Morality: Actions Vs. Inaction Vs. Thoughts?

[paximperium]

This is not a poll so no Planet X option.

So here is the question; should a person's morality be judged by their actions, thoughts or inaction?

Here is the scenario:
A Mother beats her child every day(use whatever threshold for excessive you want) for being naughty but mom believes this is for the good of the child. She provides everything for the child including affection.

The Aunt lives with them and thinks it is very very wrong but does nothing, never speaks up against it and never calls the cops.

The Uncle lives with them but is sexually lusting after the child, he is a closet pedophile but is way too cowardly to act out(use whatever justification you want, religion, the law etc.) but fantasizes about raping the child every day. However he does the "right" thing and calls the cop on the mom.

From whatever moral position you adhere to:
Was the mother wrong is beating her child? She believed it was for the child's own good after all. What if mom was also beaten as a child and she believes this is the normal way of doing things?
What if mother only beats the child once a week, a month or only when mom is angry?

Was the inaction of the Aunt wrong? What if she had a justification for it; a good one(fear of reprisal from family) or perhaps a bad one(she would be embarrassed)?

Is the Uncle's thoughts wrong? He has never acted on it. What if we had the technology to read his mind? What if you knew that he would act it out if he could get away with it? What about his actions?

PS: This question arises from an interesting discussion I had with a theist in another board concerning morality of thoughts vs. actions(the whole "Should atheist get into heaven if his actions were good but thoughts were blasphemous.") I can bring up that issue later but let's just keep to this topic.

Discuss away.

 

[Darat]

By "beat up" I assume you mean cause the child physical harm? If so:

The mother's action's are "morally" wrong, as are the Aunt's.

The uncle - if we have enough information to be able to asses the risk the uncle poses to the child we can make a determination whether he needs to have his access to the child subscribed. From your scenario there isn't enough information for me to say if he poses such a risk to the child.

 

[paximperium]

The uncle - if we have enough information to be able to asses the risk the uncle poses to the child we can make a determination whether he needs to have his access to the child subscribed. From your scenario there isn't enough information for me to say if he poses such a risk to the child.

Let's say he poses absolutely zero risk except for being in close proximity so that the child that is an object of his fantasies. The most he will ever do is "innocent" touching.

He is too cowardly to act out but if he could, he would. Lets assume he is too cowardly to act out even until his death.

 

[Darat]

You put innocent in quotation marks?

To the other point if he poses no risk to the child then he can think whatever he likes.

 

[paximperium]

You put innocent in quotation marks?

Yes. It is innocent unless you can read his mind.

I'll chime in later.

 

[Fredrik]

From whatever moral position you adhere to:
Was the mother wrong is beating her child? She believed it was for the child's own good after all. What if mom was also beaten as a child and she believes this is the normal way of doing things?
What if mother only beats the child once a week, a month or only when mom is angry?

Ignorance is no excuse. If it was, Mohammad Atta would be a hero. Neither is anger. And "only once a week"!? Seriously, if you get beat up once a week, would you think it's OK because it's only once a week?

Was the inaction of the Aunt wrong? What if she had a justification for it; a good one(fear of reprisal from family) or perhaps a bad one(she would be embarrassed)?

Of course it's wrong. If her "justification" is anything less than that she had a very good reason to think that she will be murdered if she speaks up, then it's not good enough.

Is the Uncle's thoughts wrong? He has never acted on it. What if we had the technology to read his mind? What if you knew that he would act it out if he could get away with it? What about his actions?

He's not harming anyone, so who cares what he thinks. If he would actually do it if he thought he could get away with it, that makes him "evil" by any reasonable definition, but you asked about what he's doing, not what he is.

PS: This question arises from an interesting discussion I had with a theist in another board concerning morality of thoughts vs. actions(the whole "Should atheist get into heaven if his actions were good but thoughts were blasphemous.") I can bring up that issue later but let's just keep to this topic.

Theists usually define their morality by a fixed set of rules, rather than from knowledge about which sort of actions actually cause harm. If they enforce rules that are likely (or certain) to cause harm, then this puts them firmly in the same category as the Aunt and Mohammad Atta. Ignorance is no excuse.

Regarding the heaven issue, I can understand if this "God" character doesn't want to let a certain kind of people into his home. He might find their presence disturbing, even if they deserve to be rewarded for suppressing some evil urge for decades. He doesn't seem to care much about what people actually deserve.

 

[madurobob]

Agree w/Frederik & Darat

As Darat says, if we assume the mother is causing physical harm then her actions are morally wrong whether she feels she's doing it for noble reasons or not. The aunt's actions are also morally wrong because she knows the mother's actions are wrong and takes no action.

The uncle? Who cares about his fantasies? The point is they are only fantasies - he does not act on them. I don't think you can consider him morally wrong for having a fantasy that he does not act on because he knows it would be wrong to do so. But, he does the morally right thing by doing something about the mother's abuse of her son.

 

[fromdownunder]

Yes. It is innocent unless you can read his mind.

I'll chime in later.

If you can read his mind, then he is still innocent, because we know that he will not act out his desire - his mind tells us that. Since you said we can use any reason for him not taking action, my reason is that will not act because he knows that it is morally wrong to do so, hence his non-action is the moral thing to do.

Norm

.

 

[MG1962]

The means never justfies the cause

 

[Lord Muck oGentry]

This is not a poll so no Planet X option.

So here is the question; should a person's morality be judged by their actions, thoughts or inaction?




Discuss away.

Righto.
Action or inaction can be right or wrong. Unbidden thought cannot be right or wrong, although it may be good or bad. Dwelling on it may be wrong, since that may lead to wrong action.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Well, in Buddhism and the Ancient Greek philosophies (The only philosophies that matter, everything went downhill after them ), cultivation of the mind/soul is held highly, and it is generally accepted that this includes right actions and right though/intention/reason. To live a moral live, you need both.

And, of course, that is why these things are pointless. We can say that X's thoughts don't matter, but that is because we are not X. The only morality we should concern ourselves that of which we have ownership.

But, if we follow the modern utilitarian thought, we obviously get a different answer. Which is also why any debate seems pointless to me, because discussion will simply reveal that we are operating on different systems of morality.

 

[thull]

morality is a popularity contest.

Find a culture that fits with your actions, inactions, thoughts and you can be in the majority trying to regulate and judge others actions, inactions and thoughts.

Ideally people should look at all options and choose the best available option or try to come up with an even better option if the available ones aren't ideal. However, most people will still just rely on doing what the people they try to imitate aspects of do or just go the easy route of whatever seems easiest for survival.

The topic is interesting, but as tsukasa pointed out: pointless. Are there any universal morals? is far more productive starting point.

 

[thull]

Moral realism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of human opinion.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct which is held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. Morals are created by and define society, philosophy, religion, or individual conscience.

Moral skepticism denotes a class of metaethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal, claim that moral knowledge is impossible.

Definitions from Wikipedia

So the basis for morality is either "it always exists", "it exists when people create it", "it doesn't exist" or somewhere in between which leaves for a lot of room for interpretation.

Judging by the views shared thus far, doesn't even seem like we're taking morality into the equation. Abuse and neglect are (or may be depending on your country/state's laws) illegal.

 

[fromdownunder]

Judging by the views shared thus far, doesn't even seem like we're taking morality into the equation. Abuse and neglect are (or may be depending on your country/state's laws) illegal.

Well, morality is subjective and not objective. It depends on the view of the tribe making the laws what is and is not moral.

Anyway, that is for another thread. This one is specifically about a hypothetical, and, you guessed it, about individual perceptions as to what is or is not moral. As morality hypotheticals always are.

Norm

 

[Kopji]

I hope this does not turn out too wordy... For me, looking for an objective 'moral' guide to right and wrongness doesn't help, and is asking the wrong questions.

It seems more useful to think of this as a situational problem that has one or more potential ethical solutions. Looked at this way the 'problem' becomes how to ethically view the situation from various perspectives and then act as rightly as we can. The more perspectives we can accurately consider, the more rightly a 'solution' emerges.

The child, mother, aunt, and uncle all offer behaviors and perspectives that act as different weights or values to the eventual ethical response.

From whatever moral position you adhere to:
Was the mother wrong is beating her child? She believed it was for the child's own good after all. What if mom was also beaten as a child and she believes this is the normal way of doing things?
What if mother only beats the child once a week, a month or only when mom is angry?

So rather than trying to find an answer in how wrong everyone was, a solution that highly values the good of the child seems most 'good'.

To look for an 'ethical problem' answer, I would place what is 'good' for the child foremost and usually I would define 'good' as being an environment that is nurturing. Does the presence of the mother in that environment help or hinder? Same with the aunt and uncle. I can include 'potential consequences' into my ethics: We want a long term ethical solution that is nurturing for the child, what roles could mom, the aunt, and uncle play in that?

Morality pitfall: What if the child turned out to be the offspring of Satan, or actually enjoyed the beatings? Would we still be right in standing up for the child? Extreme example, but no different than the other clauses intended to muddle the morality pool. It does illustrate my skepticism at valuing moral fault finding over ethical problem solving.

I would say that we share a human desire to protect the weak or helpless. We evolved as social animals, and the long evolution has consequences that we call 'humanity'. We don't need a god in order to believe that.

Was the inaction of the Aunt wrong? What if she had a justification for it; a good one(fear of reprisal from family) or perhaps a bad one(she would be embarrassed)?

Do you see how I would think that looking for the 'wrong' in this only contributes to not focusing on finding an ethical solution? So what if she was right or wrong? More likely it is all gray.

Is the Uncle's thoughts wrong? He has never acted on it. What if we had the technology to read his mind? What if you knew that he would act it out if he could get away with it? What about his actions?

And maybe if the child were ever in danger the uncle would be the only one willing to jump in and save the child's life. Or maybe, the uncle has acted on his sexual impulses with other children but not this one. Or maybe, the presence of the child is the only thing keeping him from tipping over the edge and acting on his impulses... Again, with morality these are undoubtedly very heavy matters, but if we were to focus on what our ethical response should be - I would decide that this is much like the distraction of the aunt.

PS: This question arises from an interesting discussion I had with a theist in another board concerning morality of thoughts vs. actions(the whole "Should atheist get into heaven if his actions were good but thoughts were blasphemous.") I can bring up that issue later but let's just keep to this topic.

I was taught that the sin was in the thoughts. If I thought about doing something wrong, it was not different than if I had done it. Actions were just the sin made manifest. (And people wonder why religion is so good at the production and maintenance of guilt.)

Probably like many other atheists, I find it difficult to imagine being part of a heaven that includes so petty and small a God: one who is so insecure that he/she/it cared what I thought about them or worshiped them or not. This does not seem much like a moral question though, as one about the geography of heaven. What is a heaven like where the the inhabitants are either ignorant of all the eternal suffering in hell, or know of it and can sing happy songs?

 

[Darat]

Really good post Kopji and I pretty much agree with you. But there is always the problem of "paralysis by analysis". We don't and can't have perfect knowledge so at times we do have to make a determination along the lines of the opening post's hypothetical. In many cases even not making a decision is in effect making a decision.

 

[JetLeg]

This is not a poll so no Planet X option.

So here is the question; should a person's morality be judged by their actions, thoughts or inaction?

Here is the scenario:
A Mother beats her child every day(use whatever threshold for excessive you want) for being naughty but mom believes this is for the good of the child. She provides everything for the child including affection.

The Aunt lives with them and thinks it is very very wrong but does nothing, never speaks up against it and never calls the cops.

The Uncle lives with them but is sexually lusting after the child, he is a closet pedophile but is way too cowardly to act out(use whatever justification you want, religion, the law etc.) but fantasizes about raping the child every day. However he does the "right" thing and calls the cop on the mom.

From whatever moral position you adhere to:
Was the mother wrong is beating her child? She believed it was for the child's own good after all. What if mom was also beaten as a child and she believes this is the normal way of doing things?
What if mother only beats the child once a week, a month or only when mom is angry?

Was the inaction of the Aunt wrong? What if she had a justification for it; a good one(fear of reprisal from family) or perhaps a bad one(she would be embarrassed)?

Is the Uncle's thoughts wrong? He has never acted on it. What if we had the technology to read his mind? What if you knew that he would act it out if he could get away with it? What about his actions?

PS: This question arises from an interesting discussion I had with a theist in another board concerning morality of thoughts vs. actions(the whole "Should atheist get into heaven if his actions were good but thoughts were blasphemous.") I can bring up that issue later but let's just keep to this topic.

Discuss away.

I think that when such question arise, we need to define new terms. Instead of staying with our obscure terms of "good" and "bad", we should define terms that mean "Good intent", "good action". And if we had such terms, we could just say that the intent was bad, the action was good, and that to ask whether the "intent+action" was bad or good makes no sense.

Though it isn't much of an answer..