Grease-Monkey Ethics
A ploy frequently used by the Natural Lawyers to try to defang some of the mirth-provoking counterexamples to Natural Law Theory is to claim that there is nothing wrong with not using a faculty, just as there is nothing wrong with not using the saw in the tool shed or the car in the garage (!). (Henceforth the “nothing wrong” claim.) The ‘nothing wrong’ claim is sometimes used to try to show that, even though it may seem to at first, Natural Law Theory does not in fact make practicing celibacy immoral. (Jeremy Bentham was the first, I believe, to assert that the Natural Lawyer, to be consistent, needs to commit to the hottest flames of hell precisely those priests who are true to their vows.) The same ‘nothing wrong’ claim is made to try to show that using earplugs is not immoral. To insert earplugs into one’s ear, it is claimed, is to choose not to use one’s hearing at all.
The Natural Lawyers Timothy Hsiao4 and John Skalko5 both assert versions of the “nothing wrong” claim.
I show here that the ‘nothing wrong’ claim does not succeed in defanging the earplug counterexample. The passive character of hearing makes the analogy with the use of tools and cars inappropriate in the case of hearing and the use of ear plugs. What is more, the ‘nothing wrong’ claim is simply false. That the Natural Lawyers rely on it so heavily is a bit of an embarrassment. Well, more than a bit. It is positively “cringe”, as the kids say.
What is more, even if we somehow succeeded in regarding hearing not as passive, but — contrary to its phenomenology — as consisting in a series of acts in which the hearing “power” or “faculty” is “engaged” and the hearing organs are used as the “instrument of a “sensitive power”, the tool whose analogy with hearing would be most revealing would not be, say a saw, but a smoke alarm. The purpose of the smoke alarm is to warn me of an unexpected occurrence; the presence of smoke and fire in my building. I may be said to start using a smoke alarm, perhaps, when I install in my apartment, then go about my business relying on it to sound in case there is a fire.
But this is of course a highly strained use of the word “use”, because I am not doing anything with the alarm when I have come to take it so much for granted that I have practically forgotten about it. Using is not a disposition but an act. But let’s accept this strained use of “use” for a moment in the case of both hearing (I discover I can rely on my hearing) and the smoke alarm. I am “using” the alarm by virtue of relying on it, even in cases in which I have 9/10s forgotten I have a smoke alarm.
In the case of the 100 percent effective earplugs, I am choosing, then, to “not use” my faculty of hearing. But by inserting the earplugs, I have also defeated its purpose by disabling it. In this case, not using is disabling. The normal function of hearing requires an ear canal that is free and clear of obstruction. Using ear plugs removes this necessary component of hearing.
In the case of the smoke alarm, I “not use” (treat “not use” as a verb) this item of equipment when I take out the battery, disabling it. Here not using is also disabling, which means defeating the purpose of the smoke alarm. This case is unlike the (wrong, as I am about to show) picture of the saw as something whose purpose is not (immediately) defeated by simply storing it without using it.
But even if the analogy were useful, there is one little thing amiss with this ploy: the ‘nothing wrong’ claim is simply false.
The Nothing Wrong Claim is simply false: The authors at books.openedition.org state the ‘nothing wrong’ claim this way:
Furthermore there is a difference between using something wrongly and not using it at all. We use a knife wrongly if we try to use it as a violin bow but not by leaving it in the knife drawer. So, not using sexual faculties (celibacy) is morally acceptable for the NLT.
https://books.openedition.org/obp/4430
But on any craftsman ethos in which respect for one’s tools is important, just leaving the knife in the drawer is a misuse of the knife tending towards destruction of the knife. Likewise, just leaving the car in the garage for 14 years will contribute to the rusting of the axles. That the used car salesman happened to be telling the truth when he claimed this car was owned by a little old lady who kept it in the garage for 14 years does not make it any less likely that the badly-rusted axle will suddenly snap in two at the worst-possible moment on the freeway. One needs to use tools in order to keep them functioning. Keeping knives in the drawer or cars in the garage is the ultimate in being louche, so far as grease-monkey ethics go.
“The easiest way to prevent your hand tools and other machines from rusting is using them frequently. When you are using them on a regular basis, the opportunity for dust or moisture to sit on the surface becomes less, thereby decreasing the chances of rusting as well”
https://www.moglix.com/blog/5-ways-to-prevent-your-tools-from-rusting/
One could try (maybe a bit clumsily) to justify the grease-monkey ethos on Natural Law Theory grounds by pointing out that if the Good is to be conceptualized in terms of instruments with teloi (tools, organs), preventing a tool from rusting by using it, using a tool results in a greater amount of good in the world than there otherwise would have been. In encouraging us all to be louche mechanics, Hsiao and Skalko are turning against the very theory they are so eager to espouse.
Likewise, as I am about to show, the only way to prevent ones sperm from “rusting “so that one can lessen the risk of producing non-viable progeny is to make sure one ejaculates only into orifices or onto surfaces or which are absolutely incapable of taking up the sperm and producing a baby.
Priests have been known to assert that all one has to do is look at one’s private parts to see written there “for reproduction only (well, and maybe for pissing as well) and nothing else.” (Needless to say, every red-blooded American looked. Nota bene: I am only stating what has been alleged to be written there. I am not saying that this writing isn’t both redundant and self-contradictory.3) Armed with their microscopes and their knowledge, however, biologists have deciphered a different kind of writing:
According to the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, sperm produced in nocturnal emissions (and masturbation) tends to be “older and less competitive, and .. noncopulatory ejaculations increase the number of younger, highly-competitive sperm ejaculated at the next copulation.” Another possible benefit is that nocturnal emissions stimulate the involved muscles and hydraulic structures, providing them a sort of “workout”
Gunther Laird, THE UNNECESSARY SCIENCE A Critical Analysis Of Natural Law Theory, (Onus Books, 2020), pp. 124 – 125.
My training is not in biology, but I will go out on a limb nonetheless and assert that males with healthier, more competitive sperm will be more more likely to pass their genes along and produce healthier offspring (who in turn will be more likely to pass their genes along).
Elsewhere, I have discussed the “teleofunctional principle. Based on Ruth Garrett Millikan’s work in the philosophy of biology and of language, the teleofunctional principle is the idea (link to come) that any selective advantage a (camouflage effect, for example) that a trait or action t (the trait of darker coloration; a deer’s action of fleeing upon the slightest hint of danger) conferred upon a member of a reproductively-established family ref (the English peppered moths on this particular tree or whatever) suffices to make a the proper functional purpose or telos of t in ref. At least for now, I am using “proper functional purpose” and “telos” interchangeably.
This is certainly so in the teleofunctionality arena; but, as we have seen, any “Intelligent Design” theory that accepts evolution that is at all plausible must accept this as a sufficient condition as well for making a the telos of t. If the “Designer” God chose to accept (She could presumably have asked nature to come up with a different solution to the problem, having chosen not to accept this one) the evolution of darker coloration for peppered moths as a means of camouflage, then camouflage is the telos of that coloration in the particular environment the peppered moth finds itself in.
Establishing that a is present in an ref would, on any Intelligent Design Theory that is not too way out there, relieve us of the necessity of trying to guess what the Designer must have had in mind. So both teleofunctionality and design theory would have to ascribe an end, a function, a purpose to about everything proscribed by the orthodox natural lawyer: same-sex male sexual activity, masturbation, contraceptive medications, and blocking contraceptive devices such as condoms. Contraception could be required of her male partner by a person of the XX persuasion in order to make a good outcome more likely when contraception is not used.
Even if blocking a natural end, a telos, were always bad, the aforementioned activities are not blocking cases. Nature or God intended the penis to be constantly dripping. Indeed, if one holds that making babies must be the ultimate goal of sex, one would be committing an action both bad and immoral were he to block the natural removal of old sperm, say, by taking a drug to prevent wet dreams, or by being too rigid in refusing to masturbate. For the removal of old sperm would be a sub-goal working in favor of the ultimate goal.
But maybe making babies is not the sole ultimate goal of sex after all. Laird’s example shows rather plainly that actions can have unsuspected teloi of their own. I mean who knew that masturbation had a place in God’s or Nature’s plan? Which means, of course, that one is not in a position to say that a given telos of, say, a given sexual act is always subordinate to a telos that we think we have already identified. Several acts of same-sex sexual activity may render one’s sperm better suited for what the Natural Lawyer claims to know is the one, ultimate end of sexual activity (making babies) and therefore may be considered as having non-ultimate, subordinate ends — but our Natural Lawyer is still in no position to claim to know that these same-sex sexual acts do not have another, equiprimordial telos of their own.
Spoiler alert: they do. Check out this journal article, for example, which articulates how homosexuality advances pro-sociality, for example.
Another possible example, though not one explored by that article, is the possibility that people in the Kinsey 6 cohort (completely gay)2 facilitate the increase in the genes of their relatives by taking on some of their relatives’ child-rearing responsibilities. Although this does not seem to happen a lot in more Westernized countries that have an individualistic outlook, it does appear to happen frequently in more communitarian societies such as Samoa. The impression I have gotten is that it also happens a lot in the Philippines, a country in which one seems to get pushed into adopting stereotypically feminine roles if one is gay. (In the West one tends to get pushed into adopting more stereotypically masculine attitudes and roles). Here the “contraceptive” effect of same-sex is a selective advantage. For biological children of one’s own would usually take priority and remove time and attention from the children of one’s relatives, lessening their chances of survival. On this theory, the result of the selective advantage lies not with making babies who have half one one’s genes, but with an increase in the frequency of particular gene tokens whose types one shares with one’s relatives. Something similar seems to be going on in the case of honeybees. The biologist and the geneticist, of course, have the final say in these matters.
Although this one hypothesis would not account completely, if I am not mistakenly informed by those who crunch the numbers, for the prevalence of homosexuality among human beings, the other factors mentioned in the article cited above and in the book *NOT COMPLETELY STRAIGHT* surely take up the slack — enough so to make one wonder why everyone isn’t gay.
*********
But I digress. Let me continue on the theme of ‘it is a mistake to think that there is nothing wrong with not using a faculty or tool.
The section above validates the objection that ‘Natural Law Theory would condemn priests who keep their vows to the hottest flames of hell’.
I now turn to validating the earplug objection. The attempt made by the Natural Lawyers to defang this counterexample is a tangle of confusions.
One factor that may lead the Natural Lawyer to miss the obvious counterexamples to the ‘nothing wrong claim’ is a naive application of the perverted faculty metaphor. That metaphor, often misleadingly referred to as an “argument”, consists in a directional image. “By nature”, the Mississippi River “wants” to shift a number of miles east of its present delta near New Orleans. This new delta is its true telos or “end”, but the Army Corps of Engineers has “perverted” it to stick to its present course so that it can continue to be used for transportation the way it is now. Likewise, the Chicago river was forced to reverse course so that it dumps its polluted water into the Mississippi instead of into Lake Michigan. Its original telos or “end” was Lake Michigan, so that it could be used as a sewer, its course was “perverted” to the Mississippi River. Intrinsic to the perversion metaphor is a change in direction or end to accommodate a different use. Even forcing the Mississippi to continue its present course is a kind of change of end. Just so, the Natural Lawyer thinks that sticking it in the wrong orifice or using contraception diverts/perverts the course of the reproductive “river” from its delta of making a baby to a different “location”, pleasure. The “river” starts out with its own course, its own end, its own “telos” — but in one’s use of the “river” one redirects it to serve one’s own ends. ‘Perversion’ is an image of a change in “direction” done to accommodate a certain “use”.
So if there is no “use”, there is no perversion, right? If I am correct and hearing (as opposed to listening) is a completely passive affair meant to pick up the rattling in the grass or the gunshot in the woods or in the next apartment complex over, I do not use my hearing. Perhaps one can conjure up a strained sense of “use” in which I can be said to use my smoke alarm — but my hearing is even less conducive to even a strained sense of “use”. As is not the case with the fire alarm, there was never a time at which I decided to set up my hearing. To use something is to perform an act with regard to that thing. Use is an action, not a disposition. So if there is no use there is no diversion/perversion away from hearing’s one true end.
But to reason this way is just to engage in sophistry. The move would be purely ad hoc, because the only reason to adhere so strictly to the dictates of a metaphor (yes, a friggin metaphor) and cast the entire theory in a mold ensuring it respects those dictates would be to defang the earplug counterexample to Natural Law Theory. For the Natural Law Theory need not be stated in terms of that metaphor at all. That image may be useful to the Natural Lawyer in driving their points home, but they need to drop that image once they attempt to state a serious theory of morality. Skalko does not employ that image early in his book, choosing instead to talk about “violating a human function” always being bad. I do think “violates” has severed problems of its own; so I think the Natural Lawyer may want to talk instead in terms of ‘defeating the functional purpose of an o.
A real grease monkey would relate to Messrs. Timothy Hsiao and John Skalko everything that is in this article. Flo, a real grease monkey working in Hooterville, could only shake her head sadly were these gentlemen to repeat their claim that there is nothing wrong in not using a tool. She could only conclude that they are failed grease monkeys who acquired unfortunate philosophical proclivities in order to compensate for their miserable failure in the garage.1 Where did these people come from?!! Flo exclaims with complete and total exasperation. Wherever it is, send them back there!
No trashing of Hsiao and Skalko would be complete without pointing out their inept use of the “PFA”, i.e., the “perverted faculty argument”. This is really not an “argument”, but a metaphor, the misapplication of which Hsiao and Skalko try to use as a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
No trashing of Hsiao and Skalko would be complete
1 This might also account for Mr. Hsiao’s bizarre ammo-sexual tendencies, so evident on his website.
2 Also known as the “gold star” cohort.
3 Follow the thread of this inconsistency to the end, and you will see that Orthodox Naive Natural Law Theory is incoherent.
4 “Now since the PFA is concerned with the misuse of a faculty, the faculty must first be used. It therefore will not do to object to this argument (as some do) on the grounds that using earplugs or holding one’s breath count as perverted actions. In neither of these cases is a faculty being engaged toward some inappropriate end. It is not immoral to refrain from engaging a faculty….”
Timothy Hsiao, *Consenting Adults, Sex, And Natural Law Theory*, Philosophia, p.13, pdf available at timhsiao.org. Henceforth Hsiao CASANLT.
5 “Engaging in an action not ordered towards its natural end is not the same as preventing a natural process from happening. In using earplugs one is not engaging [in?] the action of hearing and then also failing to order this act of hearing to its natural end. Rather, in using earplugs one is simply preventing the activity of hearing from occurring. … The natural end of an action is its due end, but this does not mean that the act in question must always be performed.”
John Skalko, DISORDERED ACTIONS A Moral Analysis Of Lying And Homosexual Activity (Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, 2019), pp. 225-226.
Both Skalko and Hsiao are taking the “perverted faculty” metaphor far too literally. That metaphor relies on an image of a person “using” an organ or tool and “directing” it away from its proper end — using a saw, for example, as a bow with which to play a cello. If one is not using the saw at all, one would seem not to be directing it away from its proper end. So no “perverted” action! Therefore no immorality! But this narrow focus on the direction metaphor gives the Natural Lawyer a ‘get out of jail free’ card that they do not deserve. As I have suggested above, one “not uses” a smoke alarm by taking its battery out — by disabling the tool. Doing so would surely “violate” — to use Skalko’s term — the function of the alarm. It would surely be an abuse of that tool. But whatever intuitive force the Natural Law Theory of Morality has comes from the idea that “violating” a natural human function is always bad (DISORDERED ACTIONS, p. 20). Whatever else “violating” the function of a tool or organ would be, disabling that tool or organ, preventing it from exercising its intended function, would surely count. Directing a tool away from its intended or “natural” use is hardly the only case of “violating” its function and is, if one takes seriously the analogy of bad/immoral actions with the abuse of tools, not the only way to violate Natural Law.
So yes, Virginia, using earplugs does have to count as a counterexample to Natural Law Theory, at least as that theory is articulated by Hsiao and Skalko. The attempt made by these gentlemen to defang this particular counterexample is as much of a howler as Skalko’s placing Aristotle and the Plato of the PHAEDRUS in the ‘homosexuality boo!’ camp. The incompetence revealed in both cases is stunning.
cliffengelwirt 