Don’t worry, this time I will be much shorter than the last time. I will explain my positions regarding moral issues that are quite… controversial. And I am sure that some people will refuse to even read this to the end. But I still think my position has to be affirmed and I will refer to this essay if anyone is confused about my views.

First of all, we have to talk about why we care (or don’t care) about certain moral issues. I care about sentient beings. If a moral action affects not a single sentient being – something I am skeptical of, since we live in a closely connected universe – the moral action isn’t even a moral action to begin with; it’s an action just like any other physical event in the universe, such as rain or the moment a supernova occurs. Do you have moral concerns about a distant celestial object exploding?

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Anyway, this should clarify my position on necrophilia. Do I personally think it is disgusting? Yes. But many of the mistakes people make when talking about moral concerns is that they inject personal preferences regarding these subjects. There are things I judge disgusting – in the sense that I feel biologically nauseated by them – such as this (if you have a weak stomach in general, do not click on this link).

Do I think this is immoral? Aside from wasting food and resources that could be used for better means, the act of eating this – in my opinion, frankly disgusting – mixture of stuff is not immoral. It’s just disgusting. My whole point is that what we judge disgusting or not only applies to us personally; it shouldn’t be server as guidance to judge the moral actions of others. You think anal sex is disgusting? Don’t do it then, personally. But you shouldn’t use this to impose societal rules on others that might not share this personal preference. It is okay to have personal preferences, we all have them, more or less.

Now, what people were waiting for: what I think of necrophilia. Above, I said that I only care about sentient beings. This means that corpses – which are by definition dead and therefore ceased to be sentient – are not objects of my moral concern. My personal stance about my corpse is that I genuinely don’t care what they do with it, whether they bury it underground, burn it or molest it to generate sexual pleasure. I couldn’t care less. I will be dead by then, my consciousness won’t exist anymore. It is the moral equivalent of masturbating on a sunflower – don’t ask me what I envision by that.

I do think that rape and sexual abuse are highly important subjects to talk about and that we should always have empathy for victims of these crimes against someones autonomy. But this isn’t the case with corpses. In my opinion, we should treat corpses as objects that could be inherited by relatives and friends. If someone ejaculated on my laptop I wouldn’t be angry because I thought the laptop is sentient and therefore someone has violated it’s honor, but because I own the laptop and I don’t want semen stains on it.

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Therefore, we shouldn’t treat necrophilia as a crime or even an immoral act in this instance, but as a pure violation of someones personal property. Now, I haven’t thought deeply about what type of legislation I would ideally apply, especially considering the legal loopholes that someone could abuse for the most sinister reasons. But necrophilia in itself can’t be the problem. My personal disgust for it – and the fact that it might not be hygienic to sexually interact with a corpse – shouldn’t serve to morally condemn someone that does enjoy this.

Now, let’s move on sentient beings, which I do think matter in terms of moral judgement. First and foremost, we have to establish that individual adults that are capable of consenting should be able to do whatever they want in their privacy when it comes to sex. Of course, exceptions to this rule might exist, such as someone having a sexual fetish for cutting limbs off or other questions we might have about someones physical and mental health. But in general, in a modern and liberal society, we should give consenting adults the right to perform whatever sexual act they want, whether individually, in couples or even groups. If you disagree with this premise, everything below won’t make sense to you and the conversation shifted about what consent is or not. Not incest in itself.

The first time I have interested myself for the subject of incest (I mean, morally; I myself have no sexual interest in it) was watching a video of popular science publisher and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, which you can access here. It was a provocative moment, since I have never really thought about the subject and always considered it immoral by default. But it did plant the seed of doubt in me, which, to be quite honest, wasn’t difficult since I have never really cared about it. Many of our principles are just deeply planted in ourselves by our social environment, and they are worth being challenged. I would recommend reading Tauriq Moosa’s “Is Incest Wrong?“, which brilliantly summarizes many of my points as well.

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Anyhow, some of the counter-arguments – or better, attempts at countering the conception that incest is not immoral – is to say it is disgusting. Now, at this point I am pretty sure that the reader understands that personal preferences shouldn’t be used as moral guidance. So we can discard that. Another criticism is that incest generates birth defects and therefore is negatively affecting a person that has not consented to this (it is contentious that anyone consented to being born). I would actually agree to this, but with the detail that I would differentiate incest from inbreeding. Inbreeding is when incest happens but someone got pregnant. I think inbreeding is immoral, since it has a high chance of creating birth defects that can be very debilitating in terms of life quality of a person that has not consented to this.

My point is that incest and inbreeding are morally very different. Incest, as the pure act of affection (it also could be sex just for the act of pleasure and not love in the proper sense, but I hope you know what I mean) between individuals that are genetically rather closely related and does not produce any consequences to anyone else is perfectly fine. It should be judged just like any other relationship and condemnation of that is what I would consider rather immoral. If you don’t like incest and you feel repulsion by it: nobody is forcing you to anything. Or, well, nobody should force you to that. So I do obviously condemn the forced marriages around the world that implicate siblings and the sexual abuse that some parents inflict on their children. But as long as there is an even playing field when it comes to consent, incest is fine.

As a side note, my opposition to inbreeding is rather complicated. It invokes questions about who is allowed to reproduce; and this conversation has deep consequences. I think morally, you shouldn’t inbreed. Even though it isn’t certain, it will likely cause tremendous suffering to someone else. But we absolutely should talk about the subject of breeding rights – with intellectual honesty and empathy for those affected, of course.

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By far, I think the use of the naturalistic fallacy to justify any opposition to incest is hilarious. Humans and animals evolved mechanisms that prevent incest – ultimately, inbreeding – and therefore it must be wrong, because it isn’t natural. If you are familiar with fallacies, this is a classic one. The morality of an action is totally divorced from what we consider natural or not. The concept of “natural” is, to a materialist like me, very questionable in itself, let alone what it means morally.

The last opposition to incest that I want to address is that having affections for people that are close to you genetically is either a mental illness in itself or causes one. This is a claim I have seen no substance to it – why would we consider that a mental illness? The problem in bioethics as to what we consider an illness or not is a gigantic rabbit hole. It might be so deep, we metaphorically could reach the core of the Earth and come out on the other side. Simply put, I see no reason to label this affection an illness. Just because it isn’t statistically common – at least nowadays – shouldn’t be criteria for such. Otherwise, we might return to the middle age when being left-handed was an illness (or, in that time, a sin).

Perhaps the only evidence that I received about incest causing mental distress or illness was by a study that evaluated the consequences of non-consensual incest – or simply, rape. Yes, I am aware that rape causes trauma. This isn’t disputed, not even close. I oppose rape and condemn it thoroughly. But I haven’t seen any study about the effects of incest that involves consenting actors. I won’t bother linking the article I mentioned above since it has no relevance to the conversation, because I assume by default that rape is wrong.

Since this a controversial topic, I hope you have made it to the end without feeling any nausea. I do think we need to talk more about subjects that invoke disgust in common people, with reason and actual arguments.