Marriage as a natural kind

Thesis: Marriage as a natural kind of relationships is a better theory than marriage as an institution defined by socially instituted rights and responsibilities.

Argument 1: On the institution view, we have to say that people in most other cultures aren't married since they don't have the same socially instituted rights and responsibilities. That's bad, since they say they're married when they learn English. The natural kind view holds, instead, that people in different cultures are referring to the same kind of relationship, but may get wrong what is and is not a part of the relationship.

We do not automatically accept educational credentials from other cultures. Thus, being medically educated in France does not automatically make one count as medically educated in the U.S. And being medically educated in 5th century France would make one not one whit medically educated in 21st century France (imagine a 5th century doctor who travels in time). In other words, being medically educated is always indexed to a set of standards. But we don't think of marriage in this way, with a few notable exceptions, such as polygamy or same-sex marriage. Getting married in India is sufficient for being married in France. Why? If one thinks of getting married as assenting to a set of rights and responsibilities, then getting married in India shouldn't be sufficient for being married in France, or vice versa.

Argument 2: The natural kind view explains how we can individually and as a society discover new rights and responsibilities involved in marriage. The institution view leads either to constant abolishment of the old institution and replacement with a new one, or to a stale conservatism. We learn about the rights and responsibilities of marriage experientially and not just a priori or by poring over legal tomes. That is how it is with a natural kind like water.

Argument 3: Suppose we see someone from a patriarchal culture who is failing to care for his sick wife (or at least someone he calls a wife). We might well say: "It's your duty as a husband to take care of her." On the institution view, he can respond: "No, it isn't. It would be my duty to take care of her if I were her husband-per-American-rules, but I am her husband-per-Patriland-rules, and in Patriland wives take care of their husbands and husbands do not need to take care of their wives." But on the natural kind view, we can say: "You tried to marry her, and marriage does require taking care of a sick spouse, regardless of who is of what sex. So either you succeeded at marrying, in which case you have this responsibility, or you failed at marrying, in which case you don't have the rights you thought you gained." On the institution view all we can say is: "You're in a corrupt and sexist institution, and you should divorce to stop supporting it. By the way, you're right that you have no role duty to take care of her."

Argument 4a (for conservatives): If you take the institution view, you play into Wedgwood's argument for same-sex "marriage".

Argument 4b (for liberals): If you take the institution view, you cannot advocate same-sex marriage, but only same-sex "marriage". You have to adopt the very revisionery position that marriage should be abolished, albeit replaced with something very much like it, namely marriage*, since marriage is defined by the social understanding, and that has included opposition of sexes. Moreover, such a view leads to unhappy consequences. Once we have replaced marriage with marriage*, we can't say that our grandparents are married*, only that they are married, and since marriage* is the only relationship available after the revision, you can't do what your grandparents did. Moreover, even allowing our grandparents to stay married is problematic if marriage is an unjust institution. So probably the state needs to dissolve their marriage, leaving it up to them whether to marry*. This is a politically untenable and unhappy view. A much better view is that marriage is a natural kind, and we were simply wrong in thinking marriage is only for people of the opposite sex. This (and Argument 3, too) is a species of the general point that relativistic theses run the danger of leading to stale conservatism.

Role obligations and divine commands

This post pulls out one strand from my argument here and makes it into an independent argument, under the inspiration of Chris Tweedt.

Valid commands are always to be understood in the context of a role, and give rise to a role-obligation in respect of the recipient's role. Thus, a military command gives rise to a military duty, a legal command gives rise to a legal duty, and so on. Divine commands also give rise to a role duty. Let's call this a creaturely duty. A military duty is the duty of the soldier qua soldier. A legal duty is the duty of a subject qua subject (one might prefer "citizen", but that's not right; I am not a citizen of the United States, but I am bound by its laws when living in the United States). A creaturely duty is the duty of a creature (or, better, rational creature) qua creature.

Now, here is a puzzle. Divine command theorists (of the sort that interest me here) tell us to understand moral duty in terms of divine commands. But what divine commands give rise to are creaturely duty. So why not, instead, define moral duty as creaturely duty—as the duty proper to our role as creatures of God—rather than as the content of divine commands? While all divine commands give rise to creaturely duties, it is not particularly plausible that divine commands necessarily exhaust creaturely duties. Imagine a world where God issues no commands, but Jones thinks that God (or: a loving God, if one prefers the Adams version) has commanded him to abstain from beef. Surely Jones has some kind of a duty to abstain from beef, and plausibly it is a creaturely duty. But there is little reason to think that among the creaturely duties only those that arise from divine commands are moral duties. It seems that what gives normative oomph to divine commands is that they generate creaturely duties. But if there could be other kinds of creaturely duties, these would then have the same normative oomph. And even if there could not be any creaturely duties other than duties of obedience to divine commands, it still seems that what does the explanatory normative work is not the command, but the creaturely duty that it gives rise to.

I think analyzing morality in terms of creaturely duty is superior to analyzing morality in terms of divine commands.

For instance, consider the worry that there are some actions that are so bad that they would be wrong even if they were not prohibited by God. There is at least some room for the response that these actions are, nonetheless, violations of a creaturely duty—maybe it is a part of the creaturely role that one not be nasty to those who are equally creatures.

Or consider the idea that God is morally required to keep his promises. While we don't literally want to say that God has a creaturely duty to keep his promises, that's just a matter of words. Let R be the creature-creator role. Then we can say that God has an R-duty to keep his promises (for us, R-duty is creaturely duty; for God, R-duty is creator duty).

I do not endorse the idea of analyzing morality in terms of creaturely duty, because I think all role duties are moral duties (though this controversial claim could be overcome).