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PerseusWizardry  1yr ago (text post)   3419 thread views

Does my Philosophy of Sexuality Professor Have a Point? (It's a mandatory gen-ed)

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We are obligated not to racially select our friends

Why?

If we are obligated not to racially select our friends, we're obligated not to racially select our romantic and sexual partners.

The latter doesn't obviously follow from the former.

Therefore, we're obligated not to racially select our romantic and sexual partners.

Basic modus ponens. Valid but not sound.

If we're obligated not to racially select our friends, romantic, or sexual partners, this is because race is an immutable characteristic.

This is just asserting the whole argument as a premise.

So, we're also obligated not to select our partners based on any other immutable characteristics.

Why? Other immutable characteristics are different from race and may have other factors at play.

Moreover, for all of this, define "immutable". Our entire lifetime is probably computable from birth given sufficient knowledge of the structure of the environment and our personal DNA etc, so can anything really be mutable? You can say that with enough motivation, drive, or choice someone can change aspects of their own lives, but aren't motivation, drive, and the ability to make a choice immutable characteristics? Either you define immutability at some arbitrary level of abstraction from the computable molecular world or this is point is basically useless because everything is immutable.

Therefore, we must be all-inclusive with respect to immutable characteristics in friendship and dating.

Valid, not sound again.

I just find this sort of logical argumentation really stupid. It just asserts things in the premises (with some wordplay and emotional twisting so you don't see it for the naked assertion it is) and then goes through the barest of logical hoops to act like it is a logical argument and not just a statement of opinion. Then if you're a smart, intellectual person you're supposed to sit around and play along with the wrapper game and act like you're surprised to find your interpretation of the world is wrong because someone has simply asserted it so.

My argument:

P1: Humans are animals.

P2: Animals have natural mating and socialization preferences based on various characteristics, immutable or no.

P3: Human society is structured to meet human interests; human actions in society will meet human interests.

C1: Human society is structured to meet human preferences for socialization/romance, based on various immutable characteristics. (from P1, P2, P3)

C2: Human actions will meet human preferences for different immutable characteristics (from C1, P3)

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