“Is it the case that if a person has sex which is not the apex of pleasure, mental and physical (i.e. in response to one’s “highest values”), that this person loses the capability for experiencing that pleasure at other times/with other partners?”
I think it is more an issue of willingness, what one is willing to do/approving of at a given time more than something unalterable. If one is having sex with somebody they think is really awesome right now but they would have taken whoever said yes first and it is just dumb luck that it so happened to be this awesome person on this particular night then sex with this great person doesn’t mean anything special because the real reason they are having sex is coincidence mostly, not a matter of the character of the people involved.
I hear what you’re saying, but I think that there’s something like an excluded middle here. It’s as though you’re presenting me with the following options:
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Have sex with a person (or people) who reflect my “highest values,” or;
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Have sex absolutely indiscriminately, with “whoever said yes first.”
What about sex with someone who reflects values, but not necessarily my “highest”?
It’s like saying the statue of David is magnificent when one would have said the same thing if they were looking at a pile of dead bugs. However, if somebody changes to only being willing to give such a compliment to really masterful works of art and won’t do so for junk anymore then the meaning can be restored (though to anybody who knew your habit and standards before, they may still be skeptical for a while that you really have changed anything.) That’s what I think about who one is willing to have sex with.
Yet there’s quite a range, even between David and dead bugs… isn’t there? Let’s suppose, for the sake of our discussion, that David represents the very pinnacle of art. Would it therefore become inappropriate to take pleasure in any “lesser work,” because it’s not David – because it’s not the absolute height of the art form?
I’m not advocating calling a pile of dead bugs magnificent (at least, I’m pretty sure I’m not), and with Nicky’s provided example of Supermodel Stalin also considered, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s not a commonality here to your positions. “Casual sex” such as I’m discussing does not mean abandoning values, or embracing filth, or anything of that nature. Instead, it is a discussion of embracing those values we find in those we find attractive, though they do not reflect our “highest” values.
As for when one has sex, I’d say just because it isn’t the most super duper top of the line special occasion sex every time doesn’t really matter because sex is indeed capable of some range of awesomeness. It is probably going to be at its best during those really great occasions with things to celebrate and so on, but it can still be great at other times too when there’s nothing particularly special going on. You can be pleasantly surprised some times. I think it is who one is doing it with that will determine the range of how much pleasure sex can possibly have.
I completely agree with all of this.
“Is this sort of thing true with respect to other things? Does seeing a bad movie make one incapable (or less capable) of enjoying a good movie?”
Seeing one does not, no. You can’t guarantee too surely how good or bad a movie will be ahead of time without getting lots of spoilers though so it isn’t as if seeing a bad movie means you are somehow guilty or anything. Unless you decide to watch it again maybe. But really, who here would willingly watch Knowing more than once? Bad movies tend to come as an unpleasant surprise one wouldn’t go ahead with unless they had some morbid curiosity were they to visit themselves via time-machine and warn themself that the movie they are about to go see sucks and is a waste of time and money. Those bad surprises though may just highlight the good movies as being really good in contrast to the crap ones that you accidentally got subjected to sometimes. Really though, this is kind of only tangentially related because sex has the unique position as the single highest possible physically pleasurable act people can share.
I disagree with this. I don’t think that sex has a “unique position” (that matters to our discussion), as I’d tried to anticipate here:
If sex is the “most pleasurable” thing, I respect that as a quantitative difference from those other things which provide some pleasure, but I don’t know that it’s a qualitative difference.
If the criticism of “casual sex” is that it destroys one’s capacity for enjoying the pinnacle of sex, I would expect that to hold true for many other things as well: casual movie going (not only seeing “bad movies,” but even good films) should destroy our capacity for the best films; eating Campbell’s soup should make us unable to appreciate the vichyssoise at a fine French restaurant; and so forth.
If casual sex is “improper,” then I would think it’s also improper to experience any art, or food, or anything, really, that does not reflect our “highest values,” lest we run the risk of shutting ourselves off from those more-excellent experiences.
And yet, I don’t think it’s true at all, this line of thinking. I don’t think it’s true that good movies drive out great, or mediocre food makes us incapable of appreciating fine dining, or that a casual affair (still based on values, note) makes the deepest kind of love unavailable. Not to put too fine a point on this, but that wouldn’t even agree with my own experiences.
Since movies and other stuff don’t have this it wouldn’t be as big a deal if one’s movie-enjoying capacity got diminished anyway. You’d just focus on other forms of art and entertainment.
Wha–? 
I don’t know if you wouldn’t mind if your movie-enjoying capacity were diminished, but I’d surely mind! And I expect that “other forms of art and entertainment” would suffer in precisely the same manner. This is of great concern to me, because I love story and writing and etc. Do you mean to say that, every time I read a mediocre story for my weekly writing workshop, I reduce my ability to enjoy great fiction that much more?
The seeing bad movies thing is a little wonky of a comparison though. It isn’t seeing a bad movie or having crummy sex that diminishes anything, it is intentionally doing so, settling for this instead of a better movie (or better sex partner) or some other use of your time and – gah!
I don’t think that the comparison is wonky; I think it’s pointing up the problems with this approach to sex. (Or this approach to anything, really.)
So, okay, let’s say that there’s a problem with choosing to see a bad movie over a good movie (relative to your legitimate goals; Roger Ebert probably has to make this choice with regularity, and I wouldn’t hold that as improper of him); or choosing a McDonald’s hamburger, all things being equal, over filet mignon. Does that mean that it’s never proper to eat a McDonald’s hamburger?
Perhaps we could say that, if the One True Love of your life is available to you, then it wouldn’t make sense to choose to sleep with (for instance) a partner of lesser value over your OTL. Granted. But suppose that this choice is not available to you?
For me, when I lost my virginity, it was not a choice of sleeping with my then-girlfriend, or “someone better” (I knew my wife even then, but I did not know her then as I know her now; in fact, we were both “different people” at the time, and have subsequently agreed that to attempt a relationship back then would have ended disastrously). It was sleeping with my then-girlfriend (to whom I was very attracted, and even loved in some fashion, but who did not represent my “highest values” – I would not wish to marry this woman, and I knew that at the time) or not sleeping with her, and maybe not sleeping with anyone else.
Okay. Sex has the greatest potential for physical pleasure that people can give to and receive from one another. Romantic love is the greatest feeling of pleasure mentally that one can get from another ( “get from” as in that the feeling is evoked in you by them, not that they are heaping their love of you onto you) and also the highest compliment one can pay to another. Sex for humans by its very nature involves intimacy between people, but not necessarily romantic feelings. Romance has to be coupled with sex by choice. Why should one choose to do so?
But suppose I’m not arguing against coupling sex with romance? I’m asking instead whether it’s necessarily improper to have sex without coupling it with romance.
I suspect that you’ll eventually wish to disqualify every possible analogy 
, but here’s another one for your consideration. At Thanksgiving, I enjoy to share discussion with family and friends prior to our meal about “what we’re thankful for” – which is cheesy, perhaps, but I like it. And I’ve noted, and do believe, that it lends a certain depth to our subsequent meal. Eating rituals exist in other cultures, too, like tea ceremonies, and various forms of communion, “breaking of bread,” etc. Doubtless, these observances contribute to these meals, giving them a special “spiritual” character.
In light of this, would we contend that any eating divorced from such observances is “improper”?
Behind all of this, there seems to be a kind of “all-or-nothing” character – a letting of “perfection” become the enemy of good or even great. If you want to tell me that sex, at its very height – with the ideal romantic partner, on Valentine’s day in a secluded cabana on a Hawaiian beach, as the sun sets over the Pacific, and etc. – cannot be rivaled, I’ll not argue that point. But the lesson that I do not believe follows is: therefore, everything lesser than that is “improper,” or should be avoided.
(I’m going to proceed with the context of the rest of Objectivism already assumed here) As I’ve mentioned, doing so makes the act combine the highest pleasures one can get and give in both components of a person and so the combination is able to produce greater pleasure than either the mental or physical could on its own in a unique experience addressing yourself as a whole entity. If you don’t choose to keep these things linked than you are limited to only how much pleasure you can get from just the physical action of sex. You passed up the only possible way to get this kind and amount of combined pleasurable experience, so now you’re just SOL.
Let’s agree that what is ideal is to maximize one’s experience, in terms of pleasure, in terms of life fulfillment and flourishing, values with life as the standard, etc. But that’s not to say that having sex with Dagny Taggart on the John Galt Line is the one and only sexual experience a man should ever have, is it? That he should wait, abstinent, until he’s able to produce that uniquely magical scenario? (And should he never meet Dagny, then it’s better to die a virgin.)
What if it were possible to enjoy any number of encounters/affairs prior to meeting Dagny, all of which with women of virtue, and be no later to one’s assignation on the train?
It boils down to quality versus quantity. The math for what adds up to a greater amount of “positive experience points” gets a little complicated once you factor in things like the possibility of masturbation and that one can’t just switch back and forth between casual “quantity” mode and romantic “quality” mode at the drop of a hat, it doesn’t work like that.
On this last, switching between “quantity” versus “quality” (and I’m not sure it’s that simple), shouldn’t it be as simple as keeping straight your feelings and relationships among different people? When I hug my mother, it’s not the same as hugging my wife, and neither are the same as hugging my best friend, or my brother. I’m able to keep the context in mind, and it’s very rare that I accidentally grab Mom’s behind.
I’ll agree that some people at various times might have difficulties keeping “casual” sex casual, or perhaps recognizing the opportunity for a deeper romantic bond, when the right partner presents his/herself. But isn’t the response to this to recognize the potential for danger, and counsel honest introspection and communication? Not to banish all casual sex to impropriety or immorality.
This is an estimate I’m making here from all kinds of places over the years, but from what I’ve heard it seems like people who have casual sex aren’t having all that much more than people who aren’t anyway for various, so it seems really unlikely anybody could possibly get enough in quantity to rack up points fast enough to out pace those going for quality. I’m doubtful one could possibly do such a thing though anyway even if they tried to vastly crank up the pace since, as I’ve said before, these people are losing out on a unique experience. It’s almost like having only half of a movie at a time, either the audio or the visual and no narrator or captions - listen or watch as much as you may it is just not the same, not nearly as good, and hard to imagine the whole thing from only ever having one at a time. Furthermore, there is something one can use as a substitute, “next best thing” to fill in for just the physical pleasure from sex - masturbation of course. However, could you even come up with a lesser physically pleasurable activity that one could do together with somebody else they were romantically involved with to create a lesser substitute for what purpose sex would have served? I can’t come up with anything that doesn’t fall horrendously short, so far short as to not even be in the same ball park. Unless you’ve got something up your sleeve I think the case is pretty solid that one can’t make up for the loss that comes with passing up keeping sex and romance linked.
Again, I feel like I’m staring into this gigantic Either-Or chasm that leaves out a range of perfectly liveable land in the middle. Either a person has casual sex as a life choice, or he has this pinnacle of sex as a life choice, and those who choose the latter wind up better off than those who choose the former. (And I think that if we really got into it, we’d eventually be forced to conclude that “masturbation” is even worse – it’s more casual than casual.)
But what about life as it’s actually lived? My wife and I are about to celebrate eight years together (three married), and we are wonderfully in love. I wouldn’t trade our relationship for anything. Yet before our relationship, I had a number of other relationships with other women – some more causal and some more serious. It’s not that “I could have had then what I had now, and just chose otherwise.” That’s not the case. What I have now was unavailable to me at the time. Instead, I had relationships with the women that I knew, and spent time with, and responded to their values and their virtues as I saw fit. None of them reflected my “highest values” in the way that my wife does – I did not want to marry them, for instance – but what of that? It didn’t mean that those earlier relationships were unpleasant (on the whole, though there were certainly times… ). I don’t regret having had any of those relationships. Nor do I believe that any of those relationships made me less capable of appreciating my wife, or enjoying our life together (sex or otherwise). So what specifically did I do that was “improper”? What did I miss out on? How did I do myself damage? Does this idea of casual sex being improper have any reality?
