Lawyers and philosophers have long debated whether law should enforce social morality. This paper explores whether law should improve social morality. It explains how this might be possible, and what sort of obstacles, factual and moral, there are to doing so. It concludes with an example: our law should attempt to improve our social morality of sexual conduct.

One of the most interesting features of the computer is its ability to create virtual environments. These environments allow us to interact with objects that are simulated by the computer and are not real. They thus allow us to realize actions that have no repercussions whatsoever on the non-virtual world. This seems to qualify virtual environments as an ideal playground to do all kinds of things that would be labelled ethically wrong if realized in the real world. Nevertheless, we have (...) the feeling that certain types of virtual actions – raping computer simulated girls for example – are not right at all, in spite of the fact that we know that no actual person is harmed by this. In the light of phenomena like virtual rape and violence, philosophical reflection on the ethical status of actions realized in virtual worlds has become inevitable. This paper will provide the groundwork for such a reflection, by answering the following questions: Can we apply the predicates of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to actions realized in virtual worlds? And if this turns out to be problematic, how can we explain our feeling of discomfort with certain types of virtual behaviour, i.e. our feeling that there is something ‘not at all right’ about, for example, virtual rape? These questions will be answered in the three sections of this paper.The first section deals with the necessary condition for the application of the predicates of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to virtual actions: freedom in the virtual environment.In the second section, we will endeavour to demonstrate that the fulfilment of this necessary condition is not sufficient when it comes to the application of these predicates to virtual actions.The last section explains how we can still be uncomfortable with certain virtual actions, even though the said actions escape ethical judgment. (shrink)

Diverse lines of evidence point to a basic human aversion to physically harming others. First, we demonstrate that unwillingness to endorse harm in a moral dilemma is predicted by individual differences in aversive reactivity, as indexed by peripheral vasoconstriction. Next, we tested the specific factors that elicit the aversive response to harm. Participants performed actions such as discharging a fake gun into the face of the experimenter, fully informed that the actions were pretend and harmless. These simulated harmful actions increased (...) peripheral vasoconstriction significantly more than did witnessing pretend harmful actions or to performing metabolically-matched non-harmful actions. This suggests that the aversion to harmful actions extends beyond empathic concern for victim harm. Together, these studies demonstrate a link between the body and moral decision making processes. (shrink)