In my last post, I gave a rather rambling and wandering account of reasons why NFP may be categorically distinguished from contraception or sterilization (and reminded you of why those two are also distinct) and various reasons an analogies to show why an intelligible good is still signified by sexual pleasure, as long as semen is deposited in the vagina, even when no conception actually results or even can result. I pointed out that, in itself, mere knowledge of fertility/infertility (and even strategic use of that knowledge) does not actually add anything to the moral equation.
Quite a good discussion started up in the comments to that post, and it is in response to that discussion that I would like to do a more focused (and hopefully more organized) post about just what, in Catholic thought, constitutes the "moral equation" of any act, and demonstrate that NFP cannot actually be condemned in any element of that equation (whereas contraception can).
Now, I am not actually a moral theologian, and I think there is actually quite a diversity of opinions constituting exactly what defines these three elements, but traditionally an act has been judged as good or bad based on: intention/intended end, moral object, and circumstances/foreseeable consequences.
As I understand the terms, the intent is the end sought in the choice (the "why?"), the moral object is the means or instrumental causes chosen to obtain that end (the type of act itself, the "how," although considered in terms of the object the will chooses and not simply as an externalistic/materialistic description), and the circumstances are relevant conditions usually related to consequences which may be foreseen to result. All three must be moral for the act to be moral.
Now, this may not be entirely traditional, but I would argue that in one sense, at least, the intent is always good. People may be able to formulate proximate intents which are bad, but the Will is only ever drawn by some good (even if only a subjective good). The problem with the intended end, then, can only come in its relation to the means, it seems to me.
Some examples might help explicate the difference, by showing different acts made problematic by each of the three "fonts of morality."
An act problematic in intent, for example, might be taking a recreational hard drug. Let's pretend for a moment there is no problem with the consequences in terms of health-effects. And I think we can assume that, in itself, injecting a chemical into the body is not intrinsically a choice against any natural good. However, the intended end is the meaningless pleasure, the subjective experience the chemical is able to "hack" the brain to obtain. In itself, pleasure is a good, or it would not attract the Will...but the problem here is that in relation to the moral object, this good intended is not intelligible. There is nothing about injecting a chemical that is intelligibly good (or, at least, not as good as the pleasure would indicate), so this act would be illicit, is choosing an evil in that disorder.
An act problematic in moral object could be murdering to satisfy vengeance against a criminal. Again, the intent in itself may be good (the satisfaction of justice), and there may be good consequences from his death that outweigh the bad. But, nevertheless, his death is instrumental to achieving the end sought. The Will is consenting to the evil of his death as a direct means to the end, and as such is choosing an evil. A private individual could not morally do this (though someone acting merely as the "hands" of the State-body in its own self-defense or "medical amputation" might).
Finally, an act that might be problematic in merely the consequences (and there are many like this) might be pulling the trigger on a gun when someone is standing in front of you. Note: this is subtly different than the previous example. In this case, we are assuming you don't intend their death in any sense of the word. You're shooting for some other reason or satisfaction in which their death is not at all instrumental or causal (ie, you obtain it whether they die or not), but are just...blithely willing to accept the consequence of the very high risk of that resulting from you pulling the trigger. This is also bad and equivalently homicide.
Foreseen but unintended consequences, being only indirectly consented to by the will, are different than the other two fonts, however. There can be some bad consequences as long as they are proportionately outweighed by the intended end and/or good consequences (ie, the principle of Double Effect), and we can also never be held responsible for all the remote consequences echoing through history not foreseen.
Now, the condemnation of contraception rests, I think, largely on the first sort of defect: a disordering between intended end and moral object. A pleasure is obtained that is not justified by the type of act chosen, so a subjective good is chosen without its corresponding objective and intelligible good, which amounts to a solipsistic incurvatus in se, a placing of one's Last End in merely a signifier gutted of its transcendent significance. Going through the motions and experiencing sexual activity as good subjectively, but then deliberately excluding the very rational end that makes it objectively good in the first place, making the whole thing arbitrary and absurd, short-circuiting any intelligible meaning of the good therein.
(Sterilization, on the other hand, would be condemned, whether sex followed or not, simply as a mutilation, simply on account of the bad consequence of deliberately damaging fertility. In itself, it is not a sin against chastity, but rather against bodily integrity. However, because double effect allows good ends and consequences to outweigh bad consequences, procedures which sterilize are accepted by the Church if the intended end is some other medical good, just like other mutilations, such as amputations, may be accepted similarly for health reasons.)
Now, I will try to show why NFP cannot be condemned on these grounds, nor on the grounds of any of the three fonts of morality.
First, it must be noted that there are really three sorts of acts which make up the common notion of limiting births with NFP: gaining the knowledge of which days are fertile or not, abstaining on fertile days, and having sex on infertile days. If each of these acts is individually non-controversial, their mere combination in any fashion cannot become suddenly controversial.
The first act, that of seeking knowledge of which days are fertile and infertile...should be pretty obviously seen as fine by everyone. There is never any positive obligation to remain ignorant about anything, sometimes infertility is obvious (as in pregnancy, or when it is perpetual), and the methods used to acquire the information are not of themselves immoral. There is no problem with the moral object of having or seeking this knowledge, no natural good is negated in the instrumental chain of means used to obtain it, there are no evil consequences of simply having the neutral knowledge (which, in itself, can be used to either aid or avoid conception).
The only thing people may object to is the intent. This knowledge is being gained to, usually, avoid pregnancy. However, this is not a bad intent. "Avoiding pregnancy" is not an evil in itself unless we propose that everyone is at all times obligated to be attempting to conceive babies. But obviously that's not true, or we wouldn't allow celibates, and would have to equally condemned married couples who avoid pregnancy by total abstinence as opposed to periodic. There is no positive obligation to be always actualizing a given good (even if married couples do probably have a general obligation to try to actualize it at least once). And as discussed above, contraception is not condemned on the simplistic grounds of "avoiding pregnancy" (which equally applies to celibacy or total abstinence), but on the disorder between the moral object and the intended end.
The next act that makes up NFP is abstaining on fertile days. This, again, should rather obviously be non-controversial. Unless there is some pressing reason that would demand sex on a fertile day, the consequences are neutral or even non-existent (it's hard to speak of consequences for a non-act, and abstinence is just that: it's morally passive). The intent is, again, to avoid pregnancy, which is not a bad intent unless we posit a positive obligation to always conceive or to conceive whenever possible (in which case, as discussed above, we'd have to condemn celibacy and any form of total abstinence too). And the moral object is really, as I just said, a non-object. Abstinence isn't a positive act or reality, it's a passive non-act, as it were. Unless there were a positive obligation to have sex whenever fertile, abstinence cannot be condemned.
The real act that seems to be the "problematic" one in the NFP debate...is the positive act of having sex on the infertile day, as some argue that this is equivalent to contraception (and thus must either be condemned, or use it as evidence of why contraceptive acts should be allowed). However, this is seriously confused.
First, this act cannot be condemned on account of intent. The intended end in having sex that day is, assumably, sexual pleasure or release. In itself, this is not bad, as has been discussed (the only possible evil could come in whether it was ordered properly relative to the act in which it is taken). It would be utterly absurd to claim that the intent of having sex "is to avoid conception." That is not the reason the couple is having sex! That would be absurd and incoherent. (Nor, as I explained in my previous post, do I really think even an actual conception in-itself can "explain" the pleasure or serve as its corresponding intent, even when the couple is trying to get pregnant, given that conception happens later, and non-voluntarily, inside the woman, whereas the objective good will coincide temporally with its subjective good).
But, some might say, it's obviously the reason they are having sex that day. Fair enough, but the question of timing is one of circumstances, not intent or moral object. It is clearly not part of the intent, because as a good article describes: “There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as moving the sexual act from one time to another time. Suppose one wants to say the act is 'moved' from a fertile Monday to an infertile Friday. But one cannot say this. A human act is something that is unrepeatably defined temporally. A sexual act on Monday and a sexual act on Friday are two different acts. The act of abstaining from the sexual act on Monday and of engaging in a sexual act on Friday is not an act of transferring the sexual act from Monday to Friday, because it is a logical impossibility, strictly speaking, to transfer a specific act. The unrepeatable Monday-sexual-act cannot be moved to Friday any more than one can move the Monday itself to Friday.”
Likewise, the timing to avoid conception is also not part of the moral object either. There is nothing instrumental about the avoidance of conception or the timing of the act in terms of the couple achieving pleasure. They would achieve that intended end regardless of whether the day was fertile or not. The act chosen to obtain it, if "considered in a vacuum," is the same act (the moral object could be phrased something like: stimulation of the genitals culminating in ejaculation in the vagina) whether the day is fertile or not. The infertility of the day is not part of the causal chain of means chosen to achieve the intended end of the pleasure, so it is not part of the moral object.
Thus, the timing/infertility is relevant only as a circumstance. Some might say that, based on the logic of condemning contraception, any sex during infertility should be condemned because "avoiding conception" is a consequence. However, besides the fact that we have already established that contraception is not condemned due to some supposed bad consequence of avoiding conception but rather a disorder in reason between intended end and the means chosen to achieve it...this is also simply absurd. Just like with the intent, "avoiding conception" can't be said to result from the sex act! Having sex isn't causal when it comes to the non-conception which, besides being a metaphysical zero in itself, would happen that day whether the couple had sex or not!! So it cannot logically be called a "consequence" of the sex.
The only way, then, that NFP could be condemned is if it were established that the same sort of disorder between intended end and chosen means existed as exists in contraception. Some people might jump to say, "But clearly! The intelligible good which rationally relates the pleasure to the act is conception, but that is not possible on an infertile day!" However, this is a categorical error. As has already been established two paragraphs above, the infertility of the day is not part of the moral object. It is a circumstance, but it is not part of the direct chain of causes chosen to obtain the pleasure. And, of course: infertility that already exists cannot be said to be directly part of the free choice of an act after-the-fact.
Therefore, the moral object can only be judged in itself. Only the type of act can be judged relative to the intended end, since we have already established that this circumstance of infertility is not part of the moral object and cannot logically be said to actively effect the consequences one way or another (no conception happens whether sex occurs or not!) Since the infertility is neither part of moral object nor intent, it certainly can't be part of the relationship between them. And is the act proposed, the moral object of "stimulation of the genitals culminating in ejaculation in the vagina," ordered properly relative to sexual pleasure? Yes. Clearly. If it wasn't, we'd have to condemn sex period.
Given that our society has a consequentialist view of morality generally (and given a lot of bad explication of this teaching even within the Church)...it may seem odd to people that the intelligible good of procreation can confer rational order or significance or meaning on the pleasure of the act of ejaculation in a vagina even when actual procreation is impossible or unlikely, even when infertility is known to exist. However, that is the internally consistent conclusion of our moral system.
Because the infertility is not a part of the moral object in itself (inasmuch as it is not instrumental to the pleasure sought), and because it also can't be said to cause a bad consequence (inasmuch as no conception would occur that day whether sex takes place or not, and inasmuch as "avoiding conception" in itself is really not an intrinsic evil either, if only because it is a non-entity)...we can only judge the proper ordering of the pleasure relative to the type of act which occurs.
And the type of act to which sexual pleasure intelligibly corresponds is the type of act which sometimes leads to conceptions, and indeed for that very reason. But, for the reasons explained above, actual conception or fertility is not required every time for a proper ordering of the Will, exactly because the ordering of the end can only ever be judged relative to the type of act, to the sort of moral object (of which the ultimately inconsequential circumstance of infertility is not an instrumental part). There is no defect in any of the three fonts of morality with NFP, and yet there is with contraception (exactly because contraceptive "sex" is a different sort of act, is not of the type given rational order by procreation).
Quite a good discussion started up in the comments to that post, and it is in response to that discussion that I would like to do a more focused (and hopefully more organized) post about just what, in Catholic thought, constitutes the "moral equation" of any act, and demonstrate that NFP cannot actually be condemned in any element of that equation (whereas contraception can).
Now, I am not actually a moral theologian, and I think there is actually quite a diversity of opinions constituting exactly what defines these three elements, but traditionally an act has been judged as good or bad based on: intention/intended end, moral object, and circumstances/foreseeable consequences.
As I understand the terms, the intent is the end sought in the choice (the "why?"), the moral object is the means or instrumental causes chosen to obtain that end (the type of act itself, the "how," although considered in terms of the object the will chooses and not simply as an externalistic/materialistic description), and the circumstances are relevant conditions usually related to consequences which may be foreseen to result. All three must be moral for the act to be moral.
Now, this may not be entirely traditional, but I would argue that in one sense, at least, the intent is always good. People may be able to formulate proximate intents which are bad, but the Will is only ever drawn by some good (even if only a subjective good). The problem with the intended end, then, can only come in its relation to the means, it seems to me.
Some examples might help explicate the difference, by showing different acts made problematic by each of the three "fonts of morality."
An act problematic in intent, for example, might be taking a recreational hard drug. Let's pretend for a moment there is no problem with the consequences in terms of health-effects. And I think we can assume that, in itself, injecting a chemical into the body is not intrinsically a choice against any natural good. However, the intended end is the meaningless pleasure, the subjective experience the chemical is able to "hack" the brain to obtain. In itself, pleasure is a good, or it would not attract the Will...but the problem here is that in relation to the moral object, this good intended is not intelligible. There is nothing about injecting a chemical that is intelligibly good (or, at least, not as good as the pleasure would indicate), so this act would be illicit, is choosing an evil in that disorder.
An act problematic in moral object could be murdering to satisfy vengeance against a criminal. Again, the intent in itself may be good (the satisfaction of justice), and there may be good consequences from his death that outweigh the bad. But, nevertheless, his death is instrumental to achieving the end sought. The Will is consenting to the evil of his death as a direct means to the end, and as such is choosing an evil. A private individual could not morally do this (though someone acting merely as the "hands" of the State-body in its own self-defense or "medical amputation" might).
Finally, an act that might be problematic in merely the consequences (and there are many like this) might be pulling the trigger on a gun when someone is standing in front of you. Note: this is subtly different than the previous example. In this case, we are assuming you don't intend their death in any sense of the word. You're shooting for some other reason or satisfaction in which their death is not at all instrumental or causal (ie, you obtain it whether they die or not), but are just...blithely willing to accept the consequence of the very high risk of that resulting from you pulling the trigger. This is also bad and equivalently homicide.
Foreseen but unintended consequences, being only indirectly consented to by the will, are different than the other two fonts, however. There can be some bad consequences as long as they are proportionately outweighed by the intended end and/or good consequences (ie, the principle of Double Effect), and we can also never be held responsible for all the remote consequences echoing through history not foreseen.
Now, the condemnation of contraception rests, I think, largely on the first sort of defect: a disordering between intended end and moral object. A pleasure is obtained that is not justified by the type of act chosen, so a subjective good is chosen without its corresponding objective and intelligible good, which amounts to a solipsistic incurvatus in se, a placing of one's Last End in merely a signifier gutted of its transcendent significance. Going through the motions and experiencing sexual activity as good subjectively, but then deliberately excluding the very rational end that makes it objectively good in the first place, making the whole thing arbitrary and absurd, short-circuiting any intelligible meaning of the good therein.
(Sterilization, on the other hand, would be condemned, whether sex followed or not, simply as a mutilation, simply on account of the bad consequence of deliberately damaging fertility. In itself, it is not a sin against chastity, but rather against bodily integrity. However, because double effect allows good ends and consequences to outweigh bad consequences, procedures which sterilize are accepted by the Church if the intended end is some other medical good, just like other mutilations, such as amputations, may be accepted similarly for health reasons.)
Now, I will try to show why NFP cannot be condemned on these grounds, nor on the grounds of any of the three fonts of morality.
First, it must be noted that there are really three sorts of acts which make up the common notion of limiting births with NFP: gaining the knowledge of which days are fertile or not, abstaining on fertile days, and having sex on infertile days. If each of these acts is individually non-controversial, their mere combination in any fashion cannot become suddenly controversial.
The first act, that of seeking knowledge of which days are fertile and infertile...should be pretty obviously seen as fine by everyone. There is never any positive obligation to remain ignorant about anything, sometimes infertility is obvious (as in pregnancy, or when it is perpetual), and the methods used to acquire the information are not of themselves immoral. There is no problem with the moral object of having or seeking this knowledge, no natural good is negated in the instrumental chain of means used to obtain it, there are no evil consequences of simply having the neutral knowledge (which, in itself, can be used to either aid or avoid conception).
The only thing people may object to is the intent. This knowledge is being gained to, usually, avoid pregnancy. However, this is not a bad intent. "Avoiding pregnancy" is not an evil in itself unless we propose that everyone is at all times obligated to be attempting to conceive babies. But obviously that's not true, or we wouldn't allow celibates, and would have to equally condemned married couples who avoid pregnancy by total abstinence as opposed to periodic. There is no positive obligation to be always actualizing a given good (even if married couples do probably have a general obligation to try to actualize it at least once). And as discussed above, contraception is not condemned on the simplistic grounds of "avoiding pregnancy" (which equally applies to celibacy or total abstinence), but on the disorder between the moral object and the intended end.
The next act that makes up NFP is abstaining on fertile days. This, again, should rather obviously be non-controversial. Unless there is some pressing reason that would demand sex on a fertile day, the consequences are neutral or even non-existent (it's hard to speak of consequences for a non-act, and abstinence is just that: it's morally passive). The intent is, again, to avoid pregnancy, which is not a bad intent unless we posit a positive obligation to always conceive or to conceive whenever possible (in which case, as discussed above, we'd have to condemn celibacy and any form of total abstinence too). And the moral object is really, as I just said, a non-object. Abstinence isn't a positive act or reality, it's a passive non-act, as it were. Unless there were a positive obligation to have sex whenever fertile, abstinence cannot be condemned.
The real act that seems to be the "problematic" one in the NFP debate...is the positive act of having sex on the infertile day, as some argue that this is equivalent to contraception (and thus must either be condemned, or use it as evidence of why contraceptive acts should be allowed). However, this is seriously confused.
First, this act cannot be condemned on account of intent. The intended end in having sex that day is, assumably, sexual pleasure or release. In itself, this is not bad, as has been discussed (the only possible evil could come in whether it was ordered properly relative to the act in which it is taken). It would be utterly absurd to claim that the intent of having sex "is to avoid conception." That is not the reason the couple is having sex! That would be absurd and incoherent. (Nor, as I explained in my previous post, do I really think even an actual conception in-itself can "explain" the pleasure or serve as its corresponding intent, even when the couple is trying to get pregnant, given that conception happens later, and non-voluntarily, inside the woman, whereas the objective good will coincide temporally with its subjective good).
But, some might say, it's obviously the reason they are having sex that day. Fair enough, but the question of timing is one of circumstances, not intent or moral object. It is clearly not part of the intent, because as a good article describes: “There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as moving the sexual act from one time to another time. Suppose one wants to say the act is 'moved' from a fertile Monday to an infertile Friday. But one cannot say this. A human act is something that is unrepeatably defined temporally. A sexual act on Monday and a sexual act on Friday are two different acts. The act of abstaining from the sexual act on Monday and of engaging in a sexual act on Friday is not an act of transferring the sexual act from Monday to Friday, because it is a logical impossibility, strictly speaking, to transfer a specific act. The unrepeatable Monday-sexual-act cannot be moved to Friday any more than one can move the Monday itself to Friday.”
Likewise, the timing to avoid conception is also not part of the moral object either. There is nothing instrumental about the avoidance of conception or the timing of the act in terms of the couple achieving pleasure. They would achieve that intended end regardless of whether the day was fertile or not. The act chosen to obtain it, if "considered in a vacuum," is the same act (the moral object could be phrased something like: stimulation of the genitals culminating in ejaculation in the vagina) whether the day is fertile or not. The infertility of the day is not part of the causal chain of means chosen to achieve the intended end of the pleasure, so it is not part of the moral object.
Thus, the timing/infertility is relevant only as a circumstance. Some might say that, based on the logic of condemning contraception, any sex during infertility should be condemned because "avoiding conception" is a consequence. However, besides the fact that we have already established that contraception is not condemned due to some supposed bad consequence of avoiding conception but rather a disorder in reason between intended end and the means chosen to achieve it...this is also simply absurd. Just like with the intent, "avoiding conception" can't be said to result from the sex act! Having sex isn't causal when it comes to the non-conception which, besides being a metaphysical zero in itself, would happen that day whether the couple had sex or not!! So it cannot logically be called a "consequence" of the sex.
The only way, then, that NFP could be condemned is if it were established that the same sort of disorder between intended end and chosen means existed as exists in contraception. Some people might jump to say, "But clearly! The intelligible good which rationally relates the pleasure to the act is conception, but that is not possible on an infertile day!" However, this is a categorical error. As has already been established two paragraphs above, the infertility of the day is not part of the moral object. It is a circumstance, but it is not part of the direct chain of causes chosen to obtain the pleasure. And, of course: infertility that already exists cannot be said to be directly part of the free choice of an act after-the-fact.
Therefore, the moral object can only be judged in itself. Only the type of act can be judged relative to the intended end, since we have already established that this circumstance of infertility is not part of the moral object and cannot logically be said to actively effect the consequences one way or another (no conception happens whether sex occurs or not!) Since the infertility is neither part of moral object nor intent, it certainly can't be part of the relationship between them. And is the act proposed, the moral object of "stimulation of the genitals culminating in ejaculation in the vagina," ordered properly relative to sexual pleasure? Yes. Clearly. If it wasn't, we'd have to condemn sex period.
Given that our society has a consequentialist view of morality generally (and given a lot of bad explication of this teaching even within the Church)...it may seem odd to people that the intelligible good of procreation can confer rational order or significance or meaning on the pleasure of the act of ejaculation in a vagina even when actual procreation is impossible or unlikely, even when infertility is known to exist. However, that is the internally consistent conclusion of our moral system.
Because the infertility is not a part of the moral object in itself (inasmuch as it is not instrumental to the pleasure sought), and because it also can't be said to cause a bad consequence (inasmuch as no conception would occur that day whether sex takes place or not, and inasmuch as "avoiding conception" in itself is really not an intrinsic evil either, if only because it is a non-entity)...we can only judge the proper ordering of the pleasure relative to the type of act which occurs.
And the type of act to which sexual pleasure intelligibly corresponds is the type of act which sometimes leads to conceptions, and indeed for that very reason. But, for the reasons explained above, actual conception or fertility is not required every time for a proper ordering of the Will, exactly because the ordering of the end can only ever be judged relative to the type of act, to the sort of moral object (of which the ultimately inconsequential circumstance of infertility is not an instrumental part). There is no defect in any of the three fonts of morality with NFP, and yet there is with contraception (exactly because contraceptive "sex" is a different sort of act, is not of the type given rational order by procreation).
28 comments:
A Sinner (passim):
Therefore, the moral object can only be judged in itself. Only the type of act can be judged relative to the intended end, since we have already established that this circumstance of infertility is not part of the moral object [...] (my ellipsis, emphasis)
While I truly dislike your mechanical depiction of coitus, I understand that the deposit of male gametes in a vagina trumps the in/fertility of a woman.
I also know that the Church does not necessarily object to non-coital sex so long as the non-coital sex concludes in coitus. Hence, non-coitus can never be the telos regardless of fertility status. I would argue instead that couples might require non-coital sexuality merely to preserve intimacy within long abstinence periods. Since that cannot be permitted per moral theology, strain will inevitably enter the marriage.
Your exposition on NFP should gain you a seat in the Gregoriana or the Angelicum. I quite seriously encourage you to submit an application. Yet, have you no mercy for those couples who suffer greatly because of NFP? Even this eunuch notices this. If someone whose sexual lens is permanently myopic can see this pain, why not the many who understand the moral theology of NFP inside and out?
This is why it's better to take up one's rosary and hear a Low Mass, rather than flip moral gymnastics in one's head.
Well, speaking of eunuchs, I'll point out the following contradiction in people's attitudes towards sexual morality:
Many people seem to take this attitude that, since abstinence might cause strain in the marriage (but so might more kids), then we must allow people to indulge themselves in disordered fashions "rather than burn."
However, sexual tension (when risking pregnancy is not an option) would be just as easily dealt with by simply a pill that SUPPRESSED urges entirely. And yet no one ever suggests that...
If people apparently can't control themselves, if people are sooooo sex-crazed or dependent on that in their relationships that they simply can't abstain...I see no reason why, at that point, allowing them to indulge immorally is preferential to medically suppressing their sex drives.
Unless you've ALREADY concluded that indulgence is not immoral and sexual "expression" healthy.
Neither indulgence nor suppression is ideal according to Catholic moral theory, obviously, but if we're talking about messy real-world situations...why should the latter be considered any worse than the former?? Why have such sympathy for indulgence of allegedly uncontrollable desires but then not even consider some sort of hormonal suppression?
The only answer possible is if you ALREADY have concluded that there is nothing wrong with indulgence. But if that's what's behind your preferring it to suppression, you can't exactly claim that real-life circumstances are what led to the conclusion that it's okay in the first place without being circular.
Even by your pragmatic logic, those "real-life" circumstance (though I don't believe they're as dire as you say, I think people WANT to claim they are because they WANT to indulge) don't imply allowing indulgence. They would imply EITHER allowing indulgence OR suppressing sex drives medically.
But at that point, you'd need some ADDITIONAL reasons, beyond the alleged real life circumstances themselves, to prefer the former over the latter. Since "pragmatism" is thus NOT an argument in itself for why moral theory should be trumped (because there is ANOTHER "pragmatic" option in the form of suppression)...
Let me get this right ...
You would rather castrate men and women simply because their relationship (especially in the early years) might require a greater level of intimacy than is alloted by a several day window a month?
How will the hordes receive their neutering? Prefrontal lobotomy? Castration?
I know what restraint is. I was in (erotic, polyvalent) love with a man for ten years. Yes, I know, I am incapable of loving because I don't understand the physio-ontological-procreative triad of Catholic sexual teaching. Yet, in all those ten years we never had genital relations. I know my chastity was worthless in the eyes of the Church, since it was merely the avoidance of sin. If a humble faggot can abstain, then so also may straights if they try. This I do agree.
Yet still, must we downgrade the desire of physical intimacy in marriage to a mere accident? The wonderful and daresay holy nature of love between man and wife is fed and nourished by sexuality. This need, this yearning, varies over time. I cannot believe that a complete rupture of marital bonding is preferable to any deviation from the equations of moral theology.
Thanks for the very interesting thread.
All I can say to that is: sentimentalist crap.
As your own example shows, people can have erotic love without REQUIRING sex for bonding.
And, indeed, we're not even talking here about asking a married couple to abstain entirely, as they do have that "window" (and, someday, technology will make it so the few fertile days will be detected infallibly).
And, no, I'm not talking about castration. It was simply a hypothetical to probe your priorities and values, but the pill imagined would simply make the sex drive latent on days when the couple need to abstain in order to render their abstinence non-difficult.
And yet you now seem to be saying this would STILL be bad, because you are assigning some positive value to sexual interaction beyond the act itself, but rather in its psycho-emotional bonding aspects or whatever. At best, this is sentimentalist crap and an entirely modern construct of the role of sex in life and a relationship. At worst, it is an argument where the ends justify the means.
I again can only wonder why you give preference to erotic spontaneity over morality.
I’m going to try to focus on what to me seem the key points here.
Going through the motions and experiencing sexual activity as good subjectively, but then deliberately excluding the very rational end that makes it objectively good in the first place, making the whole thing arbitrary and absurd, short-circuiting any intelligible meaning of the good therein.
I don’t think I agree with this. In support of this, you link to a previous post in which you quote Grisez as saying, “The third mode is this: One should not choose to satisfy an emotional desire except as part of one’s pursuit and/or attainment of an intelligible good other than the satisfaction of the desire itself…. Thus, one’s reason for acting is the very satisfaction of the emotional desire rather than some intelligible good whose instance has features which arouse the desire…. In deliberately settling for mere emotional satisfaction, one’s choice is not that of a will toward integral human fulfillment.”
First, to be clear, I’m not advocating hedonism; but you don’t need the concepts of intelligible goods and proper ordering of Will to moral object to argue against hedonism. None of the major pre-Christian philosophies approved of hedonism—even Epicurus was not a hedonist, contra the misconception, advocating a rather ascetic ideal. My point is that excess and putting the pursuit of pleasure over everything else is fairly self-evidently wrong.
On the other hand, I think the type of reasoning exemplified here by Grisez not only over-complicates the matter, but ends up sounding like the stereotypical scolding mother who says you can’t have dessert until you eat your broccoli! In short, the indication seems to be that pleasure is almost an unfortunate accompaniment of more important things, such as doing your duty, etc. In our previous discussion at Reditus, I made a similar point. On one level, pleasure is non-cognitive and has no “object” as such. If I step out on a beautiful day and note that it is beautiful, it can be pure experience with no thought needed—I don’t need to monologue in my mind, “Gee, this is a beautiful day,” I can just experience it.
The idea here seems to be that somehow I must always keep the moral object in sight, or be praising God and consciously trying to do His will every time I experience pleasure. In a very broad sense, this is probably true—I shouldn’t shirk my duties or do wrong to experience pleasure (such as robbing a bank to go to a fancy restaurant), and I should cultivate a general attitude of thankfulness to God for existence and everything else.
Having said that, I think this mode of argumentation goes too far. If I have a block of free time in my day which will not prevent me from getting my daily duties done, and if I want to listen to Tchaikovsky or take a walk in the park or go get an ice cream sundae, then as long as the pleasure involved isn’t inordinate (like eating fifteen sundaes) or disrupting my responsibilities (like I use my daughter’s college fund to fly to St. Petersburg to hear Tchaikovsky played live) or cutting into time I need to do my duties, then I don’t see how partaking of the music or walk or sundae purely for legitimate pleasure is somehow morally wrong.
It’s like saying I have to justify the least bit of pleasure in my life—the music will edify me or the food must be nutritious or the walk must improve my health. To say that every single pleasure must be ordered to “an intelligible good other than satisfaction itself” or “integral human fulfillment” seems to me to egregiously overstate the case.
Thus, if the context of the marriage is otherwise in order and the possibility of offspring isn’t closed off and if the appropriate family size is considered given the circumstances, then I don’t see why a couple can’t just have sex for the enjoyment, emotional fulfillment, etc.
As to the drug analogy, people smoke, chew tobacco or gum, and drink because doing so does "hack the brain's pleasure centers", although much less so than say heroin. With a beer, at least there's the nutritive aspect; but it's really hard to see how smoking or chewing gum has an "intelligible good" involved or is anything more than doing something perceived to be pleasant for the sake of the pleasure.
I'm not arguing for smoking, btw--I abhor it. The point is that the Church has never deemed either smoking, chewing tobacco, or chewing gum as intrinsically sinful on the basis of lacking an intrinsic intelligible good as their object.
To me, the danger of your hypothetical drug would be more in the almost-certain psychological dependency with the bad results thereof than the lack of intelligible good. If it were possible for someone to use such a drug moderately every now and then in a way that did not destabilize his life, lead to psychological addiction, etc., then it would be hard for me to see how it would be intrinsically wrong. In fact, there are very rare individuals known as chippers who can smoke or even use heroin in moderation without becoming addicted and while living a normal, productive life. Without advocating either smoking or heroin, I find it hard to argue the immorality here. Of course, the vast majority of smokers and heroin users do become addicts, and in the case of heroin that's a particularly horrible thing. Thus, we oppose smoking or shooting up because of the effects for the vast majority--the danger to the many is great enough to oppose it even though it might be innocuous to the few who are chippers. Still, how that makes such things immoral for chippers is not clear to me.
OK, proceeding onward:
The only way, then, that NFP could be condemned is if it were established that the same sort of disorder between intended end and chosen means existed as exists in contraception. Some people might jump to say, "But clearly! The intelligible good which rationally relates the pleasure to the act is conception, but that is not possible on an infertile day!" However, this is a categorical error. As has already been established two paragraphs above, the infertility of the day is not part of the moral object. It is a circumstance, but it is not part of the direct chain of causes chosen to obtain the pleasure. And, of course: infertility that already exists cannot be said to be directly part of the free choice of an act after-the-fact.
I disagree. To say that the moral object of sex is and must be procreation, but that procreation need not occur as a result of that act simply is not intelligible to me. I’ve read this post several times, particularly the sections I’m focusing on, and somehow I really just don’t follow the reasoning. It seems like a very complicated and interestingly argued way of saying that X is actually Y. You say, “[A]ctual conception or fertility is not required every time for a proper ordering of the Will, exactly because the ordering of the end can only ever be judged relative to the type of act, to the sort of moral object (of which the ultimately inconsequential circumstance of infertility is not an instrumental part).” I’m sorry, but I just don’t see this as intelligible.
Look at it like this: I can see if you say that the moral object of intercourse is to conceive a child, period. That makes sense. I could see it if one were to say that the moral object of intercourse were pleasure and emotional intimacy for the spouses. Whether one agrees, that, too, is logical. To say that both of these are moral objects--no problem.
"In short, the indication seems to be that pleasure is almost an unfortunate accompaniment of more important things, such as doing your duty, etc."
No, the implication is that, as the previous post quoted from the Pruss article:
"Pleasure thus has an intentionality in it, a signifying of a good, much like the quale of green signifies a green thing. Pleasure, like any other mental representation, derives its significance from what it represents. The good of pleasure thus derives from it being a representation, a perceiving, of something good. (This also shows that there are cases of pleasure that are not good: these are the non-veridical pleasures, pleasures that are representations of goods that are not real.) At the pain of circularity, the pleasure considered as such, must be notionally distinct from that good. Hence, pleasure should not be an end in itself, since its good is derivative from that good which is represented by it. That good could be an end, but not the pleasure itself. Without the good that the pleasure represents, the pleasure has no truth or goodness in itself but only an illusory semblance of a good."
"On one level, pleasure is non-cognitive and has no “object” as such. If I step out on a beautiful day and note that it is beautiful, it can be pure experience with no thought needed—I don’t need to monologue in my mind, “Gee, this is a beautiful day,” I can just experience it."
Because (as the Pruss article also hints at) there is a real good in the experience, in the beauty, in Knowledge given our nature as rational beings.
"The idea here seems to be that somehow I must always keep the moral object in sight, or be praising God and consciously trying to do His will every time I experience pleasure."
I have continually emphasized that quote from Catholic Encyclopedia which points out, "it must be noted that there is no obligation to formerly and explicitly have before one's mind a motive which will immediately relate our actions to God. It is enough that such an intention should be implied in the apprehension of the thing as lawful with a consequent virtual submission to Almighty God."
And also, from that section of Grisez, "This is not the same as the situation in which one spontaneously does reasonable things without having reasoned about them. Nor is it the same as cases in which one acts for an intelligible good and gains emotional satisfaction in its concrete, sensibly pleasant aspects."
You don't have to explicitly formulate the intelligibility in your mind each time, because MOST things are intelligible.
The truth is, even in fallen nature, there are only so many species of sin, so many categories of disorder. This is what we have the commandments for, to point out which things in the human experience are commonly found to be disorderable.
Everything else, we COULD "explain" if we tried, but that doesn't mean we have to every time. If know, virtually, that they are intelligible, there is then no reason have to actually have that in one's mind every time.
However, if we've been warned, if it's been demonstrated to us that they are not in accord with Reason, are not intelligible...then we must avoid these things.
"I don’t see how partaking of the music or walk or sundae purely for legitimate pleasure is somehow morally wrong."
It depends on your definition of "purely for."
These things you describe are all perfectly reasonable, all have perfectly intelligible actual goods which the enjoyment signifies, so there is no problem.
"It’s like saying I have to justify the least bit of pleasure in my life—the music will edify me or the food must be nutritious or the walk must improve my health. To say that every single pleasure must be ordered to “an intelligible good other than satisfaction itself” or “integral human fulfillment” seems to me to egregiously overstate the case."
Human nature was not irretrievably corrupted by the Fall. All subjective good must correspond to its objective good, but in most cases this just happens automatically, and you don't need to justify anything or have anything but a virtual submission in it. Certainly, you don't need to explicitly formulate the intelligibility in your mind, as long as it's there and you have no reason to question it being there.
Again, there are a few categories where intelligibility can be disordered, and the Church (and, frankly, even natural philosophy and widespread human tradition and conscience) warn us about such sins.
But most of our enjoyment in life (as rational beings) is simply in Knowledge, in experiencing the goods of Creation on a sensory or cognitive level, and there is nothing to worry about there.
"I don’t see why a couple can’t just have sex for the enjoyment, emotional fulfillment, etc."
Because it is arbitrary and meaningless and thus warps the very meaning of The Good, the Will places its last end in a good which is solipsistically circular and thus non-transcendent.
You need to be able to answer: WHY is such sex enjoyable??? Why is this pleasure based specifically on sex (male or female) and localized in the genital organs and coincide with ejaculation in the male??
What is particularly good (AS good as the intensity of the pleasure would indicate) about rubbing a penis in a rubber sheath inside a vagina and then, say, ejaculating on some breasts?? WHY is THAT desirable??
If the answer is "just because" that's a clear moral problem, and if the answer involves a good which has then, in fact, been excluded...that's also clearly problematic, and reduces the people involved to rats in a Skinner Box, reduces the act to being an essentially drug-like enjoyment.
If you can't say WHY something is desirable, there is clearly a moral perversion there involving the nature of The Good as intelligible. "Because it is pleasurable" is not an answer, because pleasure is simply desire-fulfilled (ie, desire is the perception of a good not-yet obtained, pleasure is the perception of obtaining a good), so it still begs the question.
If you can't say WHY something is desirable, but still pursue it, you are discarding the notion that The Good is rational or intelligible, and reducing it to simply a subjectively defined and ultimately arbitrary thing, desire no longer being transcendent, but simply the vestigial urges of animal materialism.
"As to the drug analogy, people smoke, chew tobacco or gum, and drink because doing so does 'hack the brain's pleasure centers,' although much less so than say heroin."
There are real experiential goods here, though. The fact that they engage the brain's pleasure centers is not problematic (that's how humans work!) if it is intelligible.
To break it down specifically:
Alcohol is generally not drunk "for pleasure" as far as I know. It's drunk to relax and lower inhibitions. In other words, it removes a bad state "medicinally." But I don't think there is much of a "positive" pleasure associated with alcohol beyond this release of anxiety, freeing of the mind and tongue, etc.
Smoking, initially, may have some sensory goods. Smoke is a creation of God, and gaining experiential knowledge of it through the senses of taste, smell, and touch...is a real Good. Knowledge is certainly an intelligible good (in fact, the supreme intelligible good in human nature.)
However, after a while people start to smoke not because they enjoy the experience, but to satisfy an irrational addiction. It becomes a compulsive desire that, as Grisez says, "instead of pointing to some reason to choose to satisfy it, offers only its own satisfaction as a reason for choosing." Or, at least, the reason of sensory experience no longer justifies the strength of the desire (which has become purely compulsive). At that point, when one is smoking out of addiction or compulsion (chemical OR psychological)...then, yes, it becomes a sin.
I suppose the same thing can be said for gum-chewing. When it is done to freshen ones breath or clean ones mouth or even just to experience the flavor and tactile properties of this thing God has made, fine. If it becomes compulsive...that's a problem.
However, we also have to look at the gravity here. Because the goods in question are not that important, compulsive gum-chewing is probably only ever going to be a very minor venial sin. Sex, on the other hand, involves the perversion of a very great and important good, and thus sins of lust are always mortal.
"I find it hard to argue the immorality here."
You don't accept the "intelligibility of good" notion (and most people in our world today don't!) so of course.
However, your non-acceptance of it also apparently leads to you willfully trying to disprove it (for example, in denying intelligibility of smoking or gum chewing, when clearly there is a good of experiential knowledge, at least until those things become addictive or compulsive).
"I disagree. To say that the moral object of sex is and must be procreation, but that procreation need not occur as a result of that act simply is not intelligible to me."
Did you even read my post??
No one has said the moral object of sex must be procreation, that doesn't even make sense. I think you're confusing moral object with the previous discussion of "intelligible good"
The "moral object" is the ACT or "How," the instrumental chain of means used to achieve the intended end (the intelligible good is what relates the two in order).
And since the type of act proposed to obtain the intended end of sexual release works INDEPENDENT of infertility/fertility...we must conclude is it is not part of the moral object. The fertility or infertility is not causal when it comes to the pleasure here, anymore than the type of gun chosen is causal to a murder.
"I’m sorry, but I just don’t see this as intelligible."
What I point out in the post is that there are only three ways an act can be immoral, and all of them involve the Will.
Since the question of fertility (not directly engaging the Will in sex) is relevant as a circumstance, it by definition cannot enter into the question of the ordering between the intended end (in this case, the pleasure) and the moral object (in this case, the act of sexual stimulation culminating in vaginal ejaculation).
"Look at it like this: I can see if you say that the moral object of intercourse is to conceive a child, period."
No. You've totally misunderstood what "moral object" is in terms of the fonts of morality, even though I clearly explain this at the beginning of my post.
The moral object is the act proposed, the instrumental means chosen, to achieve the intended end.
If you don't understand the nature of moral object, of course the rest of my argument won't make sense.
There are three ways, in Catholic morality, that an act can be bad. The will cannot be attracted to evil as an end (that is against its nature) but there are still three ways it can choose evil:
1) it can consent to evil as a MEANS to its desired end (ie, a defect in moral object)
2) it can consent to evil by accepting it as a disproportionate side-effect of the act (ie, a defect in foreseen consequences)
3) it can consent to evil in the disorder BETWEEN the intended end and an otherwise good or neutral moral object (ie, a defect in intelligibility)
Contraceptive sex has a defect of this last sort. However, infertile vaginal sex does not, because the infertility is not instrumental in the moral object. It thus can only be judged in terms of its ordering relative to the intended end of the pleasure WITHOUT consideration of the infertility. Because the infertility is part of the circumstances, not the moral object or intent, and thus is irrelevant to the relationship or the question of intelligibility between those two.
I was going to finish, but you've posted since then, so I'll respond to that and try to wrap it up.
I don't think pleasure necessarily has intentionality except in the most abstract sense. To say that many pleasures exist for a reason is to state the obvious--if we hated food, we'd starve; but I think it's going way too far to argue that there is some specific, intelligible good to which every pleasure must correspond in the way that my seeing a green object corresponds the object's greenness. For the purposes here, though, I'm not going to pursue that. That's very complex and I'd have to give it much more thought. I think Pruss has a point to a certain degree, but something intuitively doesn't quite sit right with me about his account, and I don't have time to give it sufficient thought.
I'll come back to NFP vs. contraception and what the objective good is. You say that sex just for pleasure or emotional communion is "arbitrary and meaningless and thus warps the very meaning of The Good, the Will places its last end in a good which is solipsistically circular and thus non-transcendent." That implies that love, interpersonal emotional communion, etc. are "solipsistically circular and thus non-transcendent", which doesn't seem right to me, but anyway. If I grant that, then I really don't see how the same thing isn't true about sex in an infertile period (and let's stipulate, for the purposes here, that the infertile period is known with 100% accuracy); or to put it another way, I don't see how sex specifically timed in order to avoid conception isn't "just" for pleasure, emotional union, love, etc. Certainly with an infertile or elderly couple, where conception is impossible, I don't see how such sex isn't "just" for union, love, pleasure, etc.
I have read your posts. I don't understand how it's intelligible to say that the moral object of the act is the chain of causality, without necessary reference to the actual end.
No one has said the moral object of sex must be procreation, that doesn't even make sense.
It makes perfect sense. If one said that sex must be undertaken only to result in procreation and that one must ensure to the best of one's ability that it does so, that would be perfectly logical. This is distinct from saying that one must have as many children as possible or that one has an active duty to procreate as much as one can or even that one can guarantee successful conception in any given case, as you've implied in previous posts. To say that no one has a positive obligation to procreate, but that any sex act must be so ordered and at least capable of resulting in procreation, is certainly intelligible.
To put it another way, it seems to me incoherent to say that a moral object of an action is the "how", the "chain of events", without necessary reference to the end. It's hard for me to see how the moral object of sex is a procreative kind of act whether or not there is or can be procreation. I keep re-reading your posts to see if I'm somehow missing something, and this concept still just doesn't compute. Either we're miscommunicating or we have worldviews or assumptions that are so incompatible as to form a barrier to communication.
Smoking, initially, may have some sensory goods. Smoke is a creation of God, and gaining experiential knowledge of it through the senses of taste, smell, and touch...is a real Good. Knowledge is certainly an intelligible good (in fact, the supreme intelligible good in human nature.)
??!! Not to be rude, but you've got to be kidding! When have you ever heard someone say they began smoking to gain knowledge of smoke, or that they are chewing gum to derive experiential knowledge of chicle?
"I think it's going way too far to argue that there is some specific, intelligible good to which every pleasure must correspond"
Well, the "must" is only morally.
Obviously, there are neurochemical explanations for why, say, taking heroin is pleasurable. It's pleasurable because biology causes injection of those chemicals to activate pleasure circuits, and consciousness perceives the activation of those pleasure circuits as Good (but it does so for OTHER, intelligible reasons).
The problem is in the disorder BETWEEN the means and the end. Conscious perception of the Form of Good when those circuits are activated may itself be intelligible enough. And activation of those circuits by certain chemicals may be intelligible enough.
But, when combined, the Whole process there is not intelligible, as there is no particular connection (besides the purely material/instrumental one) between the injection of the chemical and the subjective perception of the form of Good of which the activation of the pleasure centers in the brain is only supposed to be a signifier.
"That implies that love, interpersonal emotional communion, etc. are 'solipsistically circular and thus non-transcendent,' which doesn't seem right to me"
No, but achieving these things through instrumentalizing the pleasure naturally concomitant with the act of vaginal sex...is. The ends don't justify the means.
If there is a special intimacy or bonding to sexual experience with another person, this is BECAUSE its meant to bond two people who have just potentially (if not actually) conceived a child.
To instrumentalize that process in order to obtain the effect while excluding the very REASON that effect is obtainable through that process in the first place...is to act unintelligibly.
"I really don't see how the same thing isn't true about sex in an infertile period (and let's stipulate, for the purposes here, that the infertile period is known with 100% accuracy); or to put it another way, I don't see how sex specifically timed in order to avoid conception isn't 'just' for pleasure, emotional union, love, etc."
Again, you seem to still be assuming that the defect must either be in the consequences (ie, the non-conception) or in the intent (ie, the pleasure), and that if both of those are demonstrably okay (given okay acts that have the same ones), an act must be okay.
However, what my whole post lays out is that in Catholic morality, there are THREE fonts, and that a defect with intent will not be found in the intent itself (which is always "good" in some sense) but in the intelligibility of the relation between act and moral object.
WHY ejaculation in a vagina is good and thus pleasurable is clearly intelligible (because its the sort of act that can result in conception!)
That actual conception may not be possible do to circumstances does not change this MORAL equation or order, does not change the reason for the significance of Good in that sort of act. If this circumstance is not CAUSED actively by a human agent, then it cannot change the nature of the act of the Will, which is all morality could ever be based on.
"Certainly with an infertile or elderly couple, where conception is impossible, I don't see how such sex isn't 'just' for union, love, pleasure, etc."
That may be the only intent, and that's fine. But I've never been discussing the question of intent; in fact, I've just assumed intents are good.
The question is: is the relationship between the pleasure and the type of act (ie, the moral object) they choose to achieve the pleasure...intelligible?
And it is. It's quite easy to say why the end of sexual pleasure should coincide with the moral object of vaginal ejaculation.
And a circumstance of infertility can't change that, exactly because the human agent has no causal role in that infertility, so it doesn't change the nature of the act of the will (which is where morality is found). It is taken passively as a circumstances, certainly, but it is not an instrumental part of the act relative to the end, and thus there can be no disorder between those two.
"I have read your posts. I don't understand how it's intelligible to say that the moral object of the act is the chain of causality, without necessary reference to the actual end."
What actual end? The intelligible good?
I think my whole point is that there IS "reference to" the intelligible good of procreation in vaginal ejaculation, even when there is no actual procreation, exactly because procreation remains the intelligible reason why that SORT of act is perceived as good/pleasurable in that manner by human consciousness.
And that the external circumstance of fertility or infertility does not change the SORT of act, morally speaking, exactly because fertility or infertility is not a direct object of the Will or actively instrumental, but rather a mere circumstance passively.
"It makes perfect sense."
What you're TRYING to say may make sense, but it makes no sense as you've phrased it because you are not using "moral object" correctly, and seem to be confusing it with the rational end/intelligible good. Which makes me question whether you've understood the point behind anything I'm trying to say.
"To say that no one has a positive obligation to procreate, but that any sex act must be so ordered and at least capable of resulting in procreation, is certainly intelligible."
It is.
However, your confusion seems to be that you see sex when infertile as not being "so ordered" because it is not "capable"...
However, this again seems to be the confusion of external material events with internal morality. The latter can only ever be in the human Will.
The human will can only choose the SORT of act. External circumstances are not direct objects of the Will. Therefore, if we admit an intelligible connection between vaginal ejaculation and sexual pleasure...this, morally speaking, remains true (internal to the moral agent) REGARDLESS of external circumstances outside the causation of the Will (such as fertility/infertility).
Again, you seem to be saying that vaginal ejaculation on an infertile day and vaginal ejaculation on a fertile day are two different TYPES of act, and thus could be differently ordered relative to the pleasure (with the latter rationalized by procreation, but the former not).
However, this is untrue precisely because fertility or infertility are not possible objects of the Will. So the type of act remains the same (and all such acts are intelligiblized by the good they morally reference, even if they don't actualize it due to circumstances external to the Will).
"??!! Not to be rude, but you've got to be kidding! When have you ever heard someone say they began smoking to gain knowledge of smoke, or that they are chewing gum to derive experiential knowledge of chicle?"
Again, YOU seem to be referring to Intent, when I was not.
Obviously, I assume people smoke or chew gum for the most part for the enjoyment, for the pleasure. That is certainly the intent, and it's not wrong.
But, at first, at least, it remains the enjoyment OF a sensory knowledge of those substances which really does exist. It is not simply a free-floating enjoyment, but is grounded in and signifies a real transcendent good.
So the enjoyment is made intelligible by a real good and there is no disorder between the moral object (of applying ones senses to those substances) and the intended end (of obtaining the pleasure which naturally coincides with experiencing the sensory knowledge of such substances).
"It's hard for me to see how the moral object of sex is a procreative kind of act whether or not there is or can be procreation."
Because fertility/infertility cannot be a direct object of the Will, and morality is not found in external circumstances, but in what the WILL is able to choose!!
This all comes down to "Why?" really, and whether the "why" is intelligible.
Why is ejaculation outside the vagina pleasurable?? Well, BECAUSE of ejaculation INSIDE the vagina, basically. The fact that stimulation of the genitals is pleasurable even outside intercourse...is only ultimately BECAUSE of intercourse, I assume (ie, rubbing the genitals in a masturbatory wouldn't lead to orgasm if sexual reproduction did not exist)
To thus choose the pleasure without the "because" is unintelligible and to chose a subjective good not grounded in any objective good (and thus to put ones Final End in ones own subjectivity rather than in the transcendent and absolute).
Now, you might say, "But why is ejaculation in the vagina pleasurable? Only because of conception. Therefore, to choose infertile sex is unintelligible because you've chosen the pleasure without the because."
There is a huge difference between the two however, namely in the nature of choice: in infertile sex, the infertility is not actively chosen. Contraception is an active intervention that actually requires an act of the Will, but natural infertility is an external circumstance that is not and can't be a direct object of the Will (since the Will didn't cause it by any act)...and thus it cannot effect the morality of the act nor alter the good which the Will is referencing when choosing that SORT of act.
Basically, it comes down to this:
The Catholic conception of morality is internal and thus to some degree abstract. It is not consequentialist.
There are three steps the rational appetite (ie, the free will) goes through in making a decision, and all must be good for the act as a whole to be good:
First, some good end is perceived and identified as attracting the will (the intended end). The identification may indeed often be of some subjective good like pleasure or enjoyment, since that's how we are designed to be motivated (ie, the end itself doesn't have to be explicitly formulated as some objective intelligible good, as it is assumed, unless demonstrated otherwise, that desire/pleasure naturally corresponds to an objective good).
Second, an abstract proposal is formulated in terms of how this end is to be a achieved or obtained, a template of some instrumental chain of means that the Will can set in motion is considered. If this type of act, in the abstract, is not ordered properly relative to the intended end, that's one sort of defect. If the instrumental chain of causes contains, in itself, some evil...that's another sort of defect.
When it comes to moral object, the Will consents to a proposal of an act formulated "in a vacuum," in an abstract way. It consents first to a type of act abstracted from the concrete circumstances.
The proposal is indeed, then, in the final step...compared to the external circumstances in order to judge the foreseeable consequences, but this comparison of the abstract proposal to concrete circumstances comes AFTER the proposal is formulated (at least in terms of the considerations of the moral act).
Thus, the only way external circumstances can enter into the morality of the act is by way of consequences.
It has already been established that "non-conception" as a "consequence" is not in-itself bad, nor can it even really be called a consequence of sex on an infertile day given that it would non-occur whether sex took place OR NOT.
But the moral proposal "to obtain pleasure through unobstructed vaginal sex" is made abstractly in the moral process of the Will PRIOR to any consideration of external circumstances like fertility/infertility. And if that proposal is, in the abstract, good (and it is, because abstractly considered that's the conceptive sort of act)...the concrete circumstance of fertility/infertility at that point could only effect the morality of the act as a whole in terms of foreseen consequences.
But we've already established that there is nothing defective about "consequences" in infertile sex two paragraphs above.
OK, I've been reading some moral theology sites, particularly this one, and I think I'm clarified as to my objections to the line of argument here.
From that site: "The moral object is also called the proximate end. The moral object is a type of end, but it is not the intended end, nor the end result (consequences), which are, in a sense, distant from the moral nature of the chosen act," and "Many people confuse these two fonts, the intention and the moral object." Then an example: "A physician intends to heal his patient, and so he chooses an act (a particular treatment) that is inherently directed at the moral object of healing the patient. The intention and the moral object are the same end. But if the physician has a different intention, such as to make money, or to impress a colleague, the moral object of the chosen act (giving a patient a particular treatment) remains unchanged."
I'm not sure I agree that there is a "moral object" distinct from the consequences (in some cases) or the intent (in others). I don't see the act as a proximate end and the consequence as the an intended end.
So in the physician example, I'd say that giving the treatment is the act and the end is that the patient gets healed. To say that giving the treatment is the proximate end, with a distinct moral nature of its own, and the healing is the ultimate end, which might not even occur (if the treatment fails) seems to me to be a rather sophistic over-complication.
I'd describe it this way: if the physician wants to heal the patient, his will is to do so, the act (not the end, proximate or otherwise) is giving the patient the treatment, and the end is that the patient gets healed. For the mercenary show-off doctor, the treatment is still the act and healing is still the end. The doctor has just made the healing a proximate end, with the money or esteem becoming (for him) the ultimate end.
As I said, this is clarifying because I've long had problems with the double-effect theory and intrinsic evils. The idea is that you can't will an intrinsic evil for any good, no matter how great; but you can allow an evil if your intention is toward a good action and the evil is a by-product. I've always thought that was somewhat of a slippery way of saying that in life you sometimes have to do a bad thing (say, amputate a leg) in order to get a good result (ridding the patient of cancer) by trying to say that you weren't willing the evil, just putting up with it. From this discussion, I can now follow the thinking involved--I just think it's wrong.
My understanding is that the Orthodox Church analyzes it differently and just says, in essence, "Look, sometimes any choice is going to be evil to a degree (amputation vs. death), so you have to choose the lesser of two evils." If you read the account of abortion to save the life of the mother in some cases at this site, there is no talk of "double effect" but of "involuntary sin". Another interesting treatment, which I haven't had time to read in full but which seems interesting, is here.
Another example: I've read Catholic theologians saying that if a soldier fights in a just war, he should not only be OK with it but cheerful, since he's willing a good. By contrast, while not considering killing in war to be murder, the Orthodox still have penances levied on returning soldiers, and tends to reject "just war" as Westerners understand it.
Thus, if one does not accept the Catholic analysis of moral object--and I don't, because I think the Orthodox approach is more nearly correct--then the arguments you make collapse. That's the nub of it--you accept the notion of "moral objects" as part of ethical analysis, whereas I think they're an unnecessary and obfuscating complication which is a perfect example of the problems I have with Scholasticism.
Given this, then I'd say that since the intention (sexual intimacy without risking conception) and the action/end (sex without conception) are the same for NFP and contraception, there's no logical difference in their morality. Either both are acceptable or both are wrong.
Now, I'm sure you disagree with me, but I think we've located the ineradicable difference. You accept the concept of a proximate end or "moral object" intermediate between the intention and the ultimate end (with which the circumstances are connected), and I don't. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe you are; but our different commitments here compel different results in evaluating the morality of contraception.
If you still want to consider contraception sinful, then by my analysis in light of the Orthodox view, it would be the lesser of two evils (if one assumes that a certain amount of sexual intimacy is necessary to a healthy marriage and that sometimes for such sex to result in pregnancy would be a legitimate problem) or maybe an "unintentional sin". In fact, an analysis similar to this is often heard in contemporary Orthodox circles. The idea is that contraception isn't ideal, but in some circumstances is acceptable, depending on the circumstances and in the couple's consultation with their spiritual father.
I think your post on lying is another example of how the type of analysis using intention, moral object, and circumstances causes problems. Very few people of any religion, if asked if lying to the Nazi outright is sinful, would hesitate to say, "No!" In fact, Peter Kreeft, a Catholic and philosopher who, I think, is a Thomist, bluntly says that saying "Jews? What Jews? No Jews around here!" is not a lie since it is not the right of the Nazi, in this context, to know the truth, given his intentions. Once again, you may disagree with this, but not even all Catholic philosophers would share this analysis. More importantly, a mode of moral reasoning that ends up saying something so far from most people's gut instincts--that you can't directly lie even to a murderer to protect innocent lives--seems to me to be self-evidently problematic.
I still disagree with you, but I must say that this has helped to clarify my thought, not only on the issue of contraception, but overall modes of moral reasoning that I've long thought problematic but without quite knowing why. We can't both be correct, but I trust God will be lenient on whichever is wrong insofar as he is arguing out of good will, as I think we both are.
"OK, I've been reading some moral theology sites, particularly this one, and I think I'm clarified as to my objections to the line of argument here."
Though I would point out, I said at the beginning of the post "I think there is actually quite a diversity of opinions constituting exactly what defines these three elements."
And I was actually thinking specifically of Ronald Comte given that his article is quite prevalent online, and yet I don't necessarily agree with his interpretation entirely (and have seen other, better, interpretations in Grisez and Lysaught, for example).
"I'm not sure I agree that there is a 'moral object' distinct from the consequences (in some cases) or the intent (in others)."
Comte's example there is terrible. But Catholic morality has always taught there are three fonts of morality, and that the moral object is distinct from intended end and consequences. His example sucks, however; I've tried to give better ones.
"I don't see the act as a proximate end and the consequence as the an intended end."
The consequence ISN'T the intended end. There are THREE fonts of morality, and foreseen consequences are different from intended end.
"So in the physician example, I'd say that giving the treatment is the act and the end is that the patient gets healed. To say that giving the treatment is the proximate end, with a distinct moral nature of its own, and the healing is the ultimate end, which might not even occur (if the treatment fails) seems to me to be a rather sophistic over-complication."
Again, I can't vouche for Comte's examples, but I'd point out that if what you say is true, then the morality of the physician's act depends on it actually succeeding to be moral, even if the physician is intending it to succeed, and even if its lack of success is beyond his control.
In Catholic morality, though, the act of, say, counselling the doubtful is in-itself good as a moral object, even if I have problematic ulterior motives, and even if I know my counselling is going to fall on deaf ears and not succeed. The act as a whole is thus bad by both intent and consequences, but the third font, the moral object, remains good.
"if the physician wants to heal the patient, his will is to do so,"
This doesn't work, though, because we cannot choose an external occurrence beyond our control.
The physician cannot choose "to heal the patient" because that is beyond his control. His Will can only choose "the sort of act potentially conducive to healing a patient" because that's as much as is under his Will's control.
Circumstances beyond his control will determine whether that act actually succeeds in achieving healing (and that's true whether it's healing, or money, which is the intended end that gets him to do that act).
"The idea is that you can't will an intrinsic evil for any good, no matter how great; but you can allow an evil if your intention is toward a good action and the evil is a by-product."
Well, your intention is towards a good end, and you directly choose only good means. And the evil consequence (which cannot in any way engage the will directly as an ends or a means) must be proportionate to the good achieved.
"you sometimes have to do a bad thing (say, amputate a leg) in order to get a good result (ridding the patient of cancer) by trying to say that you weren't willing the evil, just putting up with it."
The evil can never be an ends or a means in your will. It can never be directly chosen as an ends or a means, because morality is based on the orientation of the Will, so an evil can never directly engage it as an ends or a means.
"If you read the account of abortion to save the life of the mother in some cases at this site"
Have you read MY account of that?
http://renegadetrad.blogspot.com/2011/03/old-news-thoughts-on-life-of-mother.html
http://renegadetrad.blogspot.com/2011/03/further-thoughts-on-life-ethics.html
Or Lysaught's (with whom I agree)??
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/St.-Josephs-Hospital-Analysis.pdf
It's pretty clear to me that in cases of life-of-the-mother, the death of the child is always a side-effect, because the death itself is never instrumental to the salvation of the mother's life. What is instrumental is merely the REMOVAL of the child (however accomplished), whether death results or not.
This is an example of moral object at work. The consequences (death) may be the same, but a case (such as satisfying vengeance) where the death itself is INSTRUMENTAL to achieving the intended end...is different from a case where the death is neither an ends or a means (though that doesn't mean such actions are all justified; death as a foreseen consequence must still be considered, and usually will not be justifiable to accept even passively).
"That's the nub of it--you accept the notion of 'moral objects' as part of ethical analysis, whereas I think they're an unnecessary and obfuscating complication which is a perfect example of the problems I have with Scholasticism."
Catholic morality is, in a sense BOTH "deontological" AND "consequentialist" inasmuch as we are to FIRST consider whether "this sort of action" is allowable in the abstract (ala deontology and the categorical imperative) but then we ALSO compare it to the foreseeable consequences (ala utilitarianism/consequentialism).
I will try to think of some examples soon (besides NFP/contraception and the lying thing) that prove moral object is relevant even when the intended end and foreseen consequences are the same.
"Given this, then I'd say that since the intention (sexual intimacy without risking conception) and the action/end (sex without conception) are the same for NFP and contraception, there's no logical difference in their morality. Either both are acceptable or both are wrong."
You're speaking here as if NFP is one action, but it's actually two or three: obtaining the knowledge, abstaining on fertile days, and sex on infertile days.
It is the last which I take to be the contestable one.
And I think how you've defined things here is incorrect. "Without risking conception" isn't part of the intended end of the choice to have sex. It would be absurd to say that "not conceiving" is the "why" for the couple having sex.
Also, you say "action/end" is "sex without conceiving" but this is in fact two different things. The "action" is sex, the consequence (inasmuch as it can be called that) is that there is no conception.
But the "no conception" is a circumstance that isn't actively caused by the choice to have sex at all. It's the result of a circumstance external to the act of the Will.
What IS under the aegis of the will is what type of sex act to preform to obtain sexual pleasure and whether the two are rightly ordered relative to each other.
Whether conception results or not is not part of the MORAL equation, exactly because the couple don't actively or instrumentally cause that.
"Very few people of any religion, if asked if lying to the Nazi outright is sinful, would hesitate to say, 'No!'"
Because there has been a loss of the moral object, which is the only thing "virtue ethics" can be based on. Everyone is either an intentionalist or a consequentialist, basically.
The Fathers all taught the absolute immorality of a life (yet allowed for equivocation).
"you can't directly lie even to a murderer to protect innocent lives"
Because people have good intentions!
But, in itself, without Reason, that's what the road to hell is paved with.
Well, as I said, I don't see the idea of "moral object" as meaningful (certainly not as you and some sites are defining it), I don't see desired results and foreseen consequences as intrinsically different, at least not as specified here, and I think that the Orthodox theological method is an example of an ethics that doesn't make either of these assumptions, either. You may not agree, but that's our fundamental divide. I see many aspects of Scholastic thought here as being incorrect; you don't. We can't both be right, but I don't see how it's possible to go further given the incompatibility in assumptions.
Just tangentially, here, here, and here are some discussions on the Orthodox view of contraception, which has not been universally settled, but which generally does not dismiss it out of hand. The point is that no one can accuse the Orthodox of caving in to modernity or not having a long and complex tradition of ethical teaching. On the vast majority of issues, the Orthodox would agree with the Catholics--just not everywhere. In any case, I think that the Orthodox method not just here but in other areas (such as just war, which I mentioned before) and in fact in general, is better, since it seems to me less prone to abstraction and complicated assumptions and it seems to take better account of the human condition.
"I don't see desired results and foreseen consequences as intrinsically different"
But things can result which you don't desire!
You reject Double Effect, but it makes so much sense (and gut sense) in the case of, say, a pregnant woman with cancer who needs radiation even though it may harm the baby.
The intended end is the healing, the moral object is the radiation.
The harm on the baby is clearly a foreseen but unintended side-effect distinct from both.
It's not an end for the will, because it is a bad thing and the will is not attracted to it, it is not specifically desired, is certainly not the "why" for giving the radiation.
But it's not a direct part of the means either, inasmuch as the harm on the baby is not instrumental or causal to achieving the healing of the mother. The harm on the baby itself is not a logically necessary step in the causal-chain from "radiation" to "healing the mother" (inasmuch as the healing would occur from the radiation whether the baby was harmed OR NOT somehow).
And yet it's clearly morally relevant inasmuch as it should obviously be considered whether this bad effect is proportionately justified by the good intended result.
I don't see how this isn't distinct, a third category.
Let's not consider the question of infertility/fertility yet, nor even the question of intelligible goods for pleasure. Let's just imagine that there's a religion like Judaism with the Old Law that forbids things potentially arbitrarily just on God's fiat.
So, let me ask:
Could this religion feasibly forbid the sort of act "extra-vaginal orgasms"? Sure, presumably. It could do so unequivocally and retain a sort of internal consistency.
But (assuming it wanted its followers having babies) could it feasibly forbid the sort of act "orgasms in the vagina"?? No, obviously, because this is the sort of act which can result (sometimes) in conceptions...it could not be condemned unequivocally.
This alone is enough to demonstrate that these two TYPES of act are categorically different.
Now, you might say, that the religion could condemn some "orgasms in the vagina" contextually or circumstantially, that it could condemn some of them WITH QUALIFICATION (specifically, the qualification of infertility).
However, in Catholic morality at least, "qualification" (ie, circumstances) can affect the morality of the act only in terms of foreseen consequences.
Unchosen circumstances (like infertility, which is not actively CAUSED by the Will) cannot be said to affect the type of act the Will makes considered internally, exactly because they are external to it and beyond its control.
So to condemn an act of "orgasm in the vagina" based on the external circumstance of infertility, there would have to be some bad consequence. But there isn't. The "non-conception" certainly can't be called a consequence of it, exactly because it would result either way.
But beyond that, it does not enter into the moral equation anywhere. It is not part of the TYPE of act considered prior to the question of circumstances, and as our question above about unequivocal vs qualified condemnation demonstrates, that type of act is rendered intelligible by the idea of conception INDEPENDENT of concrete circumstances.
The abstract idea of conception renders that type of act (internal to the Reason/Will of the moral agent) intelligible and uncondemnable BEFORE the concrete circumstances of whether conception can actually result EXTERNALLY...are ever even considered or enter into the moral equation.
Or consider it this way:
Conception is excluded by the very internal logic of the concept "extra-vaginal orgasm." Whether the day or woman is fertile or not.
Whereas conception is NOT intrinsically excluded by the internal logic/definition of the concept "orgasm in a vagina."
External circumstances may exclude it in practice, but the internal logic of the act itself is coherent and intelligible in a way that contraceptive sex is not.
And since external circumstances like infertility are not caused by the will, they can only be morally relevant in terms of foreseen consequences, NOT in terms of whether the type of act-considered-internally is ordered properly relative to the intent/pleasure.
The condemnation of contraception but allowance of NFP, the "open to life" idea...is not about external practical openness, but about internal conceptual openness (as the internal is what is really relevant when it comes to the Will of the moral agent). About what is excluded (or not) by the internal logic of the type of act proposed and considered in-itself, PRIOR to the consideration of external circumstances.
And, clearly, "orgasm in a vagina" does not conceptually exclude procreation by the very logic of its nature as an act in the way that "extra-vaginal orgasm" (ie, contraception) does.
Unchosen circumstances (like infertility, which is not actively CAUSED by the Will) cannot be said to affect the type of act the Will makes considered internally, exactly because they are external to it and beyond its control.
The condemnation of contraception but allowance of NFP...is not about external practical openness, but about internal conceptual openness (as the internal is what is really relevant when it comes to the Will of the moral agent). About what is excluded (or not) by the internal logic of the type of act proposed and considered in-itself, PRIOR to the consideration of external circumstances.
I'm sorry, but I don't see this distinction as valid. Unchosen effects, if they can be foreseen, must logically affect the morality of the action, and making it about the internal type of act based on the will prior to consideration of external circumstances just seems to me to be sophistry. I understand what you're saying; I just think it's incorrect.
I've long said that any ethical system, if it is made too systematic and consistent, ends up giving bad or illogical results, or results that contradict our moral instincts--an example would be the forbidding of lying even to the Nazi officer seeking Jews. I think that both that example and what we've discussed here exemplify the tendency of Scholastic thought towards extreme abstraction and complication.
Once more, the discussion has been interesting and I think I see what you're saying and can to some extent appreciate it. I just think it's based on faulty premises; and since we have different premises, all we can do is agree to disagree.
"I'm sorry, but I don't see this distinction as valid. Unchosen effects, if they can be foreseen, must logically affect the morality of the action"
I've said again and again that concrete circumstances can indeed affect the morality of the act, but they affect it only in terms of foreseen consequences. They do not affect the internal logic of the type of act proposed in the abstract (the moral object) which is good or bad PRIOR to and independent of the final consideration in the equation, which is that of foreseeable consequences.
Now, there is no bad consequence caused by sex on an infertile day. Therefore, consequences and external circumstances do not make it immoral, as it has an intelligibility conferred on it by the good of procreation INTERNAL to the Reason of the moral agent (inasmuch as the INtrinsic logic of that type of act doesn't exclude it) PRIOR to this consideration.
With contraceptive sex, it also isn't wrong because of any bad consequences dependent on circumstance. Rather, it's wrong because the internal moral proposal "extra-vaginal orgasm" is in its own internal logic disordered (by INtrinsically excluding procreation by nature) even BEFORE consideration of concrete circumstances.
"and making it about the internal type of act based on the will prior to consideration of external circumstances just seems to me to be sophistry."
If you believe morality is basically externalistic or consequentialist like that, of course you will think so.
But to a Church that believes in "virtue ethics"...which is to say, that morality is seated first of all in the internal character of the moral agent and internal orientation of their Will relative to the abstract Form of Good, as opposed to in mere external events, it makes perfect sense!
Consider: if I will someone's death (internally)...does it matter if I never proceed to actually try to kill them externally??
In Catholic morality, at least, no; to will someone's death is the same moral object as in murder, whether I make a move to externally actualize it OR NOT.
Utilitarian ethics, on the other hand, probably won't care except on some vague argument of ill-will having negative effects on you emotionally or in your external demeanor or productivity or something like that.
"I understand what you're saying; I just think it's incorrect."
But you haven't exactly explained how. For example, why ISN'T the death or harm of the baby, in radiation-to-cure-a-pregnant-woman...a Third moral category separate from intent (why) and moral object (how)??
"any ethical system, if it is made too systematic and consistent, ends up giving bad or illogical results, or results that contradict our moral instincts"
I, of course, disagree.
I think the problem is that, for moderns especially, our "moral instincts" largely consist of good INTENTIONS. And that may be perfectly natural, as it is the nature of the Will to be attracted by good ends.
But if we forget to then consider (in Reason, not "instinct") the question of the internal nature of the type of act proposed in itself (the moral object)...we end up with a consequentialist ends-justify-the-means system of externalistic "morality" which I simply don't agree with.
I don't think evil can be chosen as either an End OR a Means, and I think virtuous character is ultimately internal to the moral agent, not located in external events. And the Church agrees with me.
Look, I think we're beating our heads against the wall here over issues on which we'll never agree. We can parse everything down to the last iota and it's not going to be useful.
I stand by my view of excessively systematized ethical systems.
I don't think evil can be chosen as either an End OR a Means, and I think virtuous character is ultimately internal to the moral agent, not located in external events. And the Church agrees with me.
The Church got along without this type of analysis for twelve hundred years before Scholasticism, and the Orthodox Church still gets along without it. My opinion is that the Church took a wrong turn in going with Scholasticism and especially in "canonizing" it (Aquinas himself was actually much more flexible and less of a systematizer than is often thought). This is not willfully thumbing my nose at the Church--I've read, studied, and pondered philosophy in general and ethics in particular for nearly thirty years, and I'm calling it as I see it. I might even add that for a time I actually favored Scholasticism in general and Neo-Thomism in particular until after many years I saw that it has several problems. I have all due respect for it, but I think in a lot of areas it just doesn't work. A brief but balanced discussion of this is here. The Church can't claim that a particular method of ethical analysis is infallible, and to my knowledge it hasn't done so.
If I'm wrong, then I hope, and try my best, to be wrong in good faith. God knows my sins and shortcomings, and all I can do is trust in His mercy in areas in which I may be mistaken, and in all other areas, as well. We all do what we can, by our lights, and trust God to sort it out in the end.
As I implied in the last post, I'm bowing out of this discussion, both because, as I indicated, it's counterproductive, and because at the moment my offline responsibilities don't allow me the time to do so with sufficient time for careful thought and research.
However, you might find the discussions here and over here to be interesting, whether or not you agree with the views expressed. Certainly the argumentation is far more erudite and researched than anything I could do. I'm not suggesting you read them because I think they will change your views, necessarily--that's not my goal, anyway. It will show that people of good will who listen seriously to the Church can come to different conclusions; and for me, at least, it is very instructive to read stuff I don't agree with, since it clarifies my thought, as the discussion here certainly has done.
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