Our society places much importance on the idea of choice in sexual orientation. In the Kerry/Bush debates the one question about LGBT issues was “Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?“. This tends to set up the worst answer to anti-gay arguments. Here are 3 popular versions:
- I didn’t choose to be gay, therefore nothing wrong with it
- With all the discrimination, would any sane person choose to be gay? Therefore I did not, therefore nothing wrong with it.
- X from genetics/biology suggests sexual preference is influenced by [INSERT COMBINATION OF NATURE/NURTURE CRAP]. Therefore I did not etc, therefore etc.
When someone provides an answer like this one many things go wrong. Answers like the 3 above:
- Appear to assume that if this were a choice it would be wrong. (Logically this doesn’t follow — but many will get this impression).
- Definitely invoke the naturalistic fallacy, the Dreaded Dark Overlord of Fallacies. The argument that something’s not wrong because the person doing it has no choice is very similar to the argument something’s not wrong because it is “natural”.
- Portray the gay person in question as powerless. This even leads to backlash groups like this. It is this last point that’s most interesting.
- Another insightful view of the problem here
Framing the conversation this way forces you to make a statement about free will and determinism — the Dreaded Dark Overlord of Philosophy. Seriously, there have been few questions with such a verbal diuretic effect. Even the Wikipedia article (meant as a summary), is some 8000 words!
I’ve found people tend to avoid bringing up some “Higher Idea” of choice. With good reason: they know it leads into labyrinths that have nothing to do with the original subject.
It plays no role in their life. (The extent to which it’s our choice to be something doesn’t impact the fact that we follow a certain process in choosing.) Whatever sexual, romantic or emotional attractions you might have, their cause is not somehow different to all your other thoughts & urges. They’re all physical processes happening in your body (your brain obviously being a part).
Imagine how ridiculous it’d be if someone evaluated a person, say (1) being a Catholic or (2) killing someone or (3) producing a great work of art, and referred only to whether or not they “had a choice” to do it. Our next question would be “So what? You still need to discuss the merits of each point without referring to choice.” Why should sexual orientation be any different? The Choice Conversation answers nothing, since other arguments must always follow it. It’s just a waste of valuable time. If you’re talking to an anti-gay bigot and they bring out the choice card, the best response is simply: “This is irrelevant. Next!”
(PS. Will post on the free will bullshit pseudo-problem later. In a nutshell,
it all adds up to normality
)
11 comments ↓
I was introduced to the Naturalist Fallacy in Pinker’s book on Human Nature. I had never thought of it before, but since then I must have run into people making that claim dozens of time. “It’s only natural… therefore it must be good!” What’s shocking is when I tell them that some of the most horrendous crimes in society are “only natural” for psychopaths or other similar examples, they keep on arguing that natural = good. WTF?
i think there’s almost an inherent biological faculty in humans that sees nature (eg. trees, animals, plants) as largely benign. after all we evolved whilst mastering nature through organised hunting, fire, weaponry, agriculture etc. the fact that we are at the mercy of nature every second (through the bacteria needed for our bodies) wasn’t known and hasn’t evolved into our consciousness. i think there’s a deep emotional basis for the naturalistic fallacy.
Well, I don’t think that the naturalistic fallacy is true. In fact, this claim on the linked site about how people make this appeal all the time is weird, since I don’t think people make the appeal enough. Western society is about as unnatural as I can think of.
Here is why naturalistic argument is not a fallacy. Any place that you claim nature is bad there is a deeper seeded assumption (mostly Western) that death is bad (or in the case of the psychopath, that somehow psychopaths are acting in accordance to nature). This is what needs to be addressed.
My ethics of naturalism post.
On the actual post, though, I feel as if I missed the point. I thought there was going to be talk about how the discussion of choice leads to backlash groups and feelings of powerlessness. What was the point?
If you’re going to post about the determinism debate, can I direct you here?
http://alrenous.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-will-determinism-infinity.html
…even if for no other reason than to avoid duplication of effort?
Hi Alrenous, thanks for the link. Had a bit of trouble with the Gaussean probabilities and how you connected everything to quantum physics but will have a look at a later point.
I didn’t catch why you thought about compatibilism as irrational in your post, what’s your rundown?
Because I actually think compatibilism is so clearly true that the free will debate is mostly pointless
[But I need to come up with a clear way of putting it all before I post]
Matt — my post was mainly arguing that in conversations about sexuality, choice is a red herring. I didn’t think the specifics of powerlessness were that important to the point.
Cheers for the link, however I’m not sure how it argues for naturalism. The reason the naturalist fallacy is considered a fallacy isn’t because “nature is bad” (I agree that snippet is meaningless by itself) but because there’s no reason to go from “X is natural” to “X is good”.
In your post you don’t provide reasons for this transition (I know you probably don’t need to for the purpose of your post but I also don’t think the reason exists).
I don’t say nature is bad but I would say much of the world of non-human-animals contains acts that would be seen as cruel and unjust from a human perspective — would you disagree?
Can you provide some specific examples? I certainly don’t want to go to the extreme and say we ought to act exactly as all animals act in nature, but for the sake of argument it seems better than the opposite (we must defy all our natural instincts and call this “civilized”).
Animals don’t kill their own species. We could learn from that. If we go the “fight to become leader-of-the-pack route”, then we already do this (in my opinion). Also, when animals are homosexual, they aren’t ostracized and condemned by the rest of their species.
In another note, I agree that choice can be a red herring, but as a naturalist, I must say that nature tends to be a solid bet. When our ethics disagree with nature, it is usually some culturally induced prejudice that doesn’t exist everywhere. Does the choice argument not matter if you want to make the claim that it is less moral to be someone that you are not (assuming not a choice), than to commit an “immoral” act in accordance with your nature?
I think there are some fruitful arguments that can come from the choice argument even if it isn’t immediate.
Actually, if you’re going the compatibilism route, I’d be very interested in that post.
As I mentioned, I can’t figure out what compatibilism is supposed to mean. So I -think- it’s irrational, (the problem is symbolized by: unpredictability is qualitatively different than predictability) but I don’t really know, because I don’t really understand the position.
Matt — I was actually going to do a biology-post-month in August so I’ll do a whole post about examples from nature based on your comment. But note that even if I could find no examples it still does not show that something is moral *because* it’s natural.
what a refreshing and incredibly new outlook on the issue. Now that I think about your right choice isn’t the issue really. It has no influence on its rightness or wrogness. However I don’t see how sexuality is either its purely neutral. In fact most natural things are seen as good or crul but our really neutral. All things can have a potential of negavtive and positive consequences so it can be argued that all is subjective and therefore its own right neutral though this comes across issues when we deal with majority moral outrage but then again this only works if we look at logical actions. If an action causes vast moral outrage it can be illogical and cruel or cruel and neautral but hated because of the ‘yuck factor’ i.e.one is not used to it.
i really think my sexuality is a neautral thing and choice isn’t an idea that should be considered as it adds no merit or vice. I can say i tried so hard to be simply gay or straight so i know i’m n ot this way by choice but the decision to act on it was and my choices in relationships are. Whether its good is not deciphered by this issue. It should really be a seperate argument actually. At the end of the day something that does not harm illogically is probably a neautral with potential for many outcomes. This would be a better argument perhaps.
[...] say “who would choose to be gay, given what they’d have to go through?” This argument fails but makes sense for pedophiles. I’ll rephrase to avoid free-will traps: “what person [...]
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