I share conflicting opinions on this matter, on one hand, the primary logical (note: not emotional) argument against cannibalism is that carnivores prefer, for good and sound reasons, to kill and eat living, healthy animals. When you do this to a cow it's not a big deal; when you do it to a human, it's murder, and a very big deal.
Barring emergencies, you'd have to ensure that only naturally deceased persons were eaten. This reduces the appeal (old, skinny people aren't as tasty as young, healthy folks) and increases the health risks (i.E - you'd have to ensure they didn't die of a communicable disease).
HOWEVER: if you were able to resolve the above, there's absolutely not a single logical reason not to eat the dead. People (Americans in particular) are extremely touchy about death and dying, mostly because they live their entire lives in terror of dying. Thus they insist their corpses be venerated like living beings instead of rapidly-decaying sides of meat (which they are).
A dead body is an empty vessel. People who think otherwise are succumbing to superstition and fear. It no more benefits from veneration or respect than a dead cow. Once you're dead, you don't care.
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On the other hand, this is a human being. Like you, your family, friends, children who haven't even the ability to ask yet alone answer these questions. Just because they may be dead, or even in survival contexts it can never be called 'right'. What are you doing if you survive? What is survival now? Walking on the beach? Driving to work? Having a meal somewhere in a fine restaurant? 100 years ago, no one knew you'd exist, and in 100 years no one will care you did either. You owe to your species, which has lasted and will last far longer than your time on earth. You owe that respect, and you show it by not eating another human, dead or alive, stranger or close one, or any context. I'd rather die hungry and human than usurp what it means to be human.
If someone finds it right and another wrong, but you justify it to 'survive' you call into question a whole ball game of what's right and wrong, and before you know it we're exterminating an entire race because they apparently 'threaten our way of life', and it's 'justified', you're bombing an entire nation to destroy a minority, killing hundreds of thousands (War on terror) and calling it 'justified'. When you forge the first link of this chain, you bind yourself to a way of thinking, of feeling and desensitize the following generation.
If you learn to devalue something, you can learn to devalue anything, and what is right and wrong becomes subjective, and that's when all kinds of wrongs happen. Its how we turn a blind eye to suffering in the world, its how 6 million Jews were exterminated.
Logical or emotional, It is primitive, and survival does not give you the right, or make you right. It's wrong, it always was, and it always will be no matter the outcome. You have no divine or earthly right to say that it is, and certainly not if you're going to usurp your humanity in the first place.
I hear some friends and family saying they would, and it deeply disappoints and saddens me. No matter how many people agree it is ok, it will never change that it is wrong.
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But then I think to myself, Cannibalism is frowned upon for three main reasons - Desecration of the corpse, Slippery slope leading to murder, and human diseases.
The 'Desecration of a Corpse' argument is a purely cultural standpoint. For instance, a Christian would likely cringe at the thought of a Tibetan 'Sky Burial' where a body is dismembered and left on the top of a mountain for vultures to eat. In that culture, that process after death is considered respectful to the dead. The body is no longer housing the soul, so it can be disposed of without disrespecting the dead in any way.
Likewise, in some tribal cultures, cannibalism is the cultural norm.
Some Americans practice autocannibalism - when women eat their own placenta after childbirth. They're regarded as odd, and the practice a bit disgusting, but it's not as hated, despite the woman and sometimes her husband consuming a large portion of human flesh.
Second, is the 'Slippery Slope' argument. First the cannibal will be eating dead bodies, then they'll develop a taste for human flesh and go murder more people to get it! That's a logical fallacy.
There are plenty of instances of people resorting to cannibalism during times of famine, and easily going back to their normal food sources once they're not starving.
The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. Modern usage avoids the fallacy by acknowledging the possibility of this middle ground. For instance, someone who wishes to eat human flesh may ask hospitals to alternatively dispose of whatever healthy human tissue has been removed in operation, or after someone dies. Likewise, they may ask that the fat removed in liposuction be passed on to be used in cooking. There are plenty of ways to engage in cannibalism without actively killing someone.
The final argument is disease. Diseases can be passed on through eating human meat much easier than eating cow or chicken flesh, because the viruses are already attuned to human flesh. The main disease to spread this way is Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, basically Mad Cow disease for humans. However, it has been found that this disease is only dangerous when eating the flesh (especially the neural tissue) of someone who already has this disease, or it is passed on in a hereditary manner. By eating healthy human tissue, cooking thoroughly and avoiding the brain matter, one can make the eating of human flesh just as safe as a processed pig or chicken.
Such confusion is maddening at times.
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