A dildo also isn’t able to consent. A carrot isn’t able to consent and is more alive than the roadkill (since it can still reproduce). Ability to consent is something we require from conscious beings, but we generally don’t require it from objects, and corpses blur the line.
I definitely get the “ick” feeling from necrophilia, so my knee-jerk reaction is to consider it immoral, but it isn’t actually that easy to come up with a consistent justification for that condemnation.
I cannot fucking believe I’m going to participate here…
… but when you’re talking to someone about organ donation, you’d typically say something like “You can’t take them with you. That isn’t you anymore. You’re dead. It’s just meat now.”
… and that’s as much as I’m going to say because gross
But this is actually why we decide whether or not we participate in postmortem organ donation while we’re alive - we make the conscious decision ahead of time. Which is still then consistent with the consent argument
Weird from a cultural perspective where any sort of non-medical interference with a corpse is frowned upon, so we’re trained from a very young age to find any of that stuff icky/morbid. Other cultures may not have that same aversion.
Kinda in the same vein as we in North America have a very conservative opinion on being naked in public where other cultures couldn’t care less.
What I’m asking is if a person who wants to and does have sex with corpses, knowing that this is socially profane and must be kept secret, is this a trustable person?
Also, respect for the dead often involves rituals that are non-medical. I think disease obviously played a part in how these rituals were formed, but I don’t think that disease is the primary reason people care.
Sure, but I can also construct a moral framework in which it’s ok for me to murder anyone I don’t like because my not-mental-illness-sky-daddy said so.
Moral relativism is bullshit and can be used to justify anything.
The idea that you’re morally obligated to maximize your own health to minimize your burden on society usually doesn’t stand up well to follow up questions.
Realistically, the societal health costs of being obese would be statistically higher than fucking roadkill. I think most people would find themselves pausing before suggesting to an obese person that thier obesity is more morally problematic than fucking roadkill.
There is something to health of an individual in a society and morality, it’s pretty hard for me to ignore that intuition. I just don’t know a real formulation which doesn’t introduce more issues to a system of morality than it resolves? Curious if anyone had one.
When I read liability, my instinct was contagion. There is absolutely a moral obligation to minimize contagion—we did a whole covid-lockdown thing about it.
Being obese is too self-contained an issue, if it is an issue, I think. The only one suffering, if they are suffering, would be the obese person, and the only externalization of that would be financial costs that are too abstract for people to take personally.
I have the great privilege of living in a society with socialized Healthcare, so these questions do come up from time to time.
The lifetime Healthcare costs for people who have conditions which can be mitigated by lifestyle choices is a real thing. Smoking, being an obvious example much less touchy than obesity. Even if I’m extremely comfortable with the slice of my taxes that go to Healthcare… wouldn’t it be great if we got to spend less on smoking-related issues, and could instead buy more MRI machines. Merely pay for more doctors? Nurses? Expand the treatments we can even offer?
Just because they’re abstract, doesn’t make it any less of a question of morality. I don’t see any moral difference between the contaigen and smoking from the perspective of the personal responsibility of maintaining the overall health of your society. One is just accepted by society.
I don’t see any moral difference between the contaigen and smoking
I don’t understand what you mean.
Smoking isn’t contagious. Smoking might be socially contagious, but that’s a different kind. Smoking and the resulting cancer would be the kind of disease that people “choose” to take on, which is different from being accosted by influenza.
You might be thinking about this on a societal level? I meant interpersonally. Showing up to an event while sick and without a mask is a little fucked up. And covid touches on the societal, but my chief moral complaint is really with people who were neglectful of the community effort to minimize harm during a pandemic, who would choose possibly killing somebody’s grandma so that they could go to the beach. I’m not really thinking about… taxes.
Whether it is ethical for people to “overuse” the medical services their society provides I think depends ultimately on what it is fair to ask people to do, and what the actual consequences of not doing them are.
Like, is it immoral to get a dildo stuck up your arse? Because you’re wasting a doctor’s time. I feel like we might be touching on such austere efficiencies that we’re beginning to lose sight of what a doctor is for.
Harm is harm. If my recklessness gives you covid, that’s harm. I harmed you. If my wanton habits strain the Healthcare system such that they’re expending money on my emphasima instead of more MRIs, and the lack of MRIs mean the diagnostic delays kept you from finding a brain tumor before it became inoperable, that’s harm too. I harmed you.
It’s comfortable to hide behind layers of abstraction. That’s just morality laundering.
If I give you covid, and you die, that’s bad.
If I give you covid, and you spread it to your grandma and she dies, that’s bad.
If I give you covid, and you give someone else covid, and THEY give it to THIER grandma and she dies, that’s bad.
And if I give… etc etc etc etc. How far down this chain do I gotta go before you say “ah ok, no morality issue there”?
Does it matter if you expose people but none actually get it? Does it matter if people get it, but as a result of the chain reaction nobody dies?
Probably not, right? The irresponsibility of the act has already established that it was wrong, regardless of the dilution along a chain and regardless of the actual outcome. You don’t KNOW what will happen, you just have statistical models.
You might never know WHICH bean made you fart. It doesn’t matter. The collective effect produced a result.
And what if spending money on the MRI for the guy with the brain tumor delays a study on Alzheimer’s disease? And what if that Alzheimer’s study took money that could have been used to further develop gene therapy?
I don’t really understand the point of this.
If a guy has a dildo stuck up his arse, he needs help. …There’s no follow up point, he just needs help.
I would find a medical industry that harbors contempt for the indignity of having to help this guy… pathetic. Like, it’s silly.
[edit] Let me amend one thing, 'cause I reread the original comment.
I think that neglectfully spreading an illness is more morally objectionable than recklessly contracting one. A known one, anyway. Covid is somewhat special because disease vectors and not actually knowing if you had it or how it spread was more on people’s minds.
Morally wrong? No. Disgusting and disrespectful? Absolutely.
Is it not? I’m not religious, but I still find it morally wrong to have sex with something that didn’t consent to it.
Whether the animal is alive or dead, it isn’t able to consent. And since the animal cannot consent, it is therefore rape, making it morally wrong.
A dildo also isn’t able to consent. A carrot isn’t able to consent and is more alive than the roadkill (since it can still reproduce). Ability to consent is something we require from conscious beings, but we generally don’t require it from objects, and corpses blur the line.
I definitely get the “ick” feeling from necrophilia, so my knee-jerk reaction is to consider it immoral, but it isn’t actually that easy to come up with a consistent justification for that condemnation.
UT OH
I cannot fucking believe I’m going to participate here…
… but when you’re talking to someone about organ donation, you’d typically say something like “You can’t take them with you. That isn’t you anymore. You’re dead. It’s just meat now.”
… and that’s as much as I’m going to say because gross
But this is actually why we decide whether or not we participate in postmortem organ donation while we’re alive - we make the conscious decision ahead of time. Which is still then consistent with the consent argument
So then if I consent to someone fucking my corpse after I’m gone, it becomes morally OK for them to do it.
Well yea I guess if I go tell shawty she can ride my hog after I get the death erection and she does it I can’t really be mad at her can I
I don’t even know how to approach that but you do you I suppose
With regard to the corpse, maybe.
There’s possibly a virtue ethics argument against the person doing it? Like, it’s a little weird that they want to, right?
Weird from a cultural perspective where any sort of non-medical interference with a corpse is frowned upon, so we’re trained from a very young age to find any of that stuff icky/morbid. Other cultures may not have that same aversion.
Kinda in the same vein as we in North America have a very conservative opinion on being naked in public where other cultures couldn’t care less.
I’m already a moral relativist.
What I’m asking is if a person who wants to and does have sex with corpses, knowing that this is socially profane and must be kept secret, is this a trustable person?
Also, respect for the dead often involves rituals that are non-medical. I think disease obviously played a part in how these rituals were formed, but I don’t think that disease is the primary reason people care.
What if it’s a plant instead? It once was alive, and is incapable of consent. Is it morally wrong to make a dildo out of wood? What about bone?
That makes it immoral in your framework. But you can simply construct one that doesn’t require consent, then it wouldn’t be wrong.
Sure, but I can also construct a moral framework in which it’s ok for me to murder anyone I don’t like because my not-mental-illness-sky-daddy said so.
Moral relativism is bullshit and can be used to justify anything.
Exactly, you can construct what ever moral framework you want to, sky daddy or not.
Also it’s likely to make you sick and then you become a liability to your community = immoral.
The idea that you’re morally obligated to maximize your own health to minimize your burden on society usually doesn’t stand up well to follow up questions.
Realistically, the societal health costs of being obese would be statistically higher than fucking roadkill. I think most people would find themselves pausing before suggesting to an obese person that thier obesity is more morally problematic than fucking roadkill.
There is something to health of an individual in a society and morality, it’s pretty hard for me to ignore that intuition. I just don’t know a real formulation which doesn’t introduce more issues to a system of morality than it resolves? Curious if anyone had one.
When I read liability, my instinct was contagion. There is absolutely a moral obligation to minimize contagion—we did a whole covid-lockdown thing about it.
Being obese is too self-contained an issue, if it is an issue, I think. The only one suffering, if they are suffering, would be the obese person, and the only externalization of that would be financial costs that are too abstract for people to take personally.
I have the great privilege of living in a society with socialized Healthcare, so these questions do come up from time to time.
The lifetime Healthcare costs for people who have conditions which can be mitigated by lifestyle choices is a real thing. Smoking, being an obvious example much less touchy than obesity. Even if I’m extremely comfortable with the slice of my taxes that go to Healthcare… wouldn’t it be great if we got to spend less on smoking-related issues, and could instead buy more MRI machines. Merely pay for more doctors? Nurses? Expand the treatments we can even offer?
Just because they’re abstract, doesn’t make it any less of a question of morality. I don’t see any moral difference between the contaigen and smoking from the perspective of the personal responsibility of maintaining the overall health of your society. One is just accepted by society.
I don’t understand what you mean.
Smoking isn’t contagious. Smoking might be socially contagious, but that’s a different kind. Smoking and the resulting cancer would be the kind of disease that people “choose” to take on, which is different from being accosted by influenza.
You might be thinking about this on a societal level? I meant interpersonally. Showing up to an event while sick and without a mask is a little fucked up. And covid touches on the societal, but my chief moral complaint is really with people who were neglectful of the community effort to minimize harm during a pandemic, who would choose possibly killing somebody’s grandma so that they could go to the beach. I’m not really thinking about… taxes.
Whether it is ethical for people to “overuse” the medical services their society provides I think depends ultimately on what it is fair to ask people to do, and what the actual consequences of not doing them are.
Like, is it immoral to get a dildo stuck up your arse? Because you’re wasting a doctor’s time. I feel like we might be touching on such austere efficiencies that we’re beginning to lose sight of what a doctor is for.
Yeah, that’s basically it.
Harm is harm. If my recklessness gives you covid, that’s harm. I harmed you. If my wanton habits strain the Healthcare system such that they’re expending money on my emphasima instead of more MRIs, and the lack of MRIs mean the diagnostic delays kept you from finding a brain tumor before it became inoperable, that’s harm too. I harmed you.
It’s comfortable to hide behind layers of abstraction. That’s just morality laundering.
If I give you covid, and you die, that’s bad.
If I give you covid, and you spread it to your grandma and she dies, that’s bad.
If I give you covid, and you give someone else covid, and THEY give it to THIER grandma and she dies, that’s bad.
And if I give… etc etc etc etc. How far down this chain do I gotta go before you say “ah ok, no morality issue there”?
Does it matter if you expose people but none actually get it? Does it matter if people get it, but as a result of the chain reaction nobody dies?
Probably not, right? The irresponsibility of the act has already established that it was wrong, regardless of the dilution along a chain and regardless of the actual outcome. You don’t KNOW what will happen, you just have statistical models.
You might never know WHICH bean made you fart. It doesn’t matter. The collective effect produced a result.
And what if spending money on the MRI for the guy with the brain tumor delays a study on Alzheimer’s disease? And what if that Alzheimer’s study took money that could have been used to further develop gene therapy?
I don’t really understand the point of this.
If a guy has a dildo stuck up his arse, he needs help. …There’s no follow up point, he just needs help.
I would find a medical industry that harbors contempt for the indignity of having to help this guy… pathetic. Like, it’s silly.
[edit] Let me amend one thing, 'cause I reread the original comment.
I think that neglectfully spreading an illness is more morally objectionable than recklessly contracting one. A known one, anyway. Covid is somewhat special because disease vectors and not actually knowing if you had it or how it spread was more on people’s minds.
Does this touch on anything you’re saying?