Sexual Logic

Can we give a sexual account of logical operations? That may sound like a quixotic project, though an enticing one—stimulating, seductive. Quixotic is the word: as in, can’t be done. How could logic be sex? Sancho Panza would warn against it; it’s like that knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who can’t accept defeat even when his limbs have been cut off (“It’s just a flesh wound”). Sexualizing logic is the holy grail of enlightened biological philosophy, but it looks daunting to put it mildly. At least we should undertake the quest in hopes of rousing adventures, if comical ones. In that spirit, then, I shall imperil myself on the high roads of knightly expedition, offering at least some harmless entertainment along the way. Seriously, though, I am going to propose an identity theory of sex and logic (or something approximating to it). I am going to put sex in the syllogism (note that last syllable). So, hold on to your hats (or other appendages).[1]

Where shall we start (as the actress said to the bishop)? At the endpoint, I suggest: with entailment, logical consequence, deduction. In logic we put together premises in order to derive a conclusion, hoping for validity. We combine premises, let them rub together, and observe the outcome. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. The premises have the power to produce the conclusion; they have logical potency. The conclusion resembles the premises, though it isn’t identical to them; it is an intelligible upshot. The premises generate the conclusion; it emerges from their union. They anticipate it and it fulfills their expectations. The OED defines “entailment” thus: “involve (something) as an inevitable part or consequence”, and goes on to cite the legal sense of entailing property over generations (it says nothing of logical entailment specifically). Paraphrasing, we could say that entailment involves a necessary result of other things (it’s close to causation). It is a type of creation, but not from nothing; indeed, the creative origins are already imbued with what results from them. This concept would appear to include both logical entailment, which is allied to deduction, and parental entailment, which is allied to procreation. So: logical consequence is formally like parental consequence. The conclusion of an argument is the baby produced by the parental premises—the two of them combined. The baby produced by a copulating couple is likewise the conclusion of an argument. You can see the baby in the parents and the conclusion in the premises; neither arrives as an unheralded novelty. Yet the result is not reducible to the causes, not identical with them. The idea, then, is that deduction is structurally like procreation; the conceptual format of the one mirrors the conceptual format of the other. The logical notion is built from the genealogical notion; the latter is the precursor to the latter. We think of (mentally represent) entailment by analogy with procreation, trading upon old evolutionary transitions (like scales and feathers). Our concept of entailment is modelled on our concept of procreation: premises mate to give birth to conclusions. There is a kind of genetics of logic (think of it as logical form). The syllogistic form is like the procreative sequence. The cognitive psychology of logical reasoning is akin to the cognitive psychology of procreative reasoning: A and B come together to produce Z. In both cases the outcome follows from the antecedents—temporally and by law. You come to a conclusion by reasoning according to logical laws, and you produce a baby by acting in certain ways (principally copulation) according to biological laws. Logic maps onto sex, conceptually speaking; not by conceptual analysis of the traditional kind but by instantiating the same basic pattern. Logic is a kind of abstract procreation. This connection exists in the basement of the concept: progenitor and progeny, axioms and theorems. In both cases, a certain inevitability applies.[2]

That was entailment; now we must deal with predication. A certain move immediately suggests itself: the copula and copulation. The copula copulates: it joins and fecundates. Logical predication is the counterpart of sexual copulation. It is one thing hooking up with another, fastening itself to another, modifying another. It concatenates and agglomerates. It produces the sentence—the crown jewel of language. It forms the unit that features in logical relations. To predicate is to create a viable unit of meaning—a move in the language game. And this is like a couple coupling, embracing, linking together. Sexual intercourse is a concatenation of bodies. The beast with two backs is made of two sub-beasts, a male and a female. One thing applies itself to the other. Two separate units merge into a higher unit. This is programmed in the genes and hardwired in the brain, in man and animals. We understand the concept of copulation innately and primitively; it provides the basis for understanding the operation of predication (suitably supplemented). Linguistic copulation is structurally analogous to sexual copulation. It is the necessary prelude to procreation and deduction: first copulate, then procreate (or deduce). The elementary predication is a linguistic double-backed beast, ready to generate new offspring (logical entailments). Only predicate (fornicate); then you can and will entail (procreate). The syllogism is pregnant with its conclusion, but the premises have to be assembled first: copulation precedes parturition. Parents give birth to babies; premises give birth to conclusions. A baby is a kind of conclusion to a logical argument. The womb is a syllogistic form waiting for a specific content to be inserted. Thus, predication and deduction have sex written all over them, or into them. In predicating you are copulating; in deducing you are making babies. Sancho Panza is happy with this (though fearful his boss is about go off on an errant errand).

We must now descend to the level of the penis, with the vagina not far behind. These vital organs are about to come into their own logically, to prove their logical worth. Phallocentrically, I will focus on the penis: for we must now address the question of reference, denotation, meaning. Logical arguments need sentences, sentences need words, and words need meaning (reference). How does sex give words meaning? (Sancho trembles.) Isn’t it obvious? By means of erections of course! Do I need to say more? Okay, I will expatiate on the subject of tumescence and sense and reference. Reference is connected to ostension, pointing, bodily orientation. It is reasonable to suppose that reference originated in pointing, and hence in the hand. But the index finger is not the only pointer known to man (and I have men in particular in mind, as well as other male animals). You can point with your elbow and nose and foot. But you can also point with your penis, especially in its erect state. In fact, it makes quite a good pointing instrument: conspicuous, rigid, striking. You can do some effective ostension with that thing. But there is a more fundamental point to be made about penis-pointing: it primarily points at the vagina. That is its primary ostensive target. It even homes in on this target, eventually hooking up with it. It is vagina-oriented, vagina-focused, vagina-dedicated. Moreover, its design is vagina-influenced: it is made to fit the vagina, as the vagina is made to fit it. The two things fit snugly together, as if made for each other (which they are). One mirrors the other; there is an isomorphism between them. You could say: the penis means the vagina—alludes to it, indicates it, refers to it. There is a close internal relation between them, closer than that between the forefinger and its typical referent. The erect penis is thus the clear precursor to linguistic reference—it’s as plain as the nose on your face. For reference is precisely this kind of intimate internal meaningful relation. One could upload the penis (or a mental representation of it) into the linguistic faculty and produce a fair simulacrum of reference as we know it. Erection and denotation go hand in hand. Familiarity with one breeds familiarity with the other. When a name rigidly designates an object the term “rigid” is not inappropriate. It is as if the name has an erection pointed at its bearer! The most primordial type of reference, distributed throughout the animal kingdom, is the penis—pointing rigidly at the relevant part of the female. I mean, that thing really refers—unmistakably, stubbornly. You know exactly what it is pointing at. It is the prototype of the naming relation, the original demonstrative gesture. There could be a tribe that referred onlyby means of the penis. The penis thus refers to the vagina, stands ready to copulate with it, thereby producing lovely babies. Erection, copulation, procreation; reference, predication, deduction: they line up nicely together. (Sancho looks quizzical at this point, but not in fear of his life.) We thus have the outlines of a sexual logic—that holy grail of sexual philosophy. No doubt it will need some tinkering and trouble-shooting, but it looks reasonably robust, and not entirely quixotic.

Boringly, I must append a methodological note. Let’s not caricature sexual logic, please, calling it by names it’s not. It is not intended as an a priori conceptual analysis of entailment, predication, and reference; nor is it offered as an empirical reduction of those notions. Rather, it is intended as a biological theory of the origin of a human faculty: how that faculty came to exist, from what materials, on what basis. It didn’t come from nowhere and it had only antecedent faculties to work with—what the organism was already equipped with. No saltation! Given that sex dominates biology, shaping it from the ground up, we do well to seek sexual precursors and precedents, searching for the biological roots of an adaptation. Logic looks distant from sex at this point in evolutionary and cultural history, but nothing is completely unconnected with sex, even if the connection is quite remote (this is the first law of sexual philosophy). The logical thinker is also a sexual being from head to toe. Sex infiltrates his entire existence. The genitals are never entirely irrelevant. The animal is always cocked to use them, because its mission in life is to procreate. The logical faculty, like the perceptual faculty, is ab initioset up to serve a sexual purpose, and it is natural for it to incorporate sexual elements. It is part of what enables us to reproduce, and it has an architecture that derives ultimately from pre-existing sexual adaptations. Its biological point is sexual and its content incorporates sexual materials. The biological universals of procreation, copulation, and erection are part of its evolutionary heritage. Sexual logic is thus perfectly (bio)logical. Biological adaptations have biological explanations, and sex is central to biological explanations.[3]

[1] Perhaps I should make clear that the logic I am talking about is pre-school logic not textbook logic. It isn’t predicate calculus but folk logic—the basic ability to reason logically. Kids can do it, and dunces, and many animals. It belongs to a basic part of the mind going back eons; I suspect dinosaurs were decent logicians in this sense. It had to arise in them from prior traits, and these traits would have had sexual liaisons.

[2] I have yet to discover an analogue of orgasm in the case of logic, though I suppose we might consider the elation of drawing a conclusion from a well-formed argument. Logic certainly has its addicts and enthusiasts (also perverts: deviant logics). Some people are infatuated with logical symbols. I have never seen any logical pornography, though.

[3] Note that I haven’t discussed specific logical systems; that has not been my concern. My concern has been the logical relation of entailment and the role of premises and conclusions, combined with predication and reference. Logical universals, in effect. It is such universals that can be subsumed under biological categories (more precisely, our grasp of them). The cognitive substructure is sexual in nature. Perhaps if logic were taught with this substructure in mind, it would be met with more enthusiasm from students. Ditto for philosophy in general. Do you think psychology was generally popular before Freud came along? Sexual philosophy is a sure enrollment booster. Sex sells. I could write a popular book on it.

The Sexual Gene

We know the gene is a selfish little thing, but it is also a sexual little thing. Gene survival depends on a gene’s ability to navigate sexual reproduction: the better it is at having sex (conducing to it), the more likely it is to survive into the future, possibly for millions of years. This means finding mates and successfully copulating. If a gene is no good at sex, it disappears from the gene pool. Altruistic genes don’t survive long, and neither do sexually inept ones. More exactly, a given gene must be part of a gene complex whose housing organism performs well on the sexual stage. Genes must be sexual artists and athletes (also scientists). They can’t waste time on other pursuits. They reproduce themselves by means of sex, i.e., genetic mixing across binary sexes. Moreover, genes are sexual predators, as they are food predators: they prey on members of the opposite sex for copulation, as they prey on other creatures for food. Indeed, they predate for food so that they can predate for sex. That is, they seek sex at every opportunity and they are not too fussy about how they get it. Altruistic copulation is not in their playbook. Their only objection to forced copulation is that the target organism might put up a fight. They are amoral sexual predators. They don’t usually resort to violence, though they may, preferring instead seduction and persuasion (bower birds, for example). Alternatively, we may describe genes as sexual parasites: they use others for their sexual purposes without killing them. Either way they are intent on sexual exploitation (the genes not the animals).

Sexual reproduction is what drives phenotypic variation, and hence speciation. Without sex reproduction is mere copying (with some errors thrown in), i.e., biological stasis. So, sex is what leads to evolutionary progress, its main engine; the genes are thus progressive in their sexuality. If the genes were not sexual, we would not exist. Genes indifferent to mating would be genes destined for extinction. We have sexual genes to thank for what makes us human—we should thank God that our ancestors’ genes were sexual predators. Sex is woven into animal nature (also plants) down to strands of DNA. It is the driving force of the natural world. Animals are sex machines right down to their simple genetic components. There is nothing offensive or discreditable about this; it is just the way evolution works. When Darwin talked about artificial selection and natural selection, he was talking about sex: human breeding simply is intentionally guided copulation, and natural selection is mediated by the same thing. There is no need for sex under the Creationist model—it isn’t necessary for species differentiation—but as things are, it is essential for biodiversity. The sexual gene is necessary for species distinctions.

None of this is to say that animal-level sex (including human) should be given free rein. It isn’t even to say that sex is morally good or unobjectionable. The genes are selfish but we need not (and should not) copy them—selfishness is bad. Similarly, the sex mania of genes is no excuse for sex mania in humans. On the contrary, the very power of the genes in shaping our motivations gives us reason to suppress, sublimate, and regulate our sex lives. It is the same for our gustatory lives. The sex drive is too strong to be given free rein. The genes look after themselves not their vehicles (i.e., us). But we are not their slaves; we can rebel against them. The genes are selfish and sexually predatory, but that is no reason for us to be—and we are not. We don’t get our morality from our genes. The point I have wanted to make is that genes are not only selfish but also rigidly sexual: everything they do is geared to sex. From their point of view, the genitals are paramount; the rest of the body is a device for getting the genitals into the right place at the right time. The survival of the fittest is the survival of the fittest genitals. In fact, we could aptly conceive the whole body as just genital infrastructure, because the genitals are the whole point—they are what the animal has sex with. We therefore need a sex-centered genetics, as we need a self-centered genetics. Selfish and sexual. We have the greedy gene and the horny gene (metaphorically speaking). The gene that propagates best is the gene that has the most sex, i.e., lives in the organism that has the most offspring as a result of copulation. As James Brown sang, “Stay on the scene, like a sex machine”.[1]

[1] I have liberally employed personification talk here, as is commonly done. It is easy to translate it into non-homuncular talk, though more cumbersome. See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, if necessary. From a gene’s-eye point of view, life is all sex and selfishness; not so from a human point of view (there it’s all money and status, which don’t interest genes).

Common Knowledge and Sex

There is knowledge and there is common knowledge. Common knowledge is the situation in which A knows that B knows and B knows that A knows that B knows, etc. It is a fairly complex form of knowledge. Where does it come from? In what circumstances did it first arise? What is the paradigm case of it? Presumably it is not in economic contexts, such as it being common knowledge that money has value. I think sex is a good candidate: the proximity is such that it is common knowledge between the participants that they are having sex together. How could lovers miss it? The fact in question is evident to both parties, as is the knowledge of that fact possessed by both. It is obvious to both that the other knows what is happening. This is necessary for sexual coordination: you can’t coordinate your actions unless you know that the other knows (I leave it to the reader to fill in the details). Once you have the concept of knowledge it is a short step to the concept of common knowledge in a sexual dyad. It also becomes part of the nature of the sex act—this knowing that the other knows and he or she knowing that. If knowledge is inevitable in a sexual situation, then common knowledge is also inevitable in that situation. The fact impinges on the sensorium of both parties, but so does the knowledge of that fact—he or she knows that the other knows what is afoot. The other’s knowledge impinges on me, as my knowledge impinges on the other. Each phase of the unfolding act is accompanied by such common knowledge: I know that you know that I know that you know, and so on. So, this special type of knowledge arises naturally from the sexual nexus. The hypothesis is that the possibility of such knowledge arose from the sexual special case, it being so salient and integral to that act. Sexual epistemology is thus at the root of the general notion of common knowledge. It is the paradigm case and springboard. It probably arose in animal populations millions of years ago as a result of successful copulation. It is a useful biological adaptation. It then became a general phenomenon of group psychology. In the beginning was the deed. Knowledge arose in that context[1] and so did knowledge of knowledge.

[1] See my “Amatory Knowledge”. We could call this view “sexual foundationalism” (as opposed to sensory foundationalism). It is a kind of Freudian epistemology. If Freud were right, we could predict repression of the truth of this view: we don’t like to accept that our prized knowledge derives, ontogenetically and phylogenetically, from sexual roots. The oral, anal, genital, and cerebral phases (centered on the head).

Four Strong Women

We have recently heard four strong women speaking their truth: Kristi Noem, Karoline Leavitt, Pam Bondi, and Jeanine Pirro. And it has been quite a spectacle: angry, self-righteous, denunciatory, and defamatory. They have confidently proclaimed what they evidently believe—the trouble is that it has been false, illogical, unjust, and vicious. Yet they fit today’s feminist rhetoric: they won’t be bullied and intimidated by men (or other women) and they stand up for what they believe. They think they have right on their side, or they appear to. But they are dangerous, stupid, and absurd (especially the last). They give the lie to the myth that women are inherently superior to men, morally and otherwise. They particularly love to defame others and cry out for draconian punishment. If you came across these four women before meeting any others, you would suppose that all women are monsters. Of course, they are not the only ones, and they exist on the political left too (though less repellently). I sense in sensible female commentators (Ana Navarro, Abby Phillip, and others) some embarrassment about the behavior of their “sisters”, but actually it is fairly predictable: they are right-wing zealots protected by the mantras of contemporary feminism. There is no such thing as “my truth”, and “strength” is not a virtue absent judgement and kindness. These cliches have become masks for ruthless self-promotion and violence against others. They are also eminently corruptible. They do what they are told, whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter. They have zero integrity and even less humanity. But they are just the contemporary world writ large and ugly; there are similar types everywhere, including in universities (I know some of them). It is hard to avoid the conclusion that feminism has become morally bankrupt and intellectually incompetent. It has become political in the worst sense.