Monday, February 13, 2012

Does the Catholic prohibition on contraception make sense?

Those protesting the Obama administration's directive forcing Catholic institutions to provide their employees with contraceptives against the religious teachings of Catholicism are careful to point out that your view on whether the Obama administration is right is distinct from what you believe about the Catholic position on birth control.

At the same time, it's not a bad time to say something about the Catholic position on birth control. It is probably the ethical position most at odds with the modern utilitarian view of morality, and it makes no sense if you don't understand the central principle of Catholic ethics in general.

The central principle of Catholic ethics is that it is teleological. If you don't get this, then most Catholic ethical positions will make no sense at all.

There are basically three kinds of ethical systems. The first is consequentialist: an action is right if it produces good effects. Utilitarianism is the most widely known kind of consequentialism. The second is deontological: an action is right if the intension is to act in accordance with ethical rules. Immanuel Kant's ethics is considered a paradigm case of deontological ethics.

The third school of ethical thought, that to which Catholics are at least supposed to adhere, is teleological. What does it mean to say that Catholic ethics is "teleological"? The word comes from the Greek word telos, meaning, roughly, "purpose." This is widely known today as "virtue ethics," a view of human actions that is based on an Aristotelian-Thomistic view of reality. In modern times this view has been championed most notably by G.E.M. Anscombe and Alasdair MacIntyre. In fact, MacIntyre's book After Virtue is one of the most important and influential philosophy books to have come out in the last 50 years, and is almost single-handedly responsible for the contemporary revival of virtue ethics.

MacIntyre makes the case that, since the rejection of the Aristotelian-Thomist worldview during the so-called Enlightenment, teleological ethics has largely been abandoned in favor of various consequentialist and deontological views of ethics that have largely failed for a variety of reasons. And this, in turn, is the result of the rejection of two of Aristotle's four cases: formal cause, which the intrinsic pattern inherent in every thing, and final cause, which is the inherent purpose (telos) in every thing, and is aligned implicitly in each thing to that things formal cause.

The only coherent system of ethics, MacIntyre argues, is teleological.

Ethics in the teleological view is very simple. There are men as we find them in the world and men as they would be if they fulfilled their telos. Ethics is the best way to get from the first to the second.

Furthermore, because formal and final causation are rational concepts, virtue ethics yields a rational ethical system, one which short-circuits the fact/value distinction that plagues every other ethical system. There is no fact/value distinction in Catholic ethics, since ethics is itself a rational system.

Catholic ethics then, being teleological, is based on purpose. But more specifically, it is based on the intrinsic purpose in natural things, most importantly in man. If you look at the list of Catholic ethical positions, it will make sense only if you understand this.

This is particularly evident in sexual ethics. In Catholicism, a sexual act, like any other act, is judged right or wrong according the telos implicit in the act. The telos of the sexual act is reproduction. If the sexual act is performed in conflict with this purpose, or if the purpose the act is somehow interfered with, then it is wrong.

This is why the Catholic Church is opposed to contraceptives: They interfere with the intrinsic purpose of the sexual act.

Now as soon as you say this, you get rhetorically jumped by people who either don't understand teleological ethics or don't agree with it. They either argue that reproduction is not the only purpose of the sexual act or that no act has any intrinsic purpose and that the purpose of any act is whatever the doer has in mind.

As to the first kind of response, the usual argument is that pleasure is obviously a purpose of sex, and therefore reproduction is not the only purpose. But the argument that reproduction is not the only purpose of the sexual act is irrelevant, since it is not the position of the Catholic Church that it is. The Catholic position is that reproduction is the primary purpose and other purposes are subordinate to it.

It is also irrelevant because the argument confuses the natural purpose of a thing and it's extrinsic, human purpose. As Catholic philosopher Edward Feser has put it:
It is also irrelevant that people might indulge in sex for all sorts of reasons other than procreation, for I am not talking about what our purposes are, but what nature's purposes are, again in the Aristotelian sense of final causality. Now it is true of course that sexual relations are also naturally pleasurable. But giving pleasure is not the final cause or natural end of sex; rather, sexual pleasure has as its own final cause the getting of people to engage in sexual relations, so that they will procreate.
In other words, of course there are other purposes to sex than procreation, but they themselves only serve to enhance the primary purpose.

Then, as we said, there is the argument of those who don't think anything has any intrinsic purpose at all. This is the real objection, and, in fact, the people who argue that sex has some purpose other than procreation really don't believe in intrinsic purposes at all, anyway, even though they sometimes talk as if they do.

If you take this position--and reject all formal and final causes in nature--then you are left with the position that the heart is not for pumping blood, and the kidney is not for filtering the blood, and teeth are not for chewing, and the brain is not for controlling the rest of the body.

Just be glad doctors don't believe this--or at least that they don't act as if they did.

Under this view, nothing, in fact, is for anything.

And if you take this position, you are, of course, in the strange predicament of saying that the reproductive organs are not for reproduction.

It's not a position I would want to defend.

5 comments:

KyCobb said...

Martin,

"It's not a position I would want to defend."

The primary purpose of the hand with an opposable thumb when it evolved was to grasp a hand axe to kill and skin wild game. It certainly wasn't to type on a keyboard to post comments on the internet, for example. So I have no problem taking the position that Nature's purpose in evolving the hand doesn't tell me anything about how I can morally use it.

Anonymous said...

Martin - You're making a "Discovery Channel" argument, after a song from a few years back with the refrain of "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel". While the song's author likely had a very different intent, the fundamental idea is the same as that of natural law type arguments against contraception.

The primary purpose of sex for animals may be procreation, although given the variety of beasts one would be wise to hesitate even making that generalization. Nevertheless, given the special position of humans in God's creation, it's reasonable to believe they may be unique. Procreation could well be a secondary, but occasionally necessary end.

While I'm not claiming sola scriptura, at some point the difficulty of making a coherent natural law case against contraception argues for Scriptural guidance. Tellingly there is no way to make an honest case against it there. Numerous other sexual practices are proscribed, but usually those outside the context of marriage, particularly in the New Testament. Those opposed to contraception by married couples may be too concerned with sex instead of marriage, as anybody trying to make an absolute moral case against diet soda (separates taste from calories) would be too focused on sugar.

Tying back to earlier posts, while none of the above demonstrating weakness in arguments that contraception is wrong makes a positive case that it is right, Santorum's apparent willingness to uncritically accept this thinking could give even otherwise sympathetic voters pause when presented with the opportunity to put him in a position of power. Looked at another way and using a military analogy, trying to defend a suspect position increases his risk of being overrun and thus being able to defend more important positions. Better to fortify what can actually be defended and take the offensive from there.

Singring said...

'The central principle of Catholic ethics is that it is teleological. If you don't get this, then most Catholic ethical positions will make no sense at all.'

Fine. The principle are teleological ethics.

But why on earth should anyone accept teleological ethics? Simply citing a philosopher like MacIntyre:

'The only coherent system of ethics, MacIntyre argues, is teleological.'

...is not really going to do the trick, is it?

'The Catholic position is that reproduction is the primary purpose and other purposes are subordinate to it.'

Based on what criteria? As I have stated many times before, a sexual act - even if eprformed without contraceptives - leads to pleasure in the perticipants far more frequently than it does to conception. Therefore, I would suggest that there is strong empirical evidence that pleasure is the primary purpose of sex, to which reproduction si subordinate.

'In other words, of course there are other purposes to sex than procreation, but they themselves only serve to enhance the primary purpose.'

On what data does Feser base this stunning teleological assertion? The data reveal a stronger relationship between pleasure and sex compared with reproduction and sex. All Feser is doing is telling us that he disagrees with the data and why we should accept his assertion on good faith. Very, very weak.

'If you take this position--and reject all formal and final causes in nature--then you are left with the position that the heart is not for pumping blood, and the kidney is not for filtering the blood, and teeth are not for chewing, and the brain is not for controlling the rest of the body.'

Exactly. And what's the problem with that?

I can still accept that the heart if 'for' pumping blood (in a on-teleological sense) while rejecting that it is for pumping blood (in a teleological sense). I simply do away with this nonsense about formal and final causes.

'Just be glad doctors don't believe this--or at least that they don't act as if they did.'

Contraray to your insistence, many doctors don't believe this in a teleological sense. Your insistence on muddying these distinctions is frustrating, especially for someone so insistent on the correct use of philosophical terminology.

Daniel said...

Singring,

I think what Martin is trying to do is establish a larger philosophical context for Catholic opposition to contraception. He cited MacIntyre’s work and Edward Feser’s (I believe the quote comes from a book called “The Last Superstition”) with the idea that we (frequenters of Vere Loqui) might benefit from reading them, and striving to understand experientially the ideas they discuss.

Philosophy is something to be *lived*, rather than debated without cease. So, I think he was simply suggesting that his readers trying living with the ideas of these gentlemen for a while.

Sincerely,
Daniel

Singring said...

Daniel,

those are some fair points you make, but unfortunately I don't quite take Martin's piece the same way. Martin himself is contrasting the CC's view on contraception with that of other moral philosophies, so I really don't see why it would be out of order for me to respond to these comparisons and make my own observations.

By the way, I have 'lived' Catholic morality for a brief period in my life - I was raised to take the Holy Communion at age of 13, I used to go to church quite frequently at that time and I received state-funded Catholic religious eductation through primary school and then up to about tenth grade (my primary school teacher was in fact a quite strict, 'old school' Catholic nun).

Now, maybe that istn't as 'complete' a religious life as you would like people to experience to get acquainted with Catholic dogma, but it didn't take me very long to realize that a) (just as an example) a doctrine that condemns those who choose not believe in X to eternal torment is not something I can condone even if it were true and b) the reasons I was given to believe in these doctrines were so laughable I couldn't bring myself to even consider them seriously. I read a lot of fantasy books as a child and I found the tales I was told of Jesus to be just as outlandish and obviously made up as what I was reading about Orcs and Trolls.

Maybe you had a different experience and have arrived at different conclusions. Myself, I am quite happy and comfortable with the utilitarian and eprirically supported moral system I rely on and I have thought about it a lot. In fact it has helped me change my mind on some moral issues, such as adoption by gay couples. Moreover, as a biologist, I find the idea of 'natural laws' in the teleological sense (i,e, derived from formal and final causes) to be utterly superfluous. Thus, trying to simply live with the ideas of someone like MacIntyre for a while (who, by the way, seems to acknowledge that his only reason for arguing for virtue ethics is that he doesn't agree with current moral views), is not really the kind of approach I would find useful. Would you find trying to live with the ideas of Shariah law for a while useful?

I'd like to be given a good reason for why MacIntyre has a good point before trying it on for size, rather than just being told what that point is, how it confirms religion X's dogmas and that I should give it a try.