5 ms·

Without exactly contradicting you, I wonder at the implication of your post on the concept of free moral agency and accountability for actions.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Reframe it in marginal terms: - No one says there must be sex work in the utopia. But we have it in this world, and prohibitions of vice do not work. - We utterly fail at catching and convincing rapists, let alone preventing rape with deterrence or something. The orthodox ways to prevent the crime are not working. If there is already a failure of justice and prevention, and if sex work isn't inherently bad, what's wrong with improving the lives of sex workers and getting less rape as a side effect? And even without any utilitarianism, the key would be to focus on the unpatholization of sex work as something good in its own right, with the rape reduction side effect as not being decisive.
icegreentea2 6y ago
It implies that all people act and react according to circumstances (long-term and short-term). And this is something the law already acknowledges - note all the different types of homicide that exists in law. Rape is rape. But sometimes the rapist can also be a victim of something else. They can both by guilty of rape (and therefore accountable), but also a victim in need of help at the same time. In the law, we have ways to distinguish that - there is a reason why judges (a human) is typically given authority to choose actual punishment - to in take into account circumstances. Where "weird implications" start appearing is when this interacts our current popular trend of blanket applying "evil" status to people who commit certain actions. My gut feel is that this is a (understandable) response/backlash to abuse of the structure of moral relativism thinking and other post-modernist thinking by various groups. Or perhaps it's backlash against to the perceived failures of moral relativism to deliver any benefits "to the common person".

Ericson2314 6y ago

Reframe it in marginal terms: - No one says there must be sex work in the utopia. But we have it in this world, and prohibitions of vice do not work. - We utterly fail at catching and convincing rapists, let alone preventing rape with deterrence or something. The orthodox ways to prevent the crime are not working. If there is already a failure of justice and prevention, and if sex work isn't inherently bad, what's wrong with improving the lives of sex workers and getting less rape as a side effect? And even without any utilitarianism, the key would be to focus on the unpatholization of sex work as something good in its own right, with the rape reduction side effect as not being decisive.

icegreentea2 6y ago

It implies that all people act and react according to circumstances (long-term and short-term). And this is something the law already acknowledges - note all the different types of homicide that exists in law. Rape is rape. But sometimes the rapist can also be a victim of something else. They can both by guilty of rape (and therefore accountable), but also a victim in need of help at the same time. In the law, we have ways to distinguish that - there is a reason why judges (a human) is typically given authority to choose actual punishment - to in take into account circumstances. Where "weird implications" start appearing is when this interacts our current popular trend of blanket applying "evil" status to people who commit certain actions. My gut feel is that this is a (understandable) response/backlash to abuse of the structure of moral relativism thinking and other post-modernist thinking by various groups. Or perhaps it's backlash against to the perceived failures of moral relativism to deliver any benefits "to the common person".