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Sex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2009

Jonathan Webber
Jonathan Webber
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Abstract

The sexual domain is unified only by the phenomenal quality of the occurrence of the desires, activities, and pleasures it includes. There is no conceptual restriction on the range of intentional objects those desires, activities, and pleasures can take. Neither is there good conceptual reason to privilege any class of them as paradigmatic. Since the quality unifying the sexual is not morally significant, the morality of sexuality is no different from morality in general. The view that participant consent is morally sufficient in the sexual domain therefore requires the more controversial view that it is morally sufficient in general.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 233 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2009

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References

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43 This paper has been greatly improved by discussion at work-in-progress seminars in the Centre for Ethics in Medicine and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bristol in autumn 2007 and at the Sexual Ethics Workshop at the University of Bristol on 9th May 2008.