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8/18/2015 8:16 am  #151


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

iwpoe wrote:

...why would we ever suppose that we have to help society? That society has an imperative 'for itself' doesn't mean that we are obliged to help society do anything.

 
And who's saying we are obliged to help society to do anything? Has anybody ever been obliged to marry? Hasn't bachelorship or heremitic monkhood always been an option?

This precisely highlights how marriage is important for society, not (only) to individuals. It's important for society, but society cannot make everybody follow it - and indeed hasn't. Marriage has symbolic value to individuals, not compulsory value. But the symbolic value is vital to society - namely, the symbol is about the survival of society.

For the survival of society, everybody doesn't have to breed. It suffices when a critical mass of individuals breeds. In order to ensure that a critical mass of individuals breed, certain symbolic social values must be established, institutionalised or ritualised.

To compare with eating - eating ensures your survival, but you don't have to do it. Eating is not strictly compulsory. Eating is not an agent so that it would force itself on you. You are completely free to abstain. Try it, and in three days try to repeat your argument that there's no imperative going on here.

As far as I have seen, nobody here ever said that society imposes marriage on us and we must obey. Instead, there's mutuality between society and the individual. There's an intricate two-way relationship that can be termed causal, but it's not linear. Society has its will and individual has her will, just like any two people may have conflicting wills and for one to push her own will through, she must bend or break the will of another and the other must allow it be bent or broken. Or the wills may be in accord, aiming at the same goal, mutually reinforcing. Such are the conditions and dispositions to consider in mutual relationships that make the relationships non-linear.

Last edited by seigneur (8/18/2015 8:26 am)

 

8/18/2015 8:34 am  #152


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

seigneur wrote:

And who's saying we are obliged to help society to do anything?

You are, presumably, if anything is to follow from the alleged survival imperative of society.

seigneur wrote:

This precisely highlights how marriage is important for society, not (only) to individuals. It's important for society, but society cannot make everybody follow it - and indeed hasn't. Marriage has symbolic value to individuals, not compulsory value. But the symbolic value is vital to society - namely, the symbol is about the survival of society.

Sure. I'll just grant you that. What's it to me? What force does that have over me or any actual man? So what if we stop reproducing? Will "society" be angry, languish, and die? What's that to actual men?

seigneur wrote:

For the survival of society, everybody doesn't have to breed. It suffices when a critical mass of individuals breeds. In order to ensure that a critical mass of individuals breed, certain symbolic social values must be established, institutionalised or ritualised.

But why "must" *we men* establish them. All you've even possibly shown is that *society* needs to survive. *I* am not society. Nor are you. Nor is everyone you know. Nor is our aggregate. etc. That alleged imperative allegedly belongs to an entity that is no particular man and which cannot itself do anything to fulfill that imperative.

seigneur wrote:

To compare with eating - eating ensures your survival, but you don't have to do it. Eating is not strictly compulsory. Eating is not an agent so that it would force itself on you. You are completely free to abstain. Try it, and in three days try to repeat your argument that there's no imperative going on here.

There is a moral and biological imperative to eat in the case of the individual.

seigneur wrote:

Instead, there's mutuality between society and the individual. There's an intricate two-way relationship that can be termed causal, but it's not linear.

Perhaps this is, in fact, true, but the whole question has been, "Why *must* we help society?"

Also, just secondarily, are you laboring under them impression that there is a factual imminent danger to society in the form of the loss of a sufficient reproductive population? You've never been clear to me on this.

seigneur wrote:

Society has its will and individual has her will, just like any two people may have conflicting wills and for one to push her own will through, she must bend or break the will of another and the other must allow it be bent or broken.

Really? I await a stern letter from society admonishing me for my neglect of her needs.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

8/18/2015 8:42 am  #153


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

If being ‘atomistic’ means only to attribute primarily value to the flourishing and interaction between individual substances God very much included then I’m happy to accept that label. As I said before I am also happy to admit that societies, whatever ontological status they have, also have a form of derived value though this is based only on the good of the individuals involved.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

Is procreation not good, in part, because it is our natural end? No doubt there is far more to it than that, but does that not suffice from a natural law perspective?

I think I said this before somewhere but I would take that as a reason to be suspiciues of Natural Law at least in this area. That the creation of a divine being, one which is of its essence an image of God, should come about premairly for the same reason a dog has puppies strikes me as rather suspect.

For what it's worth I'm going to develop this point elsewhere but I would argue the atheist who endorses the POE (and thus implicitly the claim that moral values exist independently of God) must also endorse the subsequent claim that we are ethically obliged not to procreate.

seigneur wrote:

DanielCC wrote:

seigneur wrote:

But the argument is not that marriage is important because the clan designates it so. The argument is that procreation (a specific biological fact) ensures survival to the clan --> survival is important to the clan (if existence is not important, then what is?) --> the clan institutes marriage as a recognition of the importance. Where is the circularity?

Because the clan is being treated as an actual substance/biological entity which has survival and makes moral decision in the same sense that proper substances do. On this view people end up serving, in fact living and creating more leaving beings for the service of, odd emergent entities.

I am trying hard to assume that you don't mean to say something like "society does not exist", but what else are you saying? Do you mean to say "society exists, but everything that is going on in it has no consequence to us"? In brief, I don't see any objection.

How about this: Society exists and survives subsequent to the existence and survival of its actual members. It exists for their flourishing and not they for its. We have no obligation to ensure its survival beyond our own survival and that of our fellow men.
 

Last edited by DanielCC (8/18/2015 8:49 am)

 

8/18/2015 8:59 am  #154


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

DanielCC wrote:

For what it's worth I'm going to develop this point elsewhere but I would argue the atheist who endorses the POE (and thus implicitly the claim that moral values exist independently of God) must also endorse the subsequent claim that we are ethically obliged not to procreate.

This would be a version of antinatalism.

Interestingly enough I think Schopenhaur beat you to the point though not from an explicit consideration of the POE saying (Parerga and Paralipomena, Short Philosophical Essays, Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, 2000, Ch. XII, Additional Remarks on the Doctrine of the Suffering of the World, § 149, p. 292.):

Whoever wants summarily to test the assertion that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain, or at any rate that the two balance each other, should compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of that other.

And also (Studies in Pessimism: The Essays. Pennsylvania State University, 2005, p. 7):

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

8/18/2015 2:16 pm  #155


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

iwpoe wrote:

seigneur wrote:

To compare with eating - eating ensures your survival, but you don't have to do it. Eating is not strictly compulsory. Eating is not an agent so that it would force itself on you. You are completely free to abstain. Try it, and in three days try to repeat your argument that there's no imperative going on here.

There is a moral and biological imperative to eat in the case of the individual.

Says who? The imperative only exists if you want to live. Not everybody wants to live, so the rule is subject to exceptions, and inasmuch as it has its exceptions, it's not an imperative. It's more like a guideline or suggestion. It's a biological instinct, but instincts are not always strictly causally binding.

But if you grant that the imperative exists insofar as the survival instinct is to be considered, then the same applies to society - marriage must be established insofar as society is to survive.

Moreover, were I to wager granting to you that eating is "imperative" upon individual, I can only do so while pointing out that we don't eat all the time - and shouldn't. Gluttony is evil. Sure, we have to eat to survive, but we have to eat the right things and eat them moderately. Similarly, marriage comes with its restrictions. Marriage is best institutionalised by clan/society/state, but in its proper sense, i.e. to denote procreative function, and it cannot compulsory for everybody.

iwpoe wrote:

seigneur wrote:

Instead, there's mutuality between society and the individual. There's an intricate two-way relationship that can be termed causal, but it's not linear.

Perhaps this is, in fact, true, but the whole question has been, "Why *must* we help society?"

Since it's a non-linear two-way relationship, the question is not "Why *must* we help society?". Something like this can be asked, but it's not the *whole* question and not the *only* question.

iwpoe wrote:

Also, just secondarily, are you laboring under them impression that there is a factual imminent danger to society in the form of the loss of a sufficient reproductive population? You've never been clear to me on this.

Actually, I have been quite clear on this. Any tribe, language or civilisation that ever went extinct in history serves as a factual example of what happens when the society doesn't regenerate effectively enough. There may be many reasons why cultures and languages subside and go extinct, but the common point here is that the relevant values get supplanted when the last members of the group fail to produce offspring that would carry on the same values.

iwpoe wrote:

seigneur wrote:

Society has its will and individual has her will, just like any two people may have conflicting wills and for one to push her own will through, she must bend or break the will of another and the other must allow it be bent or broken.

Really? I await a stern letter from society admonishing me for my neglect of her needs.

Doesn't take much. Forget your tax declaration or such. If you say tax authorities are not society, then you are effectively saying that society doesn't exist - again.

 

8/18/2015 2:29 pm  #156


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

seigneur wrote:

Doesn't take much. Forget your tax declaration or such. If you say tax authorities are not society, then you are effectively saying that society doesn't exist - again.

Do you understand the distinction between:

X is *in* Y.

and

X is Y

?


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

8/18/2015 3:12 pm  #157


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

iwpoe wrote:

seigneur wrote:

Doesn't take much. Forget your tax declaration or such. If you say tax authorities are not society, then you are effectively saying that society doesn't exist - again.

Do you understand the distinction between:

X is *in* Y.

and

X is Y

?

 
Sure I do. But what is your point? Tax authority is *in* society, but not (representative of) society? We are all part of society, but society itself has no will, has no life, does not do anything, etc?  How can you assert it when society, just like an individual body, has iron arms that it can use to crush you to death like a bug? In fact it is doing it (to some people) as we speak.

I see no sense in what you are saying.

Last edited by seigneur (8/18/2015 3:14 pm)

 

8/18/2015 7:41 pm  #158


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

DanielCC wrote:

If being ‘atomistic’ means only to attribute primarily value to the flourishing and interaction between individual substances God very much included then I’m happy to accept that label. As I said before I am also happy to admit that societies, whatever ontological status they have, also have a form of derived value though this is based only on the good of the individuals involved.

I was referring to a particular comment from Matthew when I used the term atomist, not anything you have said. I was also talking sociologically and culturally, not really ontologically. My professional field is politics at the moment, especially traditional conservatism and various agrarian-distributist-Schumacherite figures, like H. J. Massingham and Wendell Berry. I have a great interest in the role of things like tradition, prescription, social associations, place, and relations to the land in the life of the individual and society.

 But I largely agree with you that society doesn’t have a separate being or substance to the individuals that make it up. That said, it is an interesting and somewhat unusual case, as society does seem to be, in some sense, something more than the individual members that make it up, given that it helps to define and constitute these members in their mundane existences. Roger Scruton makes some brief but interesting remarks on this in his Engand: An Elegy.

I think I said this before somewhere but I would take that as a reason to be suspiciues of Natural Law at least in this area. That the creation of a divine being, one which is of its essence an image of God, should come about premairly for the same reason a dog has puppies strikes me as rather suspect.

But aren’t we partly material beings or animals? I don’t see what singles this out area as a place where animal considerations should be excluded. Of course, the natural law does emphasis that we should not approach sexuality simply in an animal way. We are not animals alone, so there needs to be a specifically human element in our sexual relations. Perhaps it does not emphasis it quite enough, but there is a place in natural law sexual morality for the spiritual capabilities of eros, the spiritual nature of complementarity, the way we should treat our partners, the child as a fecundate symbol of the loving and spiritual relationship of man and wife, etc. I think it would be wrong to see natural law teaching as just about our animal ends and faculties. But it does maintain that we are animals and we shouldn't pervert these animals ends.

 

8/19/2015 4:22 am  #159


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

 But I largely agree with you that society doesn’t have a separate being or substance to the individuals that make it up.

I.e. society is nothing but the individuals that make it up. Can someone explain how this is not reductionism, atomism, and/or nominalism?

(Yes, I noticed that you immediately contradict this in the next sentence by saying "society does seem to be, in some sense, something more than the individual members that make it up" but this is just that, a contradiction that you don't resolve. As a minimum, it looks like you are undecided in your commitments in this area.)

 

8/19/2015 7:50 am  #160


Re: Best Arguments Against Same-Sex Marriage

seigneur wrote:

Tax authority is *in* society, but not (representative of) society?

I don't know what it even *means* to "represent" society. Society, as such, never sent anyone a letter declaring its personal intent that there be an IRS to collect taxes on its behalf.

The IRS is a state institution set up by the government as the executor of the government's power of taxation. Even on a robust account of what a society is, ontologically, the sense in which it might be said to be a social "representative" would be that it's *characteristic* of our kind of society to have something like an IRS.

seigneur wrote:

We are all part of society, but society itself has no will, has no life, does not do anything, etc? How can you assert it when society, just like an individual body, has iron arms that it can use to crush you to death like a bug? In fact it is doing it (to some people) as we speak.

That's a metaphor. No one at the IRS ever got any kind of instruction or direction from society as such. No police officer ever got a notice from society as such telling them how to protect the citizenry. They get directions from their superiors (who are individuals), who get their directions from state institutions and legislators (who are groups of individuals), who make these on the basis of their general understanding of the world.


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

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