0

Does impersonation heighten the evil of an immoral behaviour, perhaps similarly to illegality? I tend to think of just laws doing exactly that, and suspect that impersonating, e.g. by identity theft, another (pretending to be you to steal your property or rape your wife) does something similar, and even wondered if the answer tells us something about the the law.

For some reason, I reminded of Mocnik's argument for human rights, via an enunciatory principle, but in terms of crimes against humanity, though I don't expect anyone to address that here (whether my identity being my own could be a basis of how my human rights can be violated).

4
  • Ok, but I don't think that the second case in your parentheses list counts as identity theft, by any definition I know of. Identity theft is more about using someone's online accounts to do more than just steal from them, but to acquire additional resources and privileges and exploit those. It is sort of like infiltrating an organization to use their abilities and resources. I don't know if there is something that makes it more bad, beyond causing a lot of disruption and harm to the victim that they need to get corrected, and placing their ability to pay for their needs at risk.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Jul 7 at 21:27
  • yeah i didn't mean it (just) in the internet sense @ScottRowe more like this maybe
    – andrós
    Commented Jul 7 at 21:30
  • it's not a great question, as i doubt anyone has written about it in philosophy @ScottRowe maybe i should delete
    – andrós
    Commented Jul 8 at 1:27
  • 1
    It sounds a bit like the idea of hate crimes. Yeah, targeting someone for aspects of themselves not really in their control makes it worse. How much worse? Impersonation adds to stealing to make it worse. How much, and in what ways? So, we have Judges for that, mostly. But if you can sharpen the question, you might get some good feedback.
    – Scott Rowe
    Commented Jul 8 at 12:49

0

You must log in to answer this question.