Question - are actions equal to morality?

[dmallind]

Interesting question raised as a sidebar elsewhere. There is no best forum for this but many ethical/moral questions tend to gravitate to R/T territory anyway so I'll put it here.

Being a utilitarian (of the act/rule hybrid stripe) it's a simple question to me: Yes. I do not care if you want to beat me to death or rape my family members as long as you do not. It does not harm me, or anyone beyond a small increase in your stress level, if you simply wish to see me a bloody lifeless pulp as long as you don't start a course of events to make me one. I'm neither masochistic nor immune to self-image BTW. I would much prefer you did not want these things, but only for my own pride not for any view of your morality.

The origin of this question however came from a poster who is at least usually thoughtful if not along my own lines of thought, with the clear implication that they considered actions and morality to be separate things entirely.

Which is your stance and why?

[IntravenousDemilo]

1. If not, actions should at least REFLECT one's morality.

And morality, of course, need not have anything to do with religiosity or belief in an afterlife. Doing good things, behaving properly towards others, and being charitable -- those are much purer impulses when they come from within rather than if they're done because one expects a posthumous reward for good service or punishment for bad service. It's for this reason that I strongly suspect the motives of people of faith, and even more strongly suspect them of not being truly good.

Sometimes I question the idea of morality itself, thinking that it is the poor cousin of ethics. Morality is generally used as a stick to beat others with, but never ourselves. Ethics is the stick we beat ourselves with.

[stray cat]

2. yes; but beware of context. Murder to save a victim is different than being a serial killer

you are what you do - the excuse that it isn't like you doesn't mean you didn't do it. Consequently few are as moral as they feel themselves to be.

[dmallind]

4. Sure - but that's where the act/rule bit comes in

Essentially the rule is murder is normally wrong. But the act can be a beneficial rather than harmful one if you kill one to save ten. Indeed to me I agree we are as moral agents judged on the harm or benefit of our actions, but even without the outlandish ideas like killing Hitler etc we can see it is sometimes necessary to do small harm to save greater harm. While causing agony to others is almost always wrong, it's better to inflict the agony of a root canal to save the greater agony and greater harm of infected abscesses throughout the jaw. A moral action and a benefit.

[Jim__]

3. Thoughts count as part morality.

Morality, in my view, is a innate trait that strengthens group cohesion. My wanting to kill you, or anyone else within the group almost certainly affects group cohesion. If people are raised to believe hating (e.g. wanting to kill other group members) is OK; this will weaken the group with respect to competing groups that teach group caring and respect as a part of morality.

[dmallind]

5. Possibly - but does it harm cohesion if not carried out, even expressed?

No doubt many of us would have cried not a single tear had Bush and Cheney been assassinated and perhaps even privately/internally acknowledged it as a positive step for the country, but we (I hope) did nothing to try and make it happen. Were we immoral?

[Jim__]

6. The question about Bush/Cheney is more complex than that.

Certainly by wanting to kill Bush/Cheney we weakened group cohesion. However, if we believed that Bush/Cheney, as leaders, were endangering the existence of the group - raising the count of our enemies, cutting taxes and increasing spending (off budget) to support 2 wars, refusing to attempt to lower carbon emissions and thus potentially leading to instability in the world, etc; and we did not act on this knowledge - e.g. we fumed inside our own minds but did nothing effective to stop this behavior, then, yes, we acted (inaction being described as action here) immorally by not acting to protect the group.

Note that this is not an endorsement of someone killing bush or Cheney as that woudl have had extremely dangerous repercussions for the group (i.e. the nation).

[struggle4progress]

7. I can't make sense of human relationships without intent

Certainly, there is a difference between someone actually harming another and someone imagining harm to another, but someone who harms another without any intent to do so probably differs in my view from one who harms another after actively imagining harm to the person harmed

Of course, I cannot actually know the intents of others: I believe they may have intents, since I think I myself have intents, and I think I imperfectly infer their intents from clues in their speech and action

[dmallind]

8. But think of it the other way round

Yes your point shows the differenece between, say, murder and manslaughter. However a more germane difference would be that between somebody who wants to murder but does not, and somebody who both wants to and does.

I can't think of anyone who would see the intent as equally bad as the act - but do many people see it as bad at all?

[struggle4progress]

9. If I know that X intends to kill me, or that Y intends to kill Z,

or if I have good reason to suspect either, I think my reaction would not be merely to cogitate on questions such as, Is X's intent to kill me or Y's intent to kill Z as "bad" as X actually killing me or Y actually killing Z? -- since I think that would be a rather stupid reaction

[dmallind]

11. What if it's not you and is merely a case study about which you can do nothing?

Then do you see a difference in the harm vs. benefit?

[Igel]

10. Define morality.

Then you have your answer.

I say this because I tend to think of morality not as based in individual actions but in the pattern of intended actions. The alcoholic can be moral in that he does his best to stay sober, but still falls off the wagon. Is he immoral because he can't hold to the morality he wants to, his ideals, or is he simply weak?

Same for the guy who's married and firmly believes that faithfulness in marriage is sine qua non and tells everybody this, but really wants to sleep with another woman. Then, one night, he winds up having too much to drink, she has too much to drink, and he wakes up at 2 a.m. in her bed. Is he immoral? Weak? Is he a hypocrite? Does it matter what he does afterwards?

Some will say he's a hypocrite for not living up to his ideals, even if he really regrets what happened and tries to make amends at the cost of great personal pain. Others will say that he's still moral, he just lapsed.

The bigger the lapse, the more frequent the lapses, the less public the repentance, the more likely "immoral" will be attached to his name. Even if you kill in self-defense, if you gloat about it "moral" won't be the word that comes to mind.

Then there's sort of the 'expanded morality' clause in some varieties of Xianity. In which it's not just actions, but thoughts and intents. So you can be utterly chaste and still be immoral because you really want to hump the object of your intentions. Then actions don't matter at all, but it's all a question of mental states.

I also don't much care, in principle, if somebody wishes me ill. However, I wish it weren't so--not for matters of pride, but because I figure people do have lapses. The more ill somebody wishes, the more opportunities they have to do ill, the greater the likelihood that they'll have a bad day, lose control, and actually do something I'd rather they didn't.

[dmallind]

12. I already have - benefit vs. harm in choice of moral agents. I'm looking for the opinions of others.

Thanks for yours. I understand it, but do not agree. If alcoholism is harmful to the person and his family, or if adultery is, what difference does intent make to that harm? And trust me as a seasoned drinker and bouncer too I can assure you alcohol merely lowers the inhibitions against doing what the drinker wants to do. It does not make somebody do something against their desire. People who have violent intent, however well controlled sober, will fight when drunk. People who want to be friends with others will be unctuously over teh top in their attention to them. People who want to get freaky with every attractiove member of their preferred (or available) gender will be more likely to act on those impulses when drunk - but the booze didn't create the impulse, it just lowered the restraints.

Now there are indeed cases where intent and action are completely different in their result, and there intent does come into play. A surgeon trying to perform a risky surgery may nick an artery in error and cause death for example. The difference here is that the action itself was directed by a moral agent committing a morally beneficial act that went wrong. The adulterous drunk is a moral agent who committed a morally harmful act and seeks an excuse. The difference is still in the action chosen by the moral agent.