| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/03/2015 6:39 pm |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
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DanielCC wrote:Out of interest what is the intrinsic good in the procreative function?
Survival. When your tribe is close to dying out, you surely recognise the value of procreation. Similarly, plenty of countries, ethnicities, cultures, languages in the world perceive the threat to their survival as we speak.
Big nations of course don't see this point. They view matters from their own luxurious position. Edit: for example like iwpoe above
| Practical Philosophy » Sodomy Laws » 8/03/2015 4:04 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 24
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DanielCC wrote:
I think a lot of people would claim it's backed up by appeal to experience i.e. it's possible to have the same phenomenological experience of romantic love towards a person of the same sex.
"Appeal to experience" is irrelevant. What would you get by removing restrictions on drugs based on "appeal to experience" by drug addicts?
Historically, sodomy laws were there, scriptural condemnation is also there, and homosexuality used to be listed as an illness. It would be scientifically relevant to see some medical research that led to the removal of homosexuality from the list. If the changes in medical views and laws were motivated only by "appeal to experience", they were totally unmotivated.
DanielCC wrote:The deeper issue here is whether one considers romantic and by extent erotic love (note I didn’t just say sexual attraction) necessarily geared towards reproduction, which, of course most heterosexuals don’t.
Let's be clear on terminology. Love is one thing, sex is another thing. The relevant topic is sex. There were times, pretty recently in fact, when sex outside marriage (pre-marital and extra-marital) was punishable, if a report by some relevant party insisted on investigation. And these punishments obviously applied to heterosexual and homosexual relationships alike.
So, it's about sex, not love. Similarly, love is absolutely irrelevant to sodomy laws, which are specifically about homosexuality. As long as homosexuality was on the list of diseases, an argument for sodomy laws probably was to contain the disease.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Constituent VS Relational Ontologies & Platonism VS Aristotelianism » 8/03/2015 12:24 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 12
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Kudos for a good comprehensive opening post. Let's see if I manage to contribute somewhat.
In my view, there are irreconcilable differences between Aristotle and Plato, but it's not very easy to determine that they are irreconcilable.
The differences of style are easy to determine though. Plato wrote dialogues, Aristotle wrote treatises. Therefore Aristotle's thought looks systematic, while Plato is subject to interpretation. One can always question if this or that view by Plato is put forth in such a manner that Plato himself endorses it or not. In my view, Plato precisely intended it this way, so that the reader would think along and question the theories put forth. Plato did not teach what to think, but how to think. Aristotle, on the other hand, taught what to think. This is the difference of style.
Aristotle's Metaphysics contains criticism of a kind of theory of forms where forms are conceived as apparently Euclidian solids in the "realm of forms". It's not clear to me if this is a criticism of Plato's theory of forms, even though many interpret it this way. Aristotle's Metaphysics mentions Plato, but on my reading always respectfully, never in connection with the criticised theory of forms. Moreover, the criticism is not against all theories of forms, because Aristotle himself holds to a (different) theory of forms (hylemorphic formal causes).
In my view, Plato's own theory of view would not be open to such criticism anyway. Instead of Euclidian solids, Plato's forms are holographic or ephemeral ideas in one single (ontological monist) substance, while the bodies of this world are condensations (shadows) of those forms. Basically, I take Plotinian interpretation of Plato to be correct.Flaccus wrote:Isn't it a major position of the Neoplatonists that there is actually a harmony to be found in Plato and Aristotle?
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The Suda indicates that Porphyry produced six books, On Plato and Aristotle Being Adherents of the Same School (Suda
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/02/2015 9:59 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
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iwpoe wrote:
1. Society at large has, in some sense that's not important to define at this very moment, lost a robust understanding of marriage: our general existential situation is one wherein the plurality of people still expect to, are expected to, and want to marry, ...
Actually, the situation is a bit more dire than this. If by "plurality of people" you mean "majority of people", then the statistical fact is that more than half of the children are born outside marriage in a number of European countries. This means the relevant majority of people think marriage is an extraneous unimportant matter.
Otherwise your points 1-3 are okay.iwpoe wrote:4. The proper response to 3 is not simply to double down on existing laws, dimply reaffirming them or restating them more explicitly or more strongly.
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"Double down" means to be doubly more emphatic about it? Actually, I think the opposite. I said somewhere earlier that I am okay with doing away with the legal concept of marriage altogether, because what we are going towards makes no realistic sense. It makes no logical sense to keep such a legal term as "marriage" that doesn't mean what marriage properly means and the people don't seem to be doing anything with it anyway. So, it should be safe to do away with it.
The idea with proper marriage, in terms of natural law, is to protect the procreative function of families. Because, this is how society regenerates itself; it's most appropriate for children to grow up with their own biological parents; it's most appropriate for biological parents (and the immediate relatives by extension) to take care of their own children, not make the children anybody else's responsibility; such families are, besides being the essence of biological reproduction of society, also the core carriers of tradition, culture, language; etc. So, instead of the de facto defunct legal concept of marriage that we have now, it would be better to institute legal benefits fo
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/02/2015 7:45 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
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I'm a bit sad about the irrelevant response. I quite explicitly said there is no causal relation between law about marriage and "proper marriage" (which was a term you brought up first, so I think we are in agreement as to its meaning).
I only said that it's *good* (you recognise that such a thing as *good* exists, don't you?) when the laws enshrine *proper marriage* as opposed to any old crap under the name "marriage" that the current legislature may put there.
Now, sure enough, laws may be full of any old crap and some level of normalcy (natural-law normalcy, as distinguished from the current legislature's opinion of normalcy) would be retained in society regardless. However, such laws would be a sign that the government cares nothing about truth, reality, and relevance of its own doings. And that would be *bad*, don't you agree?
So, there's no direct causal relation. What I am saying is that the content of laws provides an educational/corrective signal to society as to what is proper and what is not. You may disagree as to the degree of relevance of government in people's lives in terms of those signals, but I seriously think the relevance is there sure enough, particularly given that its corrective measures involve prison, confiscation of property, and such.
| Practical Philosophy » Sodomy Laws » 8/02/2015 5:14 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 24
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I am not aware of any medical research that would justify the view that homosexuality is normal. I have no clue why homosexuality was removed from the list of medical conditions while things like "ADHD" and "depression" get added. Seems like a political trend with no backup from science and fact.
If the argument is "dogs have male-to-male intercourse too", then, well, male lions eat other males' cubs, so...
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/02/2015 4:39 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
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iwpoe wrote:seigneur wrote:
I agree that "the liberal left core doesn't want to replace the family with the state". However, if "the liberal left core" includes the cause of represented by the LGBT movement, then they are in the business of marginalising the status of family. I sincerely wish the liberal left core had no such association.
Why? Be cause you need marriage liscenses issued by the state only to heterosexuals to have families? The family is a natural unit (as are proper marriages, for that matter). It doesn't require state support in the first place, let alone state support to the exclusion of all other kinds of support.
The idea that you need the family robustly supported by the law-code and/or the constitution of the state is a modern concession already, halfway down the road to conceding them as legal constructions.All true, but inasmuch as I see a connection between the government overreaching to private territory and one of those territories being the family, I see it as a Good Thing if the government officially recognises and makes efforts to protect the natural unit known as the family or, as a minimum, that which we both call "proper marriage". Because, when the government legally recognises those things, it will be clear to everyone what the values of the government are. And it will be clear to everyone when the values change, as they have been drastically changing in the "civilised" West this century.
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It's a Good Thing when the express values of the government are in harmony with the Good, isn't it? At least I think you agree that it would be a good thing to know what the values of your government are. Laws are good to have as a form of expression of the values of the government, even when we don't agree with the laws. (I'd even say that especially when we don't agree with the laws.)
So, I was not saying that official recognition would somehow cause families and proper marriages to be. Rather, official recogn
| Religion » The four logical steps to explicit propositional faith » 8/02/2015 4:05 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 3
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Johannes wrote:
This "complete" definition of faith corresponds exactly to the calling by Jesus at the beginning of his ministry: «The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; convert and believe in the gospel.» (Mk 1:15).
- "convert": personal faith;
- "believe in the gospel": propositional faith.
Just one minor quibble: It says "repent" rather than "convert", and this difference is somewhat important. John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth were not in the business of converting the Jews from some wrong religion to true religion. Rather, their message was that Jews were not properly faithful to what their own faith was really supposed to be. So, repentance was in order, and renewed affirmation of the essence of faith as proclaimed already by the earlier prophets.
| Theoretical Philosophy » Two challenges to Thomistic cosmological arguments » 8/02/2015 3:27 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 7
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@John West
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Maybe I am misreading his argument, but to me it seems that Heyzeus is saying that since "these things (mountains, planets, even perhaps those stars) are just 'piles' whose 'generation' involves nothing more than clumps of 'stuff' coming together and sticking together via physical interactions", then this simply doesn't occur to him as something that would require an explanation. The relative persistence of such things does not get him going to the first cause that sustains all contingent beings. The relative persistence of such things is irrelevant.
Instead, in Heyzeus's view it's more interesting to note persistence of the 'stuff' which underlies all those secondary things, being their material cause. In his view, the Thomistic argument would be more relevant if it started off to explain the persistence of the material cause of all things, instead of the contingent transitory things.
Heyzeus's second point presents also a conceivable objection, as far as I can see. Given the stock examples of the hierararchy of essentially ordered causes, such as a lamp hanging from the ceiling, ceiling supported by the walls, walls supported by the foundation of the house, foundation fixed in earth, etc. is it really hierarchical causality rather than fully contingent circumstances arranged around more circumstances, just like all circumstances are structurally arranged? Structurally, not hierarchically.
I'd go even further and ask if this "essentially ordered series" of causality is even causality in the relevant sense. Why not call it more appropriately something like context, correspondence, correlation? (I have strong Platonic leanings instead of Aristotelian, so I am not so eager to label everything "causality". I don't see Forms as causes, but rather as Idea(l)s. Objects of this world basically fall short of Idea(l)s of the other world - precisely as Plato put it. The objects of this world are more like reflections of the Idea(l)s of that world, i.e. things
| Practical Philosophy » Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage » 8/02/2015 2:32 am |
- seigneur
- Replies: 172
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iwpoe wrote:seigneur wrote:
On the side of pro-gays, I have seen plenty of ultra-feminist/hedonist statements to the effect that family at its very heart, parents in particular, are patriarchal, oppressive (to children and women), working contrary to freedom and happiness (of children and women). As if the govt were somehow more caring...
I don't understand why many people start here with the fringe as a guide for what the movement's ultimate aims and expected direction will be. I can listen on the radio every day to Alex Jones speaking literal non-sense, and anybody with understanding knows that he can't possibly represent the actual aims and purpose of the various conservative causes he'll throw himself behind. Ultra-feminists are loud loons, and the liberal left core doesn't want to replace the family with the state.
No, not taking it as a guide. Just that when I debated actual people on this topic, the speedy resort to undeniable irrationality was so astonishing as to be noteworthy.
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I agree that "the liberal left core doesn't want to replace the family with the state". However, if "the liberal left core" includes the cause of represented by the LGBT movement, then they are in the business of marginalising the status of family. I sincerely wish the liberal left core had no such association.
In my view, the acknowledgement of the autonomous self-worth of family by the government/law is one of the important guarantees against the excesses of government. Here "family" defined as the traditional, "nuclear", natural (natural-law) family, i.e. parents and their children. Marriage was traditionally the legal concept specifically intended to protect this kind of family. A number of countries (in Europe) have it directly in their constitutions.