A Bridge Between PAP and Accounts of Sex

Companion piece to this post

In expositing my favorite argument against homosexual activity, I tend to make a quick leap between an account of sexual activity and a theory of pleasure.  With these two in place, I conclude that homosexual activity is immoral.  I want to make explicit the connection between the theory of pleasure as perception (PAP) and accounts of sexual activity.  

In providing accounts of sexual activity, we are attempting to provide the underlying meaning and purpose of human sexual acts. For an account to be successful, it needs to adequately explain the various normative features that sex possesses.  I think it can be argued that only the one-body account succeeds. 

PAP holds that sexual pleasure, taken on its own, is not inherently valuable.  It’s only valuable insofar as it relates to the real underlying good of the pleasure or experience. Given PAP, sexual pleasure exists as a perception of some underlying good.  Once we've given a successful account of sex, we’ll have identified the underlying good that sexual pleasure is perceiving.  In the case of sexual acts that do not relate to the underlying good sexual activity, PAP holds that the agent is bringing about a pleasure or experience of having achieved such one body union without the underlying reality of it.  To do this is to deceive oneself into a false pleasure.  And it is morally wrong to deceive oneself in a matter as important as sex.

So the accounts of sexual activity are attempts to probe the underlying good of sexual experience or pleasure.  Human sexual experiences and pleasure exist for the sake of these underlying purposes.  The PAP theory is to argue that it’s wrong to induce such an experience absent its underlying good.  

(I think we should broaden PAP, perhaps dropping the “pleasure” bit. This broadening doesn't affect my main point. Still, I’ll continue to call this principle PAP.)