Natural kinds across categories

Most philosophical discussions of natural kinds concern entities in the category of substance: particles, chemical substances, organisms, etc. But I think we shouldn’t forget that there is good reason to posit natural kinds of entities in other categories.

For instance, you and I are each engaging in a token activity that falls under the natural kind (say) mammalian breathing. The natural kind specifies some essential properties of the kind, namely that it is a kind of filling and/or emptying of the lungs, as well as some teleological features, such as that the filling and emptying should be rhythmic. Instances of the kind may be better or worse: given that I am congested after a long drawn-out cold, likely your breathing is better than mine.

There are, plausibly, such things as natural activities, which fall under activity natural kinds. These may kinds may include gravitational attraction, mating, fish respiration, etc.

Dispositions, too, may fall under natural kinds, indeed a nested sequence of them. We might say that some dispositions are habits, and some habits are virtues. Thus, perhaps, you and I each have a certain disposition to rationally withstand danger, a disposition that is a token of courage, a kind of virtue. Your and my courages are different: for instance, perhaps, I am more willing to withstand social danger while you are more willing to withstand physical danger. Whether indeed virtues are natural kinds seems to me to be a central question for the metaphysics of virtue ethics.

There may be natural kinds of relations, too. Thus, I think marriage is a natural kind. On the other hand, I think presidency is not.

Sexual symmetry and asymmetry

I want to think a bit about conservative Christian views of sex and gender, but before that I want to offer two stories to motivate a crucial distinction.

Electrons and Positrons

Electrons and positrons (a positron is a positively charged anti-particle to the electron) are very different in one way but not so much in another. If you take some system of electrons and positrons, and swap in a positron for an electron, the system will behave very differently—it will be attracted to the things that the electron was repelled by and vice versa. But if you replace all the electrons by positrons and all the positrons by electrons, it won’t make a significant difference (technically, there may be some difference due to the weak force, but that’s dominated by electromagnetic interaction). Similarly, a cloud of electrons behaves pretty much like a cloud of positrons, but a mixed cloud of electrons and positrons will behave very differently (electrons and positrons will collide releasing energy).

Electrons and positrons are significantly pairwise non-interchangeable, but globally approximately interchangeable.

We might conclude: electrons and positrons significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically.

On the other hand, if you have a system made of photons and electrons, and you swap out a photon and replace it by an electron, it will make a significant difference, but likewise typically if you swap out all the photons and electrons, it will also make a significant difference (unless the system was in a rare symmetric configuration). Thus, photons and electrons are significantly pairwise and globally interchangeable, and hence significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

Heterothallic Isogamous Organisms

Isogamous sexually-reproducing organisms have equally sized gametes among their sexes, and hence cannot be labeled as “female” and “male” (biologists define “female” and “male” in terms of larger and smaller gametes, respectively). Instead these sexes get arbitrarily labeled as plus and minus (I will assume there are only two mating types for simplicity). In heterothallic organisms, the sexes are located in different individuals, so two are needed for reproduction. Humans are heterothallic but not isogamous. But there are many species (mostly unicellular, I believe) that are heterothallic and isogamous.

We can now suppose a heterothallic and isogamous species with pretty symmetric mating roles. In such a species, again, we have significant individual non-interchangeability in a system. If Alice is a plus and Bob is a minus, they can reproduce, but if you swap out Bob for a plus, you get a non-reproductive pair. But if the mating roles are sufficiently similar, you can have global approximate interchangeability: if in some system you put pluses for the minuses and minuses for the pluses, things could go on much as before. A group of pluses may behave very much like a group of minuses (namely, over time the population will decrease to zero), but a mixed group of pluses and minuses is apt to behave very differently. We thus have pairwise non-interchangeability but approximate global interchangeability.

We might similarly say: pluses and minuses in our heterothallic and isogamous species significantly differ relationally but do not differ much intrinsically. On the other hand, cats and dogs significantly differ both relationally and intrinsically.

The Distinction

We thus have a distinction between two kinds of differences, which we can label as relational and intrinsic. I am not happy with the labels, but when I use them, please think of my two examples: particles and isogamous organisms. These two kinds of differences can be thought of as denying different symmetries: intrinsic differences are opposed to global interchange of the types of all individuals; relational differences are opposed to pairwise interchange of the types of a pair of individuals.

Conservative Christian Views of Sex and Gender

Conservative Christians tend to think that there are significant differences between men and women. In addition to cultural traits, there are two main theological reasons for thinking this:

1. Marriage asymmetry: Men and women can marry, but men cannot marry men and women cannot marry women.

2. Liturgical asymmetry: Only men can serve in certain liturgical “clerical” roles.

Of these, the marriage asymmetry is probably a bit more widely accepted than the liturgical asymmetry. (Some also think there is an authority asymmetry in the family where husbands have a special authority over wives. This is even more controversial among conservative Christians than the liturgical asymmetry, so I won’t say more about it.)

We could suppose an arbitrary divine rule behind both asymmetries. But this is theologically problematic: a really plausible way of reading the difference between the Law of Moses and the Law of the Gospel is at that in the Law of the Gospel, we no longer have arbitrary rules whose primary benefit is obedience, such as the prohibition on eating pork.

If we are to avoid supposing an arbitrary divine rule, we need to suppose differences between men and women to explain the theologically grounded asymmetries. And this is apt to lead conservative Christians to philosophical and theological theorizing about normative differences such as women being called more to “receptivity” and men more to “givingness”, or searching through sociological, psychological and biological data for relevant differences between the behavior and abilities of men and women. The empirical differences tend to lie on continua with wide areas of overlap between the sexes, however, and the normative differences are either implausible or likewise involve continua with wide areas of overlap (men, too, are called to receptivity).

But I think we are now in a position to see that there is a logical shortcoming behind the focus of this search. For differences between men and women can be relational or intrinsic, and the search has tended to focus on the intrinsic.

However, I submit, purely relational differences are sufficient to explain both the marriage and liturgical asymmetries. One way to see this is to pretend that we are a heterothallic isogamous species (rather than heterothallic anisogamous species that we actually are), consisting of pluses and minuses rather than females and males.

Then, if marriage has an ordering to procreation, that would neatly explain why pluses and minuses can marry each other, but pluses can’t marry pluses and minuses can’t marry minuses. No intrinsic difference between pluses and minuses is needed to explain this. Thus, as soon as we accept that marriage has an ordering to procreation, we have a way to explain the marriage asymmetry without any supposition of intrinsic differences.

Likewise, if there is going to be an incarnation, and only one, and the incarnate God is going to be incarnate as a typical organism of our species, then this incarnation must happen as a plus or a minus. And if married love is a deep and passionate love that is a wonderful symbol for the love between God and God’s people, then if the incarnation is as an individual of one of the sexes, God’s Church would then symbolically have the opposite sex. And then those whose liturgical role it is to stand in for the incarnate God in the marriage-like relationship to the Church would most fittingly have the sex opposite to that of the Church. Thus, if the incarnate God is incarnate as a plus, the Church would be figured as a minus, one can explain why it is fitting that the clergy in the relevant liturgical roles would be pluses; if the incarnate God is incarnate as a minus, we have an explanation of why the clergy in these roles would be minuses as well. (Interestingly, on this story, it’s not that the clergy are directly supposed to be like the incarnate God in respect of sex, but that their sex is supposed to be the opposite to that of the Church, and given that in the species there are only two sexes, this forces them to have the same sex as the incarnate God: the clergy need to have a sex opposed to the sex opposed to that of the incarnate God.)

Now, we are not isogamous, and we have female and male, not plus and minus. But we can still give exactly the same explanations. Even though in an anisogamous species there are significant intrinsic biological differences between the sexes, we need not advert to any of them to explain either the marriage or the liturgical asymmetry. The marriage asymmetry is tied to the pairwise non-interchangeability of the sexes and explained by the procreative role of marriage. The liturgical asymemtry is tied to the marriage asymmetry together with the symmetry-breaking event of God becoming incarnate in one of the sexes.

As far as this story goes, there need not be any morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female to explain the marital and liturgical asymmetries. The relational difference, that you need male and female for a mating pair, is morally significant on this story, but in a way that is entirely symmetric between male and female. And then we have one symmetry-breaking event: God becomes incarnate as a male. We need not think that there is any special reason why God becomes incarnate as a male or a female—it could equally well have been as a female. The decision whether to become incarnate as a male or a female could be as arbitrary as the decision about the exact eye color of the incarnate God (though, of course, eye color does not ground either significant intrinsic or significant relational differences). But if it were an incarnation as a female, other changes would be fitting: the clergy who symbolize the nuptial role of the incarnate God would fitting be female, in the exodus story it would fitting be female lambs and goats that would be sacrificed, and it would be fitting that Sarah be asked to sacrifice her first-born daughter.

I am not saying that there are no morally significant intrinsic differences between male and female. There may be. We are, after all, not only heterothallic but also anisogamous, and so there could turn out to be such intrinsic differences. But we need not suppose any such to explain the two asymmetries, and it is safer to be agnostic on the existence of these intrinsic differences.

Nothing in this post is meant as an argument for either the marriage asymmetry and the liturgical asymmetry. I have argued for the marriage asymmetry elsewhere, but here I am just saying that it could be explained if we grant the procreative ordering of marriage. And my arguments for the liturgical asymmetry are based on fittingness. But fittingness considerations do not constrain God. While we can explain why the clergy are of the same sex as the incarnate God by the nuptial imagery story that I gave above, God could instead have chosen to make the clergy be of the opposite sex as the incarnate God, in order to nuptially signify the people with the clergy, or God could chosen to make the clergy be of both sexes, to emphasize the fact that salvation is tied to the humanity (see St. Athanasius on this) and not the sex of the incarnate God. But when many things are fitting, God can choose one, and we can then cite its fittingness as a non-deterministic explanation.

Though, I suppose, I have at least refuted this argument:

3. The only way to explain the marriage and liturgical asymmetries is by supposing morally significant intrinsic differences between female and male.

4. There are no such intrinsic differences.

5. So, probably, the asymmetries don’t exist either.

I have refuted it by showing that (3) is false.

Another argument on the interpretation of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9

Mark (10:11-12) and Luke (16:18) have rather simple and straightforward statements on divorce and remarriage: if you divorce and remarry, you’re in adultery. A standard interpretation is the Strict View:

• (SV) Divorce does not actually remove the marriage, and so if you remarry, you’re still married to the previous party, and hence are committing adultery.

It’s usual in the Christian tradition to restrict this to consummated Christian marriage, and I will take that for granted.

However, Matthew has a more complex set of prohibitions:

• Matthew 5:32: Anyone who divorces his wife, except on account of porneia, makes her commit adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

• Matthew 19:9: Anyone who divorces his wife, except due to porneia, and marries another commits adultery.

There are several puzzles here. First, unlike in Mark and Luke, we have exceptions for porneia, a generic term for sexual immorality. There are two main interpretations of this exception:

1. Except when the wife has committed sexual immorality (most commonly, adultery).

2. Except when the “marriage” constitutes sexual immorality.

Reading (1) supports the Less Strict View:

• (LSV) Except when your spouse has committed adultery, divorce does not actually remove the marriage, and so if you remarry, you’re still married to the previous party, and hence are committing adultery.

Reading (2) is based on the observation that not every legal marriage is genuinely a marriage: the Romans, for instance, might have allowed a couple to marry despite their being too closely related from the Christian point of view. In such a case, their “marriage” is not a real marriage but incest, a form of sexual immorality, and divorce is not only permissible, but a very good idea. Note that on reading (2), we can but need not suppose that Jesus verbally included the exception—the inspired author might have added it for clarification because the issue came up for converts, much as we put things in square brackets within a quote to clarify the author’s meaning (there were no brackets in Greek, of course).

Reading (2) has the advantage that it explains how all three Gospels can be inspired, even though Mark and Luke have unqualified statements of SV, since on reading (2) it is true that divorcing one’s wife and remarrying is never permitted, but it is permissible, of course, to divorce one’s partner in an immoral sexual relationship that non-Christian society may call “marriage”. Note that the Greek for “his wife” can literally just mean “his woman”, which makes the disambiguation especially appropriate.

But I want to turn towards a different and more complex argument for SV. Notice that in Matthew 5:32, instead of us being told that the man who divorces his wife (or woman) commits adultery, we are oddly told that he makes her commit adultery. But being a betrayed spouse does not constitute adultery! What’s going on? Well, the good interpretations that I’ve seen note that the social context is a society where it is very difficult to be a woman without a husband. There will thus be significant social pressure to marry or become a concubine, either of which would constitute adultery against the first husband. The realities of the day were such that very likely she would succumb to the pressure, and the first husband would have caused her to commit adultery, and thereby he would have earned himself something worse than a millstone about the neck (Matthew 18:6). This reading also nicely explains why Matthew 5:32, unlike the three other texts, does not mention the man marrying another. For the woman is going to be exposed to the social pressure to join herself to another man whether or not her (first) husband marries another.

Note that this reading of “makes her commit adultery” prima facie works on both readings of the porneia exception. On the reading where the porneia is the wife’s adultery against her husband, obviously if she is already committing adultery, by divorcing her he isn’t making her commit adultery. On the reading where the porneia is constituted by the immorality of the first “marriage”, because the woman wasn’t really married to the man, if she goes and marries another, she isn’t committing adultery.

Nonetheless, there is a serious problem for this reading of “makes her commit adultery” on the Less Strict View and reading (1). While Matthew 5:32 does not talk of the man marrying another, often the man will marry another. So now imagine this story. There is a valid marriage between Alice and Bob with no adultery, but Bob divorces Alice, and marries Charlene. At this point, Bob is committing adultery against Alice on both SV and LSV. Thus, if LSV is correct, then Alice is entitled to divorce Bob and marry another, say Dave. But if she avails herself of this, she isn’t committing adultery. In other words, if LSV is correct, in many cases the first wife will be able to avoid committing adultery without going against social pressures: she need only wait for her first husband to marry, and then the “except on account of porneia” clause on interpretation (1) frees her (and since he’s already legally divorced her, she doesn’t need to do any legal paperwork). (Of course, there will still be less common cases where she is stuck, namely when the man fails to remarry. But such a case wouldn’t be the rule, and Matthew 5:32 implies that leading the woman to adultery is the rule rather than an exception.)

On SV, the problem for the reading of “makes her commit adultery” entirely disappears. Whether or not the man remarries, there is social pressure for the divorced wife to marry, and in doing so, she would be committing adultery against the man.

Interestingly, there is a historically represented view that avoids the Strict View, allows our interpretation of “makes her commit adultery” and avoids the above interpretative problem, namely the quite awful Asymmetric View:

• (AV) A woman is not permitted to remarry after a divorce, whether or not the first husband committed adultery against her, but a man is permitted to remarry after a divorce if, and only if, the first wife committed adultery against him.

Additionally, AV also explains why neither of the texts in Matthew has an exception for porneia in the “anyone who marries a divorced woman” clause, a minor weak point for LSV. (On SV and reading (2) of porneia, we just note that one need not repeat a parenthetical clarification every time.)

In fact, while there was controversy in the early centuries of Christianity over remarriage and divorce following adultery, I understand that it was mainly a controversy between advocates of SV and AV, not between advocates of SV and LSV. However, AV was rightly lambasted by St. Jerome for being sexist, and I assume almost nobody wants to defend it now.

Thus to sum up my argument for SV:

1. One of SV, AV and LSV is true, as they are the historically plausible Christian views on marriage.

2. The right interpretation of “makes her commit adultery” is the social pressure interpretation.

3. This interpretation is incompatible with LSV.

4. AV is false.

5. Therefore, SV is true.

Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom

The Catholic Church teaches that celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom is better than marriage. Until recently, I assumed that this was celibacy which was chosen by the person as a sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom. On this interpretation, celibacy which was not chosen by the person—say, because some internal or external factor precludes marriage—does not have that superiority.

But now it has occurred to me that there are two senses in which celibacy can be for the sake of the Kingdom. First, the celibate person may choose it for the sake of the Kingdom. But the second way is that God may choose it for the person for the sake of the Kingdom. Understood in the second way, an involuntary celibacy can still count as for the sake of the Kingdom.

The same point would apply to such things as poverty and obedience. Some choose poverty and obedience to better witness to the Kingdom of God. But for some, God chooses it. And the poverty and obedience can still be for the sake of the Kingdom.

The above is especially true if the calling is embraced with gratitude and love. In that case, we can have a genuine sacrifice of something that, paradoxically, may not even have been available to one. Think here of two early followers of St Francis who joyfully embrace the poverty that he preached: one came from a rich family, and sold all he had, and the other was very poor, and had nothing to give away. It would be problematic if the formerly-rich Franciscan had a permanent superiority in his poverty. Instead, I think, we can say that the always-poor Franciscan is still making a sacrifice by embracing the poverty, by renouncing griping, by rejoicing in God’s gift. The same can be true of a eunuch who embraces celibacy.

In-vitro fertilization and artificial intelligence

Catholics believe that:

1. The only permissible method of human reproduction is marital intercourse.

Supposing we accept (1), we are led to this interesting question:

2. Is it permissible for humans to produce non-human persons by means other than marital intercourse?

It seems to me that a positive answer to (2) would fit poorly with (1). First of all, it would be very strange if we could, say, clone Homo neanderthalensis, or produce them by IVF, but not so for Homo sapiens. But perhaps “human” in (1) and (2) is understood broadly enough to include Neanderthals. It still seems that a positive answer to (2) would be implausible given (1). Imagine that there were a separate evolutionary development starting with some ape and leading to an intelligent hominid definitely different from humans, but rather humanlike in behavior. It would be odd to say that we may clone them but can’t clone us.

This suggests to me that if we accept (1), we should probably answer (2) in the negative. Moreover, the best explanation of (1) leads to a negative answer to (2). For the best explanation of (1) is that human beings are something sacred, and sacred things should not be produced without fairly specific divine permission. It is plausible that we have such permission in the case human marital coital reproduction, but we have no evidence of such permission elsewhere. But all persons are sacred (that’s one of the great lessons of personalism). So, absent evidence of specific divine permission, we should assume that it is wrong for us to produce non-human persons by means other than marital intercourse. Moreover, it is dubious that we have been given permission to produce non-human persons by means of marital intercourse. So, we should just assume that:

3. It is wrong for us to produce non-human persons.

Moreover, if this is wrong, it’s probably pretty seriously wrong. So we also shouldn’t take significant risks of producing non-human persons. This means that unless we are pretty confident that a computer whose behavior was person-like still wouldn’t be a person, we ought to draw a line in our AI research and stop short of the production of computers with person-like behavior.

Do we have grounds for such confidence? I don’t know that we do. Even if dualism is true and even if the souls of persons are directly created by God, maybe God has a general policy of creating a soul whenever matter is arranged in a way that makes it capable of supporting person-like behavior.

But perhaps is reasonable to think that such a divine policy would only extend to living things?

The puzzle of engagements

The idea of a marriage engagement is kind of weird. On its face, it seems to be a promise to make a promise: the two people promise each other to exchange marriage vows. But if you’re promising to promise X, why don’t you just promise X right away?

I think there are two ways to save the idea of engagement given the above. One can raise the level of the marriage commitment or one can lower the level of engagement commitment.

The first approach would be to say that the marriage vows aren’t mere promises: they are vows, a covenant. A vow has a different, qualitatively higher--even sacred--binding force than a mere promise. If this is right, then we can learn something from the cultural practice of engagement, something about the higher level of normative commitment in marriage.

The second approach would be to demote engagement. Perhaps we can look at an engagement as akin to what the business world calls a “non-binding agreement in principle”.

Truly going beyond the binary in marriage?

There is an interesting sense in which standard polygamy (i.e., polygyny or polyandry) presupposes the binarity of marriage. In standard polygamy, there is one individual, A, who stands in a marriage relationship to each of a plurality of other individuals, the Bs. But the marriage relationships themselves are binary: A is married to each of the Bs, and the Bs are not married to each other (they have a different kind of relationship).

The same would be true with more complex graph theoretic structures than the simple star-shaped structure of polygyny and polyandry (with A at the center and the Bs at the periphery). If Alice is married to Bob and Carl, and Bob and Carl are each married to Davita, the quadrilateral graph-theoretic structure of this relationship is still constituted by a four binary marriage relationships.

Thus, in these kinds of cases, what we would have are not a plural marriage, but a plurality of binary marriages with overlap. This, I think, makes for more precise terminology. The moral and political questions normally considered under the head of “plural marriages” are about the possibility or morality of overlap between binary marriages.

To truly go beyond the binary would require a relationship that irreducibly contains more than two people, a relationship not constituted by pairwise relationships. I think a pretty good case can be made that even if one accepts overlapping binary marriages, as in standard polygamy, as genuine marriages (I am not sure one should), irreducibly non-binary relationships would still not be marriages (just as unary relationships wouldn't be). The structure of the relationship is just radically different.

Causal theories of normative statuses

Utterances cause a variety of outcomes. For instance, a request often causes an action by another person, while saying “Alexa, turn on the lights” can cause the lights to turn on. This is not the paradigmatic thing that happens with performatives. With performatives, the outcome is (at least partially) constituted by the utterance. When the Queen utters the words of knighting, the newly created knight’s knightliness is not caused by but constituted by the utterance. One plausible argument for this is that causation has a speed of light limit, but knighting does not: the Queen could knight someone a light-year away, effective immediately.

So we have two kinds of outcome for an utterance: causal outcomes and constituted outcomes. It is plausible that sometimes utterances have both kinds. For instance, knighting someone can both constitute them as a knight and cause them to do knightly deeds.

It is widely, though perhaps often only implicitly, held that the normative statuses involved in marriages, promises and reasons of request are constituted outcomes of performative utterances.

It is, I think, worth thinking about what reasons we have to accept this performative constitution thesis. For here is another possibility: these social statuses are constituted by contingent normative properties that are caused to exist by the utterance. In such a case, the utterances producing these statuses are not performatives, but function causally, like the “Alexa, turn on the light” example.

If naturalism is true, so is the performative constitution thesis. For if naturalism is true, then normative properties supervene on physical properties, and there is no plausible physical property that is caused by uttering a promise on which the relevant normative property could supervene. Here is a quick argument: Any physical property that can be produced by promising can be produced impersonally by random quantum phenomena, but such random quantum phenomena will not result in the relevant normative properties of promise. Hence the physical act of promising must be a part of the supervenience base of the relevant normative properties.

But if naturalism is false, then we have a new possibility. It could be that marrying, promising and requesting non-physically cause relevant normative properties. The quick argument above no longer works, since random quantum phenomena need not have the power to produce these normative properties. In fact, even the speed-of-light argument concerning knighting doesn’t work, because non-physical causation need not have a speed-of-light limit.

Do we have good reason, beyond an incredulous stare, to dismiss the causal theory of these normative statuses?

I think classical theists have some reasons to opposed the causal theory. First, God has the power to directly cause all the kinds of effects we have the power to cause. So if I can cause myself to have the normative property of having promised you a dollar, God can directly cause me to have his normative property. But that’s absurd: for while God can directly cause me to promise you a dollar, it is a contradiction for the state of having promised to be caused by any means other than the making of that promise.

This is, however, only a limited opposition to the causal theory. For while God cannot directly cause me to be in a promissory state, it may well be that God can directly cause me to have the paradigmatic normative property constituting the promissory state, namely an obligation of performance with exactly the kind of weight that the promise carried. Thus, the first argument is compatible with a hybrid causal-constitutive view on which my making a promise causes the obligation but constitutes the obligation as a promissory one. Compare how my carving a statue would cause the statue but constitute it as hand-made.

The second argument against the causal theory is this. By divine simplicity, God’s contingent properties are all constituted by contingent entities outside of himself. But when God promises something, he acquires a contingent obligation. By divine simplicity, that obligation must be constituted by something contingent outside of God. And the most plausible candidate is that the it is constituted by the physical manifestation making up the promise (e.g., the voice that the promisee heard). So in the case of divine promises, neither the original causal theory nor the hybrid theory is plausible.

That said, the second argument is not very strong. For contingent beliefs are internally constituted in us and yet by exactly the same divine simplicity argument externally constituted in God. So while the fact that God’s promissory normative statuses are externally constituted gives us some reason to think ours are, this is far from conclusive. Moreover, what goes for promises may not go for other things. God (qua God) cannot marry. So the argument doesn’t apply to marriage.

In summary, if naturalism is false, then it could be the case that some of the normative statuses that are generally thought to be constituted by performative utterances are in fact caused by utterances, though classical theists have some reason to prefer the performative constitution theory in many cases.

Finally, note that there is a third option besides constitution and causation: something I call quasi-causation. If I pray for an effect, and as an outcome of my prayer, God produces the effect, I don’t want to say that my prayer caused God to produce the effect. It just seems contrary to divine transcendence to suppose we can cause God to do things. Yet there is something like causation going on here. Similarly, it could be that sometimes a normative status is not caused but merely quasi-caused by an utterance.

Catholics, in fact, are liable to think that the quasi-causal theory is at least true of one aspect of one case: sacramental marriage. In sacramental marriage, there is an intrinsic change in the parties entering the marriage as a result of the exchange of the marriage vows. But because the change happens due to God’s gracious activity, it probably cannot be said to be caused by the marriage vows. Rather, the change is quasi-caused by the marriage vows. However, it is not clear whether the relevant intrinsic change is a change with respect to a normative property.

All in all, there are many open questions here.

Time and marriage

Consider this sequence of events:

• 2000: Alice marries Bob.

• 2010: Bob dies.

• 2020: Alice marries Carl.

• 2030: Alice and Carl invent time machine and travel to 2005 where they meet Bob.

Then, in 2005, Alice is married to Bob and Alice is married to Carl. But she is not a bigamist.

Hence, marriage is not defined by external times like 2005, but by internal times, like “the 55th year of Alice’s life”. To be a bigamist, one needs to be married to two different people at the same internal time. A marriage taken on at one internal time continues forward in the internal future.

And while we’re at it, the twin paradox shows that it is possible for two people to be married to each other and for one to have been married 10 years and the other to have been married 30 years. Again, it’s the internal time that matters for us.

Slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws

Slavery is the ownership of one person by another. Since a person no more owns another than a thief owns the purloined goods, there has never been any slavery. But of course there have been institutions thought to be slavery: institutions in which a person was thought to be the property of another. These were not institutions of slavery in the above strict sense but forms of unjust imprisonment, kidnapping, etc.

This seems to be merely a point about words, and a mistaken one at that. “Of course, Alexander II ended serfdom in Russia while Lincoln ended slavery in the US. Words mean what they are used to mean, and to dispute historical claims like these is to be like the fusty grammarian who claims that ‘It’s me’ is bad English.”

I agree that the question of words is unimportant. But here is what is important. Institutions are defined in large part by their norms. It is a defining feature of the norms of slavery (and, with some differences, of serfdom) that one person has property-style rights over another who has onerous obligations corresponding to these rights. But in fact, nobody has such rights over another, and the supposed obligations do not obtain. The institution that the “masters” saw themselves as a part of did not in fact exist, because the rights and obligations that they took to be integral to the institution did not, and could not, in fact exist.

We can use the term “slavery” (and cognates in other languages) for that non-existent institution, just as we use the term “phlogiston” for the substance that chemists mistakenly believed in before oxygen was discovered.

But we could also use distinguish and use two terms. Maybe slavery_h is the historical form of social organization that actually (and deplorably) existed and slavery_n is the normative institution that the masters_h (and maybe some of the slaves_h, as well) incorrectly thought to exist and thought to be coextensive with slavery_h.

Again, the words don’t matter, but it matters that there was a morally condemnable attempt to create a certain social institution which attempt failed because the norms that were attempted to be instituted were incapable of institution.

This is a pattern we find in many other cases. There is no such thing as a forced marriage, since the norms of love and sexuality that define marriage do not come into existence apart from the free consent of the parties. But of course over the course of history there have been morally condemnable attempts to force people—especially women—into the institution of marriage. These attempts always failed, and what the victims were forced into was a different institution, one subjecting them to such injustices as kidnapping, unjust imprisonment, rape, etc.

Thomas Aquinas, similarly, holds that there are no unjust laws. Of course, legislators may attempt to enact laws that would be unjust (or they may simply be exercising power and not even trying to legislate). But when they do so, they fail to enact laws. What they enact are mere demands masquarading as laws (philosophical anarchists think all “laws” are like that). Again, the question of words is unimportant, but what is important is the pattern: the legislator is deplorably attempting to create a social institution—a law—and failing to do so, but instead creating another institution.

The particular cases of this pattern are interesting, and so is the pattern itself. A central part of the pattern is an attempt to create an institution (or an instance of an institution) that misfires, and instead another institution is created that is widely but mistakenly thought to be the one that was the target of the attempt. But the cases of slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws also share another feature that not all the cases of misfiring do. For instance, suppose due to an honest mistake in the counting of ballots, there is a mistake as to who the mayor of a town is. The false mayor then attempts to legislate something quite just. The attempt fails, because the false mayor lacks the standing to legislate. But there need be nothing morally deplorable here, as there is in the slavery, forced marriage and unjust law cases.

Moreover, the three cases I started with are not just morally deplorable, but there seems to be an important connection between moral evil and performative misfire. Slavery_h is morally horrific, but slavery_n would be even worse, as the slaves_n would be under genuine obligations to do the enforced labor required of them and not to escape. This would, as it were, make morality itself complicit with the master, and the properly formed conscience of the slave into a whip in the master’s hand. And the same holds in the other two cases: morality itself would be a tool of oppression.

There are, alas, times when morality is a tool of oppression. The duties that exist between relatives are frequently exploited by repressive regimes as a means of social control: If you are an Uyghur or Tibetan defecting to a free country and speaking out against the Chinese regime, your relatives back home will suffer, and this restricts your activity because of the duties you have to your relatives. But the kinds of cases where the wicked use morality as a lever against the righteous seem different and less direct from what would be the case if slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws had the normative force that they pretend to. It is a mere coincidental effect of duties to family when these duties make it morally impossible or difficult to stand up to a wicked regime. But it would be of the very nature of the norms induced by slavery, forced marriage and unjust laws—if these norms really came into existence—that they would oppress.

This still leaves an interesting puzzle, which different moral theories will answer differently: Why is it the case that morality does not innately oppress?

Objection: Maybe slavery_h does create norms, but not moral norms.

Response: I myself don’t think there are any non-moral norms. But in any case slavery_h does not create any kind of obligation on the slave to obey the master, whether moral or not, except in some, but not all, cases a prudential one.

In vitro fertilization and Artificial Intelligence

The Catholic Church teaches that it is wrong for us to intentionally reproduce by any means other than marital intercourse (though things can be done to make marital intercourse more fertile than it otherwise would be). In particular, human in vitro fertilization is wrong.

But there is clearly nothing wrong with our engaging in in vitro fertilization of plants. And I have never heard a Catholic moralist object to the in vitro fertilization of farm animals.

Suppose we met intelligent aliens. Would it be permissible for us to reproduce them in vitro? I think the question hinges on whether what is wrong with in vitro fertilization has to do with the fact that the creature that is reproduced is one of us or has to do with the fact that it is a person. I suspect it has to do with the fact that it is a person, and hence our reproducing non-human persons in vitro would be wrong, too. Otherwise, we would have the absurd situation where we might permissibly reproduce an alien in vitro, and they would permissibly reproduce a human in vitro, and then we would swap babies.

But if what is problematic is our reproducing persons in vitro, then we need to look for a relevant moral principle. I think it may have something to do with the sacredness of persons. When something is sacred, we are not surprised that there are restrictions. Sacred acts are often restricted by agent, location and time. They are something whose significance goes beyond humanity, and hence we do not have the authority to engage in them willy-nilly. It may be that the production of persons is sacred in this way, and hence we need the authority to produce persons. Our nature testifies to us that we have this authority in the context of marital intercourse. We have no data telling us that we are authorized to produce persons in any other way, and without such data we should not do it.

This would have a serious repercussion for artificial intelligence research. If we think there is a significant chance that strong AI might be possible, we should stay away from research that might well produce a software person.

Talk video: Marriage is a natural kind

I just noticed that my recent SCP talk arguing that marriage is a natural kind has been posted. Slides (which I think don't show up on the video) are here.

Marriage is a natural kind

I just posted the slides from my SCP Midwest talk on marriage as a natural kind.

Reproductive ethics and divine intellectual property

God made everything. He did so timelessly eternally, and is fully responsible for everything that exists. He is not just a first cause, but an artist, author, designer and architect. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that during his eternal lifetime God has intellectual property rights to what he has made, including all biological forms of life. If so, then something like a license from God is needed to copy significant parts of creation.

A reasonable reading of Genesis tells us that God made us stewards of the non-human world around us, and in particular he has given us license to engage in agriculture, including the duplication of animals and plants. But we have not been given similarly far-reaching license with regard to humanity. We are told to be fruitful and multiply, but to be fruitful and multiply is not the same as to duplicate ourselves by any means possible. We have very good reason to think that we have license to use our reproductive organs to reproduce within a relationship designed for this purpose, namely marriage. But we have little reason to think that we have any license to reproduce outside of such a relation or that we have license to do so outside of the natural use of these reproductive organs. And the default assumption is that we have no permission to reproduce the intellectual property of another.

This line of thought generates something that is pretty much the Catholic picture of reproductive ethics. There is no permission for human reproduction outside of marriage. And reproduction needs to occur by means of human mating. Reproductive technologies, then, need to be limited to improving or repairing the reproductive potential of human mating, rather than replacing human mating by something else.

One can enhance the above story by noting that creatures have a two-fold connection with the divine artist. First, they are designed and created by him. Second, they are images of him. Some creatures are much more significantly divine self-portraits: these are persons, capable of interpersonal relationships of love. It is reasonable to think that there would be more significant restrictions on the copying of those works of art which are the divine self-portraits.

Objection 1: We shouldn't need to have Scripture to know that we may engage in agriculture and marital mating.

Response: Indeed. I think the relevant permissions are naturally "written in the heart". We intuitively grasp the difference between genetically enhancing wheat and genetically enhancing humans, and the difference between sperm banks for cattle and for humans. But the license to use new reproductive technologies is not so written in the heart.

Objection 2: Intellectual property rights are limited by society, which gets to define how long they last and to what degree they apply, and these rights are never endless.

Response: It is reasonable to think that there are such limitations for the property rights of human beings who themselves draw on centuries of culture for their creation. But God is a case apart.

Objection 3: Intellectual property rights are a matter of positive rather than natural law; they are created and modified by society.

Response: I share this intuition, and that makes me not want to full endorse the line of thought in this post. But perhaps we can say that intellectual property rights of humans are a very faint reflection of divine intellectual property rights, faint because all we have and create ultimately belongs to God, and also because of the dependence of our own creative work on that of others. So in us, it's a matter of social decision whether there be rights coming from our poor ways of creating. But God is fully and truly a creator.

Objection 4: This is too cold! God is the God of love, not an IP lawyer.

Response: The story is incomplete. But art isn't something cold, nor are the "moral rights" of artists something cold and for lawyers only.

Marriage and the state

There is a presumption against the state imposing or enforcing restrictions on people's behavior. That's why, for instance, the state does not enforce private promises where money doesn't change hands. Now, marriage has two primary normative effects:

1. Make sexual union permissible;
2. Impose a rich tapestry of duties that the spouses owe to one another.

Most Western jurisdictions do not have a legal prohibition of fornication, however, which makes the first of the two primary normative effects moot with respect to the state (though of course marriage still is needed for sexual union to be morally permissible, as I argue in One Body). In those jurisdictions that do not legally prohibit fornication, the primary legal effect of marriage is entirely restrictive. Hence, in those jurisdictions, there is a presumption against the state's recognition of any marriages at all. (One might argue that the state needs to license marriages in order to render sex morally permissible; but marriage in the moral sense does not require state involvement.)

In those jurisdictions where fornication is not a crime, I think it is helpful to start debate about things like same-sex marriage or polygamy with a presumption against state involvement in any marriages whatsoever, and then ask in what cases, if any, that default negative judgment can be overcome.

(For the record, I do think the presumption can be overcome in opposite-sex cases, because of the connection with procreation. But I am not arguing for this here.)

Marriage in heaven

Question 1: Are there marriages in heaven?

Answer: No. Jesus explicitly says that there is no marrying or giving in marriage in heaven (Luke 20:27-38). So no new marriages are entered into in heaven. That might seem to leave open the question whether existing marriages might not continue. But the context of the discussion is of a woman who was married to a sequence of brothers and the paradoxical consequences of that if these marriages continue in the afterlife. Jesus' answer only solves the paradox if we accept the implicature that there is no marriage in heaven. Moreover, it would be an odd view if existing marriages persisted in heaven but new ones couldn't be entered into. If marriage in heaven would be a good thing for us, this kind of a setup just wouldn't be fair to a loving couple who was murdered minutes before their wedding was to take place.

Question 2: Why are there no marriage in heaven?

Answer: It's good that way. Well, that's true, but not informative: it applies to everything about heavenly life. But we can think a bit about why it's good for it to be so.

One thought is that only marriage for eternity would be fitting for heavenly life. Divorce just doesn't seem the sort of thing that is fitting for heavenly life. But I think it would be problematic for humans to bind themselves to one another for an eternal heavenly life. Heavenly life is unimaginable to us now, radically transcending our current knowledge. Because of this, it would not be appropriate for us to commit ourselves now to be bound to another person for an infinite length of time in that utterly different life. Now one might think that once in heaven the problem disappears. But I suspect it does not. I suspect that the heavenly life is a life of eternal and non-asymptotic growth (hence my recent swollen head argument against Christian physicalism). I don't know if the beatific vision itself increases eternally, but I suspect that at least the finite goods of heavenly life do. So some of the reasons why it would not be fitting for us to bind ourselves now to one another for eternity would apply in heaven: in year ten of heavenly life, perhaps, one cannot imagine what year one billion will be like; in year one billion, one cannot imagine what year 10¹⁰⁰ will be like; and so on. Eternity is long.

A second thought is that there is something about the exclusivity of marriage that is not fitted for heavenly life. The advocates of free love had something right: there is something limiting about exclusivity. This limitation is entirely fitting given the nature of marriage and its innate links to reproduction and sexual union as one body. But nonetheless it seems plausible to me that an innately exclusive form of love is not fitted to heaven.

A third and most speculative thought: There is a link--worth exploring in much greater depth than I am going to do here--between the exclusivity of marriage and the appropriateness of according privacy to sexual activity. But I suspect that there is a great transparency in heavenly life. What is hidden is revealed. It is a life of truth rather than of withholding of information. In regard to the emotional life, those in heaven will have highly developed faculties of empathy. After all, my model is one of continued growth. People can grow immensely in empathy in this life--how much more will they likely grow in heaven! These faculties of empathy would enable people to have great empathetic insight into the sexual lives of others, to a point where that insight could make them empathetic participants in that life, in a way incompatible with the exclusivity of marriage and the privacy of sexuality.

Divorce, remarriage and communion

I've been thinking a bit about one of the key issues of the recent Synod on the Family, whether Catholics who have divorced and attempted remarriage without an annulment should be allowed to receive communion. As I understand the disagreement (I found this quite helpful), it's not really about the nature of marriage.

The basic case to think about is this:

Jack believes himself to be married to Jill, and publicly lives with her as husband and wife. But the Church knows, although Jack does not, that Jack is either unmarried or married to Suzy.

Should Jack be allowed to receive communion? After all, Jack is committing adultery (if he is actually married to Suzy) or fornication (if he's not actually married to Suzy) with Jill, and that's public wrongdoing. However, Jack is deluded into thinking that he's actually married to Jill. So Jack isn't aware that he's committing adultery or fornication. Jack may or may not be innocent in his delusion. If he is innocent in his delusion, then he is not culpably sinning ("formally sinning", as we Catholics say) in his adultery or fornication.

This is a hard question. On the one hand, given the spiritual benefits of the Eucharist, the Church should strive to avoid denying communion to an innocent person, and Jack might be innocent. On the other hand, letting Jack receive communion reinforces his delusion of being married to Jill, making him think that all is well with this aspect of his life, and committing adultery and fornication is good neither for Jack nor for Jill, even if they are ignorant of the fact that their relationship is adulterous or fornicatory.

One thing should be clear: this is not a clear case. There really are serious considerations in both directions, considerations fully faithful to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition that adultery and fornication are gravely wrong and that one should not receive communion when one is guilty of grave wrong.

One may think that the above way of spinning the case is not a fair reflection of real-world divorce and remarriage cases. What I said above makes it sound like Jack has hallucinated a wedding with Jill and may have amnesia about a wedding with Suzy. And indeed it is a difficult and far from clear pastoral question what to do with congregants who are suffering from hallucinations and amnesia. But in the real-life cases under debate, Jack really does remember exchanging vows with Suzy, and yet he has later exchanged other vows, in a non-Catholic ceremony, with Jill. Moreover, Jack knows that the Church teaches things that imply that he isn't really married to Jill. Does this make the basic case clear?

Well, to fill out the case, we also need to add the further information that the culture, at both the popular and elite levels, is telling Jack that he is married to Jill. And Jack thinks that the Church is wrong and the culture is right. I doubt we can draw a bright line between cases of mental aberration and those of being misled by the opinions of others. We are social animals, after all. (If "everyone" were to tell me that I never had a PhD thesis defense, I would start doubting my memories.)

At the same time, the cultural point plays in two opposite ways. On the one hand, it makes it more likely that Jack's ignorance is not culpable. On the other hand, it makes it imperative--not just for Jack and Jill's sake, but now also that of many others--not to act in ways that reinforce the ignorance and delusion. Moreover, the issue for Jack's spiritual health isn't just about his relationship with Jill. If Jack puts more weight in the culture than in Catholic teaching, Jack has other problems, and may need a serious jolt. But even that's not clear: that jolt might push him even further away from where he should be.

So I don't really know what the Church should do, and I hope the Holy Spirit will guide Pope Francis to act wisely.

In any case, I think my point stands that this isn't really about the nature of marriage. One can have complete agreement that adultery and fornication are wrong and that Jack isn't married to Jill, without it being clear what to do.

Divorce

A marriage forges the couple into something analogous to a new person. Divorce is intended to be destructive of that something analogous to a new person. Thus divorce is at least presumptively wrong.

Objection: What if a marriage fails to forge that something analogous to a new person?

Response: I think we should see persons as through and through normative beings. What makes the married couple be something analogous to a new person is not that they actually make decisions together, become aligned to one another's needs and so on, but that such joint decision-making, this kind of alignment to one another's needs and so on are normative for them—are what they should strive for. A ceremony that fails to make this normative reality come into existence is not a marriage. We have something analogous to a new person even in a bad marriage.

Why is marriage sacred?

Many religions that disagree on many other things treat marriage as something sacred, not just a contract. Moreover, many non-religious people—though not all—have intuitions that point in that direction. Let's take all these intuitions at face value. Marriage is sacred.

Why?

Well, a paradigm of the uncontroversially sacred—something that we except to see connected to rituals across religions—is life. We are not surprised to see funerals or baptisms in a religion. Maybe at some deep level it is puzzling why human life is sacred (if materialism is true, this may be especially puzzling), but that human life is treated as sacred is not puzzling.

A student pointed out to me this morning that we can attempt to account for the sacredness of marriage by pointing to the sacredness of the new joint life of the couple. They become one flesh after all. Indeed, it is as if a new human life came into existence. And if the analogy is tight enough, that makes sense of its as being sacred.

But while I think this is all true, I suspect that the reason why marriage has been so widely treated as sacred may be a more literal connection to new life: it is a relationship tied to literal new human life, to procreation. Literal new human life is sacred. The sacred infects what is related to it. The message of a book is sacred, so the volume it's in is treated as a holy book. Marriage, on this picture, is tied to procreation.

But of course we and our ancestors know that not every marriage results in procreation and that procreation can happen outside of marriage. So the tie between marriage and procreation has to be carefully formulated. I don't think we want to say it's just a statistical tie. That would undermine the reason for taking marriage to be sacred. Rather, I suspect it's a normative tie. There is more than one way one could expand on this tie.

One option is to say that marriage is a relationship that normally results in children. One would expect a relationship that normally results in something sacred to have something sacred about it.

However, this option has the consequence that a marriage without children is lacking something normal to it, like a three-legged sheep lacks a leg. But is it right to say that a couple who got married in their 60s has a defective relationship? Well, the phrase "defective relationship" leads astray. It suggests that there is something wrong with what the people are doing. And in that sense, the couple who got married in their 60s don't have a defective relationship just because they don't have children. But if we think of it as a defect in the same way that a sheep having three legs is a defect, then that phrase may not be incorrect. A couple who gets married late in life may well have a quite appropriate sadness that they were unable share a larger portion of their life, and in particular a sadness that they were unable to share their fertility. So I don't think the case of elderly couples is a serious problem for the view that the tie between marriage and procreation is that children normally result from marriage. And the view explains why it can feel so tragic to be infertile.

Another option would be that marriage is a relationship that makes having children morally permissible. It is a relationship that licenses procreation. One shouldn't here have a picture of the state or the church giving one a license to procreate: marriage comes from an exchange of vows between the future spouses, and it is their giving themselves in marriage to one another—something that in principle can happen without a state or a church being involved—is what morally licenses the procreation on this view. It is only with the kind of commitment that is found in marriage that a couple could permissibly tie themselves to each other by having a child together. But it makes some sense that taking up the commitment which makes the production of human life permissible would be infected with the sacredness of human life. Still, in the end this doesn't seem quite to get the full story. For instance, if a married unemployed couple is so poor that they cannot adequately care for their children, then it could be morally impermissible for them to procreate. Getting a job could then render procreation morally permissible. But that doesn't make the job be a sacred thing, at least not in the way marriage is.

In the end, I suspect that all three stories—the story of the new joint life of the couple, of marriage normally resulting in children, and of marriage in principle morally permitting a couple to have children—are a part of the truth. And, as a colleague reminded me, there is the mirroring of the life of the Trinity.

Deciding to marry

Consider this line of thought.

1. To decide to marry y for no reason is unreasonable.
2. To decide to marry y on the grounds that y will make one happy is selfish.
3. To decide to marry y on the grounds that one will make y happy is arrogant.
4. To decide to marry y on the grounds that it will make the world a better place is to be full of oneself.
5. To decide to marry y on the grounds that God is calling one to it is unavailable to atheists and claims an implausibly good understanding of God's designs.

So on what grounds can one decide to marry y?

I am inclined to think that (5) can be rejected: I think atheists can do something because God calls them to it, but they won't formulate the reason in that way. I also think we can have some understanding of what God calls us to. And while (3) and (4) may be true, perhaps all one needs as grounds is the thought that likely one will in a small way contribute to y's happiness and make the world a better place, and one need not be arrogant to think that.

Still, I think that even with these qualifications, something important is being left out of the story. Love, I guess. Love directly justifies the pursuit of a union appropriate to the love, and marriage is the union appropriate to certain forms of love.