From: zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reproductiveness
Keywords: Revised Standard Version
Date: 12 Dec 92 18:08:11 GMT
Expires: December 31, 1999
 <1992Dec11.165618.18412@husc3.harvard.edu> <1992Dec12.154421.20705@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Dec12.154421.20705@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
gsmith@polyhymnia.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith) writes:

>In article <1992Dec11.165618.18412@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

>>In article <1992Dec11.183617.20888@sun0.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
>>gsmith@lauren.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de (Gene W. Smith) writes:

MZ:
>>Mr Smith, I am 34 years old, stand 6' in my slippers, weigh 188lbs, and
>>bench press 310lbs.  

GWS:
>At your age you should have learned to act less like a pimply-faced
>geek.  

At my age, Mr Smith, I quickly get bored with rebutting schoolyard
taunts.  Take a clue from Oscar, and get some snap in your repartee,
or your audience will surely come to associate all of the uranist kind
with your exemplary limp wits.

GWS:
>Well, all good things come to an end, and I am going to a math
>conference and Christmas vacation.  But if anybody else wants to play,
>we now have a new and even more incoherent revised standard version of
>Mikhail's "argument" to play with, due to the efforts of yours truly.

Just so you don't have an excuse to pull out prematurely, I am sending
you a copy of my reply.

GWS:
>It begans thusly:
>
>$We start with the argument that the morally relevant function of sex
>$is reproductive.  This means that the *moral* essence of sex is
>$reproductive

	      ,

GWS:
>$	       that is, it is necessarily the case that all morally
>$praiseworthy sex is reproductive, i.e. sex is reproductive in all
>$deontically desirable possible worlds.  The only morally good 
							   ^^^^
							praiseworthy

GWS:
>$								sex is
>$that which involves its 

		       moral

GWS:
>$			  essence.  Therefore, the only morally good sex
>$is that which is reproductive.

GWS:
>Mikhail now wants to say:
>
>$However, it is OK to have sex in such a way that sex is not
>$reproductive, just so long as it still remains the case that sex is
>$possibly reproductive.  However, it is bad to have sex which is
>$necessarily not reproductive, i.e. not reproductive in any possible
>$world, because the desirable sex is reproductive in all possible
>$worlds,        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  ^^^^^^^

No.  I corrected you to read: "because sex is reproductive in all
desirable possible worlds"; consequently we have that sex is morally
praiseworthy if, and only if, the actual world is among the desirable
worlds.  Try thinking whilst you write, and you will surely get it.

GWS:
>$	 and also the only good sex is that which is reproductive in
>$the actual world.
>
>The above appalling balderdash is what Mikhail has annotated and
>approved.  About it he now says:

MZ:
>>I have you exactly where I wanted you, Mr Smith.  It is painfully
>>obvious that your knowledge of modal logic is far inferior to my grasp
>>of category theory.

GWS:
>Uh huh.  We take note of the fact that so far, MZ hasn't demonstrated
>this superior knowledge in any way.  Certainly claiming the above as
>his "argument" doesn't.  Hoo boy.

Based on your performance in this debate, I suspect that you couldn't
take note of your own arse without a flashlight, Mr Smith.  My logical
superiority over your addle-brained self has been amply demonstrated by
my ability to untangle your mess of quantifiers.  If you wish to make a
better impression of yourself, get some remedial instruction.  It is
never too late to learn, even for a tendentious, overeducated shithead.

GWS:
>The revised standard version now continues like this:
>
>$Men and women differ in all morally relevant possible worlds, since it
>$is necessarily the case that a man has an XY genotype and a woman has
>$an XX genotype. This is in fact analytically true.
>
>$Since having the same genotype entails not being reproductive in any
>$possible world, it is morally bad for two people with the same
>$genotype to have sex, since their sex is not reproductive in any
>$possible world, whereas in fact morally praiseworthy sex *is*
>$reproductive in the actual world, whilst morally permissible sex is
>$possibly reproductive between the same partners, i.e. reproductive in
>$some possible world.
>
>$It is all right to for one person to have sex with another so long as
>$they have been to a doctor and made sure that they have opposite
>$genotypes.  This is true even if the woman is sterile or the man
>$infertile, because in some possible world the woman would not be
>$sterile or the man would not be infertile.  However, it should be kept
>$in mind that, in the vast majority of cases, the phenotype corresponds
>$to the genotype.
>
>$However, in no possible world could someone who is somatically a woman
>$but with an XY genotype have an XX genotype, and so in fact she is
>$actually a man, and heterosexual sex with her is really homosexual,
>$whereas lesbian sex with her is heterosexual and in fact entirely free
>$from blame.
>
>$Moreover, it is always fine to have sex using birth control devices,
>$because in some possible world you might not be using birth control
>$devices.  This situation, where a certain form of sex is reproductive
>$in some possible world, but not in this one, is morally neutral, or
>$permissible, because it does not contradict the fact that morally
>$permissible sex is reproductive in some possible world, whereas if the
>$sex is not reproductive in any possible world it would contradict the
>$fact that morally permissible sex ought to be reproductive in some
>$possible world, and therefore be bad.
>
>$Because homosexual sex is not reproductive in all possible worlds,
>$whereas morally desirable sex in fact is reproductive in all morally
>$desirable possible worlds, homosexual sex is a grave moral
>$transgression, nearly as bad as murder, and explaining the depravity
>$of their ways to homosexuals is therefore a highly moral act.

GWS:
>About the process which lead to the creation of the revised standard
>version of the Mikhail Argument, MZ says the following:

MZ:
>>I would call this "negative dialectics", the art of elenctically
>>eliciting the truth from an obstreperous, obstinate nitwit, -- but,
>>alas, the term is already taken.

GWS:
>Finally MZ realizes he is a niwit!  Now to get him to realize that
>what I have elenctically elicited is raving nonsense...

You would do a lot better in this exchange, once you learn to go beyond
the Pee-Wee Herman school of repartee ("I am rubber and you are glue,
etc."); do try to come up with an original putdown now amd then, if only
to demonstrate the superior wit inculcated within you by your thorough
rearing.

MZ:
>>This is fun!  Are you as clueless when you argue about mathematics?
>>Oh yes, you are, -- there is this tiny matter of your idiotic claim
>>of the ontological priority of the cardinal numbers, in a structure
>>built on the backbone of the ordinals.  Sayonara, nitwit!

GWS:
>Look, Pinhead, I did not say cardinal numbers were "ontologically
>prior", I said they were conceptually simpler.  And set theory is not
>"built on the backbone" of ordinal numbers, or these would not be
>defined as sets.

I have come to a conclusion that the best way to make you reveal your
appalling ignorance is to get you talking about logic.  Kindly take
note, in your capacity of a *professional* mathematician, that in an
ontologically foundational discipline like set theory, ontological
priority is precisely a necessary and sufficient condition for
conceptual simplicity.  Concerning the question of proper definitions,  
axiomatic set theory regards a cardinal as an ordinal which is not
equinumerous to (or, if you prefer, injectible into) any smaller
ordinal.  (See Fraenkel, Bar-Hillel, and Levy, _Foundations of Set
Theory_.)  As for ordinals being defined as (\epsilon well-ordered,
transitive) sets, that does not prevent the ZF set theorists from
using the class of all ordinals in the meta-theory, to define the
class of all sets V.  Address your complaints to real mathematicians,
old thing.

GWS:
>What a maroon!

No comment.

GWS:
>Well, and what of the famous argument?  Since I am going away, I won't
>poke any holes in it.  I think these are obvious enough now to
>everyone, and in fact I've succeeded in doing what I wanted to do,
>which was to clarify MZ's "argument" enough so that its problems are
>transparent.  In this I have succeeded so well that in fact we can now
>see it has become raving lunacy.  

To paraphrase John McCarthy, bluster will get Smith nowhere.

GWS:
>				  However, if anyone wants to
>continue, there are a few issues I should bring up for Mikhail's
>benefit.

Why, thank you, o generous and munificent benefactor of my heart.

GWS:
>Things are, shall we say, a little confused.  Is morally desirable sex
>that which is reproductive in this world, or that which is
>reproductive in all morally desirable possible worlds?  MZ says both.

Nope, I do not.  Morally desirable sex is that which is reproductive in
the actual world, or, equivalently, sex is reproductive in all morally
desirable possible worlds.

GWS:
>What does reproductive and essentially reproductive mean?  

The same thing: an act leading to reproduction in virtue of its
essential nature, rather than through a contingent causal circumstance.

GWS:
>							   Is it
>permissible to have sex when reproduction isn't possible, as he says,
>and does that still mean that it is possible in some possible world?

It is permissible to have sex when reproduction is not possible in
virtue of some circumstance unrelated to the essential nature of the
partners.  The salient notion of possibility, on which see Forbes,
regards man as necessarily correlated with his originating zygote, and
so necessarily of a given gender.  Consequently, if reproduction is
excluded in virtue of contraception, menopause, or non-genetic
infertility, it is excluded contingently; whereas if reproduction is
excluded in virtue of *genetic* infertility, such as is caused by
selecting a partner with an incompatible genotype, then for that union,
it is excluded necessarily.

GWS:
>It looks like this is one of those cases where we need to distinguish
>what is possible from what is possibly possible, and so say that in
>some possible world the sex possibly is reproductive.

There is no need to iterate modal operators, provided that an
appropriate notion of modality is selected.

GWS:
>We are in fact getting into a problem because Mikhail has screwed up
>by saying sex is essentially reproductive.  In fact, we can't say all
>sex acts must be reproductive, or the argument breaks down.  Mikhail
>tries to save this by introducing deontic logic, but this doesn't
>work.  We can't say that in all possible worlds, some sex acts are
>reproductive, because in some possible world a disease may have come
>along and made this false, say by entirely eliminating one sex.

Mr Smith, the notion of modality with which we are operating, is not the
realist one of David Lewis (for its assumption is simply unnecessary),
but the stipulative one of Kripke and Co.; I advise you to consult the
texts I cited, before you embark on further irrelevant speculations
regarding what may be stipulated as possible.

GWS:
>Moreover, as we have already mentioned, we the interest is not in
>whether a sex act leads to children, but whether it is possible that
>it does.  Hence the significant thing here is whether, in all possible
>worlds, some possible world exists in which some sex act exists which
>is possibly reproductive.  That is, he *should* say that sex is
>necessarily possibly sometimes possibly reproductive, so that sex is
>essentially possibly sometimes possibly reproductive.

Nonsense.  With my corrections, the significant things were said by you
above.  The argument is simple, and further speculation is groundless.

GWS:
>This now connects with your standard Catholic argument.  The idea here
>is that God made sex, and that its necessary possible sometimes
>possible reproductiveness is the point of sex.  Therefore, sex should
>always be done such a way that it is possibly possibly reproductive,
>or He will be upset.

My argument is made independently of any theistic premisses.

GWS:
>This doesn't work for Mikhail, and in any case he doesn't want to say
>that all sex acts should be possibly possibly reproductive.  It is
>permissible if, between the partners, there exist some sex act which
>is possibly possibly reproductive, even if the particular one being
>done isn't it.  Now, on the theistic theory, God might well get even
>more peeved at this, because here are two people who could be doing
>possibly possible reproductive sex, and they aren't.  But MZ says that
>this is OK, whereas if no sex acts are possibly possibly reproductive
>between two partners, the sex acts are morally bad (even if they are
>identical.)

See above.  Nota bene: having failed to convict me of inconsistency, you
might want to challenge my assumptions.  Feel free to inquire.

GWS:
>If you figure out how this all makes sense, I suggest you get Mikhail
>to pay you $1000.  You'll have earned it.  Good luck, and Merry
>Christmas!

Enjoy your vacation.

>-- 
>     Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/IWR/Ruprecht-Karls University 
>               gsmith@kalliope.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de

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