Because we acknowledge that thinking about doing something inherently makes it more likely that you’ll do it; the question is to what extent and whether that should affect how you think of and deal with that person. If someone says they’re a pedophile, but have never and will never act on it, assuming that you knew it was the absolute truth, would you entrust your child to them? Your life savings? Obviously this specific situation is never going to happen to the vast majority of people, but it does lead to other similar questions that are more realistic.
Speaking of weird hypothetical questions, here’s one I’m musing over. Suppose you have a hermit whose beliefs are sincerely and 100% MAGA. But since they’re a hermit, they never vote, get on the internet, or otherwise interact with people except for the briefest of business dealings, during which they are completely fair and courteous no matter who he’s dealing with. In other words, their beliefs have never, can never, and will never manifest any effect on anyone else but themselves. Accepting this hypothetical, would you consider this hermit a good person? Like if you personally decided whether he’d go to Christian heaven or Christian hell when he died, what would you choose?
(Yes, it’s extreme and silly, but it gets to the heart of the discussion here, IMO. That and the extremity and silliness adds to its charm for me.)
Yeah, it must, to some extent. If you never think of doing something, you’ll never do it, will you?
(Edit: I realize I’m overstating a little here, but hopefully my meaning comes across. Like, who do you think is more likely to bomb a Planned Parenthood: someone who thinks about abortion frequently, or someone who never thinks about it? It’s a signal and an impetus, at the least, right? Or else this entire discussion would be moot.)
Like I said, it’s just a matter of how much effect it has and what it says about you.
I don’t think you’re saying that everyone who is opposed to abortion is equally evil as the one person who bombs a clinic (although it sounds that way). So just how evil is someone who thinks that all abortion should be illegal? Compared to someone who wishes no-one would ever have an abortion? Compared to someone whose believes people who get and perform abortions are condemned for eternity? Providing that none of these people ever takes any action of any kind about it? More importantly to me, what is the point of calling someone evil for their thoughts, if they never take any action about it? What does it get you? Is believing that some thoughts are evil going to get people to change their thoughts?
They’re a good person in a practical sense but they still have evil and irrational beliefs. I think everyone should go to a benevolent afterlife because desert based punishment doesn’t make sense at all in a deterministic/indeterministic universe. It definitely doesn’t make sense to punish someone for having bad beliefs when people can’t choose their beliefs or what they find convincing.
But that is talking about what it would be if they acted on it, which you say this isn’t about.
You’d never know if a person you are sitting with, chatting and drinking cofffee, harbours secret fantasies about smashing in your skull, if they never act on it.
If it affects their behaviour or attitudes in any way, that’s acting on it. If they confess the thoughts to you, but assure you it’s all just a fun idea in their head, that’s acting on it.
A hypothetical: let’s say a child is being tortured. Person A and person B both walk by the torture and do nothing. Person A does nothing because he hates children and person B does nothing because he’s deaf and blind and doesn’t notice.
Since the outcome is the same, is it your contention that person A and person B have the same level of guilt (or innocence)?
The Lutheran Church agrees with you and expresses that in The Confessions with the phrase, “I have sinned in thought, word, and deed.” However, if a thought or desire is truly evil, virtually every single person in this world is evil because we have all had them on more than one occasion because there are a plethora of evil thoughts and desires available. Sexing children is just one variety, albeit a truly disgusting one. How many of us have fantasized about the suffering and/or death of evil people, for example?
If you wish me dead in your mind, I’m not in actuality. I’ll gladly take that as opposed to a bullet in the head.
I don’t think that people necessarily have control over the thoughts that arrive in their heads, but I do believe that (perhaps with exceptions) dwelling on them, developing them into fantasies etc, can be a choice.
Is a person who expends considerable mental effort developing a fantasy about (say) hurting people, statistically more likely to eventually carry out those actions?
If so, then I think there would be an argument that the development of the fantasy itself was evil - in the same way that, for example, driving your car deliberately at a person with the intent to run them down is an act of evil, not just the moment of impact.
I think that any person that influences someone to commit acts of evil evil qualifies as evil. Thoughts can be personified as an internal dialogue between yourself and a mock persona, so a thought can be evil.
The thinker himself hasn’t done any evil at that point. Evil is in the world, and in our minds, and opposing it is just part of the duty of being human. But if you let it get to the point where you’re willfully allowing the evil thought to develop into greater plans or fantasies, then you’re influencing the evil thought and yourself to bring it closer to realization, so that’s an evil act.
Let me emphasize that I don’t think thoughts are punishable evil. Just that the internal struggle with evil is part and parcel of the human condition, and to be good is to fight that inner fight to the best of one’s ability.
We all agree that acting on harmful desires is clearly wrong—but fantasy is trickier. The morality of a fantasy depends on what it is, why it exists, and how much control a person has over it.
Many believe thoughts are a private matter and only actions deserve moral scrutiny.
But I’d argue it’s more complicated. Not all disturbing fantasies are morally equal. Torture fantasies, for example, have no evolutionary basis and are a moral red flag—even if they’re never acted on. On the other hand, attraction to post-pubescent teens is biologically wired into humans, though most societies raise the age-of-consent higher. Prepubescent attraction, in contrast, has no natural precedent and is far less morally flexible.
I don’t believe “evil” is in play here (it depends on how you define it), but some fantasies can be deeply unhealthy or morally concerning without crossing into outright evil.
Ultimately, the morality of any fantasy depends on its content, its biological roots (nature), social norms (nurture), and the person’s psychological health. So if you think all fantasies are equally immoral, or equally harmless, you’re confusing a thought crime with a crime scene.
I think that a fantasy you’d hate if it ever came true probably feels differently in your head than one that you’re tempted to make come true.
Aside from the fact that I don’t know how you’d get those statistics, because in most cases, and probably especially in cases of the first type, the person’s not going to go around announcing that they have the fantasies: I think you’re really conflating two different types of things. Yes, I think people who are seriously tempted to go torture somebody should try not to entertain torture fantasies. But I don’t think they’re dangerous to somebody who’d be horrified by them if they came true; any more than enjoying reading and/or writing murder mysteries, even horrific ones, is dangerous to most people.
Scenario 1: You’re walking down a stairwell; one of the treads of the stairs (made of heavy ceramic blocks) is loose and you don’t notice this; you step on it and it becomes dislodged falling off the side and down the stairwell - to where a person is walking on one of the flights of stairs that zigzag down below. The block strikes them on the head and kills them.
Scenario 2: You’re walking down a stairwell; one of the treads of the stairs (made of heavy ceramic blocks) is loose and you DO notice it; you pick it up and you also notice that there is a person walking on one of the flights of stairs that zigzag down below; you hurl the block down at them without warning and with deliberate intent to harm them. The block strikes them on the head and kills them.
Same outcome and only outcomes count. So the same thing? Right?
I agree. I sometimes have intrusive thoughts that in the moment, I find quite shocking - for example on the way out of a theatre one time I just suddenly wondered, out of nowhere, what would happen if I picked up one of the heavy brass bases for the rope barriers and started bashing people’s heads with it, and I’ve often experienced the ‘what if I just jumped?’ thing when up high on a balcony or roof.
I don’t think anyone can necessarily control such intrusions and I expect some people maybe have trouble telling them ‘that’s enough of that’; my question was really about when people react “that’s not enough of that” - and choose to dwell on and embellish and nurture a dark fantasy (and not because they’re a writer of fiction) - are some of those people more likely to actually carry out the fantasised act?
But I still say that some people – maybe many people – fantasize about things they’d be horrified to have actually happen; and that those people are not at risk for doing so, any more than if they were writing fiction, or reading somebody else’s fiction.
People also fantasize things they would like to have happen. If those things are horrific, I agree that they should try not to “dwell on, embellish, and nuture” them. But I disagree that privately enjoying a fantasy that the person knows perfectly well would horrify them if it actually happened is dangerous. And I suspect – though I doubt there’s any way to get good statistics – that it’s pretty common.
There are people who take it so far as to find somebody willing to play these things out – complete with safe words to make sure nobody actually gets harmed. I don’t think absolutely everybody kinky in this fashion really wants to genuinely rape and torture their partners; and I get the impression, though I’m not part of that community and only know what I’ve happened to read about it, that if they’re actually doing it right instead of imitating Shades of Grey, it doesn’t progress into actually doing so.
According to Buddhist beliefs, thoughts are the precursors to actions. One is required to examine one’s thoughts and refrain from thoughts that harm or hurt others so that they do not result in actions.
I would argue a deaf and blind person cannot be trusted to climb this boobytrapped stairwell. If they do so anyway, they killed the person below just as surely as the person doing it on purpose.
The real villain is of course the contractor doing such shoddy work.
At some point we’re gonna need a judge and jury. But let us decide if we need them based on outcomes.
I’m not talking about deaf or blind people - the two scenarios I provided are, by most people, classified as 1: accident and 2: murder, but your assertion that ‘Intentions, motives, nothing of that matters. Only outcomes count.’ renders them the same, does it not?
Or does intent actually matter, after all?
The person descending the stairs caused a block to strike the head of someone below, killing them. In scenario 1, this happened unwittingly. In scenario 2, it was a deliberate and malicious attack. The outcome was the same - someone died. Are they the same? Should we treat them exactly the same way?