The idea of apologetics definitely exists in society. See the recent Steubenville rape case where a significant portion of people were arguing against it being rape, despite the lack of consent and her being too drunk to respond to anything.
But, you are right that this example doesn’t show that. What would demonstrate this is that it is a common thing, not an example of someone who is clearly not neurotypical.
See the recent Steubenville rape case where a significant portion of people were arguing against it being rape, despite the lack of consent and her being too drunk to respond to anything.
Whether it was “rape” or not is a matter of definitions. The more interesting question is whether what they did was wrong, and there it’s very hard to make a utilitarian case for it being so. This blog comment by Jessica Boxer discusses the issue. Relevant part:
However, here is a question I have been struggling with from a moral point of view. Recently two football players in Steubenville, OH have been convicted of rape. It was a huge story here, there is a big piece on it in wikipedia.
There is some dispute of the facts, but the most commonly believed story is that the girl got really drunk, and was partying with the boys who were also super drunk. She passed out, and the boys digitally penetrated her vagina, and slapped their dicks on her thigh. The next morning she woke up naked, not remembering what had happened, and continued in that ignorant bliss for a couple of days. However, the events had been captured in social media and she soon found out. After she found out, she complained, and the boys were charged, and ultimately convicted.
I am baffled by the morality of this case. The harm caused to her was the embarrassment from being told what happened. No actual physical harm came to her directly, she wasn’t even aware of the harm. Especially so with the specific nature of their actions, with fingers only. But clearly the boys acted very badly. Honestly, I am a little confounded on the morality of this case. You read the comments on news sites and people want to string these boys up by their necks. But to me they acted badly, but it was just a bunch of drunken revelry, especially since the girl’s actions earlier in the evening indicated that she would welcome their advances, and the fact that there is some question as to whether she was in fact conscious and at least a little participatory in the action.
The more interesting question is whether what they did was wrong, and there it’s very hard to make a utilitarian case for it being so.
The harm caused to her was the embarrassment from being told what happened.
Steady on, what metric are you measuring harm on? She presumably had a very strongly held preference to not have sex-acts performed on her without consent—a preference utilitarian would count the violation of that preference a very great harm.
I think it’s hard to make a utilitarian case that those boys DIDN’T act wrongly.
She presumably had a very strongly held preference to not have sex-acts performed on her without consent—a preference utilitarian would count the violation of that preference a very great harm.
Consider the example I gave here. Would you apply the same logic to the preference of a Namboothiri that on Dalit get within 96 feet of him?
We assume in this case that the Dalit wants to approach the Namboothiri? I guess that makes for the closest analogue to this situation.
It’s a clever intuition pump, but I think it is flawed. In the case of the Dalit and the Namboothiri, preference utilitarianism should disapprove of the caste system itself for a whole bunch of reasons.
If you take away the religious and cultural framework, and just have them be two people, one of whom (A) strongly desires not to be approached by the other (B), then yes, I would apply the same logic. As long as B is not harmed by avoiding A, then leaving him alone is the right thing to do. If A is as averse to being approached as a normal person is to being assaulted, then approaching them is a very serious crime. Of course, in practice it would rarely be the case that B was not harmed by avoiding A, since 96 feet is a long way. The harm of not approaching somebody so close that you are actually penetrating them, though, is so incredibly slight that I’m willing to ignore it for the purposes of analysis.
Edited to change the word “yards” to “feet”. Doesn’t change my argument.
There is some dispute of the facts, but the most commonly believed story is that the girl got really drunk, and was partying with the boys who were also super drunk. She passed out, and the boys digitally penetrated her vagina, and slapped their dicks on her thigh. The next morning she woke up naked, not remembering what had happened, and continued in that ignorant bliss for a couple of days. However, the events had been captured in social media and she soon found out. After she found out, she complained, and the boys were charged, and ultimately convicted.
Oh thank God. I’ve been seriously worried at how my model was failing to predict accurately in this case, even after updating on what I thought had happened (the victim was conscious and physically restrained while the boys had sex with her, and people responded to video evidence with death threats and slut-shaming.) I noticed that I was confused, but couldn’t seem to find the flaw—thank you for providing the explanation!
That said, I think it’s fairly obvious that most people don’t want their bodies to be used sexually while they’re unconscious, and enforcing this norm seems like a pretty slam-dunk good idea. I suppose if you’re not a preference utilitarian, but instead some sort of hedonic maximizer, simply suppressing it might make sense? Kinda? I’m drawing a blank here.
Unfortunately, you will never explain yourself, because it costs karma to reply to this. Mumblemumblemuble...
The idea of apologetics definitely exists in society. See the recent Steubenville rape case where a significant portion of people were arguing against it being rape, despite the lack of consent and her being too drunk to respond to anything.
But, you are right that this example doesn’t show that. What would demonstrate this is that it is a common thing, not an example of someone who is clearly not neurotypical.
Whether it was “rape” or not is a matter of definitions. The more interesting question is whether what they did was wrong, and there it’s very hard to make a utilitarian case for it being so. This blog comment by Jessica Boxer discusses the issue. Relevant part:
Steady on, what metric are you measuring harm on? She presumably had a very strongly held preference to not have sex-acts performed on her without consent—a preference utilitarian would count the violation of that preference a very great harm.
I think it’s hard to make a utilitarian case that those boys DIDN’T act wrongly.
Consider the example I gave here. Would you apply the same logic to the preference of a Namboothiri that on Dalit get within 96 feet of him?
The people who spread images of what had been done to her seemed to agree that her status was being lowered.
We assume in this case that the Dalit wants to approach the Namboothiri? I guess that makes for the closest analogue to this situation.
It’s a clever intuition pump, but I think it is flawed. In the case of the Dalit and the Namboothiri, preference utilitarianism should disapprove of the caste system itself for a whole bunch of reasons.
If you take away the religious and cultural framework, and just have them be two people, one of whom (A) strongly desires not to be approached by the other (B), then yes, I would apply the same logic. As long as B is not harmed by avoiding A, then leaving him alone is the right thing to do. If A is as averse to being approached as a normal person is to being assaulted, then approaching them is a very serious crime. Of course, in practice it would rarely be the case that B was not harmed by avoiding A, since 96 feet is a long way. The harm of not approaching somebody so close that you are actually penetrating them, though, is so incredibly slight that I’m willing to ignore it for the purposes of analysis.
Edited to change the word “yards” to “feet”. Doesn’t change my argument.
Oh thank God. I’ve been seriously worried at how my model was failing to predict accurately in this case, even after updating on what I thought had happened (the victim was conscious and physically restrained while the boys had sex with her, and people responded to video evidence with death threats and slut-shaming.) I noticed that I was confused, but couldn’t seem to find the flaw—thank you for providing the explanation!
That said, I think it’s fairly obvious that most people don’t want their bodies to be used sexually while they’re unconscious, and enforcing this norm seems like a pretty slam-dunk good idea. I suppose if you’re not a preference utilitarian, but instead some sort of hedonic maximizer, simply suppressing it might make sense? Kinda? I’m drawing a blank here.
Unfortunately, you will never explain yourself, because it costs karma to reply to this. Mumblemumblemuble...