to work well.
The mother is not a wind-up toy. But her maternal instincts can be understood in evolutionary terms. Such an understanding can give her a reason to trust them, thus both making her a better mother and helping her to enjoy motherhood more. But it also warns her when maternal instinct might be a bad guide, as for example when her children's interests clash with the legitimate interests of other children. Is this helping?
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.
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.
I understand that you're looking for ways to express or analogize the way mind and body and soul fit together, but the risk of sociobiology is that it tends to reduce people to the material, and I don't think you've successfully transcended that here. With the meadow and the painting it's really just fairly unclear to me how you see the physical and more-than-physical relating to one another; it seems like you're sort of feeling your way through the dimensions of that problem more than proposing solutions.
"We need to learn not to find genetic competition repugnant so that it spoils the beauty of nature for us. Like oil paints, while it has an unlovely side to it, it is a necessary part of something beautiful."
It has an unlovely *side* to it? Or is that just what the meadow actually is? If it's only a component, how does it relate to other components? Again, it seems to me you're musing on these questions more than answering them.
Then you get here: "Now consider a mother and a baby. The mother is transported with delight at the baby's every movement and sound, and even more, if anything, when the baby is peacefully asleep. She provides for the baby's every need, far more eagerly and urgently than for her own. She loves it with a perfect giving love, wanting it to be happy and to flourish, asking nothing in return. And the baby feels perfect trust in its mother. Her presence makes all fear vanish. It turns to her in every need, and loves to feel the warmth of her body. What could be more wonderful?
And yet it's their selfish genes that are making them behave this way, as one battle in their endless war for market share in the gene pool. The baby is the means by which the mother's selfish genes will invade the next generation."
Far more than in the meadow case, you do now seem to think you've resolved the puzzle, but I'm very far from on board at this point. The first quoted paragraph tells us that the mother loves the baby "with a perfect giving love" while the baby's trust is likewise "perfect"... but then we're told that "it's their selfish genes that are making them behave this way."
So... there's no daylight here between "selfish-gene-driven" instinct and love? None at all worth mentioning? That's just *what love is*, obeying Darwinian impulses to perpetuate one's genes?
No. Reconciling "heart, might, mind, and strength" is always hard but that's definitely not a satisfactory solution.
And this isn't just philosophical "daintiness". It's not compelling. What woman does that first paragraph describe? I've talked to a whole lot of mothers about their early maternal experiences, and none of them describe it like that. That doesn't capture the lived experience of the transition to maternity at all. And as a mom you might be inclined to feel bad about it (because gosh, that woman sure sounds happy and loving, pretty much an angel) until you get to the next paragraph and consider that, actually, she's almost functionally equivalent to a wind-up toy, so maybe you don't really want to be her.
I understand that you could reply, "Look, it's just a quick example, I'm not pretending to capture the full phenomenological experience of motherhood," but then, what are you capturing? You're offering a fully material explanation for a dramatically oversimplified account of an extremely complex human experience and... what does that get us exactly?
Biology is mysterious, but I don't howl with indignation every time someone dips a toe into a physiological explanation of some aspect of human experience. Yes, corporeality is part of being human. But of course we shouldn't allow ourselves to be reduced to cardboard-cutouts, supposedly adequately captured by fully material explanations. That's not about daintiness, but about dignity.
Just in case CS Lewis's explanation is better than mine, here he is in Mere Christianity:
“For example, some people wrote to me saying, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct — by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires — one desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
“Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note…”
He continues for a couple more paragraphs.
Hmm... Well, first of all, thanks for reading.
So *of course* the point is that the mother won't *feel* like a vehicle of her selfish genes invading the next generation through her baby, nor *is* she *merely* that, but she will feel a while suite of powerful impulses and emotions that are something different from, sometimes wider than, and often more readily motivating than, the mere bread and butter of moral reasoning. And if we analyze those emotions and impulses-- instincts-- against cold-eyed analysis of what behavior would serve the interests of her selfish genes in the environment of evolutionary adaptation, then we'll find a remarkably good fit. That does *not* eliminate or reduce her moral agency *at all*; it's part of the materials she has to work with.
In the normal mother/baby case, she can check her instincts against her moral reasoning sometimes and confirm that she's on the right track. "My instincts are making me love this baby very, very much. Should I do that? Yes, I should. So I'll let the instincts have their way here and enjoy the ride." It's not essential that she frame it that way, but I think it actually is helpful. It's an efficient mode of srlf-understanding. In other cases, such as if circumstances make it the right thing to nurse and care for someone else's baby, the instincts might be less helpful or even actively with against her. Then her moral will must work hard overriding them.
Why is this not landing with you? I don't quite get it.
We have instincts, which arise from our being embodied. It's good to understand them. Sociobiology is the key to understanding them. But we also have supernatural souls. Part of that supernatural soul is reason and moral will. The moral will should be master, and the instincts, a servant. If one has a servant, it's good to understand the servant's capabilities and biases, so as to give better orders and avoid situations where the servant will be tempted to misbehave. Sociobiology is the resume of our instincts. We should understand them in order to put them to work well.
The mother is not a wind-up toy. But her maternal instincts can be understood in evolutionary terms. Such an understanding can give her a reason to trust them, thus both making her a better mother and helping her to enjoy motherhood more. But it also warns her when maternal instinct might be a bad guide, as for example when her children's interests clash with the legitimate interests of other children. Is this helping?
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.
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.*