“While some paraphilic behaviours, such as pedophilia, exhibitionism and voyeurism, are illegal and involve a non-consensual party, certain others should not be

“While some paraphilic behaviours, such as pedophilia, exhibitionism and voyeurism, are illegal and involve a non-consensual party, certain others should not be labelled abnormal, says the study’s co-author, Christian Joyal... ‘If people are happy, if everybody is consenting, I don’t know why it should be abnormal, especially in 2016,’ Joyal says.” In other words the co-author either has no grasp of, and/or little regard for, distinctions considered important by many people across many centuries: moral object versus moral subject, intention, and circumstances. See the essay Intrinsic Evil and the Moral Object[+] for an overview. In pointing that out, I don’t mean to denigrate the researchers’ persons or work. But the co-author’s “I don’t know why...” comment jumped out at me; I don’t think it was a rhetorical statement. Indeed, in many conversations I’ve had in recent years and in my daily reading, I sense a vast and accelerating cultural ignorance related to basic moral philosophy, especially among STEM folk. That’s quite a different thing than holding fast to or proposing a conflicting set of reasoned ideas. Now, discussing-debating the details is somewhat out of scope for HN – and I’m not attempting to get that snowball rolling down hill – but ignorance of this variety ultimately leads to dismissive attitudes and mental caricatures of those with whom we disagree, paving the way for “justified” incivility. I think we can and should do better. [+] http://www.catechism.cc/articles/moral-object.htm http://www.catechism.cc/articles/moral-object.htm