1. ‘Good’, a Logically Attributive Adjective

Feser's defense of the perverted faculty argument rests on his understanding of natural law ethical theory, and he emphasizes the way in which his natural law account of human goodness depends on notions of formal and final causality. More basic to his position, though, is his commitment to the view that ‘good’ is what Peter Geach (Reference Geach1956) calls a logically attributive adjective. In a paper that seems not to be sufficiently appreciated by some contemporary ethicists, Geach draws a logical distinction between two kinds of adjective: logically predicative adjectives and logically attributive adjectives. According to Geach, ‘in a phrase “an A B” (“A” being an adjective and “B” being a noun) “A” is a (logically) predicative adjective if the predication “is an A B” splits up logically into a pair of predications “is a B” and “is A”; otherwise I shall say that “A” is a (logically) attributive adjective’ (Geach, Reference Geach1956, p. 33). In this initial formulation Geach does not specify what makes an adjective logically attributive, but the examples he uses and the discussion that follows draw the condition out clearly enough: a logically predicative adjective is one whose sense is independent of the noun it modifies, whereas a logically attributive adjective requires a noun in order to have a determinate sense.Footnote ⁶ Take Geach's example of the adjective ‘red’, which is logically predicative. The sentence, ‘This is a red car’, can be split logically into two predications (‘This is red’; ‘This is a car’) without any loss or change of meaning. That is because the adjective ‘red’ does not depend on a noun for its sense; the word means the same thing whether one talks about a red car, a red shoe, or a red apple. The situation is different when it comes to logically attributive adjectives, such as ‘big’ (to use another example of Geach). The sentence ‘This is a big flea’ does not logically split up into ‘This is big’ and ‘This is a flea’, since, as Geach points out, ‘if these analyses were legitimate, a simple argument would show that a big flea is a big animal and a small elephant a small animal’ (Reference Geach1956, p. 33).Footnote ⁷ Without a noun to modify, the adjective in the sentence ‘This is big’ fails to have any determinate sense. Sometimes context supplies the sense by implying the noun that a logically attributive adjective modifies, such as when I say, ‘This is big’, while shopping for a new coffee table, but absent such context, the adjective ‘big’ in my utterance remains without determinate sense.

The main point of Geach's paper is to defend the view that the adjectives ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are always logically attributive. Sticking with the former, there are any number of examples that one can choose to illustrate Geach's main point. Take the phrase ‘a good pen’. To predicate ‘is a good pen’ of some particular object is to say, among other things, that the thing fits comfortably in one's hand; that it writes clearly; that it does not leak ink; etc. What it means for a pen to be good is different from what it means, say, for a martini to be good. We call something a good martini because, among other things, it is made with a dry gin; it is chilled; it contains little vermouth; etc. Were someone to praise her pen for being made of a dry gin, we would not understand what she meant (unless we presumed she was joking). So, too, we would be at a loss were someone to praise his martini for writing clearly. To be sure, there is some connection between the sense of ‘good’ in ‘good pen’ and ‘good martini’, but the words do not mean exactly the same thing in each case.

In addition to his claim that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are logically attributive adjectives, there is yet another, related claim defended by Geach, namely, that the primary sense of the adjectives ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is descriptive. In making this part of his argument, Geach has in mind two philosophical camps that deny the primary, descriptive sense of the adjectives ‘good’ and ‘bad’: ethical non-naturalists, such as G.E. Moore (Geach calls these moral philosophers ‘Objectivists’), and ethical noncognitivists, such as R.M. Hare (Geach calls these ethicists ‘Oxford Moralists’).Footnote ⁸ For the purpose of this essay, I need not pursue Geach's arguments against these groups, since Feser also rejects non-naturalism and noncognitivism in ethics (Reference Feser2015, pp. 380–81). But it is worth noting that insofar as the primary sense of ‘good’ is descriptive, judgments that such-and-such is a good X or that so-and-so is a good Y are judgments about X and Y, respectively, and these are judgments that can be true or false. Even if I have no special interest in X or Y, I can understand what someone means when they judge this X to be a good X – so long as I know what X is – such as when a friend says, ‘This is a good pen’.Footnote ⁹ Whether or not the pen is good is not primarily a matter of my friend's psychological state – it is not, that is, primarily a matter of her liking the pen or wanting the pen or commending the pen to me. For even if the pen is useful or attractive to my friend in some way, if it cannot be used to write, then it is not a good pen. Whether or not this pen is a good pen, or this martini is a good martini, is largely an empirical matter having to do with whether or not this pen or this martini has what it should have given that it is a pen (or a martini). So, too, when it comes to evaluating an individual living being in terms of whether it is a good member of its species.

There are, of course, important differences between evaluating an artifact, such as a pen or a martini, and evaluating a living being as a member of its species. But in claiming that the goodness of a living individual as a member of its species is species-dependent I am simply applying Geach's insight regarding ‘good’ being logically attributive to the evaluation of individual living beings in terms of the kind of living beings that they are. To express Geach's point in Feser's Aristotelian-Thomistic language, to say that the goodness of a living individual as a member of its species is species-dependent is to say that we cannot make sense of such goodness apart from an understanding of the formal cause or essence of the living being in question. Moreover, asserting that the goodness of a living being is species-dependent says something more than that evaluative judgments of an individual living being as a member of its species are context-dependent;Footnote ¹⁰ to claim, with Geach, that the adjective ‘good’ is always logically attributive is to say that the sense and, therefore, the truth or falsity of judgments such as, ‘This is a good X’ depend on what X is. Thus far, Feser and I are in agreement with Geach's account of the adjective ‘good’.

Where Feser and I disagree is in our understanding of the natural ends of human sexual activity. I think he too narrowly construes these ends because he fails to recognize some of the implications of how goodness depends on what X is, a failure that involves Feser not appreciating some of the implications of another philosopher on whose work he relies. In presenting his understanding of how the goodness of X depends on X's nature, Feser draws on Philippa Foot's Natural Goodness, as do I. But Feser and I arrive at different conclusions about the goodness of intrinsically nonprocreative human sex acts because Feser's account of natural goodness generalizes across species and, therefore, does not recognize some of the ways in which evaluative judgments of an individual human being as a member of its species depend on particular features of the human life-form that are not shared with all animal species.

2. The Species-dependence of Natural Goodness

When I write of the goodness of an individual living being as a member of its species, I am referring to what Foot calls ‘natural goodness’. Foot draws a basic distinction between natural goodness and what she calls ‘secondary goodness’, which she explains as follows:

For my purposes, I set aside our evaluations of nonliving parts of the natural world (such as soil and water) and focus on our evaluation of individual living beings. When we evaluate a living being in relation to the interests or needs of members of a species other than its own (such as when one judges that oak tree a good nesting spot for the squirrels in one's yard, or when one judges this horse a good mode of transportation), then we predicate secondary goodness of the living being in question. When, however, we evaluate an individual living being on its own terms, as it were – that is, in relation to the life-form of the species to which it belongs – then we predicate natural goodness of that individual living being (such as when one judges that oak tree to be a good oak because it has deep roots, or when one judges this horse to be a good horse because it has strong legs).

Drawing on the work of Michael Thompson (Reference Thompson, Hursthouse, Lawrence and Quinn1995),Footnote ¹¹ Foot argues that in order to understand ‘certain distinctive ways in which we describe individual organisms, we must recognize the logical dependence of these descriptions on the nature of the species to which the individual belongs’ (Reference Foot2001, p. 27). Key to this understanding is what she and Thompson call ‘natural history propositions’. These propositions take the form ‘Ss are F’ or ‘The S is F’, where ‘S’ stands in for the name of a species and ‘F’ holds the place for some predicate. Take, for example, the natural history proposition, ‘Chickens are diurnal’, which we can distinguish from propositions such as, ‘Spicy is a chicken’, and ‘Spicy is awake during the day and sleeps at night’. Although the latter two propositions are about Spicy, this particular chicken, the former is not; the former says something about chickens in general. Foot is quick to point out that natural history propositions are not logically quantifiable, since no logical quantifier captures the sense of natural history propositions.Footnote ¹² For example, ‘Chickens are diurnal’ is not saying ‘All chickens are diurnal’, since there are some chickens that are not (for example, that chicken, Coach, who is ill and who, therefore, sleeps during the day and is awake at night). But ‘Some chickens are diurnal’ also fails to capture the sense of the natural history proposition, since ‘Chickens are diurnal’ is not merely saying ‘There is at least one chicken that is diurnal’. Rather, natural history propositions pick out something that is true of a species in general – they pick out norms of the life-form. More specifically, they pick out some part or characteristic or operation relevant to the flourishing of the life-form in question.

Foot's point in distinguishing between natural history propositions and propositions that describe individual living beings is to draw attention to the way in which natural goodness evaluations depend on these two kinds of propositions. As she puts it when describing judgments of natural goodness with respect to plants and non-human animals, ‘if we have a true natural-history proposition to the effect that S's are F, then if a certain individual S – the individual here and now or then and there – is not F it is therefore not as it should be, but rather weak, diseased, or in some other way defective’ (Reference Foot2001, p. 30).Footnote ¹³ To return to the chicken example, since it is true that chickens are diurnal, if this particular chicken, Spicy, is diurnal, then Spicy is a good chicken in just that respect. If, however, another chicken, Coach, is not diurnal, then we know that something is wrong with Coach as a chicken, at least in that respect.Footnote ¹⁴ To return yet again to the language that Feser prefers, the preceding (incomplete) account of judgments of natural goodness depends on the essence of a living being (its formal cause), that is, the kind of being that it is, since this essence helps to determine whether the living being is good as that kind of being.

I say that the preceding account of judgments of natural goodness is incomplete because it does not bring into relief the role of teleology in such judgments (‘final causes’, as Feser would put it). As Foot emphasizes, the kinds of natural history propositions relevant to evaluations of natural goodness are ones that are teleological rather than non-teleological. Here, in anticipation of Foot's argument, I distinguish two senses of ‘teleology’. There is what one might call a basic sense of teleology that has to do with regularity. This basic sense of teleology concerns the ways in which causes have typical or characteristic effects (for example, gin intoxicates human beings when they consume it in large quantities; diamonds cut glass when scraped across its surface; copper turns green when it oxidizes).Footnote ¹⁵ The second sense of ‘teleology’ builds on the first, since it goes beyond merely pointing out what is typically the case regarding causes and says something about what is genuinely good or genuinely beneficial for members of some species in light of their life-form. It is this second sense of ‘teleology’ that is pertinent to judgments of natural goodness. Take the example, ‘Flamingos have pink feathers’. This proposition looks like ‘Chickens are diurnal’, but the latter natural history proposition picks out a characteristic of chickens that contributes to their flourishing, given their life-form. More specifically, chickens cannot see in the dark. So, were they active at night, they would be easy pickings for nocturnal predators, such as raccoons. Thus, when the sun sets, chickens roost (or return to their coops, if they are kept by human beings) in order to sleep and so that they are less prone to predators. Being diurnal plays a part in the good of chickens, since being diurnal contributes to their self-defense and survival. A similar story cannot be told about the pink color of the feathers of flamingos. Although the feathers of adult flamingos are pink, having pink feathers does not play a part in the life-form of the species – that is, the pinkness of their feathers does not contribute to the flourishing of flamingos.Footnote ¹⁶ Hence, the natural history proposition about the coloring of flamingo feathers is non-teleological (in the second sense I distinguish), whereas the natural history proposition about the diurnal activity of chickens is teleological (in the second sense I distinguish). The lesson to draw from these two examples is this: when evaluating individual living beings, it is not enough that some part or characteristic or operation of the living being occurs regularly in members of the species; mere regularity does not entail a connection to natural goodness. Natural goodness concerns those parts, characteristics, or operations of living beings that serve a purpose in the life-form of the species in question, and the purpose in question is the flourishing of members of the species as members of the species.

Feser would agree thus far with the account of natural goodness I take from Foot. My contention is that Feser goes wrong in failing to appreciate some of the implications of Foot's account for the relationship between (a) the purposes (that is, the natural ends) of sexual activity for a human being as a member of its species and (b) the life-form of human beings. More specifically, basic to Feser's defense of the perverted faculty argument is his view that one can make sound natural goodness evaluations of living beings on the basis of generalizations about what is true of their genus. It is, for example, true that animals need to eat in order to survive. But such a generalization does not allow one to make a sound judgment about what this animal should eat, or how much it should eat, or how often it should eat. Nor does such a generalization tell me whether the life-form of this animal involves additional functions for eating, some of which may have nothing to do with nutrition and survival.

In order to illustrate the way in which generalizations across animal species do not allow one to make sound natural goodness evaluations of particular living beings, I want to consider the purposes of nails in the various life-forms of different species of birds. The purposes of claws in the life-form of chickens is different in crucial respects from the purposes of talons in the life-form of red tailed hawks, which are different in crucial respects from the purposes of talons in the life-form of bald eagles, which are different from the purpose of talons in the life-form of lammergeyers. That is to say, the nails of the members of each respective species play different roles: they contribute differently to the flourishing of members of the respective species, determining different natural ends and, therefore, different natural goods for members of each species – differences that are due to differences in the respective life-forms of each species of bird. Red tailed hawks, for example, use their talons to hunt and, given the size of these hawks and their typical environment, they tend to hunt relatively small diurnal terrestrial animals (Spicy and Coach beware). Bald eagles, however, are significantly larger than red tailed hawks and tend to hunt fish as a large portion of their diet. So, their talons are used differently; the talons of a bald eagle have a different purpose or natural end than the talons of a red tailed hawk (that is, they play a different role in the life-form of the bald eagle than talons do in the life-form of the red tailed hawk). And, so, the natural good of an eagle is different from the natural good of a red tailed hawk (and the natural good of chickens) in that respect. Lammergeyers, unlike red tailed hawks and bald eagles, are scavengers that eat bone marrow, and one purpose of their talons is to carry the bones of dead animals to great heights in order to drop them and crack them, thus making the bones easier to swallow. Accordingly, their natural good differs from the other three species in this respect.

In response to the preceding illustration, someone such as Feser may still be inclined to generalize across species by formulating a genus-specific (as opposed to species-specific) natural history proposition such as ‘Birds use their talons to eat’. Such a generalization is, in fact, false (penguins, for example, are one of many species of bird that do not use their nails to eat). But even if it were not false, such a genus-specific natural history proposition would be insufficient for making sound natural goodness evaluations. On the one hand, genus-specific natural history propositions can lead one to judge a living being to be naturally good when it is not. Imagine that Coach, the chicken, does not use her claws to scratch the dirt looking for insects to eat, as is the case for healthy members of her species, but instead uses them to try to hunt the koi fish that I keep in the pond next to the chicken coop. On the basis of ‘Birds use their talons to eat’ and ‘Coach uses her talons to hunt koi’, I could justifiably conclude that Coach is doing what birds should do and that, therefore, she is a naturally good bird in that respect. Such an evaluation, however, would be false. Coach is a naturally good bird insofar as she is a naturally good chicken, and it is not part of the life-form of chickens to use their talons to hunt for fish.

On the other hand, genus-specific natural history propositions can also lead one falsely to ascribe natural badness to an individual living being. Imagine that I am hiking in the Pacific Northwest and I observe a bald eagle constructing its aerie. As it carries large sticks and fashions them into the right shape, I recall that birds use their talons to eat. But here is a bald eagle using its talons to make its nest. On the basis of ‘Birds use their talons to eat’ and ‘This bald eagle is not using its talons to eat but to make a nest’, I could justifiably conclude that this bald eagle is naturally bad or defective. Such an evaluation, however, would be false. At this point the defender of genus-specific natural history propositions may say that we need yet another such proposition, namely, ‘Birds also use their talons to make nests’. Such a move may seem to save me from a false natural goodness evaluation in the case of the bald eagle, but I would quickly run into trouble upon returning home and noting that Coach the chicken does not use her claws to make a nest but instead uses them to roost.

My point in criticizing genus-specific natural history propositions is that generalized natural history propositions based on higher classifications do not allow one to make sound natural goodness evaluations, since only species-specific teleological natural history propositions allow one accurately to determine the natural ends of this living being with respect to its species. As Michael Thompson observes, ‘the real subject of a natural-historical judgment and of an Aristotelian categorical is, I think, inevitably a representation of the thing that must be there – that is, something like what was formerly called an infirma species’ (Reference Thompson2008, p. 67).Footnote ¹⁷ Feser, however, relies on genus-specific generalizations when developing his account of the natural ends of human beings and his understanding of the purposes of sexual activity, which is why he too narrowly construes the natural, sexual ends of human beings.

3. Feser's Account of Natural Goodness and his Sexual Ethics

As I acknowledge at the start of this paper, Feser's defense of the perverted faculty argument relies on an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of formal and final causes.Footnote ¹⁸ According to Feser,

On the basis of the preceding passage alone, one might wonder whether Feser and I really disagree in our fundamental ethical commitments. But Feser's account of human goods relies on some generalizations across species, resulting in his failure to recognize the full implications of the species-dependence of natural ends, particularly the natural sexual ends of human beings.

Taking his lead from Aquinas, Feser identifies ‘three general categories of goods inherent in human nature’:

According to Feser's categories of human goods, the higher categories presuppose the lower ones, so that, for example, in order to pursue knowledge effectively one needs enough to eat and a place to sleep, among many other things. Additionally, according to Feser, ‘the lower goods are subordinate to the higher ones in the sense that they exist for the higher ones. The point of fulfilling the vegetative and sensory aspects of our nature is, on his [Aquinas's] view, to allow us to fulfill the defining rational aspects of our nature’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 384).

At first glance, it may seem as though Feser is fully attuned to the species-dependence of natural goodness, since he identifies a class of goods that is peculiar to rational animals, that is, to human beings. And so it may seem as though his hierarchy of human goods, on which his defense of the perverted faculty argument rests, is consistent with the natural goodness account that I presented in section 2. But closer examination proves otherwise. In defending the perverted faculty argument Feser does not develop his account of the natural sexual goods of human beings by first looking to the human life-form and the myriad sexual activities in which human beings engage and the myriad functions those activities play in a flourishing human life. Instead, he starts with a generalized, hierarchical account of how human goods relate to each other via the aforementioned three categories, and he draws conclusions about the human sexual good on the basis of that generalized account.

It is tempting to follow Feser in dividing lower goods from higher goods, since, for example eating (an allegedly ‘lower’ good) is something less-complex animals can do, but reading (an allegedly higher good) is something they cannot. But to think of eating as a lower human good, as something not as distinctively human as, say reading, is to prioritize comparisons across species rather than to determine the function of eating for human beings by looking at the human life-form. Feser claims that ‘even though eating is pleasurable, the biological point of eating is not to give pleasure, but rather to provide an organism with the nutrients it needs to survive’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 389). Human beings, of course, need to take in and metabolize nutrients in order to survive, and, so, one purpose (or role or function) of eating for human beings is to take in nutrients. To that extent there is nothing wrong with talking about the biological purpose of human eating, so long as one is equally prepared to talk about the cultural purpose, or the political purpose, or the aesthetic purpose, etc. Admittedly, earlier in his text Feser allows that, for human beings, meals have ‘a social and cultural significance that raises them above mere feeding’, and he claims that ‘other goods we share in common with animals similarly participate in our rationality and are radically transformed as a result’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 388). But he clearly thinks of the social and cultural significance of eating as something that can be sharply distinguished from its biological purpose.Footnote ²⁰ For Feser, biological purposes are shared with other animals and, therefore, occupy a lower position in his hierarchy of human goods, a hierarchy based on generalizations across species. In his reliance on generalizations across species to determine the natural ends of human beings Feser fails in just that respect to acknowledge the species-dependence of natural goodness in his account of human goods. As Foot points out in her final published work,

In order to emphasize the differences between the functions of eating in the human life-form and the function of eating in the life-form of other animals, I want to sketch how eating contributes to human flourishing in ways that go beyond the mere intake of nutrients. Perhaps some other non-human animals eat in order to survive, but that is not the purpose of eating in a flourishing human life, even if it is true that human beings need nourishment. Nor is nourishment a necessary factor in all that counts as good eating in the human life-form. Here it is instructive to remember a remark of Gareth Moore on this topic: ‘The best eating is often unnecessary; it is a treat, something that we do over and above what we need, just because it is delightful. We also recognize a value in positively feasting, in self-indulgence, occasionally eating beyond, or even far beyond, our needs as a form of celebration. To eat beyond necessity contributes to human well-being, as does most going beyond need’ (Reference Moore1992, p. 68).Footnote ²¹

In making his observation about eating beyond need, Moore is arguing for the view that doing things just because we enjoy them is a crucial part of the human life-form (though he does not use that phrasing). Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that eating plays a number of roles in the human life-form, many of which involve more than the sheer enjoyment of eating. Take the following (incomplete) list of examples: eating a turkey with friends and family for Christmas dinner; eating cake to celebrate one's birthday; eating a pint of ice cream to alleviate the pain of a breakup; swallowing antacids to sooth one's upset stomach; eating as a courtesy, as when one accepts food from one's host even when one is not hungry; eating a chocolate lava cake for dessert, even though one is full; drinking a martini or two after a long day of work. Although eating or drinking for these various purposes may be (but need not be) enjoyable, one misunderstands the preceding examples if one construes them simply in terms of the pursuit of pleasure. On the contrary, these purposes have to do with a variety of distinctively human goods (that is, a variety of distinctively human natural ends), goods such as the celebration of accomplishments, familial bonding, the strengthening of friendship, healing over love lost, and commemorating traditions, to name just a few. The goodness of these natural human ends have nothing to do with survival or even the taking in of nutrients.Footnote ²² In fact, some of these goods (such as the stiff drink at the end of a long day, or eating dessert at the end of a luxurious meal) run contrary to biological health – yet we acknowledge them as genuine human goods.Footnote ²³ Employing cross-species generalizations in one's account of the natural good of eating for human beings, as Feser does, glosses over the various and complicated natural purposes of eating that are particular to the life-form of human beings, including all of the genuine human goods that depend on meals, some of which have nothing to do with survival.Footnote ²⁴ To quote Moore again, ‘From the fact that food and drink are necessary to the survival of the individual [human being] it does not follow, then, that our eating and drinking should be limited to what will enable us as individuals to survive’ (Reference Moore1992, p. 68).

Just as Feser fails to recognize the full implications of the ways in which the purposes of eating in the human life-form are species-dependent, he similarly fails to recognize the full implications of the ways in which the purposes of sexual activity in the human life-form are species-dependent. Feser begins his discussion of general sexual ethics by reasserting the natural law view that human beings are rational animals. He then immediately claims, ‘That we are animals of a sort entails that the vegetative, sensory, locomotive, and appetitive ends that determine what is good for non-human animals are also partially constitutive of our good’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 388). Here Feser bases his account of human goods on generalizations across species, rather than on an examination of the features of the human being's life-form. To argue in this way, however, is to misconstrue natural goodness arguments. That nutrition and survival are natural ends of eating for chickens, moose, and wombats is irrelevant to determining whether nutrition and survival are natural ends of eating for human beings. That one can generalize across chickens, moose, wombats, and human beings regarding nutrition and survival as ends of eating in the life-forms of their respective species is something one does after determining the natural ends of each particular species, not before. So, one argues badly when one starts with such generalizations and uses them to determine the natural ends of a particular species, as Feser does in the case of human beings.

After claiming that the sexual faculties have two inseparable natural ends, namely, procreation and the emotional bonding of the sexual partners, Footnote ²⁵ Feser asserts ‘that sex considered from a purely biological point of view exists for the sake of procreation is uncontroversial’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 389). Feser means this claim to concern all animals, as is clear from what he says about pleasure not being a natural end of sex: ‘For giving pleasure is not the end of sex, not that for the sake of which sex exists in animals. Rather, sexual pleasure has as its own natural end the getting of animals to engage in sexual relations so that they will procreate’ (Reference Feser2015, p. 389). I set to the side Feser's claim that the natural end of sexual pleasure is to induce animals to procreate, since that claim is not germane to my argument. Instead, I simply draw attention to the fact that Feser's natural goodness argument about the natural ends of sex proceeds by making assertions about what he takes to be true of animals – that is, his argument depends on a generalized natural history proposition rather than natural history propositions that are species-specific.

It may well be uncontroversial that procreation is the biological purpose of sex in human beings, if one takes the assertion to mean simply that procreation is one of the roles sex plays in the human life-form. But, as I argued in the case of eating, a natural goodness evaluation of human beings that focuses on the features of the human life-form will acknowledge that there are a number of natural ends to human activities, including human sexual activities, some of which have nothing to do with or even run counter to what we may identify as biological purposes. As Gareth Moore observes,

Admittedly, to agree with Moore that it can be good to have sex beyond necessity is not thereby to show that engaging in intrinsically nonprocreative sexual activity is part of the human sexual good. In order to show that, one would have to look to the human life-form and make a natural goodness argument to the effect that some intrinsically non-procreative human sexual act is a natural human good.

4. Sexual Activity and the Human Life-form

As I argued in Section 2, natural goodness evaluations of individuals require two types of propositions: propositions describing the parts, characteristics, or operations of the individual in question; and teleological, species-specific natural history propositions. Since I am arguing that intrinsically nonprocreative human sex acts are not intrinsically immoral, I need to provide a cogent natural goodness evaluation of an intrinsically nonprocreative human sex act that explains why such an act is not naturally defective for being intrinsically nonprocreative. To this end I take the example of Matilda, a woman who masturbates, as a paradigmatic case of an individual engaging in intrinsically nonprocreative sex acts. The natural goodness evaluation in question concerns Matilda's will, that is, her choosing to engage in a sexual activity that cannot result in procreation. Natural goodness accounts of human action treat the human will as a capacity analogous to the sonar of bats and photosynthesis in ferns.Footnote ²⁶ There are a number of ways in which Matilda's choice can be defective (for example, she can act against her conscience in making her choice, or she can choose her course of action in the pursuit of an immoral end), but here I am only concerned with one, namely, whether the kind of act in which she chooses to engage is intrinsically immoral in virtue of being a deliberately performed, intrinsically nonprocreative human sex act. For the sake of developing a natural goodness argument of the form I discussed in Section 2, I will presume that:

1. (1) Matilda is a woman, and

2. (2) Matilda masturbates.

In order to render a natural goodness evaluation of Matilda's autoerotic activity, I now need to formulate teleological natural history propositions about human sex acts. Another way to put this is to say that a natural goodness evaluation of Matilda's autoerotic sexual activity requires a true account of the role or function of autoerotic sexual activity as it contributes to flourishing in the human life-form.

Both Feser and I acknowledge that procreation is a natural end of human sexual activity. But he arrives at that conclusion by generalizing across animal species regarding the biological purpose of sex, whereas I acknowledge reproduction as one among a number of natural ends of human sexual activity in the human life-form. Furthermore, on the basis of his generalization, Feser claims that it can never be good for a rational agent to use her faculties in a manner ‘contrary to’ their natural end (Reference Feser2015, p. 398), which is why he judges an intrinsically nonprocreative sex act such as masturbation to be intrinsically immoral.Footnote ²⁷ But, as I have argued, an examination of the human life-form shows that, at least in the case of eating, human beings have a number of natural ends, some of which have nothing to do with and even run contrary to some biological natural ends, such as nutrition. Similarly, I am now arguing that there are a number of natural sexual ends for human beings, some of which have nothing to do with and even run contrary to the biological natural end of procreation. More specifically, I am arguing that masturbation meets some genuine sexual human needs and, therefore, is a natural human good. But before I identify those needs, it is worth emphasizing yet again that reproduction, as a natural human good, differs in significant ways from reproduction in other animals species. Philippa Foot expresses the point as follows:

Whether or not a human being reproduces is not merely a matter of whether that human being's physiology works well (and whether the human being has the opportunity to mate); the question of whether a human being reproduces is also informed by the capacity human beings have to choose whether to reproduce. Foot's point is that human beings may choose not to reproduce in favor of pursuing some other human good or goods, and that choice need not be evidence of natural defect. It may even be praiseworthy. Feser, of course, allows that one can choose never to reproduce and that such a choice can be a good one, since he recognizes, for example, that the choice to be a Catholic priest can be a good choice. His main contention is that if a human being engages in sexual activity, then any sexual activity that is intrinsically nonprocreative is for that reason intrinsically immoral. But this parameter on the kinds of sexual acts in which human beings may engage does not square with the way in which certain intrinsically nonprocreative sex acts, such as masturbation, meet certain human needs and, therefore, are genuine human goods.

It can be hard for some people to admit masturbation is a natural human sexual good, given the long history of condemning masturbation, a history that stems primarily from the moral teachings of Judaism and Christianity. The moral-religious condemnation of masturbation took a different turn in the 18^th century, when some argued that it was not merely immoral but physically and psychologically harmful to people. There are two main texts that historians cite as having the greatest influence in spreading this view of masturbation. The first (Anonymous, 2020) is a pamphlet called, ‘ONANIA; OR THE Heinous Sin OF Self-Pollution, AND All its Frightful Consequences, in both SEXES, Considered’, which was published anonymously in the early 18^th century, and which describes masturbation as ‘so detrimental to the Publick, and so injurious to ourselves’ (1724, p. 6).Footnote ²⁹ This pamphlet influenced Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728–1797) to write Onanism: A Dissertation on the Diseases Caused by Masturbation (Reference Tissot2015 [1760]). In this work, which was translated into several languages and widely read, Tissot repeats the myths that masturbation results in a weakened physical state in men (because of the loss of semen) and women (because of the loss of humors) and that masturbation causes all kinds of physical and psychological maladies.Footnote ³⁰ Tissot's influence was so great that his stigmatizing of masturbation makes its way into the 20^th century, as this 1918 description of the symptoms of masturbation (printed in an encyclopedia of health) indicates: ‘The health soon becomes noticeably impaired; there will be general debility….Next comes sore eyes, blindness, stupidity, consumption, spinal affliction, emaciation, involuntary seminal emissions, loss of all energy or spirit, insanity and idiocy – the hopeless ruin of both body and mind’ (Crooks and Bauer, Reference Crooks and Bauer2016, p. 243).

According to current scientific research, there is no evidence for any of the symptoms enumerated in the 1918 text. This is a relief, since a recent survey indicates that ‘almost 85% of women and over 94% of men between ages 25 and 29 had masturbated’ (Crooks and Bauer, Reference Crooks and Bauer2016, p. 345). But it is not merely that there is no evidence that masturbation causes the physical and psychological harms alleged by people such as Tissot; it is also the case that research shows that masturbation meets a number of human sexual needs, the meeting of which contributes to human flourishing. For example, studies have shown that:

1. 3) masturbation can relieve sexual tension (Francoeur, Reference Francoeur1991);

2. 4) masturbation can be used as a form of safe sex (Davidson and Moore, Reference Davidson and Moore1994);

3. 5) masturbation can help people learn about their sexual likes and dislikes (Phipps, Reference Phipps1977);

4. 6) masturbation can be used to help treat certain sexual dysfunctions, such as anorgasmia in women and delayed ejaculation in men (Rowan, Reference Rowan2000);

5. 7) married women who masturbate report greater marital and sexual satisfaction than women who do not masturbate (Hurlbert and Whittaker, Reference Hurlbert and Whittaker1991); and

6. 8) masturbation can result in a sense of well-being and can even result in higher self-esteem (Hurlbert and Whittaker, Reference Hurlbert and Whittaker1991).

The relief of sexual tension, practicing safe sex, greater awareness of one's sexual preferences, alleviating sexual disfunction, marital satisfaction, and increased self-esteem are all genuine human needs in the human life-form, none of which (except perhaps the first) are needs in other species of animal.Footnote ³¹ These needs indicate some of the ways in which human sexual activity, like human eating, is inextricably bound up with the various physical, psychological, social, and cultural features of the human life-form that make the role of human sexual activity enormously different from the role sexual activity plays in other species. These needs also point more generally to why some intrinsically nonprocreative human sexual activity can contribute to human flourishing: given the human life-form, sex for human beings is not merely for reproduction.

Accordingly, propositions 3–8 function as teleological, species-specific natural history propositions that can be combined with the two earlier propositions about Matilda (above) to form a natural goodness evaluation of her choice to masturbate. Of course, before one can judge whether this or that autoerotic act of Matilda is blameless, one would need more details (for example, perhaps instead of a gin after a long day working in her local hospital, Matilda, an emergency room physician, returns home and relaxes by masturbating). Nonetheless, my brief sketch of the role masturbation plays in the human life-form provides a natural goodness argument to the effect that insofar as masturbation fulfills certain genuine human sexual needs, masturbation is a genuine human good, despite masturbation being incapable of resulting in procreation.