So, this is my first ever blog post in AFF and this is about my first ever TERM PAPER. LOL. I know it sounded boring to post about term papers. Haha! But I thought it'll be fun to post something very long and serious. Because this document was the only thing I did this day. It . And it was awkward to made one like this. Just read on why I called it and 'awkward topic'. :)

 

 

 

A research about Human uality, Male and Female differences, Dating, Infatuation versus Love and the problems, we, teenagers encounter within our ual Development stage as proposed by our Paulthenics Adviser, Ms. Lolita Andres.

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Philosophy of uality........................................................................................................... 2

Metaphysics of uality............................................................................................................ 3-4

Metaphysical ual Pessimism.................................................................................................. 5-7

Metaphysical ual Optimism................................................................................................... 8-9

Moral Evaluations..................................................................................................................... 10

Non-moral Evaluations......................................................................................................... 11-13

The Dangers of ...................................................................................................................... 14

ual ersion....................................................................................................................... 15

ual ersion and Morality.................................................................................................. 16

Aquinas’s Natural Law.......................................................................................................... 17-18

Nagel’s Secular Philosophy......................................................................................................... 19

ism..................................................................................................................................... 20

Female uality and Natural Law............................................................................................... 21

Debates in ual Ethics.............................................................................................................. 22

Natural Law vs. Liberal Ethics.................................................................................................... 23

Consent Is Not Sufficient...................................................................................................... 24-25

Consent Is Sufficient............................................................................................................. 26-27

Male and Female Differences............................................................................................... 28

How Males and Females’ Minds are Different............................................................................. 28

Developmental and Structural Differences....................................................................... 28-29

Chemical Differences............................................................................................................. 29

Hormonal Differences............................................................................................................ 29

Functional Differences........................................................................................................... 30

Differences in Processing Emotion......................................................................................... 31

Learning Style differences................................................................................................. 31-32

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….33

 

 

A.                  

Introduction

                In this research, Human uality and ual Development among teenagers and the adults will be discussed, how it is being affected by the culture and the influences in their environment, including the nature of dating and the differences between men and women, infatuation and love, and the philosophy of uality according to a Christian source and a Secular philosophy to help the students understand the nature of Human uality further so that they could avoid confusions and encountering problems such as ual phenomena of premarital , , homouality, flirting, contraception and the like.

Objectives

            This study aims to give the students a better understanding of the changes in their lives as they grow up and how these changes are called as ual Development concerning the Human uality which will include natural acts of teenagers like dating, being in loved or infatuated, ual drives among adolescents and the consequences they will encounter throughout this ual Development. Also, the confusions they encounter with the opposite .

 

 

 

 

 

Human uality

 

 

 

Philosophy of uality

Among the many topics explored by the philosophy of uality are procreation, contraception, celibacy, marriage, adultery, casual , flirting, ion, homouality, ion, seduction, , ual harassment, sadomasochism, ography, , and ia. What do all these things have in common? All are related in various ways to the vast domain of human uality. That is, they are related, on the one hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the search for and attainment of ual pleasure or satisfaction and, on the other hand, to the human desires and activities that involve the creation of new human beings. For it is a natural feature of human beings that certain sorts of behaviours and certain bodily organs are and can be employed either for pleasure or for reproduction, or for both.

The philosophy of uality explores these topics both conceptually and normatively. Conceptual analysis is carried out in the philosophy of uality in order to clarify the fundamental notions of ual desire and ual activity. Conceptual analysis is also carried out in attempting to arrive at satisfactory definitions of adultery, ion, , ography, and so forth. Conceptual analysis (for example: what are the distinctive features of a desire that make it ual desire instead of something else? In what ways does seduction differ from nonviolent ?) Is often difficult and seemingly picky, but proves rewarding in unanticipated and surprising ways.

Normative philosophy of uality inquires about the value of ual activity and ual pleasure and of the various forms they take. Thus the philosophy of uality is concerned with the perennial questions of ual morality and constitutes a large branch of applied ethics. Normative philosophy of uality investigates what contribution is made to the good or virtuous life by uality, and tries to determine what moral obligations we have to refrain from performing certain ual acts and what moral permissions we have to engage in others.

Some philosophers of uality carry out conceptual analysis and the study of ual ethics separately. They believe that it is one thing to define a ual phenomenon (such as or adultery) and quite another thing to evaluate it. Other philosophers of uality believe that a robust distinction between defining a ual phenomenon and arriving at moral evaluations of it cannot be made, that analyses of ual concepts and moral evaluations of ual acts influence each other. Whether there actually is a tidy distinction between values and morals, on the one hand, and natural, social, or conceptual facts, on the other hand, is one of those fascinating, endlessly debated issues in philosophy, and is not limited to the philosophy of uality.

                                                                                                                               I.            Metaphysics of uality

Our moral evaluations of ual activity are bound to be affected by what we view the nature of the ual impulse, or of ual desire, to be in human beings. In this regard there is a deep divide between those philosophers that we might call the metaphysical ual optimists and those we might call the metaphysical ual pessimists.

The pessimists in the philosophy of uality, such as St. Augustine, Immanuel Kant, and, sometimes, Sigmund Freud, perceive the ual impulse and acting on it to be something nearly always, if not necessarily, unbefitting the dignity of the human person; they see the essence and the results of the drive to be incompatible with more significant and lofty goals and aspirations of human existence; they fear that the power and demands of the ual impulse make it a danger to harmonious civilized life; and they find in uality a severe threat not only to our proper relations with, and our moral treatment of, other persons, but also equally a threat to our own humanity.

On the other side of the divide are the metaphysical ual optimists (Plato, in some of his works, sometimes Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, and many contemporary philosophers) who perceive nothing especially obnoxious in the ual impulse. They view human uality as just another and mostly innocuous dimension of our existence as embodied or animal-like creatures; they judge that uality, which in some measure has been given to us by evolution, cannot but be conducive to our well-being without detracting from our intellectual propensities; and they praise rather than fear the power of an impulse that can lift us to various high forms of happiness.

The particular sort of metaphysics of one believes will influence one’s subsequent judgments about the value and role of uality in the good or virtuous life and about what ual activities are morally wrong and which ones are morally permissible. Let’s explore some of these implications.

 

                                                                                                              II.            Metaphysical ual Pessimism

An extended version of metaphysical pessimism might make the following claims: In virtue of the nature of ual desire, a person who ually desires another person objectifies that other person, both before and during ual activity. , says Kant, “makes of the loved person an Object of appetite. . . . Taken by itself it is a degradation of human nature” (Lectures on Ethics, p. 163). Certain types of manipulation and deception seem required prior to engaging in with another person, or are as common as to appear part of the nature of the ual experience. As Bernard Baumrim makes the point, “ual interaction is essentially manipulative—physically, psychologically, emotionally, and even intellectually” (“ual Immorality Delineated,” p. 300). We go out of our way, for example, to make ourselves look more attractive and desirable to the other person than we really are, and we go to great lengths to conceal our defects. And when one person ually desires another, the other person’s body, his or her lips, thighs, toes, and buttocks are desired as the arousing parts they are, distinct from the person. The other’s s, too, are the object of our attention: “uality is not an inclination which one human being has for another as such, but is an inclination for the of another. . . . [O]nly her is the object of his desires” (Kant, Lectures, p. 164).

Further, the ual act itself is peculiar, with its uncontrollable arousal, involuntary jerkings, and its yearning to master and consume the other person’s body. During the act, a person both loses control of himself and loses regard for the humanity of the other. Our uality is a threat to the other’s personhood; but the one who is in the grip of desire is also on the verge of losing his or her personhood. The one who desires depends on the whims of another person to gain satisfaction, and becomes as a result a jellyfish, susceptible to the demands and manipulations of the other: “In desire you are compromised in the eyes of the object of desire, since you have displayed that you have designs which are vulnerable to his intentions” (Roger Scruton, ual Desire, p. 82). A person who proposes an irresistible ual offer to another person may be exploiting someone made weak by ual desire (see ia Held, “Coercion and Coercive Offers,” p. 58).

Moreover, a person who gives in to another’s ual desire makes a tool of himself or herself. “For the natural use that one makes of the other’s ual organs is enjoyment, for which one gives oneself up to the other. In this act a human being makes himself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of humanity in his own person” (Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p. 62). Those engaged in ual activity make themselves willingly into objects for each other merely for the sake of ual pleasure. Hence both persons are reduced to the animal level. “If . . . a man wishes to satisfy his desire and a woman hers, they stimulate each other’s desire; their inclinations meet, but their object is not human nature but , and each of them dishonors the human nature of the other. They make of humanity an instrument for the satisfaction of their lusts and inclinations, and dishonor it by placing it on a level with animal nature” (Kant, Lectures, p. 164).

Finally, due to the insistent nature of the ual impulse, once things get going it is often hard to stop them in their tracks, and as a result we often end up doing things ually that we had never planned or wanted to do. ual desire is also powerfully inelastic, one of the passions most likely to challenge reason, compelling us to seek satisfaction even when doing so involves dark-alley gropings, microbiologically filthy acts, slinking around the White House, or getting married impetuously.

Given such a pessimistic metaphysics of human uality, one might well conclude that acting on the ual impulse is always morally wrong. That might, indeed, be precisely the right conclusion to draw, even if it implies the end of Homo sapiens. (This doomsday result is also implied by St. Paul’s praising, in 1 Corinthians 7, ual celibacy as the ideal spiritual state.) More frequently, however, the pessimistic metaphysicians of uality conclude that ual activity is morally permissible only within marriage (of the lifelong, monogamous, heteroual sort) and only for the purpose of procreation. Regarding the bodily activities that both lead to procreation and produce ual pleasure, it is their procreative potential that is singularly significant and bestows value on these activities; seeking pleasure is an impediment to morally virtuous uality, and is something that should not be undertaken deliberately or for its own sake. ual pleasure at most has instrumental value, in inducing us to engage in an act that has procreation as its primary purpose. Such views are common among Christian thinkers, for example, St. Augustine: “A man turns to good use the evil of concupiscence, and is not overcome by it, when he bridles and restrains its rage . . . and never relaxes his hold upon it except when intent on offspring, and then controls and applies it to the carnal generation of children . . . , not to the subjection of the spirit to the flesh in a sordid servitude” (On Marriage and Concupiscence, bk. 1, ch. 9).

 

                                                                                                             III.            Metaphysical ual Optimism

Metaphysical ual optimists suppose that uality is a bonding mechanism that naturally and happily joins people together both ually and non-ually. ual activity involves pleasing the self and the other at the same time, and these exchanges of pleasure generate both gratitude and affection, which in turn are bound to deepen human relationships and make them more emotionally substantial. Further, and this is the most important point, ual pleasure is, for a metaphysical optimist, a valuable thing in its own right, something to be cherished and promoted because it has intrinsic and not merely instrumental value. Hence the pursuit of ual pleasure does not require much intricate justification; ual activity surely need not be confined to marriage or directed at procreation. The good and virtuous life, while including much else, can also include a wide variety and extent of ual relations. (See Russell Vannoy’s spirited defense of the value of ual activity for its own sake, in Without Love.)

Irving Singer is a contemporary philosopher of uality who expresses well one form of metaphysical optimism: “For though ual interest resembles an appetite in some respects, it differs from hunger or thirst in being an interpersonal sensitivity, one that enables us to delight in the mind and character of other persons as well as in their flesh. Though at times people may be used as ual objects and cast aside once their utility has been exhausted, this is no[t] . . . definitive of ual desire. . . . By awakening us to the living presence of someone else, uality can enable us to treat this other being as just the person he or she happens to be. . . . There is nothing in the nature of uality as such that necessarily . . . reduces persons to things. On the contrary, may be seen as an instinctual agency by which persons respond to one another through their bodies” (The Nature of Love, vol. 2, p. 382. See also Jean Hampton, “Defining Wrong and Defining ”).

Pausanias, in Plato’s Symposium(181a-3, 183e, 184d), asserts that uality in itself is neither good nor bad. He recognizes, as a result, that there can be morally bad and morally good ual activity, and proposes a corresponding distinction between what he calls “vulgar” eros and “heavenly” eros. A person who has vulgar eros is one who experiences promiscuous ual desire has a lust that can be satisfied by any partner, and selfishly seeks only for himself or herself the pleasures of ual activity. By contrast, a person who has heavenly eros experiences a ual desire that attaches to a particular person; he or she is as much interested in the other person’s personality and well-being as he or she is concerned to have physical contact with and ual satisfaction by means of the other person. A similar distinction between uality per se and eros is described by C. S. Lewis in his The Four Loves (chapter 5), and it is perhaps what Allan Bloom has in mind when he writes, “Animals have and human beings have eros, and no accurate science [or philosophy] is possible without making this distinction” (Love and Friendship, p. 19).

The divide between metaphysical optimists and metaphysical pessimists might, then, be put this way: metaphysical pessimists think that uality, unless it is rigorously constrained by social norms that have become internalized, will tend to be governed by vulgar eros, while metaphysical optimists think that uality, by itself, does not lead to or become vulgar, that by its nature it can easily be and often is heavenly. (See the entry, Philosophy of Love.)

 

                                                                                                                                         IV.            Moral Evaluations

Of course, we can and often do evaluate ual activity morally: we inquire whether a ual act—either a particular occurrence of a ual act (the act we are doing or want to do right now) or a type of ual act (say, all instances of homoual )—is morally good or morally bad. More specifically, we evaluate, or judge, ual acts to be morally obligatory, morally permissible, morally supererogatory, or morally wrong. For example: a spouse might have a moral obligation to engage in with the other spouse; it might be morally permissible for married couples to employ contraception while engaging in ; one person’s agreeing to have ual relations with another person when the former has no ual desire of his or her own but does want to please the latter might be an act of supererogation; and and are commonly thought to be morally wrong.

Note that if a specific type of ual act is morally wrong (say, homoual ), and then every instance of that type of act will be morally wrong. However, from the fact that the particular ual act we are now doing or contemplate doing is morally wrong, it does not follow that any specific type of act is morally wrong; the ual act that we are contemplating might be wrong for lots of different reasons having nothing to do with the type of ual act that it is. For example, suppose we are engaging in heteroual (or anything else), and that this particular act is wrong because it is adulterous. The wrongfulness of our ual activity does not imply that heteroual in general (or anything else), as a type of ual act, is morally wrong. In some cases, of course, a particular ual act will be wrong for several reasons: not only is it wrong because it is of a specific type (say, it is an instance of homoual ), but it is also wrong because at least one of the participants is married to someone else (it is wrong also because it is adulterous).

                                                                                                                                 V.            Non-moral Evaluations

We can also evaluate ual activity (again, either a particular occurrence of a ual act or a specific type of ual activity) non-morally: non-morally “good” is ual activity that provides pleasure to the participants or is physically or emotionally satisfying, while non-morally “bad” is unexciting, tedious, boring, unenjoyable, or even unpleasant. An analogy will clarify the difference between morally evaluating something as good or bad and non-morally evaluating it as good or bad. This radio on my desk is a good radio, in the non-moral sense, because it does for me what I expect from a radio: it consistently provides clear tones. If, instead, the radio hissed and cackled most of the time, it would be a bad radio, non-morally-speaking, and it would be senseless for me to blame the radio for its faults and threaten it with a trip to hell if it did not improve its behaviour. Similarly, ual activity can be non-morally good if it provides for us what we expect ual activity to provide, which is usually ual pleasure, and this fact has no necessary moral implications...

It is not difficult to see that the fact that a ual activity is perfectly non-morally good, by abundantly satisfying both persons, does not mean by itself that the act is morally good: some adulterous ual activity might well be very pleasing to the participants, yet be morally wrong. Further, the fact that a ual activity is non-morally bad, that is, does not produce pleasure for the persons engaged in it, does not by itself mean that the act is morally bad. Unpleasant ual activity might occur between persons who have little experience engaging in ual activity (they do not yet know how to do ual things, or have not yet learned what their likes and dislikes are), but their failure to provide pleasure for each other does not mean by itself that they perform morally wrongful acts.

Thus the moral evaluation of ual activity is a distinct enterprise from the non-moral evaluation of ual activity; even if there do remain important connections between them. For example, the fact that a ual act provides pleasure to both participants, and is thereby non-morally good, might be taken as a strong, but only prima facie good, reason for thinking that the act is morally good or at least has some degree of moral value. Indeed, utilitarians such as Jeremy Benthamand even John Stuart Millmight claim that, in general, the non-moral goodness of ual activity goes a long way toward justifying it. Another example: if one person never attempts to provide ual pleasure to his or her partner, but selfishly insists on experiencing only his or her own pleasure, then that person’s contribution to their ual activity is morally suspicious or objectionable. But that judgment rests not simply on the fact that he or she did not provide pleasure for the other person, that is, on the fact that the ual activity was for the other person non-morally bad. The moral judgment rests, more precisely, on his or her motives for not providing any pleasure, for not making the experience non-morally good for the other person.

It is one thing to point out that as evaluative categories; moral goodness/badness is quite distinct from non-moral goodness/badness. It is another thing to wonder, nonetheless, about the emotional or psychological connections between the moral quality of ual activity and its non-moral quality. Perhaps morally good ual activity tends also to be the most satisfying ual activity, in the non-moral sense. Whether that is true likely depends on what we mean by “morally good” uality and on certain features of human moral psychology. What would our lives be like; if there were always a neat correspondence between the moral quality of a ual act and its non-moral quality? I am not sure what such a human ual world would be like. But examples that violate such a neat correspondence are at the present time, in this world, easy to come by. A ual act might be both morally and non-morally good: consider the exciting and joyful ual activity of a newly-married couple. But a ual act might be morally good and non-morally bad: consider the routine ual acts of this couple after they have been married for ten years. A ual act might be morally bad yet non-morally good: one spouse in that couple, married for ten years, commits adultery with another married person and finds their ual activity to be extraordinarily satisfying. And, finally, a ual act might be both morally and non-morally bad: the adulterous couple get tired of each other, eventually no longer experiencing the excitement they once knew. A world in which there was little or no discrepancy between the moral and the non-moral quality of ual activity might be a better world than ours, or it might be worse. I would refrain from making such a judgment unless I were pretty sure what the moral goodness and badness of ual activity amounted to in the first place, and until I knew a lot more about human psychology. Sometimes that a ual activity is acknowledged to be morally wrong contributes all by itself to its being non-morally good.

 

 

                                                                                                                                      VI.            The Dangers of

Whether a particular ual act or a specific type of ual act provides ual pleasure is not the only factor in judging its non-moral quality: pragmatic and prudential considerations also figure into whether a ual act, all things considered, has a preponderance of non-moral goodness. Many ual activities can be physically or psychologically risky, dangerous, or harmful. , for example, whether carried out by a heteroual couple or by two gay males, can damage delicate tissues and is a mechanism for the potential transmission of various HIV viruses (as is heteroual ). Thus in evaluating whether a ual act will be overall non-morally good or bad, not only its anticipated pleasure or satisfaction must be counted, but also all sorts of negative (undesired) side effects: whether the ual act is likely to damage the body, as in some sadomasochistic acts, or transmit any one of a number of venereal diseases, or result in an unwanted pregnancy, or even whether one might feel regret, anger, or guilt afterwards as a result of having engaged in a ual act with this person, or in this location, or under these conditions, or of a specific type. Indeed, all these pragmatic and prudential factors also figure into the moral evaluation of ual activity: intentionally causing unwanted pain or discomfort to one’s partner, or not taking adequate precautions against the possibility of pregnancy, or not informing one’s partner of a suspected case of infection (but see David Mayo’s provocative dissent, in “An Obligation to Warn of HIV Infection?”), can be morally wrong. Thus, depending on what particular moral principles about uality one embraces, the various ingredients that constitute the non-moral quality of ual acts can influence one’s moral judgments.

                                                                                                                                      VII.            ual ersion

In addition to inquiring about the moral and non-moral quality of a given ual act or a type of ual activity, we can also ask whether the act or type is natural or unnatural (that is, erted). Natural ual acts, to provide merely a broad definition, are those acts that either flow naturally from human ual nature, or at least do not frustrate or counteract ual tendencies that flow naturally from human ual desire. An account of what is natural in human ual desire and activity is part of a philosophical account of human nature in general, what we might call philosophical anthropology, which is a rather large undertaking.

Note that evaluating a particular ual act or a specific type of ual activity as being natural or unnatural can very well be distinct from evaluating the act or type either as being morally good or bad or as being non-morally good or bad. Suppose we assume, for the sake of discussion only, that heteroual is a natural human ual activity and that homoual is unnatural, or a ual ersion. Even so, it would not follow from these judgments alone that all heteroual is morally good (some of it might be adulterous, or ) or that all homoual is morally wrong (some of it, engaged in by consenting adults in the privacy of their homes, might be morally permissible). Further, from the fact that heteroual is natural, it does not follow that acts of heteroual will be non-morally good, that is, pleasurable; nor does it follow from the fact that homoual is erted that it does not or cannot produce ual pleasure for those people who engage in it. Of course, both natural and unnatural ual acts can be medically or psychologically risky or dangerous. There is no reason to assume that natural ual acts are in general more safe than unnatural ual acts; for example, unprotected heteroual is likely more dangerous, in several ways, than mutual homoual ion.

Since there are no necessary connections between, on the one hand, evaluating a particular ual act or a specific type of ual activity as being natural or unnatural and, on the other hand, evaluating its moral and non-moral quality, why would we wonder whether a ual act or a type of was natural or erted? One reason is simply that understanding what is natural and unnatural in human uality helps complete our picture of human nature in general, and allows us to understand our species more fully. With such deliberations, the self-reflection about humanity and the human condition that is the heart of philosophy becomes more complete. A second reason is that an account of the difference between the natural and the erted in human uality might be useful for psychology, especially if we assume that a desire or tendency to engage in erted ual activities is a sign or symptom of an underlying mental or psychological pathology.

                                                                                                      VIII.            ual ersion and Morality

Finally (a third reason), even though natural ual activity is not on that score alone morally good and unnatural ual activity is not necessarily morally wrong, it is still possible to argue that whether a particular ual act or a specific type of uality is natural or unnatural does influence, to a greater or lesser extent, whether the act is morally good or morally bad. Just as whether a ual act is non-morally good, that is, produces pleasure for the participants, may be a factor, sometimes an important one, in our evaluating the act morally, whether a ual act or type of ual expression is natural or unnatural may also play a role, sometimes a large one, in deciding whether the act is morally good or bad.

A comparison between the ual philosophy of the medieval Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinasand that of the contemporary secular philosophy Thomas Nagel is in this regard instructive. Both Aquinas and Nagel can be understood as assuming that what is unnatural in human uality is erted, and that what is unnatural or erted in human uality is simply that which does not conform with or is inconsistent with natural human uality. But beyond these general areas of agreement, there are deep differences between Aquinas and Nagel.

                                                                                                                               IX.            Aquinas’s Natural Law

Based upon a comparison of the uality of humans and the uality of lower animals (mammals, in particular), Aquinas concludes that what is natural in human uality is the impulse to engage in heteroual . Heteroual is the mechanism designed by the Christian God to insure the preservation of animal species, including humans, and hence engaging in this activity is the primary natural expression of human ual nature. Further, this God designed each of the parts of the human body to carry out specific functions, and on Aquinas’s view God designed the male to implant into the female’s for the purpose of effecting procreation. It follows, for Aquinas that depositing the elsewhere than inside a human female’s is unnatural: it is a violation of God’s design, contrary to the nature of things as established by God. For this reason alone, on Aquinas’s view, such activities are immoral, a grave offense to the sagacious plan of the Almighty.

ual with lower animals (), ual activity with members of one’s own (homouality), and ion, for Aquinas, are unnatural ual acts and are immoral exactly for that reason. If they are committed intentionally, according to one’s will, they deliberately disrupt the natural order of the world as created by God and which God commanded to be respected. (See Summa Theologiae, vol. 43, 2a2ae, qq. 153-154.) In none of these activities is there any possibility of procreation, and the ual and other organs are used, or misused, for purposes other than that for which they were designed. Although Aquinas does not say so explicitly, but only hints in this direction, it follows from his philosophy of uality that , even when engaged in by heterouals, is also erted and morally wrong. At least in those cases in which occurs by means of this act, the is not being placed where it should be placed and procreation is therefore not possible. If the entering the is the paradigmatic natural act, then any other combination of anatomical connections will be unnatural and hence immoral; for example, the , mouth, or fingers entering the . Note that Aquinas’s criterion of the natural that the ual act must be procreative in form, and hence must involve a inserted into a , makes no mention of human psychology. Aquinas’s line of thought yields an anatomical criterion of natural and erted that refers only to bodily organs and what they might accomplish physiologically and to where they are, or are not, put in relation to each other.

 

                                                                                                                         X.            Nagel’s Secular Philosophy

Thomas Nagel denies Aquinas’s central presupposition, that in order to discover what is natural in human uality we should emphasize what humans and lower animals have in common. Applying this formula, Aquinas concluded that the purpose of ual activity and the ual organs in humans was procreation, as it is in the lower animals. Everything else in Aquinas’s ual philosophy follows more-or-less logically from this. Nagel, by contrast, argues that to discover what is distinctive about the natural human uality, and hence derivatively what is unnatural or erted, we should focus, instead, on what humans and lower animals do not have in common. We should emphasize the ways in which humans are different from animals, the ways in which humans and their uality are special. Thus Nagel argues that ual ersion in humans should be understood as a psychological phenomenon rather than, as in Aquinas’s treatment, in anatomical and physiological terms. For it is human psychology that makes us quite different from other animals, hence an account of natural human uality must acknowledge the uniqueness of human psychology.

Nagel proposes that ual interactions in which each person responds with ual arousal to noticing the ual arousal of the other person exhibit the psychology that is natural to human uality. In such an encounter, each person becomes aware of himself or herself and the other person as both the subject and the object of their joint ual experiences. erted ual encounters or events would be those in which this mutual recognition of arousal is absent, and in which a person remains fully a subject of the ual experience or fully an object. ersion, then, is a departure from or a truncation of a psychologically “complete” pattern of arousal and consciousness. (See Nagel’s “ual ersion,” pp. 15-17.) Nothing in Nagel’s psychological account of the natural and the erted refers to bodily organs or physiological processes. That is, for a ual encounter to be natural, it need not be procreative in form, as long as the requisite psychology of mutual recognition is present. Whether a ual activity is natural or erted does not depend, on Nagel’s view, on what organs are used or where they are put, but only on the character of the psychology of the ual encounter. Thus Nagel disagrees with Aquinas that homoual activities, as a specific type of ual act, are unnatural or erted, for homoual and may very well be accompanied by the mutual recognition of and response to the other’s ual arousal.

                                                                                                                                                           XI.            ism

It is illuminating to compare what the views of Aquinas and Nagel imply about ism, that is, the usually male practice of ing while fondling women’s shoes or undergarments. Aquinas and Nagel agree that such activities are unnatural and erted, but they disagree about the grounds of that evaluation. For Aquinas, ing while fondling shoes or undergarments is unnatural because the is not deposited where it should be, and the act thereby has no procreative potential. For Nagel, ory ism is erted for a quite different reason: in this activity, there is no possibility of one persons’ noticing and being aroused by the arousal of another person. The arousal of the ist is, from the perspective of natural human psychology, defective. Note, in this example, one more difference between Aquinas and Nagel: Aquinas would judge the ual activity of the ist to be immoral precisely because it is erted (it violates a natural pattern established by God), while Nagel would not conclude that it must be morally wrong—after all, a ist ual act might be carried out quite harmlessly—even if it does indicate that something is suspicious about the ist’s psychology. The move historically and socially away from a Thomistic moralistic account of ual ersion toward an amoral psychological account such as Nagel’s is representative of a more widespread trend: the gradual replacement of moral or religious judgments, about all sorts of deviant behaviour, by medical or psychiatric judgments and interventions. (See Alan Soble, ual Investigations, chapter 4.)

                                                                                                   XII.            Female uality and Natural Law

A different kind of disagreement with Aquinas is registered by Christine Gudorf, a Christian theologian who otherwise has a lot in common with Aquinas. Gudorf agrees that the study of human anatomy and physiology yields insights into God’s plan and design, and that human ual behavior should conform to God’s creative intentions. That is, Gudorf’s philosophy is squarely within the Thomistic Natural Lawtradition. But Gudorf argues that if we take a careful look at the anatomy and physiology of the female ual organs, and especially the oris, instead of focusing exclusively on the male’s (which is what Aquinas did), quite different conclusions about God’s plan and design emerge and hence Christian ual ethics turns out to be less restrictive. In particular, Gudorf claims that the female’s oris is an organ whose only purpose is the production of ual pleasure and, unlike the mixed or dual functionality of the , has no connection with procreation. Gudorf concludes that the existence of the oris in the female body suggests that God intended that the purpose of ual activity was as much for ual pleasure for its own sake as it was for procreation. Therefore, according to Gudorf, pleasurable ual activity apart from procreation does not violate God’s design, is not unnatural, and hence is not necessarily morally wrong, as long as it occurs in the context of a monogamous marriage (, Body, and Pleasure, p. 65). Today we are not as confident as Aquinas was that God’s plan can be discovered by a straightforward examination of human and animal bodies; but such healthy skepticism about our ability to discern the intentions of God from facts of the natural world would seem to apply to Gudorf’s proposal as well.

                                                                                                                     XIII.            Debates in ual Ethics

The ethics of ual behavior, as a branch of applied ethics, is no more and no less contentious than the ethics of anything else that is usually included within the area of applied ethics. Think, for example, of the notorious debates over euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, and our treatment of lower animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and in medical research. So it should come as no surprise than even though a discussion of ual ethics might well result in the removal of some confusions and a clarification of the issues, no final answers to questions about the morality of ual activity are likely to be forthcoming from the philosophy of uality. As far as I can tell by surveying the literature on ual ethics, there are at least three major topics that have received much discussion by philosophers of uality and which provide arenas for continual debate.

                                                                                                          XIV.            Natural Law vs. Liberal Ethics

We have already encountered one debate: the dispute between a Thomistic Natural Law approach to ual morality and a more liberal, secular outlook that denies that there is a tight connection between what is unnatural in human uality and what is immoral. The secular liberal philosopher emphasizes the values of autonomous choice, self-determination, and pleasure in arriving at moral judgments about ual behavior, in contrast to the Thomistic tradition that justifies a more restrictive ual ethics by invoking a divinely imposed scheme to which human action must conform. For a secular liberal philosopher of uality, the paradigmatically morally wrong ual act is , in which one person forces himself or herself upon another or uses threats to coerce the other to engage in ual activity. By contrast, for the liberal, anything done voluntarily between two or more people is generally morally permissible. For the secular liberal, then, a ual act would be morally wrong if it were dishonest, coercive, or manipulative, and Natural Law theory would agree, except to add that the act’s merely being unnatural is another, independent reason for condemning it morally. Kant, for example, held that “Onanism . . . is abuse of the ual faculty. . . . By it man sets aside his person and degrades himself below the level of animals. . . . between us homogenii . . . too is contrary to the ends of humanity”(Lectures, p. 170). The ual liberal, however, usually finds nothing morally wrong or non-morally bad about either ion or homoual ual activity. These activities might be unnatural, and perhaps in some ways prudentially unwise, but in many if not most cases they can be carried out without harm being done either to the participants or to anyone else.

Natural Law is alive and well today among philosophers of , even if the details do not match Aquinas’s original version. For example, the contemporary philosopher John Finnis argues that there are morally worthless ual acts in which “one’s body is treated as instrumental for the securing of the experiential satisfaction of the conscious self” (see “Is Homoual Conduct Wrong?”). For example, in ing or in being anally sodomized, the body is just a tool of ual satisfaction and, as a result, the person undergoes “disintegration.” “One’s choosing self [becomes] the quasi-slave of the experiencing self which is demanding gratification.” The worthlessness and disintegration attaching to ion and sodomy actually attach, for Finnis, to “all extramarital ual gratification.” This is because only in married, heteroual do the persons’ “reproductive organs . . . make them a biological . . . unit.” Finnis begins his argument with the metaphysically pessimistic intuition that ual activity involves treating human bodies and persons instrumentally, and he concludes with the thought that ual activity in marriage—in particular, —avoids disintegrity because only in this case, as intended by God’s plan, does the couple attain a state of genuine unity: “the ic union of the reproductive organs of husband and wife really unites them biologically.” (See also Finnis’s essay “Law, Morality, and ‘ual Orientation’.”)

                                                                                                                       XV.            Consent Is Not Sufficient

Another debate is about whether, when there is no harm done to third parties to be concerned about, the fact that two people engage in a ual act voluntarily, with their own free and informed consent, is sufficient for satisfying the demands of ual morality. Of course, those in the Natural Law tradition deny that consent is sufficient, since on their view willingly engaging in unnatural ual acts is morally wrong, but they are not alone in reducing the moral significance of consent. ual activity between two persons might be harmful to one or both participants, and a moral paternalist or perfectionist would claim that it is wrong for one person to harm another person, or for the latter to allow the former to engage in this harmful behavior, even when both persons provide free and informed consent to their joint activity. Consent in this case is not sufficient, and as a result some forms of sadomasochistic uality turn out to be morally wrong. The denial of the sufficiency of consent is also frequently presupposed by those philosophers who claim that only in a committed relationship is ual activity between two people morally permissible. The free and informed consent of both parties may be a necessary condition for the morality of their ual activity, but without the presence of some other ingredient (love, marriage, devotion, and the like) their ual activity remains mere mutual use or objectification and hence morally objectionable.

In casual , for example, two persons are merely using each other for their own ual pleasure; even when genuinely consensual, these mutual ual uses do not yield a virtuous ual act. Kant and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) take this position: willingly allowing oneself to be used ually by another makes an object of oneself. For Kant, ual activity avoids treating a person merely as a means only in marriage, since here both persons have surrendered their bodies and souls to each other and have achieved a subtle metaphysical unity (Lectures, p. 167). For Wojtyla, “only love can preclude the use of one person by another” (Love and Responsibility, p. 30), since love is a unification of persons resulting from a mutual gift of their selves. Note, however, that the thought that a unifying love is the ingredient that justifies ual activity (beyond consent) has an interesting and ironic implication: gay and lesbian ual relations would seem to be permissible if they occur within loving, monogamous homoual marriages (a position defended by the theologians Patricia Jung and Ralph Smith, in Heteroism). At this point in the argument, defenders of the view that ual activity is justifiable only in marriage commonly appeal to Natural Law to rule out homoual marriage.

                                                                                                                             XVI.            Consent Is Sufficient

On another view of these matters, the fact that ual activity is carried out voluntarily by all persons involved means, assuming that no harm to third parties exists, that the ual activity is morally permissible. In defending such a view of the sufficiency of consent, Thomas Mappes writes that “respect for persons entails that each of us recognize the rightful authority of other persons (as rational beings) to conduct their individual lives as they see fit” (“ual Morality and the Concept of Using Another Person,” p. 204). Allowing the other person’s consent to control when the other may engage in ual activity with me is to respect that person by taking his or her autonomy, his or her ability to reason and make choices, seriously, while not to allow the other to make the decision about when to engage in ual activity with me is disrespectfully paternalistic. If the other person’s consent is taken as sufficient, that shows that I respect his or her choice of ends, or that even if I do not approve of his or her particular choice of ends, at least I show respect for his or her ends-making capability. According to such a view of the power of consent, there can be no moral objection in principle to casual ual activity, to ual activity with strangers, or to promiscuity, as long as the persons involved in the activity genuinely agree to engage in their chosen ual activities.

If Mappes’s free and informed consent criterion of the morality of ual activity is correct, we would still have to address several difficult questions. How specific must consent be? When one person agrees vaguely, and in the heat of the moment, with another person, “yes, let’s have ,” the speaker has not necessarily consented to every type of ual caress or coital position the second person might have in mind. And how explicit must consent be? Can consent be reliably implied by involuntarily behavior (moans, for example), and do nonverbal cues (, lubrication) decisively show that another person has consented to ? Some philosophers insist that consent must be exceedingly specific as to the ual acts to be carried out, and some would permit only explicit verbal consent, denying that body language by itself can do an adequate job of expressing the participant’s desires and intentions. (See Alan Soble, “Antioch’s ‘ual Offense Policy’.”)

Note also that not all philosophers agree with Mappes and others that fully voluntary consent is always necessary for ual activity to be morally permissible. Jeffrie Murphy, for example, has raised some doubts (“Some Ruminations on Women, Violence, and the Criminal Law,” p. 218):

“Have with me or I will find another girlfriend” strikes me (assuming normal circumstances) as a morally permissible threat, and “Have with me and I will marry you” strikes me (assuming the offer is genuine) as a morally permissible offer. . . . We negotiate our way through most of life with schemes of threats and offers . . . and I see no reason why the realm of uality should be utterly insulated from this very normal way of being human.

 

Source:http://www.iep.utm.edu/uality/.html

 

 

Male and Female Differences

Dan Hodgins, Coordinator Early Childhood Education

In the 1990’s, brain-based research came into its own. We’ve learned so much about the brain it can be confusing. Still, we have a great deal we don’t know about this organ-the only physical organ in the known universe that can contemplate itself-but we know so much that now, to walk into a classroom or home without knowledge of both how the brain works and how the male and female brains learn differently is to be many steps behind where we can and should be as faculty, parents and humans.

This article hopefully will present the crucial sciences of this research in a way that will inspire us to look at our teaching methods and the classroom climate we set up for student learning. This information is an accumulation of research, study and observation over the last ten years that I had the opportunity to conduct with Dr. Gerison and Dr. Stake from the University of Southern California. It will be in two parts.

The first will present what we have discovered as the difference in male and females’ minds and the second on how to set up climates for learning to support these differences.

 

How Males and Females’ Minds are Different:

Developmental and Structural Differences

In most cases, female brains mature earlier than males. An example is in the myelination of the brain. One of the last steps in the brain’s growth to adulthood occurs as the nerves that spiral around the shaft of other nerves of the brain, like vines around a tree, are coated. This coating is myelin, which allows electrical impulses to travel down a nerve fast and efficiently. Myelination continues in all brains into the early twenties, but in young women it is complete earlier than in young men, almost twelve – eighteen months earlier.

Because of this, females, for instance, can acquire their complex verbal skills as much as a year earlier than males. Thus, quite often, a female will learn to read faster and achieve a larger vocabulary than her male peers, and she may speak with better grammar. This difference seems to continue throughout development; in general, female brains develop quicker than male brains.

Another structural difference, and perhaps the most striking, is the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerves that connects emotion and cognition. In females, it is up to 20% larger than in males, giving females better decision making and sensory processing skills. All learning must connect emotion and cognition. Because of this difference in size, females have better verbal abilities and rely heavily on verbal communication; males tend to rely heavily on nonverbal communication and are less likely to verbalize feelings. The current research suggests that sixty-seven per cent of males throughout their life are visual learners. This learning style has immense ramifications in our present culture, which relies so heavily on talk, conversation, words.

Chemical Differences

Males and females have a differing amount of most of the brain chemicals. Perhaps the most telling difference is in how much serotonin each brain secretes. The male brain secretes less than the female, making males impulsive in general, as well as fidgety. Oxytocin is just one of the brain chemicals that, being more constantly stimulated in females, make the female capable of quick and immediate empathic responses to others ‘pain and needs.

Hormonal Differences

Females are dominated by estrogen and progesterone, males by testosterone. These hormones are contrasting in their effects. Progesterone, for instance, is a female growth hormone and also the bonding hormone. Testosterone is the male growth hormone and also the -drive and aggression hormone.

Males receive five to seven “spikes” or “surges” of testosterone an hour, depending on their age. During the spiking, hormonal flow can make their moods change frequently; cause a need for much action; and perhaps, induce s.

Female’s testosterone spikes are usually two a day and often occur in the late afternoon and evening. Female estrogen and progesterone rise and fall with their hormonal cycle, making their moods swing as well. These hormones affect in class emotive functioning, of course, because of mood, but they also influence learning performance. For instance, when female estrogen is high, female scores are higher on both standardized and in-class tests than when it is low. When male testosterone is high, the male performs better on spatial exams but worse on verbal tests.

Functional Differences

Using PET scans, and other brain imaging techniques it has been documented that the resting female brain is as active as the activated male brain. In other words, more going is on in the female brain. The female brain is never at rest, frequently has trouble sleeping at night, dreams in color, and often causes talking during sleep. Because the male brain is not as activated and often pauses after tasks, his brain often becomes overwhelmed by stimulation more quickly than the female.

During the pause state, much information is lost. Two areas of greater functioning in the female are memory and sensory intake. We also have discovered that males see well than females in bright light. This suggests biological rationale for how faculty might consider arranging students in terms of distance or closeness to visual learning aids.

Differences in Processing Emotion

Processing emotion is an area where males are generally more at risk for missed learning and processing opportunities. The female brain processes more emotive stimulants, through more senses, and more completely than does the male. Males can sometimes take hours to process emotively (and manage the same information as females). Consequently, a male’s aggressive and withdrawal response short-circuits intellectual and academic learning because his emotive processing is taking longer and involves less reasoning; in addition, less of his emotional crisis-response neural firing is in the top of the brain, where learning is occurring. He’s more occupied in the lower brain.

Learning Style differences

• Males tend to be deductive in their conceptualizations, sharing their reasoning process frequently from general principle and applying it, to individual cases. Females on the other hand, tend to favour inductive thinking, adding more and more to their based of conceptualization. They tend to begin with concrete examples.

• On average, females do produce more words than males. Female soften use words as they learn them, and males often work silently. Even when we study student group processes, we find females in a learning groups using words more than males.

• Males tend to use up more space when they learn, especially at younger ages. When a female and male are put together at a table, the male generally ends up spreading his work into the female’s space, not vice versa.

• Females do not generally need to move around as much while learning.

Movement seems to help males not only stimulate their brains but also manage and relieve impulsive behavior.

• Cooperative learning, which is good for all, is often easier for females to master in the early stages of its use. Females attend to the code of social interaction. Males tend to focus on performing the task well.

• Especially as males get older, they tend toward symbolic texts, diagrams, and graphs. They like the coded quality better than females do, who tend to prefer written texts. Both male and females like pictures, but males often rely on them in their learning.

The differences in male and female brains are, we hope, good aids in re-visioning teaching and learning practices. In part two, I will be presenting innovations that have already addressed a number of these differences.

I hope this information inspires you, rather than depresses you! Some of it, especially the material regarding males, may not have gotten your attention as thoroughly until now.

 

Source: http://psychcentral.com/library/male_female_differences.html

 

 

Conclusion

            In finality, Human uality is a broad and controversial topic being discussed, debated, and it develops until now. As what is said in the research, Human uality is the general idea of male and female differences and their point of views with their or gender—how they act with the opposite , how they view ual acts with the influence of their religion, culture and even the people around them. The conceptual analysis if the fundamental notions of ual desire and ual activities between male and female, teens or adults couples were clarified in the research. There was a similar opinion from a Christian Theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas and a contemporary secular philosopher Thomas Naegal that they assumed, “what is unnatural in human uality is erted, and that what is unnatural or erted in human uality is simply that which does not conform with or is inconsistent with natural human uality.” Therefore, these erted acts like homouality, and the like are immoral and against the Human uality. The Dangers in were also emphasized. At the latter part of the research, the differences between Male and Females were explained, giving the students a more vivid look at their strength or weaknesses as a man or a woman, in academics or in their emotional responses.

            But even though humans have these differences in gender and uality, it shouldn’t keep us from looking at ourselves as unique person created by the Highest, with its own beauty and a fruitful life. Because whether you are male or female, you need each other for the life’s equilibrium. That’s the reason why God created each one of us…to procreate and to love each other with respect and in a moral kind of life. We are different in gender, but we are one in the eyes of God.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

And that's the story of my awesome and awkward day today. >,<

I can let you download this one, only if you will let me know. Because PLAIGIARISM IS A BIG NO NO. 

 

~Ciao!

 

♥♥♥