If every act of a person is determined wholly by factors beyond their control; whether that be genes, social conditioning, neuronal activity or whatever, then there can be no rational justification for praising or blaming them. — John

Arguably, there could be rational justification if said praise or blame elicited a change in the agent's future behavior in line with the desires of the praiser or blamer. Even if we believe that our child was determined by forces beyond his control to take the cookie from the cookie jar, leveling blame (in the form of verbal admonishment) upon him may thereby decrease future incidents of his taking a cookie from the cookie jar, which suits our desire of our kid not sneaking so many cookies.

In other words, the praise or blame can itself become part of the causal chain which ineluctably leads to another agent performing or refraining from performing some particular act.

I don't think you need most of paragraph 3 of you're just trying to build a Gettier case. You just need "Bob in fact stole the money." — Srap Tasmaner

Yea, I agree that that was a bit wordy, but I wanted to forestall any questions as to how one knows that Bob did in fact take the money. But yes, from our "God's eye view," we could just take it as given.

Your case seems to turn on whether Al's belief was really justified, whereas Gettier cases usually try to make this airtight. This may be case of epistemic luck, but it feels more like, "I'll bet it was him" than the Gettier type.

I agree: the point of the post was to ask whether this was in fact a Gettier case, not to examine Gettier cases in general. So it does turn on whether Al was justified in believing Bob was the thief. I am inclined to believe that (1) Al did possess at least some justification (even if weak), but (2) Al did not know that Bob was the thief at the time he initially formed the belief. Obviously, (1) and (2) are not mutually consistent given a JTB conception of knowledge, so something has to give.

It depends on what you mean by 'know'. Does anybody ever really know anything in the empirical sphere (in the sense that it is absolutely impossible that they could be wrong)? — John

I think there are some assumptions in your statement which need to be examined. Most theories of knowledge do not require certainty to qualify (if only for the reason that we could hardly be said to "know" anything, when it seems apparent that we know a great deal).

After all, even the most homely truths (e.g. I have 2 hands, I live on planet Earth, etc) are vulnerable to defeat at least in principle (even if only due to being a BIV, a victim of a Cartesian demon, or various other skeptical scenarios).

In the above example, Al was not really epistemologically justified in believing Bob committed the crime. He may be justified in believing that Bob was the more likely culprit, but he should have suspended judgement until further information was gathered. Before the police report, Al was unjustified, so his belief was lucky, but in the average JTB sense, not in the Gettier sense. — Chany

I think this is the crux of the matter, and is debatable. (Is there a difference between epistemological justification and justification simpliciter?)

If JTB suffices for knowledge, does the theory need to stipulate how much justification is required before a true belief can so qualify? I would argue that Al possessed at least some justification in believing that Bob was the thief, even if his justification was weak (perhaps we can strengthen his justification by adding that there is evidence that the theft was an inside job).

And of course it can be and often is disregarded.

Not that that depends on truth being relative. One can disregard something if truth isn't relative, too. People can disregard all sorts of things if they like.

If only the fact that people can disregard things had any particular significance.

You're probably also disregarding that it's an objective fact that truth is relative. But whether a statement about that fact is true or false is subjective of course. — Terrapin Station

I'm not sure that I follow all of this. I think you're missing the point in saying that "people can disregard all sorts of things if they like." My point was that, by the cognitive relativist's own lights, his interlocutor can not only disregard the relativist's claim that "all truth is subjective/relative," but also the relativist's response that the truth that "all truth is relative" is true only for him (and other relativists, presumably).

It's not though. If I say, "'All truth is relative' is true," as a relativist, and as a truth-value subjectivist, I'm not saying that "'All truth is relative' is true" is anything but relatively, subjectively true to me--I'm reporting my judgment about that proposition to you. Certainly other people can and do assign "false" to that statement instead. And assigning "true" and "false" to it are nothing other than judgments that we make as individuals. I'd not be claiming that the "is true" part of "'All truth is relative' is true" is something other than a judgment that an individual makes.

Often what's happening there is that the truth-value non-relativist is reading their non-relativistic framework into the statement; they're not parsing it under whatever the relativist's notion of truth is. — Terrapin Station

I would point out that the truth value of the cognitive relativist's claim that their statement "all truth is relative" is only relatively or subjectively true for them would likewise be only relatively or subjectively true for them, and thus can be disregarded at will by the non-relativist (or other cognitive relativists, for that matter). Little, if anything, a cognitive relativist says can carry probative force.

References to efficient causes are absent from most science I have read, and the parts where authors have referred to them would, IMHO, be better off without those references. The product of scientific endeavour is theories and equations, which give rise to explanations and predictions. — andrewk

This seems to be a somewhat physics-centric view of "science" (a not-uncommon view in discussing the philosophy of science - sometimes fields other than physics are referred to as the "special sciences." Some might thus be reminded of Dana Carvey's Church Lady character from SNL...but I digress).

Science as a whole has not dispensed with the notion of cause. Epidemiologists speak of the cause(s) of disease outbreaks, paleontologists speak of the cause(s) of mass extinctions, etc. I also don't think that every science concerns itself with equations or predictions (though all are theory-laden, certainly). Some scientific fields are largely qualitative, and are largely retrodictive, as opposed to predictive, in nature (the aforementioned field of paleontology likewise applies here).

For a quick-and-dirty illustration of my point, a search for "caus*" restricted to titles alone in the public medical literature database at PubMed.gov yields 255,563 hits. The same search performed at arXiv.org yields too many hits to be displayed, maxing out at 1,000 hits.

The only point of contention seems to be that, if we start with the perfectly concrete and definable concepts of prediction and explanation, the notion of 'causality' adds nothing to our understanding of the world and just confuses discussion of it. It also generates unnecessary arguments and lawsuits, amongst non-philosophers and philosophers alike. — andrewk

I think that some philosophers might raise an eyebrow at your claim that explanation is "perfectly concrete and definable." The voluminous literature on scientific explanation alone would seem to indicate that it is far from settled what constitutes an explanation of some phenomenon or state of affairs.

Depends who the "employers" are. Large(r) companies want it not because they need it, but it's a way for the person in charge of hiring to guard his behind if you end up being a bad hire. He can then say to his managers - "oh well, I did my best, look at his education here, he seemed to have been the perfect candidate!". It's all about politics, not doing what's best for the business. — Agustino

I amended my above post to say "many employers," because certainly, university degrees are not necessary for every job (luckily, since most Americans don't hold them). There are obviously many, many jobs which don't require such degrees, from minimum-wage, unskilled work (e.g. fast food worker) to skilled work which may command a decent living (e.g. finish carpenter).

However, beyond the "politics" aspect, a university degree also sends a sort of honest signal to an employer, i.e. that this applicant was qualified to gain admittance into a university, was intelligent and disciplined enough to complete the course work, etc. Unfortunately, as the value of degrees becomes debased by things like affirmative action or legacy admissions, grade inflation, or lowered standards for academic coursework, this signal likely communicate less useful information to employers.

But, say someone came to be employed by me (a small company/employer) - I'd only have one real question, apart from getting to know their personality - can you get whatever job I'm hiring for done well? If you can, let's see it, and I'd give them a real world test right away. If they perform well, that's all I care about. I don't give a toss about their degree, because I've seen too many idiots with degrees. And there's many like me, especially smaller companies. Smaller companies care about results - politics, reputation, and bullshit aren't relevant.

Yes, once a person has some work experience under their belt, a degree (or lack thereof) becomes less relevant, as one's work experience becomes more salient. Younger people or more recent grads don't have this benefit, however.

None of this changes, however, that holders of a university degree earn substantially more over their lifetimes than those who don't hold such a degree (again, at least in the U.S.)

Yeah, I definitely think it's not worth the money. If I knew what I know today, and I had sufficient confidence back then to refuse the peer-pressure, I wouldn't go either.

You spend roughly ~£60,000 (with all costs, including accommodation, food, travel, etc. for 4 years), and are stuck with debt afterwards (and much more for US, or if you are international in UK obviously). From a meagre paying wage job it will take you ~6-8 years to pay that back (factoring living costs, etc.), and the skills you gain (apart from the piece of paper) are really not much. I think you're far better off learning something valuable by yourself while working a job - any job pretty much - that pays your bills. — Agustino

Whether or not one obtains useful skills in a university education (which probably greatly varies by major: engineering or accounting majors on average probably obtain more job-specific skills than those majoring in ethnic studies or Renaissance poetry), there is the pragmatic consideration that a lack of a university degree is a barrier to entry for many jobs.

Many employers want that "piece of paper," and lacking it will preclude one from even getting one's foot in the door for an interview. University graduates (at least in the U.S.; I haven't seen the data for the U.K.) earn substantially more over their working lifetimes than do non-university graduates.

The first is whether the harm is the expected harm or the actual harm. All sorts of confusing situations arise in which one sets out to be kind but accidentally causes pain, and vice versa. One can try to dispel this by talking in terms of expectations, but further problems arise with that. — andrewk

I think the distinction between expected and intended harm is also salient: one can expect a certain amount of harm to result from an action without necessarily intending that that harm come about. For instance, a military may bomb an enemy military target with the expectation that some collateral damage will result, and yet intend to absolutely minimize civilian casualties (through extensive surveillance of the target, cross-checking multiple sources of intelligence, using "smart" bombs, etc).

The second is what does it mean to 'cause' harm. It may be that my decision to buy magazine X rather than magazine Y is the last straw that breaks the back of struggling magazine Y, which then folds, its editor suicides and her family is plunged into misery. Causes are a very fuzzy concept to try to pin down to something as clinical as a razor.

It also seems clear that, even in some cases where some degree of non-consensual harm was reasonably expected to occur, that no moral infraction has taken place. Imagine a woman with an extremely racist father who brings home a black man for dinner, knowing full well that it will likely cause her father some consternation. When she enters with her date, her father clutches his chest and dies of a heart attack, Fred Sanford-style. I would remain to be convinced that the woman has acted unethically in such a situation.

'Logical positivism' is associated with a book called Language Truth and Logic, published in 1936 by A J Ayer, and still on the curriculum in many philosophy departments. — Wayfarer

Even the former proponents of logical positivism admitted that they threw in the towel, and that LP has largely gone the way of the dodo. I understand that it is still on the curriculum in many philosophy departments, but so too no doubt is the cosmological musings of the pre-Socratics. That doesn't mean that anyone still believes it.

perhaps, but is it a word? — Wayfarer

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

Is there a checkbox for it on the Census?

I can't speak to the Australian census, but the U.S. census, as far as I'm aware, has no category for apatheist.

I think the distinction you might be after is between 'strong atheism', which believes strongly that there is no God, and 'weak atheism', which doesn't claim to know, but also says it's not an important question. — Wayfarer

Isn't the latter a better description of "apatheism" rather than atheism?

Addiction has always been relevant to the OP; he stated that there's evidence that porn is not harmful. I never directly addressed the OP, but bringing up addiction is relevant to the topic; it was a response to that part of the OP. Perhaps not the most directly philosophical aspect, no. — Noble Dust

Relevant, sure, but not the only thing to talk about. The OP raised a number of other issues, including whether porn uses people merely as means rather than ends unto themselves, whether sex is or ought to be solely a private act and not for public consumption, etc.

But the most pressing aspect of the topic is addiction because of it's prevalence and the way it affects peoples lives. What's worse right now is there isn't much data or studies to support the obvious problem that porn addiction presents. All we have are a few studies, and anecdotal evidence from hundreds of thousands of people. This is why I'm focusing on the problem of addiction. I feel like a broken record at this point. — Noble Dust

Ok, ND, just take a deep breath and calm down. The world will soldier on and survive the scourge of porn addiction, I promise you.

Perhaps porn addiction is the "most pressing aspect" of porn from a public health standpoint, but this isn't a public health forum: it's a philosophy forum, and there are other aspects of the topic which are salient and (IMO) interesting in their own right, apart from the issue of addiction.

Fine, I can entertain the possibility, I just don't think it's important or relevant to the issue of addiction. It doesn't affect the problem of addiction in any way. I'm primarily concerned with the issue of porn addiction, and it seems like all that you and other folks here have to say about that is "sure, addiction is possible". These arguments that fixate on the minutae are distracting from the bigger issue. — Noble Dust

You seem fixated on the issue of porn addiction, to the exclusion of virtually every other consideration. There are other aspects of the topic, and I don't think they should be tossed off as "minutiae."

What do you think about the possibility of porn addiction?

This:

Yes, porn can be harmful and addictive. — Arkady

The problem is that this is too theoretical. — Noble Dust

We know that some people are into bondage, S&M, etc in their personal life, and we know that some people have a taste for violent porn. I think we both accept these statements. The possibility I suggested is that some people seek out or preferentially enjoy more violent sorts of porn, not out of an escalating addiction, but just due to their tastes.

It's implausible to imagine someone who's never been exposed to porn seeing it for the first time and going "yeah, but where's the violent stuff?".

Perhaps not, but what hinges on this?

It's theoretically possible that violent or more unusual forms of porn could exist without addicts who need more novelty (tolerance), sure. It's just not plausible. I'm not a psychologist, but I would imagine studying addiction is better done by analysis and observation of addicts, not posing theoretical scenarios. The problem is there isn't alot of studies like that being done yet.

Then we disagree about its plausibility. Recall your comment that such porn exists only due to porn addiction; that is, there is not one single person who watches violent porn who is not also a porn addict. That is what I find implausible. Very few things exist solely because of one (and only one) other thing, it seems to me.

I know. I commented as I did because your analysis is shallow. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Then I am in good company, apparently.

It's neither interested in describing the phenomena of escalation nor in understanding the presence of violent pornography. All it's interested in doing is scoring a rhetorical point against that escalation exists or there is any sort or problem-- your argument is effectively dismissing there could be any issue by saying: "but it's really just some people are interested in violent pornography."

I neither claimed to have a deep insight into the psyche of those who consume violent porn, nor did I dismiss the possibility of escalation. I took issue with Noble Dust's claim that such porn exists only because of porn addiction, and suggested an alternative route whereby one might seek out such porn due to a taste for more violent fare, rather than needing a more potent "hit" to satisfy their addiction.

Issues of escalation aren't really about whether people are inclined towards S&M or not. The trouble with porn, for many who are watching purely for excitement, is it gets boring. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I simply suggested that some people who consume more violent brands of porn or S&M, or bondage porn or what have you may have a taste for such things, rather than such consumption being only the result of porn addiction, as Noble Dust suggested.

Can you think of a solution? — anonymous66

I don't think that more relaxed or permissive social mores surrounding sex are necessarily a problem, so I don't believe that any solution is required (teen pregnancy is down in the U.S., for instance). The antidote to bad speech (if one so considers porn), as in most cases of bad speech, is more speech, in this case jettisoning foolishness such as abstinence-only sex education and giving adolescents realistic, frank, and comprehensive education about sex and human sexuality.

It might also behoove parents to raise their own children, instead of leaving it to the government to filter, sort, and approve what citizens in a liberal democracy may or may not view.

What would you make of an argument like this one?: Porn is giving people the wrong idea. It suggests that all consensual sex is fine. — anonymous66

I would say that it likely has the causal arrow reversed, to the extent there is a causal relationship between the belief that "all consensual sex is fine" (which I doubt is even a widespread view, as, for instance, adulterous sex can be consensual and yet frowned upon) and the societal acceptance of porn. I think it is more likely the case that more relaxed social mores regarding sex fuels the societal acceptance of porn than vice-versa.

Stop misquoting me. I never said that I was only asking questions. I said I was "asking an open question about just how harmful porn is." This is not important. — Noble Dust

I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but this was our exchange:

I'm not necessarily arguing that porn should be banned or outlawed. That's also an unrealistic notion. I'm simply arguing that porn is harmful and addictive. What I find worrisome is that so many people don't seem to see it as an addiction. Society at large continues to seem to think that porn is a positive thing. It's not. — Noble Dust

Yes, porn can be harmful and addictive. It doesn't follow that it's inherently harmful and addictive, unless you wish to maintain that anyone who has ever viewed porn became addicted to and was harmed by it. — Arkady

Clearly I never said that. I was asking an open question about just how harmful porn is. — Noble Dust

You said that porn is "harmful and addictive," not that it can be harmful and addictive. I took that to mean that you were saying that it is by nature harmful and addictive. If my interpretation is erroneous, how should I have interpreted that statement?

Deriving pleasure from someone's else's suffering, whether real or voyeristically, is morally wrong.

If I see a serial rapist put behind bars for the rest of his life for his crimes and take pleasure in that, is it morally wrong (let us assume that he suffers from his punishment and doesn't take some perverse pleasure in having his freedom taken away)?

Yours is a rather strong moral claim, but it seems of peripheral relevance at best to the current topic. You said that violent porn exists only due to the escalation of porn addiction, which I find dubious: I pointed out that some may just have a taste for more violent types of porn, just as some may have a taste for more violent types of sex in their personal lives. But you failed to address this point, and instead just moved on to offer your opinion as to the moral status of people who consume such fare.

I should ask: what about deriving pleasure from one's own suffering, which can be a goal of S&M (in my above post, I was redundant in invoking S&M and sado-masochism: I think I meant to also say "bondage")?

The questions I referenced came right after what you just quoted: — Noble Dust

Yes, I did see your questions, but you clearly also made multiple assertions, contra your claim that you were only asking open questions about porn.

The problem is that porn addiction escalates in the same way that tolerance escalates in drug or alcohol addiction. Those violent forms of pornography only exist because of porn addiction. — Noble Dust

Isn't it just possible that some people have a taste for more violent forms of porn, just as some people have a taste for S&M, sado-masochism and the like in their personal sexual lives?

Clearly I never said that. I was asking an open question about just how harmful porn is. — Noble Dust

You said:

I'm simply arguing that porn is harmful and addictive. What I find worrisome is that so many people don't seem to see it as an addiction. Society at large continues to seem to think that porn is a positive thing. It's not. — Noble Dust

These look more like assertions than questions to me.

This is definitely a problem. I was mentioning the secrecy of porn though, because it's almost a joke. No one invites their friends over to watch some classic porn. — Noble Dust

What's "classic porn," just out of curiosity?

They're not anecdotes. There are indubitably enormous numbers of pre-teens - literally hundreds of millions, possibly billions - who have unrestricted access to endless amounts of pornographic video. This is fact. — Wayfarer

Firstly, I don't deny that vast numbers of children have access to porn. What I called an anecdote was the story of the child who became addicted to porn at 9 years old. Having access to X and becoming addicted to X are 2 different things.

Of course 'censoring the internet' is controversial - as I have often observed, arguing against porn on an internet forum, is like arguing against beer in a pub. Nevertheless, following a spate of truly ghastly sexual murders in the UK, the British government is actually enacting legislation to outlaw some categories of porn. Of course the Guardian is outraged.

I don't know which variety of porn you are speaking of, but I assume that it was something of a violent nature if it motivated "ghastly sexual murders"? If that's the case, then let us not draw a false equivalency between violent pornography and pornography simpliciter. Even if outlawing particular types of porn may be advisable, that doesn't entail that outlawing all porn is likewise advisable.

Yes, porn can be harmful and addictive. It doesn't follow that it's inherently harmful and addictive, unless you wish to maintain that anyone who has ever viewed porn became addicted to and was harmed by it.

Perhaps children feel the need to view porn in secret because sex is treated as dirty and shameful, and humans are made to feel sinful for having sexual desires? Perhaps then the solution is more sex education to let adolescents know how sex "really" is, and not have unrealistic or distorted expectations or beliefs about sex.

Porn has actually been shown to have the same chemical response in the brain as heroin. — Noble Dust

Again, I don't deny that porn can be addictive or otherwise taken to excess. Likewise, alcohol, gambling, junk food, and a host of other things are potentially addictive, and yet we don't feel the need to ban them (though they are of course subject to regulation, as is porn). Opioid abuse is a much larger problem than porn, I would argue, and yet no one denies that opioids have their place in medicine.

I'm sorry to say, but this is totally unrealistic. — Noble Dust

Well, I agree, insofar as I believe that any serious attempt to regulate the consumption of porn would be unrealistic in any liberal democracy worth having. In what other sense do you find it to be unrealistic?

I'm not conversant with the technical issues, but I have little doubt that with enough technical saavy, those who wish to purvey and consume porn would find a way to do so by getting around any governmental roadblocks. Sites such as Silk Road (which offered a variety of illegal fare) are shut down, and new sites spring up like weeds in their place. You are probably aware of the so-called "dark web," which is also a hive of illegal online activity.

Governmental censor or prohibition almost never works: this has been shown time and time again, with the abject failure of Prohibition in the U.S. and the "war on drugs," which has led to widespread violence and sky-high rates of incarceration.

There is also a lot of high-minded nonsense about the dangers of porn, including anecdotes about 9-year-olds being hooked on it and dubious stats about it destroying marriages. Freedom of expression is arguably the highest ideal of a liberal democracy (and it also protects those modes of expression about which you may have particular interest in safeguarding, such as religious speech), and is not something to be sneezed at or dismissed in the name of the latest moral panic.

On the one hand, porn should absolutely be legal for the reasons you gave, but on the other hand, the porn industry's potential connection to human trafficking needs to be further investigated. — Noble Dust

Sure. And labor abuses are also rampant in the agricultural and seafood industries. Perhaps something like a certification process for "clean" porn should be instituted (much as one can buy "conflict-free" diamonds).

There is also the troublesome phenomenon of "revenge porn," which does not involve consenting parties (if they consented to the original taping, they did not consent to its release online).

There's also the potential connection to child porn. What percentage of adult porn actors started their careers in child porn?

I assume that you're thinking specifically of female porn stars? Either way, I don't have the answer, and I suspect that reliable data is hard to come by.

The demarcation between trafficking, prostitution, child porn and adult porn is not at all so clear cut. It's a complex issue. Realistically, making porn illegal would have more damaging effects than not, I would guess, but that doesn't mean it's not having hugely detrimental effects on society as we continue to allow it. It's not black and white.

I am skeptical that its effects are "hugely" detrimental (especially as compared to say, smoking, opioid abuse, high-calorie food consumption, etc), but no doubt it does have some problems associated with its use. But again, this could be said about virtually anything which humans engage in (some things more than others).

Perhaps a compromise position would be to ban the production of new porn, while not outlawing the consumption or sale of existing porn. The amount of pornography in existence is quite vast: even the most dedicated pornaholic would likely have trouble exhausting the current stock in his lifetime.

Out of curiosity, on what basis might you consider something to be immoral if not harmful?

In other words, if something is not harmful what makes it immoral? — VagabondSpectre

I don't think I have a comprehensive theory of morality which will cover every possible case of moral vs. immoral action (and I'm skeptical that the world of human action can be so cleanly dichotomized; there may well be a spectrum of morality).

However, in saying that I don't believe harm to be necessary condition of immorality, I think there are a few examples of actions one would typically regard as immoral and yet not harmful per se, sometimes in part due to moral luck.

For instance, consider the situation in which a person is unfaithful to their spouse, and yet the spouse never learns of the affair, and thus suffers no harm (whether psychological or physical). I believe it is reasonable to consider the adultery immoral, and yet no one was harmed.

Also consider the case of driving while severely inebriated: one may be lucky and not harm anyone, and yet such an action may well be viewed as immoral because a person knowingly and unnecessarily put others at great risk by dint of his irresponsible actions.

Consider another instance in which one greedily pilfers money from a person who is so rich that he doesn't even notice the money is missing, and thus suffers no psychological or physical harm. Is not the theft immoral, even though no one was technically harmed (one could perhaps argue that more abstract entities such as his bank account or his estate were harmed)?

Surely there’s racism in the porn industry.

Surely.

http://www.theonion.com/video/use-of-n-word-may-end-porn-stars-career-14174

That's how I understand Davidson's position as well. And the next logical step is to conclude that the copy is not the same person as the original (because predicates that were true of the original are false of the copy). — SophistiCat

I think this may speak to some of the confusions surrounding the notion of "identity" which I pointed out. Clearly, logical identity is more stringent than personal identity. I believe that two things A and B can be said to be logically identical iff whatever can be predicated of A can be predicated of B and vice-versa.

However, this is clearly too stringent a criterion for personal identity, which seems to be the relevant notion with regard to Swampman-style thought experiments (as far as I can tell). Persons psychologically and physically change a great deal throughout their lives, and yet they remain the same person. In the time it took me to type this post, I no doubt shed a few thousand or so skin cells, and thus am not now logically identical to the person I was when I began typing it, and yet I retain the same personhood or sense of self.

I wasn't saying anything about harm being proof of something being immoral. But, rather reasons to allow or disallow. If the claim, "it's immoral" isn't enough to persuade people to disallow something in our society, then it seems the next step must be to show that it is harmful. — anonymous66

Perhaps I misunderstood you, then. My mistake. So, you are saying that your hypothetical interlocutor might say that if something is immoral (whether or not it is also harmful) or it is harmful (whether or not it is also immoral), then that would be sufficient grounds for regulating or banning it. And if the immoral disjunct is ruled out, the possibility that it is harmful is to be examined to see if there are grounds for banning it.

Arkady
I suppose one could say, "if you think it's immoral, then don't watch it." and then the argument goes back to proof of harm. — anonymous66

I don't believe that harm is necessary or sufficient to render something immoral. And even if it were, it doesn't follow that any and all immoral actions or behaviors ought to be regulated, outlawed, or otherwise be made a matter of public concern.

Do moral intuitions about porn have any bearing on the issue? — anonymous66

I have no idea. Are moral intuitions dispositive of moral questions in general? Whatever the answer, I see no reason that questions surrounding pornography would be exempt.

At the very least, the argument, "assuming that fornication and/or adultery is immoral, then porn is immoral", is plausible.

Even granting the premise that fornication is immoral, it is a non-sequitur that watching fornication is also immoral, which is at issue here. Watching fornication is not equivalent to engaging in fornication, and thus whatever moral opprobrium may attach to the latter doesn't necessarily attach to the former.

What I see is that those who argue that porn is not harmful, or no more harmful than other things we allow, are met with the claim "people only want porn because there is something wrong with the way they view morality."
How to counter the claims about morality? — anonymous66

I think the reasons people want porn are rather different from the reasons one might invoke to justify porn.

In any event, such a response seems to be an ad-hom, and to beg the question ("porn is immoral because people who use it have a skewed morality").

Right, assume a spherical cow observer in vacuum :) — SophistiCat

Mmm, spherical cow.

I think what this thought experiment shows is that Leibniz's construal of identity cannot work with a view from nowhere.

Yea, like I said, notions of "identity" may seem relatively straightforward at 30,000 feet, but tend to become rather muddled when examined closely.

I just think that a physical duplicate would share the same mental states. I don't believe that the truth value of those mental states (insofar as the states have propositional content) would also be identical. Let us say that I believe that I went for a walk in the park yesterday, and that I did in fact go for such a walk. My belief is therefore true. If a physical duplicate of me was then conjured up by some means, he will also believe that he went for a walk in the park, and yet his belief is false (indeed, all of his memories would be false, I would think).