A Pill for Men?

[msquared]

New reseach has found a drug, that in male mice, basically makes the sperm not able to "swim" for up to a couple of hours. Non Hormonal.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/male-birth-control-drug-effective-at-preventing-pregnancy-preclinical-study-finds-201239838.html

How will the Rigth try and keep this from the Public? Or wil they tout it as a great scientific achievment?

[TheDrake]

I guarantee you their narrative won't be about the saved lives of the potentially unborn.

[TheDrake]

Oh, I know! You'd better not force my health plan or Medicare or Medicaid to pay for this immoral drug. Every sperm is sacred!

[Fenring]

I guess it might depend on who's doing the condemning. I'm actually not clear on the various beliefs among Protestant denomenations regarding contraception. Obviously Catholics are against it, which would include this technique. That said I would hope that on this basis politicians won't try to prevent the general public having access to a safe, new technology (if this is one). It's hard to accept the logic of members of a religion predicated on free will doing their best to prevent the use of such. It's almost like people want to boss each other around, and the reasons for that end up just being post hoc rationalization.

[rightleft22]

Growing up Protestant i don't recall much debate about contraception. Abstinence for those not married was expected and or demanded but in general as long as the seed was not planted and growing the community would pretend not to notice.

That said the expected/demanded roles of men and woman where very defined and certain. There has been some change on this, but not really, underneath any talk on the matter, perhaps sub consciously, is the notion that Woman are subserviently to the Man. (the number times I've heard the argument that 'Men and Woman' are biologically different' as if that explains everything.. without any thought to how each individual is biologically different if even in small ways and what that means...)

So I would expect the position of Protestants on the matter is that contraception is the responsibility of the woman, because Eve/woman = sin and thier is no greater sin then sex outside of marriage... and maybe inside it as well.. God after all cursed woman so its woman's burden to carry, God is Love its for woman own good,  so.... Abstinence, just don't do it, and if you do it don't get caught and heaven awaits.

And Yes I've been apart of such conversations growing up...

[yossarian22c]

Oh, I know! You'd better not force my health plan or Medicare or Medicaid to pay for this immoral drug. Every sperm is sacred!

Can't wait for the feminist left to champion the drug and then some extreme feminist get outraged when some married guy uses it without telling his wife. The extremes on both sides are no fun.

The right will also hate the drug for different reasons. Probably because viagra is okay for insurance to pay for but this isn't.

[Fenring]

Growing up Protestant i don't recall much debate about contraception. Abstinence for those not married was expected and or demanded but in general as long as the seed was not planted and growing the community would pretend not to notice.

The issue of contraception goes beyond the issue of fornication, though. If contraception is a no-go morally then it would be likewise barred even for married couples (as it is with Catholics).

[TheDrake]

Hobby Lobby was the case bringer, owner is evangelical. His statement said that their objection to the aca was that they considered some forms of contraception to be available to their employees.

“Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs.”

[Fenring]

Hobby Lobby was the case bringer, owner is evangelical. His statement said that their objection to the aca was that they considered some forms of contraception to be available to their employees.

“Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions. Which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs.”

Yeah. I'm not sure if they were speaking loosely and therefore imprecisely, or what. Since obviously contraception by definition is not causing an abortion, from that statement alone I can't tell whether they are morally opposed to contraception or not.

[msquared]

They will just have to come up with another reason for other people not to have sex.  I mean if all they were concerned about was just abortion, they should have no issue with this drug.

I wonder if the woman would still be responible for having supply of this drug?  That way she could make sure that the pill the guy took was the real stuff.  I can see guys saying "See I's taking the pill" and it being some placebo or fake.

[yossarian22c]

They will just have to come up with another reason for other people not to have sex.  I mean if all they were concerned about was just abortion, they should have no issue with this drug.

I wonder if the woman would still be responible for having supply of this drug?  That way she could make sure that the pill the guy took was the real stuff.  I can see guys saying "See I's taking the pill" and it being some placebo or fake.

Probably more important would be to know if Alcohol or other drugs negatively affects the performance of the drug.

[JoshuaD]

Bad for men. Bad for women. Bad for society. No thank you.

[jc44]

Bad for men. Bad for women. Bad for society. No thank you.

Why? It may be obvious to you - it isn't to me.

[Tom]

The argument that ejaculation without the possibility of pregnancy is somehow damaging to society is, as far as I'm concerned, a complete non-starter. I've never heard a convincing case made.

[msquared]

yes you get into the argument that once a woman is no longer able to concieve that even a married couple should not have sex any more, since sex is only for procreation within a marriage.

[rightleft22]

The argument that ejaculation without the possibility of pregnancy is somehow damaging to society is, as far as I'm concerned, a complete non-starter. I've never heard a convincing case made.

There is data showing that more men and woman are choosing to remain single and masturbation over relationships that include sex. In that sense their is a case to be made that masturbation can impact society. With population numbers being as they are not sure if this is damaging or not, though I suspect those that feel that society must look like them will see it as damaging.

Interesting how that statement. 'ejaculation without the possibility of pregnancy's'  only concerns men's ejaculation's and not a woman period. One is viewed as natural process the other as un-natural and so sin. Seems as if God had no qualms about the loss of unfertilized eggs being split.

     

[Fenring]

The argument that ejaculation without the possibility of pregnancy is somehow damaging to society is, as far as I'm concerned, a complete non-starter. I've never heard a convincing case made.

Going from a completely materialist standpoint (the typical secular base case) it's a difficult concept to broach, yes. You need to look at the worldview behind such a concept to address it head-on. For instance if your body is just a bunch of material that happens to be organized a certain way, then none of means anything in a cosmic sense. If your person has special significance, a special dignity, and is capable of special offerings to the world, then we can no longer presume that something is 'just' what it appears to be. It has to be measured in its context. When talking about sex (let's say in a Catholic context) if you are participating in, or resonant with, something far larger than yourself when you have sex, those implications need to be included. If you're just two animals that have no impact on anything other than your immediate surroundings then...not. The argument put forward is that every part of the sexual act has very serious significance that is not obviously apparent on the material level. Even the bare fact that humans (and animals) are able to reproduce is a wonder that I feel most people have lost touch with. It's seriously crazy that we can do that. The religious argument is that it's not simply aesthetically wondrous but in fact is far more than that. You can of course agree or disagree with that.

That being said, I think the hidden premise behind your argument is actually far more counter-intuitive than it is intuitive; namely that a person's actions and choices don't have any impact on society. Once we could agree that all actions have an impact on everything, it becomes an entirely separate matter to identify what those effects actually are. Like, if you yell at someone for no reason during your day, you might suppose offhand that you've made the world a worse place. But do you actually know that, factually? It will be tough to verify that kind of intuition in a rigorous sense. And it will be equally tough to deny that certain actions have a negative effect. When it comes to sexual matters many people ironically try to see that realm as not being connected at all to the well-being of others, even though paradoxically it's fairly plain to see that sex is everywhere and on everyone's minds. So clearly it has more significance to the group than they want to admit! Where the divide really lies is in separating license from well-being: I may do what I wish, and no one should try to stop me! And that concept is divorced from "but what would I do if my first priority was the well-being of humanity?" The second question is by no means easy, but likewise therefore cannot have easy answers to the negative.

[rightleft22]

"but what would I do if my first priority was the well-being of humanity?"

I wonder how many people would sacrifice for the greater well-being of humanity today.  Based on the stories we tell (books, TV, movies...) the answer would be not many as it seems well-being of oneself and immediate family comes first. So many of the story lines dependent on the sacrificing of the many for saving of the one which is a change from the stories we told not that long ago.

[Tom]

The thing is, removing pregnancy as a consequence of ejaculation does not actually necessitate changing any behaviors or societal constructs established around ejaculation. We already do not require that sex produce children; there is no Catholic ban on sterile men or women engaging in sexual conduct. So the question becomes: is there a social reason that removing the potential expectation of children as a consequence of sex changes the sex act?

The answer of course is yes. You ethically can't have truly casual sex if you're going to risk producing another (unwanted) human life. This presumably has a suppressive effect on casual sex, at least among ethical people. So the follow-up question is: is there a reason to artificially require, for normal adults, that every act of sexual congress accompany with it the risk of pregnancy?

And the obvious answer here is: only if you, as a society, wish to limit and regulate the accessibility of sex in and of itself, independent of its potential consequences.

I have yet to hear a good reason for that.

[Wayward Son]

That being said, I think the hidden premise behind your argument is actually far more counter-intuitive than it is intuitive; namely that a person's actions and choices don't have any impact on society. Once we could agree that all actions have an impact on everything, it becomes an entirely separate matter to identify what those effects actually are.

That kinda sounds like a "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, the sound is still significant" argument.

I think back to a professor in college who pointed out that, in a mathematical sense, you can't use calculus in physics.  Because calculus "counts" an infinite series, often a decreasing one, and you can't divide the universe into infinitely-small pieces.  Pretty quickly you get into the quantum realm where most macroscopic equations break down.

But everyone still uses calculus.  Why?  Because it is a more-than-adequate approximation.  The small differences can be easily ignored, and should be.  They simply don't matter.

I would expect the effects of certain sexual practices would be somewhat similar.  While is may be tough to deny that such things have absolutely no effect (in a mathematical sense), they may very well have no practical effect.  In fact, it would be very hard to justify why a Supreme Being would create a universe where such common and hard-to-control actions would have significant effects, when the alternative would be to create a world where they would not have any.

So just identifying actions that have an effect on society is not enough.  You also have to identify those that have a significant effect, and those who effects simply dwindle away to nothing.

[Tom]

In my experience, few things annoy Catholics of a semi-scientific bent more than pointing out that the whole discussion of metaphysical essence is completely nonsensical. Leaving aside the impossibility of monitoring anything that's literally immaterial, the obvious truth is that there should be some scientifically measurable impact on the world when a thing's essence is altered, even if the change in that thing is materially imperceptible, if that thing can be considered relevant. If you swapped Joe Biden's essence with the essence of the Pope, would the person that we'd still recognize as Biden still support abortion? If not, what impact on physical Joe Biden does essential Joe Biden actually have?

If the chance to Biden's essence only has effects on some spiritual plane totally disconnected from this one (and which thus cannot affect this one), then why pretend that any Catholic dogma is empirical or testable?

It's one of the many reasons why materialism just makes more sense.

[Wayward Son]

I've always wondered how such Catholics (and other religious people) reconcile free will with brain damage, Tom.

I mean, if our actions are a reflection of our essence, and determine whether we go to heaven or hell, then what role do drugs that severely alter our behavior effect the calculus of our moral responsibility?  Are we responsible for what we do when we're high?  Or is there some excuse due to physical factors like drugs that give us a free pass?

And while some may argue that people choose to be high, then how about a side-effect of a life-saving drug?  Or if someone was drugged against their will?  Or a metabolic imbalance that causes a change in behavior (e.g. schizophrenia)?  Or even an actual physical change, like the guy who had a metal spike rammed through his skull and lived, but was never the same?

Our bodies affect our brains and personality.  So how does that affect our responsibility for our actions?

Did you sources ever address this?

[Tom]

That's actually been a conversation that, to the best of my knowledge, goes at least as far back as Aquinas. The traditional answer, which I believe is officially doctrinal as of the Council of Vienna back in the 1300s, is that human essence takes the form of the rational soul, and that the human mind is one of its emergent properties. Pretty much every noun in the last half of that sentence is using a Very Specific Definition that owes a lot to the ancient Greeks.

Basically, it's substance dualism; the idea is that there's an immaterial spirit that, in conjunction with physical matter, gives rise to something that has both material and essential properties. All things that live have "souls" in this tradition, even vegetables; sapient things have additional souls, or more accurately additional forms of souls, where forms can broadly be thought of as types. So humans have multiple forms of souls, but according to the Council of Vienna the specific form that makes us human and not, say, animal is that we have a rational soul that enables sapience. (Understanding this doctrine is, I suspect, one of the reasons that Joshua has so much difficulty countenancing discussions of sapient AI or genetically-modified chimpanzees or whatever.)

If you have a rational soul and your physical body has limitations that prevent that soul from properly expressing itself -- if you are, as an extreme example, brain-dead -- then your soul, which is immutable, is not affected, but your consciousness may be impacted. Technically, this means -- and doctrinally, this is official -- that personality is not in fact an indicator of the state of your soul. You can be the rudest, most evil bastard on the face of the planet due to some chemical imbalance like alcoholism, and you could still be Heaven-bound because your soul has accepted salvation.

Modern Catholicism has some issues with this because of its emphasis on conversion narratives. What happens to someone who accepts Christ into their heart but then suffers a terrible brain injury and, as a result, falls into depression that causes them to reject the gospel entirely and become a Satanist? Or what about someone who was raised to be coldly rational and is a hardcore atheist until, while under the influence of mushrooms, they become convinced of the truth of Christ? Is there no impact on their rational soul in these cases, because only their physical substrate changed and thus only the expression of their consciousness changed? 

Very few Catholics, including clergy, ACTUALLY live as if someone's behavior cannot be predictive of their essence, even though this is doctrinally the case. (An extremely simple example to point out why it's almost impossible for Catholics to consistently reconcile this doctrine: intentional suicide is still considered by many sects to be a mortal sin, even if a chemical imbalance in the brain were to cause someone to kill themselves.)

[Fenring]

Modern Catholicism has some issues with this because of its emphasis on conversion narratives. What happens to someone who accepts Christ into their heart but then suffers a terrible brain injury and, as a result, falls into depression that causes them to reject the gospel entirely and become a Satanist?

The answer would go something to the tune that it matters how hard they tried given their situation. A good example is Frodo in Lord of the Rings; how can he be a saint when in fact he finally turned to evil at the end and tried to become Sauron v2? The answer is that his failure was simply a function of his limited strength, not of his intention. How all this is weighed isn't something that can be measured by us.

Very few Catholics, including clergy, ACTUALLY live as if someone's behavior cannot be predictive of their essence, even though this is doctrinally the case.

I suspect this is more a modern thing, given the prevalence of non-violent societies that tend toward obedience and quietude from the populace. If you went back a thousand years I suspect you'd find all kinds of ornery and unpleasant people by today's standards who nevertheless were considered God-fearing people.

(An extremely simple example to point out why it's almost impossible for Catholics to consistently reconcile this doctrine: intentional suicide is still considered by many sects to be a mortal sin, even if a chemical imbalance in the brain were to cause someone to kill themselves.)

It's not a contradiction to consider something sinful and at the same time to say we don't know the real state of affairs for a given person who did it. Put differently, "you shouldn't do that, it's bad for you" is not in conflict with "that person did that and we don't know the result."

I may get around to some of the earlier points, but long story short there is a long list of reasons why things that make sense to a non-materialist that wouldn't make sense to a materialist. Actually they could make sense to certain kinds of materialists, so long as they're creative about what properties material might contain. It would be a sort of mechanistic-materialist (i.e. there is nothing beyond the material and the material consists of little more than plumbing in the Descartian sense) that would lack any common metaphysics. If you reject the idea that individual actions can have far-reaching consequences or implications, sure, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that many people feel this position is wrong in principle, even putting aside metaphysics. Like, what if a person gives birth in secret, and without anyone knowing about it engages in ritual child sacrifice. The materialist 'tree in the forest' perspective would say something like this has no effect on anything and doesn't matter. I suppose it only matters if it's in 'my backyard' or something like that, so that it can really affect you. But instinctively I think most atheistic people would reject that position and would nevertheless feel something there is something terrible in this situation, something wrong that goes beyond the particular effects of law and order within a society.

[Tom]

The materialist 'tree in the forest' perspective would say something like this has no effect on anything and doesn't matter.

Personally, I don't know any materialist who would say "killing your newborn child in a ritual sacrifice has no effect on your child or yourself."

I think you might be having a problem imagining what it means to a materialist for something to matter. You recognize that materialists are in fact generally willing to admit that people can have ideas and those ideas can be discussed as prospective realities, right, even if the truth is that each idea is a series of electrochemical impulses and not, say, the Platonic concept of Freedom?

Edited to add: given your specific example, I think the more narrow interpretation of your question is "would a materialist feel it ethically necessary to intervene, and why?"  Which I suspect is only a question if you somehow imagine that materialists do not, by and large, believe that ethical imperatives can be derived from first principles or social constructs (or both). It's confusing materialism with moral relativism, and does so in a way that actually does a disservice to both. (Consider: many, many societies have in fact allowed the ritual sacrifice of infants, often as a consequence not of materialist philosophy but religious belief. Whether or not someone would intervene to prevent a mother from sacrificing her newborn child would probably depend much more upon their upbringing in such a society than upon any other factor.)

But I think what you really mean is "would a materialist believe that it matters to the Universe that this mother has sacrificed her child?" And the answer there is "no," with the addendum "but it probably matters a lot to specific people, and that's all that matters, anyway."

[Fenring]

It's confusing materialism with moral relativism, and does so in a way that actually does a disservice to both.

It is quite true that it's possible to be both a materialist and a moral realist...but I've never met that beast in the wild. I would submit to you that such a person would need to have what I called above a creative (in a good way) approach to defining what 'material' means. I don't want to derail the discussion too much with this sidetrack, but suffice to say that I would be more than happy to have a conversation with an avowed materialist who holds that reality finds certain acts to be objectively bad.

(Consider: many, many societies have in fact allowed the ritual sacrifice of infants, often as a consequence not of materialist philosophy but religious belief. Whether or not someone would intervene to prevent a mother from sacrificing her newborn child would probably depend much more upon their upbringing in such a society than upon any other factor.)

Agreed that there can be many various reasons for a particular bad action, of which abject materialism doesn't have to be one (in fact it probably rarely is). I was rather referring to how a mechanical-materialist would evaluate such a scenario in objective terms, aside from 'it makes me feel icky'. I maintain that the vast, vast majority of materialists would hold that a child sacrifice is wrong and would not be content to say that it is merely against the terms of a particular society. How you get from this observation to see how contraception (for instance) could in any way shape or form be found to be in a similar category would take a lot of legwork. I'm not trying to persuade you of this position, just to illustrate that it's a considered position. We can have a side thread about it if you're game, just to outline what the position actually is, without it being about proving who's right about the position itself.

[Tom]

I'm not sure what you mean by "reality finds an act to be objectively bad," as opposed to "a given act is objectively bad." But I would say that almost all materialists believe that something can be evaluated objectively once you agree on a definition of "bad." If, for example, you grant the axiom "harm is bad," which is a very common first principle in materialistic ethics, the minimization of net harm becomes objectively ethical. (Obviously then the discussion moves to the definition of "harm," but that sort of thing applies to almost any logically-derived ethical framework.)

I maintain that the vast, vast majority of materialists would hold that a child sacrifice is wrong and would not be content to say that it is merely against the terms of a particular society.

We can safely call these materialists lazy. Most of the societies that endorsed child sacrifice did so because they considered it a moral imperative -- that some higher power actually demanded this be done, regardless of the desires of the child or their parents, and that it was to the benefit of the society that this power be appeased. Consider the modern-day Jehovah's Witness, learning that only with a blood transfusion might their own child be saved; while permitting your child to die rather than directly intervening to cause your child's death is a meaningful moral distinction to many people (as evidenced by the classic Trolley Problem), the core argument -- that there is a perceived benefit to this harm that actually causes it to be a net good -- is the same. Materialists arguing against this might say that there IS in fact no real benefit, and thus no net good. They might argue that there is a psychological harm done to the killers and to the members of that society that outweighs the asserted benefit. They might assert the ethical supremacy of informed consent, and argue that the infant in either scenario cannot consent to their sacrifice for the greater good and thus cannot be made to participate. They might draw a bright line against any form of intentional and irreversible harm, on the grounds that outcomes are often unknowable and it is "safer" to stop far shy of any grey areas. Or, if they're really, really lazy, they'll say "I don't like child sacrifice because something about it squicks me out. It's probably some sort of biological impulse."

NONE of those responses are inconsistent with hard materialism.

But let's bring this back to: "I don't want people to be able to choose to have sex without the risk of pregnancy." I'll certainly grant, as I did in my initial reply, that it is almost certainly a considered position, considered specifically from the position of someone who for whatever reason wants to limit people from engaging in sex more casually and is willing to ensure that casual sex retain some of its most problematic consequences. That removing all consequences of casual sex might in fact make the suppression of casual sex nonsensical is not a consideration to this sort of individual, because they have personally concluded that casual sex is inherently wrong and carries with it consequences that cannot be ameliorated, to the extent that forcing a smaller number of people to continually risk all the worst potential downsides is better than potentially exposing a larger number of people to considerably less risk. However, as I've said, no one has ever presented an argument for the latter that I've found remotely compelling.

[Fenring]

I'm not sure what you mean by "reality finds an act to be objectively bad," as opposed to "a given act is objectively bad."

Just a turn of phrase. It means the badness is baked into reality, like a part of physics essentially, and not a function of requiring people to happen to opine about it. Whether it's tied to biology or to cosmology or something else would remain to be defined.

But let's bring this back to: "I don't want people to be able to choose to have sex without the risk of pregnancy."

I will admit that among Catholics there is a fairly small contingent of people who would subscribe to this. Some (or maybe many?) of them are monarchists, who basically believe in government enforcement of the religion's morality. However probably 99% of Catholics, if I'm guessing the real number correctly, believe that certain things should be a person's free choice even while harmful (such as pre-marital relationships) while other actions such as murder should obviously be illegal. Abortion is one of those funny topics that crosses both boundaries in that it's a moral position informed by revelation and yet considered to be something that should be illegal akin to murder. But contraception is not one such and I've yet to meet a Catholic of any bent (other than monarchists) who would actually espouse banning contraception even from non-Catholics. It would rather just be a friendly suggestion of how to live in a better way, but to be left at that. There is also the concept of two-tier-morality as an objective thing, which for instance Judaism espouses. Things are always weird in the U.S., don't forget, where everything gets mixed into extreme politics. Note also that conservative states and their moral lawmaking are typically guided by Protestant moral values, not Catholic ones, despite the current happenstance of Catholics in positions of prominence (which I view to be a coincidence more than anything else).

[Fenring]

I think back to a professor in college who pointed out that, in a mathematical sense, you can't use calculus in physics.  Because calculus "counts" an infinite series, often a decreasing one, and you can't divide the universe into infinitely-small pieces.  Pretty quickly you get into the quantum realm where most macroscopic equations break down.

I just wanted to address a few of your points, WS. Here the issue is that calculus is a tool we invented to approximate or calculate infinite series. It was never meant to be a literal representation of reality but rather is a tool for determining how to compute either area, rate of change, or other elements that involve curves. It's sort of an elegant brute force method of assigning numerical values to reality. This is different from a real moral calculus, since that is not supposed to be a mere tool to examine an abstraction like math is, but rather a statement about how reality actually is. So the comparison you're making is apt, but a moral realism position would be on the side of empiricism in the sense of being observations about reality, rather than calculus, which is a human fabrication that helps us compute things.

I would expect the effects of certain sexual practices would be somewhat similar.  While is may be tough to deny that such things have absolutely no effect (in a mathematical sense), they may very well have no practical effect.

The issue of defining the effects of what might be called sexual morality require expanding beyond things like barometric pressure and blunt force. Here's an example: when people are using contraception and other people know they are using it, it changes what everyone has in their head about others. That is a big change! The awareness of reality and world view are changed. But that is just one example. Having contraception allows people to believe that sex has no consequences, which creates obvious material effects: when someone gets pregnant they may well now adopt the attitude that they have been treated unfairly or cheated of their consequence-free activity. If you doubt this then you may consider the case where a sexually involved couple gets pregnant and one of the two of them wants to keep the baby. Suddenly the worldview changes in a big hurry about whether or not the consequences would matter. But there are countless other examples of severe material changes just in attitude related to the use of contraception, and we haven't even addresed the moral implications of any of these yet. It would be quite shocking if there were no moral implications at all from any of this. Now I will admit that the case for why the use of contraception would, in and of itself, have moral implications, requires longer argument. And I'll add that it's not at all a self-evident argument, so it's not like you're missing something obvious. I'd say it's a bit counter-intuitive in some ways.

In fact, it would be very hard to justify why a Supreme Being would create a universe where such common and hard-to-control actions would have significant effects, when the alternative would be to create a world where they would not have any.

Well this depends on what heights humans are capable of reaching, and how far one must go to reach there. For instance if you looked at an average collection of college students you might think that it's too much to ask that people be able to run a 4 minute mile. After all that requires much sacrifice, discipline, training, and potentially even talent to achieve. Why make yourself go through that? But some people do; they seem to be drawn to it. Maybe it's to be able to run a marathon. Now imagine that there's a such thing as a moral marathon - is it so unfair to expect people to try to train for this if such a thing exists? What would indeed be unfair would be to judge everyone on a common standard if they tried and found varying degrees of success. That people should be expected to try at all doesn't seem to me hard to justify.

[Tom]

It would be interesting if the person who designed the modern marathon and decided all the rules also insisted that anyone who failed to complete one by their thirtieth birthday would have their skin flayed from their body. Especially if, a few decades into this regime, they announced that anyone sending nude photos of themselves to their only son would be exempt from flaying. I bet a lot of marathoners would write paeans to their mercy.

[Fenring]

It would be interesting if the person who designed the modern marathon and decided all the rules also insisted that anyone who failed to complete one by their thirtieth birthday would have their skin flayed from their body.

That would be an unfortunate situation, but it's not the Catholic claim at any rate. I do think (with no malice intended) that some Protestant sects are very cause->effect prone in assigning hellfire to certain actions or even beliefs.

[Fenring]

Tom, if you wanted a secular analogy, you could think of smoking. It's hardly controversial to advise someone they shouldn't smoke and that it's bad for them. If they choose to do so, however, you will have a rough time with your predictive power on what might happen as a result. While you would probably be on safe ground to say, broadly speaking, that they're causing themselves harm, you could not simply say "you are going to get cancer from that". But we would hope for each person that they be as healthy as possible, and for anyone looking to live past 90, we'd likewise say they'll probably not achieve that by doing harmful things to themselves. It wouldn't be logical to take from this that whoever designed aging was cruel; it's just a fact of nature that taking better care of yourself yields better results, and the contrary opinion that no one should tell you what to do to be healthy would be the strange and counterintuitive position.

[Tom]

Might someone then assert that a cure for lung cancer is bad for society? Because that's the parallel.

[Fenring]

Might someone then assert that a cure for lung cancer is bad for society? Because that's the parallel.

I think the typical question is whether something harmful should be illegal. With smoking that's been more a question of policy than criminal law, for instance establishments not allowing it. In some places, like NYC for example, they periodically try to pass health measures like banning large-volume sugary drinks, which usually falls flat on its face. As far as a cure goes, the analogy only goes so far. But in general I think it should be pretty obvious that the more people in a society who care about being healthy and take disciplined measures to try to make it happen, the better things will be for everyone. We may have to add to that the proviso that the people accept some kind of authoritative statements about health rather than just doing whatever some for-profit guru says.

[Tom]

Except that, in the case of your metaphor and the actual topic, what we're talking about is whether preventing the primary harm of a given behavior is immoral because the ancillary harms are still bad enough that doing anything to remove discouraging factors would be unethical. Would it be wrong to find a cure for lung cancer if it meant that millions more people would get yellowed teeth and become addicted to nicotine?

[Fenring]

Except that, in the case of your metaphor and the actual topic, what we're talking about is whether preventing the primary harm of a given behavior is immoral because the ancillary harms are still bad enough that doing anything to remove discouraging factors would be unethical. Would it be wrong to find a cure for lung cancer if it meant that millions more people would get yellowed teeth and become addicted to nicotine?

It is indeed murky to ask what happens if doing a good thing has apparently negative material consequences. Example: let's stop unnecessary foreign wars. Well maybe it happens to be the case that reducing military spending (corporate welfare, if you will) results in bankruptcies in large contractors, jobs lost, and destabilization on the national defense front. So a moral choice has negative side effects in the realpolitik analysis. But then you have to look not 5-10 years forward, but infinitely forward to see its full effects. So even using a consequentialist calculus ends up mired in framing issues and complexity. And more importantly, moral considerations do not in fact have to employ a consequentialist moral framework. They probably shouldn't, as there are no doubt many moral choices that will definitely result in increased discomfort in the world, even increased suffering. The rejection of this last premise, i.e. positing that no moral act can result in suffering of any kind, is becoming increasingly common, but it's logically untenable. But in a way saying that is pretty similar to saying that consequentialist outcomes cannot realistically be computed (for similar reasons to John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism being impossible to compute numerically).

[JoshuaD]

Bad for men. Bad for women. Bad for society. No thank you.

Why? It may be obvious to you - it isn't to me.

It's bad for men because it is almost certainly going to have late-discovered side effects which are harmful. Look at the side-effects of female birth control, women talk about it all the time. It's not good to go messing around with the fundamental functions of our bodies with brute-force, poorly tested chemicals.

It is bad for women because it will tend to increase promiscuity. The pill and the sexual revolution have produced depression, anxiety, confusion, and sadness in women. It has enabled capitalism to destroy the family. Women are pushed by all of society and their own wishes to let men use them as objects and leave them scarred. It is disgusting and sad. Look at our pop music: we have made a false God out of the hysterical, broken woman finding "strength" in her loneliness after having the good bond of sexual connection ripped from her, over and over and over, for the gratification of cheap men.

It is bad for both men and women because it will increase the proliferation of STDs. It is bad for both men and women because extra-marital sex is self-harm.   

It is bad for society because the pill and the sexual revolution have led to higher divorce rates, higher suicide rates, more STDs, more depression, less healthy food, less healthy families, and decreased birth rates.

It's disgusting and cheap. the sexual revolution was a failed idea and its consequences are written across the nation on the shattered families, broken women, weak men, and mutilated bodies. Any rational analysis without a "I should do whatever I want, no matter the consequences for others" finger on the scale clearly shows that the consequences of the female birth control pill have been catastrophic. We should get that off the market immediately, not double down with a male birth control pill.

[JoshuaD]

Understanding this doctrine is, I suspect, one of the reasons that Joshua has so much difficulty countenancing discussions of sapient AI or genetically-modified chimpanzees or whatever.

What are you on about?  I have no trouble with either of these topics. You've got me confused with someone else or some strawman you invented.  We might make true artificial life with true intelligence. We haven't yet, but maybe we could. That would be cool. Similarly, there very well could be other rational creatures on the planet or in the universe.

You can be the rudest, most evil bastard on the face of the planet due to some chemical imbalance like alcoholism, and you could still be Heaven-bound because your soul has accepted salvation.

It would be good if you understood the thing you were criticizing. This is not a Catholic belief. It is a view typically adopted by protestants. Catholics believe in salvation through works and faith, not faith alone. If you're an evil bastard and you don't repent, Catholics are going to be very worried for you.

----

I'm not going to derail the thread further to re-hash the arguments with you regarding serious flaws with materialism, and especially the serious flaws with a materialist making moral claims with any authority. I've written about that here a bunch.

[Tom]

The pill and the sexual revolution have produced depression, anxiety, confusion, and sadness in women.

How many women have you actually discussed sex with, Joshua?

[msquared]

Josh

You did see where this Pill for Men is not hormonal based? So the side effects you are talking about do not exist. There may be other side effects, and that is what testing will find out.

[Tom]

This is not a Catholic belief. It is a view typically adopted by protestants.

No, it's not. I'm not talking about predestination. Believe me, though: the official doctrinal stance on this, for 1500 years, has been: you can be a good person in essence without doing anything good. The idea that Catholics believe in salvation through grace and works is a common misconception, mainly inflated to draw a distinction between themselves and Protestantism -- but again the official line is that salvation is only possible through grace and in fact cannot be affected in its essence by works. That's the whole root of Pelagianism, which was rejected almost a thousand years before the Council of Vienna (at, I believe, the Council of Carthage), and which was actually cited by the Council of Vienna as part of the argument for why someone who never did good works might still attain Heaven, as long as their soul wanted to but was prevented by their body.

That's the trick. The idea is that working towards salvation is necessary because the desire for improvement is literally essential; that's where Protestants and Catholics differ. But that desire does not actually have to be materially expressed to count towards the salvation of the soul.

[Tom]

(To be fair, Mark, I don't think Joshua's primary concern is about side effects. He's pretty clear that he thinks casual sex is, as he put it, "disgusting and cheap.")

[Fenring]

Believe me, though: the official doctrinal stance on this, for 1500 years, has been: you can be a good person in essence without doing anything good. The idea that Catholics believe in salvation through grace and works is a common misconception, mainly inflated to draw a distinction between themselves and Protestantism -- but again the official line is that salvation is only possible through grace and in fact cannot be affected in its essence by works. That's the whole root of Pelagianism, which was rejected almost a thousand years before the Council of Vienna (at, I believe, the Council of Carthage), and which was actually cited by the Council of Vienna as part of the argument for why someone who never did good works might still attain Heaven, as long as their soul wanted to but was prevented by their body.

You have to be careful about the details here, as in a way you're right but you're not hitting the crux of the position. It is true that we cannot assess someone's state of salvation, and even someone who looks like they're doing nothing good may be moving in a good direction. And even more so, someone can go through a 'conversion' at any time, even upon death. So Hitler may be a saint in heaven even though his prospects looked bleak on Earth, ending in suicide. And there are understood to be mitigating circumstances (i.e. graces) afforded to people who have natural disadvantages. However it is strongly maintained that "faith without works is dead", which is what places it in strong contraposition to Protestantism, and this is straight from the NT. This means that if your faith does not lead to works, it's not really faith. This isn't some esoteric theological point, but is actually just common sense: if you actually believed something and committed yourself to it you'd act on it. How could you not? So the actions end up being a measure of whether it's real faith, and real commitment.

The act of will to commit to something and follow through with it is essentially what Pentecost is about: being filled with the Holy Spirit and running out into the street to try to help people. At its best this is just an assent to energy you find yourself filled with; but at minimum it's an active effort to do what you know you're supposed to. In common parlance we could say the same thing about knowledge (and Nietzsche makes this argument): what is the point of knowing things if that doesn't lead to changes in how you live? In this respect Catholicism has more in common with Judaism than it does with Protestantism, in that the faith involves not just possessing belief in something but acting out a series of mandatory duties which come in increasing demand depending on your ability and commitment. And they are absolutely obligatory, no question about that. So while it is true that someone who apparently did not engage in good works (according to your limited POV) may be saved, it is not true that you do not need to do good works. Refusal to do so will definitely drive you away from the truth, and I would make this argument in a secular/materialist context as well. The theological point you are referring to is that it's not the good works themselves that save you, i.e. you cannot create your own salvation through your actions. But part of the desire to join with your Creator must definitely involve the commitment to improving the state of the world.

[Tom]

And they are absolutely obligatory, no question about that.

The essential desire to do good works is obligatory. If you are unable to do good works due to material limitations, you can still be saved. Again, that was one of the major points of the Council of Vienna. Catholic theologians have clarified this to mean that if you wind up killing someone while on a cocaine bender and are shot and killed by the police, your soul -- if it is repentant enough -- may still be admitted to Heaven. That, in fact, if you had been a genuinely horrible person prior to that, and it was only the horror of your act that awoke your soul to repentance, that the killing itself may be in an indirect way "responsible" for your salvation (although they hasten to add that, of course, it is the grace of God that is truly responsible).

Edited to add: I don't want to make it seem like I think this is a sensible or coherent position. I do not. But I am not incorrectly describing this doctrine, either. Catholic theology has tried for so, so long and across so many perspectives to reach some kind of internal logical consistency that it is incredibly fragile. (One might ask, for example, how the idea of an immutable soul can be reconciled with a soul that is driven by horror to repentance. I don't know. I think the official answer might be that the soul in question had always been the sort of soul that'd be horrified, and would have come to God eventually anyway, maybe, so all this speculation is limited by moral comprehension. But I'm not remotely sure that there even is an official answer to "what can change something immutable" that also functions as a rejection of Calvinism.)

[Wayward Son]

The pill and the sexual revolution have produced depression, anxiety, confusion, and sadness in women.

As opposed to the depression, anxiety, confusion and sadness women had before the Sexual Revolution.

Life wasn't hunky-dory for women before they had better birth control options, for them or their children.  And they certainly weren't treated any better from what I've read.  The problems were different, but there were still problems, and they were still significant.  The main difference was that they had fewer choices in the matters.  And I don't think most women want you to man-splain to them how much happier they will be once you take away their choices and self-determination. 

[Fenring]

The essential desire to do good works is obligatory. If you are unable to do good works due to material limitations, you can still be saved.

Yes, that's why I wrote above "mandatory duties which come in increasing demand depending on your ability and commitment."

More is expected of you if you can do more. But "unable" is a tricky word, since unless you're in a coma you can always do better, even if that means being kinder to caregivers keeping you alive.

But you have to be careful about citing examples like crime sprees following drug use, since the will to use the drug is itself a choice with serious consequences. It's not a good McGuffin for 'thing that removes your ability to make choices which then leads to bad actions' since you did make a choice to get into that state. Again, this is a more or less common sense position to take. And in fact I think regular society's view on this isn't entirely off-base: take a drunk driver who hits a child. The accidental killing seems to be treated much more like an intentional crime if the driver was drunk rather than just incompetent, because even though it was really the initial choice to drive while drunk that led to the bad outcome, that choice alone is very serious. So you shouldn't underplay that element of it in a Catholic view either.

That being said, you're absolutely correct that in theory a serious of terrible actions can somehow lead you down a path where you come out better for it, even better than you would have been had you never done them. This is in fact the argument made about The Fall itself, "oh happy sin" that led to a new type of salvation even better than the originally planned version. But it's not the sin being touted as 'not mattering' or even 'being good in a way' but rather just a glorification of the force that can take lemons and make lemonade out of it. What you are probably considering is that your victims end up being fuel for your supposed betterment, which is unjust. But this view would mistake justice for pleasure. It is certainly possible to cause misery, but the Catholic belief is that you cannot bring about an injustice (on the cosmic level) for others.

[Tom]

FWIW, Fenring, you don't actually need to justify the Catholic approach to this question to me. I'm quite familiar with it, both academically and practically (as most of my extended family on both sides are Catholic). I only went into it in detail here to try to make clear to Joshua that I'm not misrepresenting his religion's doctrines in letter or spirit.

[Fenring]

Thanks, Tom. What I've been trying to emphasize, though, is a couple of things, one of which the Catholic belief involves a lot more common sense reasoning than is often believed (often a mis-attribution from Protestant beliefs). And another thing is the 'works' issue which relates directly to contraception. Since the faith is based on a way of living and relating to others/reality, rather than on mere belief in a series of propositions, it goes against the grain of Western philosophy to say that a choice (like whether to use a condom) can exist on the good/bad axis without it being merely a corollary from some propositional axiom that makes sense on paper. In fact, any doctrine based on revelation (or in large part on it) is going to actually be difficult to explain propositionally since we are much smaller than the reality behind the doctrine, and if anything the propositional explanation may follow as a universal generalization from the practice we have been given rather than the other way around. (* see note) And this speaks directly to your objection: the lack of a perfected explanation behind a rule doesn't invalidate the rule, although it may mean we have a lot of room to grow into the understanding of it. From an atheistic perspective you would naturally ask how we know the rule is valid in the first place if it isn't merely derived from established principles. There are many ways to answer this question, the first of which is obviously that you'd need to believe in revelation, but there are other ways that are more common-sense intuitive and which are experienced by people all the time.

* I'd like to mention parenthetically that this relationship to a truth that's greater than us, which we know is meaningful but can't explain, is by no means restricted to religion. When analyzing the arts, even poetry and literature, there are artistic creations which we know on a deep level are moving and important, but our explanations of how we think they work are interesting but inadequate. In Shakespeare's best passages, for instance, you'd be making a mistake to think you can encapsulate them in propositional form, although it's fun to try. The practice of reading or writing poetry, or engaing with scuplture or painting, can be viewed as very important, and even have teachable technique, and yet not result in explanations that would satisfy a scientifically rigorous approach. And yet we should not shy away from placing huge importance in engagement with these things!

[Tom]

I'd like to mention parenthetically that this relationship to a truth that's greater than us, which we know is meaningful but can't explain, is by no means restricted to religion.

It is not for nothing that I consider epistemology to be by far the most crucial branch of philosophy. Because the distinction between things that are meaningful and things that are true is, I believe, hugely important.

The practice of reading or writing poetry, or engaing with scuplture or painting, can be viewed as very important, and even have teachable technique, and yet not result in explanations that would satisfy a scientifically rigorous approach.

For example: I'm not at all sure this is true, depending on what you consider "scientifically rigorous."

[Fenring]

It is not for nothing that I consider epistemology to be by far the most crucial branch of philosophy. Because the distinction between things that are meaningful and things that are true is, I believe, hugely important.

It's good to narrow down the issues that really require study and expansion, rather than pruning as some branches of philosophy may require. But I would personally not put a hard distinction between meaningful and true in the sense I was using the term, which involves interacting with truth in some way. If you mean meaningful to be that which impacts you for whatever reason then I would agree with a caveat, that even that may be a touching upon some truth even if it's incomplete. I would add a few more areas that are of utmost importance, but epistemology is a good one.

The practice of reading or writing poetry, or engaing with scuplture or painting, can be viewed as very important, and even have teachable technique, and yet not result in explanations that would satisfy a scientifically rigorous approach.

For example: I'm not at all sure this is true, depending on what you consider "scientifically rigorous."

I mean that you can move toward establishing a general theory of it and use US (universal specification) with strong predictive power. From that standpoint fields like economics for instance are not scientifically rigorous. Or put in more everyday terms, someone can't tell you whether you've had an important experience or not, and even if you self-report one they can't tell you what it means from a general theory. Someone may offer advice on what to do if you've had an epiphany or feel like you've touched on something deep about yourself or others, but your experience cannot be catalogued numerically in any satisfactoy way to become raw data. Some psych work can be made of it, but if such experiences could be abstracted into a general theory, we're, like, hundreds or thousands of years away from that. I'm not particularly opposed to that being possible in principle.