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frobert
Guest
Didn’t I say in the post that my view was from personal experience and was probably selfish?
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Prodigal_Son
Guest
Thank you for calling this the “naive” natural law argument. That is an accurate use of language, since it is indeed naive. Can we just put it to bed, and stop talking about it?
Stephen168
New member
What is your definition of marriage?
Stephen168
New member
Your ability to suck on a hammer is not the designed use of a hammer or an arugment for same sex unions as marriage.
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DrTaffy
Guest
I cannot put it to bed as long as some on what I’ll loosely call ‘your side’ still espouse it.
If you can stop Catholics arguing that gay sex must be wrong just because they see a purpose to heterosexual sex, I’ll stop countering that argument.
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DrTaffy
Guest
The one I gave you earlier. The one you ignored.
What is yours?
But if sucking on the hammer serves a purpose, why would it be immoral? It is not an argument that something is moral, just a counter to a naive argument that something is immoral. i.e. If you are still making this argument after leaving high school, you really need to read up on the actual, genuine arguments that are variously referred to as ‘natural law.’
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Prodigal_Son
Guest
I didn’t know we were talking about equal sexual rights for hammers.
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simpleas
Guest
Interesting posts
Stephen168
New member
You were first asked for your definition in post #525. You refused to answer it in post #541 and I did not find it in your posts: 542,568,570,571,641,679,695, or 696 since you refused to answer post #525.The one I gave you earlier. The one you ignored.
And now you refuse again.
What is your definition of marriage?
Stephen168
New member
How does the morality of sucking on a hammer support an argument for same sex unions as marriage?
The conversations on this subject are four different conversations get mixed together.
-What is Marriage?
-What is the governments role (support/discourage/regulate) in marriage?
-Is sodomy moral?
-What is the governments role (support/discourage/regulate) in sodomy?
Usually the conversation is about the second question and is begging the first question. And uses the third to justify their position.
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Prodigal_Son
Guest
G.E. Moore once claimed that he could prove that the external world exists by holding out his hand and saying, “Here is a hand.”
So I think it will be a perfectly ordinary philosophical strategy if a bunch of people get together, suck on hammers, and say “Therefore, gay marriage is moral.”
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DrTaffy
Guest
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DrTaffy
Guest
Yeah, baby, suck that hammerI didn’t know we were talking about equal sexual rights for hammers.
Ask the guy who brought it up. That would be… You:thumbsup:
Stephen168
New member
No, you never gave one. You avoid it as you have now.
Stephen168
New member
Actually it was you in post #696.
Stephen168
New member
A mouth was made for a plethora of uses
Therefore a match was made for a plethora of uses.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
Drinking gasoline is not wrong because “it is not the one correct use of the mouth,” it is wrong because of other considerations.Where did I say that?
Answer: nowhere, you are trying to put words into my mouth.
Multiple functions for body parts invalidates the naive and simplistic ‘natural law’ argument that just because you have identified one use for a body part, any other use is therefore ‘disordered’.
For example, how many uses are there for the mouth:
eating
drinking
breathing
speaking
tasting (even when not eating the thing being tasted)
feeling the shape or texture of something
blowing or sucking
holding something
visual gestures such as smiling or snarling
tactile gestures such as kissing
biting, offensive or defensive or in order to shape something
spitting (ever seen a camel take out a fly?)
…and so on.
Given such a plethora of uses, how can a similair naive ‘natural law’ argument hold that oral sex is wrong because it is not the one correct use of the mouth?
It may, also, still be true that there exist legitimate and illegitimate uses for body organs and systems. Merely because more than one legitimate use exists does not, thereby, mean any use is legitimate.
If, for example, one particular alternative use completely nullifies or compromises a legitimate or important use, that might be a good reason for disqualifying the alternative use as illegitimate.
Thus, exclusive same sex “orientation” that renders null legitimate procreative “purposes” for reproductive organs and systems for individuals so affected may be sufficient reason for calling exclusive same sex purposing of reproductive systems morally illegitimate.
Further arguments may be necessary to make a completely compelling case, but it need not be true if one argument does not suffice to make a case that several arguments together are, thereby, not permitted to do so.
What is interesting, in an eerily discomforting sort of way, are the results of John Calhoun’s experiments with mice and rats back about fifty years ago. The term “behavioral sink” was coined to describe the breakdown of social order among mice when overcrowding made social roles impossible to maintain.
These two links describe the findings of Calhoun and others.
mostlyodd.com/death-by-utopia/
cabinetmagazine.org/issues/42/wiles.php
From the second article…
What is disturbing is that the “behavioral sink” aptly describes the rising tide of aberrant behaviour quite noticeable in modern western societies. Perhaps instead of accepting and “tolerating” what in less dysfunctional societies would be considered unusual or disordered behaviour, we ought to, minimally, look into to possibility that modern western society is caught in the throes of its own “collapse.” Reading warning signs as warning signs instead of “liberties” to indulge might be a reasonable option, at least until a clear determination is made regarding the social health of modern western culture.
Like the frog in the pot, it is not clear to me that mice in the midst of devolving social order would be astute enough to recognize the danger about to befall them. Likewise, in a human society undergoing a devolving social order that is about to collapse into its own behavioural sink, moral relativism could well be a loss of moral and social compass rather than a positive change.
Contrary to the modern myth of overpopulation and resource scarcity, the underlying issue in Calhoun’s experiments was not a “lack of” anything, but rather that individuals in the social order were overwhelmed by and unable to maintain their social roles, leading to a complete abandonment of any existing social order. It could be argued that such a state is precisely the issue in modern western culture. Social roles have largely been abandoned and the bold-faced portion describing the breakdown of mice society from the article above aptly depicts the human social order in modern western cultures.
Rather than dismissing questioning and discussion as homophobic or intolerant, perhaps, at least, some openness to the possibility that the overturning of traditional moral values in such a short period of time MIGHT signal some potentially serious issues with regard to human social health.
Killing one’s own offspring, having an aversion to reproducing offspring, pansexualism, lone females raising young, unhealthy preoccupation with appearance and grooming, etc. etc. were hardly signs of healthy mouse society before its extinction, yet are accurate with regard to the current liberal democratic agenda for -]mouse/-] human society.
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Peter_Plato
Guest
My last post may not have been clear enough on this point.Where did I say that?
Answer: nowhere, you are trying to put words into my mouth.
Multiple functions for body parts invalidates the naive and simplistic ‘natural law’ argument that just because you have identified one use for a body part, any other use is therefore ‘disordered’.
For example, how many uses are there for the mouth:
eating
drinking
breathing
speaking
tasting (even when not eating the thing being tasted)
feeling the shape or texture of something
blowing or sucking
holding something
visual gestures such as smiling or snarling
tactile gestures such as kissing
biting, offensive or defensive or in order to shape something
spitting (ever seen a camel take out a fly?)
…and so on.
Given such a plethora of uses, how can a similair naive ‘natural law’ argument hold that oral sex is wrong because it is not the one correct use of the mouth?
What I intended to point out was that a mouth is essential for eating to keep a human being alive. Therefore, an alternative purpose that thwarts eating as a key function could be morally wrong precisely because it is contrary to the key or a key purpose of the mouth.
Thus, never using the mouth for eating/digesting but only for vomiting up food would make the “vomiting” repurposing of the mouth morally wrong.
Similarly, sexual organs have as a key purpose reproduction. Same sex “orientation” that completely nullifies the key or one of the key purposes could be problematic from a moral standpoint, for that very reason.
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PRmerger
Guest
Egg-zactly.
So you are permitting yourself to say: there are some churches that I cannot in good conscience support.
You will, I presume, now permit Catholics to say the same thing?
With all due respect, if I may apply some psychology here, I think you are misplacing the “gotcha” sentiment. I have no such sentiment in dialogue with you.
What I believe you are feeling is more of a, “Shoot! PRmerger has made a valid point.”
If that makes you feel as if I have said, “Gotcha!” I think that’s a transference of your realization that a logical, reasoned argument has been presented that is incontrovertible.
I would hope that in future dialogues here when someone provides an argument* which makes you go
instead of attacking the presenter of said argument, you simply re-consider and say, “Hmmm…I guess that was a good point that she made.”
*Here I anticipate that you are going to make a comment about how you’re not here to “argue” and provide “arguments”.
So I will pre-empt that and simply say that when we use “arguments” in this context we are not talking about quarreling or arguing. We are using “arguments” in the classic Philosophical sense as being a series of premises which lead to a logical conclusion.
An argument here is not quarreling.
Rather, it is intellectual discourse.
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GaryTaylor
Guest
Interesting post, thank you!- Status