One can't prove a negative.
Mathematicians prove negatives all the time - for instance, that any system powerful enough to generate arithmetic will not be complete (ie will contain truths for which there is no proof).
In this particular case you are the one asserting the negative - namely, that there are no moral obligations or constraints that constrain illustration and publication. I would expect you to have some reasons that support this assertion.
My argument is that there's no basis to say that such a decision is a moral one, when viewed via deontological ethics (e.g. in terms of the act of portraying an image, unto itself).
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I've explained my reasoning on this many times throughout this thread.
And my point is that mere assertion is not argument.
Anyway here is my counterarguent, also framed deontologically: it is wrong to demean others; some works of art are demeaning of others (eg as evidenced by their responses to them, some of which are found in this very thread); given that there is a general duty not to do what is wrong (everything else being equal), there is therefore a duty not to publish such works of art; for commercial publishers it is particularly likely that everything else will be equal, given that they have no countervailing interests of moral significance such as the need for personal authenticity.
Whether or not you (or anyone else) thinks this is a good argument, it clearly shows that
deontology has no particular significance in this context.
On the contrary, the issue of contextualization is an exceptionally strong argument, which I presume is why you haven't offered anything to refute it this far.
My objection is pretty clear: that you grossly exaggerate the difficulty of interpreting art and intentions. I ascertain intentions and honesty everyday in ordinary conversation, in watching advertisements, in reading books. Your typical fantasy illustrator is not Picasso. The work is not very subtle. And your contention that the words on a book to which a picture is an illustration have no bearing on construing the picture is not very plausible. I suppose it's conceivable that the girl in the red cloak on the front of my kids' copy of Little Red Riding Hood is not really the titular character - but even if that's conceivable, it's very unlikely.
Insofar as trying to ask what makes a specific action a specific action, I can only guess that you're asking for a level of detail so specific as to be virtually non-existent. Can you tell me what makes the act of running running, as opposed to jogging? Or hustling? Or walking very quickly?
The issue is not about vagueness. The issue is that in each of those cases - running, jogging, hustling, walking - the action is individuated by the result it produces (in those cases, various forms of movement via the legs).
Yet you claim that I can conceive of, and then evaluate, an action without reference to its result. All I'm asking is how, on this account, you individuate actions.
(I don't this literature as well as the moral philosophy literature, but the classic work I think of is Davidson's essays in the collection
Essays on Actions and Events.)
So you cite a source that you say backs your claims, and then can't cite a source for them? That's not a very credible way to present what you hold to be supporting evidence.
I am guessing that you have not heard of Duff or Gardner or Ashworth or Tasioulas or Pogge or Henry Shue until I posted their names in this thread. (I am assuming that you have heard before of Kant, Aquinas and Peter Singer - they are better known outside the field.)
There's nothing wrong with that - I don't expect non-philosophers to follow the field any more than I follow fields in which I don't work - but it makes your insistence on "evidence" a bit odd. I've given names. Google or Wikipedia will give you their writings. The chairs that they hold will show that they are eminent in their field.
But if you want some more detail, here are some suggestions: on versions of consequentialism and deontology I suggest Pogge's
Realizing Rawls, ch 1 - in which he articulates and defends what he takes to be Rawls' "contract consequentialism" - and then Pogge's later recantation of this view in
World Poverty and Human Rights, ch 1, in which he defends a non-consequentialist theory of human rights as a minimal theory of justice. (Among other things, what this will make clear is that the contrast between consequentialist and non-consequentialist morality is not about whether or not consequences matter, but about whether anything matters other than the effect that an action has on aggregate welfare: consequentialists deny that anything else matters, whereas deontologists assert that some other things matter to the evaluation of action.)
For a classic presentation of the mainstream contemporary theory of the criminal justice system defended by Duff, Gardner, Tasioulas, Tadros etc you might read Duff's
Trials and Punishments. For what I personally think is a powerful critique of this (but not one that entails morality has no bearing on law) you could read Scott Veitch's
Law and Irresponsibility. (But Veitch's work is not, in my view, mainstream.)
