He who can follow an argument will also know how not to be led by it.
Month: April 2013
If You Like to Think . . .
. . . you'll like my blog. If you don't like to think, you need my blog.
Islam, Radical Islam, and the Left’s Denial of the Threat
In the nine years I have been blogging I have been careful to distinguish between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, Islamism, Islamofascism, etc.) I can't say I have had any really good reason for this charitableness on my part. Perhaps it is that I just didn't want to believe that 'moderate Muslim' is as much an oxymoron as 'moderate Nazi.'
In "Calling Islam 'Islam'," Bosch Fawstin argues against distinguishing between Islam and radical Islam (militant Islam, fundamentalist Islam, etc.) But if one doesn't make this distinction, and radical Islam is the enemy, then Islam is the enemy. This seems to have the unpalatable consequence that 1.5 billion Muslims are the enemy. Surely that is false. As I understand Fawstin, he avoids this inference by distinguishing between Muslims who take Islam seriously and those who don't. Actually, he makes a tripartite distinction among Muslims who take Islam seriously, and are a grave existential threat to us; Muslims who do not take Islam seriously and are a threat to us only insofar as they refuse to condemn the radicals; and Muslims who, unlike the second group, practice Islam, but an 'enlightened' Islam. This third group, however, is empty. According to Fawstin, "There’s no separate ideology apart from Islam that’s being practiced by these Muslims in name only, there’s no such thing as 'Western Islam'."
If Fawstin is right, then to speak of Islam having being 'hijacked' by radicals makes as little sense as to speak of National Socialism as having been hijacked by radicals. Islam and Nazism are radical and militant and murderous by their very nature: there are no moderate forms. If you are Muslim or a Nazi then you are a radical since these ideologies admit of no moderate forms; if you are not a radical Muslim or Nazi, then you are not a Muslim or a Nazi at all.
Whether or not you agree with Fawstin's parsing of the terminology, the radicals do pose a real threat both 'explosive' (as in the Boston Marathon bombing) and 'subversive' (as in the building of the ground zero mosque). Curiously, in the case of GZM, the site of the subversion is the same as the site of one of the main 'explosions.'
Why is it that Jay Sekulow perceives the threat clearly while Juan Cole does not?
In Terrorism and Other Religions, Cole argues that "Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions." Although we conservatives don't think all that highly of Bill Maher, we cheered when he pointed out the obvious, namely, that Islam, and Islam alone at the present time, is the faith whose doctrines drive most of the world's terrorism, and that the Left's moral equivalency 'argument' is "bullshit" to employ Maher's terminus technicus. Why should pointing out what is plainly true get Maher labeled a bigot by Cole?
So I thought I must be missing something and that I needed to be set straight by Professor Cole. So I read his piece carefully numerous times. Cole's main argument is that, while people of "European Christian heritage" killed over 100 million people in the 20th century, Muslims have killed only about two million during that same period. But what does this show? Does it show that Islamic doctrine does not drive most of the world's terrorism at the present time? Of course not.
That is precisely the issue given that Cole is contesting what "the bigot" Maher claimed. What Cole has given us is a text-book example of ignoratio elenchi. This is an informal fallacy of reasoning committed by a person who launches into the refutation of some thesis that is other than the one being forwarded by the dialectical opponent. If the thesis is that Muslims who take Islam seriously are the cause of most of the world's terrorism at the present time, this thesis cannot be refuted by pointing out that people of "European Christian heritage" have killed more people than Muslims. For this is simply irrelevant to the issue in dispute. (I note en passant that this is why ignoratio elenchi is classifed as a fallacy of relevance.)
Someone born and raised in a Christian land can be called a Christian. But it doesn't follow that such a person is a Christian in anything more than a sociological sense. In this loose and external sense the author of The Anti-Christ was a Christian. Nietzsche was raised in a Christian home in a Christian land by a father, Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, who was a Lutheran pastor. Similarly, Hitler was a Christian. And Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, was a Muslim. But were Ataturk's actions guided and inspired by Islamic doctrine? As little as Hitler's actions were guided and inspired by the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of some of Ataturk's anti-Islamic actions.
Having exposed the fundamental fallacy in Cole's article, there is no need to go through the rest of his distortions such as the one about the Zionist terrorists during the time of the British Mandate.
Why do leftists deny reality? A good part of the answer is that they deny it because reality does not fit their scheme. Leftists confuse the world with their view of the world. In their view of the world, people are all equal and religions are all equal – equally good or equally bad depending on the stripe of the leftist. They want it to be that way and so they fool themselves into thinking that it is that way. Moral equivalency reigns. If you point out that Muhammad Atta was an Islamic terrorist, they shoot back that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian terrorist — willfully ignoring the crucial difference that the murderous actions of the former derive from Islamic/Islamist doctrine whereas the actions of the latter do not derive from Christian doctrine.
And then these leftists like Cole compound their willful ignorance of reality by denouncing those who speak the truth as 'Islamophobes.'
That would have been like hurling the epithet 'Nazi-phobe' at a person who, in 1938, warned of the National Socialist threat to civilized values.
Jeannine Pirro Tells the Truth to ‘Jihad Mom’
This had to be said and Judge Pirro does a wonderful job of it. What I love about the Fox ladies: beauty, brains, and balls — or the female equivalent thereof.
"We should not be required to breathe the same air as you, we should not be required to share the indignity of your presence" says Judge Jeanine Pirro in her opening statement to the Jihadi mother of the Boston bomber, as she exposes the facts that are being brought to light behind the terrorist attack in the Boston Marathon.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Zero Through Ten
Before getting on to tonight's scheduled presentation, we pause to remember George Jones who died Friday at 81, his longevity proof of the human body's ability to take a sustained licking from John Barleycorn and keep on ticking. I don't believe Jones ever had a crossover hit in the manner of a Don Gibson or a Merle Haggard. He was pure country and highly regarded by aficionados of that genre. Here are two I like:
…………….
Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero/No Limit (1965)
Orleans, Still the One (1976)
Doors, Love Me Two Times (1967)
Jimi Hendrix, Third Stone from the Sun (1967) "You will never hear surf music again . . . ."
Lucinda Williams singing Dylan, Positively Fourth Street. This is a great cover!
Cream, From Four Until Late
Bob Dylan, Obviously Five Believers (1966)
Bob Dylan, From a Buick 6 (1966), from Highway 61 Revisited with Al Kooper on organ and Mike Bloomfield, lead guitar.
Lovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock (1967). More proof of the vast superiority of the '60s over every other decade when it comes to popular music. No decade was more creative, engaged, rich, relevant, and diverse. Generational chauvinism? No, just the plain truth! But you had to be there.
Johnny Rivers, Seventh Son (1965)
Byrds, Eight Miles High (1969)
The Clovers, Love Potion #9 (1959). Written by Lieber and Stoller.
Bruce Springsteen, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
The Aporetics of Existential Meaning
For present purposes, an aporia is a set of propositions each member of which has a strong claim on our acceptance, but whose members are collectively inconsistent. Like many a philosophical problem, the philosophical problem of the meaning of life is usefully approached from an aporetic angle. So consider the following aporetic tetrad:
A. If life has a meaning, then it cannot be subjective.
B. The meaning of life must be subjectively appropriable by all.
C. There is no meaning that is both nonsubjective and subjectively appropriable by all.
D. Life has a meaning.
Good though not absolutely compelling reasons have been given for both (A) and (B). But they are in tension with one another, a tension recorded in (C), the third limb of our aporetic tetrad. One who inclines towards compatibilism with respect to existential meaning inclines toward the rejection of (C). Unfortunately, (C) is not easily rejected, as I will try to show in this post. The main difficulty concerns the subjective appropriability of an objective purpose by all even if it is granted that there is an objective purpose applicable to all.
First of all, one cannot appropriate an objective purpose unless one knows or at least has good reasons for believing that there is one. More importantly, one must know what the purpose is and what one must do to live in accordance with it. Three different questions: Is there an objective purpose? What is it? How do I live in accordance with it? Countless millions of people, however, have lived who lacked the abilities or the opportunities to form reasonable beliefs about these matters, let alone to come to have knowledge about them. It is not enough that the objective purpose be knowable by some; it must be knowable by all. This was argued earlier. But for the countless millions just mentioned there was no real possibility of appropriating the objective purpose. By ‘real possibility’ is meant something far stronger than a mere logical possibility or even a nomological possibility. It is logically and nomologically possible for a human being to run a four-minute mile. But it is not possible for me and plenty of others to run that fast. So even if it is logically and nomologically possible for all human beings to know the objective purpose of life, it does not follow that all have any serious possibility of knowing it. It is as impossible for the countless millions just mentioned to know the objective purpose of life, supposing there is one, as it is for people like me to run a four-minute mile. It follows that the objective purpose of life, supposing there is one, is not subjectively appropriable by all, which is to say that it is not subjectively appropriable in the way it would have to be for life to be objectively meaningful. Again, if life has a meaning, it has a purpose, and the purpose must be the same for all and appropriable by all. Redemption from absurdity must be possible for all if it is be possible for any. If the world is so arranged that you are barred from redemption through no fault of your own, then my redemption is not a redemption from absurdity.
Those with the abilities and opportunities to investigate the three questions just mentioned are not in a much better position. For they are confronted with a welter of conflicting doctrines. The fortunate have the leisure to inquire and the intellect with which to inquire, but our intellects are weak and the problems stare us down with a face of seeming intractability. If all we have to rely on are ourselves and the resources of this world, then the conclusion to draw is that human life has no meaning that is both nonsubjective and subjectively appropriable.
Some will reply that what we cannot supply has been supplied by divine revelation. But this is no real solution. Even if God has revealed the purpose of human existence to us, together with the means of achieving that purpose, and in a way that respects our freedom and dignity, this will not do us any good if we do not know the purpose and how to achieve it. That, however, is precisely what we do not know as is clear from the conflicting accounts of the content of revelation, not to mention conflict over whether revelation is actual or even possible. All of these are ‘up for grabs’: the existence of God, the possibility of divine revelation, the actuality of divine revelation, not to mention its content and interpretation. If I merely believe in the content of a particular (putative) revelation, the Christian revelation for example, as interpreted in a certain way by a certain ecclesiastical authority such as the Roman Catholic magisterium, that is not good enough for it leaves me with reasonable doubts. But as long as I doubt the meaning of life and must continue to inquire, I have not yet subjectively appropriated the objective meaning of life. The subjective certainty of faith is not enough. What is needed is the objective certainty of knowledge. And it must be available to all – which is not the case for those who lived before the time of the historical revelation.
D. Life Has a Meaning
A case has been made for each of the first three limbs. Should we therefore conclude that life has no meaning? That would be hasty. It is arguable, though not compellingly arguable, that the living of a life presupposes the objective meaningfulness of life. E. M Adams writes,
Just as belief in the intelligibility of the world is presupposed by our quest for understanding, the meaningfulness of life is presupposed in living a life. We have to believe that life is not absurd, that it is not a tale told by an idiot, that it makes sense, in order to keep on with the struggles of life. (“The Meaning of Life,” International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion 51, 2002, pp. 71-81.)
I take Adams’ point to be that we cannot live without presupposing that our lives have meaning, objective meaning, a meaning whose source is external to us. One who believes, not just in his study, but throughout the activities of his life, that his life and its activities have only the meaning that he gives them must suffer a loss of motivation. If he does not, he is simply fooling himself about what he really believes and lives in a state of self-deception, or else he conveniently forgets his theoretical conviction when it comes time to act. He maintains at the level of theory that his life has only the meaning he confers upon it, but he ‘contradicts’ this theoretical belief by the energy and passion with which he pursues his projects and perhaps also by the passion with which he tries to convince the rest of us that nothing matters except what we make matter. For if he fully appreciated what his subjectivism amounts to he would see that his acts of meaning-bestowal are as meaningless as everything else in his life. You could say that such a person has not subjectively appropriated his subjectivism. This is true whether the subjectivism is extreme or moderate.
Living our lives with zest and vigor and passion and commitment, we presuppose that they are objectively meaningful. One who denies this I would suspect of self-deception or a lack of intelligence or spiritual superficiality. One who responds, “I live a rich and full life despite my conviction that life has no objective meaning applicable to all” simply does not appreciate the existential implications of what he believes. This is a bold assertion, many will disagree with it, some will be offended by it, and I cannot prove it; but it is reasonable to maintain it. It must also be conceded that, even if we cannot live full lives without the presupposition of objective meaningfulness, it does not follow that there is an objective meaning. It is not easy to exclude the possibility that what we must presuppose does not hold in fact. We must presuppose the intelligibility of the world if we are to embark seriously upon the arduous quest for understanding, but it is logically and epistemically possible that the world is unintelligible in itself. Likewise, we must presuppose the objective meaningfulness of life if we are to live rich and full and committed lives, but it is logically and epistemically possible that our lives are objectively meaningless nonetheless.
But if these possibilities are actual, then all the more are our lives meaningless, for then the way things are thwarts us: there is a ‘disconnect’ between what we need and must presuppose and what is true. Given that we cannot know that this is the case, we are entitled to believe that it is not the case. It may be that the ultimate nature of the world is such as to frustrate our purposes. But we cannot know this and there is no point in believing it, while there is every point in believing that the presupposition of meaning is true. Our very lives are the ‘proof’ of it. When it comes to life and its living it is reasonable to hold that the ‘proofs’ will be vital and pragmatic rather than theoretical. We are participants first and spectators second. We are parts of the world-whole and we are beings of meaning; it is reasonable to extrapolate that the world-whole of which we are parts is also a world of meaning and intelligibility. If we are wrong and the truth thwarts us, then why should we value truth? With this I conclude my case that life has meaning, whatever that meaning might be. It has some objective meaning or other and part of what contributes to the zest and passion and subjective meaningfulness of a life is the quest for that objective meaning.
Impasse
The limbs of the aporetic tetrad are all of them defensible, yet they cannot all be true. I leave it to the reader to find his way forward if he can. If nothing else, I have elucidated the philosophical problem of the meaning of human existence and have blocked some facile (non)solutions.
Schopenhauer on Islam, “The Saddest and Poorest Form of Theism”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, tr. E. F. J. Payne, vol. II (Dover, 1966), p. 162. This is from Chapter XVII, "On Man's Need for Metaphysics" (emphases added and a paragraph break):
Temples and churches, pagodas and mosques, in all countries and ages, in their splendour and spaciousness, testify to man's need for metaphysics, a need strong and ineradicable, which follows close on the physical. The man of a satirical frame of mind could of course add that this need for metaphysics is a modest fellow content with meagre fare. Sometimes it lets itself be satisfied with clumsy fables and absurd fairy-tales. If only they are imprinted early enough, they are for man adequate explanations of his existence and supports for his morality.
Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need for countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value. Such things show that the capacity for metaphysics does not go hand in hand with the need for it . . . .
A Callable Loan
We who thrive get used to being alive, and forget we have our lives on loan, a loan that can be called on the spot without advance notice. Compare James 4:13-17 (NIV):
13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
The Made Man
He who is ever on the make will never have it made. He will never be a 'made man.' There is a time to strive, and a time to be. Is the universe trying to get somewhere? It already is everywhere. Are you any less cosmic? If you think you have a Maker, is he not a 'made man'? And aren't you a chip off the old block?
Let It Lapse
If a relationship has a troubled past, no future, and a present that is merely the transition from the one to the other — let it lapse.
Polygyny?
Tony H asks:
Your procreation argument for heterosexual marriage is consistent with polygyny, so if it is sound, it may rule out homosexual marriages, but be of great use to defending polygynists since it maximizes procreation and the perpetuation of the state quantitatively. What is the state's interest in monogamy?
I was afraid my argument could be misinterpreted as promoting increased procreation. But I took no stand on that. My argument does not "maximize procreation." It says nothing about whether there should be more procreation or less. Here is what I wrote: "The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good." Let me break that down paratactically.
We collectively need some offspring; they need to be socialized and instructed in the rudiments of our culture; they need to be protected; they need to be educated to the point where they can function as productive citizens. No one of those coordinate clauses, or their logical conjunction, entails that levels of procreation should be increased, let alone that the state should have a hand in such an increase.
Is my argument logically consistent with countenancing polygyny? I suppose it is as it stands; but that is only because my argument was restricted to only one aspect of this multi-faceted issue. I was just assuming that marriage is dyadic in order to focus on the question of why the state shouuld recognize opposite-sexed dyadic unions but not same-sexed dyadic unions. The issue of the 'adicity' of marital and quasi-marital unions was not on the table. One cannot talk about everything at once.
Why should the state have an interest in monogamy over polygamy (whether polyandry or polygyny)? I have no answer to that at the moment. I have only started thinking hard about these questions recently and I have an open mind on them.
As a conservative, I of course subscribe to the quite general principle that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things. But I am open to the possibility that the presumption in favor of traditional marriage (dyadic, between humans only, permanent, exclusive, opposite-sexed, open to procreation) can be defeated. For while I am a conservative, I am also a philosopher, and you can't be a philosopher (in the strict sense!) if you simply assume dogmatically this or that.
I should also add that I play for a draw, not for a win. It sufficies to 'neutralize' the liberal-left arguments. All I have to do is show that they are not compelling. I don't have to refute them. There are precious few refutations in philosophy, and none of them pertain to 'hairy' issues like same-sex 'marriage.'
Cat Blogging Friday! Brotherly Love
James Anderson on POMO Marriage
James N. Anderson writes,
To grant that marriage could be redefined is to capitulate to a postmodernist anti-realism according to which all social structures and institutions are mere human conventions and there is really no such thing as human nature, understood in traditional metaphysical terms. We must insist that marriage is not something that can be defined and redefined as we see fit. Marriage is a divine institution, not a human social construction like chess or money that we invented for our own purposes. There wasn’t a point in time at which humans ‘defined’ marriage in the way that, say, a foot was once defined as 12 inches. Marriage was bestowed upon us, not created by us.
1. It is certainly true that if marriage is a divine institution, as Professor Anderson says, then it has a nature not subject to human definition or redefinition. For if there are natures, then they are what they are whatever we say about them or think about them. They are what they are whether we frame definitions of them or fail to do so, or do so accurately or inaccurately. But that marriage is a divine institution is a premise that won't be granted by many and perhaps most of the participants in the current debate over same-sex marriage. It is therefore futile to use this premise in the current debate. Or as the pugnacious Irishman Bill O'Reilly said the other night, "No Bible-thumping." Defenders of marriage ought to invoke only those premises that secularists could accept, assuming that the goal is either to persuade them that the traditonal concept of marriage ought not be revised, or to show them that traditionalists have a principled stand that does not arise from biogotry or a desire to discriminate unjustly.
Suppose I want to convince you of something. I must use premises that you accept. For if I mount an argument sporting one or more premises that you do not accept, you will point to that premise or those premises and pronounce my argument unsound no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. I am not saying that marriage is not divinely ordained; I am saying that the claim that it is has no place in a discussion in which the goal is to work out an agreement that will be acceptable to a large group of people, including theists and atheists. (Not that I am sanguine that any such agreement is in the offing.)
2. Whether or not marriage is a divine institution, it can have a nature. That is: the question whether marriage has a nature, and the question whether there are natures at all, are logically independent of the question whether God is the ultimate ontological ground of natures. Or at least this is prima facie the case. Jean-Paul Sartre famously maintained that man cannot have a nature because there is no God to give him one; but it is not at all clear that a godless universe must be one bereft of natures. Aristotle believed in natures even though his Prime Mover was neither the creator nor the ontological ground of natures.
3. Let's assume that there is no God, and that therefore marriage is not divinely instituted, but that some things have natures and some things do not. Water, to coin an example, has a nature, and it took natural philosophers a long time to figure out what it is. Chess, by contrast, does not have a nature. It is a tissue of conventions, an invention of man.
4. Does marriage have a nature? If it has a nature, and that nature requires that marriage be between exactly one man and exactly one woman, then there can be no question of redefining 'marriage' so as to include same-sex 'marriages.' If marriage has the nature just specified, then it is impossible that there be such a thing as same-sex marriage. And if same-sex 'marriage' is impossible, then one cannot sensibly be for it or against it. 'I am for same-sex marriage' would then be on a par with 'I am for carnivorous rabbits.'
'Should homosexuals be allowed to marry?' for traditionalists is like 'Should cats be allowed to philosophize?' The nature of cats is such as to rule out their doing any such thing. Similary, on the traditionalist understanding, marriage has a nature, and its nature is such as to rule out tlhe very possibility of same-sex 'marriage.'
5. Any talk of redefining 'marriage' therefore begs the crucial question as to whether or not marriage has a nature. Such talk presupposes that it does not.
6. If the same-sexer goes POMO on us and adopts antirealism across the board, then he opens himself up to a crapstorm of powerful objections. But needn't go that route. If Anderson is suggesting that the same-sexer must, then I disagree with him. The same-sexer need not embrace antirealism along the lines of a Goodmaniacal worldmaking constructivism; he might simply claim that while there are natures, and some things have them, marriage is not one of those things.
7. Can I show that marriage has a nature? Well, there is very little that one can SHOW in philosophy, so let's retreat a bit. Can I make a plausible case that marriage has a nature? Well, man has a nature and certain powers grounded in that nature, one of them being the power to procreate. The powers of human beings are not like the 'powers' of the chess pieces. It is by arbitrary human stipulation that the bishops move along diagonals only, capture in the same way they move, etc. But the power of a man and woman to produce offspring is not a power that derives from arbitrary human stipulation. It is a a power grounded in the nature of human beings.
Now if 'marriage' refers to what has traditionally been called marriage, i.e., to that the definition of which the same-sexer revisionists want to revise so as to include same-sex unions, then 'marriage' refers to a relation between opposite-sexed human animals that is oriented toward procreation. Of course there are social and cultural factors in addition to this natural substratum. There is more to human marriage than animal mating and care of offspring. But if you grant that human beings have a nature and a procreative power grounded in this nature, then it seems you have to grant that 'marriage' refers to a union between opposite-sexed human beings, a union that has a specific nature. If so, then it is senseless to want to revise the definition of 'marriage.' Marriage is what it is; it has a nature, and that's the end of it.
UPDATE (4/26): Professor Anderson responds here.
The Infertility Argument for Same-Sex Marriage
Suppose two 70-year-olds decide to marry. They can do so, and their marriage will be recognized as valid under the law. And this despite the fact that such elderly couples cannot procreate. But in many places the law does not recognize marriage between same-sex couples who also, obviously, cannot procreate. What is the difference between the opposite-sex and same-sex cases? What is the difference that justifies a difference in legal recognition? (Bear in mind that we are discussing legal recognition of marriage; the issue is not so-called civil unions.) Let us assume that both types of union, the opposite-sex and the same-sex, are guided by the following norms: monogamy, permanence, and exclusivity. So, for the space of this discussion, we assume that the infertile heterosexual union and the homosexual union are both monogamous, permanent, exclusive, and non-procreative.
What then is the difference between the two cases that justifies a difference in treatment? If the only difference is that the one type of union is opposite-sex and the other same-sex, then that is a difference but not one that justifies a difference in treatment. To say that the one is opposite-sex and the other same-sex is to tell us what we already know; it is not to justify differential treatment.
Here is a relevant difference. It is biologically impossible that homosexual unions produce offspring. It is biologically possible, and indeed biologically likely, that heterosexual unions produce offspring. That is a very deep difference grounded in a biological fact and not in the law or in anything conventional. This is the underlying fact that both justifies the state's interest in and regulation of marriage, and justifies the state's restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples.
There are two points here and both need to be discussed.
The first concerns the justification of the state's involvement in marriage in the first place. It is obvious, I hope, that the state ought not be involved in every form of human association. State involvement in any particular type of human association must therefore be justified. We want as much government as we need, but no more. The state is coercive by its very nature, as it must be if it is to be able to enforce its mandates and exercise its legitimate functions, and is therefore at odds with the liberty and autonomy of citizens. It is not obvious that the government should be in the marriage business at all. The burden is on the state to justify its intervention and regulation. But there is a reason for the state to be involved. The state has a legitimate interest in its own perpetuation and maintenance via the production of children, their socializing, their protection, and their transformation into productive citizens who will contribute to the common good. (My use of 'the state' needn't involve an illict hypostatization.) It is this interest that justifies the state's recognition and regulation of marriage as a union of exactly one man and exactly one woman.
I have just specified a reason for state involvement in marriage. But this justification is absent in the case of same-sex couples since they are not and cannot be productive of children. So here we have a reason why the state ought not recognize same-sex marriage. One and the same biological fact both justifies state regulation and recognition of marriage and justifies the restriction of such recognition to opposite-sex couples. The fact, again, is that only heterosexuals can procreate.
Proponents of same-sex 'marriage' will not be satisfied with the foregoing. They will continue to feel that there is something unfair and 'discriminatory,' i.e., unjustly discriminatory, about the state's recognition of the union of infertile heterosexuals as valid marriage but not of homosexual unions. (Obviously, not all discrimination is unjust.) Consider the following argument which is suggested by a recent article by William Saletan entitled Homosexuality as Infertility. Saletan writes, "People who oppose gay marriage can come to accept it as moral, once they understand homosexuality as a kind of infertility."
The issue is not whether same-sex marriage is moral, but whether it ought to be legally recognized as marriage. That quibble aside, Saletan's piece suggests the following argument:
1. Homosexual couples are infertile just like infertile heterosexual couples are infertile: there is no difference in point of infertility.
2. Infertile heterosexual couples are allowed by law to marry.
3. Like cases ought to be treated in a like manner.
Therefore
4. Homosexual couples ought to be allowed by law to marry.
One can see why people would be tempted to accept this argument, but it is unsound: the first premise is false.
To show this I will first concede something that perhaps ought not be conceded, namely, that the predicate 'infertile' can be correctly applied to same-sex couples. Justification for this concession would be the proposition that anything not F, even if it cannot be F, is non-F. Thus anything not fertile, even if not possibly fertile, is infertile. So same-sex couples are infertile in the same way that numbers and ball bearings and thoughts are infertile.
But even given this concession, there is an important difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. The former are essentially infertile while the opposite-sex infertile couples are only accidentally infertile. What the latter means is that there is nothing in the nature of opposite-sex unions to rule out the possibility of procreation. But in the case of same-sex unions, the very nature of the union rules out the possibility of procreation. So (1) in the argument above is false. Homosexual couples are not infertile in the same way that infertile heterosexual couples are. The former are infertile by their very nature, while the latter are not. This difference is what justifies a difference in treatment.
We must of course treat like cases in a like manner. What I have just shown, however, is that the two cases are not alike.
The point is even more clear if we take the view that 'fertile' and 'infertile' are predicates that can be meaningfully applied only to that whose nature includes the power to procreate. Accordingly, same-sex couples are no more infertile than hammers and nails are dead.
We have two interpretive options, and both supply a difference that justifies a difference in treatment.
Option A. Anything that is not fertile is infertile; hence, same-sex unons are infertile. But they are not infertile in the same way that opposite-sex unions are. Same-sex unions are essentially infertile, infertile by their very nature, while opposite-sex unions, when infertile, are only accidentally infertile. (This is why infertile opposite-sex couples can sometimes become fertile through medical intervention.)
Option B. If x is either fertile or infertile, then x has a nature that includes the power to procreate. Hence same-sex couples are neither fertile not infertile.
On either option, Saletan's "Homosexuality is a kind of infertility" is false. This is also clear from the consideration that a couple is called 'infertile' because one of both of the partners is infertile or impotent. But a union of two homosexuals is in most cases a union of two fertile women or of two potent men. To call a homosexual couple 'infertile' is therefore to use 'infertile' in a different way than the way it is used when we call a heterosexual couple 'infertile.' Homosexual couples are infertile because, to put it bluntly, dildos or fingers in vaginas and penises in anuses do not lead to procreation — and not because of some defect or abnormality or age-induced impairment in the partners.
I have just shown that the (1)-(4) argument for extending the legal recognition of marriage to same-sex unions is not compelling. Nevertheless, some will still feel that there is something unfair about, say, two opposite-sexed 70-year-olds being allowed to marry when homosexuals are not. It may seem irrelevant that the nature of the opposite-sex union does not rule out procreation in the way the same-sex union does. Why do the 70-year-olds get to have their union recognized as marriage by the state when it cannot be productive of offspring?
At this point I would remind the reader that the law cannot cater to individual cases or even to unusual classes of cases. Consider laws regulating driving age. If the legal driving age is 16, this is unfair to all the 13-16 year-olds who are competent drivers. (E.g., farm boys and girls who learned to operate safely heavy machinery before the age of 16.) If the law were to cater to these cases, the law would become excessively complex and its application and enforcement much more difficult. Practical legislation must issue in demarcations that are clear and easily recognized, and therefore 'unfair' to some.
But a better analogy is voting. One is allowed to vote if one satisfies quite minimal requirements of age, residency, etc. Thus the voting law countenances a situation in which the well-informed and thoughtful votes of mature, successful, and productive members of society are given the same weight as the votes of people who for various reasons have no business in a voting booth. We don't, for example, prevent the senile elderly from voting even though they are living in the past out of touch with the issues of the day and incapable of thinking coherently about them. We don't exclude them or other groups for a very good reason: it would complicate the voting law enormously and in highly contentious ways. (Picture armies of gray panthers with plenty of time on their hands roaming the corridors of Congress armed with pitchforks.) Now there is a certain unfairness in this permissiveness: it is unfair to thoughtful and competent voters that their votes be cancelled out by the votes of the thoughtless and incompetent. But we of the thoughtful and competent tribe must simply 'eat' (i.e., accept) the unfairness as an unavoidable byproduct of workable voting laws.
In the same way, whatever residual unfairness to homosexuals there is in allowing infertile oldsters to marry (after my foregoing arguments have been duly digested) is an unfairness that simply must be accepted if there are to be workable marriage laws.
To sum up. The right place to start this debate is with the logically prior question: What justifies the state's involvement in marriage? The only good answer is that state involvement is justified because of the state's interest in its own perpetuation via the production of children and their development into productive citizens. (There is also, secondarily, the protection of those upon whom the burden of procreation mainly falls, women.) It is the possibility of procreation that justifies the states' recognition and regulation of marriage. But there is no possibility of procreation in same-sex unions. Therefore, same-sex unions do not deserve to be recognized by the state as marriage. This is not to oppose civil unions that make possible the transfer of social security benefits, etc.
The infertility argument for the extension of legal recognition to same-sex unions has been neutralized above.
The Meaning of Life Must be Subjectively Appropriable
The meaning of life, if there is one, cannot be subjective. This was argued in an earlier entry in this series on the meaning of life. But the meaning of life cannot be purely objective either. The meaning of life, if there is one, must somehow involve a mediation of the subjective and the objective: the meaning of life must be subjectively appropriable. I will now explain what I mean by ‘objective,’ ‘purely objective’ and ‘subjectively appropriable.’
An objective meaning or purpose of X is a purpose that is as it were assigned to X from without. An objective purpose is exogenous while a subjective purpose is endogenous. A purely objective purpose of X is one that is objective, but also such that X cannot subjectively appropriate or make its own the objective purpose. Thus if X has a purely objective purpose, then X plays no role in the realization or enactment or embodiment of its purpose.
A tool made for a specific purpose is an example of something that has a purely objective purpose. The Phillips head screwdriver has the specific purpose of driving crosshead screws. It was designed for just that job. Such a tool has an objective purpose which derives from the plans and intentions of human artificers. To invert the famous formula of Jean-Paul Sartre's manifesto, "Existentialism is a Humanism," its essence precedes its existence. Artifacts like screwdrivers are produced according to a plan or design that is logically and temporally antecedent to their production. But the purpose of a screwdriver is not only objective, it is also purely objective in that there is no possibility of a screwdriver's subjectively appropriating its objective purpose. And this for the simple reason that no screwdriver is a subject of experience. It is not just that screwdrivers are not biologically alive; they lack subjectivity. No inanimate artifact can discern its purpose, let alone freely and consciously accept or reject it. It makes no sense to speak of a screwdriver existentially realizing, or subjectively appropriating, or living, or enacting its purpose. The purpose a screwdriver has, it cannot be. No screwdriver is in a position to complain that the purpose it has been assigned is not its purpose.
With us it is different. We may or may not have an objective purpose, but if we have one, it cannot be a purely objective purpose; it must be a purpose that can be made our purpose. But it is best to speak in the first-person. A purpose that I cannot make my purpose is of no consequence to me. Such a purpose would be meaningless to me. An objective purpose that I could not come to know about, or could not realize, or an objective purpose that I knew about and could realize but whose realization would destroy me or cause a preponderance of misery over happiness or thwart my flourishing or destroy my autonomy would not be a purpose I could make my own. It is essential to realize that the question of the meaning (purpose) of human life arises within the subjectivity of the individual: it cannot be understood in a purely objective way. We are not asking about the purpose of a certain zoological species, or even of the purpose of a given specimen of this species viewed objectively, 'from outside.' The question, properly understood, is necessarily such that each must pose the question for himself using the first-person singular pronoun. The question is not: What is the purpose of the human species? Nor is it: What is the purpose of this specimen of the human species? The questions are: What is the purpose of my existence? Why am I here? and the like. The question must be posed from within one's life, and not directed at one's life from a third-person point of view. It is man as subject who asks the question, man as Dasein in Heidegger's lingo, not man as object.
We can sum this up by saying that an objective purpose, if there is one, must be subjectively appropriable if it is to be relevant to existential meaning. To appropriate a thing is to make it one's own, to take possession of it. This is not to be taken in a crass material sense. To subjectively appropriate an objective purpose is to existentially realize it, to realize or embody it in one's Existenz (to borrow a term from the German existentialist lexicon). It is to adopt it freely and consciously and live it as an organizing and unifying principle of one's life. This subjective appropriation is obviously consistent with the purpose's remaining objective. It is a bit like realizing an ideal. If a couple realizes the ideal marriage, the ideal does not cease being ideal in being realized. Or if you do what you ought to do, your doing it, which is a translation of a norm into a fact, does not obliterate the distinction between facts and norms. Similarly, the subjective appropriation of an objective purpose does not render the purpose subjective; what is subjective is the appropriation, not the purpose.
Subjective appropriability has a normative element. Suppose a slave knows the purpose assigned to him by his master and comes freely to accept that purpose as his purpose, a purpose he then carries out in his daily activities. On my use of terms, although the slave has freely accepted the master’s purpose as his purpose, he has not subjectively appropriated the purpose. And this for the reason that the slave’s acceptation is inconsistent with his autonomy and dignity. The subjectively appropriable is not merely that which is able to be appropriated, but that which is worthy of being appropriated. I take it as axiomatic that a meaningful life for a human being must be a life worthy of a human being.
What is meant by 'objective'? An objective purpose is (i) exogenous and (ii) available to all, the same for all, applicable to all. But to avoid triviality, a codicil must be appended: the objective purpose cannot be a vacuously general meta-purpose. It cannot be something like: the purpose of life is to do whatever you want to do and can do within the limits of your situation. That would apply to everyone but in a vacuous way that would allow the purpose of life for one person to consist in exterminating Jews, for another in collecting beer cans, for a third in medical research, etc. The question about the meaning of life is not a question about a vacuously general meta-purpose, but about a substantively general first-order purpose. An objective purpose must impose first-level constraints on our behavior. At the same time, an objective purpose is one whose realization contributes to human flourishing.
But why must an objective purpose be available to all persons? Why can't it be available only to some and still be objective? Why couldn't some be excluded from the meaning of life, 'predestined' as it were to be left in the cold? It is built into the very notion of an objective purpose for rational beings that it be available to every rational being. We have insisted that the philosophical problem of the meaning of life has an answer only if human life has an objective purpose, the same for all. If this purpose were not also available to all, then it could not be claimed to be ingredient in an answer to the completely general philosophical problem, one that must not be confused with the psychological problem of the meaning of a life. This might sound too sketchy to be satisfactory. A bit more can be said.
One source of a sense of life's absurdity is the observation that suffering is irrationally distributed. An observation as old as Ecclesiastes and the Book of Job is that often the wicked prosper and the just suffer. Happiness and virtue are not properly adjusted one to the other in this life as Kant observed. Reason is scandalized, not by the mere fact of suffering, but by its intensity and unfair distribution. Now if human life, rational life, has an objective meaning or purpose, then this meaning or purpose must be rational. This strikes me as a near-tautology: life cannot make objective sense unless it makes sense, i.e., is rational, understandable, intelligible. And if the objective meaning or purpose of life is rational, then no person can be arbitrarily excluded from partaking of it. For that would be a form of evil. If the world’s constitution were such that only some rational beings could partake of life’s meaning, then that would be a decidedly suboptimal arrangement, indeed an evil arrangement. Recall our earier point that the meaning-of-life question can be formulated as a human or ‘anthropic’ question but also as a ‘cosmic’ question. Anthopic question: What is the objective purpose of human existence? Cosmic question: Is the nature of the world-whole such as to enable and further the meaningfulness of human existence? My present point is that the world-whole must be such that no rational being is excluded from partaking in the objective meaning of life. The meaning of life, if there is one, must be the same for all and available to all. A rational world plays no favorites. If the objective meaning of life were not available to all, then that would be an evil arrangement, one that could not be objectively meaningful. An illustration follows.
On a theistic scheme, the objective purpose of life is to participate in the divine life. Now if God were arbitrarily to exclude some from participating in it, for no reason, but just as a display of power, that would make no sense. It would be irrational, and indeed evil. But then would it not be obvious that the meaning of life would not be guaranteed on such a theistic scheme? If God is an arbitrary despot, then God is a threat to life's having an objective meaning. A theism of divine despotism is a higher-order absurdity: both life here below and life beyond would be absurd on such a theism. So I cannot see how life could have an objective purpose if that purpose is not available to all. It is perhaps not unnecessary to point out that not all will avail themselves of the available.
Putting together the results of this post and one preceding it in this series, we can say that the meaning of life cannot be subjective, but it must be subjectively appropriable, not just be some, but by all.