The natural progression of same sex marriage

[Jac3510]

Conservatives need to understand that they lost the "marriage" war formally on January 1, 1970. It's been a dead issue since 1985. Just as a corpse, given time, begins to rot and only then starts to exhibit foulness, we are now seeing the corruption of our own destruction of the institution playing out in the gay marriage debate. Byblos is right. The corruption will continue until it is complete and marriage is no longer recognized at all by the government. There will only be legal contracts of whatever sort that people of any kind can enter. "Marriage," then, will simply be another example of contract law.

As far as what happened in 1970, that was when Reagan's signing of California's no-fault divorce law came into effect. All 50 states have had no-fault divorce since 1985. It is that law more than any other that reduced marriage to nothing more than a private contract. It was that law that led Americans to stop viewing marriage as a public institution. Merely being private, people can enter and exit it as they will. And since they can do so as they will, the only question is whether or not they are competent to so will--which is to say, is there consent.

If conservatives want to make a proper argument against gay-marriage, they need to go back to arguing that marriage is a public institution. They need to root that in an argument that societies have a proper order, which entails not only a social essence, but an essence to societal institutions such as marriage. That, however, is not something they want to do, because it would curtail some "freedoms" we want (like our no-fault divorce), and more importantly, such an idea would have major social ramifications concerning both individual and corporate obligations to one's society. That affects the way we practice business, etc.

The tl;dr is this: conservatives became libertarians in the 70s (in large part, I think, as an overraction to Carter's clear love of all things dictatorial). They're just now seeing the social degradation of that position playing itself out. You can't argue against gay marriage (or any other deviant marriage of marriage) on libertarian grounds. So we have a choice. Give up our libertarianism and make consistent arguments, or keep our libertarianism and continue to watch our society decay. I wish we would opt for the former, but I thoroughly expect the latter.

[Reactionary]

Jac, what was the state of affairs before 1970? Was divorce an option?

[Jac3510]

It was, Reactionary, but in order to receive a divorce, one party had to show the other was "at fault," an idea that usually meant either cruelty (i.e., one party was abusive) or adultery. Outside of that, the judge could simply deny the petition for the divorce, a concept that recognizes that marriage is a public institution. You can enter it willingly, but once you do, you are accountable not only to your spouse, but to your community. No-fault divorce said that people could leave their spouses for any reason. No fault was necessary to be found. Granted there may be financial repercussions (e.g., paying alimony and child support), but even those repercussions were related to the private relationship.

Again, we either need to get back to marriage as a public institution and therefore one that the public has the right and obligation to enforce, or we need to recognize it as a private institution, in which case the public has no right interfering in the private preferences of others. We don't tell people what kinds of dogs they can buy. We don't need to be telling people who they can and can't enter a legal contract with (so long as both parties are able and willing to enter into the contract).

[Reactionary]

Thanks, Jac. I'm not American so it's obvious why I asked you about your laws and customs.

[Ivellious]

Jac, it's kind of funny that you bring up divorce laws and such. I read an interesting letter to the editor recently by a group of Catholic priests who opposed the proposed law that would ban all marriage not between one man and one woman in my state. While they made several points as to why they opposed a government ban on gay marriage, one of their big points was that they did not feel like they should expect their own religious ideals to be enforced among everyone. Their argument was that Catholics aren't petitioning the government to ban divorces (which they said is essentially just as wrong as gay marriage in their view), and that because of that they believed that this anti-gay marriage legislation was purely a political push that was using religion only to gain support.

[Jac3510]

Does it surprise you to see Catholic priests (especially American, which I assume to your reference to your "state") breaking from their intellectual and spiritual tradition? Sadly, it doesn't surprise me in the least.

In any case, those priests have simply made the same mistake conservatives made forty plus years ago. They are correct that we ought not make policy based on articles of faith--any faith--but they are incorrect in their assumption that the definition and nature of marriage is, in fact, an article of faith. On the contrary, it is commendable and desirable to make public policy on articles of reason (indeed, that is the only basis on which public policy ought to be made), and the nature and definition of marriage is exactly that: an article of reason.

That assertion, however, requires us to see marriage as a public institution with a nature or essence. To deny natures and essences generally is a major trend in Western philosophy, so it doesn't surprise me to see some Catholic priests embrace it. But notice what they have done, which I think strengthens my own argument. Seeing marriage as an article of faith, they recognize it ought not be pushed as a public institution, and to do so would simply be to politicize the issue. But if marriage is not an article of faith, but rather an article of reason, then we as a society are obligated by reason to consider, define, and enforce the matter to the best of our ability. Conservatives as a whole, however, stopped seeing marriage as an article of reason and began viewing it as an article of faith necessarily post 1970. Therefore, all they have had to argue are religious arguments--the ones you so commonly see (it violates God's law!!!11!1). Only when we return to the notion that marriage is a natural institution (not a merely social contract) and therefore its nature a matter of reasonable investigation (rather than religious edict) can we hope to make a persuasive case against those views of marriage that we deem insufficient and/or deviant. Shy of that, we're left with mere religious and consequential arguments, both of which are completely unpersuasive.

[Beanybag]

Interesting case. I have a few questions. Why should we care about the natural order of things? What is the order of a human? What is the relationship of the order of the parts if a thing compared to the order of the whole of a thing? How do you demonstrate the proper order if a thing? Does this not ultimately lead to a form of consequentialism?

[Jac3510]

Why should we care about the natural order of things?

Because you can't consistently not. Natural order is the basis of all rational thought.

What is the order of a human?

To be rational (which is to say, to act in accordance with natural law).

What is the relationship of the order of the parts if a thing compared to the order of the whole of a thing?

It's different for different systems. For some systems (i.e., substances), the parts are internally related. For others (i.e., artifacts, property-things), the parts are externally related.

How do you demonstrate the proper order if a thing?

By rational analysis, which begins with a discovery of its powers and an examination of what those powers are for (which is to say, a discovery of their final causes).

Does this not ultimately lead to a form of consequentialism?

No.

[Beanybag]

Why should we care about the natural order of things?

Because you can't consistently not. Natural order is the basis of all rational thought.

Can you explain?

[Jac3510]

Can you explain?

Not without giving you a full course in epistemology, which would require giving you a full course in metaphysics, which in turn would first require a study of physics.

But, I can give you two examples that assume all of the above. Just don't take it as a full explanation!

1. To ignore order is to ignore final causality. But it is impossible to adequately describe this world and what we observe without constantly appealing to final causality. You are reading this post right now. I take it you checked this post because you were interested in the discussion. Thus, you are reading this because you wanted to know more about this subject. Put differently, the final cause of your reading this post is your curiosity being fulfilled (or whatever). If you ignore natural order, however, you cannot say that your reading this is ordered toward fulfilling that curiosity (or whatever your reason for reading this is). You are reduced to a strictly non-intentional description of causal events. The same line of thinking is true about all causal chains when you ignore final causality. The heart does not pump blood throughout the circulatory system. The lungs do not take in air "so that" the body can get oxygen. Earth does not orbit the sun. All those things presume an order (and a natural order, at that).

Try to describe anything without reference to what it are "for" or "about" or to what "end" it is "directed" and you'll find you don't get very far.

2. Even if you attempt to describe systems without teleological language (that is, language describing order, which uses terms such as 'for,' 'because,' ' so that,' etc.), you'll find upon reflection that you got off to a false start. For thought itself is naturally ordered, and that necessarily so. Suppose you are thinking about the earth orbiting the sun. Look what you are doing. You are thinking. But all thoughts are necessarily about (that is, ordered toward) something other than themselves. There is no such think as a thought that is not about something. Even thinking about thinking is thinking about something. So then thoughts are necessarily ordered towards something other than themselves, which means that thoughts have final causality.

So if you deny natural order, you end up denying the reality of thought itself.

[Beanybag]

Very interesting, although I'm not sure I follow yet. I have a good background on physics and epistemology but less for metaphysics. I still have some questions. How do you know a final cause? What about the causes of these final causes (the cause of my curiosity)? And, with respect to the nature of things, it seems a rather top-down approach. What is the order of an atom or a material? What is a thing to you?

Edit: ah, I'm actually pretty familiar with ontology and epistemology, which seem to be the bulk of metaphysics. Perhaps you can point me in a direction to learn more about this? My views are certainly influenced and bias to aristotlean and western philosophy.

[Jac3510]

BB,

Get a copy of Edward Feser's The Last Superstition. It's very polemical, but if you get past the inflammatory language, the explanations in it are second to none. Whenever I read Dawkins or Hitchens, I find myself doing the same thing (looking past the inflammatory language to get to the argument).

You might also want to get a copy of J. P. Moreland's Body and Soul (I lecture through the entire book in my course on ethics--you can get all the lectures in audio form on my blog). He takes a lot of time to walk through the differences in substances and property-things, which gets into the notions of final causality, internal/external relations, etc.

edit:

If you do have a good background in epistemology, then you should appreciate the severe problem that the Cartesian Theater poses to real knowledge (aka, representative epistemology). Now if things don't have a natural order, then they don't have essences, and if there are no essences, there are no forms, and if no forms, then there is nothing to impress upon the mind. Therefore, the best the mind can do is represent what it is seeing to itself, meaning that we can never get out of the theater. Thus, if there is no natural order, then we know nothing outside of the mind. Put differently (in Fregean terms), all we know are ideas of things and not things themselves. But since ideas are of the mind's creation and have no necessary connection with the things they represent, then it is impossible to say that we know anything about the extramental world.

So . . . I say take your pick. Either we return to Aristotle's hylomorphism and with it natural order (which provides the argument against gay marriage I've hinted at in this thread!) or we reject the natural order and the reality of forms and thereby make knowledge impossible.

[Beanybag]

Trying to get a hold of those books soon from my library. I find it funny that you use the term Cartesian Theater, that's a term Dennet coined in his attacks on strict materialism and determinism (and isn't he a father of the new atheist materialist movement?). There are many reasons to criticize strict materialism, most of them related to consciousness. I don't think the dichotomy you provided is accurate though. Certainly knowledge is possible without forms and perhaps there are more conceivable theories that would also provide a sufficient explanation for knowledge. I find the forms very Platonic and very strange, I'm not sure I like that explanation of 'things' very much, but I still have to read about it. It could also be as Hume said.. that the idea of things ARE the things themselves and that things are only their properties, for what is a thing without properties? I don't have a definitive answer - I like to have a more top-down approach to my philosophy where I simply assume a bunch of foundations and work down to explain them, but I'll have a better understanding in time, hopefully. I'll have more to say after I've read up.

With that said, I'll present some news: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/1 ... lp00000009

[Jac3510]

Certainly knowledge is possible without forms

Ah, but I disagree. In fact, this is one of the reasons I accept hylomorphism. For all the complicated arguments we can make, it is really very simple. Either what you know is the thing itself or what you know is a representation of the thing itself. There's no middle ground on that. I would argue that knowing a representation of a thing is necessarily different from knowing the thing itself. Therefore, if all we know are representations of things, then we know no things--we only know our own ideas. So either we find a way to get things themselves into our minds, which allows for knowledge of the real world, or we leave things external to the mind "out there" and therefore we have no knowledge of the external world.

The only way, though, to get things themselves into the mind is to posit a non-physical aspect of all things, and that this non-physical thing must be directly involved in defining what the thing is. But that's just a form. So I go back to my dichotomy. Either we accept hylomorphism and with it the possibility of knowledge, or we reject forms and with it the possibility of knowledge.

I find the forms very Platonic and very strange

Then, with all due respect, get the books I've recommended. Aristotelian forms are not the same thing as Platonic forms. I do not believe in the existence of the latter for both philosophical and theological reasons. In fact, I would suggest that Platonic forms equally make all knowledge impossible (a fact that Plato himself recognized, and therefore turned real knowledge into remembering what we had known in our preincarnate state but had forgotten at birth).

Moreover, I would suggest that not only are they not strange, but that you believe in them whether you are conscious of it or not. If you believe that things really are what they are, then you believe in forms. Let me add a book to your reading list. Get Etienne Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience. There, he discusses, among other things, the history of the problem of universals--a problem pretty much ignored by modern philosophy but which is seriously problematic to the way we do it today. In fact, much of philosophy that comes out of the analytical movement is really just the philosophy of language--but you cannot have a proper philosophy of language until you have a proper philosophy of universals. Now here's the kicker. The only way to offer a logical answer to the problem of universals is to presuppose the reality of forms. If you ignore them, then universals do not correspond to anything in reality, and therefore, what you are speaking of in reality is actually nothing when you use any given universal. But if you aren't talking about anything, then you can't say that you know anything.

So I hope you find the reading informative and helpful.

It could also be as Hume said.. that the idea of things ARE the things themselves and that things are only their properties, for what is a thing without properties?

This gets into what I said above. On this view, all you know are ideas and not things in themselves. This, of course, creates a problem of causality--how do we explain what causes this idea rather than that idea to come about in the mind. Hume's answer of doubting the very reality of causality is, in my view, sufficient warrant for rejecting his entire approach (although I am aware that some of that is popular myth--Hume didn't really doubt causality in the strict sense, but that's another debate; it doesn't affect the problem we are discussing here).

As for what a thing is without properties, first you have to define what a property is. A nominalist like Hume, a realist like Plato, and a moderate realist like Aristotle will all have different takes on that.

I don't have a definitive answer - I like to have a more top-down approach to my philosophy where I simply assume a bunch of foundations and work down to explain them, but I'll have a better understanding in time, hopefully. I'll have more to say after I've read up.

I don't actually have a problem with that. The question is what foundations you assume. Going back to Descartes and why I can't stand his philosophy (I've said in my classes multiple times that almost every modern philosophy error can be laid at his feet), his methodological skepticism is silly and, I think, self-refuting (why should we adopt his methodology at all? If we are going to doubt everything we can, shouldn't we doubt the proposition that we should doubt everything we can in order to find truth?!?). Put positively, there are such things as properly basic beliefs. An important question is what those properly basic beliefs are. We have to start somewhere. We may find out upon investigation that our properly basic beliefs were not so proper(ly basic) after all. Or we may find out through investigation that there are other beliefs that we should start with or assume. But all that is for another thread. As I said, I hope you find the reading helpful.

[touchingcloth]

Certainly knowledge is possible without forms

Ah, but I disagree. In fact, this is one of the reasons I accept hylomorphism. For all the complicated arguments we can make, it is really very simple. Either what you know is the thing itself or what you know is a representation of the thing itself. There's no middle ground on that. I would argue that knowing a representation of a thing is necessarily different from knowing the thing itself.

I agree broadly with this, but certain concepts in modern physics muddy the waters of our ability to understand even what a thing itself is. For example quantum mechanics - and in particular the uncertainty principle - raises the very real possibility that there is a limit to how well our representations of things can correlate with the things themselves.

Anyway, that's a bit of a digression and I think that the Aristotelian view of epistemology is sound in essence. Jac - I'd be interested if you could elaborate on how hylomorphism provides an argument against same sex marriage? My understanding is that it is a theory of the physical rather than the moral, so I guess your argument must lie more in Aristotelian ideas of teleology rather than epistemology?