I find it difficult to accept that faced with the invitation to do a so called sinful act could in an any way implicate me in sin. It seems to me that any invitation to do anything must be met with period of consideration, weighing the pros and cons, before any action be taken by the hearer. Without this we would never understand what anybody else was saying. There could be a bomb in the lady’s handbag and my removing it from the premises could save lives especially as I know how to defuse such a device. Thou shalt not steal is good advice, but not good enough to cover all possibilities which face us in life.

Having made a photo copy from a journal in the University library yesterday I almost accidentally walked out with the journal in my bag: I don’t think it would have set the alarm off. I replaced it and was set to wondering what I would have done had I found it in my possession when I arrived home. There were certainly other papers therein, which I would like to read, but philosophy being what it is, such reading can be somewhat protracted. This would have conspired against an early return of the journal, if at all. I decided an immediate return would have been the thing to do, the Uni is not that far away, and some undergraduate in far more need of The Journal than I, could be severely inconvenienced.

The point I am trying to make here is that we are in life faced with many temptations and suggestions from other people all of which must surely be considered no matter how briefly. It is thereafter the action we take, upon which we should be judged. People are on a daily basis faced with the desire to commit adultery but mostly they do not. I have no idea how one could avoid this temptation it seems to be a fact of nature. To criticise a person for the consideration he gives before initiating any action seems in some way unsatisfactory.

Surely moral worth or praiseworthiness
can only be directed to action. The same goes for blame. ‘I was only obeying orders’, or similar excuses, are no defence for action taken by the agent.

It takes two to commit adultery (three if you really want to do it properly). Am I missing something here?

I agree with Don. If it’s wrong for me to covet my neighbor’s wife then so be it, and everyone else is wrong too for coveting someones ass. If one takes seriously the wholesale distribution of transgressions you suggest we’d have to live in emotional straight-jackets. It’s not what you feel but what you do that determines your culpability.
It takes two to commit adultery (three if you really want to do it properly). Just thinking about this I “sinned.”

Praise and blame? Is this what passes for philosophy?

Here’s a real philosophical starting point:

Your young child comes home from school one day and you learn that some cruel prank was acted out on the class nerd. You learn that your child was goaded to partake in the mischief but refused, and you ask him why he abstained from the cruelty. Which of these three answers from your child would you most like to hear:

A. I didn’t participate because I knew you would be proud of me if you found out
B. I didn’t because I knew if you found out I’d be in trouble
C. I refused because I didn’t think I’d want that prank done to me if I were the nerd.

What does promise (or hope) of reward or the threat (fear) of punishment have to do with true right or wrong? Can either be a path to enlightenment?

Sam - Asking, ‘Is this what passes for philosophy?’ doesn’t pass for philosophy. It’s a rhetorical question, so it’s got no argumentative bite, and it’s an ad hominem, which doesn’t count either.

Don and Ralph - Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but I meant by ‘being tempted’ actually considering doing something wrong as a live possibility. I don’t think I’m really tempted to steal, in this sense, just if someone suggests it to me. I don’t really covet someone if I only find them attractive, as it were, from a safe distance. I’m not suggesting emotional straight-jackets. The automatic, low-level, animal coveting we probably all experience isn’t what I mean. I don’t know what to think about the rightness or wrongness of that.

But it’s possible that there would be something wrong in my really thinking about actually stealing. So I suppose I reject Don’s thought that moral praise or blame can only be directed at action, and I don’t think, Ralph, that it’s what you do not what you feel that matters.

Dear god, I have the horrible feeling I’m finding virtue ethics more and more attractive.

Okay James, I read it the way I wanted to. Reading it the way you meant:
If the person who suggested the theft, in your scenario, hadn’t, then there wouldn’t even be a question of wrong doing. So, he has done wrong. What could have been that person’s motive in suggesting the crime and not carrying it out himself? Nothing to absolve him from some or a major part of the responsibility. If the person who receives the suggestion for theft doesn’t act out the crime, then it depends on why, as in Sam’s scenario above. If after seriously thinking about stealing the purse the person backs off because of not wanting to cause unnecessary harm to another person, then I don’t think he did anything wrong. If on the other hand he sees a cop nearby and figures the odds are too great against him, then yes, I agree with you, he has done wrong. Now the interesting case, to me, is if he backs off because of fear of being caught, even though there’s no reason to believe he will be. This type of reasoning on his part might be a safety mechanism developed to prevent him doing wrong. If he always will respond the same way, then I’d say, even with all his fantasizing and planning, he is not doing wrong.

Speaking of pubs, consider this: In Ohio - where it is illegal to smoke in bars - a judge just ruled that bars should not be penalized when their patrons decide to smoke. Previously, patrons smoking in a bar might result in that bar being handed hefty fines.

Sure, we might not be able to prove active tempting on the part of the bar owners. But is it enough that they provide a warm room, dark corner, and a beer?

http://www.wytv.com/content/news/local/story/Ohio-Judge-Makes-New-Ruling-on-Smoking-Ban/IjhzGoIfikKXFlPZk0yq6Q.cspx

Ad hominem? Can a philosopher label any question as ad hominem and still actually be a philosopher? (Why would you let me be in control of the button that turns off reasoning in your mind?) Is it only the fool that seeks to explore an apparently rhetorical question?

In George Orwell’s novel “1984”the government attempts to control not only the speech and actions, but also the thoughts of its subjects, labelling disapproved thoughts with the term thoughtcrime or, in Newspeak”Crimethink”.

I am wondering if James has something like this in mind for evil/immoral thoughts which are ultimately not acted upon or divulged in anyway, notwithstanding at some point, the thinker certainly had action in mind. If this be the case then I suppose thought immorality could take place but who would know, but the thinker and his God; assuming he has one? Once the unwholesome thought is acted upon, or even given verbal utterance I think the situation is rather different. It is so to speak, out in the open for all to judge as to its moral worth, and if in any way, it indicates a threat to society, or contravenes the law of the land. It is only in retrospect we can criticise a person for having had immoral thoughts, but perhaps we should also praise the person, who with no outside coercion, did not ultimately act on them.

Good Grief! I don’t mean thought crime, I mean something like Aristotle’s notion that doing the right thing isn’t just DOING the right thing — it’s doing something for the right reasons, with the right feelings, in the right way and on and on. If you think morality is a big complicated thing like that (and who knows?) then maybe being tempted is wrong in a way, whether you actually do anything untoward or not.

Sam - I think you lost me, unless you’re now asking whether I’m saying you’re a fool, which is, what, a reverse rhetorical ad hominem?

Ralph - your powers of seeing good questions are better than mine. If the guy backs off for one set of reasons rather than another and we think he’s in the clear, morally, as a result, then we really do have more than just action in our conception of goodness. I think I might believe that.

I am somewhat rusty on Virtue ethics, but from what you (James) say about Aristotle’s notion, it seems to me that you may well be embracing this, as you recently suggested.

“Doing the right thing isn’t just DOING the right thing — it’s doing something for the right reasons, with the right feelings, in the right way and on and on.”

I must say I find this notion very appealing as an ethical system. However my mind turns towards the career of Adolf Hitler and those who agreed with his right reasons, right feelings, right way. Again consider Tony Blair, still as I understand, unrepentant concerning the misery and utter chaos caused by his so called right decision.

In view of the above, I still feel reasonably confident that moral praise or blame can only be directed at action, and it is what you do, not what you feel that matters. We have no first person access to the thoughts and feelings of others; but when they are expressed at actions in the world, the situation is different

This is both a metaphysical and ethics issue. Typically we assume that the object of desire is passive, and that ’sin’ is caused by the tempted agent’s failure to control his or her active and compelling desire.

But since the time of Helen, there has been the excuse of “too beautiful to resist”. This metaphysic presumes that a passive agent somehow compels the active agent to act. Is such causation possible?

The ethics problem is well stated in the above. Here’s another take: may we reasonably excuse or forgive immoral behavior because he/she was resistibly enticed by her/him?

I like this thought experiment, mainly because it represents a more mature and complex idea of morals than we typically get.

Here’s what I think:
Actions make us culpable to others, thoughts, temptations, as it were, do not. In this case, Helen is no more guilty of tempting Paris than a rabbit is guilty of spilling his own blood when attacked by a predator: one is not responsible for one’s own existence. Similarly, consider the defense of the rapist: “I saw the way she was dressed! She was asking for it!” Again with the handbag, the little old lady isn’t going to get any sympathy for saying “HELP! He looked at my handbag! He wanted to take it, I know it!” It doesn’t work.

Taking a brief tangent here, before looking at the other side of things, consider current hate-crime laws. Here, a court attempts to assess the motive, or intent behind the crime AND PUNISH THAT, in addition to the act of violence itself. Assault and murder are crimes with stiff enough penalties that we don’t need legal precedent for crimes of motive or the idea that certain classes of individuals may be “more protected” than others.

But that’s not the whole story. While public accountability is unjust, it doesn’t mean that an individual is innocent of wrongdoing when sorely tempted. Entertaining the idea of wrongdoing, if done consistently enough, generally tends the thinker toward those actions. And, even if it does not, it generally means that he or she desires to act in that way and is merely prevented from doing so whether by fear or another cause. This is fundamental to an idea of free agency, or personal volition.

Imagine if we had a device to accurately assess someone’s moral condition. Lets also imagine two cases of a man who wishes to punch another man in the face. In the first case, there’s nothing stopping the aggressor, and in the second, his hands are bound behind his back. Is there a difference in this man’s moral state? Is he going to choose differently in the future because of this? About the only thing we’ve prevented is the actual harm, and perhaps the aggressor’s satisfaction of feeding the other guy a knuckle sandwich.

A different take on Sam’s multiple choice questions (which, for the record, I’d rather hear C, than A, than B). What if this were one’s spouse, and the question was “why do you stick around?”

A. I know you love me.
B. I’m afraid of what would happen to me if I left.
C. Why would I leave? I love you (and I’d hate to think what would happen if you left me).

Here, to turn the original question on its ear a bit, it is obvious to see that if we’re not doing the right thing for the right reason, we’re not exactly doing the right thing. However, even if we don’t always have pure motives, by doing good actions even without them, we may begin to develop the sorts of attitudes necessary for correct motives. That is, after all, the unspoken idea that Sam’s example would have us assume in the role of parent: even if our kid answers B, at least he’s thinking about the consequences of his actions, and he may eventually land on C.

I feel like I’m dancing around a point here. This largely has to do with free will versus determinism. If our actions are simply the result of inescapable physical processes, then we simply cannot extract “irresistible” temptation from resistible temptation. There’s not such thing as either, only causation, in that case. But, instead, if we are given to the idea that we do indeed make some watershed decision, given our physical input, then there is certainly room for examining temptation and motive as opportunity for wrongdoing. However, because it is unreliable to to so to others, I don’t think we can make the leap from “I was wrong to be tempted by X” to “You were tempted by X, which is wrong and punishable.”

Gad. This is topic is expanding rapidly.

Don - There must be a way of admitting that Hitler and Blair had reasons and feelings, but insisting that they weren’t the right reasons and feelings. Certainly they thought they were right, but one can be wrong about such things — for Aristotle anyway. (Rawnsley’s book apparently has it that Blair experienced a lot of self doubt, by the way.)

Ripis - I hadn’t thought of it that way…and I’m a little worried about the implications. Not sure I want to say that a temptee is excused because of the nature of the tempter. Would we ever say that someone was entirely excused from stealing, just because the object stolen was really tempting? Maybe we used to have those thoughts, as a species, but we’ve moved on lately.

Sean - I suppose any discussion of right and wrong is eventually going to depend on some answer to questions about freedom. (But those are too hard for me.) The bound hands example makes me think a little of how much our moral life depends on luck. I’d very much like to kill my nephew, but the gun jams at the last minute. That bit of luck means I’m only guilty of attempted murder. It’s only luck that distinguishes me from a murderer. There must be some explanation of why we punish attmpted murderers and murderers differently, but it can’t have much to do with rationality.

Interesting stuff, anyway.

In my opinion, Action holds the most(de)merit, while Speech has less, and Thought has the least.

but then again, what do We know?

as i write this a man is going berserk outside in a rage?…can we be held accountable for out instinctive motives
?yes apparently we can.sin is a part of ourselves we must let go,in essencse let go of ourselevs,to become the perfect person in simple terms…id like to discuss more,but time rins sort,then again time has never liked me,almost as vendita..pieces…