You know you've been waiting for another one. This time, it's courtesy of Jim Houston, a new blogger at Talking Philosophy. Simple story: guy and girl romp in elevator at train station in Scotland, thinking they can't be seen. But there's a CCTV camera, and now they're in trouble with the law. Did they do anything morally wrong? What's the punishment that fits the crime ... if any? Houston seems to have the situation under control. Take it away .... Jim.
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Update: Wait a minute. He doesn't have it under control. He neglected to mention that the guy and girl were brother and sister! Sensationalistic tabloid link here. I think this would be a decidedly non-uplifting chapter of "my lift book".*
* Quotes because there's only a 1% chance I'm going to write a lift book, but it's fun thinking about it anyway.
3 comments:
I kinda agree with Jim here... I'm not sure why adding to the event that they happened to be brother and sister changes the morality of the situation any. I mean, imagine that they were separated at birth, fell in love, and one (or both) is infertile (so we can't get into problems about harming future babies). I'm not sure what it adds if any.
To the elevator question... I'm not sure if elevators are private spaces. We might think they are, but they're surreptitiously private at the most, since the door will eventually open for the next passenger. You usually have some warning since the elevator has to go to the floor that the passenger is on, but if the passenger is on the floor the elevator is stopped at, then they'd get an immediate eye full.
Does that harm them? I think arguably, in our society, it does... If our society was such that public sex was a more regular occurrence, the harm would be less.
Most of us think it only right and natural that we have strong emotional attachment (indeed, love) to members of our family, but are shocked at the idea of romantic/sexual relations between those who are genetically closely related. And this revulsion is clearly not just because of what we've heard about the perils of inbreeding. What's going on here? Surely you could spend many pages of your book on this issue, along with the more general business of what sort of consensual but "indecent" or "shocking" acts ought legitimately to be banned from public spaces.
Publication date: Fall, 2013. (Remember: the book doesn't have to be very long.)
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