CPHL306 Contemporary Moral Issues I

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CPHL306Contemporary Moral Issues I

• Prohibition

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Wilson, Against the Legalization of Drugs

• The notion that abusing drugs such as cocaine
  is a victimless crime is not only absurd but
  dangerous. Even ignoring the fetal drug
  syndrome, crack-dependent people are, like heroin
  addicts, individuals who regularly victimize
  their children by neglect, their spouses by
  improvidence, their employers by lethargy, and
  their coworkers by carelessness. Society is not
  and could never be a collection of autonomous
  individuals 338
• But dont we already have legal measures in
  place to prohibit, deter, and punish of parental
  and workplace negligence? Why not just apply
  those measures directly?

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Wilson, Against the Legalization of Drugs

• What about the argument that it is the
  illegality of drugs increases crime? Wouldnt
  legalizing drugs decrease the drug-related crime
  rate?
• Yes, but
• some, perhaps a great deal of that gain would
  be offset by the great increase in the number of
  addicts 339

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Wilson, Against the Legalization of Drugs

• Do you agree with the following claim
• If we believe as I do that dependency on
  certain mind-altering drugs is a moral issue and
  that their illegality rests in part on their
  immorality, then legalizing them undercuts, if it
  does not eliminate altogether, the moral
  message. 340

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Wilson, Against the Legalization of Drugs

• Many people argue that it is hypocritical to
  allow alcohol use, and prohibit other drugs, when
  the costs of alcohol abuse are so much higher.
• Wilsons response This shows merely that a
  legal drug produces greater social harm than an
  illegal one. But that seems to support the claim
  that legally prohibiting drug use reduces the
  harm such use might otherwise cause.

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Husak, A Moral Right to Use Drugs

• Husak presents a litany of costs of the war on
  drugs
• Clogged courts and prisons
• Increased policing costs, strained resources
• The erosion of individual liberties evictions,
  raids, random searches, confiscation of drivers
  licenses, mandatory drug testing
• Minor drug violations caught in indiscriminating
  legislation

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Husak, A Moral Right to Use Drugs

• Too much of our policy about illegal drug use
  is based on generalizations from worst-case
  scenarios that do not conform to the typical
  reality of drug use.A legal policy applicable to
  all should not be based on the perceived problems
  of a few. 346

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Husak, A Moral Right to Use Drugs

• Why would anyone think that recreational drug
  use is immoral?
• One option It wrong because it alters
  consciousness.
• Is this a plausible view? Can you think of
  other ways of altering consciousness, apart from
  drugs?

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Husak, A Moral Right to Use Drugs

• What about the argument that the legalization of
  drugs would be tantamount to encouraging drug
  use?
• (i) The conclusion that adult use of drugs is
  protected by a moral right does not entail that
  drug use is beyond moral reproach. The exercise
  of a moral right may be subject to criticism.
  350
• (ii) The rights of some adults should not be
  sacrificed so that others do not misinterpret a
  message. 350

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Cudd, Taking Drugs Seriously

• note you do not have this reading
• Thesis
• In a liberal society citizens have the right to
  take most drugs. In my view the infringement of
  that right for almost all drugs is legitimate in
  a liberal society only under special
  circumstances, namely those circumstances in
  which what I call liberal paternalism is
  justified 309

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Cudd, Taking Drugs Seriously

• What is liberal paternalism? It is the claim
  that
• Interference with a persons liberty is
  justified when the person acts irrationally,
  either because she miscalculates the consequences
  of her action, or she acts on irrational desires
  orpreferences 310

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Cudd, Taking Drugs Seriously

• In what cases, then, would laws prohibiting drug
  use be consistent with liberal paternalism?
• Only in a couple of special cases, says Cudd
• The use of drugs among pre-adults due to peer
  pressure
• The hockey helmet example Each player prefers
  that all players wear the helmet, but no one
  wants to wear it (and look like a wimp) if at
  least one player doesnt wear it
• In each of these cases a coercive law that
  coordinates group action would end up giving
  individuals what they preferred anyway. Thus it
  fits with liberal forms of paternalism, because
  any rational person would choose the coercive
  measure.

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Cudd, Taking Drugs Seriously

• (ii) The use of anabolic steroids among athletes
• Much like the first case All athletes would
  prefer that no one takes steroids, but without an
  effective law against their use, many will take
  it, under the assumption that others are.
• Here an effective coercive law would be
  consistent with liberal paternalism because it
  would give each individual what he rationally
  prefers anyway.

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• A Quick FYI
• The following are illegal by Canadian law
• Living off of the avails of prostitution
• Maintaining a bawdy house
• Public solicitation for the purposes of
  prostitution
• Purchasing the sexual services of a minor
• For more info check out
• http//www.sexwork.com/montreal/law.html

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Arkes, Prostitution

• Arkes argues that contemporary law on
  prostitution shies away from moral condemnation
  of prostitution
• The inclination has often been to ban public
  solicitation or restrict the zone of
  solicitation - to treat the problem , in other
  words, as a matter of aesthetic regulation or
  the abatement of nuisances 230

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Arkes, Prostitution

• Some condemn prostitution on the grounds that it
  leads to other harms to society for example, an
  increase in street crime.
• The problem with this approach is that it would
  logically force us also to condemn things that
  dont deserve it for example, baseball games

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Arkes, Prostitution

• Arkes argues that both of these approaches fail
  to show what is fundamentally wrong with
  prostitution.
• In Arkes view, prostitution is intrinsically,
  morally wrong, and any argument that would
  conclude that we should ban it, must depend on
  this insight.

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Arkes, Prostitution

• So what is it about prostitution that makes it
  intrinsically bad?
• Argument A1
• Prostitution inescapably implies that the
  intimacy of sexual intercourse need not be
  connected to any authentic sentiment of love and
  that it need not take place in a setting marked
  by the presence of commitment. In that sense it
  might be said that prostitution patronizes the
  corruption of physical love it reduces physical
  love to the kind of hydraulic action that animals
  may share, and as it does that it detaches the
  act of intercourse from the kind of love that is
  distinctly human. 233

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Arkes, Prostitution

• But we must be careful not to slide here into
  another empirical argument against
  prostitution we shouldnt say that the
  corruption of physical love is bad because it
  strikes at those institutions, like the family,
  which depend most importantly on the ties of
  love. 233 It is bad, rather because the
  corruption of love is intrinsically bad.

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Arkes, Prostitution

• O1A1 Why must all sex be confined to the
  bonds of love? Why must all sex be serious
  sex? We sometimes share food with those
  we love to strengthen the bonds of love,
  and sometimes eat casually for physical
  satisfaction alone. Why should we treat sex
  differently from food?

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Arkes, Prostitution

• R1O1A1 Sex may be different in ways that
  are morally significant. 235
• More specifically
• (i) the sexual bond is uniquely intimate,
  such that entering into it for mere physical
  or commercial purposes violates its nature
• (ii) the connection of sex to the
  portentousness of reproduction, makes it an
  inappropriate means to mere physical or
  commercial satisfaction

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Arkes, Prostitution

• Of course, even if Arkes is successful in
  demonstrating that prostitution is morally wrong,
  this entails that it ought to be illegal only if
  we adopt his legal moralism
• law arises in the most proper sense only from
  imperatives of moral standing moral propositions
  entail the existence of law because the logic of
  morals is a logic of commitment. 232
• people have a claim to the exercise of their
  personal freedom in all of its expressions unless
  they do something that is in principle wrong, and
  it is only on the basis of a principle that the
  law may restrain that freedom. 235

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• Jaggar outlines three positions on prostitution
• The Liberal position
• The Marxist position
• The Radical Feminist Position
• Jaggar finds all three positions plausible, to
  some extent, but argues in favour of the radical
  feminist approach.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• A. The Liberal Position
• This position has several varieties, but they
  all argue that prostitution should be
  decriminalized.
• They support their view by appealing to the
  classical liberal ideals of equality before the
  law, and the protection of individual rights
  through minimization of governmental interference
  in the private sphere of life.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• Liberals view prostitution as a contract
  between individuals that is therefore subject to
  regulation as are other contracts, but simply to
  ensure fair trading practices.
• Jaggar criticizes the liberal approach for it
  fails to consider that prostitution may involve
  an illegitimate sort of contract in which one of
  the parties is helpless and sells themselves
  into oppression.
• A closely related criticism is that many
  prostitutes may not enter into their contracts
  voluntarily.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• B. The Marxist Position
• Marxists are more interested than Liberals are
  in the social context within which the practice
  of prostitution flourishes.
• For Marxists, prostitution is bad, but it is not
  specially bad. In the Marxist analysis
  prostitution is essentially the sale of bodily
  services for a wage thus it is on par with a
  variety of services. Engel speaks of the
  general prostitution of the labourer.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• Wage labour, generally, is criticized by
  Marxists for its alienating effect on the
  workers. Workers become mere appendages to
  their machines, cogs in the capitalist system.
  Thus the essential, creative human capacity to
  work is reduced and bound to an inhuman system of
  industrial production.
• In this same system wives are reduced to baby
  machines and sexual prostitutes are mere
  commodities.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• Classical Marxism seeks to abolish prostitution,
  but not by mere legal prohibition. It seeks
  rather a revolutionary overthrow of the entire
  capitalist system within which prostitution
  flourishes.
• Prostitution, and wage labour more generally,
  are products of economic inequality, and thus can
  be eliminated only when that inequality is
  eliminated.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• C. The Radical Feminist Position
• For radical feminism (RF), prostitution is the
  archetypal relationship of women to men. That
  is, RF sees most social interaction between
  women and men as some form of prostitution.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• RF agrees with Marxism both that (i) sexual
  prostitution is not bad in a special sort of way,
  but rather is one expression of a systemic
  inequality and (ii) there is economic coercion
  underlying prostitution.
• RF differs from Marxism in its refusal to
  assimilate prostitution to other types of wage
  labour.
• RF is distinct from liberalism in its broad
  construal of what constitutes sexual services,
  and in its denial that prostitution is a
  victimless crime.
• RF is distinct from both Marxism and liberalism
  in that it defines prostitutes as women.

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Jaggar, Prostitution

• RF calls for the elimination of prostitution,
  but recognizes that this will involve the
  systemic overthrow of patriarchy.
• Part of the solution will be the elimination of
  male demand for prostitutes, which requires us to
  abandon the conventional myth that men have
  biologically stronger appetites for sex and
  sexual diversity than do women.
• Is this indeed a mere myth? Robert Wright, in
  Feminists, Meet Mr. Darwin will argue that it
  is not.

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• Arguments against prostitution
• A1 It constitutes a case of sexual
  immorality. Society and conventional morality
  condemn it. 240
• This is because the less a sexual practice
  has to do with the bearing and rearing of
  children, the less sanctioned it is. 240
• O1A1 (i)An explanation of our
  antiprostitution sentiment does not constitute
  a justification of that sentiment.
• O2A1 (ii)Prostitution neither is nor ever was
  a threat to reproduction within the nuclear
  family.Nor has it ever been a threat to the
  family itself. People marry and visit whores
  for quite different reasons.

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• A2 Prostitution is intrinsically wrong
  mercenary love per se is immoral.
• O1A2 If two adults voluntarily consent to an
  economic arrangement concerning sexual
  activity and this activity takes place in
  private, it seems plainly absurd to maintain
  that there is something intrinsically wrong with
  it.To say that prostitution is intrinsically
  wrong is in a way to refuse to give any
  arguments.This terminates rational discussion
  where it should begin 241
• (Doesnt Arkes give reasons, regarding the
  intimacy of sex, which show why prostitution is
  intrinsically bad?)

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• A3 Prostitution is undesirable because the
  relation between whore and customer must by the
  nature of things be a very poor relation to
  nonmercenary sex. 241
• O1A3 (i) Simply because x is of poorer
  quality than y does not mean that x is bad.
• O2A3 We must be careful not to romanticize
  nonmercenary sex, or excessively denigrate
  mercenary sex.

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• A4 Prostitution involves the selling of
  something too basic to human life to be sold.
• O1A4 There is on this ground no more reason
  to despise the sex market and those engaged in
  it than to despise the food market and those
  engaged in it. 243

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• A5 Prostitution is wrong because it
  constitutes an extreme instance of the
  inequality of the sexes. 244
• Gives an extramarital outlet for men, and not
  women
• Relation of prostitute to customer is one of
  object to subject
• The prostitutes job is solely to satisfy the
  man she is thus simply a means to an end
• Prostitution reduces woman to a piece of
  merchandise she is thus objectified and
  economically exploited

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• O1A5 (i) If it is wrong that prostitution is
  available only to men, the way to redress
  this is to make it more available to women,
  should they desire it.
• (ii) There are many male prostitutes thus it
  is not, as a whole, specially oppressive for
  women.
• (iii)The perils of prostitution call for reform
  to its regulation, not banning it.

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• (iv) Prostitutes arent subject to special
  economic exploitation many occupations
  involve selling bodily services for money.
  Moreover, many prostitutes are better thought
  of more as entrepreneurs than as sex slaves.
• (v) Treating a prostitute as a mere means to
  an end, without regard for her personhood, is
  not specially exploitative. Furthermore, being
  primarily interested, when visiting a
  professional, in their professional
  performance, is not equivalent to dehumanizing
  them.

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Ericsson, Charges Against Prostitution

• (vi) Prostitutes also often see their customers
  as a mere means to an end.

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Film The Great Happiness Space

• Write a brief commentary for 2 bonus marks.
• Questions to address in your commentary
• In what ways is the host bar tailored to appeal
  specifically to women? Is this what youd expect
  prostitution for women to look like?
• Do you think that the sort of hosting that
  Issei engages in is morally permissible? Is the
  deception he practices a benign sort, or
  perhaps not even deception at all?
• Do you think that host bars, like the one in the
  film, could be popular with women in the North
  American context? Why or why not?
• Feel free to address any other questions of
  interest directly related to the film.

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Film The Great Happiness Space

• Your commentary should be between 300 and 400
  words.
• Send your commentary in the body of an email to
  pbali_at_ryerson.ca
• The subject of your email should be CPHL306
  commentary