DrTaffy;12003848:
Then we are way off the original topic, are we not? And is it not irrational to criticise arguments aimed at the natural law argument for not countering your new consequentialist argument?
I entered the conversation because someone (you?) claimed that people only have subjective purposes, not an objective purpose.
Not me, I think. But if we are talking about something completely different from the original natural law discussion, I think you need to set out what we
are talking about, not just pick up on my argument on the natural law issue as though it applied to whatever we are now discussing.
Seriously, I am not clear on what that new topic actually is.
Also, my argument may be consequentialist, but only in an Aristotelian sense.
Could you explain how that differs from what you thought I was saying?
Can you, for example, explain what you mean by ‘virtue’ such that a bowel movement is virtuous? Yet a lifelong productive loving joyful relationship between two people who raise a number of lovely children is
not? Or even more bizarrely, is only virtuous if the two people are of opposite sexes?
But then my question for you is this: Is there anything special about the sexual organs? If not, then why is it OK to tickle a child, but wrong to fondle him or her? If there is something special about the sexual organs, then why should we believe that your analogies to other parts of the body hold?
I don’t see that there
is anything special about the sexual organs. Sure, they have unique qualities, but so do most organs. And many cases of sexual abuse do
not directly involve the genitalia, nor is that where the harm occurs - it is in the
brain that the relevant harm occurs.
So you are suggesting that actions that harm no one at all could be seriously morally wrong?
Sure. If you rape a child, or drive drunk through downtown at 100mph, you have done something gravely immoral even if no actual physical or psychological harm occurs.
Unless, I suppose, you want to drastically widen the definition of ‘harm’ - but that is something I associate with consequentialist philosophy that you apparently want to distance yourself from?
Gee, I thought that was something only “those crazy Catholics” did. Aren’t fornication and gay sex defended under the claim that “they harm no one”?
Catholics do tend to think that everything they think is uniquely Catholic!
e.g. those who seem to think it odd that other faiths (or even atheists) still extoll things that christians consider to be ‘christian virtues’ as though you had a monopoly on them.
But no. Proof that fornication and gay sex
did intrinsically cause harm would be one way to argue against them, so proof that they do not (not necessarily a claim I am making) would be
an argument in favour, but not in itself sufficient to disprove all other possible arguments against them.
Of course it was. I am potty trained, after all.
:ehh:
…how … nice.
And thank you so much for sharing.:frighten:
Aw, shucks, I thought you’d never ask!
Well, despite the good news about your potty training, I am afraid I just don’t think about you that way!
Maybe if you bought me dinner and a movie?
Seriously, one of the things I still don’t understand about whatever it is that we are debating is whether it is your own personal attitude to gay marriage that only affects your own life, or a broader question of whether others who
do not share your beliefs should be permitted gay marriage.
It makes a big difference, at least in
my mind, to the standard to which arguments should be held.
