Title: Sex; Practicality and Morality

Controversy has always gone hand-in-hand with the topic of sex. Philosophers debate issues like the morality of sex outside of marriage, the morality of homosexual sex, and the morality of prostitution. Few, however, consider the fundamental practicality and morality of sexual intercourse itself. This paper will show that the disadvantages and dangers that go along with sex far outnumber the benefits of such a practice. Sex is an inefficient means of reproduction, an instigator of disease, controversy and violence, a return to a primal animal state that distracts from human rationality and happiness, and an immoral agent that causes individuals to be used as instruments instead of entities with dignity.

For the purposes of the paper, sexual activity or sex is defined as the system of lust (sexual drive and impulse) and physical gratification (sometimes but not always ending in orgasm) associated with contact between individuals (or solely by one individual) that can enable reproduction. Sex is a means for procreation; however it is not an efficient reproductive mechanism. Sexual reproduction normally must be attempted repeatedly, even over a number of years, before viable embryo formation. Increasing population rates from unplanned pregnancies cause population growth that threatens the distribution of world resources. Ideally, reproduction would be facilitated in a laboratory setting where fertilization is guaranteed, birth defects are controlled, and healthy characteristics can be maintained throughout development. Through the system, parents who want children would still donate their sex cells, naturally deliver their child and pass on their genes. The benefits on a future generation would be enormous, including the elimination of preventable genetic disabilities, elimination of abortions, a reduction in population growth, and the subsequent increase in per capita resources. The elimination of sexs core function with modern science allows for the realization of a society where sex is no longer needed.

Sex, like an addicting drug, creates very short periods of pleasure followed by long intervals of lust. It is a common statistic that men think about sex once every seven seconds. In this sense, sex is like a burden, or a constant itch impulse, in that it weighs down the human mind. How many more individual aspirations and innovative ideas could be realized if people werent so obsessed with sex? In addition, conflict between individuals over sexual goals leads to the reduction of mutualism and the rise of competition and violence. The rampant spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as the AIDS virus, severely threatens human populations around the world. Without sex, there would be no concept of rape, STDs, prostitution or other sexual crimes. Controversy over homosexual sex, promiscuous sex, underage sex, and abortion would no longer divide human populations. The world would be less violent and more productive without the conflicts, epidemics and controversy caused by sex.

Kant argues that sex produces a big problem, mainly that when consenting individuals have sex, they do so with the full intention to use each another as means to only obtaining bodily pleasure without respecting their mutual dignity and rational nature. The human rationality of each party is subordinate to sex, and humanity is effectively made into an instrument for satisfying animal lust. Kant shows that an individual can not logically be the subject controlling his body and his body at the same time, and therefore does not have the moral right to give his or her body to someone else.

Kant, however, believes that sex is acceptable between spouses because in marriage individuals reciprocally give their entire being (and thus their inherent rights) to each other and unite in a mutual formation of will. He believes his problem of body ownership, therefore, is solved, since by giving himself to a person that gives herself to him, he is (in effect) retaining self-ownership. However, just because the end result of this complicated transaction is the same as the beginning neglects the fact that an individual is still giving away his or her body to another. If the mutuality of the arrangement isnt exact, then one person may receive more of another than what he or she gives. Kant would have to agree that individuals are still used merely as means in marriage. Husbands or wives can and do convince their unwilling spouse to consent to sex, even using marriage as an excuse or justification to receive selfish sexual favors. Kants criticism of unnatural sex, in that it is degrading to the human race, or merely a way to satisfy some animal urge, can be applied to all sexual acts. Sex takes away from human rationality, as individuals in blind passion sacrifice their dignity and high cognition for sensation.

Another philosopher, Goldman, believes that there is nothing morally special about sex. Any Freudian, however, would say that sex is an inherent part of the human psyche; one that shows evidence of dominating rational thought. Violently beating someone produces different emotional effects than violently raping someone, even if the physical pain in each circumstance is equivalent. The act of entering another person sexually excites specific emotional and hormonal reactions not realized during other interactions. Since sex is a powerful emotional force, and in sexual acts a person uses another as a means for pleasure instead of as an individual with dignity, severe and distinct emotional harm can result from sex.

Some individuals would say that eliminating sex is not desirable or practical. The feeling of pleasure from an orgasm doesnt seem to hurt anything, and is seen by many to be the highest level of happiness one can achieve. However, these individuals say so because they do not comprehend the higher faculties of happiness that exist outside of orgasm. Ancient Greek philosophers, notably Aristotle, explain that true happiness is realized not as a mental state, but as the culmination of achievements of an individual over his or her life span. Humans, Aristotle argues, possess rational faculties of a special significance that distinguish them from other animals. Just as all humans can breathe, so too can all humans have sex. The faculty of sexual reproduction does not create some high distinction that can lead to a sense of accomplishment at the end of ones life. In society, members of some clergies, widely regarded as individuals of high morality, abstain from sex and live long, healthy and productive lives. It is not coincidental that the demographic that many turn to for spiritual and ethical guidance are also those that practice chastity. These enlightened few do so because they have realized some higher faculty of pleasure that rises above the easy pleasures of sex.

Obviously, many people would have a problem with abolishing sex. A future without sex, one might say, is a future without true intimacy or love. Sex, however, is not synonymous with love. This assertion is proven true by the numerous sexual encounters between people who know or care very little about each other. Sex, in fact, is one of the most common agitators that lead to marital discord. Healthy and loving relationships are characterized by the recognition and familiarity between two different individuals or, as Kant would say, of an emotional (not physical) union. Without sex, two individuals can build a relationship based on respecting each others personal rationality instead of merely using their partner as a means to obtain pleasure.

A future without sex may not be feasible at the present moment. Increased investment in fertilization techniques would need to occur so that any couple could reproduce. In addition, the initial hormonal shock at the sudden absence of the sex drug may be quite drastic. What these problems tell us, however, is how dependent on sex our society has become. Like any irrational addiction, eventually sex could be eliminated to solve many of the problems of the modern era.

Title: Sex; You're Doing it Wrong

Michael Foote presents us with a stimulating piece on sex and why it's actually a bad thing (http://www.yackytarheel.com/readarticle.php?article=Sex;%20Practicality%20and%20Morality). Though confidently-reasoned, the piece and his conclusions are misguided, to say the least. The overall impression one gets from the experience of reading Mr. Foote's work is not so much that one is reading a "paper" as one is reading a pseudointellectual vehicle for self-indulgence masquerading as legitimate philosophical inquiry.

Mr. Foote's article has two devastating problems:

1. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
2. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

At a casual glance one would be tempted to equate these two, but they are actually vastly different. On the one hand, Mr. Foote fails to realize the extent and nature of the implications of his dalliances, while on the other he commits a number of errors and confusions that make the logic of his work virtually impenetrable.

Mr. Foote identifies among the negative effects of sexual intercourse a loss of human dignity and rationality; reductions in something called "mutualism", production, and the pursuit of authentic happiness; and increases in competition, controversy, emotional damage, and disease. He then proposes that the elimination of sex would solve at least some portion of these ills. What Mr. Foote does not realize is that he is attempting to construct an ethic, a system for evaluating action and developing preferences, to justify his prescriptions, with these problems situated at the center of its imperative structure. Here human dignity is defined as the subordination of reason to "animal" impulses together with human instrumentality, which appears to be no more than the use of our bodies to achieve certain goals apart from our faculties of reason and therefore undignified (cf. his discussion on Kant). Mutualism is not defined, and it probably isn't a reference to the left-anarchist school of the same name, so we can determine from context that here he means cooperation. Mr. Foote's view of happiness can be boiled down to "see: Aristotle, monks". The rest is, one hopes, straightforward.

In order for Mr. Foote's ethic to be valid and useful to him, it has to be consistent with itself, that is, it cannot apply uniquely to sex. To see why this is not the case we have to look no further than eating. The compulsion to eat is not rational, and accordingly it subordinates our bodies to the digestion of food, i.e. it requires instrumentality. Eating is not a dignified activity. Eating, moreover, is not a source of "true" Footean happiness, but it's often used as a form of escapism or source of temporary pleasure. People who are too busy fighting over scarce food supplies aren't as productive as their wealthier breathren, as the Middle Ages and Zimbabwe demonstrate. Food is competitive, controversial, emotional, and frequently disease-ridden. Why, then, does Mr. Foote not speak out against the terrible scourge of sustenance?

The answer is simple: if you don't eat, you die. Abstinence from sex rarely carries this risk. So Mr. Foote's proto-ethic is not truly an ethic - it does not organize preferences on its own. His position is in fact no more complex than utilitarianism. Sex must be rejected because it leads to bad things. But Mr. Foote's argumentation is totalizing; he purports to analyze not particular instances of sexual behavior, but any and all sex. As the decision to have sex is a function of the characteristics and situations of those making the decision, if Mr. Foote's advice is useful at all, his criteria for rejection must be sufficient (in a calculatory sense) to convince anyone, at any time, to say no to sex. Unfortunately for Mr. Foote, his criteria are all characteristics and situations in themselves, and not universally applicable. (A rapist is unlikely to give up his trade solely on the basis that rape is undignified and controversial.) We see then that Mr. Foote's recommendations boil down to "bad people are bad, risky sex is risky" - which is to say he doesn't tell us anything at all.

The more mundane problems begin immediately with his definition of sex (the only word he thought to define!). Mr. Foote holds the view that sex is defined completely by the physical sensations it produces and the physical consequences that follow. What he ignores is the nonphysical utility of sex, the information content of sexual activity. Sex is a unique means of expression and sexual activity, usually plagued with information asymmetries, is an efficient means of acquiring information that would otherwise take much more effort to get ahold of. The archetypal example of this is the information conveyed in kissing (which is more foreplay than sex, but these appear to be identical to Mr. Foote so they'll be treated the same here): virtually every aspect of this conveys some aspect of one's personality, from something as innocent as breathing to something as complex as body placement. Without acknowledging this feature of sex Mr. Foote's interpretation is unable to offer a palatable explain for e.g. why affairs end relationships, why in some cultures friends greet one another with kisses, or why virginity is notable in any way. This myopia allows him to say sex is not synonymous with love (because sex and love are not biconditional) without recognizing the informational role sex plays in love. Though platonic love is possible, many feelings can be expressed solely through sex, and a relationship without it is nothing if not emotionally shallow. Ultimately, Mr. Foote is incapable of delivering a valid opinion on sex because he isn't examing sex itself, but a sample of the many ways in which it can play out and a subset of the information associated with the phenomenon.

From there one sees a number of odd declarations. On the one hand, we are told sex is an inefficient means of reproduction - and in the same breath we're told that it's actually TOO efficient, apparently producing far too many children for human civilization to handle. We are fed the non sequitur that once technological advancement replaces procreation with scenes from A Brave New World sex will immediately lose the whole of its utility. Mr. Foote, himself presumably male, expects us to believe men think about sex every seven seconds (see: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003668.html) and proceeds to actually base some of his analysis on that nonsense. Freud is referenced favorably. It is said "competition over sexual goals" undermines innovation and growth despite the fact that competition breeds both and sex's role in inspiring individual's to overachieve is ambiguous. Prostitution is named as an undesirable consequence of sex because... who knows?

Mr. Foote commits more egregious errors. He idolizes the phantasm of production without fully understanding or considering its relation to capital and time. More production is good production, no matter what is produced or if anyone wants it or can afford it or what. Meanwhile, sex is a refuge for the poor, one of few inexpensive methods of achieving temporary respite from the world. In proposing his convoluted view of happiness, the sum of achievements, Mr. Foote drowns himself in Bourgeois drivel, carelessly damning those who most need that momentary glimpse at happiness to keep going. Most importantly, Mr. Foote's view of human dignity is anthropocentric - his perspective allows no room for the dignity of animals, in fact reducing them to objects of revulsion.

Throughout the course of his exposition, Mr. Foote leads us in a number of conflicting directions and enlists the sagely wisdom of a handful of philosophers so that he may reach an offensive and intellectually immature conclusion. After reading his work, one may be unsure of what to think. One thing is certain, however: whatever Mr. Foote has to say about sex, it's best to do the opposite.

I am really flattered that you took the time to respond to this. The fact is, however, you are blowing up the argument into some sort of meta-ethic, when really it is just a simple critique of how society would be better without sex. I see a lot of really convoluted sentences spiked with SAT words and only really a few main points in your paper. One point I made about sex is that it is not an efficient method to plan a family around, overpopulation and infertility being the two extremes where sex misses the mark of perfection (therefore not negating examples of logic, but supporting examples). The first premises that I don't know what I'm talking about are not only strange but serve only to be combative-a lot of research went into this paper, and it echoes sound arguments from many famous philosophers, such as Kant and Aristotle. Your argument against all my logic is that sex should be allowed as a form of experimentation and self expression? What if I said the same about live animal or human dissections? Anything can be a form of self-expression; that doesn't make it moral. Are you attributing sex to creativity in a relationship? In that case I would again mention the statistic that sex is the most frequent cause of ending relationships AND domestic violence. Also, sex IS NOT LOVE; you again did nothing to combat my argument. Just because kissing and sex is involved in love does not mean they are synonymous. Muscle contraction is synonymous with love too, but they are not the same entity. I would really love to hear more details about the metaphysical entity of sex.

In the second to last paragraph, did you really again support sex because of its "relation to capital and time?" Sex as an industry is considered by most to be morally questionable. The fact is that the poor could be enjoying much more meaningful pleasures than those that come from sex. A big idea in this paper is how productive the human population would be if they didn't have to donate so much effort into reproduction. Think of all of the creative effort that could go into other public projects if sex wasn't always on peoples' minds! The poor may do well to focus their aspirations on attaining a higher standard of living rather than surrounding themselves with low pleasure.

Again, my purpose in the report (which may have not been clear) was to say that society would be better off with a more efficient system of reproduction and (as an added bonus) maybe the absence of sex wouldnt really hurt relationships and may even help focus our mental efforts on correcting some of the huge problems which cause major global disparity. Thank you for your response, but I really can only find a handful of arguments in an essay covered in overly-elevated diction and empty personal attacks.

The 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Keanu Reeves as an alien with limited facial expressions,turns a story about a well-meaning alien emissary with a message of pacifism into a story about an anrgy alien with a homocidal robot who really likes to see people die. Michael Foote's response (http://yackytarheel.com/readarticle.php?id=19) to my article misses the point just as badly.

Mr. Foote's primary complaint about my response is that I'm "blowing up" the issue into something that it apparently is not. Mr. Foote does not want to propose an ethic governing human behavior with respect to sex; he means only to show that sex is bad for something he refers to as "society" which I will take to mean "everyone". This was exactly my point. Mr. Foote's arguments are inadequate to support an ethic whereby sex is rejected (because such an ethic is absurd0, which means we default to utilitarianism, whereupon we see his arguments have no prescriptive power at all. The problem is that, though Mr. Foote shows that some sex is bad, he fails to convince us that all sex is bad, so his suggestions amount to the argument that bad sex is bad - not the most stirring conclusion. Mr. Foote's evocation of "society" here is also flawed. Because "society" doesn't actually exist and is merely an aggregation of individuals, the only way to demonstrate something is bad for "society" is to demonstrate that it is (in net terms) bad for all of its members. The only evidence he has for this are his claims on human dignity and his standard for happiness, which on account of their vagueness and his failure to explode them into actual ethical imperatives serve only as factors in individual calculation, not universal standards.

The rest of his response consists of simpler confusions that I will take in order. Mr. Foote first attempts to extirpate himself from his earlier contradictions on the efficiency of sex as a reproductive tool by saying he meant that sex leads to poor family planning. Here I believe a quote from his original piece suffices: "Sex is a means for procreation; however it is not an efficient reproductive mechanism. Sexual reproduction normally must be attempted repeatedly, even over a number of years, before viable embryo formation. Increasing population rates from unplanned pregnancies cause population growth that threatens the distribution of world resources."

He next goes on to fumble the problem of sex and information I identified as a component of sexuality he ignores. There are a number of arguments here, none of which make sense. His first, that sex being a mode of expression is not sufficient reason to favor it, giving vivisection as a counterexample, is strikingly pointless. My claim was, for starters, not prescriptive: I merely identified a function of sex that needs to be addressed before the idea can be evaluated in its entirety, namely the information function. Nor did I say that all sex must be supported because of this added dimension. In fact, the dominating gist of my responses has thus far been that sex cannot be universalized, as Mr. Foote wishes to do, in this case because its utility and actualization vary from person to person and situation to situation, so claims like "sex is good/bad" are fancy ways of saying nothing. Thus I am not compelled to support vivisections (which, by the way, would not fit my point about information) because they are a mode of expression. He then goes on to say that sex causes violence and ends relationships. This has no impact on my argument whatsoever, for reasons already elucidated, and in fact I brought up its relationship-ending properties myself. Mr. Foote believes I am confusing sex with love despites that fact that I agreed they are not biconditional (i.e. they are not the same); what he misses is that sex and love are in no way mutually exclusive, and that sex can be a rich, expressive, unique component of love.

Mr. Foote dedicates an entire paragraph to his confusing when he analyses my supposed belief that sex is good "because of its 'relation to capital and time'". Again a quote, this time from my original piece, is sufficient: "[Mr. Foote] idolizes the phantasm of production without fully understanding or considering its relation to capital and time. More production is good production, no matter what is produced or if anyone wants it or can afford it or what."

Mr. Foote goes on to close by refocusing the original intent of his article. This doesn't effect me; obviously my response is only relevant to portions of his argument, and so long as he still supports those portions he's still just as wrong now as he was when he first started writing, despite his research and "sound arguments from many famous philosophers". In the end, Michael Foote murders a lot of strawmen in his response. I hope for their sake any future reply is more substantial.

In response to Mr. Stones main theme of his most recent critique of my paper, I think he has a pretty good insight; one cant generalize sex (in that there is a property missing from sex that I have missed in my analysis). I again believe this idea couldve been made clearer had he not resorted to ridiculously elevated syntax, such as the phantasm of production. I would love to hear more about this property because I see no evidence for it in any of Mr. Stones responses other than it exists. In terms of Mr. Stones argument that I only focus on some, but not all, forms of sex I would refer him to the definition I pose in my original article: sex is defined as the system of lust (sexual drive and impulse) and physical gratification (sometimes but not always ending in orgasm) associated with contact between individuals (or solely by one individual) that can enable reproduction. That sounds pretty all encompassing, but if you can find anything I missed please cite it rather than offer an empty attack.

Mr. Stone cites that society doesnt exist, then explains that the illusion of any human collective is nothing more than an aggregation of individuals. Whoever has taken a sociology, anthropology or political philosophy course can see the ridiculousness in this statement. Just as animals evolve as individuals and in populations (both involving very different factors and having dramatically different consequences), the concept of an aggregation of human individuals in a society IS synergistically more than merely the sum of their parts. Social contracts, laws and systems of morality spread through different collections of people. Utilitarianism itself is based on universal happiness that presupposes a collective of individuals; how can you say that organized societies dont exist. Moreover is it that difficult to believe that there are laws utile for society that are not utile for EVERY individual? What about taxes? What about gun regulation laws? I think Mr. Stone should take this into consideration. Sure people would miss the hedonistic pleasures of sex (of course still supposing that they would still remember its drive, which would be eliminated in a perfect abstract system), but they would soon realize that other pleasures in life are not only quantifiably more pleasurable, but more fulfilling and morally pure.

In terms of sexs role in society, which Mr. Stone finds vague, I am merely saying that it is not utile for societys progression in morals and innovation. Sex does consume a lot of our mental energy and creativity. You may not find that to be a bad thing; I can accept the opposing argument. Maybe you think the hedonistic pleasures of sex dont hurt anything and therefore their production does no harm to those who cant afford higher pleasures. These are all acceptable forms of criticism.

I still, however, want to emphasize (again) several main points which you have avoided or have failed to discredit. Family planning involves both the intention to have children and the intention to NOT have children. Both are included in this category. I still do not see how I am contradicting myself by including examples of both as failures of sex: sex causes frustration for those wishing to conceive and those who wish to merely express their emotions without the risk of childbirth. Other strategies (admittedly not efficient enough to replace sex now) would do a better job of creating a human population. You may find this wrong, and I would love to hear your argument, but the fact is that sex is NOT the most practical system for reproduction.

In terms of my ethical arguments, utilitarianism is only a small (but supporting part). The majority of my arguments feature Kantian ends-means analysis, which you fail to refute. These are the main arguments that Christian church uses to defend sexuality after marriage; mainly the unity of two lives in one (and the subsequent solving of the major body ownership rules which do not allow a person to use another as a means in Kantian analysis). As an interesting point, Kant believes that an individual (metaphysically) does not have explicit body ownership, in that he or she can not give his or her body for another to use. This is also emulated in his condemnation of suicide (as someone does not have the right to end their own life due to complications with body ownership and the harming of external entities). These arguments are controversial. I dont see how a marriage makes any difference in resolving the body ownership claim, as spouses are just as likely to misuse and cheat on each other as people in a stable relationship (therefore using each other as a means to and end instead of as an end in itself). This is complicated stuff and I apologize if I am not being completely transparent in my meaning.

As to the prescriptive power of my arguments, (preceded by an argument that begs the question: the argument is absurd because is supports an ethic that is absurd (because the argument is absurd)