Be suspicious of linear extrapolation. It does not follow that because moderate exercise is good for you, extreme exercise is extremely good for you. Nor does it follow that because extreme alcohol consumption is harmful, moderate alcohol consumption is moderately harmful.
Start from a default assumption that something natural or traditional is probably OK. This should not be dogmatic, only a starting point. In statistical terms, it’s a prior distribution informed by historical experience. The more a claim is at odds with nature and tradition, the more evidence it requires. If someone says fresh fruit is bad for you, for example, they need to present more evidence than someone who says an newly synthesized chemical compound is harmful. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
From The Endeavor
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ReplyDeleteMarriage between a man and a woman is both natural and traditional. What is the extraordinary evidence for gay marriage?
ReplyDeleteYour analogy would be more accurate if it said: what is the extraordinary evidence AGAINST heterosexual marriage? (Not that i think there is any) The corollary would be the lower burden of evidence needed to disprove the naturality of gay marriage, as it seems to be less traditionally reinforced.
ReplyDeleteThere is however, it seems to me, no such evidence to disprove the naturality of homosexual relationships. They have existed in both sexual and platonic forms since the beginning of recorded history. The greeks used to think women were basically only for reproduction and in order to really love someone it had to be a man. It is not as if homosexuality is some kind of modern cultural phenomenon. True, in the recent past it was far more repressed, but if you go back even further it becomes wholeheartedly sanctioned. Other species have homosexual sex, and don't tell me they don't know the difference, they can smell a vagina for miles. Extant hunter gatherer groups generally allow sexual play between children, premarital sex, and homosexual sex to happen as a form of experimentation without social sanction. They're about as traditional as you can possibly get.
There is also some kind of limits to the whole reliance on tradition thing. Although I agree with his overall thesis, specifically when it is articulated in forms of the natural and the unnatural. To me, though, the natural is what humans were like before complex society rose up to engineer all the abstraction and dogmatization that currently fill our lives. The aztecs sacrificed people to the gods. Is that a practice that should be continued out of recourse to tradition? No, obviously not, it is a ritualistic expression of control over the environment based on abstract spiritual concepts. This is in no way natural in the same sense that finding an apple appetizing is natural.
This leads me to a divide in the concept of natural and traditional. Natural would mean more "as we appeared in a hunter gatherer form" and traditional would mean "as life was lived by those before us in our particular society after the advent of dogma and cultural transmission between generations." In this sense the natural applies to all of us, no exceptions, the traditional would be applicable only to certain people depending on their cultural heritage. Thus your traditional and my traditional differ, my natural and your natural cannot possibly be anything but the same. Apples are appetizing, chemicals are not (unless we formulate them to be mmmmmmm sour punch straws), but opinions on homosexuality are by no means so definite.
Daniel