“if you think public nudity, public pornographic displays, and mistreatment of corpses should be illegal mainly because they are offensive, explain in general terms just when it is that the state is justified in interfering with a person’s liberty to prevent offense.”
-my final paper for philosophy 001
i of course intend to write the paper myself, but i appreciate the genius of the Teeming Millions, and i was hoping i might get some feedback/ideas.
i’ll share my glorious A with the boards…
thanks!
If your main argument is a challenge to your reader to disprove your thesis, you’ll probably get a zero. As a rhetorical move, it looks a bit cowardly, at least.
Oh, that’s the question!
You could argue that the disruption to public order is the basis for a justifiable infringement of personal liberty (I’d lean on the mistreatment of corpses point; if you somehow work sodomy and the reader’s dead mother into that discussion, you’ll have a good start). Deny that a society can function when personal liberty is absolute (establishing that some infringements are justified). Democracy is predicated, in part, on the idea that restrictions on personal liberty are justified when they are minimal and necessary for the existance of civil order that makes a free society possible.
Now let’s just get clear on this point. The question reads:
I would simply deny that I think that, claim exemption from any responsibility for explaining any such thing, and demand my “A”.
No muss, no fuss. Definitely the choice solution of geniuses everywhere.
i’m not quite brave enough to pull that one…
i feel like this will end up being a ridiculously semantic argument no matter where i begin, which is why i appealed to the boards. i don’t personally agree that laws can be predicated on the offense principle (meaning that something can be made illegal on the basis that it causes offense). my argument is mainly that things like public porn etc. disrupt society based on cultural norms. but, if these things were to be legal, then the cultural norms would shift, so that’s weak argument. the only other idea i have is enforcing the prevailing morality, but morality often equals religion, and church is not supposed to = state. the idea that things can be made illegal because they offend people. that’s first amendment. so what other principle is there?? i don’t particularly want desecration of corpses to be legal, but i would like to respect my john stuart mill libertarian practices, too. i’m in a quandary. sigh.
Mistreatment of corpses can be easily proscribed based simply on the hazard that improperly handled carrion can pose to the public health, without appealing to, or discovering for the state, a right to proscribe behavior based upon its potential to offend.
Some people are offended by the waste of real estate entailed by cemeteries; others are offended that people have the option of cremation; still others are okay with interment or cremation, but are offended by the fact that composting of the corpse is unnaturally delayed by embalming. So you see, there is no possible way to deal with the existence of a dead body without offending somebody (well, there is one. “Soylent Green is people!”). 
As this is a philosophy course, and you have just admitted that you actually don’t believe in the initial thesis (of the question), I would say that the only authentic option available to you is to truthfully acknowledge the fact, and proceed to the next item on the test.
It’s not necessarily a weak argument. If you say that cultural norms are simply “whatever’s acceptable at this time”, then you imply that there is nothing normative in society other than laws; in other words, tradition, history, cultural identity don’t or shouldn’t matter at all. But then, what is law based on but prevailing norms? Ditch cultural norms as a foundation of law, and law has no more foundation. What’s the constitution, if not a set of such norms enshrined and made very difficult to change?
Your statement that morality = religion is a little too blunt. Many philosophers have articulated non-religious schemes for morals, any one of which has a role for tradition, history, and public offense. Look at Richard Rorty for references to several philosophers for whom morality is a collective ‘we-feeling’, a sense in each individual that moral responsibility arises from a shared community identity. Start there, and you can demonstrate that offense to the community undermines the community itself.
The trick is to avoid being easily refutable by arguing that offense is never allowable or justified. As I understand the question, you’re being asked to draw the line where the offense to others justifies legal restrictions. For me, public nudity and pornography are not justifiably restricted; desecration of corpses is. Find the difference there and write about it.
You might want to rephrase your thesis. Begin by putting it into the third person… 
Will you forget the phrasing?
Public nudity is good. It’s the only way I swim, in front of a beach full of clothing-optional citizens.
Pornography doesn’t exist. End of story.
In my not-so-humble opinion, however you want to abbreviate that.