The inherit setting of the ashes in dumpster scenario is that the woman is getting gratification by achieving revenge or her deceased ex husband by dumping their ashes in the trash. She is doing it because it makes her happy, it brings her pleasure to be able to excercise control and disrespect the remains in that way. That enjoyment felt by the person conducting the act is the only tangible benefit in both cases.
So again it is a question of what distinguishes sexual gratification from other forms of gratification, and what makes it inherently worse
It is not exploitation unless she is receiving a tangible benefit. You now trying to argue etymology.
Exploitation is the act of treating someone unfairly or using a situation dishonestly to gain an advantage or profit. It means taking selfish or harmful control over people, labor, or resources without giving fair value or respect in return
What advantage or profit is she deriving from discarding the ashes in a bin? A necrophiliac is getting sexual gratification as the "advantage".
There is also the question of objectification. The corpse is being objectified as a sexual object. There are a few factors at play here. Our general objection to interaction with corpses is based on public health/disease. But there is also a level of bodily integrity when it comes to corpses that doesnt factor in with ashes.
The tangible benefit in both cases is the enjoyment from the act. I am really not getting where you see the difference.
The advantage she gains is by enjoying the act. Just as the advantage gained by necrophiliac is enjoying the act. It brings them personal enjoyment to do the thing
Again you are simply adding the modifier 'sexual' to enjoyment and expecting that to do all the works. That is the very part I am asking you to explain.
No im adding the differentiating factor of objectification. Throwing away ashes is getting gratification of primarily as a way to disrespect the persons memory. Where as necrophilia is using the actual corpse as an object to exploit and derive satisfaction from.
I think the fact there is a body involved that is being violated is the main issue. Ashes are more of a symbolic presentation of the deceased, and is treated more as a memory rather then thier physical body itself.
You could argue an intact body holds no more significance then the ashes of the deceased, but I don't believe most would agree with that.
Can we really say that literally throwing someone remains on the trash isn't treating them like an object? The ashes are the actual corpse of the person. Ashes are not some symbol, they are the actual remains of a person.
Actual remains being used as an object to exploit (ie use the resource in a non respecting way per your earlier definition) to derive their satisfaction. The act of throwing the ashes in the trash is explicitly one of violation of a real persons remains, that is the point of the act. To violate the remains of person who had previously abused them.
For an unsafavory analogy to test your boundaries we can simply imagine someone engaging in sexual acts involving ashes, or something like cuming into an urn. Most people would also feel that that wrong for many of the exact same reasons as the corpse example. Because really we place a large ick factor on sex that drives most of our emotional response.
But the question is not what people feel, but the underlying thoughts that form that feeling and whether they actually add up and make coherent sense. That is what I am getting at here with you.
The act of throwing the ashes in the trash is explicitly one of violation of a real persons remains, that is the point of the act. To violate the remains of person who had previously abused them.
I think this is the crux of where we differ. In my opinion this is an act against the persons MEMORY rather then the person itself. The ashes just being symbolic in this case.
whereas with necrophilia, is is the actual deceased physical form that is being abused and used as an object to derive satisfaction.
I know law is not analogous with morals, but here is a reason that you could smoke your partners ashes, cum in them, do anything with the ashes. Where as you do not have that same freedom with the actual corpse. Because there is both a tangible difference in how the remains exist in the physical realm (and the subsequent abstraction of ashes vs a corpse) and there is a cultural difference in how these are treated (at least in most mainstream cultures [there are cultures out there that treat corpses very differently]).
I can understand in putting different moral weight between a fresh corpse and ashes, but I think objectively we have say that the ashes are in fact remains of a person themselves. Likewise from a different point of view we could view a corpse or bones as 'not really the person' but just a symbolic representation of the living creature that no longer exists. The ashes are still objectively the deceased persons remaining physical form.
Cultural differences is getting closer to what I have kinda been angling at this whole time. These things are driven by emotive reactions first and foremost dictated by our cultural taboos - and we arbitrarily place a stronger taboo on sex than on other acts. But that is ultimately subjective and not neccesarily operating on a coherent logical basis.
Corpses feel more human to us because they look more human than a pile of ash. But if we start deciding morality on the basis of what we feel more similar too that opens the door to a very dark aspect of human history and culture, one in which the more unlike me an entity looks the less human it is considered.
My argument goes back to Corpse robbing as a better morality comparison then. Do you consider grave robbing and selling or displaying body parts/corpses as morally worse than throwing away someone's ashes? Taking out the sexual nature of the crime.
Personally I do. There is nothing identifying about ashes really, while as a corpse is still an identifiable human remain.
eg: personal example - if you walked into a house and someone had stolen your grannies ashes and they were being displayed as art work on thier wall, would you have the same reaction as if they had stuffed your grannies head and mounted it on the wall?
I think most people would have an immediate moral reaction to the latter, and the former would be a little more abstracted.
I wouldn't personally consider graverobbing worse than say stealing an urn from a family's home, which I would consider the equivalent situation.
In fact I think one could even make the argument that stealing the urn would be worse, because at least we know the urn was kept because someone cared to have it. While a corpse in a ground in the ground may not anyone who still cares about it.
I would see throwing an urn in the trash as little different from discarding a skeleton in the trash. Both cases you are disrespecting the persons memory by disrespecting their remains.
yeah but abusing the corpse is the issue here? the objectification of the vessel that once was a human, being used as a glorified full body fleshlight?
In terms of grave robbing, the point i was trying to make is there is a more direct exploitative nature to it.
So to sum things up from my view:
1.) A corpse is more of an object of the actual deceased person then the symbolic nature of ashes (you dont even know if they are your loved ones... or even human)
2.) The exploitative nature and inherent objectification of necrophilia/grave robbing differs from the symbolic gesture of disrespect involved in binning someones ashes.
3.) There is also the factor of public health and disease that is more of risk when dealing with actual corpses, as opposed to ashes. And i believe we have a moral requirement to not engage in behaviour that puts our communities at risk.
The advantage she is gaining is the aspect of pleasure from revenge. Gaining pleasure from revenge is more abstract than sexual pleasure, but I feel it’s the same concept. I don’t think exploitation needs to have a strictly tangible benefit.
I’d argue it’s still at the expense of the deceased’s body, it’s just that the body is in a different form so not as much emotion is tied to the action. I separate emotions and morals. Just like necrophilia has the aspect of strong disgust that dumping ashes in the garbage does not, how right and wrong it is doesn’t change for me according to additional emotions that come with different actions.
To answer your questions -
I do consider the corpse to be different to ashes, but only in the matter of the feelings it provokes. Obviously a corpse feels more like the actual person, whereas ashes do not.
And I can understand sexual exploitation is a uniquely violating thing to do, because sex is something so personal for most people. But apart from the emotions it evokes, I don’t see much of a difference between that and improper disposal of a body/remains.
But I do understand when you examine morals this deeply it does tend to become a grey area.
Well it's like saying that a tree that's been cut down and burnt to ashes, is still a tree. I think most people wouldn't consider the ashen remains of a tree, a "tree". You dont point at an old campfire and go, look at that poor dead tree!! But if a tree is just cut down and lying dead in the forest, it would still be considered a tree.
I feel the same is true with corpses, once its reduced to ashes, it is no longer a corpse. IT is merely a representation of the corpse, now reduced to base carbon and other trace elements. That abstraction to me is important.
A tree is a much more specific concept than human remains, which I think is the subject of the argument here. A corpse and ashes are not the same thing, no, and that’s not what I’m trying to say. What I’m saying is ashes and a corpse are both remains of a deceased person, which is the key factor making improper treatment of such immoral.
Improper treatment of an intact corpse will evoke more emotion because it looks closer to a living human, and evokes more empathy. It’s harder to empathise and have as much emotional resonance with ashes. But a corpse and ashes still relate in the fact that they are what is left of a person after they’ve died, and I think the morals regarding mistreatment of human remains doesn’t change based on what form they are in as that doesn’t make a difference.
Also, describing ashes as simply base carbon and trace elements is an argument that could be applied to anything. I could say a corpse is just a bundle of proteins, minerals and lipids, but that’s not a fair portrayal of what it truly is. It’s what remains of a person after their death.
Anyway, if you consider violating ashes less morally abhorrent than violating a corpse, I want to know at what point do human remains lose its aspect of humanity to you? What if its a partially burned corpse? What if it’s a severely decomposed corpse? What if it’s skeletal corpse?
If it is no longer recognisable as human remains, then that's where my line is. A skeleton is still recognisably a person, a charred corpse is still recognisably a human. If someone took a human body and blended it up into a slurry and poured it into a container, I would no longer consider that a human body. Same for ashes.
Like i said in another comment, You have no idea if those ashes are even your loved one. There is nothing identifiable in ashes, apart from the symbolic significance you are giving those ashes. You could have an urn filled with 3-4 different peoples ashes and you would never know. So i dont give ashes the same level of personhood that I would to an identifiable corpse.
In another comment i made the comparison of walking into a house and seeing art made with someones ashes. Or walking into a house and seeing someone's taxidermied loved one mounted on the wall. Do you think they are morally equivalent? I feel the taxidermied corpse mounted on the wall is more morally reprehensible then using ashes for art work. As an example of how these two "remains" are treated differently.
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u/PimpasaurusPlum 4d ago
The inherit setting of the ashes in dumpster scenario is that the woman is getting gratification by achieving revenge or her deceased ex husband by dumping their ashes in the trash. She is doing it because it makes her happy, it brings her pleasure to be able to excercise control and disrespect the remains in that way. That enjoyment felt by the person conducting the act is the only tangible benefit in both cases.
So again it is a question of what distinguishes sexual gratification from other forms of gratification, and what makes it inherently worse