I had to post on this just because I love the terminology. My recent Kant readings, with all the technical terminology of uncertain and sometimes downright dubious meaning and significance, has perhaps left me with a desperate desire for technical words that actually mean what you'd expect them to mean. This one came up in a post on natural law and homosexual activity. Of course, my sympathies for Thomism are fairly limited, but I do make a place for some forms of teleology, since I'm pretty much a teleofunctionalist. However, unsurprisingly, the anti-homosexuality arguments don't work any better on teleofunctionalism than on the natural law model. In Millikan's terminology, I'm quite confident that many homosexual acts are "Normal," as it seems clear that there are proper functions for such acts.
Not that it would matter if there weren't. I suppose an advantage of modern teleofunctionalism over Thomistic natural law is that since the teleology has an evolutionary basis, rather than being grounded in a divine plan, the temptation to derive any moral conclusions from it is much reduced. Plenty of abNormal activities are morally acceptable or even praiseworthy, and some Normal activities are morally unacceptable.
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