What is the liberal ethical argument against necrophilia? (Harm vs disgust)

[Statilius the Epicurean]

(For the record, I am a liberal who finds necrophilia disgusting and morally wrong and would want to keep it illegal.)

1) A fundamental liberal principle is that one should have the right to do any action which does not harm another person.
2 a) In the act of necrophilia, there is no harm being committed against another person inherent in the act itself. (i.e. yes, it is possible to imagine with scenarios where harm is being committed in the act of necrophilia, but it is equally possible to imagine scenarios where no harm is: so the harm principle cannot justify the illegality of the act in and of itself.)
2 b) Indeed, according to a pure utilitarian calculus a necrophile committing the act in the privacy of his own home without anyone knowing is making the world a better place by increasing his own happiness while not affecting the happiness of any other person.  
3) The liberal seems to be faced with two choices: 1) accept that necrophilia should be legalised, as there is no argument against its illegality in a liberal society via the harm principle, or 2) argue that his sense of simple moral disgust at the act of necrophilia is a sufficient argument to keep the act illegal.    
4 a) Let's say a liberal accepts 2) that necrophilia should be kept illegal because it is morally disgusting. The liberal then encounters a conservative from Saudi Arabia, who says that he finds the idea of homosexuality morally disgusting and that homosexuality should continue to be illegal in his country. What argument can the liberal use to convince the conservative that he is wrong and that homosexuality should be legalised?
4 b) The liberal can't use the argument that no-one is harmed by homosexuality, since he has accepted that the feeling of moral disgust can be used to proscribe certain acts, even if those acts harm no-one. The liberal can only make the argument that his feelings of disgust are more morally correct than the conservative's feelings of disgust, which is rationally both impossible to prove or convince the conservative of. (Imagine the following dialogue: L: "You are wrong to feel disgusted by homosexuality." C: "Why?" L: "Because it is not disgusting." C: "But I feel it is disgusting." L: "But it is not." C: "But it is to me.")

So the questions are:
Should necrophilia be legalised?
Is it acceptable for the feeling of moral disgust to be used as justification for ethical or legal standards?
If accepted, does the lack of disgust constitute a fundamental flaw in a purely liberal conception of morality?

[dead0man]

this is a tough one, and I'm going to need to think on it.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Are you taking consent into account? One still has rights to have one's wishes respected, even after death - so to rape a corpse would violate the dead's wishes, presuming they didn't consent while alive to be used in that way by some deviant.

[Mr. Reactionary]

Are you taking consent into account? One still has rights to have one's wishes respected, even after death - so to rape a corpse would violate the dead's wishes, presuming they didn't consent while alive to be used in that way by some deviant.

True. Thats why we still enforce the wishes of the dead written in wills.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

[Karpatsky]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

Corpses are not people and cannot consent.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

Corpses are not people and cannot consent.

Not living, no.

And you are right.  They cannot consent.

[Dr. MB]

It's disrespectful to the deceased and to the family of the deceased, just as chopping off the head of a corpse is disrespectful and shouldn't be done. No, they can't feel any pain, or be harmed by it (unless their ghost is watching, haha), but having sex with a dead person isn't something they agree to: after you die, would you rather be buried in the ground/cremated/frozen/whatever or kept in a room until flies eat your corpse so a necrophiliac could have their way with you?

[Karpatsky]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

Corpses are not people and cannot consent.

Not living, no.

And you are right.  They cannot consent.

They aren't people at all. They cannot consent in the same way rocks cannot consent. The obligation to fulfill burial wishes in a will is contractual, not consent. If you cremate someone when they asked to be buried, you aren't committing a crime of bodily injury.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

Corpses are not people and cannot consent.

Not living, no.

And you are right.  They cannot consent.

They aren't people at all. They cannot consent in the same way rocks cannot consent. The obligation to fulfill burial wishes in a will is contractual, not consent. If you cremate someone when they asked to be buried, you aren't committing a crime of bodily injury.

But they are people - people whose bodies have become obsolete.

If you view a human corpse the same way you view a rock, then nothing has value beyond its material substance, and that says a hell of a lot about what our society has come to morally.  Hopefully we never get to the point where necrophilia does become legal, or a marketable transaction.  Because that kind of society would be horrifying.

[Karpatsky]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.

Corpses are not people and cannot consent.

Not living, no.

And you are right.  They cannot consent.

They aren't people at all. They cannot consent in the same way rocks cannot consent. The obligation to fulfill burial wishes in a will is contractual, not consent. If you cremate someone when they asked to be buried, you aren't committing a crime of bodily injury.

But they are people - people whose bodies have become obsolete.

If you view a human corpse the same way you view a rock, then nothing has value beyond its material substance, and that says a hell of a lot about what our society has come to morally.  Hopefully we never get to the point where necrophilia does become legal, or a marketable transaction.  Because that kind of society would be horrifying.

Of course I don't view it the same way as a rock, and the fact that you would argue so I think gets to the real basis for your belief - but they are ultimately the same in their personhood and their ability to act legally. It is desecration, not rape.

[Blue3]

Consent still matters. Just like a person’s Will still matters after they die. The body is property still governed by the Will of the deceased person, and whoever was appointed custodian of the funeral process, like a spouse or patent or child. It’s not your property. Just like it’s illegal to break into someone’s house to masturbate.

[parochial boy]

But going purely along the harm principle as originally stated, the consent of the deceased isn't relevant as they are not aware that their consent has been violated.

And even then, what if someone did say that they were happy to be used as a sex doll after they passed away?

I think there are a couple of easy reasons to oppse necrophilia from a liberal perspective. One being the, you know, public health implications; and the other being the psychological damage to the deceased's family on discovering someone had been rogering their loved onés corpse.

[nclib]

2 b) Indeed, according to a pure utilitarian calculus a necrophile committing the act in the privacy of his own home without anyone knowing is making the world a better place by increasing his own happiness while not affecting the happiness of any other person.  

I have mixed feelings on the legality of necrophilia, but this could be analogous for a man to put a camera in a woman's shower if he were sure she (or anyone else) would never find out. That would still be considered a violation of the wishes of the woman. Not saying this is totally analogous because one is alive is the other is dead.

[Blue3]

But going purely along the harm principle as originally stated, the consent of the deceased isn't relevant as they are not aware that their consent has been violated.

And even then, what if someone did say that they were happy to be used as a sex doll after they passed away?

I think there are a couple of easy reasons to oppse necrophilia from a liberal perspective. One being the, you know, public health implications; and the other being the psychological damage to the deceased's family on discovering someone had been rogering their loved onés corpse.

The consent of the deceased still matters, or else no one would respect the will.
And as I said, you could also say the body is the property of the family.

[Karpatsky]

But going purely along the harm principle as originally stated, the consent of the deceased isn't relevant as they are not aware that their consent has been violated.

And even then, what if someone did say that they were happy to be used as a sex doll after they passed away?

I think there are a couple of easy reasons to oppse necrophilia from a liberal perspective. One being the, you know, public health implications; and the other being the psychological damage to the deceased's family on discovering someone had been rogering their loved onés corpse.

The consent of the deceased still matters, or else no one would respect the will.
And as I said, you could also say the body is the property of the family.

Wills can be challenged, and evidently do not have the same power as consent which a living person can grant or deny.

[136or142]

Are you taking consent into account? One still has rights to have one's wishes respected, even after death - so to rape a corpse would violate the dead's wishes, presuming they didn't consent while alive to be used in that way by some deviant.

True. Thats why we still enforce the wishes of the dead written in wills.

Mr Reactionary, you (Samantha) fox, naughty necrophiliacs need love too.  

[136or142]

This isn't about necrophilia per se, but about the more general laws against the desecrating a corpse.  Although it doesn't get to the moral argument, there was a genuine reason for these laws, these laws aren't just based on hypothetical concerns.

I assume many people know this, but for those who don't know there history, grave robbings used to be common. Prior to the invention of accurate human skeletons, medical people and weird people who wanted to experiment on human bodies paid grave robbers to steal bodies.

http://cemeteryindex.com/wordpress/featured-cemeteries/mt-washington-cemetery/julie-rimer-historical-ramblings/body-snatching-in-the-1800s/

I don't believe this argument and I don't remember the full details behind the argument, but, there is one theory that Jack the Ripper never existed, that, instead, an expert in cutting (surgeons, butchers, maybe carpenters) came upon a dead body and decided to cut it up to sell various body parts likely to medical experimenters.  This person then, presumably, created this Jack the Ripper, in order to get the police looking in the wrong direction.  I don't buy that, but the person behind that theory explained that when people came upon dead bodies in the street, rather than contact the police, some would try to cut up the body. He said that, by the time the police got to the body, it had frequently been desecrated when the person who first reported the body reported that it hadn't been desecrated when they saw it.

[catographer]

1) i agree with the consent arguments. same reason sex with animals is illegal; they cant possibly consent, and whether they're aware of that is irrelevant. a baby isn't aware of what consent is either but they still can't give it.
2) harm v disgust argument may also apply to consensual adult incest. what's the harm to society? especially if they don't reproduce because of it (same sex incest).
3) i lean towards being against disgust as an appropriate basis for ethical and legal standards. but certainly it's constitutional to do so in the US so we might as well use it anyway.

[Antonio the Sixth]

1) A fundamental liberal principle is that one should have the right to do any action which does not harm another person.

...and this is why I am not a liberal.

[Santander]

1) A fundamental liberal principle is that one should have the right to do any action which does not harm another person.

...and this is why I am not a liberal.

Nobody cares

[America Needs R'hllor]

In addition to what everyone said, I think we have to accept that there are universal, human values rooted in our very selves that are normative and not dependant on any set of rules. Homosexuality is completely fine because it cannot cause harm by itself and is something a large percentage of humans cannot help but practice, and also because it was proven not to be a mental illness but is rather perfectly natural. Thus, people disgusted by homosexuality are a**holes and illegitimate.
Meanwhile, necrophilia and incest are clearly something we shouldn't do- the disgust for them is rooted deep within us, and they can indeed cause grave harm by themselves- incestous children are often born with defects, and necrophilia is a public health hazard. These behaviours are also a choice, and could be a mental illness too. There's a clear difference between the two cases.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

To play devil's advocate, couldn't one argue that anal sex is a public health hazard?

[tallguy23]

Dead people can't consent. It's also just plain nasty af.

[Nyssus]

You wouldn't serve a cup of tea to an unconscious person, or to a person who was fully awake and said they did not want tea, so why would you serve a cup of tea to a dead person?

If they say yes, then, sure, but dead people don't want tea.

Consent.  It's simple as tea.