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Sexual Behavior

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Love has incomparable value. Part of what it is to live well is to love and be loved. ... impedes impulse until it can lead to fulfillment in love ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Sexual Behavior


1
Sexual Behavior
2
Possible Sexual Moralities
  • No sex without
  • Marriage and desire to procreate
  • Marriage
  • Marriage or engagement
  • Long-term commitment
  • Love
  • Considerable affection
  • Affection beyond the physical
  • Attraction
  • Respect
  • Consent

3
Utilitarian Arguments
4
Russells Utilitarianism
  • The question whether a code is good or bad is
    the same as the question whether or not it
    promotes human happiness.

5
Crude Utilitarian Argument
  • Sex produces pleasure
  • The more pleasure a situation includes, the
    better it is
  • So, the more sex, the better

6
Complications
  • But things are not so simple
  • There are also negative effects of sexual activity

7
Central Problem
  • Conflict between
  • impulse to jealousy and
  • impulse to polygamy

8
Traditional Morality
  • Traditional morality gives priority to jealousy
  • But social conditions promoting that are
    changing
  • greater mobility
  • decline in superstition and religion
  • greater privacy
  • higher education levels, postponing marriage
  • greater equality between men and women

9
Nature vs. Nurture
  • Impulses to jealousy and polygamy have
    instinctual and conventional features.
  • Russell's assumptions
  • impulse to polygamy is largely instinctual
  • impulse to jealousy is largely conventional
  • Polygamy nature
  • Jealousy nurture

10
Implicit argument
  • Pleasures from sexual variety are part of
    biological heritage and do not change
  • Pains from jealousy can largely be eliminated
  • Russells conclusion impulse to polygamy should
    have priority

11
Russells assumptions
  • Nature Polygamy
  • Nurture Jealousy
  • What is natural cant be changed
  • What comes from nurture can be changed
  • But are these right? Compare the IQ debate
  • Even if IQ is mostly inherited, it can be stunted
    or developed
  • Even if IQ is mostly environment-shaped, we may
    not be able to affect it

12
What does Russell want?
  • Women should not have children before age 20
  • Young people should have sexual freedom
  • At least a decade of sexual maturity before
    marriage-- can't expect celibacy over such a long
    period
  • Better to have relations with people of same
    class than resort to prostitutes
  • Sexual experience needed to distinguish love from
    lust

13
What does Russell want?
  • No fault divorce without children, by consent of
    one partner with, by mutual consent
  • Sexual relations should be free of economic
    taint women should work ("An idle wife is no
    more intrinsically worthy of respect than a
    gigolo.")

14
Family
  • Russell the obligations of fathers are chiefly
    financial
  • As economic equality between the sexes increases,
    these will be less important
  • Consequence The patriarchal family will
    disappear marriage will be for the rich and the
    religious.

15
Sexual Morality?
  • Is there a distinctively sexual morality?
  • No
  • No uniquely sexual virtues
  • No uniquely sexual principles
  • Just the ordinary rules about honesty, kindness,
    justice, etc.

16
Utilitarian Arguments for Traditional Morality
  • Callahan Promotes women's sexual flourishing
  • It promotes monogamy, self-control, love,
    commitment
  • This protects women at every stage of life
  • protects young women from rape and seduction
  • secures adult women male support in
    child-rearing
  • protects older women from abandonment

17
Negative consequences
  • Epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases
  • Epidemic of infertility
  • Widespread abortion
  • Pornography
  • Sexual abuse
  • Adolescent pregnancy
  • Divorce
  • Family breakdown
  • Crime
  • Displaced older women (First Wives' Club)

18
Kantian Arguments
19
Respecting Autonomy
  • Categorical Imperative
  • Respect people
  • Treat people as ends-in-themselves
  • Dont use people

20
Using people
  • Objection We use people all the time
  • Examples trade, employment

21
Autonomy
  • Respecting people -- respecting autonomy
  • Mappes Dont use others without their voluntary,
    informed consent

22
Agency
  • An agent of an act is
  • Free
  • Competent
  • Informed
  • Using someone is denying them agency
  • So, using a competent adult is
  • Denying freedom coercion
  • Denying information deception

23
Coercion Threats
  • If you dont do what I want, Ill bring about an
    unpleasant consequence for you
  • Attempt to coerce consent
  • Makes target worse off on noncompliance
  • Examples?

24
Threats problems
  • Form If you dont _______, Ill ________
  • Noncompliance -- unpleasant consequence
  • Noncompliance -- worse off
  • But note these arent the same
  • Unpleasant, but better off?
  • Pleasant, but worse off?

25
Offers
  • If you do what I want, Ill bring about a
    pleasant consequence for you
  • Attempt to induce consent
  • The target is no worse off on noncompliance
  • Examples?

26
Offers problems
  • If you ______, Ill ______
  • Compliance -- pleasant consequence
  • Noncompliance -- no worse off
  • But cant an offer leave you worse off, even if
    you dont comply?

27
Mappess Kantianism
  • Offers are OK
  • Threats are not

28
Problems
  • Beneficial threats
  • Bad offers
  • Attempts to coerce attention?
  • Whining? Pestering?
  • Alcohol or drugs?
  • Weakening of will?
  • Offer power -- implicit threat

29
Deception
  • Lying
  • Withholding information
  • Problems
  • Feigning interest
  • Not correcting false assumptions
  • Exaggerations

30
Mappess morality
  • Sexual relations OK if
  • There is no deception
  • There is no coercion
  • Not needed
  • Marriage
  • Love
  • Commitment
  • Affection
  • Attraction

31
Prostitution?
  • Mappes prostitution OK if no coercion,
    deception
  • But prostitution seems like a paradigm of using
    someone
  • Categorical imperative dont use people!
  • Kant himself disapproves
  • I used her, she used me, neither one cared.

32
Exploitation
  • Kant opposes paternalism
  • Respect for people -- respect for autonomy
  • So, no coercion or deception
  • But respect also requires more
  • You can use people by exploiting them
  • So, no exploitation

33
What is exploitation?
  • Transactions require appropriate concern
  • Exploitation is interaction without the required
    level of concern
  • Exploitation is not caring about the person as a
    person (not just as a moral agent)
  • Respectful desire is wanting someone for who
    he/she is

34
Aristotelian Arguments
35
Scruton's Aristotelian Account
  • Love has incomparable value
  • Part of what it is to live well is to love and be
    loved.
  • Freud psychic health "to love and to work"

36
Love as a virtue
  • Capacity for love is a virtue.
  • Sexual desire is not morally neutral
  • It is fulfilled in love

37
Habits
  • We must form correct habits
  • To channel sexual desire
  • To promote the capacity for love rather than
    stunt it

38
Traditional sexual morality
  • Traditional sexual morality develops the right
    habits for sexual virtue
  • It encourages
  • Chastity
  • Fidelity
  • Union of sex and love

39
Jealousy and fidelity
  • Both desire and modesty are natural
  • Jealousy is catastrophic and inevitable
  • Fidelity is natural and normal
  • No society or common sense morality promotes
    promiscuity or infidelity

40
Sexual Desire
  • Sexual maturity involves incorporating sexual
    desire into one's personality

41
Mean between extremes
  • Sexual virtue is a mean
  • Too little Frigidity
  • Virtue Sexual integrity
  • Too much Lustful promiscuity

42
Sexual virtue
  • Sexual virtue is desiring the right person, at
    the right time, in the right circumstances, for
    the right reasons
  • It may manifest itself as chastity, fidelity, or
    passionate desire, depending on circumstances.

43
Sexual virtue
  • How to develop sexual virtue?
  • Chastity
  • confines lust to intimate relations
  • impedes impulse until it can lead to fulfillment
    in love
  • encourages respectful desire, wanting person not
    merely for body but for person who is this body
  • unites personal and sexual, self and body, desire
    and affection

44
Flaws
  • Destructive of sexual virtue
  • Perversion (improper object)
  • Fantasy
  • Pornography
  • Lust (desire without regard for object)
  • All these alienate a person from his/her body

45
Capacity for love
  • Love is a good
  • Love is a crucial part of happiness
  • Giving in to certain desires makes one less
    capable of loving
  • That is a grave harm
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