I'm pointing out that if you hold that there's a positive duty (I'm paraphrasing here) "to portray women asexually unless the context has a sexual dimension" (something that I find much too ambiguous), then that's going to run afoul of a negative duty to "not suppress creative expression."
No.
For instance, many philosophers (Aquinas, Singer, Pogge, Tasioulas, Shue, just to name some of the better known) think there is a positive duty to supply food to the starving, and also think there is a negative duty not to rob people. Those duties don't have to come into conflict: Aquinas, for instance, said that when a poor person steals from a rich person it is not really robbery because the rich person doesn't really have ownership rights in the thing taken; while Pogge puts forward a model of taxation and property rights in which the needs of the starving can be satisfied without anyone having to be robbed.
Similarly, if there were any such duty as you describe it would not colfict with a duty not to suppres, unless I (or someone else) were to enforce that duty by suppressing. Which, to date, no one in this thread has advocated. Exhortation isn't coercion.
But in any event, I have not argued for a duty of the sort you describe. No one on this thread is calling for women to be portrayed asexually - the criticism is of women being portrayed as hyper sexualised for the pleasure of the imputed male viewer - and the only duty I have advoctaed is one of not portraying all women as hypersexualised in this particular way without regard to context and content.
I'm simply saying that there are some actions that don't have a moral dimension to them.
That is a contentious claim, although not necessarily false for that reason. But you seem to be equating "permissible but not obligatory" with "no moral dimension", and that would be a mistake. Raz and his followers, for instance, think that there are actions which are permissible but not obligatory, but it doesn't follow that they have no moral dimension - part of what makes them permissible is that they realise value, and part of what makes them not obligatory is that there is no obligation on any particular person to realise that particular value.
But even if there are actions with no moral dimension, that does not entail that there are categories of decision - such as deciding what to publish - upon which morality has no bearing. The mainstream view, I think, is that "what I should do all things considered" is intimately connected to "what I should do, morally speaking"; but even those who want to emphasise the distinction beteen these two things nevertheless think that morality is
relevant to deciding what I should do, all things considered.
It's permissible to make those decisions without considering a moral dimension because any virtue injected into those actions is, by definition, above and beyond the call of duty (e.g. it's not immoral if you fail to act virtuously there).
This is a non-sequitur. Suppose, for instance, that it's superogatory rather than obligatory to try and rescue my neighbour from a blazing hiousefire. It doesn't follow that I can decide whether or not to attempt the rescue without considering any moral dimension. In fact, I have to consider the moral dimension in order to determine that attemting the rescue would be superogatory, and hence that I am permited not to attempt it.
You seem to be running together "relevant considerations" (which moraity always is, at least in the mainstream contemporary view) and "determinative considerations" (which on at least some views morality is not).
It doesn't matter, morally, if I choose vanilla or chocolate ice cream. It doesn't matter, morally, if I choose to listen to the radio or watch television.
I can fairly easily construct cases where that does matter - eg if you know that, by ordering the chocolate, you will engender the suffering of many people, whereas this won't be so when you order the vanilla, and if nothing else is at stake in choosing a flavour (eg it's not like you have to order the chocolate to stay true to yourself), then it does matter, morally, which you order.
Now let's change the example from one of ordering vanilla or choclocate, to one of ordering steak or salad. In that case Peter Singer has a well-known argument that it certainly does matter. You might disagree with Singer, of course, but you don't show he's wrong simply by asserting that ordering of food is not, per se, a moral matter. Because that claim is precisely what he claims to have refuted.
Likewise, if you are going to contend that choice of what to publish is never morally significant then you have to offer some argument that actualy engaged with those who say that it does make a difference when what you're publishing is (say) hate speech, or some other form of morally or politicaly suspect material.
As I said, I don't know any mainstream philosopher who would take that view. From moderns Aristoteleans like Raz and his followers, to Kantians like Onora O'Neill, to consequentialists like Singer, all would think that, before you say or publish something, you should think about its moral value. (Nietzscheans would also agree, I think, that you shuold think about its value, but would contest the idea that this should be moral value. I'm not thinking of them as mainstream, though, at least in English-language philosophy.) Which isn't to say that any of them would advocate suppresion (though some might) - that's a further question. They're talking about the individual's duty as a publisher, not the duty of others to control that person.
It doesn't matter, morally, if I choose to paint a picture of a sailboat or a bowl of fruit...or anything else that I paint on the canvas.
This is mere assertion. What is the argument? I would also say that you make it easy for yourself, with your examples of boats and fruits. I don't want to break board rules, so I won't push the limits, but the claim that (say) the decision to paint a picture of a child in a sexual pose has no moral dimension to it is a slightly harder one to defend, I think. Appeals to intuition won't be enough.
I would suggest that you need to study a great deal more moral philosophy, of any stripe.
My best work in moral philosophy has been published in Philosophy and Public Affairs. I'm pretty well-read in the field, given that I am a tenured academic who teaches and publishes in the area. Rather than telling me I need to study a great deal more, you'd do better at persuading me by actually naming some mainstream moral philosopher who would agree with you that moral considerations have no bearing on decisions about what to publish.
Even Milton Friedman (who is not a philosopher, but who has relevant views nevertheless), who famously said that corporations have no duties other than to pursue profits, was taking it for granted that the government would establish regulations around corporate activity such that the money-making aims of corporations would be aligned with moral requirements. So he didn't regard moral considerations as having no bearing on decisions about production - he was rather arguing for a division of labour, in which government would ensure moral requirements are met by structuring market incentives in the right way.
That's also quite different from deontological ethics
I'm not sure what you are referring to by "that", but John Gardner, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, is a pretty major figure in contemporary deontological moral philosophy. His views aren't quite different from deontological ethics. They
are instances of deontological ethics. His view that the criminal law would be illegitimate if it did not track morality is itself a view within deontological ethics. Whereas utilitarians notoriously seem to be commited to a different view of the criminal law, namely that it should not condemn immoral action - ie action that failed to maximally promote welfare (that being the utilitarian criterion of morality) - but rather should condemn or praise in such a way as to maximally promote welfare.
You're confusing a lack of specificity in the action for a necessity on calculating the consequences in order to make a determination.
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You're falling into a consequentialist trap here, which is understandable given where you admitted you're coming from in approaching this question, but still makes the mistake of conflating various "types" of consequences, with some being "contingent" parts of the action itself in an attempt to reconcile the difference between them. Personally, I disagree with that particular philosophy, as I find it to be disingenuous at best (e.g. "consequences don't matter, except when they do").
I don't really follow this, but my question to you is: if you think that actions matter morally, how do you individuate them except by reference either to their results (whether internal and therefore necessary, or whether contingent) or to their intended results?
