Re: naturalness was Bring me your... cloned???

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/2/03 6:14:15 PM Eastern Standard Time,

liberty@... writes:

> In science, nothing is " simply " so, and " natural " is such

> a subjective term as to have no value in any discussion

> as I pointed out before. I'm gay, and have been told more

> times than I care to recall, how " it's simply not natural "

> for two men to be together, but as I also pointed out before,

> what is natural is not always necessarily moral, and what

> is moral is not always necessarily natural

What's particularly amusing is to view the historical development of the

definition of " natural, " especially as relates to the categorization and

hierarchy

of sexual sins.

The ancient Greeks considered what was " natural " to be what was found in the

animal kingdom. At some point Western Christianity, with Augustine maybe, I

forget, adopted this as the standard for the hierarchy of sexual sins. But

later Anselm made the definition that any sex that led to childbirth was natural

but sex that did not was unnatural. Thus homosexuality was considered worse

than rape at this time. I don't remember whether masturbation also was or not.

Now people have an interesting notion of " natural " that seems to mean

" without human interference. " People using this definition will tell you that

birth

control is " interfering with a natural process " or will believe that forests

self-regulate and that cutting trees down is harm to the environment, when in

fact anything including planting a plant or building a stone wall is as much

interfering with natural processes as the former and forests only regulation

mechanism is to destroy themselves over time.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Mike,

I disagree with your position, as I understand it, that one can objectively

define nature as a concept. I didn't fail to distinguish between the concept

and the application, I was deliberately speaking of the concept alone.

If the difference between homosexuality and cloning is the amount of time

each has existed for, this is clearly a relative, not an absolute, value.

Homosexuality can't possibly have existed forever, as life itself has existed

for

the smaller fraction of the existence of the universe. Assuming all animate

biological systems that engage in sexual reproduction also engage in some sort

of

homosexuality (which may or may not be true), homosexuality had to begin at

some point coincident to or post-dating sexual reproduction.

If there was a hypothetical objective and percipient observer at this point,

could she not claim that homosexuality, or sexual reproduction itself for that

matter, was " unnatural " ?

If not, why not? And if so, then there is nothing inherently natural or

unnatural about homosexuality or cloning, and cloning could have the potential

to

become normal at a later date, if the duration of existence is operative in

the definition.

One could claim that all human technology is " unnatural " but if that's the

case, than humans as an entire race are essentially an abberation from the

" natural. "

One could equally claim that all technology is a development from desires

inclinations and capabilities that are inherent in the " nature " of humans and as

such cloning is not something fundamentally new but is another step in the

natural unfolding of human ingenuity, essentially just another building block

upon paleolithic bone and stone tools.

Chris

[Guest guest]

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> In a message dated 11/2/03 6:14:15 PM Eastern Standard Time,

> liberty@p... writes:

>

> > In science, nothing is " simply " so, and " natural " is such

> > a subjective term as to have no value in any discussion

> > as I pointed out before. I'm gay, and have been told more

> > times than I care to recall, how " it's simply not natural "

> > for two men to be together, but as I also pointed out before,

> > what is natural is not always necessarily moral, and what

> > is moral is not always necessarily natural

>

> What's particularly amusing is to view the historical development

of the

> definition of " natural, " especially as relates to the

categorization and hierarchy

> of sexual sins.

>

> The ancient Greeks considered what was " natural " to be what was

found in the

> animal kingdom. At some point Western Christianity, with Augustine

maybe, I

> forget, adopted this as the standard for the hierarchy of sexual

sins. But

> later Anselm made the definition that any sex that led to

childbirth was natural

> but sex that did not was unnatural. Thus homosexuality was

considered worse

> than rape at this time. I don't remember whether masturbation also

was or not.

>

> Now people have an interesting notion of " natural " that seems to

mean

> " without human interference. " People using this definition will

tell you that birth

> control is " interfering with a natural process " or will believe

that forests

> self-regulate and that cutting trees down is harm to the

environment, when in

> fact anything including planting a plant or building a stone wall

is as much

> interfering with natural processes as the former and forests only

regulation

> mechanism is to destroy themselves over time.

>

> Chris

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

you make some interesting points about different concepts

of " natural " , but no matter how many people try to tweak a word for

their own purposes, " natural " refers to nature. nature is what it

is. there are two sources of disagreement i can identify in

relation to naturalness. one is that people may have different

interpretations of what nature actually is, but that is a purely

empirical issue, a factual matter. the second is that people may

associate naturalness with different moral positions, but that is not

variation in the concept of naturalness, only variation in its

application in moral contexts. i think you failed to distinguish

between the concept of " natural " and these two sources of divergence

in its interpretation and application.

going through the list of items mentioned in the thread, we can see

how this distinction can be made.

first of all, since homosexual behavior (and not just homosexual

dispositions) is a basic and common phenomenon that has existed since

the beginning of our species and will always exist, it is

unquestionably a part of nature; it's as natural as you can get.

this fact may not be known or acknowledged by those religious

commentators, but this is simply a case of getting the facts wrong

and/or conflating naturalness with its moral implications, the latter

being nothing more than rhetorical sleight. people are certainly

entitled to construct ruinous and divisive systems of morality than

condemn homosexuality, but they cannot change the fact it is an

inherent part of our species' gene pool, a simple consequence of

nature's reliance on physical permutations.

in the case of cloning, this is clearly not natural because it's

something that has not existed in nature. it is an historical fact

whether or not something is natural. however, this has nothing to do

with whether or not cloning is " good " . there are plenty of natural

things that i would call " bad " and plenty of unnatural things i would

call " good " . human value judgement is just a quirky biological

system constituting a small part of what goes on in the wet stuff in

human skulls; there's no reason to think nature as a whole would

correlate with this one tiny system.

in the case of birth control, certain methods may exist as a

historical fact of nature, while others clearly have not. making a

moral judgement based on something's naturalness alone would be very

irresponsible because morality is a much broader issue. it would

obviously not be a good idea to condemn certain surgical procedures

that are clearly not natural, yet might save the life of someone

whose life is justified in a given moral system. as you can see,

i'm making my argument very general.

mike parker

[Guest guest]

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Chris:

> If the difference between homosexuality and cloning is the amount

of time

> each has existed for, this is clearly a relative, not an absolute,

value.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

nothing is absolute; of course it's relative to a given moment in

time, and a subset of nature and time. if we are speaking about the

naturalness of a human phenomenon, then obviously we will be

considering the natural history of our species, not the millions of

years pre-dating it.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

> One could claim that all human technology is " unnatural " but if

that's the

> case, than humans as an entire race are essentially an abberation

from the

> " natural. "

>

> One could equally claim that all technology is a development from

desires

> inclinations and capabilities that are inherent in the " nature " of

humans and as

> such cloning is not something fundamentally new but is another step

in the

> natural unfolding of human ingenuity, essentially just another

building block

> upon paleolithic bone and stone tools.

>

> Chris

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

well, you certainly honed in on the big weak spot of my argument, the

problem of distinguishing nature and technology. we all have some

intuitions about such a distinction, but i'll be the first to admit

it would be very hard to pin this down with any precision. your

phrase " the natural unfolding of human ingenuity " distills the issue

wonderfully. however, note that if we don't make some distinction

of this kind, the concept of " natural " would be vacuous, hence not a

part of our repertoire. it is not clear exactly how to make this

distinction, but it is implicit in our use of " natural " that such a

distinction exists. so this does indeed constitute a dimension of

vagueness for the concept of naturalness, but this has no impact on

my argument in the homosexuality case, and only the most radical

conceptualization of naturalness would vitiate my arguments in the

cloning and birth control cases. as a linguist, i should add that

all words of everyday life are inherently quite vague; something

doesn't have to be precise to be meaningful.

mike parker

[Guest guest]

>One could claim that all human technology is " unnatural " but if that's the

>case, than humans as an entire race are essentially an abberation from the

> " natural

If you go from a Darwinian perspective, then the " natural " philosophy

would be something like " whatever works in the long run " .

Which isn't nearly as difficult to figure out, and since " what works "

also has to take into account our psycho/social nature, kindness

and a happy society have to play into it.

-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

> well, you certainly honed in on the big weak spot of my argument,

the

> problem of distinguishing nature and technology. we all have some

> intuitions about such a distinction, but i'll be the first to admit

> it would be very hard to pin this down with any precision. your

> phrase " the natural unfolding of human ingenuity " distills the issue

> wonderfully. however, note that if we don't make some distinction

> of this kind, the concept of " natural " would be vacuous, hence not a

> part of our repertoire. it is not clear exactly how to make this

> distinction, but it is implicit in our use of " natural " that such a

> distinction exists. so this does indeed constitute a dimension of

> vagueness for the concept of naturalness, but this has no impact on

> my argument in the homosexuality case, and only the most radical

> conceptualization of naturalness would vitiate my arguments in the

> cloning and birth control cases. as a linguist, i should add that

> all words of everyday life are inherently quite vague; something

> doesn't have to be precise to be meaningful.

Mike,

I basically agree with this. My point was that the concept of

" natural " in subjective and relative and could be judged using a

variety of standards, not that it isn't a meaningful or useful

concept. My initial post was that it was amusing to look at the great

variety of standards used in judging the " natural, " and that some of

them are pretty bad ones.

For example, that birth control is " unnatural " because it is natural

to procreate as a result of sexual intercourse is an awful use of the

word, because the simple existence of human agency in a phenomenon

does not make said phenomenon unnatural unless the meaning is expanded

to a degree that renders the term meaningless.

On the other hand, one could use more sensible definitions of natural

such as manipulating processes to mimic or control ones that otherwise

would occur spontaneously though unreliably versus manipulating

processes to occur that would otherwise not occur at all.

But in addition to your usual point about the application, there ARE

problems with the concept, not only its vagueness, which, as you point

out, is perhaps unavoidable in many or most terms, but also in

common definitions that are simply not sensible.

Chris