From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: The word "homophobic"
Date: 15 Dec 92 07:18:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Dec15.021834.18507
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <Bz9FJL.264@watserv2.uwaterloo.ca> 
msmorris@watsci.UWaterloo.ca (Mike Morris) writes:

>
>                                    Monday, the 14th of December, 1992

>Mikhail writes:

MZ:
>>Cruelty is not a weapon, Mike; as I suggested above, it is rather a
>>constituent part of, and raw material for, any moral system you might
>>come up with.  All talk about subordination just gets us back to the
>>issue of sublimation.  No, I regard cruelty, and its gregarious
>>offspring, strife, as valuable in and of themselves, inasmuch as
>>anything which is not the Good, the True, or the Beautiful may be
>>valued at all.  That is to say, their intrinsic worth is solely in the
>>realm of appearances.

MM:
>Good, then I see that you concede my point, inasmuch (that is) as cruelty is
>neither the Good, the True, nor the Beautiful.

OK.

MZ:
>>Time for another instance of trademark name-drop cum literary
>>reference: Albert Camus, _Le mythe de Sisyphe_.  I do hope you take a
>>breather atop that hill, now and then.

MM:
>My memory has it that Camus would have us affirm both the absurdity
>of our labour and the struggle to keep on keeping on, or as Beckett
>puts it ``I can't go on. I'll go on.''

Not quite.  He also has a little epiphany each time he reaches the
summit, just before the rock rolls back down.

MZ:
>>Are you seriously suggesting that the deliberate ruffling of feathers
>>constitutes an ethical breach, exactly insofar as it involves a
>>conscious insouciance for others?

MM:
>Yes, I think that's what I said, and I still do consider it accurate
>I'm afraid.

May I take it then that the avoidance of "conscious isouciance for
others" is one of your moral maxims?  If so, how do you reconcile it
with your own conscious insouciance for my moral principles, evidenced
by your persistent questioning thereof?

MZ:
>>                                  Mike, every time I open a water
>>tap, I perpetrate conscious insouciance for others, exactly isofar as
>>I elect to consume limited resources in disregard of their needs!

MM:
>One does many daily things in conscious insouciance of others. But,
>this is the first time I've met with the idea that turning on
>the tap was equatable with deliberately ruffling someone's feathers.

Your ignorance of precedent is irrelevant to this argument.  If you
fail to appreciate my analogy, look into some discussions of the
conflict between the Categorical Imperative, and the common need to
consume limited resources.

MZ:
>>                                                      More concretely,
>>it may well be that the feathers of others stand in *ethical* need of
>>being ruffled, precisely to the extent their (elide the b-word!)
>>complacency succeeds in replacing the meaningful, invigorating conduct
>>of moral discourse with the mollificative and mechanical making of
>>obeisance to manners.

MM:
>What scares me is that I understood that. If you'll look back at what
>I said, you'll see that I worded it precisely to concede the
>possibility of an *ethical* ruffling of feathers. No quarrels
>from me about that. What's touching is that you would let
>on here to the fact that you care.

Not good enough, I am afraid.  The way you put it, the necessary
condition for an *ethical* ruffling of feathers, is that it be conducted
in the absence of conscious insouciance for them; in other words, the
ruffler must either be unaware of his effect on the rufflee, or conduct
his activities whilst caring about their feelings.  To me, the former
indicates his stupidity, and the latter -- cognitive dissonance.  If I
choose to ruffle somebody's feathers, I do it in full cognizance of the
disagreeable effect my action has on the patient; however my care is not
for him, but for the principle.

MZ:
>Whether you really are playing the Socratic gadfly, on the other hand,
>is an open question to me. In the case of Gene, perhaps you are aiming
>at some good other than baiting him for your own entertainment. In the case
>of Terrance, your exercise of cruelty seemed pretty pointlessly sophomoric.

I beg to differ.  Terrance's little ditty might as well have been sung
by Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Adolph Hitler, with the very same moral
implications, or total lack thereof.

[redemption, bean-counting, and broadening one's outlook]

>I said:

MM:
>>>It is because I regard the moral condemnation of homosexual intercourse
>>>*per se* as intuitively unacceptable that I am interested in finding
>>>out what are the first principles you base your condemnation of it
>>>on.

>Mikhail writes:

MZ:
>>Again, our beef seems to be over fundamental issues.  Assuming, that
>>is, that your moral philosophy is founded in something more solid than
>>your intuitive judgment of (un)acceptability.

MM:
>I thought I told you my moral judgment was based on the harm that
>actions cause to others and to one's self. Homosexual intercourse
>seems to me to do no essential harm either to one's self or
>to another, and it also seems to me to be as good a platform as
>much heterosexual sex upon which to occasion positive good for
>another as well as for one's self, so I see no *natural* argument
>condemning it, given what I understand to be the essential freedom of
>human nature.

I thought we had agreed that your appeal to harm was circular, because
there is no way to estimate the *moral* harm caused by an action,
independently of making a prior moral judgment of its merits.

MZ:
>>Sexuality is complementary to mortality; see my synopsis of Bataille
>>elsewhere.  As for mortality becoming an engineering question in the
>>near future, keep dreaming.  Even if that should come to pass, there
>>is no reason to suppose that the fundamental nature of human beings is
>>invulnerable to change.  Free will is, of course, a prerequisite for
>>all moral discourse, which I neglected to articulate.

MM:
>Free will is also, I would say, an essential characteristic of human
>nature, perhaps *the* essential characteristic, distinguishing the
>primary way in which men differ from animals and algorithmic computer
>programs and zenigmatically conscious rocks.

"zenigmatically conscious rocks"?  I'll have whatever you are having...

As for your cult of free will, you ought to read more Spinoza.

MM:
>Yet I remarked another freedom, which wasn't just the freedom
>to choose between good and evil, but the freedom to choose among
>many good paths.

The claimed multiplicity remains to be demonstrated; I suspect that it
is an artefact of your pluralistic prejudices.

MM:
>(I'm not holding my breath for nanotechnological cell repair. But
>it might well be reasonable for my grandkids to. And did you mean
>your penultimate sentence above to be exactly that? It'd sound
>more incisive if ``invulnerable'' were changed to ``vulnerable'', is
>all.)

I said exactly what I meant.  You should consider reading for content,
rather than incisiveness.

MZ:
>>Mike, please read my responses to Luke and others.  I have no time to
>>repeat the same simple points over and over.  Believe it or not, --
>>and I really don't care whether you, or anyone else who happens to
>>read these lines, will take my word for it, -- the kinds of technical
>>distinctions I make are incontrovertible, and largely uncontroversial
>>in present-day moral philosophy.  (The way I apply them is another
>>matter; but that, I suspect, is due mostly to political exigencies.)
>>Once again, the moral aspect of an agent's sexuality is constituted by
>>the intrinsic moral nature of his sexual acts; the latter in turn is
>>determined by the breakdown into morally praiseworthy, morally
>>neutral, or morally blameworthy, according as the generative capacity
>>is exercised, deliberately avoided, or necessarily excluded by the act
>>itself, never mind any of its contingent consequences.

MM:
>I have no doubt now that your *logic* is incontrovertible. It just sounds
>to me like: ``(1) One is under a moral imperative to diddlyfarb. 
>(2) Most people don't diddlyfarb most of the time. (3) So, let
>us distinguish between ordinary non-diddlyfarbing and special
>(or ``necessary'') non-diddlyfarbing, and only morally condemn
>the special kind. (4) Special non-diddlyfarbing shall henceforth be
>defined to mean homosexual intercourse. (5) Ergo, homosexual intercourse
>is morally condemnable.'' I have no problem seeing that (5) follows.
>My problem is mainly that (4) is not in any way a *natural* definition,
>it is contrived precisely to yield you (5), and not to condemn anything
>you don't want to condemn along the way. The most natural consequence of (1)
>and (2) to me might be only to condemn the deliberate choice never to
>diddlyfarb. Either that, or to condemn all individual deliberately
>non-generative sex.

Nope, -- "to be fruitful and multiply" is not a moral imperative, but a
human end.  The imperative is not to act in a way which contradicts the
attainment of this end, rather than merely fails to attain it through
irrelevance or even deliberate avoidance.  Contradicting reproduction is
analyzed as inherent to a course of action, which is normally conducive
to its attainment, but in this particular variety excludes it in virtue
of its nature.  By analogy, contradicting the human end of preservation
of one's own, and thereafter, all human life, is not a mere failure to
preserve somebody's existence, but a deliberate termination of the same,
i.e. murder.

MM:
>A diagram might be helpful. We have to consider:
>
>A). Heterosexual intercourse
>B). Heterosexual contracepted intercourse
>C). Heterosexual non-vaginal sex
>D). Homosexual sex
>E). Celibacy
>F). Masturbation
>
>In terms of *generation*, only A) does the trick, with the possible
>inclusion of B), given the slight imperfection of birth control. That is,
>of course, if you still mean to consider only single sexual encounters.

When I change my mind on that, or anything else, I'll make sure to
inform you.

MM:
>If you are rather meaning a lifetime of behaviour (which I think
>was the Greek way,

I think not.  What is your evidence?

MM:
>		    and certainly much the wiser course with respect to
>the question of generation), then I can see grouping
>the first three together *within the institution of marriage
>and under the commitment of having children*. The first three might
>all be considered activities that advance a baby-making union (that is,
>it being always understood here that making babies is your commandment).

Again, your understanding is in error.

MM:
>But you seem to want to draw the line between C) and D) for single
>sexual acts without reference to whether there's a commitment ever
>to make babies. I mean fine, you can do that, and make your logic
>right by definition, but what reference to reality does it make? 

Moral reality, as distinguished from the religious phantasm of
redemption, is constituted by single acts, the totality of which is not
in any way guaranteed to cohere in a harmonious whole.  I call it the
Accounting Fallacy to presume that human existence is possessed of an
individual "bottom line".  There is absolutely no reason to suppose that
moral judgments must come equipped with a linear metric of probity and
depravity, required for such final analysis.  But I am repeating myself;
kindly try to avoid harping on the same hackneyed, fallacious points.

MM:
>								Again, you 
>carve off F) because you *define* ``sexual'' as requiring at least two
>participants.

Mike, the nature of human sexuality requires at least two participants.

Normally, (# of diploid chromosomes)/(# of haploid chromosomes) = 2.

Feel free to call any other pleasurable use of one's genitals `parasexual'.

MM:
>	       Yet you lumped deliberate celibacy with homosexual sex for
>its failure to honour the generative capacity. Now, I see only two definitions
>of ``sexual'' that I would think are natural. The first (I prefer) would
>refer to any use or deliberate non-use of the sexual organs, i.e. would
>include behaviours A) through F). The second would be to do as K.J. Dover
>does and divide acts into sexual and parasexual on something like your
>generative basis (i.e. to say we have the organs *for* generation---

An infelicitous idiom.

MM:
>something I have indicated is not at all clear to me---and those behaviours
>are sexual which are at least possibly generative, or A) and possibly
>B) only). I see no natural way, though to include homosexual sex as
>sexual, but to exclude masturbation as not sexual.

See above.

>I said:

MM:
>>>I think that the only necessity relevant for deciding whether
>>>any sexual act is covered by a moral standard which
>>>takes generation as an imperative is the causal necessity appealed
>>>to by the human beings making the choice not to generate. In
>>>this sense, I fail to see the essential difference between choosing
>>>to have homosexual intercourse and choosing to engage in heterosexual
>>>oral sex.  Both deny the generative capacity to the same degree
>>>of *necessity*.

>Mikhail responded:

MZ:
>>Bullshit.  For one thing, only one of them allows the participants to
>>deliberately switch to a potentially generative venue, *within* the
>>sexual union.  Thus the degree of necessity differs, for even a barren
>>heterosexual couple will still possess the sexual equipment inherently
>>compatible with reproductive ends.

MM:
>Nonsense. There's nothing preventing a homosexual couple exactly
>in the middle of lovemaking to choose to go off and have generative
>sex. Nothing *essentially* excludes this. They haven't cut off their
>equipment, denied its existence, or otherwise failed to thank God
>for the gift. They've just put it to a pleasurable use, just like
>a contraceptive heterosexual couple, and they can at any time choose,
>just like the heterosexual couple, to do something different.

In the latter case, the "something different" would have to be another,
independent action, whilst in the former, a continuity could be
maintained.  End of discussion.

[good instead of right]

MZ:
>>You choose your behavior, which underlies, but does not constitute,
>>your fundamental identity, whether sexual or personal.  Try as you
>>might, you could no more choose to be a woman, than you could choose
>>to be me.

MM:
>But, again, I do choose my behaviour. I certainly cannot choose
>to be a woman or you, but perhaps you can say why I should not choose
>to behave like a woman or you?

How could you?  The means to do so are not available to you.

MZ:
>>That's a red herring, though certainly also a _Roter Fadian_, if you
>>know your Freud.  Incidentally, I find the term `Holocaust' to be
>>rather inappropriate, for reasons of etymology.  Finally, I would
>>prefer not to contribute to the fulfillment of Godwin's Law.

MM:
>I'm afraid I don't know my Freud.

See his joke book.

MM:
>				   As I've remarked before though, I have
>listened to Bruno Bettelheim complaining about `Holocaust' for the same reason
>of etymology---he considered it impious to mix the sacred up with the most
>evil of human works. Personally, I like Elie Wiesel's coinage for exactly
>this reason. It is because ``Where was God?'' is the most natural
>question in the world to ask. I also liked Bettelheim's answer to the
>old man in the audience who asked it: ``Where was man?'', but I found
>this second question could not fully assuage the rebel's anger aroused
>by God's essential silence to the first.

I find none of this very satisfactory.  Wiesel is a prime nudnik, and
his coinage is no credit to his intelligence or sensibility.

>I said:

MM:
>>>(Though I would prefer to command affirmation of the ``common world''
>>>---meaning the total legacy of culture, including children---instead of
>>>just children.)

>Mikhail responded:

MZ:
>>I believe that the morally relevant world is no more common than Aristotle.

MM:
>I believe the usage comes from Hannah Arendt. And I do think you
>are making a mistake to insist on generation. For what it is worth,
>while I do not buy protestations of overpopulation, I do not believe
>that anyone should choose to have a child, who doesn't *want* that
>child, and I believe that forcing, or strongly urging, the generation
>of possibly unwanted children is a mistake.

That's precisely what contraception is for.

>I asked:

MM:
>>>Then who is it exactly who has this right in one's person?
>>>Do you mean one's parents? Or God?

>Mikhail responded:

MZ:
>>Why, of course a Platonic universal, "one over many".

MM:
>Why, of course not. Unless you want to launch into your
>special definition here for this ``right'' in one's person?

Nothing special is needed here.  The right in question is complementary
to the duty described above.  Unlike you, I see no reason to limit the
ascription of rights to rational agents; indeed, I prefer to regard this
disquisition as an instance of exercising the right of Truth in my
person.

>Mikhail wrote:

MZ:
>>>On the contrary, if sexuality is possessed of moral value, then any
>>>instance of willful deviation of one's sexuality from its moral ends
>>>(that is, the moral ends of the agent in his sexuality) may be counted
>>>as immoral, especially if this deviation involves a fundamental
>>>incompatibility of the participants and their moral ends.

>I responded, where he has now commented it:

MM:
>>>At first you seem to say that all the deliberately non-generative
>>>sex that my wife and I have had, and will continue to have, is
>> 							       ^^

MZ:
>>I say "may be", e.g. as done by the Catholic doctrine.

MM:
>>>immoral. Then there's the ``especially'' meant to catch homosexual
>>>sex. Is there another reason for ``especially''?

MZ:
>>To distinguish my doctrine from that of Aquinas.

MM:
>Then, either you do condemn all of the *deliberately* non-generative
>sex my wife and I have had, or this ``may be'' condemns not
>homosexual intercourse in the same way---i.e., insofar as
>the homosexual intercourse may fit within a whole, otherwise
>generative life.

Again, a whole life need not concern me, until and unless you show me a
way to define a moral metric.  Just one more time, slowly: the question
is that of the morality of a given sexual act, involving an agent, and a
certain sexual object.  The participants are individuated by their
essence, or haecceity, i.e. "thisness", which in the kind of modal logic
we have to appeal to in this issue, includes all of their respective
genotypes, as well as certain other aspects of their carnal and personal
identities.  That the choice of a particular mode of sexual conduct is
secondary to the stipulation of the agent and his object (note that I do
not assume any sort of exclusive agent-patient dichotomy, though a
certain distinction along these lines seems to be implicit in the nature
of male and female sexuality; both parties are in turn to be considered
as agents and objects) is evident not only from this consideration, but
also from an argument modelled on Berkeley's rejection of the idea of an
arbitrary triangle: there simply is no such thing as an arbitrary sexual
act, independently of the specific identities of its participants.  And
once you realize that the choice of a partner is far more fundamental
than the choice of a venue, the rest of my reasoning follows
analytically.

Please observe that the following belongs to the provenance of
meta-discussion; accordingly, I suggest that we attempt to keep it
separated from the main issue.

>I had asked:

MM:
>>>>>Are you meaning morally repugnant or is it rather aesthetically repugnant?

>Mikhail responded (*):

MZ:
>>>>What's the difference?

>I wrote:

MM:
>>>                                         But, lest you are too
>>>quick to lump me with the Stagirite, let me say that I believe
>>>there's a unification theory. I just don't think it comes from
>>>getting all New-Age weepy and mystical, or that speculations on
>>>aesthetics immediately export into ethical commandments.

>Mikhail asks:

MZ:
>>Who said anything about immediacy?

MM:
>You did. (cf. (*) above) Again, there may well be an underlying unity,
>but, it doesn't mean that moral repugnance and aesthetic repugnance
>are the same thing.

I make no distinction between distal and proximate identity.

MM:
>Here are a couple of literary examples of what I mean:

CFT:
>The Master spoke of the Succession Dance as being perfect beauty
>and at the same time perfect goodness; but of the War Dance as being
>perfect beauty, but not perfect goodness. [_The Analects_, III.25, tr.
>                                        by Arthur Waley]

Well, that's his problem.

WBY:
>       The Lover tells of the Rose in his Heart
>
>All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,
>The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,
>The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,
>Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
>
>The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;
>I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,
>With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a casket of gold
>For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart.
>                                   W.B. Yeats

MM:
>The Yeats poem I think is particularly telling. ``The wrong of
>unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told.'' If we were
>to follow that aesthetic impulse, what would we not do to the
>crying baby? In my experience there is no noise more intrinsically
>upsetting than that of a crying child, not chalk squeaking on a
>blackboard, nor the harsh clamoring for attention of a television set.
>But the television set I'd turn off, kill in other words. Why not do
>the same to the baby? That is, if there is no separate ethical judgment
>to be made?

Why not indeed?  (See Faust, Part I.)  Seriously, intrinsically
upsetting is certainly not the same as intrinsically unshapely.

MM:
>I do not deny that you can unify Beauty and the Good. I just deny
>that you can do so all the way along each of the paths.

Mike, unification is only good for made things, not the abstract
universals.  Aside from that, the paths to each may differ in detail,
but converge in purpose.

>Regarding the unity of the Good, Beauty, and Truth, I said:

MM:
>>>But this was exactly my point. They are three independent quests,
>>>a Platonic unity a possibility only at a supra- (as distinct
>>>from infra-) rational endpoint.

>Mikhail responds:

MZ:
>>I see either no ground, or no need for this distinction, depending on
>>what you mean by it.  Please elaborate, so that I may destroy it
>>conclusively.

MM:
>You're misreading Plato. He says no to rock & roll because
>it is going to excite the infrarational passions. 

Ho hum.  What is the Greek word for "infrarational"?

By the way, I note that you still haven't accounted for the Socratic
encomium to _mania_.

MM:
>						   The Good, on
>the other hand (and presumably Beauty, which you are
>wanting to unify with it) lies beyond reason itself, meaning it
>is not rational in and of itself, but you have to go through
>reason, exhausting reason, to get to to it.

Chapter and verse, please.

MZ:
>>What is "Elevating the wrong category of judgment"?  In any event, how
>>does your point vitiate my implied Platonic assertion?

MM:
>It doesn't vitiate it. It just challenges you to tell where the unity
>is. ``Elevating the wrong category of judgment'' means doing to the baby
>what you might ethically do to the TV set.

Sounds like you are confusing your good (in this instance, comfort),
with the Good.  See above.

>Regarding the Nazis' notion of racial purity, Mikhail responds:  

MZ:
>>Well, it is a stupid aesthetic concept, and _ipso facto_, a stupid
>>ethical concept.  You are playing in my hands.

MM:
>Why stupid? Picasso sticking to blue or rose was stupid? Aristotle's
>unities were stupid?

Where were Picasso or Aristotle concerned with racial purity?

>I asked:

MM:
>>>Can I take it then that we are agreed that aesthetics and ethics are
>>>distinct, except for the possibility of this Platonic unification?

>Mikhail responds:

MZ:
>>Of course not!  Where did you get any inkling of this agreement?

MM:
>I grant the possibility of the Platonic unification, I grant the
>possibility that the correct ethics and aesthetics are interleaved
>such as to allow no conflict. Do you not yet concede that
>aesthetic judgments, if made without reference to ethical concern,
>can be in conflict with ethical judgments?

Certainly not if both are made correctly.  I see no need to be unduly
concerned with errors of judgment, however common they may be.

>Mikhail writes:

MZ:
>>Mike, I am just not terribly interested in condemning acts that do not
>>involve other people.  As Baudelaire observed, the most annoying thing
>>about love, is that it is a crime, which always requires an
>>accomplice.  If you insist, yes, masturbation is wrong, precisely to
>>the extent that any waste of time may be wrong.  Still, it beats
>>watching television, -- for its nature is not nearly as stultifying.
>>With bestiality and necrophilia, things are a bit worse, as both acts
>>involve a certain degree of attachment to unworthy objects.  But
>>homosexuality, which involves willing participation of another human
>>being in an essentially barren sexual activity, seems to me very
>>nearly exemplary of sexual perversion, second only to erotic murder in
>>its blameworthiness.

MM:
>Well, your last flourish maybe earns some of Gene's outrage, but,
>as I've already mentioned above, you've condemned priestly celibacy
>for the same sexual-ethical reason you condemned homosexual intercourse.
>And yet priestly celibacy surely invloves no more people than masturbation.

Same reason, different situation.

MM:
>And not just as a possible waste of time, but because of an essential
>denial of generative capacity. Why doesn't masturbation fall under
>the same proscription? You can't say well, the masturbator fully
>intends to engage in generative intercourse at another time, because
>you have restricted your attention to individual acts, and, after all,
>the person engaged in homosexual intercourse might want to make exactly the
>same plea.

Correct.  Both deliberate celibacy and masturbation are wrong _qua_
waste of time.

MZ:
>>Define sublimation.

MM:
>Are you saying that for sex to be moral
				   ^^^^^

				praiseworthy

MM:
> 					 it must be an act of worship,
>a subordination of the will to some externally prescribed and
>circumscribed			     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
	inherent deontic

MM:
>		necessity? That if there isn't this homage (and the
>consequent transport or sublimation into some divinely gifted mania)
>to Nature, or Nature's God, intended, the sexual act isn't moral?
>Is your condemnation over some kind of impiety, in other words?

Yes, if you wish to revert to the eusebian lexicon of the _Euthyphro_.
However, I would prefer to stick to secular discourse.

MM:
>I'm going to go off to Indianapolis on Wednesday and will be back
>early next week, so I'd appreciate getting an email copy of any
>reply.

Done.

>                    Mike Morris
>           (msmorris@watsci.uwaterloo.ca)

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Le cul des femmes est monotone comme l'esprit des hommes."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books