Drug Use Is Good. Diet Coke Is Immoral. "Natural Family Planning" is a Perversion.

A better interpretation of Natural Law

The brilliant

Amos Wollen

has a new post about Natural Law. According to Wollen, there’s no way for Natural Law arguments to condemn certain sexual acts without also condemning Diet Coke.

For the uninitiated, Natural Law is the theory in moral philosophy that everything has a purpose or telos and it is wrong to use something in a way that goes against its purpose. Nearly everyone who believes in Natural Law is Catholic, and the theory itself comes from Catholic theology, especially from Thomas Aquinas. The most contentious conclusions of Natural Law theory are about sex. According to Natural Law proponents, the purpose of sex is reproduction and therefore masturbation, homosexuality, artificial contraception and coitus interruptus are morally wrong.

Natural Law is a complete moral philosophy - i.e. it is a moral framework that addresses all the big questions that one will encounter in life.

Two competing moral philosophies are Libertarianism and Hedonistic Utilitarianism. According to Libertarianism, we experience good things and bad things, we have freedom, and we make choices to get more good things and less of bad things. You are free to do whatever you want so long as you do not aggress against other people. On Libertarianism, masturbation, contraception and homosexuality are permissible because all parties consent to them. On Hedonistic Utilitarianism, masturbation and homosexuality are permissible when they increase the amount of pleasure in the world, which is most of the time. If you find Natural Law implausible, you should probably skip to the last section: “Steelmanning the case for Natural Law” and read that part first.

In this essay I will argue that there is some merit to Natural Law theory, but that it forbids and endorses very different things from what Catholic Natural Law theorists usually suppose. We shall see that recreational drug use is often morally good, diet coke may be morally impermissible and “Natural Family Planning” is a perversion of the faculties.

Does Natural Law Forbid Diet Coke?

One parody of natural law holds that consuming Diet Coke or sugarless gum must be morally wrong because they pervert the natural faculty of consumption. The telos of consumption is clearly to obtain nourishment for the body, but Diet Coke contains no nutrition - not even simple carbohydrates.

Natural law advocates claim that Diet Coke is fine but masturbation isn’t. I’ll bite the bullet: Diet coke, and all artificial sweeteners, are morally suspicious.

In the parody, Diet Coke is framed as a frustration of the faculty of nutrition, but I think Diet Coke is problematic because it frustrates a different faculty: the faculty of sweetness-taste. Like masturbation, artificial sweeteners trigger pleasure circuits by being a counterfeit of a good thing.

If you think it’s absurd to suggest that there could be anything morally wrong with artificial flavorings, try taking that position to the extreme. If there were some liquid chemical in a medicine dropper that exactly mimicked the taste of fried seitan, would it be good to close your eyes, drop one drop of the liquid on your tongue and pretend you were eating a meal? Would it be good to replace all your meals with these flavor chemicals and get all your nutrients from an IV? Or would there be something un-eudaimonic about that? Would it be better to actually eat real food in the real world?

Certainly Diet Coke and sugarless gum are a far cry from the act of dripping a drop of flavor chemical on your tongue, but are they not the first step down that road? Artificial sweeteners represent a break with nature and I think we should be cautious about breaking with nature.

Recreational drug use is not necessarily a perversion of the faculties. In many cases recreational drug use is eudaimonic and good.

Saying that a recreational drug-induced mental state causes “malfunction” of one’s cognitive faculties is like saying that dreaming is a “malfunction of one’s cognitive faculties. Sure, some of your cognitive faculties are less functional in that state, but to call a dream a “malfunction” really misses the point. Dreaming is a wondrous experience and you should be glad to have it.

Similarly, recreational drug use can be a wondrous experience. Marijuana produces not just unusual sensory experiences, but also a distinctive “way of thought.” Hallucinogens produce sensory experiences which cannot even be imagined in terms of the ordinary senses. Suppose that you were born in a sleepy medieval village, but just across the river there is a dark mountain covered in dense jungle and full of magical beasts. Would it be good to go to the mountain and explore? Is that not the expression of human curiosity and adventure? It almost seems that not going to the mountain would be un-eudaimonic. Catholic Natural Law theorists think that going to the mountain is morally impermissible. I think it’s easier to make the case that it’s morally mandatory.

Marijuana use and LSD use do not pervert the normal cognitive faculties, they produce an entirely alternative cognitive experience. However, there are some drugs that do pervert the normal cognitive faculties. Some drugs do not produce a novel cognitive/sensory experience, but merely make the user feel good. For those drugs, the standard Natural Law argument does apply and the drug is morally impermissible. Your feeling of happiness should come from your life genuinely going well in a eudaimonic sense, whether that is relationships with other people, accomplishments in this world, or merely the self-satisfaction of a life well-lived. If you are living a good life, you should feel happy, and you should feel happy only when you are living a good life. It is very wrong to obtain counterfeit happiness with a drug. Drugs which produce a happy feeling with no hallucinatory or other mental affects (such as kratom) pervert the faculty of feeling happiness much as artificial sweeteners pervert the faculty of taste. Since the faculty of happiness is much more central to one’s life than the faculty of taste, the use of a non-hallucinatory, happiness-only drug is a much graver sin than the use of artificial sweeteners. It is a much greater deviation from the natural and good life.

These are the drugs which I have used:

Marijuana: Produces a novel cognitive/sensory experience - morally permissible

LSD: Produces a novel cognitive/sensory experience - morally permissible

Mescaline: Produces a novel cognitive/sensory experience - morally permissible

Psilocybin: Produces a novel cognitive/sensory experience - morally permissible

Kratom: I tried this drug once and found that its only effect is to put you in a good mood, so I resolved to never use it again, as your happiness ought to come from reality, not from a drug. - morally impermissible.

Alcohol: Alcohol has some sensory effects, but they are mostly to dull the senses, not to produce a novel cognitive/sensory experience. For this reason, alcohol use is more morally dubious than marijuana or LSD use. However, alcohol can serve as an excellent facilitator of social interaction. I think that social alcohol use is morally permissible but solitary alcohol use is not. When used socially with good friends, the negative effects of alcohol are merely a means to the end of fraternization. When used alone, the negative effects of alcohol are the end in themselves. Social alcohol use enhances the faculty of fraternization, and while alcohol use in a social setting does cause feelings of happiness, in that case the feelings of happiness are not misplaced because you should feel happy when spending time with your friends. Taken as a whole, the act of drinking socially with friends serves the end of fraternization and should also evoke happiness. The use of alcohol use in that setting advances both those ends. - Morally permissible in social settings, not morally permissible to drink alone.

Caffeine: Like alcohol, caffeine can produce feelings of high energy and happiness without any wondrous sensory/cognitive experience. For that reason, caffeine use would be morally wrong if done purely recreationally. However, many people use caffeine to enhance their productivity at work. As we saw previously, alcohol use would be morally impermissible when done alone, but is permissible when used toward the end of fraternization. Similarly, caffeine use would be impermissible when done purely recreationally, but is permissible when used toward the end of work.

Adderall: Like caffeine, recreational use of Adderall would be morally impermissible but Adderall use for the purpose of work is morally permissible.

A proper understanding of Natural Law indicates that the moral permissibility of some drugs is the opposite of what is commonly supposed. Solitary marijuana use is permissible because it has a hallucinatory component. Solitary use of alcohol is not permissible because it merely makes you feel good.

Sexual Ethics

Diet Coke tricks the brain’s pleasure circuits with a counterfeit of sugar. Kratom tricks the brain’s pleasure circuits by causing you to feel happy in the absence of good life events that would naturally cause you to feel happy. Masturbation tricks the brain’s pleasure circuits with a counterfeit of sexual intercourse. Masturbation is therefore a perversion of the natural faculties and is morally wrong.

There is a practice in BDSM called “ruined orgasm” in which one person stimulates another person almost to the point of climax, and then abruptly stops, preventing them from reaching fulfillment. To me this seems like an even greater abuse of the natural faculties than ordinary masturbation. They are intentionally terminating the natural process before it can reach completion.

Imagine that you turned the keys in the ignition in your car, allowed your car to begin to start, but they released the keys the moment before the engine was fully started. Suppose you did that 100 times in a row. Doing so would quickly damage your car’s starting mechanism. It would be a perversion of the car’s proper function, seemingly to an even greater degree than the refusal to start or drive your car at all would be a perversion of the car’s proper function.

“Natural Family Planning” also called “the rhythm method” is perverted for a reason similar to the reason that “ruined orgasm” is perverted. The woman’s libido is highest on her fertile days. This is right and good; her brain, in right natural order, causes her to desire sex the most on the days that sex is likely to lead to pregnancy. For the woman to be satisfied only on the days that her libido is lowest and never on the days when it is highest is a horrible perversion of her natural faculties for the same reason that “ruined orgasm” is a perversion of the natural faculties. It is a frustration and a contravention of her eudaimonic desire for her husband.

Steelmanning the case for Natural Law

When people get themselves into trouble, it’s usually because they were doing something just because it’s pleasurable, rather than as a means towards their overall flourishing. Using drugs just because they feel good is the route to drug addiction. Eating just because food tastes good is the route to obesity. Playing video games just because they’re fun is a way to spend too much of your life on video games.

Some people mock the natural law prohibition of masturbation with an analogy to anything else that feels good. Is rubbing your arm just because it feels good, an immoral act? But there’s an important difference between the two cases. If you have an urge to rub your arm, or shift position in your chair, or stretch, it’s because something is ever so slightly out of out of equilibrium in your body. When you are sitting and you have the urge to slightly shift position, your body is telling you that there is a tiny amount of damage occurring from the way you currently have your weight positioned. You need to shift your weight slightly to give the stressed parts of your body a break. Ignoring that urge is bad for your health. When it is pleasurable to rub your arm or shift your position in your chair, the pleasure comes from your brain’s rightly ordered orientation toward preserving bodily health. When things are in right order, what you want is aligned with what is good for you. The pleasure of masturbation is different. In the case of masturbation, the extreme pleasure of the sexual act is not aligned with your overall well-being. Instead, the pleasure of masturbation is for its own sake.

Another advantage of the Natural Law view is that it seems to do a better job than the Libertarian View with some cases of extreme behavior. There are some people who get eyeball tattoos to make the whites of their eyes black. The procedure is irreversible. There are some people who have scales tattooed on their faces, and have artificial horns implanted under their skin in order to have a reptilian or demonic appearance. Most people feel that there is something not quite right or good about this. But from the Libertarian view, how can you criticize it? On the Libertarian View there is no accounting for taste and the preference to modify your body to look like a reptilian demon is just as good as any other preference.

Conclusion

Most Natural Law theorists think that perversion of a faculty is totally wrong in all cases - e.g. they think that masturbation would be wrong even if masturbating one time were the only way to prevent a million people from being murdered. I do not think that. I think that, holding all else equal, it is better to act in accordance with Natural Law than to violate it. I think that you would be permitted to drink Diet Coke in order to avert the apocalypse, and I even think that it would be permissible to drink Diet Coke if no other beverage were available and you were extremely thirsty. (Contrary to popular belief, the caffeine in Diet Coke is not actually enough to dehydrate you more by more than the amount of water contained in the Diet Coke). Remember, if your brain is in right order, your thirst is an indicator that you need to take in more water to maintain your bodily health. So if you violate the Natural Law presumption against Diet Coke because you are extremely thirsty, you’re not choosing mere pleasure over the Natural Law presumption. You’re choosing an important action for the health of your body over the Natural Law presumption.

But my moderate position is not compatible with usual Liberal attitudes towards a whole host of actions. My moderate position on Natural Law holds that many consensual sex acts are immoral, as are many forms of drug use even when they harm no one’s long term health and do not constitute addiction.