Gender/sex minimization and Christian sexual ethics

Here is a way to live a life: Generally strive to minimize the number of cases where one’s having a particular sex or gender functions as a reason for one’s actions or emotional attitudes.

An extreme version of this is not compatible with traditional Christian sexual ethics unless one is planning on celibacy. It is also not compatible with American law which requires one to correctly fill out various forms, such as census forms, that ask what one’s sex is. And it is not compatible with common-sense morality which requires one to respect things like sex- or gender-segregated bathrooms.

A moderate version of such a gender-minimizing practice, however, could be perhaps sustainable within the bounds of traditional Christian practice, American law and common-sense morality.

One might think that given the heterosexualism of traditional Christian practice, it is hard in romantic contexts to avoid basing decisions on reasons like “I’m a a man and she’s a woman.” In this post I want to explore the idea that one could instead base one’s romantic actions and attitudes on: “We are an opposite-sex pair.”

One might object: “That’s cheating. The reason why the two are an opposite-sex pair is that one is a man and the other is a woman.” But this is “reason” in a different sense of “reason” from that of reasons for actions and attitudes. That one is a man and the other is a woman is a metaphysical ground of the two being an opposite-sex pair, and it may well be one’s epistemic reason for thinking the two are an opposite-sex pair. But it need not be one’s reason for, say, asking the other out on a date—the reason for asking the other out on a date could just be “we are an opposite-sex pair”, and of course the delights of the other’s person, even if the evidence and metaphysical ground for “we are an opposite-sex pair” is the more fine-grained fact that one is a man and the other is a woman.

One could do the same thing when discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Instead of thinking “I’m a man, so I should consider the priesthood”, one might think “I am of the opposite sex to the symbolic sex of the Church (which in turn is the opposite sex to the sex of the incarnate Word), so I should consider the priesthood.”

Would formulating one’s reasons for action in such an unusual way have any benefits? I think so. “We are an opposite-sex pair” focuses one on a relation between the persons. On Trinitarian grounds, there is reason to think that relationality is central to personhood. Half of “I am a man and she is a woman” is self-focused. Better to use “we” than “I” in romantic thinking.

Moreover, we perhaps shouldn’t focus on what is morally irrelevant to a decision. Suppose two people are a good romantic match in terms of character traits, interests, etc., and one is male and the other is female. Supposing (perhaps per impossibile) that their sexes were swapped, but their character traits stayed the same, plausibly they would still be a good romantic match. That they are of the opposite sex is relevant romantically, assuming traditional Christian sexual ethics. But perhaps which one is a man and which one is a woman is not very relevant—what’s relevant is that the couple has one of each sex.

The picture in the above exploration is that the significance of men and women is largely relational: there is a relationship possible to a man and a woman that is not possible to two men or to two women. This is presumably because a man and a woman are an opposite-sex pair, or a potential mating pair, or something like that. This fact about a man and a woman is a relational fact. Granted, this relational fact is metaphysically grounded in certain biological features of the man and the woman, which features may not be themselves relational (say, the existence of body parts with a certain shape, or at least of activated genetic coding for them; though even there the teleology of the parts is relational). But even if the features are not themselves metaphysically relational, their ethical significance could still be largely relational.

Of course, in the end, the physical consummation of love in marital union will require each party to pay attention to the sexed nature of their own and the other’s bodies. That’s unavoidable. But perhaps that’s just a detail? I doubt it’s just a detail myself, but I could very well be wrong.

Another objection to the above story is that in love we focus on the specific features of the other, and in romantic love this includes sex-linked physical features. So when Juliet loves Romeo, she does not love him just as a “someone of the opposite-sex with character traits T₁, ..., T_n”, but also as someone with a rich set of lovely physical features, for which it is important that he is male, as many of them would be aesthetically and biologically unfitting in a woman. Agreed! But that doesn’t mean that Juliet’s own femaleness needs to be a part of her reasons for loving Romeo. Instead, she can love him as “someone of the opposite-sex to me with character traits T₁, ..., T_n, and with physical features Φ₁, ..., Φ_m which are splendidly fitted to his maleness.” Of course that Romeo is of the opposite-sex to Juliet and that Romeo is male implies that Juliet is female, but even though it implies this, it need not be a part of her reasons for love. I do like the thought that we should minimize focus on self in other-love.

Perhaps the above story isn’t right. I don’t endorse it. It’s entirely hypothetical. I find some features of the story attractive, but my credence in the story is well below 50%. There may well be ethically significant non-relational features of being and being female. Perhaps swapping the sexes of a well-matched romantic couple might in fact change whether they are a good match.

For instance, maybe there are specifically male virtues and specifically female virtues, and then swapping sexes while keeping character the same produces someone who lacks virtues that they should have. Maybe, but I am inclined to be skeptical of this suggestion. A more moderate view would be C. S. Lewis’s, that although men and women should have the same virtues, the lack of certain virtues in a man is worse than their lack in a woman and vice versa. That has more of a chance of being right. I could imagine future scientific research telling us that the typical hormonal make-up of men tends to make some virtues easier for them and the typical hormonal make-up of women tends to make other virtues easier for them. Lacking an easier virtue seems worse than lacking a harder virtue, other things being equal. If so, then if you swapped sexes while keeping characters unchanegd, the moral evaluation could change. Perhaps Alice and Bob are respectively a decent woman and a decent man, but Alice would make a terrible woman and Bob would make a terrible man. Maybe. But if they both got worse symmetrically in this way, while keeping the same actual virtues, maybe it wouldn’t make a big difference to their romantic relationships. They’d still have the same virtues between the two of them, the same vices between the two of them, it’s just that the evaluation of these virtues and vices would be a bit different. And in any case on a story like the hormonal one, it’s not clear that the specific sexes matter except causally, as tending to produce the hormones.

My thinking on this was sparked by two things. First, for a while I’ve been exploring imagining what life would be like if we were isogamous heterothallic organisms, which of course we are not. Second, I recently attended the defense of a very interesting dissertation arguing among other things that it is compatible with Catholic orthodoxy to hold that gender (though not biological sex) distinctions are a major result of original sin.

One Body book at 45% off with free shipping

Notre Dame University Press has a 45% off sale today (Cyber Monday) on all print books, with free shipping. This includes my One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics, which should be down to $24.75. You need to use the promo code 14CYBER.

Best explanation and sexual ethics

Consider three ethical claims about sexuality:

1. Rape is always wrong.

2. Incest is always wrong.

3. Bestiality is always wrong.

Take these claims in the strong sense: they hold genuinely always, no matter what the circumstances. Rape is wrong even if the victim is in a coma, is unharmed physically, permission is given by a proxy, and nobody (including the victim) ever finds out. Incest is wrong even between consenting adult relatives raised apart, with no chance of conception. Bestiality is wrong no matter whether the animal is aware of the event, and no matter how low on the evolutionary scale the animal falls or how much the animal wants the act. All these things are wrong even if much rides on them: they are wrong even to save multiple lives, including the life of the victim in case (1).

Now, although it is easy to find ethical views of sexuality that explain why rape, incest and bestiality are almost always wrong, it is hard to find coherent and well-developed views that explain why these are always wrong. But such views do exist. I know of two families of them: there are traditional natural law views and there are views like those of Karol Wojtyla which meld natural law with personalism (my One Body is in this category). However, these two families of views also entail highly controversial further prohibitions on unmarried sexuality, artificial contraception and same-sex sexual activity.

This yields an indirect inference to best explanation argument for the controversial further prohibitions: the best views we have that explain (1)–(3) also entail these further prohibitions.

Of course, one can try to turn the argument around. But I think generally speaking we have better epistemic access to what is forbidden than what is permissible, and so arguing from commonly accepted prohibitions to controversial prohibitions is better than arguing from commonly accepted permissions to controversial permissions.

I am not saying that those who deny the controversial prohibitions need to deny that (1)–(3) are exceptionlessly true to be consistent. I am just saying that they probably aren't going to have a good explanation for why (1)–(3) are exceptionlessly true.

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.

Critical discussion of One Body

The latest issue of Annals of Philosophy has critiques by Murphy, Taliaferro and Perez, Trakakis, Hamilton, Archard, Griffiths, Wielenberg, Kąkol, Hershenov and Watt of my One Body book on sexual ethics. The critiques are powerful and interesting. There is also a retrospective account by me of what I am doing in One Body as well as a response to each critic (but not to each criticism--I typically picked one point per critic).

A modest sceptical theism that doesn't lead to moral scepticism

I'll just baldly give the theory without much argument. Axiology is necessary. It's a necessary truth that friendship and knowledge are good, that false beliefs are bad, etc. But the values have many aspects and exhibit much incommensurability. It's also a necessary truth that the good us to be pursued and the bad avoided. This gives some practical guidance, but mainly in cases where the reasons in favor of an action dominate those against. And that's rare. In typical cases agents face competing incommensurable reasons.

There may also be a necessary truth that some goods are fundamental and never to be acted against. The nature of a particular kind of agent then specifies how incommensurability is to be resolved. When the agent should be merciful rather than strictly just, when strictly just, and when the agent is morally free to go either way. The nature of an agent also gives the agent inclinations to act accordingly, inclinations that can be introspective. So we can know how we should resolve cases of incommensurability when they come up for us. We have reliable moral intuitions about us.

But these moral intuitions are about humans. Intelligent sharks would have a nature that resolves incommensurables differently, and our moral intuitions wouldn't directly tell us much about how intelligent sharks should act (except in cases of domination and maybe the deontic constraint not to act directly against the most fundamental goods). So we have a reasonable scepticism about for our insight into how a morally upright intelligent shark would act. But this scepticism of course in no way detracts from our knowledge of how we should resolve incommensurables.

For exactly the same reason, we have a reasonable scepticism about how God would act, about what resolutions between incommensurables are necessitated by his nature and which are left to choice. But this scepticism in no way detracts from our moral knowledge.

I don't think the scepticism is total. We can engage in limited analogical speculation. But this needs modesty if the theory is right.

Let me end with a little argument. When we think of particularly outlandish ethics cases, such as actions that affect an infinite number of people, we get stuck or even misled. No surprise on the above theory. We aren't made for such decisions. Those are decisions for more godlike beings than us. Perhaps our nature simply fails to specify the resolutions for these cases, as they aren't relevant to us in our niche. Imagine asking an intelligent amoeba about sexual ethics!

Sexual ethics talk

Today I am giving this talk on sexual ethics at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

Morality and Relativity Theory

Einstein tells us that basic laws of physics should be invariant under change of reference frame. Is the same true of basic laws of morality? What would that mean? I think it would mean that any law of morality which is not invariant under change of reference frame can only be a consequence of a more general moral law that is invariant together with some conditions explaining why, contingently, things are arranged in some particular manner in space-time as to give rise to the non-invariant law. (Similarly, the non-invariant law about dropped objects near the earth moving in the direction of the center of the earth follows from an invariant Einsteinian law together with contingent facts about how matter is distributed in our vicinity.)

Could this abstract observation have any actual consequences? Suppose Georgina believes that when she works unowned land, by natural law the land becomes hers (cf. Locke), and by natural law she gains mineral rights to what is below the surface of the land she has worked. That doesn't seem right. What counts as being "below the surface of the land she has worked" depends on the reference frame. So it can't just be a basic moral law that one gets whatever unowned stuff is below where one worked. A story must be given explaining the lack of invariance. And probably the easiest way to do this is to say that if there is any such acquisition of mineral rights, it comes from a non-invariant positive law. This isn't very interesting, since I assume we knew that there is no natural acquisition of mineral rights.

There could, however, be some slightly more interesting consequences in other areas. For instance, in sexual ethics, it follows that considerations based on the shapes of organs, as well as ones based on inside-outside distinctions (what is in one reference frame a cup that is red on the outside, green on the inside, with juice within is in another reference frame a cup-shaped object that is green on the outside, red on the inside, with juice adhering to the outside due to odd gravitational fields), should not be of basic relevance, absent some further story. Instead, basic moral rules about sexuality should involve reference-frame invariant concepts such as contact, causation, teleology, intention, and consent. This is helpful—it focuses the philosopher's mind on what the morally relevant features of the activities are. (I've used this in a comment to argue that the use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission within a married couple is unacceptable within a Catholic sexual ethics.)