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What if there were medicine, perhaps in the water, that kept men masculine and women feminine, so as to undo the deleterious effects of masturbation? What then?
Regarding things being ends-in-themselves, I think that mathematics is an end in itself. And so is morality. And music. The list goes on.
My reply would be that the deleterious effects, while in part physical, are not merely physical. They are psychic. There is a legitimate psychic trauma that occurs with watching porn, for example. You could put testosterone analogs in the water all day long, and it would not reverse these effects. You'd simply get a more moody and assertive traumatized male.
I think I'm cheating a bit, and maybe that's okay.
I have a tendency in philosophy to prioritize the a priori rather than the a posteriori.
Like, it doesn't matter that there are Eucharistic miracles, or Fatima whatever. That's a posteriori.
It doesn't matter that God gave us the Bible. That's a posteriori.
What matters are the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. Because they're a priori. Or, at least, they are metaphysical, meaning that they involve reason, rather than appealing to some contingent facts in the world.
I mean, I guess the cosmological and teleological arguments also rely on contingent facts in the world.
Blah blah blah.
I favor reason, not details, not facts of the world. Whatever it takes for me to explain what I mean by that.
Now, when it comes to morality, something about murder, theft, and rape, just strike me as a priori immoral. Other things, like usury, or drug use, or perhaps porn and masturbation, require some kind of "looking into the world" to determine that they are evil because they, by and large, have deleterious effects. That's sort of a consequentialism right there.
For me to say, oh, imagine a drug in the water that undid the deleterious of masturbation... Then you say, blah blah blah psychic harm. Then I say, blah blah blah more drugs in the water that fix that too...
...is kind of like saying, imagine a drug in the water or a genie or a deus ex machine that makes murder okay.
Like, instead of someone dying and staying dead, ala naturalism, they are guaranteed heaven with their family, or something. Or, they actually stay alive and get a beach vacation. But wait, that doesn't even resemble murder any more, now does it?
Whereas in the drugs in the water example with masturbation, the act of masturbation seems unmodified, whereas in the thought experiment to make murder palatable, it seems to actually undo the act of murder.
So I don't know about this move that I want to perform. Of saying, X is bad because of Y things. But if we remove Y things, is X still bad? And then I want to say something like, only X's which are bad a priori are actually bad. X's which are bad on account of Y are not bad.
The other thing is about propensity or correlation. Rather than Y always being associated with X until a thought experiment manages to replace the Y while keeping X... We have some real-world thing where X doesn't have to come along with Y, but it often or usually does.
So that X is a priori morally permissible, but it by-and-large attracts immoral people. Should we condemn X, then? Or should it remain legal, because it is a priori permissible?
I'm thinking of literal examples here, but I don't want to mention them, because you won't be able to focus on the abstraction, and you'll only focus on the details of why the literal examples are wrong.
But take for granted that drug use and prostitution are morally permissible.
Now, if it is a contingent fact of reality that prostitutes and drug users also tend to be thieves, should we make illegal prostitution and drug use for the purpose of cutting down theft?
This seems unfair to the responsible drug users and prostitutes, who want to engage in X without being guilty of the correlated Y.
Morality is such a difficult and contentious field. It seems like every problem you encounter is unsolvable. Not like mathematics. So little controversy there, comparatively.
An evil tree that bears evil fruit remains evil, regardless of whether or not someone uses the power of science to transform the rotten fruit into something edible. What nonsense it would be to apply such a process to an evil tree, instead of cutting down said tree and nurturing a good tree instead.
Regarding things being ends-in-themselves, I think that mathematics is an end in itself. And so is morality. And music.
The end of mathematics is the True, the end of morality is the Good, and the end of music is the Beautiful. Congratulations, you named all three Transcendentals, which are the essence of God.
The list goes on.
Indeed, there is philosophy, whose end is the True; and etiquette, whose end is the Good; and painting, whose end is the Beautiful. There are as many items on this list as there are arts and sciences oriented toward the Transcendentals as their ends. Such things are not ends in themselves, but have God as their end.
And what is pleasure?
Pleasure likewise pertains to the Good, since pleasure is a good.
But pleasure is not the only Good, and so any pleasure that is pursued contrary to a greater good is sinful, and any pleasure not contrary to a greater good is licit.
Sexual pleasure is a good, simply; but defiance of the right order of wedlock is a privation of a greater good than the pleasure itself is good, which is why sex out of wedlock is not licit.
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