On natural oughts and whether "natural" exists.

Here is a post from old that I have tinkered with a little. In  my move here, I am going through my back catalogue and sorting things through, and this caught my eye.

There I was, some years back, with one of my twins in my arms, and was wondering as to whether oughts can be derived from a natural pre-programmed behaviour. For example, if an evolved characteristic, such as aggressiveness in males (I am generalising here, of course) or the desire to eat meat, or, if it could be proven, the ‘natural’ inclination to be heterosexual was inherent in a human, are we then obliged in some way to act in accordance with that ‘natural’ inclination? 

[caption id="attachment_6484" align="alignright" width="181"] Naughty cat?[/caption]

Or, indeed, is it just as ‘right’ that we overcome such ‘natural’ motivations with rational thought. For example, given that we are naturally predisposed to like and eat meat, are we obliged in any way to eat it? Or is this evolved programming simply irrelevant to who we are and what we do? Is it a genetic fallacy to think that in understanding how we got to where we are that we are in any way obliged to continue in that same framewor?. Thus to continue the example, if we find that it is actually morally reprehensible to eat meat, we are well within our rational rights to reject the eating of meat in favour of some form of vegetarianism, regardless of the fact that we might owe our large brains, or currently evolved form in some way, to the eating of meat.

In the same way, people who argue (and I am posting this entry from a naturalistic, non-theistic viewpoint) that heterosexuality is natural and that homosexuality is unnatural are raising the question as to whether that matters at all. There are an awful lot of things we do which are ‘unnatural’: medicine, TV, fake tan (well, I don’t), fly to space etc etc and we do them without compunction. They have no moral dimension resulting from their unnaturalness. Therefore, my point here is that natural vs unnatural is completely irrelevant. So what that a particular behaviour is ‘natural’!

In reality, many theists who reject homosexuality also defer to some kind of divinely inspired essentialism, or doctrinal decree as well. But the idea that homosexuality is unnatural should carry no force at all. Not least because there is evidence in non-human nature of such behaviour.

This also brings us to another interesting point: what is the distinction between natural and unnatural? Is there such a distinction, or is it actually arbitrary? Surely any behaviour by a natural organism (i.e. human) is, in a sense, natural? I remember speaking to someone who thought that conceiving through IVF was unnatural and thus the resulting baby was unnatural; and yet he could not understand that keeping his mother-in-law alive with drugs in a hospital was exactly the same kind of ‘unnatural’. This resulted in quite a strong argument. In fact, neither is natural or unnatural, but simply are. Everything, to one degree or another, is naturally derived, surely. The universe is  natural phenomenon, and so everything within would surely be defined as such. Yes, we can play with definitions of the word, but there is more than hint of arbitrariness when defining it to fit moral positions that we think others whould adhere to.

Thoughts?