Theological arguments about...wet dreams

My first book, The Unnecessary Science, has previously been reviewed and discussed here at OnlySky. It gives a philosophical and critical look at the thinking of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and then modern religious thinkers like Ed Feser who build on those foundations to make moral proclamations in line with their theistic beliefs.

This is the second piece looking at a weightier critique of the book from Justin Kalan of The Molinist. The first piece dealt with the theological wrangles concerning gay marriage. It is important to deal with such thinking and criticisms because Thomism, natural law, and other similar philosophies underwrite (oftentimes conservative and religious) legal approaches to subjects like abortion, gender, and sexuality.

Here, we will discuss the rarely-philosophically-discussed subject of "nocturnal emissions" and "the end of sex." Yes, these euphemisms do refer to what you think they do. We will be concerning ourselves with the ideas around sexual faculties having, or not having, their rationale in terms of procreation.

In his second post, Mr. Kalan succinctly but not entirely accurately sums up my argument in The Unnecessary Science: “Male nocturnal emissions refute the notion that male sexual faculties have a procreative end.” Now, in the actual text itself, I don’t deny our sexual faculties have that end at all or in any sense. My argument is much more specific; I wrote “[philosopher Ed Feser’s] assumption that ejaculation is a specific event, rather than the culmination of an ongoing process, is questionable. The existence of wet dreams—embarrassing as those may be to discuss—would seem to indicate that there is an ongoing, general nature underlying the exercise of male sexual faculties” [p. 122]. This minor misinterpretation isn’t crucial to Mr. Kalan’s objection, though, so we can forgive it and move on.

I had previously argued that wet dreams, being so common at night among young men, prove that not every instance of non-procreative ejaculation represents a “frustration” of the procreative faculty. They are not "wrong." But there is then the further issue of whether having these emissions purposefully is morally wrong.

Let me explain.

Aristotelian metaphysics tells us that everything we see in the world has certain regularities, or "final causes." For instance, a match regularly produces flame when struck, rather than lilacs or ice or any other random thing, and the only explanation for this (so Aristotle and Christian Thomist philosopher Ed Feser would say) is that matches are “directed towards” producing flame. Or, in other words, the production of flame is a match’s “final cause:” the reason for its existing, its proper function, the purpose for which it was made (in the Acme match factory or wherever). [See p. 109-13 in my book for more detail.]

As Feser tells us, if the final cause of our sexual faculties is procreation, it is objectively immoral to “frustrate” their purpose, and you can arrive at this conclusion without even looking at a holy book—logic alone will do the trick. Less pruriently, Feser also claims that only the Aristotelian tradition can provide an objective basis on which to condemn things like racial chattel slavery or mass genocide: Only if human beings have a certain final cause as rational animals can any of those evils be condemned as objectively frustrating that cause.

The Thomist, referring to the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas, espouses the thesis that every instance of non-procreative ejaculation is a frustration. It is wrong.

Returning to Mr. Kalan, he argues that several other equally common nocturnal events do represent frustrations of their relevant faculties, and therefore nocturnal emissions also constitute such frustration, and therefore the Thomist thesis that every instance of non-procreative ejaculation is a frustration of the procreative faculty withstands my argument against it.

The nocturnal events Mr. Kalan refers to are sleep-talking and tossing around in sleep. The purpose of our communicative faculties (ostensibly) is to communicate truth, but when we babble in our sleep, as many of us often do, this faculty is contravened, albeit unintentionally (and thus blamelessly). By the same token, most of us shift around in our sleep, but the purpose of our "locomotive faculties" is proper movement; accidentally hitting our partner or bumping and hurting ourselves on a nearby wall or bedpost is a frustration of those faculties. If we were to babble while awake, however—consciously “taking control” of the process—that would be a blameworthy frustration of the faculty. It is the same as if we consciously took control of our nighttime tossing and turning to hit a partner or a wall. Thus Mr. Kalan says my argument that there is nothing wrong with consciously taking control of non-procreative ejaculations (through masturbation or whatever) fails—even if we can’t be blamed for them, nocturnal emissions still frustrate the end of our sexual faculties the same way sleep-talking and walking frustrate the end of those faculties.

The simple, and blunt, response to this is that Mr. Kalan did not read my exposition on pages 124-125, which I will do him the courtesy of repeating here:

Make no mistake, wet dreams do seem to serve some function, which further undermines the natural law position even if we accept Aristotelian teleology. According to the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, sperm produced in nocturnal emissions (and masturbation) tends to be “older and less competitive, and…noncopulatory ejaculations increase the number of younger, highly-competitive sperm ejaculated at the next copulation.” Another possible benefit is that nocturnal emissions stimulate the involved muscles and hydraulic structures, providing them a sort of “workout.” Again, as has probably been hammered home to the point of annoyance by now, natural law ethics are based around “functions” and their fulfillment or frustration. If an event fulfills a natural function of the faculties which carry it out, that is by definition good. Since non-procreative ejaculations apparently fulfill legitimate natural functions relating to our sexual faculties (clearing out old sperm and strengthening the relevant muscles and hydraulic structures of the penis), they are in that sense good.The Unnecessary Science, p. 124-25.

It should also be obvious why there’s no analogy here between sleep-talking or -walking. Babbling in one’s sleep does not enhance or help maintain one’s communicative abilities, and tossing and turning, especially bumping into things, does nothing to maintain your physical fitness. That is to say, they do not fulfill any legitimate function, which is why the Aristotelian and Thomist condemn them. But as I demonstrated in The Unnecessary Science, non-procreative ejaculations do fulfill a true, legitimate, natural function, namely cleaning out old sperm from out of the pipes to make room for new, better little guys. Therefore non-procreative ejaculations cannot be inherently and purely wrong at all times in the sense of frustrating a function by an Aristotelian standard, since they do contribute to the fulfillment of the procreative function from a long-term, general perspective.

And in that case, as I originally said, there ought be nothing wrong with commandeering such ejaculations consciously rather than only at night.

Gunther Laird is a freelance scholar working in the United States. The Unnecessary Science is his first book, hopefully to be followed by others in a similar vein.