Aristotle: the Incoherence of “Same-Sex” Marriage

As I have said ‘same sex marriage” does not expand marriage, it ends it.

“The very moment in which they make that assumption is when they divorce the concept of ‘marriage’ from its ‘essential properties.’”  Yes.  Amen.

And what does this say about a church that has no better understanding of either its biblical or philosophical foundations than to promote such a thing as not only possible but deserving of the church’s blessing?

Ahhh, I’m no fan of “same-sex marriage,” but please, anyone but the dread Aristotle.  Yes, he was encyclopedic and brilliant, and he’s not bad as a first-order approximation, but he got enough wrong or materially incomplete that I refuse to accept “Aristotle said” as a reliable authority.

For instance, his work on syllogisms while tremendously influential has been long supplanted by a whole family of non-classical logics with multiple truth values, e.g. probability calculus, or other values that violate Aristotle’s assumptions, modal logic.  The existence of formally rigorous logics beyond Aristotle is relevant here because psychologists of language have shown that in natural human languages, e.g. English, the brain often uses “fuzzy logics” to ascribe meaning or uses concepts differently for different purposes in different contexts.  Wittgenstein wrote extensively about this in overturning the strictly representationalist image of language and semantics and defining the meaning of a word as its use in language:

3.3 Meaning as Use

“For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (PI 43)... Traditional theories of meaning in the history of philosophy were intent on pointing to something exterior to the proposition which endows it with sense. This “something” could generally be located either in an objective space, or inside the mind as mental representation. As early as 1933 (The Blue Book) Wittgenstein took pains to challenge these dogmas, arriving at the insight that “if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use” (BB 4). Ascertainment of the use (of a word, of a proposition), however, is not given to any sort of constructive theory building, as in the Tractatus. Rather, when investigating meaning, the philosopher must “look and see” the variety of uses to which the word is put. So different is this new perspective that Wittgenstein repeats: “Don’t think but look!” (PI 66); and such looking is done vis a vis particular cases, not thoughtful generalizations. In giving the meaning of a word, any explanatory generalization should be replaced by a description of use. The traditional idea that a proposition houses a content and has a restricted number of Fregean forces (such as assertion, question and command), gives way to an emphasis on the diversity of uses.

3.4 Language-games and Family Resemblance

In order to address the countless multiplicity of uses, their un- fixedness, and their being “part of an activity”, Wittgenstein introduces the key concept of ‘language-game’. He never explicitly defines it since, as opposed to the earlier ‘picture’, for instance, this new concept is made to do work for a more fluid, more diversified, and more activity-oriented perspective on language…

Some properties of language-games can be noticed in Wittgenstein’s several examples and comments. They are, first, a part of a broader context termed by Wittgenstein a form of life (see below). Secondly, the concept of language-games points at the rule-governed character of language. This does not entail strict and definite systems of rules for each and every language-game, but points to the conventional nature of this sort of human activity. Finally, Wittgenstein’s choice of ‘game’ is based on the over-all analogy between language and game, assuming that we have a clearer perception of what games are. Still, just as we cannot give a final, essential definition of ‘game’, so we cannot find “what is common to all these activities and what makes them into language or parts of language” (PI 65).

It is here that Wittgenstein’s rejection of general explanations, and definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher’s “craving for generality”, he points to ‘family resemblance’ as the more suitable analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same word. There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally—and dogmatically—for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through “a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing” (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form—be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Lan

So using the term “marriage” differently across different contexts would not undermine language itself.  We do this all the time in for instance realizing that “honor” means different things to the feudal Japanese, Confederates, feminists, ancient Romans, and Barak Obama.

Even if natural language were more rigid, we could still formally represent different meanings and uses of “marriage” without confusion in Kripke semantics and modal logic or with multi-valued semantics.  These would simply be stipulations in our language game.

This matters because Aristotelian logic is teleological, i.e. relativized to purpose.  So Catholic Aristotelians, Natural Law theorists, are lead into saying stuff like “marriage is the thing that serves two purposes—procreation and heterosexual unity.”  That can get rigid fast and proscribes birth control.  Historically, the break with teleological reason by Protestants in the Reformation opened the door to the concept of contingency and thus modern science.  After Luther, Descartes could break from Aristotle and Aquinas and conceive of facts not as part of the Harmonious Whole serving the great purpose but “just as they are” sustained by the radical voluntarist will of God.

In short: if gay marriage is unethical or unwise, it’s not because the Master Dictionary in the Sky or the official lexicon of the French Academy says so.  Language works by convention for the people, by the people, and of the people.

All that said, I think it unwise to use language that conveys symbolic approval or legitimacy upon gay marriage.  That’s because I think the Bible treats marriage as a heterosexual sacrament.  You could say the Bible provides a privileged and superior theology and meaning of marriage.  And I do respect the authority of the Bible and the tradition of the Church.

Fifteen years ago, when I was writing on this subject as the TEC General Convention was dealing with what at the time it was called “rites honoring love and commitment between persons of the same sex,” I decided on the subtitle “Why the Church Cannot Bless Same-Sex Marriage.”

The “cannot” represents a realist understanding of words and the world. So, kudos to Aristotle. However, a realist understanding does not mean that false words cannot affect perceptions of reality and undermine the goodness of reality. So kudos also to George Orwell and Humpty Dumpty. In my book, I quoted Maggie Gallagher to the point that the invention of “no-fault divorce” resulted in the abolition of marriage.

In 1970 Mary, a nice Catholic girl in her early twenties, tried to commit an illegal act.

She and her boyfriend Jim had just graduated from a small Catholic college near San Francisco and like many other young couples they decided to wed. They had blood tests and proper licenses; a priest officiated at the ceremony; the bride marched up the aisle in a white dress, they exchanged vows, she took his name, and over the years bore two children. To all outward appearances, Mary and Jim were married. Everyone said so.

But 1970 was the year the state of California imposed no-fault divorce. With that act, quietly, with little public fanfare or political debate, the state of California outlawed marriage.

Mary did not find out till nearly a decade later when Jim decided to fly down to Los Angeles to scout out law offices for a new practice. Two days later, Mary received a long letter in which Jim explained that he had married too young and needed to “find himself.” She was left with two toddlers, $12,000 from the sale of the house and $300 a month in child support.

When Mary agreed to live in the same house with Jim and accept his financial support and offer her own paid and unpaid labor to the household, to sleep in the same bed and to bear his children, she did so because she thought she was married. Had Jim asked her to do these things for him without getting married, she would have slapped his face. Mary knew what marriage meant. The example of her parents, and the teachings of her religion gave her a concrete idea of the unwritten law. It meant the two became one flesh, one family. It was a lifetime commitment.

But the state of California later informed her that she was not allowed to make or to accept lifetime commitments. No-fault divorce gave judges, at the request of one half a couple, the right to decide when a marriage had irretrievably broken down. They decided by and large that wanderlust would be a state-protected emotion, while loyalty was on its own. In a cruel display of judicial power, the state of California made Mary a single woman again, without protecting her interests and without requiring her consent.

The realist has one revenge, one compensation for the abuse which false speech can wreak on the world. Unreality will come to an end, and not just apocalyptically but in history. Just read Proverbs and Psalms about the wicked falling into the own pit they have dug for the righteous (Prov 28:10; Psa 7:14-16).

Let me make one bold prediction here – one that I may not live long enough to see. The program of normalizing homosexuality will come to an end some day, and people will look back on it and say “How did they ever take that seriously?” Maybe this situation will happen after the current generation fails to reproduce and reaps the dire consequences thereof. Maybe it will happen when the Muslims and the Mormons inherit the earth. But it will be happen.

And of course there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth at the end of this age as well.

My last post is kind of a downer, so let me say something cheerier about the realist understanding of marriage.

I confess to being a Janeite from my teenage years. I also confess to thinking the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice to be close to perfection as a visual “reproduction” of the book. What is most amazing is the ending: how the screenwriter and producers manage to capture visually what Jane Austen leaves unsaid (but implied). Here it is.

Now I defy you - and maybe even the hard-hearted revisionist - not to be moved by this scene, especially if you have followed the trials and tribulations of love that precede it. There is something incredibly good about what Bonhoeffer calls “celebrating the triumph” of marriage and what the Bible calls a man leaving father and mother and cleaving to his wife.

And I also defy you to re-imagine the scene with Darcy and Bingley and Elizabeth and Jane as the happy same-sex couples and draw the same deep satisfaction expressed by Mrs. Bennet (of all people!): “Oh, Mr. Bennet, God has been very good to us!” “Yes, so it would seem,” he replies. And so it does seem – to the human heart.

Finally, a note in defense of polygamy. I don’t know if Aristotle says anything about polygamy but I think he might recognize it as a natural though deficient form of marriage. Polygamy at least preserves elements of the essence of marriage: the polygamous husband unites with one wife (at a time) and aims to reproduce offspring and to maintain a home (with many mansions) for his wives and children. Jesus does call Christians to a higher righteousness of one man, one woman, but polygamy in the OT and traditional societies is “natural” in a way that same-sex relationships cannot be.

The Plantagenets -

Would your acceptance of Wittgenstein entail asserting an anti-realism all the way up and down our conceptual schemes?  So that all a rigid designator would be in a particular language game is a stipulation?

I am amused by your statement, ” Historically, the break with teleological reason by Protestants in the Reformation opened the door to the concept of contingency and thus modern science.” because it speaks so positively of the triumph of scientific mechanism.  In the end, you may be right in your evaluation.  As I see it, MacIntyre located the incoherence of modern morality precisely in the right place, i.e. the rejection of teleology, and moral coherence will be achieved only with its return.  We may disagree about the essence of human nature, but using the language of essence is the only way we can talk reasonably about morality.

1)  Scope of Realism

  I’ll try to be a good little Wittgensteinian here and say that sometimes I’m a realist, sometimes not.  It depends.  Marvin Minsky building on Thomas Kuhn did some interesting work on applying Wittgenstein to top-down conceptual schemes in mental frames and artificial neural networks:

3.5 CLUSTERS, CLASSES, AND A GEOGRAPHIC ANALOGY

“Though a discussion of some of the attributes shared by a number of games or chairs or leaves often helps us to learn how to employ the corresponding term, there is no set of characteristics that is simultaneously applicable to all members of the class and to them alone. Instead, confronted with a previously unobserved activity, we apply the term ‘game’ because what we are seeing bears a close ‘family resemblance’ to a number of the activities we have previously learned to call by that name. For Wittgenstein, in short, games, chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and crisscross resemblances. The existence of such a network sufficiently accounts for our success in identifying the corresponding object or activity.”– Thomas. Kuhn {The Structure of Scientific Revolutions}...

To locate something in such a structure, one uses a hierarchy like the one implicit in a mail address. Everyone knows something about the largest categories, in that he knows where the major cities are. An inhabitant of a city knows the nearby towns, and people in the towns know the nearby villages. No person knows all the individual routes between pairs of houses; but, for a particular friend, one may know a special route to his home in a nearby town that is better than going to the city and back. Directories factor the problem, basing paths on standard routes between major nodes in the network. Personal shortcuts can bypass major nodes and go straight between familiar locations. Although the standard routes are usually not quite the very best possible, our stratified transport and communication services connect everything together reasonably well, with comparatively few connections.

At each level, the aggregates usually have distinguished foci or capitols. These serve as elements for clustering at the next level of aggregation. There is no non-stop airplane service between New Haven and San Jose because it is more efficient overall to share the “trunk” route between New York and San Francisco, which are the capitols at that level of aggregation.

As our memory networks grow, we can expect similar aggregations of the destinations of our similarity pointers. Our decisions about what we consider to be primary or “trunk” difference features and which are considered subsidiary will have large effects on our abilities. Such decisions eventually accumulate to become epistemological commitments about the “conceptual” cities of our mental universe.

The non-random convergences and divergences of the similarity pointers, for each difference D, thus tend to structure our conceptual world around

(1) the aggregation into D-clusters
(2) the selection of D-capitols

Note that it is perfectly all right to have several capitols in a cluster, so that there need be no one attribute common to them all. The “crisscross resemblances” of Wittgenstein are then consequences of the local connections in our similarity network, which are surely adequate to explain how we can feel as though we know what is a chair or a game–yet cannot always define it in a “logical” way as an element in some class-hierarchy or by any other kind of compact, formal, declarative rule. The apparent coherence of the conceptual aggregates need not reflect explicit definitions, but can emerge from the success-directed sharpening of the difference-describing processes.

The selection of capitols corresponds to selecting stereotypes or typical elements whose default assignments are unusually useful. There are many forms of chairs, for example, and one should choose carefully the chair-description frames that are to be the major capitols of chair-land. These are used for rapid matching and assigning priorities to the various differences. The lower priority features of the cluster center then serve either as default properties of the chair types or, if more realism is required, as dispatch pointers to the local chair villages and towns…

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Frames/frames.html

  Sorry, for the long quote; I cut it down substantially, and it’s worth reading the whole section.  But in short, I think that the network is real but messy.  In fairness to Aristotle, default values for linguistic prototypes are in some ways an update of the concept of accidental properties.

  But in terms of religion, I’m probably something a fideist and a Platonist (the guy point up in the picture above because I like John 14, Pascal, Simone Weil, and Wittgenstein so much.  Some of the time that is!

2)  “So that all a rigid designator would be in a particular language game is a stipulation?”

Good, hard question.  I believe in casual groundings especially with regard to Proper Names in a linguistic community.  So yes, people like Marcus Borg are indeed linguistic terrorists.  But yes, our knowledge of a rigid designator might have to be stipulated in certain circumstances.  However, so doing might be extremely artificial.  But my point is that it would be consistent.  We could generate a consistent, clear logic that gay marriage doesn’t crash.  Therefore, gay marriage isn’t always illogical. 

It would be artificial and weird (at least to me) if gay marriage was bad because it confuses a semi-artifical theory of language from thousands of years ago.  So in secular contexts, I prefer to introduce a number of assumptions about health, the human unconscious, and the family to show how gay marriage generates bad consequences.  I’m definitely a realist there.  (So was Aristotle in his description of Philolaus and Diocles’s same-sex union and its origin in Diodecles’s detestation of his own mother’s “incestuous passion.”  Politics, Book 2) 

3)  MacIntyre.  I keep hoping read more MacIntyre.  His stuff on tradition as a guard against naive social engineering seems promising.  But from what I know of virtue ethics, it seems wedded to the intuitive but wrong fundamental attribution error as described by social psychology: http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Papers/Virtue.html

  Consider John von Neumann mid-century.  In 1945 after helping to invent the atom bomb, he was one of four people on the targeting committee that selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In 1949ish, he gave away a fortune by refusing to patent the first computer architecture because he didn’t want to slow progress.  In 1950, he told Congress, “If you say why not bomb [Soviets] tomorrow, I say, why not today. If you say today at five o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?”  That’s not a guy who’s moral essence or “character” is simple, non-controversial, or easy to evaluate without reference to the times.  But it does raise real questions about the triumph of scientific mechanism.  So you know, I love science… critically, but hey, I’m not married to it!

“We may disagree about the essence of human nature, but using the language of essence is the only way we can talk reasonably about morality.”

Using language is the only way we can talk.  That’s true.  What I don’t like is making inferences about morality based on language.  “I’ve seen a bunch of white swans.  Therefore, all swans are white.  The essence of a swan includes whiteness,” is an inductive, generalizing argument.  It’s convenient; it works most of the time, but we have to be careful to remember that it’s probabilistic and not let it drive heavy, deductive moral reasoning.

But I suspect we probably agree on much especially thanks to the divine gift of a moral common ground in Christianity.  And I appreciate that while I’m a very visual thinker, there can be other approaches that are more useful in some cases.  I love geometry and photography, so the “optical philosophy” of Wittgenstein appeals to me, but give me some nasty computation, and I want to divorce myself!

The Plantagents -

When was the Harman essay written?  I did not see a date in my cursory glance at the essay.

All that MIT stuff is way too reductionist for me, and I suspect that a naturalized epistemology as those MIT philosophers seem committed to would require a fideistic approach to religion, otherwise the assumption of naturalism rules out the possibility of God’s existence. 

In any case, I think that Haley is right to talk about the essence of marriage, recognizing that the word “marriage” can be used in many different ways, all with a “family resemblance.”  However, we have to recognize as well that the supporters of same-sex marriage, or at least many of them within the Church, appeal to an essentialist argument as well:  Marriage is a “life-long committed relationship.”

1999

From The Plantagenets [3]
(something I could grasp… and agree with)

“All that said, I think it unwise to use language that conveys symbolic approval or legitimacy upon gay marriage.  That’s because I think the Bible treats marriage as a heterosexual sacrament.  You could say the Bible provides a privileged and superior theology and meaning of marriage.  And I do respect the authority of the Bible and the tradition of the Church.”

Which is why (it seems to me) the concept of “same-sex marriage” makes as much sense as “male childbirth.” Neither are (I would say) intrinsically possible.

The Plantagenets -

This post was not about Aristotle per se, and it did not ask you to accept him as an authority on the incoherence of same-sex marriage, because he never (as far as we know) wrote anything on that topic. So to reject the analysis on the grounds that you prefer Wittgenstein’s linguistic framework is to drag in a somewhat large red herring. Indeed, it has thus far hijacked the thread (even though I have to admit it has been diverting and very educational).

All I attempted was to apply an Aristotelian analytical framework to the current arguments for lifting a supposed “ban on same-sex marriage.” When you shift to a Wittgenstein-based framework, you go from (as you note) a teleological (normative) one to a descriptive (non-normative) one, and therein lies the rub.

That being said, you save the day by indicating that you recognize “the divine gift of a moral common ground in Christianity.” Christianity is fundamentally and thoroughly teleological, given that it has man made in the image of God. It is the Christian teleological function of traditional marriage that gives it its essential properties, and not the other way around. (The pagan Aristotle might disagree, but never mind him—it’s his framework we want to borrow, as did the apostolic fathers.)

If man is God’s creation, there can be no divergence between essentials and the teleological purposes of marriage. This is underscored in the Gospel, which emphasizes that human marriage reflects the marriage between Christ and his Church. There is nothing rigid in such an observation (other than in the sense in which God’s natural law states those things which “we can’t not know”). And to the degree that God’s law keeps man on the proper path, it provides man with what Chesterton saw as true freedom, the freedom to be responsible to God: “Most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities.”

A descriptive framework, which sees marriage as a wholly social and linguistic construct that may vary from time to time and space to space is not fashioned (or intended!) to lead to Christian truths, since it relies on man’s fallenness for its derivations. Nonetheless, in the hands of a great philosopher such as Wittgenstein, it may nevertheless stumble across equivalent truths, because in the end, fallen though he is, man still reflects God’s image.

Dr. Noll (#4), it was not just the invention of “no-fault” divorce that destroyed marriage. In Divorce versus Democracy, published in 1916, G. K. Chesterton predicted that granting divorce for fault would lead to the multiplication of “faults” recognized by the law, and that the only possible termination of that process would be divorce for no “fault” whatsoever. Moreover, all of such modern folderol, he said, would be enacted primarily for the convenience of the wealthy.

In the same way, I believe that he would have argued against recognizing any “ban” on “same-sex marriage” on the grounds given here. Once strip marriage of its essential properties, and there is no going backwards: the dilutions will complete the process begun with the modernization of divorce law.

As noted above, no-fault divorce removed the “permanence” aspect of State-sanctioned marriage.  Thus, a desire for “permanence” in homosexual relationships is a poor argument for “same-sex marriage”.

Defrocked of permanence, state-sanctioned marriage in America now is fundamentally a property regime, a special bundle of financial rights (rights in a spouse’s income, health insurance benefits, and pension rights for the surviving spouse) that are meant to encourage parents (especially moms) to invest more time and resources in their children and thereby produce better citizens.  This children-driven property regime has no application to homosexual couples who cannot naturally beget children and who cannot, even with artificial or surrogate assistance, provide for the fundamental right of a child - the right to be born to a mother and a father.  (I suspect that, for some advocates of “same-sex marriage”, the real purpose is merely gold-digging for health insurance and pension largesse at the expense of the rest of America.)

I would submit that the availability of maternal and paternal parenting for any offspring is an “essential” attribute of marriage.

Mark Adams Brown
San Angelo, Texas
September 24, 2012

I really appreciate this conversation and don’t want to hijack it accidentally, so let me say this:

Yes, an Aristotelian framework with orthodox Christian ends is incompatible with same-sex marriage.

We can strengthen that claim by applying a Wittgensteinian “ordinary language school” interpretation to the Bible to argue for our understanding of that those orthodox Christian ends.  For example, by showing how first century Jews used words like “marriage,” we can show not say what Paul meant.  This is one of many ways in which analytic philosophy and orthodox Christianity in both taking meaning and truth seriously form a pincher against liberal theology.

Yes, there are major conceptual differences between the Biblical and modern gay conceptions of marriage and probably an even greater difference in terms of the Wittgensteinian “forms of life” that use the word “marriage” so differently.  Any activist who says otherwise is so disingenuous as to be beneath my previous mention.  We can actually quantify these differences through a technique called cognitive mapping: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2584270?uid=3739912&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101076585463

And if I’m tough on language sometimes, it’s partly because I appreciate Pope Gregory the Great’s insight that “we make idols of our concepts, but wisdom is born of wonder.”

But

“It is the mark of an educated person to require as much certainty in a particular domain as the nature of the matter allows.”

—Aristotle