Imagine that two partners are in a relationship much like a typical monogamous relationship, with one exception: instead of restricting one another from having additional partners, they restrict one another from having additional friends. If either partner becomes friends with someone else, the other partner will refuse to support it—indeed, will go so far as to end the relationship.
Most of us, I think, would find such an arrangement morally troubling. But just what’s troubling about it? Here’s what seems to me, at least, to be wrong with such an arrangement: it goes against the spirit of love. Friendship, after all, is an important human good, and when we’re in a romantic relationship with someone, we should want him or her to be free to pursue such goods as they see fit. And part of letting our partner have such freedom is to refrain from imposing costs on them when they do so—costs like withdrawing our affection and ending the relationship. Indeed, not only should we refrain from imposing costs on our partner when they find a new friend, we should be happy for them. That is what love calls for.
And yet, if all this is right, we come to a puzzle. For friendship is not the only important human good in town; sexual and romantic relationships are likewise an important human good. Whether through sexual pleasure, mutual learning, or a special kind of emotional support, such relationships enrich our lives in a number of ways. Why, then, should we seek to restrict our partner from having more of these relationships? Were our partner to find an additional partner, should we not instead simply be happy for them, much as we would if they found an additional friend? Might it be that love calls for us to abandon our all too common restrictions here—that is, to abandon monogamy?
The immorality of monogamy
Why we need to stop restricting our lovers
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Søren Wollenberg 29 February 2020
Reply to Joe McConnell - As you say, you are pointing out the obvious; however, by doing so are also pointing out something kinda irrelevant to the question at hand. The question of the article is about morality, but your comment is simply about practicality.
However, even if practicality was a factor in discussion, your argument is still kinda flawed:
As your comment itself seems to acknowledge, monogamy as a structure of relationships doesn't actually do anything to prevent people from engaging in sexual relations outside such structures; as in either due to cheating, or simply through having non-romantic sexual relations once-or-multiple times.
There is no reason to think that changing the structure of relationships from involving just two to instead involving two+ people automatically would result in people having sex with more people than they otherwise would. It doesn't follow that simply because the option of doing so is introduced that people would be inclined to act on it any more than they would have otherwise.
There is no reason to think that simply because you have access to multiple partners, that you'd be inclined to get such, or that you'd be inclined to change partners more than you otherwise would.
Charles Justice 28 February 2020
This is a reply to Soren Wollenberg, Thanks for discussing my comment. I quote from Virginia Held, Feminist Morality: "The flourishing of children ought to be at the very center of moral, and social, and political, and economic, and legal thought" I'm in agreement with the Feminists on this. Without the flourishing of children we don't have an ongoing society. But I go one further. I believe it is morality that got us out of the state of nature, and that partially and imperfectly replaced natural selection with normativity.
As for my making Chalmers argument into a straw man: Perhaps I'm oversimplifying what he says. I guess my point would be the free love that he advocates may work fine for some people, but it isn't moral, and monogamy is not immoral. Chalmers appears to me to being sardonic, in calling monogamy immoral. I've argued elsewhere that the original and simplest form of morality is monogamy. It's in my piece: "What was the original rule?" Briefly, I'm arguing that the nature of human uniqueness comes from our making monogamy possible by collective agreement. Free love was not a viable option in our beginnings. Our closest ancestors were australopithecus, who probably had a polygynous alpha male hierarchy. There was no natural way to choose another option, so it required collective support of a monogamous system. Most birds are biparental because their offspring are more likely to be grow to adulthood and reproduce if they have two parents. When you talk about the possibility of two fathers, you are really talking about alloparenting, which I would argue is made possible by monogamy. Briefly, monogamy unites separate kin groups which enlarges multi-family groups and makes them stronger, and also creates alliances with outside groups.
As to bringing up LBGTQ, I see it as a very modern development that is not relevant to the origin or heart of morality. Morality isn't about universal tolerance and everybody being nice to each other. This is made possible by morality. In nature the strong rule. Morality gets us out of nature. Then we have more choices and chances of flourishing.
Joe McConnell 21 February 2020
Just to point out the obvious... increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy. Or we can just pretend that's all preventable with wisdom and good judgment, because, you know, herpes and abortion are hardly a thing in the civilized world. Loving sarcasm ;-)
Søren Wollenberg 20 February 2020
Charles Justice's comment on this article comes off as strangely malignant; actively refusing to take any of the positions of Chalmers as being genuine, and instead trying to argue against a completely different position than the one being advocated for. In other words, Charles Justice has raised a strawman to argue against (perhaps even so subtly that they didn't intend to do so themself); raising the position that "No one could seriously argue for free love, so the topic must truly be about free sex." A position more likely to repel readers.
One could be inclined to leave the matter here, but the way Charles Justice engages their strawman-version-of-Chalmers additionally seems quite off. The engagement, first of all, orbits its entire point around what would seem to be a Fallacy of Appeal to Nature, claiming that child-rearing is the entire purpose of morality. I don't have much to say to that beyond it seeming like a truly strange claim.
What especially makes child-rearing as the focus of one's core of morality strange is that it results in Justice's argumentation rather inconsistent. They argue that;
"[...] Unique to humans is alloparenting also, sharing child care responsibilities with kinfolk like grandmothers and aunts and uncles. No other animal has this. In almost all mammals female uniparenting is the rule, but humans are one of the exceptions. The obvious reason is that the human female cannot provide sufficient protection and nourishment by themselves [...]"
But then goes on to say;
"[...] Once you bring children into the picture monogamy is just an infinitely better deal for them."
If child-rearing truly was the very purpose of morality, why would it then follow that such children would need to only have two parents when Charles Justice themself claims that more figures, such as aunts and uncles, are necessary to truly give children the care they need. But if this is so, why wouldn't you find it more ideal for these additional figures to also be the parents of the child? Why should a child's ideal raising be; mom, dad, and aunty rather than; mom, dad, and second dad? Indeed, if there truly is an inherent need for additional caregivers beyond two parents, what exactly is it about two parents that is supposed to be so ideal in the first place?
These last two questions also illuminate another issue with Charles Justice's critique of the article; it completely dismisses all relevance of LGBTQA+ people in the matter. I mentioned earlier that Justice actively dismisses the premise that the article's focus could mainly be about romance rather than sex, but doing so completely rejects the experiences of certain kinds of asexual people, and how this article might apply to them.
Additionally, much of the argumentation seems to heavily rely upon, although not inherently exclusionary of homosexuality, a heterocentric understanding of relationships.
Charles Justice 17 February 2020
Charles Justice, PA. I am a philosopher with a specialization in Philosophical Anthropology. I' m sure Professor Chalmers is being provocative here when he claims that monogamy is immoral. What he seems to me to be implicitly claiming is that we don't need morality at all. Chalmers argues that friendship is analogous to a sexual relationship, so if having lots of friends is a good thing, so should having extra lovers. Apparently, the problems that we imagine occurring with this scenario, problems of jealousy, are really just hang-overs from our over-valuing monogamy. I'm sure Professor Chalmers has an analogous attitude to the one that an ethics professor in my graduate school had towards monogamy. He dumped his wife for a younger woman. His ex-wife remained a colleague within the department. It was painful to witness. Really, I am thinking that underlying Chalmer's attitude is a rejection of morality itself. Because, if you think about it, isn't it considered immoral to cheat on your spouse? Yes, but that's only because we don't approve of sleeping around. Why then shouldn't we, as Chalmers suggests, just approve of healthy sex and free choice, along with a healthy dose of honesty and willingness to work things out? Why not indeed?
I'm interested in the origins of morality, and so I notice that adultery is on a lot of moral “do not do” lists. I know it is fashionable to think that morality is bourgeoise hypocrisy, and has been for the last hundred years. There have been previous famous philosophers like Sartre and Bertrand Russell who have pushed the moral boundaries and argued for the same. But unlike them, I consider it important to investigate why adultery has always been such a big deal. My guess is that this question goes far deeper into human nature than Professor Chalmers has ever imagined.
It's certainly true that our mores have changed drastically in the last hundred years. Wife-beating is no longer tolerated in the country where I live. Homosexual marriage is now legal. Sexual relations outside of marriage no longer seems so immoral either. So why not change the mores around marriage? But notice that Professor Chalmers never mentions the word “marriage”, not even once. He talks about “monogamous relationships”. I’m sure he has a good reason for this, perhaps it simplifies his argument; my thought is that marriage is also fundamental to morality. Marriage is a kinship relation between two sets of kin that exists in all human societies. Monogamy is the prevalent form of marriage in the majority of societies, although a good proportion of societies permit other forms such as polygyny or mistresses. I think Professor Chalmers is not really referring to polygyny as the alternative to monogamy, he is referring to unaffiliated free sex. But it’s important to realize that the real alternative to monogamy is polygyny, and most probably polygyny was the dominant form of relationship before human kind. Now, consider what morality is about - it’s really about human flourishing and human flourishing is directly connected to the well being and development of children.
In ape societies there is no sharing of food after nursing, and there is certainly no sharing of food between adults. But human children have much longer development, and a longer period of dependence than the offspring of any other living thing. Humans are biparental, that is both mother and father can share in parenting responsibilities. Unique to humans is alloparenting also, sharing child care responsibilities with kinfolk like grandmothers and aunts and uncles. No other animal has this. In almost all mammals female uniparenting is the rule, but humans are one of the exceptions. The obvious reason is that the human female cannot provide sufficient protection and nourishment by themselves to nurse their infants and feed themselves and their dependents, due to the longer period of childhood helplessness and dependence. A male partner and other relatives are required. It appears that monogamy was just the thing for humans. Males could hunt cooperatively and bring back a portion of meat, with its valuable protein and fat for their “wives” while females with the burden of childcare, could gather food closer to home. This arrangement does not work in polygyny, so polygyny is rare amongst true hunter-gatherers, a form of living that probably dominated for the first one and a half million years of human history.
But that was then and this is now. Why not free sex today, since the physical problems of feeding and supporting children have largely been solved by technology and agriculture? Remember Chalmers does not mention the word “marriage” because the world of free sex that he is talking about is essentially a world without children. Once you bring children into the picture monogamy is just an infinitely better deal for them. And without children why would you need morality? Without children, how can a society flourish for more than a generation? Professor Chalmers has made the same mistake that a lot of famous philosophers have made these days - he has forgotten what morality is for.
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