There's that saying that reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
I don't think the harm of grave robbing is real in this sense. It distresses people to know about the grave robbing. If they don't know about it, what damage does it actually do?
And if people are taking care that victims remain ignorant, such that no harm occurs, what is the appropriate amount to care?
Lying or hiding truth causes harm. If grave robberies are being covered up, it means that the government or some other institution is lying or at the very least shielding the truth. If people do not have access to reliable truth, they won't be able to make reasonable decisions, which can result in real harm.
This is an assertion. What harm is this lie causing? Anything more concrete than "it upsets the moral balance of the universe"?
> If people do not have access to reliable truth, they won't be able to make reasonable decisions, which can result in real harm.
Can you provide an example of a real harm, or of a real decision that would be affected by this?
There is a whole social context to it. It could teach people that it's ok to disrespect grieving people. Or a sliding scale that would eventually make lying ok in general and/or other contexts.
On a societal scale these things do have a bigger impact even when in one case itself no damage seems to have been done.
> Can you provide an example of a real harm, or of a real decision that would be affected by this?
Not exactly because they're consequences beneath people's directly observable behaviour. It's also long term.
The social the fabric in this world is actually important, even though I cannot quantify it.
I wonder how you'd feel about this then: If someone cut out your brain while you were sleeping, and put it into a sufficiently high-quality simulation world, while simultaneously doing the same to all the people in your life who would care about you and thus be aggrieved - would that be perfectly fine, as long as they pulled it off smoothly enough that no one ever noticed?
To me that would be violent; I'd prefer people not do that - to me or others - regardless of how smoothly they can pull it off.
> This is an assertion. What harm is this lie causing?
Being lied to is arguably a harm itself, regardless of any concrete damages that may arise. It's disrespecting a person's autonomy and ability to know the truth. This isn't some crazy new theory, if you haven't heard of it before, I'd suggest you read Kant.
However, on a purely utilitarian and practical level, lying also causes concrete harm. Let's go back to the original example of grave robbers. If you knew that whatever valuables you buried with the departed would just be dug up again and stolen, you probably wouldn't bury them. Thus grave robbers are stealing from you pretty directly.
For those who remain skeptical about the intrinsic value of trust, it can be seen that trust is a foundation of economic efficiency: https://ourworldindata.org/trust
Life is rarely black and white, although it sure makes it simple to say it is. “Never say never, always avoid always”, etc.
I have to assume that what you mean by society is no the same I mean by society. Society gives such basic things as language (not any particular language, but the existence of any language).
Most of us are in perpetual debt to society, deriving from it much more value than we can ever hope to give back.
This is society.
Just because you don’t hold this belief doesn’t make it false— it can be neither proved nor disproved by any known method (short of dying yourself). Society has generally agreed to respect each individual’s beliefs in these cases, and each person is entitled to some direction of their own affairs after they have passed; this is why wills are enforceable.