In seeing what clairobscur wrote, I guess this is where we might seeing things differently.
I should note that the law also tends to make this distinction of intent in regard to actions. However, the laws, for the most part, do not criminalize thought in the absence of actions. I think this is a good thing.
I forgot about this part. Yes, I agree with you. Making up an absolute rule and trying to apply it in all circumstances will always lead to some ludicrous results (like the previously mentionned example : “one should not lie” / “Are there Jews hidden in your attic?”). However, you can still draw rough lines with most things falling with no much doubt on one side or the other.
This is my point. We agree that it’s morally objectionable, but attempting to put together a test that a completely objective, emotionless assessor could use to decide that it’s morally objectionable is, IMO, impossible. Morality has to have a subjective factor - the “eek” factor, as clairobscur puts it so graphically. I wouldn’t go as far as A J Ayer and say this factor is the only basis for morality, but I don’t think it’s right to attempt to deny it any role in our moral judgements.
So we’re not in serious disagreement, after all. I’m glad to hear it. 
However, I would still take issue with your original argument. There are some fantasies that are so extreme they can’t, on a subjective basis, be considered morally neutral, even if they can be made to pass an objective test.
I certainly do too. Actually, I think that intent isn’t taken enough into account, and that people who “intended to” or “didn’t care for” and who, out of sheer luck, happened not to, say, kill anybody often aren’t punished as strongly as they would IMO deserve (for instance a careless driver).
But it’s only because these people actually acted on their thoughts. “I hate my neighbor and I wish him to die” shouldn’t be a crime. “I tried to shot my neighbor but I’m near sighted and missed him” is mostly identical to “I actually shot him dead” IMO but completely different from “I wanted to play a funny prank on my neighbor but I’m complete idiot and he ended up dead”.
That said, there’s a difference between what you feel about somedy and how you judge his morality. You can despise someone for his ideas/thoughts/fantasies/whatever, avoid him altogether, etc… and still think they aren’t immoral. I’m sure there are plenty of people I wouldn’t associate with, had I read the secret journal they keep locked in some drawer.
By “indication” do you mean, how other people would read us? Then that’s not what I’m talking about.
Take the movie cliche, where a guy’s ethically challenged buddy tries to get him to cheat on his taxes or pad an insurance claim. “Who’s gonna know?” he says. “I’ll know,” is the cliche answer. THAT’S the level I’m talking about this on. That inner life that “knows.”
Another approach, robertliguori [and **Miller **too, I think]. If behavior is “the only real indication of who we are as people,” then imagine a hypothetical person who is totally incapable of behavior, but is fully capable of thought. Posit a totally paralyzed person who is unable even to communicate; even to indicate yes or no. But he has a complete mental life.
I’m saying, that–with that perfectly paralyzed hypothetical person–the inner life that he leads is the only thing that I am talking about. This is why I said earlier than behavior, etc., is irrelevant to this discussion, because that’s not what I was talking about. I’m talking about that part of all of us that is the only part left to the totally paralyzed man: that inner private life that, ultimately informs and drives all of our behavior. Even if all of your actions are totally moral, it’s possible to have immoral thoughts. I admire people who are able to separate the two. God knows I certainly have more than my share of immoral thoughts. And I struggle not to let them drive my behavior. But saying that they’re morally null until the result in an action is denying the inner life of the paralyzed man. It’s like saying that if there’s no one there to hear it, then the tree never fell in the first place.
And to respond to **tomndebb **and Miller, regarding finding out your spouse fantasized about raping and killing children, the fact that both of you had to weigh other factors–history of the relationship, etc.–acknowledges that there is something to be balanced against. Therefore you, too, have made a moral judgment about those fantasies.
No. They are making a judgment about personal comfort. I do not think it is immoral not to bathe, but I would be concerned if my spouse decided not to.
Is that an absolute rule?
I think we agree, for the most part.
Ah, but in that case, you’d be saying something that you’d have to know is offensive. Thinking it would be morally neutral, but saying it would be an overtly hostile action.
I don’t see the relevance of this example. At all. Everyone’s got that inner sense of morality. Mine just doesn’t raise an eyebrow at thoughts, only actions. “Think what you want,” says my inner life, “Just don’t do anything that actually hurts people. That would be Wrong.”
I see what you’re saying… but it’s just too an extreme an example. I don’t see how a person in that situation could possibly retain sanity. I honestly don’t think a personality could survive in that kind of absolute isolation. Humans need stimulation just to be human. I don’t think there would be any inner life, just some thing howling in the dark.
At any rate, I don’t think I could pass any sort of a moral judgement over someone in that situation. From any point of view, yours or mine, I don’t think I could say that person is moral or immoral. Their experiences are too far out of my conception for me to say.
Not quite: what it has to be balanced against it the likelihood that that person is, in fact, just writing about a fantasy, and not something they plan to commit. All serial killers fantasize about murder, but not everyone who fantasizes about murder is a serial killer. So long as my theoretical spouse is in the second group and not the first group, she’s not doing anything immoral. Of course, I kight have noticed other things over the course of our marriage (such as, say, an unusually high demand for trashbags, lots of “midnight gardening,” disappearing neighbors, etc.) that would lead me to suspect it’s not just fun and games. But at the very worst, the fantasy might be evidence of immoral actions. The fantasies in and of themselves would not have a moral value. A bloody fingerprint isn’t immoral, either, but if it’s someone else’s blood, it might be evidence of immoral action.
AAAAARGHHHHHHHHHH!
It’s a fictional example!!! (I never use multiple exclamation points, but you leave me no choice.) It’s a fictional example and you’ve only responded to those aspects that I didn’t mention because they weren’t my point! The example is not about a paralyzed person; that’s just a device to illustrate a separation between thought and action. Sheesh, it’s like trying to explain a concept to a precocious child.
**Me: ***What if you had three wishes, what would you wish for?
***Miller: ***But how would you get the wishes?
***Me: ***It doesn’t matter, just pretend for the sake of discussion.
***Miller: ***But there’s no such thing as wishes.
***Me: ***Just pretend.
***Miller: ***From a genie? There’s no such thing as genies.
***Me: ***Please, just pretend, for discussion.
***Miller: ***But couldn’t he use one of those things that Stephen Hawking uses to communicate with?
***Me: ***Say he can’t.
***Miller: ***Maybe he could blink his eyes, once for yes, twice for no.
***Me: ***For the sake of this discussion, say he can’t.
***Miller: **Why? Did he hurt his eyelids in a car accident?
Just please address the points that I raise in my thought experiment, without trying to explain the practical objections to such a thing actually occurring.
Irrelevant; I’ve never been talking about “doing,” only thinking. That’s exactly the distinction I’ve been trying to make.
Can we have a mod retitle this thread as “Please stop by and lob your favorite non sequitur”?
This, I think, is our fundamental area of disagreement - the question whether thoughts alone can be immoral. I’d like to suggest another fictional example, that’s a little less extreme than lissener’s:
A man wants to murder his wife. He fantasises about it regularly, until, one night, he strangles her in her sleep.
Would you say that he was a moral person up to the instant he put his hands around her throat? It’s his first action. Or would you agree with me that he was being immoral by thinking about and planning the murder, even though that didn’t involve him actually doing anything?
I agree that a person’s moral nature can only be judged by their actions. But I would say that someone can be immoral and think evil thoughts, even if there’s no external evidence by which other people can discover this.
Not really. You keep moving the goalposts around. You first asked whether the fantasies would be immoral, to which ai give an unequivocal NO. You then shifted the discussion, most likely to get me to sdee the situation from a different perspective, and asked how I woulf feel or react if I discovered that my date or spouse demonstrated particular actions.
I included extra information in my reply to demonstrate why such fantasies would not, in and of themselves, bother me. To move closer to your position, if I discovered that my young teen son was investing a lot of energy in rape or torture fantasies, I would be concerned, because I would not immediately know whether they were fantasies or obsessions. If all his other expressions and actions indicated that the fantasies were just that, I would not have a problem with him, either.
I like eggs. Btw, does anyone else think that “egg” is a really funny word? Especially if you say it over and over? Egg. Egg. Egg. 
By indication, I mean measureable effect on the world around you. Cheating on your taxes or some such has such an effect. Evil fantasies do not.
Or that we have other criteria in addition to morality for choosing our spouses.
Two final questions for you: Say that we were to play A Clockwork Orange for our two hypothetically paralyzed men discussed above. One is made very uncomfortable, and does his best to ignore the images he is presented with. The other enjoys the heck out of it. Both are imagining the exact same thing.
Now, posit an additional two people. Over a period of time, both experience fantasies about rape and sexual dominance over others. One gets into the BDSM scene, and has a great deal of safe, sane, consensual sex. The other denies his thoughts, and represses himself until he eventually snaps. How many fantasies must he deny himself to balance out whatever he does in the real world?
You’re assuming that fantasies would decrease one’s desires, rather than fueling and increasing them. I see no reason to accept that claim.
In fact, I know people who were badly depressed, and who became increasingly suicidal the more they fantasized about suicide. By their own testimonies, it was when they chose to avoid such thoughts that they got their suicidal impulses under control. Ditto for people I know who were caught up in pornography; they more they indulged their fantasies, the deeper their desires became.
I have suspected throughout this thread that we may have a problem regarding the meaning of “fantasy.” To mw, and to the majority of writers on the topic whom I’ve read, fantasy indicates imagining things that are not true and cannot ever happen. If one is dreaming, wishing, hoping, obsessing over acts that they could, indeed, make reaql, then they have left fantasy for some other activity.
I am also not persuaded by claims that fantasies necessarily provide some release for bad thoughts. I suspect that the situation would depend very much on whether the person recognized the imagined actions as real or possible and what sort of grasp of reality the person possessed.
However, the thread began with a question regrding fantasy, which I perceive as the indulgence of one’s imagination in purely unreal (for whatever reasons) activities. Once we begin dragging in the thoughts of people who cannot distinguish reality or the intentions of people who are capable of acting on their imaginations, regardless how horrible, then we have moved beyond the OP. It is still a worthwhile discussion, but we have begun to conflate at least three separate topics.
I’m a big fan of using rules of thumb in real world applications of morality because otherwise you are so easily sidetracked into the sort of lawyeristic dribbling you see whenever legal issues come up on the Dope: extreme isolated cases are trotted out to show that even the most reasonable law can have bad consequences in real life, while insanely wrong conduct pass legal scrutiny because some feature of the language makes it somehow palatable to a judge (I’m looking at you, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, you who somehow decided that beating a shackled and cuffed prisoner hard enough to break bones somehow doesn’t constitute cruel treatment).
Too often the problem lies with looking too hard at specific cases while losing sight of the general concept. Frex, take the first Amendment, which says, “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.” Notice how it doesn’t make any exceptions for religious speech, sexually oriented speech or hate speech? I think that’s because the Founders knew that those in power would constantly be tempted to restrict the speech of those lacking power, and that any restriction on free speech, however tiny, would be used as a wedge to generally get rid of free speech.
Now, I personally, as a rule of thumb guy, can see an exception to the First Amendment for the sake of keeping secrets (like troop movements) in wartime. And I see no conflict between the First Amendment and restricitions on video or photos of children doing sex, because creating such images is nonconsensual, as children cant’ give informed consent. But of course, throughout American history many other restrictions have been placed on speech in America, even political speech (think: Alien & Sedition Act). In fact, my personal favorite was the suppression of information about birth control back in the early years of the 20th century, which was claimed to be not a restriction on Free Speech on the grounds that it had to do with sex and was therefore obscene.
My point is that rules of thumb are generally a good way of avoiding the dead ends produced by lawyeristic twaddle about specific cases, but they have to be balanced with an awareness of the importance of the principles they are being applied to. Freedom of speech is essential to a democracy, and those who want their own way no matter what will always be opposed to it, and if you let them rule of thumb you here and rule of thumb you there, pretty soon you won’t have a democracy – you’ll be under someone’s thumb.
I dated a guy who was into rape porn. Now, I understand that it is considered a legitimate fantasy. What bothered me is that he wanted me to watch it with him. This, in my opinion is where he crossed the line into someone I didn’t want to hang out with any longer. I dunno…do couples watch rape porn together? I consider myself FAR from being prudish, but in my opinion, this is a fantasy that should be kept locked inside one’s brain.
Exactly. Which is why that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the UNMEASURABLE part, the part that is wholly personal. The taxes was not the point of that example; it was the knowing.
I never suggested repression. I’m only trying to define the nature of the thought, not to prescribe a course of action of how to deal with it.
The reason I’m using extreme examples is to establish the extremities of the spectrum. I’m trying to define the “zero” and the “10” on the zero-to-ten scale. I’ve already said that most real-life situations fall somewhere more along the bell curve between these extremes.