(Repost of my YouTube comment. Happy to discuss further with anyone interested.)
Natural law defender, madly typing here!! 🙋🏼♀😂
Okay...As one who does hold to natural law theory, I have trouble feeling the force of your counterexamples and reductios, as I think most of them have been satisfyingly addressed by defenders of natural law theory (especially, Ed Feser). A few specific points that I would raise in challenge to your arguments as presented here:
-The (disgusting!) fraternity party example presents, like, 8 violations of natural law, so I don't think it's very effective for grounding an objection to Besong's claim that it would be impossible to activate sexual powers in service of our general power of touch without violating the natural law. I think the example favors his position in more ways than one!
-Also, for any case that you try to present to a natural lawyer that involves some gross imbalance between violations of the natural law and outcomes (like swallowing a small piece of plastic to avert the apocalypse), I don't at all think that natural lawyer is committed to saying that you shouldn't swallow the plastic because it would be categorically wrong. (Or that you shouldn't lie to the Nazi at the door if there were somehow no option for wiggle room.) Swallowing the plastic can be an act that falls short of moral excellence that you might still choose to do after a rational evaluation of the situation. In other words, swallowing plastic can be wrong and still something that you might choose to do for other moral reasons. So, the natural lawyer doesn't have to say that swallowing plastic is morally perfect act. It can be mixed, and there will be consequences and fallout accordingly. (Along this line, Catholics make a distinction between venial and mortal sins, which acknowledges this point.)
-Kind of a side note...But I think you all need to hang out with some babies and little children to gain some insight into all kinds of issues with chewing on and ingesting items that are not designed for consumption. Every counterexample that you all have offered in these conversations has made me internally giggle because I have likely pulled it out of one of my children's mouths before...sponges, silly putty, pencils, straws, etc. It's funny how motherhood opens your eyes to new ways that faculties can be perverted! 😂 I think motherhood may also raise awareness on how everything we put into our bodies can impact health. Red flags fly for me when my children want to consume something with artificial sweeteners, like diet sodas or sugarless gum. Research on artificial sweeteners has sounded some alarms for me, which I think should factor into moral choosing. (On this note, by the way, it strikes me as significant that diet coke and sugarless gum are stock counterexamples used against the perverted faculties argument---because they are the two specific items that I saw college girlfriends with eating disorders abuse! Makes me think twice about their use, on top of the concern for artificial sweeteners.)
-I don't think you guys represented the one-flesh union idea very well. It has more to do with the complementarity between male and female reproductive organs and functions and their completeness in union than it does with personhood and legal status. It's not about becoming one literal person in the marital act. It's about recognizing the natural clues we have about the functioning of organisms in terms of completeness. Besides the reproductive system, every other system that we have in our bodies functions in a complete and independent way for our own sustenance and flourishing (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, etc.). There is only one that needs a complementary part, found only in the complementary sex, and that is the reproductive system. So basically, our bodies strongly indicate that they are designed to function completely in union with the opposite sex.
-All in all, I think it should be of note that the more "metaphysically distant" you have to get with your counterexamples to disprove natural law theory, the more I'm inclined to read your examples as working in support of natural law theory. I think there is an obvious reason that you have to strain to find examples in which the natural law seems not to govern in orderly manner. If you have to an invent imaginary organs that are directed towards evils ends, and you have to invent substances that offer no harm nor nutritive benefits, and you have to invent scenarios in which evil beings have the power to bring death to the world for a person refusing to swallow glass...then I think, just maybe, that is because the metaphysical assumptions that serve as the foundation for natural law theory check out in every real case.
hey hey, just circling back to this. i've made a note of the long comments recently that i want to reply to, but i'm holding off till my exams are done. just know i haven't forgotten!
I agree with many of the critiques of the perverted faculty argument. That said, I'm not sure how persuasive the objection to the one-body view is. The claim is that Husband and Wife form a new biological unit (call it "Pair") during the marital act. But then the relevant question is not whether Jealous Neighbor assaults Wife when he hits Husband; rather, it's whether he assaults *Pair*. It seems obvious that you can strike a whole without striking all of its parts, so the fact that Jealous Neighbor isn't assaulting Wife isn't a very good reason to think he isn't assaulting Pair. But then it's not clear why this example is supposed to persuade us that Pair doesn't exist.
It also might be worth distinguishing between the way in which the "one body" stuff is used by the new natural lawyers from the way in which it's used by e.g. Alex Pruss. (Apologies if that was done and I just missed it.) I think (as I believe you do) that Pruss's arguments are a lot more sophisticated and plausible than those of the NNT crowd; indeed, I think his book is just about the only good thing that's been written on this topic by an analytic philosopher.
(Repost of my YouTube comment. Happy to discuss further with anyone interested.)
Natural law defender, madly typing here!! 🙋🏼♀😂
Okay...As one who does hold to natural law theory, I have trouble feeling the force of your counterexamples and reductios, as I think most of them have been satisfyingly addressed by defenders of natural law theory (especially, Ed Feser). A few specific points that I would raise in challenge to your arguments as presented here:
-The (disgusting!) fraternity party example presents, like, 8 violations of natural law, so I don't think it's very effective for grounding an objection to Besong's claim that it would be impossible to activate sexual powers in service of our general power of touch without violating the natural law. I think the example favors his position in more ways than one!
-Also, for any case that you try to present to a natural lawyer that involves some gross imbalance between violations of the natural law and outcomes (like swallowing a small piece of plastic to avert the apocalypse), I don't at all think that natural lawyer is committed to saying that you shouldn't swallow the plastic because it would be categorically wrong. (Or that you shouldn't lie to the Nazi at the door if there were somehow no option for wiggle room.) Swallowing the plastic can be an act that falls short of moral excellence that you might still choose to do after a rational evaluation of the situation. In other words, swallowing plastic can be wrong and still something that you might choose to do for other moral reasons. So, the natural lawyer doesn't have to say that swallowing plastic is morally perfect act. It can be mixed, and there will be consequences and fallout accordingly. (Along this line, Catholics make a distinction between venial and mortal sins, which acknowledges this point.)
-Kind of a side note...But I think you all need to hang out with some babies and little children to gain some insight into all kinds of issues with chewing on and ingesting items that are not designed for consumption. Every counterexample that you all have offered in these conversations has made me internally giggle because I have likely pulled it out of one of my children's mouths before...sponges, silly putty, pencils, straws, etc. It's funny how motherhood opens your eyes to new ways that faculties can be perverted! 😂 I think motherhood may also raise awareness on how everything we put into our bodies can impact health. Red flags fly for me when my children want to consume something with artificial sweeteners, like diet sodas or sugarless gum. Research on artificial sweeteners has sounded some alarms for me, which I think should factor into moral choosing. (On this note, by the way, it strikes me as significant that diet coke and sugarless gum are stock counterexamples used against the perverted faculties argument---because they are the two specific items that I saw college girlfriends with eating disorders abuse! Makes me think twice about their use, on top of the concern for artificial sweeteners.)
-I don't think you guys represented the one-flesh union idea very well. It has more to do with the complementarity between male and female reproductive organs and functions and their completeness in union than it does with personhood and legal status. It's not about becoming one literal person in the marital act. It's about recognizing the natural clues we have about the functioning of organisms in terms of completeness. Besides the reproductive system, every other system that we have in our bodies functions in a complete and independent way for our own sustenance and flourishing (circulatory, respiratory, digestive, etc.). There is only one that needs a complementary part, found only in the complementary sex, and that is the reproductive system. So basically, our bodies strongly indicate that they are designed to function completely in union with the opposite sex.
-All in all, I think it should be of note that the more "metaphysically distant" you have to get with your counterexamples to disprove natural law theory, the more I'm inclined to read your examples as working in support of natural law theory. I think there is an obvious reason that you have to strain to find examples in which the natural law seems not to govern in orderly manner. If you have to an invent imaginary organs that are directed towards evils ends, and you have to invent substances that offer no harm nor nutritive benefits, and you have to invent scenarios in which evil beings have the power to bring death to the world for a person refusing to swallow glass...then I think, just maybe, that is because the metaphysical assumptions that serve as the foundation for natural law theory check out in every real case.
hey hey, just circling back to this. i've made a note of the long comments recently that i want to reply to, but i'm holding off till my exams are done. just know i haven't forgotten!
Understood! No rush. Wishing you a strong finish to your semester! 💪🏻🌟
I agree with many of the critiques of the perverted faculty argument. That said, I'm not sure how persuasive the objection to the one-body view is. The claim is that Husband and Wife form a new biological unit (call it "Pair") during the marital act. But then the relevant question is not whether Jealous Neighbor assaults Wife when he hits Husband; rather, it's whether he assaults *Pair*. It seems obvious that you can strike a whole without striking all of its parts, so the fact that Jealous Neighbor isn't assaulting Wife isn't a very good reason to think he isn't assaulting Pair. But then it's not clear why this example is supposed to persuade us that Pair doesn't exist.
It also might be worth distinguishing between the way in which the "one body" stuff is used by the new natural lawyers from the way in which it's used by e.g. Alex Pruss. (Apologies if that was done and I just missed it.) I think (as I believe you do) that Pruss's arguments are a lot more sophisticated and plausible than those of the NNT crowd; indeed, I think his book is just about the only good thing that's been written on this topic by an analytic philosopher.