One common misconception in the same-sex marriage debate is the idea that the traditional legal definition of marriage is a violation of equal rights. Since this is an extremely emotionally charged accusation, it’s difficult to get past it into a real discussion of the issue.
Here’s the approach I usually take:
1. Nearly everyone who thinks the government ought to issue marriage licenses favors defining marriage in some way. That is, they favor excluding some combinations of people (polygamy, incest, etc.), not individuals, from the definition. Even judges. Even you!
2. You can’t consistently argue that by excluding certain combinations of people, traditional marriage violates equal rights—unless you also argue to remove every single boundary from the definition of marriage and say anyone can marry anyone, in whatever combination of numbers they like.
3. If you’re not willing to argue this, then you’re for having a definition with boundaries, which puts you on equal footing with the traditional marriage supporters.
4. So the question is, which definition should we use? It’s fine for you to argue that your definition of “two people who love each other” is better than my definition of “one man, one woman,” or someone else’s definition of “one man, multiple women,” but we need to start off by understanding that we’re arguing definitions, not rights.
It’s not unconstitutional to adopt either my or your definition, as long as it’s applied equally to every individual. Remember that the Constitution doesn’t recognize rights for combinations of people; rights only belong to individuals. So one can’t say that a man and five women have a right to get married; one can only say that each individual man or woman has the right to enter into marriage (no individual is excluded). This right is then acted upon according to the boundaries set by the state’s definition of what marriage is—boundaries which are equally applied to every individual. You would like to equally apply the boundary of “two people who love each other” (excluding some other combinations), and I would like to apply the boundary of “one man, one woman” to each individual equally.
But I agree that the boundaries we place on marriage need to be relevant to the institution of marriage in order to be legitimate, so why don’t we sit down and talk about the reasons why we each think the country should use our definition?
This definition-vs.-rights issue needs to be clarified. Otherwise, if you’re arguing for the boundaries of traditional marriage, you’ll enter the argument having already been unfairly declared an unconstitutional bigot before any of your reasons are explained (despite the fact that your opponent also favors certain boundaries), and anyone would be unlikely to listen to the reasons why you’re an unconstitutional bigot. We have to get past this first barrier if we want to be given the chance to make our case.
[Cross-posted at Stand to Reason]
August 10th, 2011 | 4:32 am | #1
This is now argued about so much that I wonder if anyone ever stops to think, “How did this happen?” How did something so clear become so murky. It is a travesty that the culture has come to not only embrace homosexuality as good and normal, but it also wants to sanctify it. That we’ve gone so far from truth is enough to make one weep.
August 10th, 2011 | 10:01 am | #2
[...] We’re Arguing Definitions, Not Rights Evangel, Amy Hall Comments (0) [...]
August 10th, 2011 | 10:55 am | #3
[...] SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEBATE: “We’re Arguing Definitions, Not Rights.” So the question is, which definition should we use? It’s fine for you to argue that your [...]
August 10th, 2011 | 11:02 am | #4
This is a bit confused. Yes there’s an issue of definition, and yes any plausible definition of marriage will exclude some combination of people. However, it simply doesn’t follow that there’s no issue of rights as well. If a definition a) excludes certain combinations for no good reasons and b) in doing so burdens a specific group, then there are grounds to the charge of unjust discrimination. That is the argument pro SSM folks are making.
August 10th, 2011 | 1:04 pm | #5
Hi Tristian,
Could it be that it’s really a matter of worldviews? That if one adopts the naturalistic worldview that matter and nature are all there is, then anything is possible and cannot be condemned because morality is nonsensical, but that if one adopts a theistic worldview, that God is there and is not silent, then He gets to make the rules?
August 10th, 2011 | 1:51 pm | #6
Steve, I don’t think that’s the issue really. For one thing, it’s just not the case that naturalism entails, or leads its adherents to believe, that ‘morality is nonsensical.’ More to the point, the gay marriage issue is about the law and and the role of a state that is, or at least should be, committed to treating all citizens equally, regardless of their world views. Any resolution will be legitimate only if and to the extent it makes no assumptions about ultimate questions.
August 10th, 2011 | 2:05 pm | #7
I read up to point #2. Ms. Hall apparently thinks that laws prohibiting adults from marrying 5-year-olds should be just as much an equal rights issue as laws prohibiting SSM. What sort of conception of the “equal rights” issue would lead someone to think this?
For a tentative defense of anti-polygamy laws that is sensitive to the equal rights issue (or at least to a more compelling conception of that issue), consider this paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1331492
August 10th, 2011 | 3:33 pm | #8
Stopping at #2 causes you to misinterpret the point, JGY. She doesn’t claim that civil rights allows for anything — she rightly concludes that once you concede that civil rights *doesn’t* allow for everything, you’ve admitted that there are boundaries that can’t be crossed. You actually have to follow the argument, not stick your fingers in your ears as soon as you hear something you don’t like.
Suck it up and read the whole thing and you’ll understand why your objection doesn’t hold. Maybe. I’m sure you still won’t agree, but at least disagree with the actual argument, not one you made up.
August 10th, 2011 | 3:54 pm | #9
An analogy:
Religion (religious freedom) is a right and a definition, and by Constitutional necessity, any definition must protect by our inalienable rights.
As Americans, we have the right to practice a religion of our own choice, though occasionally the religious status of given set of beliefs and practices has been legally challenged. The Supreme Court devised this test in response to UNITED STATES v. SEEGER, 380 U.S. 16:
The test of religious belief within the meaning of the exemption in 6 (j) is whether it is a sincere and meaningful belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption…
INTERPRETATION OF 6 (j).
…In spite of the elusive nature of the inquiry, we are not without certain guidelines. In amending the 1940 Act, Congress adopted almost intact the language of Chief Justice Hughes in United States v. Macintosh, supra:
“The essence of religion is belief in a relation to God involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation.” At 633-634.
By comparing the statutory definition with those words, however, it becomes readily apparent that the Congress deliberately broadened them by substituting the phrase “Supreme Being” for the appellation “God.” And in so doing it is also significant that Congress did not elaborate on the form or nature of this higher authority which it chose to designate as “Supreme Being.” By so refraining it must have had in mind the admonitions of the Chief [380 U.S. 163, 176] Justice when he said in the same opinion that even the word “God” had myriad meanings for men of faith:
“[P]utting aside dogmas with their particular conceptions of deity, freedom of conscience itself implies respect for an innate conviction of paramount duty. The battle for religious liberty has been fought and won with respect to religious beliefs and practices, which are not in conflict with good order, upon the very ground of the supremacy of conscience within its proper field.” At 634.
August 10th, 2011 | 4:02 pm | #10
This, BTW, is why opponents like to call it Same Sex Marriage instead of Gay Marriage — it’s not about who the individuals are (who cares whether the person’s gay or not?) it’s about who everyone in the marriage is.
August 10th, 2011 | 9:02 pm | #11
@Tristian:
This is a bit confused.
True, but not nearly as confused as your response.
If a definition a) excludes certain combinations for no good reasons
Pointless; this completely begs the question at hand, and asserts that the opinion holder has no interest in even discussing the actual issue.
and b) in doing so burdens a specific group, then there are grounds to the charge of unjust discrimination.
False. This is wrong on so many levels that a combox cannot do justice to a response, yet it is so representative of the muddleheadedness of liberal social prejudice! Laws that discriminate between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior do not discriminate against people who want to do what is unacceptable. Laws against incest do not discriminate against people who want to commit incest (or against people with parents!); they discriminate between what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and they are justly applied universally and impartially.
None of this, of course, has anything to do with SSM, which is not at all a form of marriage that should be either licit or illicit on the grounds that it is acceptable or unacceptable; rather it is a logical absurdity that cannot possibly be either a licit or illicit form of marriage, because it is not marriage whatsoever. And saying so don’t make it so. That’s the real confusion. There cannot be a valid law declaring SSM either licit or illicit, any more than there can be a valid law making it licit or illicit for a pig to be a chicken. The discussion is beyond stupid.
A definition is, by definition, the truth about something. You can’t change the truth about something by saying it’s something else – even if you find the lie more personally appealing.
August 10th, 2011 | 10:05 pm | #12
Mr. Gillis, you said:
“Laws that discriminate between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior do not discriminate against people who want to do what is unacceptable.”
If you add “legitimately” between the first “that” and “discriminate” you might actually find the point I was making. To put it more plainly, laws that discriminate for good reasons are ok. Laws that discriminate for spurious reasons are not ok. The debate about SSM is whether current marriage laws are of the former sort or the latter sort.
The point I was making against Ms. Hall is simply this: proponents of gay marriage do not object to current laws because they exclude some kinds of relationships. They object because they believe these laws exclude gay relationships for no good reason.
August 11th, 2011 | 4:23 am | #13
Mr Gillis
“A definition is, by definition, the truth about something.”
No, it is not. Only a proposition can be true or false. Suppose a law provided, “In this Act, “poultry” shall include pigs,” that would be a perfectly valid definition of the meaning to be attached to the word “poultry.” as used in the Act.
August 11th, 2011 | 7:48 am | #14
Re: Steve Drake in #5, I strongly agree. For a more fully developed version of this, may I suggest this BreakPoint article, leading up to the paragraphs on “God—Not ‘Traditional Values’—Is the Issue”?
August 11th, 2011 | 7:57 am | #15
Tristian, you wrote,
This is a rather astonishing statement you have made. The role of a state has never been to treat all citizens equally. I have a couple of friends who are in the military. The state treats me differently than it does them. They get salaries directly from the state, but they have requirements and expectations from the state that I do not have. This is unequal treatment by the state, but no one would call it illegitimate.
I have other friends whom the state has incarcerated. The state is playing its proper role in keeping them in prison. That too is unequal treatment.
But on what basis does it do this? The state has determined that self-defense is a high priority, to the extent that some people may give up their lives for it. It has determined that human dignity, property rights, life, sexual wholeness, and so on are of such high value that those who violate them should be imprisoned.
These values are all related to ultimate questions, including Is there such a thing as human dignity? (Skinner didn’t think so, based on his ultimate conception of what it meant to be human; at least not in any historic or conventional sense.) If there is, then what does it mean? What is the value of a life, compared to the defense of a nation?
You assert that no resolution is legitimate if it makes any assumptions about ultimate questions. This is just obviously wrong, and I urge you to discard that opinion, as it deserves to be discarded.
August 11th, 2011 | 9:17 am | #16
To say everyone should be treated equally under the law is to say everyone should have equal standing, not that everyone should be treated identically. That is, no one should be given preferential treatment, everyone has equal rights, and so on. Obviously the same law can be applied fairly to two people with drastically different outcomes–the one guilty of a crime goes to jail, the innocent one doesn’t. That doesn’t mean they weren’t treated equally under the law.
My assertion about the state and ultimate questions is a rather mundane way of capturing the core idea of liberal democracy–the actions of the state should leave questions of the sort traditionally answered by religions to individuals to grapple with rather than impose any one viewpoint on everyone, dissenters included. This leaves plenty of room for a shared commitment to things like the value of life and basic rights, as those we can agree on despite our differences.
August 11th, 2011 | 9:52 am | #17
This is more reasonable for sure, Tristian, but still there are problems with it. To say that everyone should have equal standing is fine, but it gives us no help in deciding how marriage is defined. It is quite possible and legitimate to define marriage as an institution for one man and one woman, and to allow each person equal standing under laws that accord with that definition. Is that what you had in mind? For it is perfectly consistent with what you wrote.
Your second paragraph raises more questions than it answers, if you’re trying to find support in it for same-sex “marriage.” For example: Is the definition of marriage “traditionally answered by religion”? I don’t think so. Look at the history of marriage around the world: marriage is not defined by religion in all cases. Also, if same-sex “marriage” is sanctioned by the state, does that mean there is no one viewpoint being imposed on everyone, dissenters included? No, actually, this imposition is already happening: the viewpoint that same-sex couples should be treated just like married couples is being forced upon dissenters.
And again, do we really agree on the value of life? Not everyone does. Do we have a “shared commitment to … basic rights,” on which “we can agree… despite our differences”? Which rights are basic? That’s not so easy to agree on, when we have a vocal minority clamoring for the right to define marriage as they please, and a majority denying that there is such a right.
I could bring up more examples but this should suffice. Even though your response just now improves on your first statement, it remains fraught with difficulties.
August 11th, 2011 | 9:57 am | #18
Tristian,
How well do you understand naturalism? If ultimate reality is matter then there is no place for such things as non-physical, universal norms. There can be no absolute standards of true or false reasoning; reasoning that leads one to say that the gay marriage issue is about the law and and the role of a state that is, or at least should be, committed to treating all citizens equally… Do you see any contradictions in this?
August 11th, 2011 | 10:26 am | #19
Tom, by itself the principle of equality under the law doesn’t say anything about marriage, and it’s not meant to. Similarly with the principle that the state not take sides in religious disagreements. These simply supply important, and hopefully uncontroversial, constraints on any resolution of the issue of gay marriage.
Regarding the second point, well, there’s a lot to be said, but let me just say this. It’s a consequence of toleration of diverse viewpoints that we will have disagreements. As folks like to say these days, that’s a feature of our kind of government, not a bug. The important thing is that these disagreements be argued over against a background of more basic agreement about the values and principles we are collectively bound by. So yes, we have arguments about marriage, abortion, euthanasia, and so on, because these are difficult questions about which reasonable people of good will disagree. Hopefully our shared commitments to our constitutional history and the value and dignity of individuals can survive these debates.
August 11th, 2011 | 10:34 am | #20
Steve, no, I see no contradiction whatsoever. Naturalism cannot tell us we cannot do things we plainly can. We can, now, distinguish better and worse arguments through appeal to reason–this is something any naturalist picture will embrace, not reject. There is a long tradition in Western thought of using reasoned argument to make normative and evaluative claims in a manner consistent with naturalist assumptions, and it’s an extraordinarily powerful and important tradition. So I see no problem with arguing about marriage within the constraints of naturalism.
August 11th, 2011 | 10:54 am | #21
Hi Tristian,
But naturalism cannot account or give you the ‘why’ of reason in the first place. It’s an abstract, non-material entity. How did it arise in a matter only universe? Even if you tell me that homo sapiens developed a system of reason over time, naturalism would say that it’s only because of certain neurons firing away in your brain, thus nothing more than mere illusion. Sir Francis Crick opened his book The Astonishing Hypothesis this way:
August 11th, 2011 | 11:23 am | #22
Tristian,
Again, I find a lot to agree with in what you say in #19. But I’m trying to understand it in light of what you wrote earlier:
I still contend that the “values and principles we are collectively bound by” cannot be separated from ultimate questions. For what are those values and principles, and in what are they based? If they are based only in our history, there is no binding in that, for Americans don’t share enough common history for that to serve that purpose among us. If they are based in some Lockean philosophy of human nature and justice, what about Rawls? (Or vice versa.) If they are not based in some transcendent source, then they are open to dispute. Even if they were based in some transcendent source (as I am convinced they are), we are bound not to agreement but to disagreement as long as we do not share a general agreement that they are, and regarding what that means. This is why our society is so fractured today.
That’s an incomplete statement as it stands; I have argued something like it more fully elsewhere.
Meanwhile, I wonder about your statement to Steve,
What naturalist assumptions are you referring to?
August 11th, 2011 | 11:27 am | #23
Well, what about Rawls, Mr. Gilson?
August 11th, 2011 | 11:28 am | #24
What about him? My only point was that there are multiple ways to go about deciding what justice means, and they come out with different answers.
August 11th, 2011 | 11:31 am | #25
Tristan:
No, I don’t think there is a long tradition of making normative claims in a manner consistent with naturalist assumptions.
How far back does this tradition go, who is a part of this tradition, and how are they naturalists?
The classical Greeks and Romans derived their normative claims from a reality to which they attributed divinity, either of the cosmos or of various gods or deified human rulers. Christianity and various Christian-Platonic/Aristotelian syntheses did not make normative claims on purely naturalist assumptions. Even Enlightenment thinkers did not presuppose naturalism as a basis of normative claims, merely scientific ones. Bacon still defended the moral goodness of his project with reference to the Christian religion. Descartes likewise developed his philosophy in the tradition of nominalist theologians Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, both of whom were in the Franciscan order. Locke specifically excluded atheists and Mohammedans (Muslims) on religious grounds from inclusion in his politics.
So, which thinkers made normative claims based on naturalistic assumptions in some “long tradition”? Who were they, what were their claims, and what were the naturalistic assumptions their claims were based on? I am curious.
August 11th, 2011 | 11:55 am | #26
The naturalism stuff is a distraction, as Tristian pointed out at the onset.
Though Mr. Gilson appeals to Rawls, my strong suspicion is that Mr. Gilson isn’t sufficiently familiar with Rawls’s ideas on the matters under discussion. He’d do well to set aside a good chunk of time to absorb the Rawlsian ideas of political liberalism, public reason/justification, overlapping consensus in the public political culture, reciprocity, and the normative conception of persons as equal.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:13 pm | #27
But it’s not a distraction if one relies on assumptions of naturalism to justify one’s views…
August 11th, 2011 | 12:23 pm | #28
I did not “appeal to Rawls,” JGY. Do I need to explain it one more time? Please re-read the context in which I brought him up. Do you think a detailed exposition of the sort you’ve just described is necessary to prove his conception of justice is not identical to Locke’s?
August 11th, 2011 | 12:26 pm | #29
Albert, you should italicize your “if” and reconsider your point.
Mr. Gilson, feel free to replace “appeal” with “mention.” I stand by what I said.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:26 pm | #30
I do not deny there is much more I could learn about Rawls. But it would add nothing important to the point I was actually making.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:29 pm | #31
JGY,
You stand by what you said, but you did not answer my questions about it.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:36 pm | #32
Mr. Gilson, I would even go further and say this: I strongly suspect that you are not sufficiently familiar with any of the Rawlsian ideas I listed. How is this relevant to the present thread? Simply research any one of those ideas and find out.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:42 pm | #33
Just in case anyone’s curious, I’ve pointed out in other places how inadequate Rawls’s ideal observer theory, on which his politics depends, is. It is precisely the sort of Kantian wishful thinking postmodern criticism has justly eviscerated in the past 30 years that posits “neutrality” that really isn’t actually neutral–unless “neutral” means “what 20th century politically liberal individualists believe” contra most of the rest of the world.
Fortunately, we’ve evolved past such theories. Even liberals have. If you’re a liberal, you might want to consider Jürgen Habermas as a superior alternative to John Rawls, whose ideas one can’t help but notice presuppose a lost faith without which his theories are ultimately empty.
Here’s an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Habermas, a much better thinker:
Regarding this last point, these guys have the best answer.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:46 pm | #34
JGY, why should I do that? You do realize Tristian wrote:
I think you want to argue with him, not me, if you think naturalism is irrelevant.
August 11th, 2011 | 12:51 pm | #35
Well, there’s a lot to respond to here–I appreciate the interest in what I’ve posted.
First, being something of a Rawlsian, I think it is more important that we agree on basic principles of justice for political purposes than it is that we agree on the answers to deeper questions like where our rights come from and so on. So I agree with Mr. Gilson that we lack consensus on the nature of justice on this deeper level; I disagree that this is problem. (That’s my official story anyway. Having read a lot of MacIntyre I do have worries about whether a politically liberal state is sustainable in the long run, but those are healthy worries to have.)
Now, regarding naturalism, I would urge we be mindful of certain distinctions. First, we should not confuse the question of whether a given thinker–Aristotle,say–was himself a naturalist with the question of whether his thought is consistent with naturalist assumptions. It is quite possible get a powerful and insightful theory of virtue out of Aristotle that assumes nothing in the way of god(s) or immaterial souls or things of that sort.
Secondly, it is one thing to ask whether naturalistic theories of morality can be insightful, powerful, and of immense help in thinking through real difficulties. It is another other to ask whether at the end of the day they stand up to as much critical scrutiny we’re inclined to throw at them. It seems to me the answer to the first question is clear yes, and the answer to the second a matter of philosophical debate. This puts naturalist moral philosophy very much on the same footing as any other kind of moral philosophy worth looking at. And so I agree, this is a red herring.
August 11th, 2011 | 3:21 pm | #36
JGY,
You have some questions to answer still. Thank you.
August 11th, 2011 | 4:10 pm | #37
Albert, regarding your sustained argument from “postmodern criticism,” perhaps you missed my equally sustained counterargument in the first thread you linked us to (you’ll have to scroll to 1.9.2011 | 1:06am). On your particular claim about neutrality and the presupposition of “a lost faith”, let’s have at least something of an argument. (Or shall I just rebut your claim with the observation that Rawls’s critics generally just wind up “eviscerating” strawmen–and that this is an especially likely diagnosis for someone who speaks of “Rawls’s ideal observer theory”!)
Mr. Gilson, how can we get you back on track with something substantive? Tristian really moved us forward in #35. Can you pick up there? (My observation was that Tristian is coming from a point of view that you are currently rather ill-equipped to appreciate and helpfully evaluate, much less pronounce as “obviously wrong.” I don’t think you can deny this.)
August 11th, 2011 | 6:53 pm | #38
JGY,
Probably the best way to get back on track with something substantive would be for you to drop these tangential questions about whether I’ve studied Rawls. I have not done so in depth. I have not claimed that I have. I hope that will settle it for you, and that you will now feel free to quit asking me about it so we can get on with the discussion.
August 11th, 2011 | 6:54 pm | #39
Tristian, your comments in #35 were substantive again. But there remain problems:
That would be great if it worked. But there is a fundamental divide between those who take it that our rights come from a sovereign God and are associated with the kind of people he created us to be, and those on the other hand who take it that our rights come by way of human choice. That divide extends to differences in beliefs concerning what constitutes the good life and in turn what constitutes justice. I don’t know of a practical way to overcome this divide except through natural law theory, but even that gets rejected by many of those who take the second stance toward rights and justice.
I do not mean to say, by the way, that these are the only two stances that one can adopt, but they serve well enough to represent the problem.
Tristian, I’m still wondering if you would be kind enough to detail the naturalistic assumptions you’ve been referring to since #20. Here’s why I’m asking. There are at least two tracks one could take and call them both naturalistic. One is to develop one’s theories without reference to any God or to belief in any God. The other is to develop theories based on a positive belief that there is no God. I could see the first approach proceeding validly to good conclusions, if one takes something like a reasoned approach based on natural law, conscience, etc. (This would still be consistent with Christian theism, even though not drawn from the Christian Scriptures). The second approach leads unavoidably, by paths I do not want to take time to detail right now, to the denial of morality and ethics except as labels attached to more or less evolutionarily adaptive behaviors.
The reason I’m not laying out that second path is because I’m not sure which better describes your position, and I don’t want to spend time on that argument if it’s not relevant to what you believe or think.
August 11th, 2011 | 7:00 pm | #40
As to “obviously wrong,” (see #15) Tristian had said that we could bypass ultimate questions on the way to a theory of justice. Tristian, I will ask you whether you think a theory of justice can be constructed without any conception or theory of human dignity. If you believe (as I suspect, but I’m asking to make sure) that human dignity is an essential part of the framework of human justice, then I would like to know your answer to a second question. Can we establish the reality and meaning of human dignity without resorting to ultimate questions?
August 11th, 2011 | 7:14 pm | #41
Mr. Gilson, the point isn’t that you haven’t studied Rawls–that much is clear from your initial objections to Tristian. The point is rather that you ought to do some homework before engaging the issues of this thread and dismissing perspectives you don’t understand (on the issues of this thread, evangelicals generally seem to be particularly naive). This will take a lot of time away from your blogging, but it’ll spare you from spending the rest of your life attacking strawmen on these issues–which issues seem to arise rather frequently in your thinking. (It’ll also spare others from having to teach you matters of basic political philosophy.)
August 11th, 2011 | 7:31 pm | #42
Tristian,
I’ll be interested to hear your answers to my questions, if you care to engage in that discussion.
August 11th, 2011 | 8:08 pm | #43
@Michael PS:
No, it is not. Only a proposition can be true or false.
I suggest you are quite mistaken, sir. And when you say “For the purpose of this Act, a chicken is a pig”, you might as well say “In my imaginary world, a chicken is a pig”. In either event, reality couldn’t care less about your conventions. You have defined therein neither a chicken nor a pig; you have only defined your Act (or your imaginary world). You’re free to do that – they’re products of your imagination after all, whereas chickens and pigs are not (not real ones, anyway). Attempting to reason from examples drawn from the land of human imagination is probably not the best path toward properly understanding reality…
To your above quoted assertion: a proposition is true or false exactly to the extent that it conforms (or not) to the truth. In other words, the truth about a thing is prior to any proposition about the thing, and the proposition is judged or measured by the truth about the thing. Not so with the definition of a thing. The definition of a thing – what Aristotle called its essence – is identical with the thing itself as it can be known (which is, needless to say, the truth about the thing), and which cannot in reality be proposed or asserted, but only discovered.
You appear to confuse a proposed definition of a thing (which is in fact a proposition that must be measured against reality!) with the actual definition of a thing, which, succinctly put, is what it is.
August 11th, 2011 | 10:56 pm | #44
Tom, you ask whether I think “a theory of justice can be constructed without any conception or theory of human dignity”? I think the idea of human dignity is very important–it captures the notion, essential to the liberal tradition, that each person counts and counts equally, and that none should be reduced to the level of things valued only for their utility in the designs or aspirations of others. One kind of theory of justice would want to ground this idea in a more basic account of human nature so as to explain and account for this dignity or inherent value in more basic terms. I take it this is what you’d like to see, and as I said I’m not entirely unsympathetic.
But we can also take human dignity as a starting point, arguing–surely plausibly–that any reasonable person in a position to do so would demand that they be so respected, and this regardless of just how they, individually, would account for their basic worth. This is not to say we cannot or should not try to ground human dignity in a more basic theory, but simply that it is not necessary for political purposes. In that sense I don’t think a theory of human dignity is needed for a theory of justice.
As for naturalism, I’m understanding it here to mean theories that make no appeal to supernatural realities. This does not mean they are necessarily incompatible with such realities.
Lastly, you mention natural law theory, so let me say one thing about that as a kind of an aside. Fr. John Courtney Murray argued that the natural law tradition could work as a kind of public philosophy in pluralistic states such as the US. Rather interestingly, he pushed this in a direction not entirely unlike that taken by the later Rawls–both envision a kind of public moral philosophy that could give coherence to our political debates while allowing us to bracket off our deeper and seemingly intractable disagreements. Rawls’ “public reason” is a lot thinner than natural law, but Rawls himself was struck by the similarities between his views and Murray’s.
August 12th, 2011 | 3:30 am | #45
Mr Gillis
Definitions are concerned with the meaning of terms, that is, of words, and are not concerned with the nature of things.
There was a famous argument amongst taxonomists in the 19th century. One said “All members of the cat family have retractable claws.” “No,” said another, “Cheetahs do not have retractable claws.” “Then, Cheetahs are not true cats,” retorted the first
You see what is happening here? The first is explaining how he uses the word “cat” (a definition) and the second treats it as a proposition. Of course, the second has his own implicit definition of the word “cat” ; just one that is different.
Taxonomists can argue about how the word “cat” can most usefully be used; they cannot claim that their chosen definition is either “true” or “false.”
Whether any word (other than proper names) can be defined ostensively, that is, by pointing, has been a great debate amongst philosophers.
August 12th, 2011 | 7:00 am | #46
Definitions are concerned with the meaning of terms, that is, of words, and are not concerned with the nature of things.
If/when marriage (and family) is redefined, what will happen is one of two things.
Either reality itself will change, and we will all just stop using real kinship to determine who our family is, and contentedly allow the state to define our relationships for us – so that if the state rules that Jimmy is now Martha’s son instead of Susan’s, we’ll all just accept that Jimmy is now Martha’s son (and if we’re really good sports, we’ll all pretend Jimmy was never really Susan’s son to begin with – I hear some of those polygamist sects are very good at this sort of thing).
Or we will continue to hold on to biology and truth, and will find new words to describe the relationships that used to be described by now-hijacked words like “marriage” and “family”.
August 12th, 2011 | 11:32 am | #47
Biology has had very little to do with kinship.
The old Roman system was purely agnatic: “liberi” means a man’s children, for “the child is of the blood of the father and not of the blood of the mother.” Latin has no word for “uncle” : patruus = father’s brother and avunculus = mother’s brother – different terms, because the relationships were perceived as radically different.
Two children of the same mother by different fathers were not legally related. Frater and Soror refer to children of the same father, no distinction being drawn between those with the same or different mothers
An adopted child was part of the kindred; a child emancipated by the father or a daughter married “in manu” were not. A daughter in a free marriage remained part of her own family.
A wife “in manu” was said to be “filiae loco” [in the position of a daughter] to her husband and inherited an equal share, along with his other children. In free marriage, she was not part of her husband’s family.
The idea that a person can belong to two different families (father’s and mother’s) would have struck the old Romans as bizarre. It was only when the family lost its importance and ceased to be a political and cultic union that the concept could arise.
August 12th, 2011 | 4:56 pm | #48
@Michael PS:
The first is explaining how he uses the word “cat” (a definition) and the second treats it as a proposition.
You seem to have either skipped or missed the last point I made in my previous comment, because you are repeating the same error, even though you’ve shifted the ground from direct assertions about the definition of something (e.g. cat), through indirection, to “how he uses the word”. Either way, you are failing to differentiate between the subjective and the objective. The second person treats it as a proposition because it is a proposition. The first may call it a definition, but if his thinking were more precise he would call it a proposed definition (i.e. a proposition), which the second one quickly rejects as false because it does not conform to the actual definition of the thing in question, of which he has enough knowledge to so judge the proposition.
You further muddy the waters here by trying to place the example within a context of purely subjective use of language (“how he uses the word”), as if language itself is not normally used objectively, and as if the participants in that conversation were not making objective claims! Pure subjectivism would make language (and hence thought) meaningless, of course, but even in your “cat” example it is a pointless diversion, because person A cannot possibly be correct or incorrect in excluding Cheetahs from a purely subjective meaning of “cat” (“how he uses the word”), because he gets to make up the meaning (or definition) of “cat” in such a scenario. But he would be equally justified in excluding tigers or lions or house cats, or of calling them all dogs or gods, insofar as “how he uses the word”, because we are far, far from reality here, and back in the land of make-believe. Real things really exist, and we can use language to understand them, if we don’t get lost in a house of mirrors…
Definitions are concerned with the meaning of terms, that is, of words, and are not concerned with the nature of things.
I do hope you can see the humor in your position. You have told me that what you would call “my definition” of a definition is not true, because definitions cannot be true or false. Then you reiterate, asserting that it is the nature of definitions to be “not concerned with” the nature of things. Yet if definition itself does not have a definition, but is merely a linguistic game of assigning meanings to tokens, then “definition” is a nonsensical concept.
Your argument seems to me to basically come down to the assertion that the concept of “definition” cannot have a real definition, but that we can merely have opinions as to possible meanings of the word – all the while presenting this assertion as if it were not an opinion but a definition!
August 13th, 2011 | 11:04 am | #49
The idea that a person can belong to two different families (father’s and mother’s)
That’s a result of the sexual revolution, and like so many things coming out of that “revolution”, it’s built out of lies.
The mother’s family and the father’s family are in fact one family, as much now as ever.
We adopt this unnatural language to help create an artificial “make-believe” barrier so that we can pretend the father and the mother do not have a familial link between them any more.
But of course they do. They are still one family, however much they pretend (and force their unfortunate relatives to pretend) otherwise.
The fantasy that they can now view themselves as separated, even in cases where children exist, is nothing but denial – an illusory grasping at a sense of control over things that are not in fact within a person’s control (which is why stepfamilies dread weddings).
August 14th, 2011 | 12:33 am | #50
I wonder if Ms. Hall would have so vehemently opposed the women’s suffrage movement calling itself a women’s rights issue, as it was clearly actually about changing the definition of “voter”. Or whether the civil rights movement as a whole would have offended her by calling itself a rights movement, when it was quite obviously just a definitional question about what we should agree constituted a “person”.
It’s much easier to cause suffering to your fellow man if you can pass the buck to a semantic abstraction and pretend that’s not what you’re doing. It is, though.
August 14th, 2011 | 5:36 am | #51
Blake
The idea that a person could belong to two families, his father’s and his mother’s is a recent innovation, only made possible with the breakdown of the extended family.
Here in Scotland, it dates from about 1745. If a person could belong to two families, then he could could belong to two septs or clans, which were based on kinship. That would mean that he had two chiefs – a recipe for anarchy.
The Romans allowed two systems: either the wife left her own family and was adopted into her husband’s (in manu mariti), in which case no difficulty arose, or she was not, in which case the child belonged to the father’s family and not to the mother’s. Again, there was no question as to which extended family or Gens he belonged – Remember, in the Comitia Curiata, voting was by Gentess and, of course, no one could belong to two.
So far from being recent, it is as old as the Indo-European race and is found in all its branches, Indian, Persian and European. It can be shown from the evidence of language, in the naming of relations, to have pre-existed all written records.
August 14th, 2011 | 6:48 am | #52
Mr Gillis
There is no such thing a a “private language” (which would be an oxymoron), nor are the meanings of words purely arbitrary.
However, everything that exists is individual and particular, which is why only proper names can be defined by pointing. What criteria of similarities and differences we use to group individual things into classes, represented by common nouns, is, ultimately, a matter of choice, evidenced by the way in which words can change their meaning over time, or acquire specialised or technical meanings – “metal” means one thing to the layman, another to the chemist and yet another to the astronomer.
The Cheetah, to take my earlier example, is sufficiently unlike all other members of the cat family to form a genus on its own, of which it is the only extant member (Acinonyx) If we relied on morphology, rather than descent, it could well be classified as a separate species.
Many modern philosophers now prefer to speak of “labelling,” rather than “defining,” for “the objective features of a phenomenon so little constrain the ways it is classified and theorized that these features can be disregarded in trying to understand why a particular classification system or scientific theory has been adopted.”
August 15th, 2011 | 4:27 am | #53
Mr Gillis
Everything that exists is single and individual and individual things are denoted with proper names.
How we group these singular things into classes, denoted by common nouns, according to perceived similarities and differences is largely arbitrary. To take my example of the Cheetah, its differences from other members of the cat family are so marked that it forms a distinct genus (of which it is the only extant member), the genus Acynonyx. If our criterion were morphology, we would not classify it as a cat; if our criterion is common descent, then we will. Either way, the features on which our classification is based are real enough
That is why words change their denotation over time or acquire special or technical meanings. “Metal” means one thing to the layman, another to the chemist and another to the astronomer. In the last two cases, so long as we are careful, in considering any proposition, mentally to substitute the definition for the thing defined, no confusion arises. The history of the word “planet” is very instructive; so, in the field of law, is “theft.”
Many modern philosophers have concluded that the objective features of a phenomenon so little constrain the ways it is classified and theorized that these features can be disregarded in trying to understand why a particular classification system or scientific theory has been adopted.
August 15th, 2011 | 7:48 am | #54
Tristian,
I’m sorry to be so slow responding to your comment #44 a few days ago. I’ve been operating on limited Internet access over the past few days, and mostly using a mobile phone when I have had access. While I was able to participate in some other discussions, there was a limit to what I could do. Thank you for your patience.
You say we can “take human dignity as a starting point.” I’m sympathetic with that to a degree, for there is a brute fact-ness to human worth and dignity that no other system of thought can take away from us. The problem I have with it is the same that I have had with a parallel fact about the human experience, our universal knowledge of moral reality. There really is such a thing as right and wrong, just as there really is such a thing as human dignity.
But there is disagreement on that. Some atheistic materialists (Michael Ruse, Paul and Patricia Churchland, and others) take it that all conceptions of moral reality are illusory. Others including Sam Harris and Mary Midgley go with human intuition and experience, and from that data they conclude (rightly) that moral reality is real. Midgley’s view of it is considerably more adept and interesting than Harris’s, in my opinion; nevertheless she runs into a problem: her conclusions concerning moral reality conflict with other related premises she holds concerning what humans are. (Whether Mary Midgley’s view are exactly those of atheistic materialism I do not know, but her premises concerning human origins in The Ethical Primate are equivalent to those that atheistic materialists would accept.)
The same difficulty holds in the case of human value and dignity. We know that humans as such have dignity and worth. We could take that as a starting point, as you said in comment #44. The problem is that it’s not the starting point: human dignity is not some eternal existent, so it must have come from somewhere. If humans are just physical beings, however, it’s hard to see where this dignity came from. Monod, Skinner, and Peter Singer have seen that difficulty and have concluded that there is no such thing as human dignity, our experience of it is illusory (Singer says this indirectly). I think they’re drawing correct conclusions from their premises, even as I wonder how they can deny their own experience of being human in the process.
You wrote,
My concern is not so much to ground human dignity or value as it is to explain it coherently and without contradicting other related beliefs. This comes back to what I said to you some time ago. You had said,
And I answered,
Let me amend that now. The one who is willing to bifurcate his or her belief systems can accept the reality of human dignity while holding to materialist views on what it ultimately is to be human. I can’t bring myself to perform that bifurcation of my own beliefs. And I can’t imagine how we could be collectively bound by any shared values and principles if we individually unbind our own values and principles from our own related beliefs.
August 15th, 2011 | 9:26 am | #55
[...] Marriage and discussions of same. [...]
August 15th, 2011 | 9:32 am | #56
[...] Marriage and discussions of same. [...]
August 15th, 2011 | 3:34 pm | #57
I wonder if Ms. Hall would have so vehemently opposed the women’s suffrage movement calling itself a women’s rights issue, as it was clearly actually about changing the definition of “voter”. Or whether the civil rights movement as a whole would have offended her by calling itself a rights movement, when it was quite obviously just a definitional question about what we should agree constituted a “person”.
It’s much easier to cause suffering to your fellow man if you can pass the buck to a semantic abstraction and pretend that’s not what you’re doing. It is, though.
I don’t know about anyone else, but what I care about is, first of all, the rights of the child.
Gay marriage requires changing the rules of adoption such that instead of adoption being focused on the needs of the child, adoption necessarily must prioritize the needs of the parents over the needs and the well-being of the child – enabling situations where the parents’ needs are to be met at the expense of the child.
Because the two are at odds: for gay parents to be granted the rights they want requires that children lose the rights they currently enjoy.
Notice I do not accuse you of adopting the position you adopt because you must hate children and enjoy causing them suffering. I believe the argument must be settled on the merits of the case, not on arguments where people ascribe false motives to other people. That seems slanderous to me.
I also care about issues of religious freedom, and freedom of belief; the questions of integrity (the integrity of the family as well as the integrity of institutions); and a host of other concerns.
You misrepresent me when you suggest that my real concern is not what I say it is, but is really a desire to cause suffering to others. If you are going to make an accusation like that, you should really support it with evidence.
August 15th, 2011 | 3:38 pm | #58
So far from being recent, it is as old as the Indo-European race and is found in all its branches, Indian, Persian and European. It can be shown from the evidence of language, in the naming of relations, to have pre-existed all written records.
The examples you cite are not examples of people having two families (at least not in the sense of today’s situation), but rather exactly the opposite: situations in which families cannot be joined into a single family tree without conflict are resolved by rules designed to clarify THIS family has priority, and THOSE relatives do not.
Whereas what the sexual revolution brought in is a situation where the child is shuttled back and forth between two families that are viewed as both equal yet distinct from each other – which is not only new, but unstable (and therefore likely to be resolved soon, or so I hope).
August 15th, 2011 | 10:06 pm | #59
Thanks for a clear argument about what the “Same Sex Marriage” discussion is really about. It is a fundamental change in the meaning of the relationship that has been called “marriage” and recognized as marriage for thousands of years, in many cultures and religions. even cultures that tolerated homosexual behavior (ancient Greece) did not think that marriage, the foundation of families, was something whose meaning could be modified in that way.
I have worked in the field of environmental laws and regulations for 27 years. One of the most basic principles embodied in those laws is that new proposals must be examined for their potential impact on existing living systems, because of the real risk that changes could have irreparable negative consequences.
Yet many of the same people who are most vociferous about preserving the natural environment from unthinking modifications by mankind’s artificial creations are also the same people who want to create a wild experiment with the species called Homo Sapiens, without any real idea of what the consequences will be for the healthy survival of the species and its culture.
The idea of unlimited abortion and government limitations on raising children (as in China) has created a vast experiment in which the world is going to find out what happens when millions of men have no prospect of having a marriage and a family. The possibilities of national and international chaos and violence are very real.
The experiment of allowing two men or two women to have the same legal relationship that is shared by a married wife and husband has only begun, but the advocates of SSM, including Obama, are bulling ahead, without any concern for how the experiment might turn out, even though it involves the fundamental unit of society, the family, which creates and regenerates society. They are of the same bent as the communists and other totalitarians who intentionally have tried to destroy the power of both parents and churches to affect the moral and intellectual development of children. They are unwilling to wait to see how the experiment pans out in Europe, where demographic implosion among native Europeans is already opening the way for Al Islam to occupy the nations it could never conquer by force of arms. They have more regard for the survival of spotted owls and pygmy rabbits than they do for the survival of their own species and civilization. They are rabid in their insistence that the current temperature range must not be allowed to vary by 1 degree, but blithely ignore the destruction of the human culture developed painstakingly over thousands of years.
August 16th, 2011 | 4:08 am | #60
Blake
You are quite right, but the reasons go back long before the Sexual Revolution. For a long time now, eight or nine generations, we have seen functions that were previously those of the family or clan, justice (in Scotland, the heritable jurisdictions were abolished in 1747, in the wake of the Jacobite Rebellion), production and consumption (with the Industrial Revolution), education and health (beginning in Victorian times), increasingly entrusted to external authorities. To this, religion could be added: people had accepted or rejected the Reformation, in its Episcopalian and Presbyterian varieties, not as individuals, but by clans.
In France, as Robert Neuberger told the Pécresse Commission, “the model has long been the peasant family, structured around a patriarch and expanding from hearth to hearth. Children were raised within an expanded group and not by two parents.” In reality, that model scarcely survived the First World War. Until 1870, the suffrage had been confined to heads of households; universal male suffrage ended the rôle of the family, as a political unit.
It is precisely this privatization of the family, shorn of its former power, that led to the Victorian and Edwardian cult of domesticity: the family as a refuge from an increasingly impersonal outer world.
Note that the same change occurred in Roman Society; it was when the Empire robbed the family of its political significance that the notion of both paternal and maternal kinship arose, beginning with Augustus.
August 17th, 2011 | 10:41 am | #61
Tom, you may be right that the thinkers you mention are being inconsistent in holding to materialist/naturalist moral theories while also holding to (broadly speaking) liberal political values. My point is that is while that is an interesting and important philosophical question, in practice it can be bracketed off for political purposes. I may be wrong about this, and in my darker moods I do wonder out the long term viability of modern liberal democracies. But at the same time I do think that any realistic political theory is going to have to start with what Rawls called ‘the fact of reasonable pluralism.’ That we have to get on with folks we believe to be fundamentally mistaken about deep things is the challenge we face.
August 17th, 2011 | 11:32 am | #62
Tristian,
I agree that the question resides on at least two levels, the theoretical and the practical, or the philosophical and the political. I’m not as sanguine as you are, though, about bracketing off the theoretical aspect. Take for example the animal rights movement. It’s less prominent in the U.S. than in Europe, but still it serves as a good illustration. Many of its leaders think that humans are essentially no different than any other animal; thus we hear charges of “speciesism.” That issue is a practical problem that reverts very quickly to an ultimate question: what does it mean to be human?
In many respects the gay rights controversy also moves very quickly toward ultimates: what does it mean to be male and female? Is that answer based in some timeless essence of humanness, some stable human nature, or is it a moving target such as naturalistic evolution conceives all species to be?
I’m still thinking through all this in light of what you said in comment #6.
Each side in the animal-rights question rests on fundamental assumptions: either humans are essentially different from animals or they are not. Each side in the gay-rights controversy rests on fundamental assumptions, too: either marriage involves some timeless essence or inherent nature, or else it does not.
Still you are right: practical politics happens on a practical level, and we need to recognize the fact of reasonable pluralism in our democracies. We can’t wait for agreement on these fundamental questions before we make our policy decisions, so we have to do what we have to do. I believe our system is designed well enough for the purpose. If we can’t come to agreement on ultimate questions, at least we have successfully come to agreement on how to set law and policy in spite of our disagreements. I pray it will remain so.
August 17th, 2011 | 12:27 pm | #63
You are quite right, but the reasons go back long before the Sexual Revolution. For a long time now, eight or nine generations, we have seen functions that were previously those of the family or clan, justice (in Scotland, the heritable jurisdictions were abolished in 1747, in the wake of the Jacobite Rebellion), production and consumption (with the Industrial Revolution), education and health (beginning in Victorian times), increasingly entrusted to external authorities.
To this I would add: we are also coming to believe that our emotions matter more than other factors.
Which may be a function of relying more on external factors for survival (if we are choosing our partners based more on feelings and less on practical compatibilities and moral concerns).
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