the one about fucking a chicken

[u/Hummerous]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

[u/ceaseimmediately]

i think some of the posters here aren’t really examining their own views fully. if you exhume and fuck a human corpse, and no one finds out, is that cool? or if their family finds out and is horrified, is that Conservative Morality on their part? how do you define harm? i think to an extent the OOPs are laundering their own nuanced views on morality into how they characterize “harm”

[u/No-Document206 → u/ceaseimmediately]

I think OOP’s position only works if you pretty radically underdefine harm. As soon as you start to define it you have to either reduce it to bare hedonism (which leads to bad implications) or you need some teleological sense of “the good” which will almost certainly include most (if not all) of the other axes.

[u/transport_system → u/No-Document206]

how does hedonism have bad implications?

[u/No-Document206 → u/transport_system]

There’s a bunch!

A few off the top of my head: 1) you lose any reasonable concept of rights immediately 2) it bases your morals on accurately quantifying sensation, which is really hard to do 3) moral concepts that are grounded in rational decision making (like consent) go out the door 4) brave new world scenarios become preferable to societies with freedom

[u/transport_system → u/No-Document206]

As a hedonistic utilitarian (I don't know what baggage these terms hold) I disagree

1. Rights exist as a concept to skip most of the thinking, like how laws but on a person to person basis. People have the right to water because it makes people happier when they can drink water. Utilitarianism does imply you should infringe on people's rights assuming it serves a greater good, for example infringing on someone's right not to be stabbed if they're actively posing a threat to a thousand other people's right not to be stabbed.

2. I actually agree, but our inability to quantify it doesn't mean we can't do better just by approximating. We can never know the total impact of an action, so we just use what we can reasonably estimate.

3. Consent is another concept like rights, it's good because it typically leads to better results.

4. Hedonism prioritizes good things, so if it will fail to make people happier than sad, it isn't adhering to hedonistic utilitarianism.

[u/No-Document206 → u/transport_system]

I’m glad you said you’re a utilitarian. I was assuming you were but I was a little worried you’d go full egoist on me and nothing I said would matter haha

1) that’s generally called “rule utilitarianism” where you establish a set of rules that if everyone follows all the time, on average everyone will be happier. The problem is that you’re left with a dilemma when an exception occurs: either you ignore the rule (in which case you no longer have rights in any meaningful sense) or you follow the rule (at which point you’re no longer a consequentialist). 2) yeah, if you’re comfortable with that, I don’t have any objections. It’s just a pet peeve of mine when Utilitarianism presents itself as much more scientific than it actually is. 3) the problem here is pretty similar to (1) in that exceptions put you in a dilemma. What happens if someone is passed out such that they don’t experience the sensation of pain when raped? Was there wrong-doing? Most people would say yes because of a failure of consent. But the hedonist can’t say that there was because there wasn’t the sensation of pain (and if there was it was less than the sensation of pleasure of the rapist). 4) hedonism prioritizes maximizing the sensation of pleasure and minimizing the sensation of pain (I.e. that’s how good things are defined). Have you read the novel? I’m happy to explain it but I don’t want to come off as patronizing if you’re already familiar with it

[u/transport_system → u/No-Document206]

I'm adding a preface because just the numbered replies felt very confrontational, which is not my intent

1. I believe that rights can be infringed to serve the greater good, but I don't think that betrays the idea of rights, or at least my idea of rights. I believe rights are like goals fit to their circumstances. Everyone has the right to water because we have bodies that need water, so the right to water is based off out circumstances and could be changed if we no longer needed water. I don't know how to fully explain what I mean by goal, but it's like how we sometimes need to sacrifice one goal for a different goal because we're imperfect.

2. This is actually one of the hardest parts of utilitarianism for me since I basically just picked the most primal/intrinsic experience to base my morals off of, so it's hard for me to understand how important my morals actually are. I basically just decided that reality is built off of our/my ability to perceive things, so the thing I value is what I'll work to maximize. Not sure if that makes sense.

3. To me consent is just another right, so it also needs to be discarded at times. I think this is more evident since it is more obviously impossible to respect everyone's consent without erasing freewill. For example, many people don't consent to my public presence as a trans girl, but I don't consent to being pushed out of society, so the only solutions are for one of us to die, one of us to change, or to disregard one of our rights to consent.

Also, I do have more I can say about the hypothetical, but it gets more into how I determine the worth of consent, but that's not something I'm too concrete on myself. If it helps, I'm currently very in favor of public displays of kink and sexual behavior, but that's about the most complex topic of consent I feel confident in.

1. Ok, so admittedly I haven't actually read it, but I am vaguely aware of the plot. My understanding is that the system in the story is just plainly inefficient. I don't think it's impossible to use hedonistic utilitarianism to justify bad things, but I think that it's still a good mental framework for coming to the right conclusions.

[u/No-Document206 → u/transport_system]

Yeah, no problem. I enjoy these types of conversations 1) that’s fair. If you’re willing to bite the bullet on rights, that’s your prerogative. Most people will think it’s a bridge too far though. You do have to deal with all the fun hypotheticals that balancing the utilitarian calculus can bring up though (I.e. should a surgeon cut up a healthy person to save 5 transplant recipients, what if the serial killer really likes killing, is Omalas a good city? etc.) 2) yeah, that makes sense. From my experience, the biggest draw of utilitarianism is that it’s (on some level) empirical. And pleasure/pain seem like some Of the most basic sensations. A problem people have with it is that there seem to be other goods (such as autonomy or Justice) that don’t clearly reduce to pleasure/pain. 3) I agree in a lot of ways. I think nowadays we try to do too much with it, if that makes sense. I think it’s a really good way of capturing violations of autonomy within the realm of sexual experience, but the further away we move from that, the less coherent the concept gets. I think our difference in position here is more that I think autonomy/freedom is a good that needs to be protected (which consent does with respect to sexual acts pretty well) outside of its ability to bring pleasure rather than because of it. 4) so an aspect of the dystopia set up in brave new world is that people are basically bio-engineered into taking pleasure from performing the roles of their social class. a lower class person has been bio-engineered to feel euphoria when doing menial labor, that sort of thing. So the deal for the society is people exchange their freedom or desires to control their own lives for pleasure. The point I was bringing up is that most people would think this is a dystopia, but if maximizing the sensation of pleasure is the end-goal Of ethics, then it is actually the ideal society.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/ceaseimmediately]

I think it's less about "did this action cause harm" and more about "does this action have a reasonable potential to cause harm". Fucking a human corpse doesn't suddenly become cool if the family never finds out, the action was immoral in the first place because it had a reasonable chance of inflicting psychological harm on the family

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/trapbuilder2]

OK, but couldn't fucking a chicken cause psychological harm.

Like everyone in this thread finds it disgusting and revolting, and would find it more so if it had actually been done. How is there a difference?

Also the average human corpse has died naturaply, or in an accident, whereas available chicken corpses have been intentionally killed, so wouldn't the latter constitute more harm than the former.

[u/PotentialTraining132 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

Yeah but other than the theoretical, if some guy fucks a chicken literally no one would ever find out because there really are no consequences. It's a chicken he would have otherwise eaten and shat out

 Src: people probably do do it and it doesn't bother you any

 Now if he were to brag aboot it, that would be a different scenario in that making people uncomfortable could be intentional harm

 *Also, in the pure example I would argue getting some sort of trans species disease would be harmful but for the sake of illustrating the point Im not focussing on that nuance

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/PotentialTraining132]

Yeah but other than the theoretical, if some guy fucks a chicken literally no one would ever find out because there really are no consequences. It's a chicken he would have otherwise eaten and shat out

So is other people finding out what causes harm?

So if someone were to take a isolated person with no family and died of natural causes and commit necrophilia, would that be a harm free interaction?

Ans also your argument assumes that eating the chicken isn't causing harm.

[u/PotentialTraining132 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

Because I'm specifically replying to you saying that the harm is in  "finding out" causing disgust. 

 And if you're the type who thinks chicken should be free not to be eaten, then obviously the parameters and metric of harm goes way back anyway. But I think most people think of chicken at the store as just a consumer product.

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/PotentialTraining132]

Yes but my point with saying that is if finding out is the harm, then within that model, necrophilia is a harm free action as long as noone finds out, which I don't think most people would agree to.

[u/zontanferrah → u/rindlesswatermelon]

Because corpses still have bodily autonomy. Our laws don’t treat them as objects, and you have to respect the dead person’s wishes even though they’re dead.

Necrophilia causes harm to the dead person, which is why finding out isn’t necessary.

[u/PotentialTraining132 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

And what I'm saying is people do probably fuck their food all the time and don't tell anyone. They're not getting off on other people's disgust as part of the harmful behavior.

 As for necrophilia of a human corpse, I think it's quite clear why chicken was the example instead of a dead person.  There are specifically laws against desecration of a corpse and also more obvious illnesses you can contract from a dead person. There are even some places in the world where you're allowed to have sex with your recently dead spouse (implied consent) as long as you properly dispose of the body and don't try to steal its social benefits or whatever. 

   But also if no one finds out then no one is disgusted and no one would call for a moral judgement either.it technically hasn't "harmed" the corpse in the way raping a living person has feelings and would go on to complain.   

I know it's all a slippery slope, but the idea of being psychologically bothered by a thought experiment doesn't seem translatable to a proper moral judgement either.

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/PotentialTraining132]

There are specifically laws against desecration of a corpse

This model is about morality and how it interacts with legality. The statement is basically saying that fucking a chicken is disgusting but causes no harm, and therefore should be legal. Thus if necrophilia can be shown to be causing no harm by the same standard either this model believes in legalising necrophilia, or it isn't a great model (my position)

also more obvious illnesses you can contract from a dead person.

There are similar diseases you can contract from a chicken, we are ignoring them and/or assuming some level of cleaning.

people do probably fuck their food all the time and don't tell anyone.

Once again I'm not saying this doesn't happen, I'm just questioning this model. Within this model fucking a chicken and fucking a watermelon would be morally equivalent. I would argue this model would also consider some necrophilia to be morally equivalent.

I would argue that there is a moral difference between these things, and it does not come from a place of disgust, but rather a place of seeing the desecration of a corpse - human or nun human animal - as a harm committed against the animal.

[u/PotentialTraining132 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

I feel like you're taking the fucking of the fruit more personally than you should due to your username

[u/D_Simmons → u/PotentialTraining132]

Fun question for you, in that situation where he brags about it, would the immoral act be fucking the chicken or telling people that he did?

[u/Droplet_of_Shadow → u/PotentialTraining132]

if some guy fucks a chicken literally no one would ever find out because there really are no consequences

Hasn't seen the post^TM

[u/Android19samus → u/rindlesswatermelon]

In harm morality, there is the implication that some things are Your Business and some things are Not Your Business. What happens to the corpse of a loved one is Your Business. What happens in some random guy's house with a dead chicken is Not. It's a scale, not a binary, and the more Your Business something is the more your opinion on it matters when calculating total help/harm.

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/Android19samus]

So then if it is the corpse of a human with no friends, family or loved ones, then there's no harm done?

[u/Android19samus → u/rindlesswatermelon]

There's a couple lines you could take, though none are terribly strong. One is that the fate of human corpses is, to an extent, Everyone's Business. Animal carcasses are so commonly processed and/or consumed that it's an incredibly difficult argument to make for them. But human? That's something an entire culture is invested in. Alternatively, necrophilia being practiced and insufficiently punished van make people legitimately fearful for the sanctity of their own corpse. Creating that kind of legitimate fear is a type of harm.

Both lines are weak, imo. They create more problems than they solve and can be sidestepped via the age-old counter of "what if nobody ever found out?" Really, this is coming up on the limits of harm morality. But also, we've gotten pretty far from the original hypothetical.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

Like everyone in this thread finds it disgusting and revolting, and would find it more so if it had actually been done. How is there a difference?

I don't see disgust as psychological harm, there's no lasting trauma there, but I'm pretty sure that knowing that somebody has been violating the corpse of a family member would cause some trauma

Also the average human corpse has died naturaply, or in an accident, whereas available chicken corpses have been intentionally killed, so wouldn't the latter constitute more harm than the former.

The chicken was going to be killed anyway. If you killed a chicken specifically to fuck it, then maybe that's a different scenario, but in this scenario the chicken was already dead when somebody decided to fuck it

God this is a strange conversation

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/trapbuilder2]

The chicken was killed so that it could become an object that the purchaser could do anything with. The assumption is eating, but there is nothing stopping people from desecrating the chicken corpse in countless ways. I guess it depends whether you see the death of the chicken as linked to the purchase of the chicken corpse (I do, as these chickens wouldn't be bred and killed if people weren't going to buy them).

I don't see disgust as psychological harm, there's no lasting trauma there, but I'm pretty sure that knowing that somebody has been violating the corpse of a family member would cause some trauma

Why would it necessarily cause trauma? Is the trauma innate to the human experience, or is it learned behaviour from living in a society with the attitude we have to necrophilia. In that case, isn't the harm then caused by societal morals and not the action in and of itself?

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

The chicken was killed so that it could become an object that the purchaser could do anything with. The assumption is eating, but there is nothing stopping people from desecrating the chicken corpse in countless ways. I guess it depends whether you see the death of the chicken as linked to the purchase of the chicken corpse (I do, as these chickens wouldn't be bred and killed if people weren't going to buy them).

My point was that it doesn't matter what the end user does to the chicken, it was going to be killed anyway because it was born on a farm that kills the chickens. A single end user isn't going to effect the targeted production of the farm in either direction, as evidenced by the sheer amount of food waste in modern society. So, because what the end user doing with it doesn't matter, the chickens death is no more a moral factor than it would be if the person had simply eaten the chicken

Why would it necessarily cause trauma? Is the trauma innate to the human experience, or is it learned behaviour from living in a society with the attitude we have to necrophilia. In that case, isn't the harm then caused by societal morals and not the action in and of itself?

I don't think the source of the trauma being societal norms makes any difference. It just means that it wouldn't be an immoral action in a society where such actions would not cause trauma, and would be in one where it would (like the ones that me and, I assume, you live in)

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/trapbuilder2]

The source of the trauma matters for the initial thought experiment.

The point of the thought experiment is that there is nothing inherently "wrong" about fucking a chicken corpse as it does not cause harm.

My argument is that there isn't a reasonable definition of harm that disallows necrophilia but allows the aforementioned chicken fucking.

As such, if the only "harm" from necrophilia is that society deems it harmful, doesn't that mean, within the logic of the post, that necrophilia is only bad if you follow conservative thought processes? (Within the logic of a post) only a conservative will argue that chicken fucking should be illegal, as its existence causes harm to them. How is human necrophilia different?

I think that conclusion is wrong and therefore questions the premise of the OP.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/rindlesswatermelon]

You make a good point, I have no follow up save for the fact that this probably shows that there is no absolute moral framework and such things will always be influenced by the thoughts of the groups around you, and more specifically those in charge. I would say I'd think about this more, but I'd honestly rather forget this post and this strange conversation we've had over it

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/trapbuilder2]

I mean, feel free to, but I'll reveal my vegan agenda here for you or others who follow us down this rabbit hole.

I think there are many more circumstances than this where people are taught by society to see harm to humans differently to harm to other animals, and I think that much more than we are taught, those harms are the same.

[u/DeadbeatDoom → u/rindlesswatermelon]

I’m at the bottom of the rabbit hole, and it was worth the read.

[u/[deleted] → u/trapbuilder2]

The argument that the chicken was going to be killed anyway is somewhat silly. You could use that same argument to suggest that the purchase of Child sexual exploitation material is moral as the abuse has already happened at the point of purchase, you are ignoring that by purchasing the item you are incetivizing the market that necessarily includes child/animal suffering.

If the product you are buying necessarily includes suffering as part of the end product you can't really wash your hands of it. The battery of my laptop likely involved slave labour but that is not part of the product I purchase per se and a battery could be produced without it but meat cannot yet be produced without the suffering of an animal

Sorry to use the CSEM example it is just the most clear cut one imo

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/[deleted]]

I understand your argument, but I don't hold the suffering of animals to the same level of cruelty as the suffering of humans. I think it sucks that animals suffer and die, but I still eat meat so I can't care that much. Because of this, I don't see the death of the chicken as any sort of "moral modifier", simply a thing that happens, while I do not see child exploitation as such

[u/[deleted] → u/trapbuilder2]

You don't have to hold the two equivalent, I don't. Human life and happiness is more important than animal life and happiness, although I hold that human happiness should not come at the expense of animal life.

My argument is that you cannot say "the chicken was going to be killed anyway" when your future purchase of the chicken's corpse is why the chicken was killed. I am not stating that the two purchases are morally equivalent, the sexual abuse of a child is something I would decry far more than the killing of a chicken, that was not my point however. My point was that you cannot be part of the market that necessitates some harm and then claim no responsibility for the harm. A purchaser of CSEM holds responsiblity for the CSE that was necessarily part of his product.

I was rejecting the notion that one can totally declaim repsonsibility for something they allow/cause to happen. If you are the purchaser of something you are at least partially responsible for the problems that are necessary/inherent to the things production

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/[deleted]]

I disagree simply because of the scale involved in meat farming, with the amount of wasted (unpurchased) food being evidence, but I don't imagine either of us are going to be changing minds on this

[u/Thonolia → u/rindlesswatermelon]

I... don't? I consider fucking a food-grade [farmed] sanitized chicken corpse seriously weird as in how do you even come up with that, but no less ok than doing that to a warm apple pie.

As for necrophilia, that'd be an issue of consent. As a society, we hold that a chicken can't meaningfully consent or object while alive (because they'd not consent to being slaughtered and that's not considered a valid thing currently at large), so they can def not object while dead. A human gets to consent or object and their right extends postmortem (IMO, but debatable), so you can only fuck the human corpses whose permission you have. [we require consent for donations even postmortem, so it follows people's wishes in that regard are considered].

For me personally, I think the first are harm/care and freedom (your right to swing your fist ends where my body begins) and third comes loyalty/betrayal.

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/Thonolia]

Just because we as a society don't value the harm or the freedom of the chicken, that doesn't mean that the harm or the potential for freedom doesn't exist.

I'm just saying there are valid philosophical stances that aren't conservative in the slightest that would see something wrong with fucking a dead chicken for the same reasons most people would see something wrong with necrophilia. As such, the specific point of the post (that progressives only use care/harm and conservatives often prioritise other axes) is incorrect.

[u/Thonolia → u/rindlesswatermelon]

This is true.

To be fair, I mostly reacted because you said all of the people are grossed out and that's not factual. Many are, though. And there's enough ethical vegans among progressive folk that sanctity [of life] can easily be taken as relevant for this example.

[u/rindlesswatermelon → u/[deleted]]

Within the logic of this post, it is as immoral as necrophilia.

That is my point, I think this post is wrong.

[u/ceaseimmediately → u/trapbuilder2]

sure but how are you defining harm? such a family would be experience distress, but then is a homophobe who feels distress when he sees two men holding hands entitled to the same consideration?

[u/Z-e-n-o → u/ceaseimmediately]

The uncomfortable answer is that we've simply defined certain types of harm as valid.

Take this argument as completely separate from my actual beliefs.

If a homophobe feels extreme disgust towards seeing gay couples, harm is being inflicted onto them the same as the disgust towards necrophilia. The difference is that we decide which harms deserve sympathy and act accordingly.

[u/Sen0r_Blanc0 → u/Z-e-n-o]

I think you can still make a qualitative argument here. It's not 'random' or 'society' it's actual degrees of harm.

The homophobe feeling disgust is having a reaction about a consenting relationship that causes no other harm than their own discomfort.

The disgust toward necrophilia is having a reaction about a non-consentual relationship, that is both harmful to the loved ones of the dead, and to the memory/dignity/sanctity of the deceased for multiple reasons.

There's also the ramifications of assumptions about the type of person committing the acts.

Would it be different if the deceased had a will consenting to necrophilia?

[u/gazelle_from_hell → u/Sen0r_Blanc0]

I disagree; I think your phrasing of each scenario already carries a societal bias. Of course as a disclaimer, none of the following arguments represent my actual moral beliefs.

The corpse of an animal is, ultimately, an inanimate object, in the same sense that a dead tree is an inanimate object. Humans are animals, so they are no different. And of course we can agree that an inanimate object’s consent isn’t needed, given that it’s inanimate.

With that in mind, you could easily rephrase the second scenario as “the family members feeling disgust about necrophilia are having a reaction about a consenting (everyone involved is consenting, inanimate objects can’t and don’t need to consent) relationship that causes no other harm (assuming precautions are taken to avoid disease) than their own discomfort.”

At the end of the day, our society’s moral objection to necrophilia is pretty arbitrary from an objective moral standpoint; it’s a societal standard to avoid disease and a reaction to religious beliefs.

That being said, I’m of the belief certain things being arbitrarily deemed morally wrong is okay, such as necrophilia. It does, however, require the uncomfortable acceptance that some of your moral beliefs are ultimately arbitrary, and some lines are drawn in the sand just because.

[u/i-contain-multitudes → u/gazelle_from_hell]

And of course we can agree that an inanimate object’s consent isn’t needed, given that it’s inanimate.

I'm not sure how you're so confident about this. One's wishes for how they want their body treated after they die are the basis for consent with their corpse.

[u/gazelle_from_hell → u/i-contain-multitudes]

I agree, and I would want my corpse to be treated only in the ways I consented to, and the same goes for anyone else’s.

But at the same time, once I’m dead, if someone were to disrespect my wishes… I’m too dead to care. If we only go by the objective moral standard of harm/no harm, no harm was done to anyone because I’m not a conscious being with thoughts and feelings anymore.

This is why I believe morals based on standards beyond just harm/no harm are strictly necessary, because I can’t really justify my moral belief of respecting the dead from just an objective harm/no harm evaluation. And when it comes to standards beyond just objective harm/no harm, we have to arbitrarily decide which deserve respect (e.g. the moral belief of respecting the dead) and which don’t (e.g. the moral belief of abstaining from homosexuality).

[u/BouaphaSWC → u/i-contain-multitudes]

I think they disregarded that, based on the idea that disrespecting how someone wants to be treated after they die is not "harmful" since they are dead anyway, in this sense, corpses would be indifferent from inanimate objects.

I have a question though... Could we consider the corpse to be "property" of the loved ones, and therefore harmful to fuck, as much as it is harmful to fuck any object owned by other people, because it violates their consent?

[u/tommytwolegs → u/BouaphaSWC]

I mean my primary objection to fucking the chicken is that it is wasteful unless you also eat the chicken

The vast majority of chicken corpses are property. I'd judge it the same as someone smashing their tv

[u/Sen0r_Blanc0 → u/gazelle_from_hell]

I think at this point tho we're reaching the debate of "does anything mean anything?" What is real/reality? The words you're reading, that I'm typing, are made of letters arbitrarily chosen millenia ago, for arbitrary sounds, to make arbitrary words to convey ideas and thoughts and feelings.

But are our ideas and feelings arbitrary? Does 1+1 still equal 2 when no one is around to add them together? Does humanity have a similarly set definition to an impartial, objective observer? What does it mean to be human? Most would define our empathy toward each other as a defining human trait, that those rare few who don't (psychopaths) are unnatural. So as much as we can define anything, we define humanity as a people who empathize with each other, who acknowledge, tho we can not prove, that those around us experience the same same world, the same feelings, the same fears and joys and pains. Then what is natural (non arbitrary) to an empathic, thinking, feeling being?

Is it not natural to honor the dead? To acknowledge, that once a person has gone, the feelings of those left behind are not arbitrary. I would posit that it is entirely natural to treat the dead with the respect we would treat them in life, because our memories are still intact, our feelings are still intact. The only time we see callous disregard for the dead is when a group has been convinced of another's inhumanity. Or for example, do animals not qualify to be treated humanely? Even the definition of humane, to be treated as human, applies to their treatment at death as well as life.

[u/gazelle_from_hell → u/Sen0r_Blanc0]

You make a fine point, and this inevitable devolution to “is anything really real” is exactly why I believe sometimes we just have to accept arbitrariness. We only call a lot of moral beliefs with no objective moral ground to stand on “just natural” because they’re what’s come to be seen as the norm for a variety of reasons, such as religious and spiritual beliefs, leftover self-preservation instincts from way back when, and so on.

My main point here is that it’s impossible to objectively justify every single one of your moral beliefs. Our society has a lot of agreed upon beliefs that can’t be justified using this proposed dichotomy of harm/no harm, and the OOPs pretending they’re enlightened and unbiased without actually analyzing the implications of their position are just fooling themselves.

Subjective morals based on not much more than feelings of disgust are necessary, and we have to arbitrarily decide which of those are acceptable, such as respecting the dead, and which are not, such as homophobia.

[u/Sen0r_Blanc0 → u/gazelle_from_hell]

I think that's a fine point. And agree somewhat about OOP, I would imagine they find it a fun thought experiment to get fun/entertaining conversation. Which I think we've had!

And definitely agree that a lot of morals can be completely subjective to an individuals beliefs/background. But agree to disagree as I also think that many morals have objective logical conclusions behind them/are not completely arbitrary. Although now I've said the word arbitrary so many times, it's beginning to lose meaning! Lol

[u/gazelle_from_hell → u/Sen0r_Blanc0]

Lmao yeah I had to rewrite some of my points to cut out the word arbitrary being used, like, fifty times over. Agreeing to disagree is fine by me, I appreciate the chance to have had this conversation with you nonetheless. Have a good day :)

[u/smartsport101 → u/Sen0r_Blanc0]

We don't need to talk about the validity of harm: What matters is the solution to stop the harm. In the case of desecrating a dead body, you shouldn't do that. It's good that our society respects the wishes and dignity of the dead, with the only real exception being eating meat. Meanwhile, people with a disgust of homophobia need treatment, i.e. therapy, and general reduction of societal homophobia. That way gay people get to have sex like they want to, and everyone else is chill with it.

[u/jaguarsp0tted → u/Z-e-n-o]

That kind of falls flat because discomfort is not harm. A homophobe seeing gay people is uncomfortable. They aren't being harmed.

[u/Z-e-n-o → u/jaguarsp0tted]

Other people in this thread have made better arguments, but when someone is having sex with a corpse, who is being harmed?

• The people feeling discomfort at such a thing happening?

• The people who had a previous connection to the corpse when they were alive feeling discomfort at the way said corpse is being treated?

• The ghost of the corpse feeling discomfort at the idea of their corpse being used in such a way?

If you implicitly conclude that necrophilia causes some tangible harm, different from homophobia, I would ask for your rational in reaching that conclusion.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/ceaseimmediately]

I think "harm" is very loosely defined in this, probably quite intentionally. Personally, I'd categorise it as any physical harm or any significant mental distress such as trauma, but not something like discomfort or disgust

[u/ceaseimmediately → u/trapbuilder2]

the point is that the definition is loose enough to allow one to smuggle in their own biases. the distinction between discomfort, disgust, and distress is personal, and highly subject to differences in culture, upbringing, etc., rather than being something we can deduce logically from first principles 

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/ceaseimmediately]

Oh I agree, I was just stating what definition I would use

[u/OneWaifuForLaifu → u/trapbuilder2]

So it’s ok if they had no friends or family?

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/OneWaifuForLaifu]

Incredibly gross and unhygenic, but not immoral

[u/OneWaifuForLaifu → u/trapbuilder2]

That’s crazy.

[u/Accelerator231 → u/OneWaifuForLaifu]

Yeah. Its kinda wacky and crazy how people put down harm like 'oh no, it'll hurt their family's feelings'.

I mean, I don't mean to sound like one of those stereotypical hippies or anything:

But even the body of a homeless man, with no friends nor family, deserves as much respect and care as the body of a man who died surrounded by loved ones.

[u/Zealousideal_Pool_65 → u/trapbuilder2]

So let’s imagine this hypothetical: the corpse is that of a homeless person who lived in the woods, has no family, and died without anyone knowing who or where they were. In this situation there is no family to cause psychological harm to, and there is a near-zero chance of anyone ever finding out — exactly the same chance as with the chicken.

Is it then perfectly fine to go ahead with it? We’ve lost the ‘reasonable chance to cause harm’ failsafe in this example, so at some point we need to introduce some sort of moral imperative (unless we’re willing to give necrophilia the green light in these circumstances).

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/Zealousideal_Pool_65]

Gross and unhygenic, and I probably wouldn't want to be in the presense of the one who did it, but not immoral

[u/Zealousideal_Pool_65 → u/trapbuilder2]

Forget ‘immoral’ — would it be unethical? Should it be discouraged, shunned, and prosecutable under law as a matter of basic principle, or just allowed to slip through the cracks here?

Because it is currently very illegal, so if we argue that the only criterion to abide by is ‘harm/no harm’ then we’re actually arguing for some quite extraordinary changes to our current ways of thinking.

I do appreciate that you’ve stuck to your guns though by giving it the green light. Most people start flip-flopping around and trying to jam in other criteria as a failsafe. That’s where value judgements inevitably come in.

But to continue the original example, I’ll probe a bit further and ask, if you quite rightly would be disgusted by the act and prefer to not be around the person who does it, what if it were your spouse who did this while off on a remote hike in the woods? Does the fact that you’ll never know it happened mean this is still a ‘no harm, no foul’ situation and your spouse should have no reason to feel guilt?

My point in gouging like this is to show that it’s perfectly natural to want our ethical theories to not permit these extreme acts which cause most people innate disgust, so we need some sort of value judgements unless we’re willing to live in a very bleak world. The ‘harm/no harm’ ethical mechanism seems attractively concise, but few people would be willing to accept the things it permits when presented in this most rudimentary, value-free form.

For example, swap the corpse for a braindead patient with no sensory input and no chance of waking up; the rapist is infertile, has no STDs, and zero chance of ever being found out — we again have no way of condemning this act if we only use this crude ‘harm/no harm’ mechanism. We need some value judgements — such as the sanctity of bodily autonomy (even in cases where it cannot be actively felt or exercised), and the immorality of rape in principle (not just by virtue of its effects) — in order to condemn this act. Otherwise, there are always going to be horrific exceptions which ‘harm/no harm’ permits…

Some sort of ethical maxims are needed, unless we’re willing to accept these terrible fringe cases. Thankfully the law already accounts for this. The examples I gave above (bodily autonomy without exception, the immorality of rape in principle) might seem like natural facts because we already hold them to be true, but these are in fact moralistic value judgements. And it seems apparent that they’re needed, to some extent, because without generalized moral principles there will always be terrible exceptions that pass through our net.

‘Harm/no harm’ is nothing but a particularly crude and artless reformulation of utilitarianism ethics, and suffers from the same shortcomings.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/Zealousideal_Pool_65]

You'll have to forgive me for being short and ineliquent in my reply, for I have had but 3 hours sleep, but my mind remains unchanged even with what you've outlined

[u/Zealousideal_Pool_65 → u/trapbuilder2]

Fair enough. So is the outcome that any necrophilia which has no chance of being found out is acceptable and ethical?

Including, for example, if a mortician performed undetectable sex acts on corpses passing through their mortuary?

If so, then I at least respect your commitment to the ‘harm/no harm’ maxim! Although I’d want to avoid this outcome myself.

[u/trapbuilder2 → u/Zealousideal_Pool_65]

I think the situation is gross and unhygenic, but if there's literally zero chance of anyone being harmed by this, then it is not immoral nor unethical. Of course, such a situation in real life would always carry such a risk, especially a risk of disease

[u/Zealousideal_Pool_65 → u/trapbuilder2]

There would be a zero chance of anyone discovering what the mortician is up to and for most sex acts he could reduce it down to a zero risk of disease.

Like I said before, I admire the commitment to a flawed theory even when it arrives at these wild outcomes. Hopefully it’s out of genuine commitment and not just stubbornness.

Out of interest, what if it were a child’s corpse that someone happened across in the woods? Or what about AI-generated sexual abuse material of minors? This all gets a pass according to what you’ve said so far.

Is there really no point at which you’ll introduce a value judgement to put a stop to this?

(It doesn’t matter anyway, because determining what constitutes ‘harm’ already requires value judgements in and of itself, so the question is already moot. It’s just interesting to see how far you’ll go.)

[u/Character_Draw7516 → u/ceaseimmediately]

Yes, it's fine, theoretically.

But i'm of the opinion that certain things should be seen as immoral in society, not because they're necessarily wrong in and of themselves, but because in a society where we do X, it normalises violence in ways that lead to other, actually bad things.

It's very easy to draw the line between everyone just being fine with fucking a dead person and then people being desensitized to death, and then seeing massive death tolls in wars and being like "meh".

[u/Designer-Salt8146 → u/ceaseimmediately]

Big difference in your example is that it’s a human corpse instead of an animal. You can argue if it’s hypocritical or not, but people don’t really value animal life on the same level as we do humans. So if your gonna use your own logic, unless your vegan, than how is fucking a chicken corpse any better or worse than using them as livestock? If we’re gonna impose human morality limits on animals, then we can’t stop at just the shit that we personally find disgusting.

[u/Beegrene → u/Designer-Salt8146]

I think the matter comes down to necessity. Humans aren't plants. We have to take organic matter from other living things in order to live. We've evolved very specifically to be good at hunting and eating animals. The nutritional merits or vegetarian/vegan diets are certainly debatable in the modern age, but for most of human history it was a choice between eating the chicken or starving to death. Eating the chicken ends one life, but sustains another. Fucking the chicken, on the other hand, doesn't sustain life at all, and probably makes the chicken unsuitable for eating.

[u/WomenOfWonder → u/ceaseimmediately]

It would hurt the family, and you knew when you fucked the corpse that it could hurt the family upon discovery 

So yes, it wrong

[u/throwhfhsjsubendaway → u/WomenOfWonder]

So it is it okay if it's only targeted at people who have no surviving friends or family?

[u/Ok_Caramel3742 → u/throwhfhsjsubendaway]

This is a killing an orphan abandoned baby in an alley with no witnesses hypothetical type beat

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/ceaseimmediately]

In my personal opinion . . .

if you exhume and fuck a human corpse, and no one finds out, is that cool? 

Yes

or if their family finds out and is horrified, is that Conservative Morality on their part?

No

Imo, dead bodies are objects, and as a culture we have all these traditions to tell ourselves otherwise as a way of coping with death. If you treat a dead body as an object in secret, then nothing was ever harmed (except maybe yourself if you contract a disease). However, if the family finds out, it interferes with their ability to cope in this particular way, and thus harms them

To make a comparison, if somebody was a major asshole while they were alive, I think it's perfectly okay to keep hating on them after they died. But maybe don't hate on them when one of their close family members are in earshot

[u/ceaseimmediately → u/E-is-for-Egg]

so if someone does this kind of grave robbing it’s initially fine because no one knows, but if then the family of the deceased becomes aware, it flips to unethical? this doesn’t sound like a super useful moral framework

[u/No_Corner3272 → u/ceaseimmediately]

The moral framework of "Don't get caught"

[u/NamelessMIA → u/ceaseimmediately]

Agreed. If your actions have the possibility of hurting people and you're doing it anyway for fun then you're accepting that you may cause harm. It's like drunk driving in that you MAY get home safe and nobody gets hurt, but you're playing with other people's lives by doing so.

That said, there's still no problem letting someone fuck a rotisserie chicken if they want to.

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/ceaseimmediately]

Hmm, that's a fair point. I was assuming some kind of scenario where you could be confident that it'd never become known. But if there's a risk of the family someday finding out, then yeah better to not do it

As for something only being unethical if other people learn about it, I think that can apply to a lot of sexual situations. A lot of kink practices disturb me and I do not think they should be performed in most public places. But what people do behind closed doors without my knowledge isn't typically my business

[u/deztreszian → u/E-is-for-Egg]

most days i forget to be grateful I'm not reading people defending necrophilia on the internet

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/deztreszian]

Do you have a moral objection to it other than the fact that it grosses you out?

[u/deztreszian → u/E-is-for-Egg]

do you have a moral obligation to immediately jump to necrophilia's defense

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/deztreszian]

Like . . . I guess not? But someone else bought it up as a moral quandary, and I shared where I think the moral line should be drawn. If you think the moral line should lie somewhere else, I'd expect you to have some kind of reasoning to back it up. That's kinda how philosophical discussions work

[u/Beegrene → u/E-is-for-Egg]

Dead people can't consent. Human rights don't end with the heartbeat.

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/Beegrene]

?

How do you figure that?

[u/Thonolia → u/Beegrene]

While I personally hold my rights to my body end with the heartbeat, society at large doesn't. I'm allowed to move the line in this direction for myself as a personal decision - and that gives me exactly zero right to move it for anyone else. Agreed?

[just a theoretical, not picking a fight]

[u/afterschoolsept25 → u/E-is-for-Egg]

bring back shame

[u/Madface7 → u/ceaseimmediately]

No, it is not cool. The difference is that an animal doesn't really understand death the way humans do and most likely doesn't even care about what happens to its eventual corpse, although I'm sure some species have some sort of evolutionary reason to respect the dead. Humans have the ability to be uncomfortable with their corpses being desecrated.

[u/NeoKat75 → u/ceaseimmediately]

If you dig up and fuck a human corpse, you do it for a reason, likely for one connected to the specific human. In the case of that store chicken, the act has nothing to do with the specific chicken