Sexual Behavior

1
Sexual Behavior
2
Possible Sexual Moralities

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

3
Utilitarian Arguments
4
Russells Utilitarianism

• The question whether a code is good or bad is
  the same as the question whether or not it
  promotes human happiness.

5
Crude Utilitarian Argument

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

6
Complications

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

7
Central Problem

• Conflict between
• impulse to jealousy and
• impulse to polygamy

8
Traditional Morality

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

9
Nature vs. Nurture

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

10
Implicit argument

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

11
Russells assumptions

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

12
What does Russell want?

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

13
What does Russell want?

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

14
Family

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

15
Sexual Morality?

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

16
Utilitarian Arguments for Traditional Morality

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

17
Negative consequences

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

18
Kantian Arguments
19
Respecting Autonomy

• Categorical Imperative
• Respect people
• Treat people as ends-in-themselves
• Dont use people

20
Using people

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

21
Autonomy

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

22
Agency

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

23
Coercion Threats

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

24
Threats problems

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

25
Offers

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

26
Offers problems

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

27
Mappess Kantianism

• Offers are OK
• Threats are not

28
Problems

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

29
Deception

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

30
Mappess morality

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

31
Prostitution?

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

32
Exploitation

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

33
What is exploitation?

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

34
Aristotelian Arguments
35
Scruton's Aristotelian Account

• Love has incomparable value
• Part of what it is to live well is to love and be
  loved.
  
• Freud psychic health "to love and to work"

36
Love as a virtue

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

37
Habits

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

38
Traditional sexual morality

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

39
Jealousy and fidelity

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

40
Sexual Desire

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

41
Mean between extremes

• Sexual virtue is a mean
• Too little Frigidity
• Virtue Sexual integrity
• Too much Lustful promiscuity

42
Sexual virtue

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

43
Sexual virtue

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

44
Flaws

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

45
Capacity for love

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