Alonzo Fyfe

This is an excellent question that goes into distinctions about how to describe an action.

I said that the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on the intentions evidenced by that action. But what is "that action?"

You do need to look at the intentions to actually answer the question of what the action actually was. You cannot look at the mere physical phenomena and call it an action. In this case, "that action" has nothing to do with clobbering the mugger -- it is an unintended consequence of the action.

But, let us say that your brother is stalking you for the purpose of kidnapping you and torturing you next week. The mugger steps out, your brother clubs him, because your brother wants you available for the next week's torture session.

The intention of clubbing the mugger is necessary for the prue value-neutral description of what 'that action' is. However, the evaluation of 'that action' as good or bad depends on the intentions evidenced by 'that action'. Change the actual intention (so that the brother clubs the mugger unintentionally), and you are talking about a different action.

[Yet, even here it is still the case that if we have no actual evidence that the brother was aiming at you and clubbed the mugger only accidently, we would presume the best and not blame the brother. We have no grounds for such a blame unless we have evidence of different intentions.]

long winded fool

Well yes, I prefer only being moral, in other words I'd prefer always telling the Nazis the truth. However, if behaving morally would result in the death of a human being, then yes I'd behave immorally to prevent this, though it would not be my preference. My behavior would not be moral, but my motives might be. It's the whole "good intentions, his heart was in the right place" thing. Hitler may have had good intentions, but he failed to act morally. If I lie to Nazis it may be because I have good intentions, but I'm still failing to act morally. Finding a way to prevent the death of the Jews while being completely honest with the Nazis would be the moral thing to do. Since I'm not morally perfect, I may be unable to do this. This doesn't then make lying to them the right thing to do, it makes it a failure on my part to understand how to be completely moral in a given situation and then acting immorally in accordance with my desire to prevent the death of a human being. In this sense you're right, lying is sometimes a socially acceptable behavior. We often confuse things which we accept as necessary evils with things which are moral. Because something is socially acceptable, doesn't necessarily make it moral. (Though it would be wise to only have socially acceptable behaviors that are also moral.) Since people are not always moral, it can be socially acceptable to return wrong for wrong.

Saying that it is moral to lie about hiding Jews in Nazi Germany is merely rationalizing immoral behavior in my opinion. "It's the only logical alternative I can think of, therefore it's moral." I don't personally think of the 'morality' of a given action in this arbitrary sense, but others may.

The AntiChris

I think I see what you're saying. If the action was intended, and not an untintended consequence, we can ascribe moral worth despite the fact that there may be an ulterior motive of which we may not approve.

Using this reasoning, the paedophile who lures homeless children to his home by providing food and shelter is morally praiseworthy despite the fact that his ultimate motive is the potential satisfaction of his sexual desires.

In normal circumstances the provision of food and shelter for the homeless would be considered praiseworthy but quite clearly, although the paedophile intended to feed and shelter the children, his ultimate motivation was not the welfare of the children and I really don't see how his actions could in any sense be considered "right".

Chris

Alonzo Fyfe

I think that you are confusing the terms 'praiseworthy' and 'right'. The person who protects the brother from the mugger so that he can torture the brother later did nothing wrong (yet). But I would not call him praiseworthy. "Right" and "wrong" refers to the motives evidenced by an action. "Praiseworthy" refers to the actual motives.

It is also important to distinguish the cases in which we "praise" people and the conditions under which they are "praiseworthy."

Consider the pedophile who, because of his attraction to children, goes to great expense to provide them with food and shelter, and yet never acts on his sexual desire. His actions are entirely those that we would expect from a well-motivated person. Because we can't tell the difference, we may wrongly assume that this individual is praiseworthy, and thus heap praise upon him. But being the object of praise, and being worthy of praise, are two different qualities.

Though we may be mistaken as to whether or not he is praiseworthy, so long as he does not act on this desire in any way different than in a way that a person with good desires would act, we would not say that he did anything wrong.

He does not do anything wrong until he does something that a person with good desires would not have done -- regardless of his own motives.

Another way of making the same point -- the idea that a person's actual motives are not relevant to the rightness of an act does not mean that a person's actual motives are not relevant in other senses.

The AntiChris

Alonzo Fyfe
I've been using the term "right" as an expression of moral approval.

Are you suggesting that moral approval is not necessarily a form of praise or are you using "right" in a non-moral sense?
Well, of course, if we don't know his true intentions it's perfectly reasonably to express moral approval on the basis of assumed motives. However, once we do know his true intentions, even though he may never act on his sexual desires, we view his actions in a different light and adjust our moral judgement accordingly.

Do you disagree?
If you're using "rightness" in a non-moral sense (as in simply expressing approval for the consequences of an act) then I agree.

However if you're using it in a moral sense, then it seems to me that a person's motives, whether actual or what we assume them to be, are an essential aspect to be taken into consideration when evaluating the "rightness" of a person's action.

Chris

Alonzo Fyfe

AntiChris:

I guess I need to know how you think we make make our moral/anti-moral distinctions, because I think that this captures very well the types of claims that people actually make and that they call moral claims.

To call an action right is to morally recommend it. "A person with good desires would have done this, it is what you should have done as well." To call it wrong is to morally condemn it. "A good person would not have done this thing. You, obviously, are not a good person."

It may be the case that from a right action we cannot identify if a person had good motives or not -- we only say that the action is what a person with good motives would have done. However, from a wrong action, we can infer that an individual did not have good motives, because he did something that a person with good desires would not have done.

Since refusal to do a right action is, itself, a wrong action, we can always make these types of inferences from wrong action.

If you can identify a counter-example, it would count against the theory. (It may not be a death-dealing blow, but it would have to be answered.)

The AntiChris

Alonzo Fyfe

I'm afraid I'm rapidly losing the tenuous grip I may have had on the precise nature of our disagreement.

In my previous post I queried a couple of things you said and asked one direct question. If you want a response to your latest post, it would be helpful if you could provide answers to my queries.

Chris

paul30

As Winterwooksy and others have noted, lying can have bad effects on others. The Enron execs misreported losses as earnings, inducing lots of suckers to invest; then the execs absconded with the money. The lie (or at best mendacity) coupled with rigging of the rules coupled with theft hurt people.

Clearly, if "wrong" has any meaning, this kind of behavior is wrong and is predicated on lying.

Ditto much if not all advertising. Advertising is paid lying, and is designed to induce people to buy things they otherwise would not. Often the products are crap, or at the very least don't come near fulfilling the claims, and the buyers rightly feel cheated.

There is the longer, more insidious effect of advertising: it makes people feel personally helpless and deficient and dependent on outside "authorities."

But apart from these effects on others, which are often hurtful, lying also hurts the liar.

Sometimes the liar gets away with it and is never caught or found out. But even in this case the lie causes harm to the liar because it cuts off honest contact with others--and without SOME honest contact life narrows and becomes barren.

Naturally--though it is rare--sometimes lies are necessary to prevent harm to others, like the lies told by the protectors of Anne Frank's family. These occasions are extremely rare; so beware of people who use this argument. Politicians like it to cover nefarious acts: "We had to lie to you for national security reasons" and other such flapdoodle.

:boohoo: