Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / A Counterexample to Natural Law Theory from Pruss

**Posted by musiclover** 7/22/2015 11:53 pm

Timocrates - But first-hand experience of sensory loss won't tell us the neurological roots of that loss. Scientists often need to go beyond first-hand experience.

**Posted by musiclover** 7/22/2015 11:55 pm

Jeremy Taylor - Intuitions are fair game in philosophy. Think of thought-experiments which elicit various intuitions. E.g. one cannot object to the Gettier cases by saying "We have a theory of knowledge which shows that these cases are cases of knowledge." Do you have the intuition that Pruss's counterexample is permissible?

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/23/2015 2:56 am

Well, how to treat intuitions is somewhat controversial. One has to be careful about the foundations for one's intuitive claim, the degree to which it might just rest on unexamined assumption, the weight one gives to it as the foundation of an argument and especially a counterclaim to another argument. A lot depends on the particular intuition being claimed, of course, and the context in which the claim is made. Going simply from what you quoted, I'd be interested to see some more fleshing out of the appeal to intuition made. I'm not saying such a scenario as that described is immoral in natural law, but what is stopping the natural lawyer simply saying that if natural law shows it to be immoral, then so be it?

**Posted by Jason Grey** 7/24/2015 10:10 pm

musiclover wrote:
"...it seems plausible that it would be acceptable to temporarily deprive an organ of its natural function.

Yes, seems so. I think Feser holds that this is fine, and that the NL prohibits only using a factulty in such a way that actively thwarts its natural telos.

I think with the sense of smell, an example would be finding the smell of a chemical that causes anosmia very pleasant, and indulging in sniffing the chemical for pleasure in such a way that one destroys one's sense of smell.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/24/2015 11:43 pm

Is it there only a problem specifically with using a faculty too thwart its own end or is it also problematic to use one faculty to thwart another? Or does that make sense? I was thinking, for instance, that you might run until your heart gives out or use your will to ignore your appetite.

**Posted by Mateus** 8/04/2015 7:50 pm

As suggested, it's seems that natural law theory hold that is immoral to use a faculty contrary to the faculty's end, not that it's immoral not to use the faculty per se all the time. For example, a end of the legs is locomotion, but sitting is not morally wrong. In the same vein, the end of the reproductive organs is reproduction, but a man doesn't need to spend 24 hours per day in procreation. Turning off a sense of smell by a period seems akin to that.

**Posted by Rivers23** 8/05/2015 3:23 am

Dr. Feser addressed this topic here, I'm sure many of you have watched it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rynlfggqAcU