Ethics and Morality (Week 12)

November 21st, 2024

Anything highlighted in pink is my own personal insight.

★ Anything starred is important to know for an upcoming assessment.

• Any good ethical theory requires an understanding of basic facts.

• Descriptive facts (NOT how it ought to have been):

  • Judaeo-Christianity (Roman Empire)

    • A lot of our Western understanding comes from Judaeo-Roman Christianity

    • Roman Christians and Jews inherited the idea of the centrality of marriage. The primary value of marriage was procreation.

    • What was unique of Roman Christians and Jews, however, was love as another core value in marriage.

    • Judaeo-Christians valued a God of freedom and love. Therefore, love should also be a basis for interpersonal relationships.

    • “Pater” = Father. We get the word Patriarchy from this word.

    • From this concept, we get ideas like arranged marriages. You’re always trying to protect the family and advance your social standing, not so much marrying for love.

    • Heterosexuality was considered the ideal. However, homosexuality was also widely accepted and widely practiced.

    • St. Valentine was a Roman Catholic Priest in the fourth century. He was killed for marrying couples who were in love. Christianity was considered illegal, so they wanted to end any furthering of it.

    • Agrarian Society = Farming Society

    • Founding sexual myth of Genesis: Adam and Eve

      • Shows radical equality of women and men, based on the rib shared between Adam and Eve.

      • This was changed because of the Roman Patriarchal System, which claimed women were to blame for all men’s problem.

      • The first major sin was called projection. Adam blamed Eve for his wrongdoing.

      • The founding myth of the West was sexual shame and lack of sexual responsibility. For the first time, after eating the forbidden fruit, they saw that they were naked and felt ashamed of it. Now, in society, our bodies and sex are seen as shameful.

    • Plato was major influence on Roman Judaeo-Christianity.

      • Plato separated the mind (logic, reason) from the body (passions).

      • For Plato, the body was less important of the mind, and should be treated as suspect.

    • People were constantly surrounded by sex, nudity and reproduction. There was a divide between what they were being taught, and what they were seeing.

    • Sexuality was viewed as something that authorities had to get involved with.

    • Judaeo-Christianity has a strict code of sexual morality. For example, you should not have any sexual expression outside of the marriage bed. They believe that to maintain society, sex is limited to marriage and procreation.

    • Theologians disagreed with how to define sin:

      • For one, he believed sex with a beautiful woman was less sinful. Because she was so beautiful, there was greater coercion, and less accountability for the man.

      • For another, he believed that if you had sex with a beautiful woman, it was more sinful, because there was greater pleasure to be had.

      • For Dante, sexual sinners were the least problematic of all the sinners. The worst sins were lying, cheating, abusing, etc.

    • The Christian church wanted to have a compromise between the Roman view of love (a social contract) and how it was a passionate union of sexual pleasure and love.

    • Marriage is a sacrament. Do people who have sex today really view sex as a sacrament?

    • In the West, we have inherited this view of marriage.

Modernism/Liberalism/Enlightenment Period (18th century - early 20th century)

• The Age of the Individual

• You are the master of your own destiny, including sexuality.

• In this period, people start to leave the farms, their small communities, and join larger cities.

• More cultural freedom.

• At the same time, science was on the rise.

• The idea of the rise of self-identity was important at this time. Who am I? Who can I be? Who do I want to be?

• The rise of autonomy.

• Religious experience starts to wane. Today, hardly any young people attend a church, temple, mosque, etc.

• Community is less important, religion is less important, traditions and history, etc.

• People in this age have to redefine themselves.

• Anomie: “a” (lack of) “nomis” (guidance)

• Democratic capitalism: everyone is free to be as wealthy as they can be. Now, the idea of the individual is tied to democratic capitalism.

• Even today, there are still some sexual behaviours that are immoral. Ex: beastiality and pedophilia.

• In Roman and Greek days, pedophilia was considered normative.

Questions today, because of where we come from:

• What guides us today ethically?

• How do we look at ethics from a normative point of view?

• What is going to guide you in the future? Just because you can do something legally doesn’t mean you can do it morally. The direction of our culture is toward more liberty.

• Are there any limits to sexual expression?

• The direction is also to diminish the communal context. If tht trajectory continues, what happens to those traditional voices of reason and concern? What does gthat mean for us and for the future?

• Whose voices do we listen to? (Normative question: who ought we listen to?)

• Do we find in sexual expression today a sense of deep mystery, of sacrament?

• Sexuality today is about instant fulfillment. That means sexuality is treated almost as a different kind of experience as it used to be, more similar to buying something on Amazon- should it be treated differently morally? Disposable people.

• Japanese men use a lot of violent porn. And yet rape is a very low crime.

• Sex is more than it appears to be. It is fun and playful, but also a serious deal that results in many responsibilities and has many ramifications.

• If your sexual expression dehumanizes others, it inherently dehumanizes you in turn. It is immoral.

Pornography

• Some people’s instinctual reaction is disgust.

• After viewing it, some people feel sexual shame.

• Some view porn as sexual development.

• Some view porn is part of the institution of life.

• Ethics and philosophy try to make sense of those reactions.

• Helen Longino

  • Harm Principle: Anything that harms people is immoral. Porn is immoral, unethical, because it is harmful to people. Not because it is distasteful; it may be, but that’s not why it is unethical. Primarily, it is harmful to women.

    • The first thing you want to do in any argument is define your terminology and key concepts.

      • Pornography: Verbal or pictorial representation of sexual behaviour that is degrading and demeaning to the role and status of women.

      • Women are treated by porn as mere sexual objects, and objects can be exploited and manipulated sexually.

      • Not all sexually explicit material is porn. Could be medical, could be instructional. What makes something porn is not simply its representation of degrading or abusing women, but because of its implicit and explicit approval and recommendation of sexual behaviour that is immoral.

      • Porn endorses the degradation of the participant.

      • Heterosexual porn endorses behaviour that is degrading and abusive to women and children.

      • Behaviour that is degrading or abusive means physical harm or abuse, and physical or psychological coercion.

      • Porn ignores or devalues the real interest, desires and experiences of the participants. Porn is an abstraction from real life experiences.

      • A person who is chosen or consented to be harmed, abused or subjected to coercion does not mean that the degradation is not there.

      • Context matters. When you change or remove some of the features of porn, the representation or description changes as well.

      • Anonymity means you are taking away the humanity of a person and turning them into a picture.

      • Pornography is immoral because it lies about women and their experiences, and lies about the complexity of women who have dignity, humanity and personhood. Porn is nothing but violence against women.

      • Longino uses Kantism and applies it to femininity. A Kantian-Feminist.

      • Now that pornography has become a quasi-institution, it has bred a climate of sexual abuse and disrespect towards women. Therefore, porn should be controlled or banned by the state.

      • The same way that Kant wants to use the state to suppress moral wrongs, she wants to use the state to suppress wrongs against women.

    • Criticisms:

      • Her definition of pornography is circular. She says porn is sexual behaviour that is immoral, and therefore it is immoral. She loads her description with an evaluation. If you try to define something, you want to be accurate and fair.

      • There is a distinction between pornography and erotica, how do you distinguish one from the other?

      • Porn leads to violence against women. If that’s true, what happens now to women who produce porn, star in porn, sell porn, profit off of porn-? Does it demean men? In that case, you have to ban “feminist” porn too.

      • Porn is degrading to women, which implies there is a normative condition. The term “degrading” doesn’t really mean this, it means a personal taste. The word “degrading” as a criteria is too subjective, too personalistic- you cannot use the word “degrading” to argue for the immorality of porn.

      • People are objectified all the time, in every context. Is the objectification the issue, or is it the quality or nature of the objectification?

      • Porn leads to violence against women- she is suggesting a cause/effect relationship between porn and harm, which has never been proven to be true. She also suggests sexual assault is a part of this, which has also been proven false.

      • Women are often coerced into porn- the porn industry doesn’t want bad press, which means they don’t want to coerce women like they used to. She conflates two different moral activities; pornography, and coercion. You have to discern between the actions. Coercion is immoral, but that isn’t to say porn is immoral.

      • Women do porn because they can’t give their actual moral consent, because they suffer under the patriarchy. There is a distinction between legal consent and moral consent. This version of feminism strips women of their autonomy, saying they cannot make any free decisions under the patriarchy.

• Ellen Willis

  • Feminism, Moralism and Pornography

  • Millitant Feminist- the feminist that every guy hates.

  • Porn is protected under the first amendment- freedom of expression.

  • Porn is no longer just for men, its also for women.

  • The problem with Longino’s argument is that it isn’t targeting pornography, but rather men. She argues this is a bad version of feminism.

  • She argues, unlike Longino, that you cannot distinguish between erotica and pornography. You cannot decide what is porn we like versus what is porn we don’t like, objectively- it all comes down to personal taste.

  • Pornography: The return of the repressed, of feelings and fantasies driven underground by a culture that atomizes sexuality. It defines love as a noble affair of the heart and mind and, on the other hand, lust as a low base animal urge centered in unmentionable organs.

    • She is using a Freudian definition of porn.

      • She says that porn is nothing more than a return of the id.

    • Porn, for a lot of people, is a sexual thing, but erotica is romantic. She argues that isn’t true. Willis wants to ban animal urges and promote “noble affairs”. She argues porn is both of those things.

    • Her definition of humanity is much broader and more complex than Longino’s, who views lust as a thing to be feared. Willis view as it as a part of who we are. Lust is present in women as much as men. Longino’s definition of women is a very small percentage of women.

    • In banning porn, you create more shame for women, of their bodies and their lust.

    • She thinks that Repressive Feminists are “self-righteous bitches” who use their critiques to shame men.

    • This division between erotica and porn cannot be held. A lot of repressive feminists inadvertently define erotica as “classy porn” and pornography as “classless porn”.

    • The government cannot restrict porn, morally and legally, because porn is not harmful. If the pornography is explicitly sadistic, coercive, violent or expressly anti-women, then that should be suppressed, but not pornography as a whole.

    • Promotes agency of women. Normalizes lust.

    • Porn can be used for proper sexual expression of a full humanity.

Falconer’s Moral Considerations on Porn:

• We make legal and cultural distinctions between softcore and hardcore porn, pornography and erotica. However, most of these distinctions are not always arguable or distinguishable. Longino makes clear, yet arbitrary lines.

• Porn can be used to develop a person’s being, Willis is correct. However, she overstates it- she doesn’t acknowledge how it can also destroy a person, i.e. through addiction.

• Porn can be moral if it supports a developing humanity, but immoral if it destroys it. Porn can also undermine an important intimate relationship, which would be immoral.

• Porn is legal and morally okay if it is always done with true consent. Full free, moral, rational consent.

• Involvement in porn should never be coercive in nature.

• If porn can be used negatively, it can also be used positively, like drinking. No state censorship, except for in a “worst case scenario”.

• Minors should never star in porn, nor should they have access to it.

• Questions for the future- the need for moral education is especially important now more than ever before.

Our ethical theories so far (and how they’d view porn):

• Consequentialism: Depends on the situational consequence.

• Deontology: (Longino) Sexual impulse and emotions are irrational. Instead, we have to use reason.

  • Maxim: Should I use porn? Universalize it, what would happen if everyone uses porn?

• Virtue Ethics: Having sex may be good with the right people, for the right reasons, at the right time, might be a virtue. With the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time, might be a vice. Porn should lead to moderation, to temperance, only if it furthers your character.

• Utilitarianism: The greatest good for the greatest number. If the majority of people like to use porn, let them.

  • Act Utilitarianism: Maybe we shouldn’t use porn as often, because it might be a lower pleasure.

• The Ethics of Care: I ought to follow my own self-interest.