Sexual Morality:   Some Basic Issues

Introduction

        What are some important issues that should be dealt with in any satisfactory account of sexual morality?

        One important point is that one can ask both about the moral status of various sexual activities, or various activities under different circumstances, and about what the legal status ought to be.

1.  Legislation and Sexual Behavior

        As regards the second of these issues, one might well begin by asking the following, very general question

What legislation should there be with regard to sexual activity?

Observation:  Our society has many laws regulating sexual activity, and in many cases the prescribed punishments are very severe.  Consider, for example:

1. Laws against prostitution.
2. Laws against homosexuality.
3. Laws against pornography.
4. Laws against sex with animals.
5. Laws against sodomy.
6. Laws against oral sex
7. Laws against fornication (in some states).
8. Laws against sex with children.
9. Laws against polygamy, polyandry, group marriages.
10. Laws against incest.

In addition, at least through the early sixties, some states - such as Massachusetts and Connecticut - also had:

11.  Laws against the sale of contraceptives.

Question 1:  Are there now, or have there ever been, any American states that had:

12.  Laws against adultery?

Question 2:  What might be the point of Question 1?
 

        To answer both the general question of whether there should be legislation regulating sexual activity, and whether, if there should, what legislation is justified, one needs to defend some general account of the circumstances under which legislation is justified.  In addition, depending upon what the correct theory of the justification of legislation is, one may also have to determine what the correct answers are to certain question concerning the moral status of sex.

2.  When Is Legislation Justified?

        What are some alternative views concerning the circumstances under which legislation is justified?   Perhaps the three most important alternatives are:

I.  The Classical Libertarian View

Laws are justified only to protect the rights of individuals.

(Sometimes this view is expressed in terms of harm, rather than in terms of rights:  Laws are justified only to protect people from being harmed by others against their will.)

II.  Paternalism

Laws are justified both to protect the rights of individuals and to prevent them from being harmed, at least in some cases, even by their own actions.

(Sometimes such legislation is held to be appropriate only in the case of children, but some maintain that paternalistic legislation is justified, at least in some cases, with respect to normal adults as well.)

III.  The Enforcement of Morality View

Laws are justified whenever the action that is legally prohibited is morally wrong, and not merely when they protect the rights of individuals, or protect people from being harmed.

        These different alternatives with regard to the conditions under which legislation is justified obviously have very different implications about what has to be shown to justify legislation in the area of sexual behavior.  Given the third view, one need merely show that some sort of sexual behavior is morally wrong, whereas given the second view, one has to show that people are harmed by the behavior, and given the first, either that someone's rights are being violated, or that someone is being harmed against his or her will.

        How much difference this will make with regard to legislation obviously depends, of course, upon the extent to which various types of sexual behavior are morally wrong.  If many types of sexual behavior are morally wrong, it will make a very great difference.  If practically no type of sexual behavior is morally wrong, it will make very little difference.

3.  Sex andMorality

        What are some of the more important moral issues that one can raise regarding sex?  The following are some of the more central ones:

(1)  What is the moral status of sexual pleasure?

        Is sexual pleasure good in itself?  Or bad in itself?  Or is it morally neutral?  Or should the moral focus be not upon sexual pleasure, but rather upon the activity that gives rise to it in each particular case?

(2)  Are there circumstances under which some types of sexual activity, which are sometimes acceptable, are morally wrong?

Some Possible Cases:  (a)  Sexual intercourse in the case of (i) premarital sex , or (ii) adultery, or (iii) prostitution, or (iv) when the purpose is not that of procreation.        (b)  Sexual activities, which are otherwise permissible, when they involve members of the same sex.

(3)  Are there types of sexual activity that are always morally wrong?

Some Possible Cases:  (a)  Masturbation;  (b)  Oral sex;  (c)  Viewing pornography;  (d) Sexual activities involving members of the same sex.

(4)  Are some sexual "orientations" morally wrong?  Or if not, are some sexual orientations at least preferable to others?  Or are some sexual orientations at least 'unnatural'?

Two other issues that are very important in thinking about sexual morality are less obvious, and less likely to be raised by people.  One is this:

(5)  Can the morality of sexual behavior be summarized in a small number of very general principles?

The final question - and one that, though perhaps the most important of all, is virtually never addressed - is this:

(6)  Are there BASIC moral principles dealing specifically with sexual behavior?

4.  Basic Moral Principles Versus Derived Moral Principles

        The final question just mentioned involves a technical term that needs to be explained - namely, that of a basic moral principle.  In addition, however, it turns out that this concept is a very important one, since it connects up with some critical thinking techniques that apply specifically to the examination of moral issues, and that are very powerful.

        There are five main things that ultimately need to be discussed:

(1)  The distinction between basic moral principles and derived moral principles.

(2)  Three ways in which this distinction is important:  (a) Critical thinking and the examination of the way in which a derived principle is derived from a more basic moral claim plus a purely descriptive claim that has no moral content;  (b)  The attempt to arrive at a simple and unified ethical perspective;   (c)  The appeal to intuitions.

(3)  Critical thinking and derived moral principles.

(4)  Critical thinking and the search for principles of greater generality.

(5)  Basic versus derived moral principles and the appeal to moral intuitions.

        I shall not, however, cover all of these topics in the present lecture.  In particular, the way in which the distinction between basic moral principles and derived moral principles connects up with the search for principles of greater generality, is best left for later.  In particular, the two topics of the moral status of animals, and of the morality of abortion, provide very vivid illustrations of the importance of searching for principles of greater generality, and of the role that the distinction between basic moral principles and derived moral principles plays in connection with that search.

4.1  The Distinction between Basic Moral Principles and derived Moral Principles

        The distinction can perhaps best be explained in terms of a simple example.  Consider, then, the following, profound moral claim:

                            It is wrong to pull cats’ tails.

Suppose that Suzanne accepts this principle, and we ask her why she does.  The question may very well strike her as an odd one, but it is not one which she will have any difficulty in answering.  For what she will say, presumably, is that she accepts it because there are two other claims which she accepts, and which she believes provide good reason for accepting it, namely:

                            It is wrong to cause pain

                            Pulling cats’ tails causes them pain.

Suzanne is offering, in short, the following deductive argument in support of her original claim:

                         (1)  It is wrong to cause pain

                         (2)  Pulling cats’ tails causes them pain.

        Therefore: (3)  It is wrong to pull cats’ tails.

        The justification which Suzanne offers for the original moral claim that it is wrong to pull cats’ tails involves, at (1), a moral claim, but it also involves, at (2),  a factual claim concerning the way the world is - and one which is purely descriptive, in the sense of not involving any moral content at all - to the effect that pulling cats’ tails causes pain.  This means that if one could show Suzanne that she was mistaken about this purely descriptive matter, she would then have, other things being equal, good reason for giving up her initial moral claim.  Suppose, for example, that animal psychologists carry out some careful studies of cats which lead to the surprising finding that the reason cats screech, and attempt to scratch you, when you pull their tails, is not that they are in pain, but that they are enjoying it so much.  If that were so, then Suzanne would no longer have any reason for thinking that it was wrong to pull cats’ tails.
When I speak of a principle as being derived for a given individual, what I have in mind is a principle which, for that individual, has the same sort of basis as the principle that it is wrong to pull cats’ tails has in the case of Suzanne.  That is to say:

 
 M is a derived moral principle for Mary

 means

There is some other moral principle, N, and some purely descriptive belief, D, that involves no moral content, such that Mary accepts the initial moral principle, M only because she accepts the other moral principle, N, and the purely descriptive belief, D, and believes that N and D taken together provide a good reason for accepting the initial moral principle, M.

4.2  A Critical Thinking Technique Based upon this Distinction

        Given the notion of a moral principle which is derived for a given individual, a very important technique for evaluating premises which express moral claims is simply this:

(1) Consider each of the moral premises, and determine whether it expresses, for the individual who is advancing the argument, a derived moral claim or a basic moral claim.

(2) If it expresses a derived moral claim, find out exactly what the derivation is.  The derivation will involve both some other moral claim, and some purely descriptive claim which does not involve any moral content.

(3) Try to determine whether the purely descriptive claim which is involved in the derivation is plausible.

(4) If one can show that the purely descriptive claim in question is implausible, then one has shown that the person’s reason for accepting the original moral premise is a bad one.
 

        The basic idea, in short, is to look for derived moral principles, and then to evaluate the purely descriptive claims upon which they rest.

4.3  Why Is this Critical Thinking Technique a Powerful One?

        Why is this technique such a useful one?  The reason is that many of the moral claims that people advance are ones which are derived for them.  Of course, if the derivations were as uncontroversial as that in the case of the principle that it is wrong to pull cats’ tails, the technique would not be especially useful.  But it would seem that this is not in fact the case:  the derivations on which people rest their derived moral beliefs are often very far from uncontroversial.  Thus, for example, many people who hold that premarital sex and homosexual sex are morally wrong would say that the reason that such things are morally wrong is that they are contrary to the will of God.  This answer presupposes not only that God exists, but that he has revealed himself to mankind, and that some book, or institution, or person, is a reliable source of information concerning the will of God.  These beliefs are by no means unproblematic, and if one or more of them turned out to be implausible, there would be good reason for rejecting the derivation upon which the person was resting the moral claim in question.

4.4  Basic Versus Derived Moral Principles and the Appeal to Moral Intuitions

        A second way in which this distinction is very important arises in connection with the idea of appealing to one's moral intuitions, or moral feelings, in support of ethical principles.  For concreteness, imagine that you were present at the founding of the United States, in 1776, and that the question arose as to who should have the right to vote.  The view that became law at the time granted the right to vote to white males, but denied it to women and to blacks.  Was this right?  If the people making this decision at the time had been asked to appeal to their moral feelings, or moral intuitions, presumably most of them, at least, would have had a moral intuition that women should not have the right to vote, and that blacks should not have the right to vote.  What is one to say about the force of an appeal to moral intuitions in such a case?

        Some philosophers - including myself - view any appeal to moral intuitions as suspect, and hold that moral theory needs a different sort of foundation.  Why might one think that?  One reason is that there are important differences - and in some cases, dramatic differences - in the moral intuitions that people have in different societies, and in different eras.  These differences, moreover, do not appear to be accidental: they appear to be connected with the rules and values that are inculcated in the given society, at the time in question.  All of this leads to the question:  "Are moral intuitions, perhaps, a matter simply of conditioned reflexes?"

        I do not want to pursue this issue here.  So let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that appeals to moral intuitions are at least sometimes justified.  One can still ask whether all cases are on a par, or whether, on the contrary, some appeals to moral intuitions have more force than others.

        One thought, suggested by the observation concerning variations between different societies with respect to the moral intuitions that people have, is this.  Perhaps one should give the most weight to moral intuitions when they are shared by virtually all societies, at all times and places, and less weight to moral intuitions when they are shared by fewer and fewer societies.  Perhaps, too, one should assign more weight to moral intuitions that seem to have arisen 'naturally', and where there does not seem to have been a powerful attempt on the part of society to inculcate the feelings in question.

        Both of these suggestions seem to me plausible.  As regards the first, if intuitions are more or less universally shared, then one explanation of that fact is that the moral feelings in question have arisen because one is aware of a relevant objective value that is part of reality.  On the other hand, if people have very conflicting intuitions on some matter, then what reason is there for viewing some of those intuitions as being in tune with some objective value, and the others not?  Finally, the more widely shared certain intuitions are, the closer they approach to being universally shared, the more reason there is to postulate a relevant objective value to explain that widespread agreement.

        The second factor concerned whether the moral feelings in question appeared to have been strongly inculcated by society, and here the thought is simply that if they are strongly inculcated by society, then that fact on its own explains why the feelings in question are widely shared: there is no need to postulate any objective value to provide an explanation.  (But there is certainly room for further argument here.  For example, one might argue that the reason that some moral feelings are very strongly inculcated by society is because parents have strong moral intuitions concerning the actions in question, and hence believe that it is important that children have those feelings strongly reinforced.)

        Looking back from the present-day, one can see the relevance of the first consideration, since what were in 1776  widely shared intuitions - that women should not vote, and blacks should not vote - are no longer widely shared - indeed, they are virtually universally rejected.  But suppose that one did not have the benefit of hindsight - suppose, for example, that one were living in 1776.  How could one have thought about the issue at that time?

        One answer is suggested by the distinction between basic moral principles and derived moral principles.  For one can ask whether one can say anything about the content that moral principles should and should not involve if they are to be good candidates for basic moral principles.  An answer to this latter question, in turn, suggests itself if one considers the following candidates for basic moral principles:

(1)  People with blond hair should not have the right to vote;

(2)  People who weigh more than 180 pounds should not have the right to vote;

(3)  People who are less than six feet tall should not have the right to vote.

        A natural answer is that such purely physical characteristics have no moral significance in themselves.  (They could, of course, be correlated with properties that were morally significant: if people less than six feet tall were all completely deranged, then one might think that people who are less than six feet tall should not have the right to vote, but then that principle would be true because it was derived:

(a)  People who are less than six feet tall are completely deranged.

(b)  Completely deranged individuals should not have the right to vote.

(c)  Therefore, people who are less than six feet tall should not have the right to vote.

A Fundamental Principle concerning Purely Physical Characteristics and Basic Moral Principles

        One way of formulating the principle was given above:

No purely physical properties is morally significant in itself.

        But rather than using the idea of being morally significant in itself, the principle can be cashed out in terms of the concept of a basic moral principle.  If we understand the concept of a basic moral principle as I am doing here - that is, as the idea of moral principles that are basic for a given individual, then the fundamental principle can be formulated as follows:

Moral principles that are basic for a given individual should not involve any purely physical properties.

        It is worth mentioning, however, that if there are objective moral values, then there will be a different sense in which moral principles can be basic, and one that is not relative to different individuals.  For then one can draw a distinction between moral principles whose truth depends upon propositions that purely descriptive, and those whose truth does not depend upon propositions that are purely descriptive.  The latter moral principles will be basic in this absolute sense, whereas the former will be derived in an absolute sense.  If one interprets "basic moral principle' in that alternative way, the fundamental principle should be formulated along something like the following lines:

Basic moral principles do not involve any purely physical properties.

        Returning now to the discussion, if purely physical properties cannot have moral significance in themselves, then properties such as having a certain skin color, or being of a certain race, or being of a certain gender, cannot be morally significant in themselves, and so one could have seen in 1776 that the following could not be basic moral principles:

(1)  Women should not have the right to vote.

(2)  Blacks should not have the right to vote.

(a)  People who are unable to reason should not have the right to vote.

(b)  Women are unable to reason.

(c)  Therefore, women should not have the right to vote.

        The answer is that claim (a), presumably, would be conceded, so the question is whether a plausible case could have been made out for claim (b).  But once things are put in this way, it is a radically different ball game: the moral intuitions of people are no longer of any relevance, since what is now at issue is a purely empirical claim.

        The important moral is this.  People sometimes attempt to settle matters by appealing to moral intuitions in situations where this is not a legitimate way of proceeding, and where the reason that it is not a legitimate way of proceeding is that the principle that is under dispute can be seen, upon reflection, not to be a plausible candidate for a basic moral principle.  Once this is seen, the discussion needs to shift to considering whether there is any plausible derivation of the principle that is under dispute, and this shift may very well mean that what one winds up considering is whether certain purely descriptive claims are or are not true.