On atheism, is it possible to establish that certain things have natural purposes, and that any deviation from those purposes is immoral or evil? [closed]

Question

Consider the following quotes that motivate my question:

Quote 1:

If a philosophical framework can't objectively say, with relative ease, "This cat is injured," or, "This cat is ill," or even, "This is a cat"; then it seems like a framework not worth having. It's like trying to explore the world in a vehicle that can barely make it out of the driveway before breaking down. My experience, though, is that people don't consistently live that way, but use a "much nicer car" to get around in everyday life than they do in these kinds of theoretical arguments. And if we accept the standards of reason that we use in daily practice, I think we'd have to agree that homosexuality, as an example, is contrary to the natural design.

Quote 2:

indeed we can say there is an "essence" to homosexuality: same-sex sexual attraction. But it's a composite, and considering what sexual attraction is ordered towards, in homosexuality its end is inherently frustrated by the "same-sex" qualifier. So, unless you deny that the end of sex is reproduction (even though it is quite evident), you can conclude that homosexuality is inherently disordered.

These quotes come from two different users who are participating in the same chat discussion. Both believe that there is some sort of "natural design" or "inherent order" or "purpose" (or telos) in things, and that deviations from these natural purposes are wrong. In particular, they see homosexuality as a deviation from the "natural design" of sex.

For the sake of argument, suppose that God doesn't exist. Then I have two questions:

Question 1: How can we objectively establish that some particular arrangement of matter has a "natural purpose"?

Question 2: Assuming that some arrangement of matter has a "natural purpose", how then does it follow that any deviation from that "natural purpose" is objectively morally wrong or evil?

Answer 1

If a philosophical framework can't objectively say, with relative ease, "This cat is injured," or, "This cat is ill," or even, "This is a cat"

What philosophical framework can't give meaning to such phrases? A thing is a cat if it has certain physical characteristics (four legs, claws, fur, etc) and is sufficiently closely genetically related to other such things.

Note, though, that all natural language claims are fuzzy. A typical cat is clearly a cat, but there are unusual entities where it may be difficult to say. Suppose you took a cat genome and added genes from a hamster genome in such a way that the resulting animal grows up healthy. At what percentage of hamster genes do you stop calling it a cat and start calling it a hamster or an in-between kind of animal? This doesn't mean philosophy can't assign meaning to the word "cat," just beware that meaning is always a bit fuzzy and ambiguous.

indeed we can say there is an "essence" to homosexuality: same-sex sexual attraction. But it's a composite, and considering what sexual attraction is ordered towards, in homosexuality its end is inherently frustrated by the "same-sex" qualifier. So, unless you deny that the end of sex is reproduction (even though it is quite evident), you can conclude that homosexuality is inherently disordered.

Homosexuality is common throughout the animal kingdom, from fruit flies to cows. It's certainly natural.

When you talk about the "end" of sex from a naturalistic perspective, I will interpret this as talking about the causal reason that sex evolved. Sex mostly evolved because it causes organisms to reproduce, that's true, but that's not the only reason sex evolved. Sex also evolved to serve a role in pair bonding and the maintenance of relationships among social organisms such as bonobos. That secondary reason also holds for homosexual relationships.

More than that, we are not required to be slaves to evolution. Humans have the ability to think and make decisions for ourselves on the basis of what we want, not on the basis of what evolution "wants for us." If we are ascribing wants to evolution, then evolution "wants" us to just have as many children as possible. But does anyone want to live like that? Not many! If it is "disordered" to have no children, isn't it also "disordered" to only have five children when you could have had ten?

Evolution is a separate entity from you, and it wants things that are somewhat different from what you want. Think of it like an ogre, demanding you work for it. The ogre has a lot of power over you, but not total power. What reason do you have to willingly surrender your remaining independence to the ogre? Sure, the ogre might be acting with its own "purpose," but does that mean you ought to obey it? You act with purpose too, and your purposes may be opposed to those of the ogre.

Question 1: How can we objectively establish that some particular arrangement of matter has a "natural purpose"?

There is a test I like to apply that tells you something like this. Most people would be reluctant to call this "purpose." For the moment let's call it a "goal-oriented tendency."

Before I say what I mean by "goal-oriented tendency," I'll give some examples:

• A mouse fleeing a cat
• A light-sensing robot that chases an LED
• A human solving a Sudoku puzzle
• An autopilot that uses a simple feedback loop to keep an airplane on course
• A thermostat
• A ball rolling down a basin
• Evolution optimizing organisms for reproductive fitness

It's harder to find examples of things that lack any sort of goal-oriented tendency. But consider a machine stamping aluminum pie plates. The machine takes in a circle of aluminum and brings the stamp down at regular intervals. The circle of aluminum could be misaligned by the human operator, and if so, the machine doesn't care or correct for it, it simply brings down the stamp anyway. Because of the lack of any feedback mechanism to ensure the circle is centered, the machine cannot be said to have a goal-oriented tendency to make correct pie plates.

So a goal-oriented tendency is simply a feedback mechanism that pushes things towards a certain outcome, and (crucially) can correct for perturbations away from the outcome. In the sense of differential equations, the outcome becomes an attractor of the system.

Question 2: Assuming that some arrangement of matter has a "natural purpose", how then does it follow that any deviation from that "natural purpose" is objectively morally wrong or evil?

It does not follow. A thermostat tends to bring the temperature towards a set range. But it is not wrong or evil if the temperature falls outside that range. The thermostat is still "trying" to regulate the temperature, but this alone does not mean any harm was caused.

For a particular person, what does matter is what that person's goal-oriented tendencies are. What is that person trying to do? If that person is trying to do X, but actually Y (quite different from X) is happening, then that person will judge Y to be a problem.

And in the end, for you, the particular person that matters is you. What are you trying to do? If something is supposedly objectively evil, but you want it with all your heart, then you want it and will seek it regardless. If something is supposedly objectively good, but you don't want to do it, then you won't seek it. So it simply doesn't matter to you whether something is good or evil, except insofar as ideas about good or evil influence what you want.

It's not just about what you want though, because by thinking about the consequences of your actions and considering various philosophical arguments, you can change what you want. Based on such thinking, you can decide whether or not you support vegetarianism, for example. And (if you are philosophically inclined) then you want to want what you would want, if you thought about it more!

So there's what you want - in the moment - and then there's what you would want, or what you really want - if you were older and wiser. You might decide to attach the label "good" not to the things you want in the moment, but to the things you would want after sufficient consideration of consequences and philosophical arguments.

I believe that "what you would want after sufficient consideration" would, for most people, involve being more altruistic than they currently are.

Answer 2

Question 1: How can we objectively establish that some particular arrangement of matter has a "natural purpose"?

We cannot. The phrase "natural purpose" makes no sense. Is any kind of sex that does not have as it's goal making children "unnatural"? What is "natural" or "unnatural" supposed to mean here?

Obviously it does not mean "behavior that doesn't occur in nature". Since it occurs among homo sapiens and among for instance bonobos (who are pretty darned free in their sexual behavior). So, what then?

Also, what kind of implications would such a judgment have? Would all forms of sexual behavior that are not linked to procreation now be a "deviation of the natural purpose"?

• Sexual play that doesn't end in coitus
• Masturbation
• Using birth control

And indeed, assuming that there was something like "natural purpose", what would that imply? That all those other sexual behaviors are wrong? - And then what, suppose it is "wrong" according to someone's moral code, should the state then outlaw all those behaviors?

One might also wonder how heterosexual or homosexual behavior is actually defined. The simple bifurcation in two classes of behaviors seems to rely on being able to always clearly distinguish "men" and "women" - while in fact the biological boundaries can be pretty fluid. Anyway, changing one's gender - is that also "unnatural"? But what about "gender dysphoria" - is that "unnatural"? If it's "unnatural", wouldn't gender change then restore the "natural order"?

Talk about "natural purpose" is a fig leave used by religious moralists. It assumes some kind of mythical "natural order", but there is no scientific, biological basis for such an assumption. Religious moralists may dismiss scientific evidence - but a secular morality can not just ignore science.

Answer 3

There is equivocation involved in one direction, but as a pluralist I must also confess that I accept that there are rehabilitated natural-law ethics propositions, so in another direction it would not be equivocal, to reason from nature to virtue as such.

Per the equivocal side of these things, though:

• If an object has a quiddity (a "what-ness") or essence (or "is-ness"), and it really does have this, and if the law of identity is then being applied in such a way that we try to export the theoretical necessity of identity into the practical sphere, our reasoning will turn into semantic plasma. For example, if a being has libertarian free will by, and as, its core nature, then any decision such a being makes can be an expression of its nature. (This is Sidgwick's problem of the noumenal scoundrel.^R) For its nature is to choose, and any choice is such a choosing, wherefore... But so if things did have essences, these would be inviolable.

However (see also my response to this question here):

• It's possible to ask whether obligations or permissions, for example, are substances or properties, or relations. Or, then, it is possible to conceive of monadic and dyadic predicates, alongside quantifiers (for subsistence). Now then it should be possible to ask whether some monadic deontic predicate was an essential or accidental predicate of some being. So there could, in a general sort of way, be obligations that existed from our nature. The caveat, which is obvious now and has been obvious for ages, is that this is not a way to infer, from the other attributes of our natures, to this attribute. Instead, this attribute is itself primary, and so it will not pertain to feelings about the natural propriety of actions in terms of those other attributes. For example, I could have some obligation essentially by nature, the obligation would be given to me in my nature (indeed, this is rather what Prichard thought at one point or other), and I could have red hair by nature, but that doesn't mean that my obligation has anything to do with having red hair.

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^RRawls tries to get around this by stratifying our natures (this is basically Kant's move to boot, but that's not surprising, since in the section of A Theory of Justice (40, to be exact) where Rawls goes over the problem, he entitles the entire section as one having to do with a Kantian interpretation of his thesis). And Kant held that, "Act according to the truth," is "analytic." But interestingly, that great subversive theist, John Duns Scotus, apparently held that hardly any moral propositions are analytic of the natural law:

For Scotus the natural law in the strict sense contains only those moral propositions that are per se notae ex terminis along with whatever propositions can be derived from them deductively (Ordinatio 3, d. 37, q. un.). Per se notae means that they are self-evident; ex terminis adds that they are self-evident in virtue of being analytically true [Kristian's note: because they are true "from" (ex) "the terms" (terminis), AKA they are "true by definition")]. Now one important fact about propositions that are self-evident and analytically true is that God himself can’t make them false. They are necessary truths. So the natural law in the strict sense does not depend on God’s will. This means that even if (as I believe) Scotus is some sort of divine-command theorist, he is not whole-hog in his divine command theory. Some moral truths are necessary truths, and even God can’t change those. They would be true no matter what God willed.

Which ones are those? Scotus’s basic answer is that they are the commandments of the first tablet of the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). The Decalogue has often been thought of as involving two tablets. ... The commandments of the first tablet are part of the natural law in the strict sense because they have to do with God himself, and with the way in which God is to be treated. For Scotus says that the following proposition is per se nota ex terminis: “If God exists, then he is to be loved as God, and nothing else is to be worshiped as God, and no irreverence is to be done to him.” Given the very definition of God, it follows that if there is such a being, he is to be loved and worshiped, and no irreverence should be shown to him. Because these commandments are self-evident and analytic, they are necessary truths. Not even God himself could make them false.

But even the first three commandments, once we start looking at them, are not obviously part of the natural law in the strict sense. In particular, the third commandment, the one about the Sabbath day, is a little tricky. Obviously, the proposition “God is to be worshiped on Saturday” is not self-evident or analytic. In fact, Scotus says it’s not even true any more, since Christians are to worship on Sunday, not Saturday. So, Scotus asks, what about the proposition “God is to be worshiped at some time or other”? Even that is not self-evident or analytic. The best one can do is “God is not to be hated.” Now that’s self-evident and analytic, since by definition God is the being most worthy of love and there is nothing in him worthy of hate. But obviously that’s far weaker than any positive commandment about whether and when we should worship God.

So by the time Scotus completes his analysis, we are left with nothing in the natural law in the strict sense except for negative propositions: God is not to be hated, no other gods are to be worshiped, no irreverence is to be done to God. Everything else in the Decalogue belongs to the natural law in a weaker or looser sense. These are propositions that are not per se notae ex terminis and do not follow from such propositions, but are “highly consonant” with such propositions.

In other words, to your title question: it doesn't seem possible to establish much about natural purposes and accompanying morals even assuming that a relatively specific version of a divine being existed, so I imagine that it would be next-to-impossible to do much with simplistic talk of natural purposes in a deity-free context. (And Scotus had to have recognized this, such that it played a part in his shift towards theological voluntarism. For he would have known that his intended audience, upon finding out that all their cherished teleological judgments about the naturalness of this or that thing's purposes were not analytic but instead "highly consonant with" analytic natural laws, would have become pretty upset by the by. For "highly consonant" is a lofty, intellectualistic description, and for his audience to have to wander the dialectical labyrinth of this phrase would have been off-putting to them; they wanted to prove their point as dogmatically as possible, wherefore...)

Answer 4

What you're supposing is - in general - the Christian reading of Aristotle. The key word isn't so much purpose as it is function. One of the other answers mentioned "natural law," and that's also the right ballpark. So, the Christian Aristotle reading seems to be something like: There are natural functions, and natural functions illuminate natural law.

Importantly, the idea of needing a God or gods to legitimate authority is not actually true, philosophically speaking. In other words, if going against natural law harms you in some way, if going against natural function harms you in some way, then that harm may be understood as a kind of evil. Even Nietzsche is clear on that point when he criticizes morality. So, in sum, to answer your question: Yes. And, yes, even within an atheistic framework. Just change "purpose" to "function."

Answer 5

In the absence of gods there is no other objective authority dictating purposes or moral imperatives. The is-ought gap describes the problem of inferring any normative statements from description of nature.

So atheist worldviews would defer to relative human-made systems of purposes and values which are relative to given societies or individuals.

There certainly is some natural design in evolution such as our lungs are made for breathing, or ears for hearing and so on. From that it derives no duty to listen or breathe, nor some prohibition to use bodies in a different way. Our bodies are made to walk in solid ground, but it is not immoral to swim, dive, or paraglide.

As for sexual organs, reproduction is certainly the most evolutionary important natural design (though abstaining from sex is equally not immoral). Yet this does not imply that there cannot be other uses beneficial to evolution and thus possibly implicit in natural design. Tentative examples would be from animal sociology where male animals in herds sometimes copulate as a means to establish and maintain a social hierarchy that helps with herd stability and thus survival. A more simple example is the male penis serving both for sperm delivery as well as emptying the bladder. All our organs derive from other organs that early in evolution were used differently than before. Life did not start out having eyes, ears, brains, bones and so on. Those arrived "accidentally" most frequently as deviation from organs with other "designs". Wings were deviations from arms, as an example, feathers are deviations from scales. Yet one would not tell bird: your feathers are just scales, your wings are arms, stop flying, it's against nature!"

In more general terms, evolution is never done, humanity is not a finished product, so continued blind experimentation is also part of nature, and an inevitable effect of unplanned experimentation is that some (most) experiments lead to nothing, while others will surprisingly lead to innovation and improvement. As such, all deviations can be seen as fulfilling the natural design of trying out something new.

Also the case can be made that any homosexual desires a person feels are part of their personal nature, and so satisfying those can not go against their nature, as nature is what caused those desires. In that sense, it could even be argued that it would be wrong for a person without heterosexual desires to perform heterosexual acts just for the sake of procreation, as their natural desires would guide towards the opposite (but there can be other incentives from society).

In atheism due to the is-ought gap does not allow to derive moral judgement based on natural design anyway, so moral judgement can only derive from other given moral frameworks. Some society can decide to declare it immoral to, say, have sex after the age of 25, and then this would be so in that society, but not in others. More rational frameworks would seek judgement that minimizes harm or maximizes utility.

In the absence of demonstrable harm or opportunity cost to some benefit, it would be difficult to find rational moral frameworks to condemn deviations from the heterosexual norm. Typical moral judgement against homosexuality are derived from irrational fear of the unknown, or more rational fear of repercussions from society leading to individual harm (e.g. loss of status for the family given the scandal. Careers requiring large public approval may be hampered for such scandalization).

The main natural design of sexual organs for reproduction certainly identifies homosexual behavior as deviation from the main design, but given the examples before natural design allows for other purposes and for deviations as part of experimentation. As such it's not rationally or scientifically justified to declare homosexual behavior as being against natures design, and even if it was that alone would not make it immoral in rational moral frameworks.

It should also be noted that while Atheism does not provide absolute morality, the opposite of atheism does not necessarily do so. Plenty of faiths and religions are possible with multiple gods having various moralities, gods without morality, and gods with strong morality but which don't give a crap about whether you wear a funny hat or with whom you have sexual contact. So it's only a minor theoretical subset in the space of possible faiths that do believe that there is a single god who would actually care about such matters.