Prelude to an Analysis of Kramer's Opinion

Obligations to family, employers, art, and the greater good have taken precedence over an analysis I am preparing for Judge Kramer's opinion, which struck down California's Family Code sections 300 and 308.5. That analysis is still incomplete, but it would make sense to offer a comment on instrumentalist rationality, or as it translates into ethical reasoning as consequentialist ethics, and as it is generally understood under the rubric of pragmatist philosophy.

For those of us who are not already self-consciously committed to pragmatism, the significant defeater concerns the horizon of utility. Pragmatism boasts a value system that stands apart from the traditional notions of truth, but it does so by relying on some intuition of utility. The final arbiter in judgment is "usefulness" rather than a correspondence between thought and reality or coherence of thought itself, even where the pragmatist might vigorously pursue the latter.

However, if you are self-consciously non-pragmatist, pragmatism appears to require an uncritical acceptance of some particular notion of utility. This suspicion is exacerbated in that pragmatists frequently seem to insist on a very narrow temporal horizon for utility. In extreme forms, pragmatism is used to justify any means to an end, whereas more mature forms acknowledge a broader temporal scope. But where does one draw the line? The day, the period, the epoch, the era, the age? To be thoroughly consistent as a pragmatist, you would have to include all of human history past and future to know just which thoughts and actions were useful toward ultimately desirable ends, but that is hardly practical since it's not possible.

Short of exhaustive, universal knowledge, the pragmatist must arbitrarily limit her temporal horizons. To the extent that this delimitation is not irrational, neither is it pragmatic. The pragmatist must begin her epistemological journey as something other than a pragmatist. If she begins as a materialist and empiricist, then perhaps the narrow temporal scope of her judgments is justified. However, there is no necessity in beginning as an empirical materialist. One could just as easily justify his beginning as an orthodox Calvinist, in which case the temporal horizon of judgment is much greater, including the Day of Final Judgment. In the latter case, the Calvinistic pragmatist would not make the judgment "It is useful to avoid Sunday worship services since I can get more of my work done" since the avoidance of Sunday worship is not practical given a day of Judgment against those who worship the creation rather than the Creator.

Pragmatism always takes up residence in some other philosophy of reality, even if the pragmatist is unconscious of it. When Judge Kramer says "there is no rational purpose" for the California laws designed to classify marriage as inherently heterosexual, it is not sufficient to rely on instrumental rationality even in what appears to be a strictly legal decision. A State must exist in reality. If reality is created by the God who revealed Himself to Moses and the Prophets, then it is subject to the will of that God.