Presumably, given that you think that moral philosophy ultimately comes down to a personal system of beliefs, you don't think there is much difference between calling something wrong, and expressing a pesonal dislike. So I don't really understand your contrast.
First, morality does come down to a set of personal beliefs; there is no objectively-correct system of morality.
The contrast is here is that while I believe that artwork is, at best, supererogatory, I wanted to debate with the people who felt that it could be held to the level of positive duties - which is different from making a statement of personal taste. There's a difference between not liking something and finding it immoral, even if both are personal judgments.
No. I'm showing that you're wrong to assert that the negative duty you referred to, and the positive duty you referred to, conflict. That you have a duty to X, and a negative right not to be forced to X, are not in conflict. The only conflict that would arise is someone tried to force you to X. And no one here is trying to force anyone to do anything. They are not "suppressing" (your word) or "censoring" (a word others have used) anything. They are simply exhorting WotC to do one thing rather than another.
You're misstating the negative duty here. It's not a right not to be "forced" to do anything. It's a duty not to suppress someone else's creative expression because it disagrees with your value system. There's no "forcing" going on.
No one is asking for actions to be "curbed". They are asking for people not to perform them. In this context, they are asking them not to create offensive/sexist/racist things.
Asking for something to be "curbed" is asking for something not to be performed; what distinction are you drawing here? In this instance, they're asking for people not to create things that they disagree with. If that's because they personally don't care for it, that's one thing. If it's because they find such things to be immoral, then I disagree with that particular value judgment.
Do you have any theory of how people can fulfill this duty in an environment in which the work in question is produced only if there is a commercial market for it? For instance, am I obliged to buy copies of every work every person in the world wants to publish? What if I run out of money? Or what to spend my money on other things?
You're confusing two separate things here, since not buying something is not controlling the distribution. Likewise, the instance of judging what to publish or not publish based on marketability issues is not a moral quandary.
But you have presented no argument that deciding to portray image X rather than image Y is not a decision to which moral considerations are relevant.
One can't prove a negative. 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).
It would be nice to see some arguments for these claims. (That a picture is not a real person is true. But production of it is still an action. What is the argument that there are some actions upon which morality has no bearing as to whether or not we may, or ought to, perform them?)
You have not actually produced any argument that images cannot, by their nature, be offensive, sexist or racist.
See above. I've explained my reasoning on this many times throughout this thread. If you want to say that something
has a particular quality, you're the one who needs to support that theory (insofar as such a thing can be supported, since this is still coming down to personal value systems).
And your arguments that particular images aren't sexist because perhaps (for instance) the picture is of a woman arching her back after tripping while walking to a cocktail party is pretty weak - in part because you haven't really addressed the question of why the artist thinks that, of all the things in the world that might be drawn, that image is worth presenting.
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.
The question of "why" the artist painted something a particular way could not be less relevant. Their motivations are impossible to determine; even if they flat-out tell you why they did, you can't determine if they're being honest or not. There's a reason why intent doesn't matter when determining the morality of an action (save for the question of if intent exists or not).
I'm not going to refer you to particular pages in essays or books by Gardner, Duff et al - their works are well-known by those who work in the field and Google or Wikipedia will give you lists of their principal works.
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.
On the issue of authority - you are the one who introduced technical notions from moral philosophy (eg the character of deontological vs consequentialist reasoning) into the debate, as if they made a difference.
They make a difference insofar as they allow a framework for facilitating the discussion of morality - otherwise it tends to be difficult to describe something that's this intrinsic for most people. It was you who started citing specific individuals as an appeal to authority.
My view is that they don't - the only consequentialist argument being made in this thread is the "marketing" one, that racist/sexist artwork loses customers - and unless you think that WotC has a duty to publish such artwork even if that costs its customers then that particular consequentialist argument looks pretty sound to me, assuming its empirical premises are sound.
Leaving aside the uncertainty in just how much the nature of the artwork actually affects sales (as well as the fact that you couched your personal statement of belief - that this unspecified artwork is "racist/sexist" - as something objective), I don't have an objection to that particular argument. However, I choose to look at the question posed in this thread - what WotC "should" do - as beng in a moral context, through which I view it deontologically and respond accordingly.
But the main argument being run by posters on this thread - namely, that sexist and racist artwork is wrong because derogatory, offensive et al - is a quintessential example of a deontological argument.
It is, and I refute that argument for the reasons specified above. Artwork, regardless of its content, is never morally wrong.
In contending that it's not, for instance because it turns in part (but not completely) on the hurt felt by those who are derided by such artwork, all you show is that you don't understand what contrasts deontological and consequentialist arguments in moral philosophy.
You're confusing a debate over where to set specific actions on the tiers of duty with a different form of moral philosophy altogether, here. It's entirely possible for two deontologists to disagree.
Your political and moral opinions are your own business, and no concern of mine. My only concern in responding to you on these points is with technical accuracy in my professional field. (And on this point, I note that you use the phrase "what action is it", but give no account of what makes an action the action that it is. In particular, you have not provided an account of the individuation of actions that does not make reference either to the results, or the intended results, of the action - be those results internal and necessary, or contingent.)
You say that, but you've made statements of moral judgment and evaluation above, so I look with skepticism on your claim that you're only concerned with the technical accuracy of what constitutes deontology. Even then, that's something of a tricky needle to thread, since it seems to rely on nothing more than judging someone's stated value system for its fidelity to how an authority figure defined that system (which necessarily breaks down when you realize that there are plenty of schools of thought about any moral philosophy, and so checking for strict adherence to one or the other is futile).
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?
