From: jmfuchs@unix.amherst.edu (JESSE MICHAEL FUCHS)
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductiveness
Followup-To: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
Organization: Amherst College
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL7]
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:42:32 GMT

Michael Zeleny (zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu) wrote:
> In article <BzEAGC.C4o@unix.amherst.edu> 
> jmfuchs@unix.amherst.edu (JESSE MICHAEL FUCHS) writes:
> 
> >Michael Zeleny (zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu) wrote:
> 
> >>In article <1992Dec16.212451.25986@cbnewsj.cb.att.com>
> >>ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) writes:
> 
> >>>In article <1992Dec16.152321.18570@husc3.harvard.edu>
> >>>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
> 
> >>>>In article <BzCIMK.AK3@unix.amherst.edu>
> >>>>jmfuchs@unix.amherst.edu (JESSE MICHAEL FUCHS) writes:
> 
> JMF:
> >>>>>	But anyway, Mickey, you still haven't answered why oral sex between a
> >>>>>male and female would be okay (assuming that you feel so,) but that oral sex
> >>>>>between two men is bad. I'm pretty sure you can't come up with a logical,
> >>>>>clearly stated reason
> 
> MZ:
> >>>>The short form: because only in the former case, the partners can
> >>>>switch to a potentially productive venue within their union, at any
> >>>>time before the climax.  The long form will be found in my latest
> >>>>reply to Mike Morris.  I await my promised reward.
> 
> [sententious malediction omitted]
> 
> ECL:
> >>>Even if one grants the premise that a potentially productive union is
> >>>some alternate world is necessary for certain configurations to be
> >>>approved--and a more ludicrous premise
> 
> MZ:
> >>The difference between a premiss and a derived principle is normally
> >>covered in an introductory logic course.
> 
> JMF:
> >	I hate to be the one to break it to you, Mickey, but there are no
> >prequisites or course requirements to being on the net. Not all of us have the
> >time nor inclination to take a logic course - personally, I think it would be
> >fun and useful, but I simply have too many other things to take. If you can't
> >explain the difference using precise, clear English, don't even bother to 
> >bring it up.
> 
> Skippy, there is no excuse for ignorance of logic, grammar, or
> rhetoric, particularly when one presumes to flame others for their
> alleged lack.  Besides, if you are not skilled in the trivium, you
> will not recognize precise, clear English, even when you see it.
	There is a simple excuse for an ignorance of "logic," this being
defined as not the inherent faculty that all humans have, but as that thing my
girlfriend went to class at 8:30 in the morning to learn and got a B+ in. The
excuse is that we didn't learn it. Instead of logic, I took courses on Japanese
literature, my fave academic subject. Now, just because I think everyone should
take as much Japanese literature as possible doesn't mean that it would be fair
of me to bring up, say, Bunraku in an argument without explaining what it is
in precise, clear English, and then chastising people for being too ignorant to
know what Bunraku is, and how there is no excuse for not having a working
knowledge of Japanese literature. (By the way, Bunraku is Japanese puppet 
theater - although over there it is considered a much more high-brow form of
entertainment than, say, The Muppets.)
> 
> ECL:
> >>>					 I haven't seen in a long
> >>>time--I have no problem seeing that two women or two men could have a
> >>>potentially productive union in *some* world.  (Maybe it's my science
> >>>fiction background.)  Therefore, by your "reasoning," their union
> >>>should be okay.  If you can't envision such a world, that, my friend,
> >>>is *your* problem, not mine.
> 
> MZ:
> >>Ditto for the difference between the possible and the conceivable.
> 
> JMF:
> >	I make this point in another post, but what the heck, I'll make it 
> >again, in a slightly different fashion. A completely, genetically barren
> >woman (perhaps one with XY chromosomes, for instance, who didn't get enough
> >testosterone in the womb - it's rare, but it happens) suddenly becoming 
> >fertile is impossible. Certainly conceivable (no pun intended,) but not
> >possible. 
> 
> From the standpoint concerned with the essential nature (admittedly
> neither legal, nor social), as represented by the genotype, your
> protagonist would be male, appearances and phenotype notwithstanding.
	So this means that you, Mikhail "Mickey" Zeleny, may have engaged in
homosexual sex any number of times and NOT EVEN KNOWN IT. Shudder...Anyway,
the XY chromosome individual was just an example of someone who would be the
most easily graspable example of someone who is completely barren - however,
Mickey, I await to see your argument restated to include women who are just
really, irrevocably barren.
> 
> > perkily,
> > jesse fuchs@unix.amherst.edu
> > "Donde esta el concerto Menudo?
>  
> cordially,
> mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
> "Nothing can be said truly of what does not exist."

								-Skippy 
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc