In this thread, the assertion was made that fantasies were moral events. I disagree. Any fantasy, no matter how detailed and repugnant, is simply a fantasy. It does not affect others in any way (as long as you’re not fantasizing on the job or some such), and even if repeatedly dwelling on the commission of evil events damages one’s internal moral health, a morally sick and diseased person whose thoughts do not escape his head is functionally identical to a paragon of virtue. As I’m a big fan of act-based morality, that’s enough for me to say that fantasies are amoral.
lissener, I would appreciate it if you in particular would elaborate on your views on this topic.
That is a really interesting question, robert. My husband and I were discussing something quite related yesterday, with regards to the Ten Commandments, and he used exactly that term, rfgdxm - he said that two (or three?) of them were thoughtcrimes. I have to go to class now, but I will try to come back and participate more fully here.
For example, if someone were to say “I fantasize about raping 8-year-old boys”, I’m sure most people would consider him to be a wicked person - he should certainly expect to be on the recieving end of much verbal, if not physical, abuse.
Would you argue either:
(a) Such a person is not immoral, provided only that he doesn’t act on his fantasies? A valid view, perhaps, but not one that would be shared by the wider community.
Or:
(b) The act of admitting his fantasies is immoral in itself? He would still be a moral person by your standards, provided he kept his mouth shut?
I agree with the assertion of the OP. A similar thing applies to “wishes”. When I was younger, I used to beat myself up a lot if I found myself wishing for something that seemed bad or selfish (e.g., if a woman I liked was going out with some guy and I would wonder if I was wishing they would break up so I might have a chance with her). I have come to realize (with a little help) that what really should define one is one’s actions and not one’s thoughts. So, in the aforementioned example, as long as I am being supportive to her and not actively undermining the relationship, it would be basically irrelevant what I was wishing would happen.
There may be some distinction between fighting involuntary thoughts and indulging in fantasies of evil. For example, a guy saddled with a problem he doesn’t want–say he has an awful temper and a tendency to punch people on very little provocation, or a sexual prediliction for children he never asked for–he can either fight those impulses, work to control them and replace them with better feelings, or he can indulge them by fantasizing about shooting sprees and 8-year-olds.
The first course is considered morally better than the second. Thought tends to lead to action. If you constantly allow yourself to want to punch people, you are far more likely to actually do it eventually than if you work at replacing your anger with calm. You’ve probably seen that old sequence (here are two examples):
The fact is that what we are like inside does determine how we treat each other. A person can only be horrible inside and kind outside for so long; eventually he will either start treating people badly or become truly kind on the inside. We are all trying to act better than we truly are (or at least I hope so), either because we truly want to be better than we are or because we don’t want others to know how awful we really are–usually both. But we have to try to control our minds and thoughts as much as we can, since if we do we tend to improve in our actions, but if we don’t we tend to get worse. A person constantly wishing he could punch people is not likely to treat people more kindly because of it, and the longer he wishes to punch, the less he will be able to love.
Here is what C. S. Lewis has to say about the idea that our personal, inner moral state has no bearing on outside society (from Mere Christianity:
But. Can we limit “acting upon a fantasy” to carrying it out more or less as fantasized? What if there is only the potential to deliberately do harm?
In 1931, some Hungarian bastard blew up the Orient Express and killed a few dozen innocent folks because he had discovered he could only be sexually satisfied while seeing people die.
Now let’s suppose he had sublimated his urge to the point where he was content merely to rush up to women on bicycles as if about to push them over. Most would just get a good scare and he could imagine to the point of getting his rox off. But there’s always the possibility that one would crack her skull on the pavement or careen into the path of an oncoming bus.
Ie, some fantasies, even if sublimated, have a clear potential to do harm. Somebody draw me a line here.
The line is drawn where one starts to act on one’s fantasies. In the thread in question, I think I put forth a reasonable case that one can’t fantasize about being raped per se because it’s logically impossible: if you want the sex, then it’s not rape, even if it involves masks and rough play. I think plenty of people have fantasies that they honestly would not like to see enacted in the real world. If I’m fantasizing about something deviant, that doesn’t mean I would enjoy it in reality at all, or even consider trying it out.
I think it is going about things the wrong way around to look at people who have committed bad acts and then ask whether they fantasized about them. I mean, I could also that almost everyone who has raped someone has masturbated in their lifetime. However, it doesn’t mean that masturbation generally leads to rape, because most people who have never raped someone have also masturbated.
I think particularly where sexual-related fantasies are concerned, there is likely to be a big gap for most people between fantasy and reality and only a few people will have serious problems distinguishing the difference.
I apologise if my example skewed the debate - perhaps we can substitute “I fantasize about being the gas chamber operator at a concentration camp” for something equally horrific but non-sexual?
I suppose my point is that I would distinguish between between being an immoral person and acting in an immoral way. I agree that immoral actions are evidence that someone is wicked; I would, however, also hold that someone will be described as wicked on the basis of their thoughts and beliefs as well as their actions. If we accept that, for example, racism is immoral, are we not justified in describing someone as immoral who thinks that black people are inferior to whites, even if they don’t take part in lynchings?
I would also make the distinction between “immoral” and “illegal”, especially as the phrase “thoughtcrime” is being used. I would fully support the rights of the paedophile or the racist to say what they think, as long as they also accept that they’re being immoral in doing so, and that they can justifiably be excoriated for it.
There was an old Twilight Zone episode where a guy who works in a band suddenly has the power to read minds. In it, he can read the mind of a fellow employee who was plotting on how he would rob the bank. The mindreader winds up confronting the guy when he was supposed to have the money on him and he doesn’t. Both are confused, but eventually the old guy who didn’t rob the bank despite thinking about it gave us the moral of the story:
“People will often think about things without ever doing them, just as we will often do things without thinking.”
This is why I don’t care what people are thinking about provided they do not share it with me and they do not act on those thoughts.
I would go even further, and say that the inclusion of sex at all in this debate is clouding the issue. I mean, the stuff Evil Captor fantasizes about is pretty tame in comparison to the stuff, say, Thomas Harris writes about in his Hannibel Lector books. Is EC a measurably worse person because his fantasies lead to an erection, and not a movie deal? One assumes that Harris enjoys writing his novels, even if its in a non-sexual sense. Should he also be judged morally for writing disgusting novels? (That he should be judged morally for writing awful novels goes without saying. )
Anyway, continuing the discussion I was having with lissener from the other thread:
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “get away with it.” If a guy has an immoral thought, and he never tells anyone, has he “gotten away” with something? It seems that under your definition there are a lot more immoral people getting away with stuff than under mine, where only actions are immoral, not thoughts. Which is not an argument against your moral view, it’s just that I don’t see how it’s an argument against my moral view. I don’t think either of us is arguing that morality is determined by getting caught at something immoral.
Is that morally different from watching a movie that contains those scenes and enjoying it on an aesthetic level? Obviously, you’re not arguing that anyone who enjoys a movie like that on any level is immoral. I don’t really see how a sexual response suddenly turns the issue into a moral one.
I suppose that’s true. I don’t believe that morality exsists independently of human thought. It’s not an objective truth, but a social construct. In a society that condones cannabalism, cannabalism is not immoral. That’s not to say that one has to be infinitly permissive. I don’t believe in an absolute morality, but I can still stake out a claim on what I think is moral, and recognize that there are other moral positions that cannot co-exsist with my own. I can’t accept the exsistence of neo-Nazism, because that moral position requires the eradication of myself and many people I care about. I can accept the exsistence of people who enjoy rape-fantasies, because rape-fantasies aren’t going to hurt me, or anyone else. If a rape-fantasist crosses the line into being an actual rapist, that’s a different story, but it is not at all a given that someone who fantasizes about rape is going to commit rape. I’m not going to judge someone until they’ve done something that is demonstrably wrong, not simply unpleasant to think about.
I disagree entirely. I’d argue that someone who has wildly inappropriate fantasies and never acts on them is more moral than someone who never has those fantasies at all. Morality is pretty easy to pull off in the absence of temptation.
I would say that I don’t seperate morality from action, rather than “can’t.” My moral scheme is based around harm to others, as that’s the closest I can come to an objective moral standard. No matter how much it might repulse me, I don’t think I have the right to judge someone who’s not causing direct harm to another person.
Exactly what part of a “deviant” fantasy is immoral? Is it:
the fact that someone is the type of person who can be aroused by immoral acts?
- are we then responsible for our sexual response?
the sexual transgression?
- is sexual fantasy of only a certain type then permissible? Or is all sexual fantasy wrong?
the act of considering an immoral act?
- is it then immoral to consider any crime/or sin even if we reject it? what about considering it in the hypothetical as people are doing in this thread?
the (alleged) increased probablility of committing immoral acts?
- same as above
Ahh, but how do you define “direct harm”? Does calling someone “nigger” or “kike” directly harm them? Does saying “A woman’s place is in the home” directly harm women, if they’re still allowed to work? Does saying “Faggots will burn in Hell” directly harm gay men? If the answer is “no” to those questions, would you say that David Duke and Fred Phelps are moral people? On the other hand, if you would answer “yes”, why does the act of expressing an opinion change it from “moral” to “immoral”?
I think you’re confusing “direct” with “substantial.” An insult or harrassment or open disrespect is clearly direct harm, even if it’s not as substantial as, say, barring women from working.
Also, what uglybeech said. Calling someone a “nigger” is, at the very least, an attempt to make them feel bad. Which is an exceedingly minor harm, but still harm, and deliberatly so.
Do thoughts have a moral character? There are a number of ays to analyze the question. For myself, one of the more interesting is to generalize the question: do actions that affect only the self have a moral value?
If your answer to this is “no”, then you may easily draw the dichotomy at "des the fantasy affect a person’s interactions with other humans (or animals or social constructs or to whatever extent you extend your personal empathy).
If your answer is “yes” (whether following a course similar to CS Lewis or perhaps because you believe that moral awareness carries implicitly a duty within the self), then the question is self-evidently answered “yes”.
For myself, I answer the first question: “they can”, and thus the second question “sometimes” (or perhaps “cenceivably”, since I am not making a claim for any particular instance of this having occurred.)
So you would argue that, no matter how repulsive someone’s thoughts and beliefs are, the person is still moral if they until they express these thoughts? That seems rather irrational to me, I must admit. For one thing, it would imply that lying is a moral thing to do, if one is lying about one’s beliefs.
What goes inside my head is none of your buisiness. What goes on in your head is none of my business. What harm does it do anyone to indulge in even the most bizzare fantasy? For one thing, police officers and pyschologists are frequently called on to reason out the modivations of suspects and the actions they might take.
Some of the most important litterature ever written is written about questionable people, Humbert Humbert in Lolita, horrific turns of events, The Man in the High Castle, or grotesque crimes, Silence of the Lambs. Our ability to understand the human conidtion and to guide ourselves does not stand on the refusal to aknowledge the existance of thoughts we consider questionable, but may actually hinge on our ability to understand them, and what they mean.
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