Consequences and validation
September 6th 2008 13:24
It's often thought that the offence lies in the intention, or even the "pre-intention". "But I say to you, anyone who stares at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart": Matthew, 5:28.
However, this notion doesn't always reflect everyday practice. For instance, attempted murder is treated (by law, and by opinion) as less serious than murder, and dangerous driving is less culpable if no one gets hurt -- "despite the fact that they have no voluntary control over their success as murderers or their lethality as motorists": Timothy Chappell, "Bernard Williams", 2006, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Chappell goes on to summarize the Williams analysis: "We blame people not only for what they have voluntarily done, but also for what they have done as a matter of luck".
This might or might not be correct; but I think it's true that we take into account how things turned out when assessing a decision as good or bad, and that we're prepared to make this assessment retrospectively.
Aristotle tends to a similar view. The label "happy" can only properly be applied after a person is dead, "because life includes many reversals of fortune, good and bad, and the most prosperous person may fall into a terrible disaster in old age, as the Trojan stories tell us about Priam. If someone has suffered these sorts of misfortunes and comes to a miserable end, no one counts him happy": Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 9.
In action movies, the hero is faced with the choice of certain safety, or almost certain death. He chooses death, but almost invariably triumphs, against the odds. Everything works out neatly -- and this success is a type of validation.
And even if things don't work out, wouldn't we still judge that the hero made the right decision? Well, I think we would. We have a whole grab-bag of beliefs ready to hand -- "Place others before the self", "Self-sacrifice is noble", "One should be courageous", and so forth. Consequences aren't dispositive of everyday morality; they're not the only thing that go into our moral judgments.
But they do help... In real life, is the failed hero validated? Take a different type of movie. On watching films like "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist", one can be struck by the emptiness of everyday moral guidelines when such beliefs are divorced from human well-being. (Compare the church service in Bergman's "Winter Light".)
There is a despairing "So what?" that overshadows such situations, despite all the Atticus Finch romance of hopeless causes. If it's World War II, and I'm a German citizen who shelters a French soldier, and both of us are discovered, the end.... Well, so what? So what if I made the proper everyday decision? It's still not clear that I made the right decision. -- The soldier and I vanish without a trace, and the world rolls on, uncaring.
However, this notion doesn't always reflect everyday practice. For instance, attempted murder is treated (by law, and by opinion) as less serious than murder, and dangerous driving is less culpable if no one gets hurt -- "despite the fact that they have no voluntary control over their success as murderers or their lethality as motorists": Timothy Chappell, "Bernard Williams", 2006, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Chappell goes on to summarize the Williams analysis: "We blame people not only for what they have voluntarily done, but also for what they have done as a matter of luck".
This might or might not be correct; but I think it's true that we take into account how things turned out when assessing a decision as good or bad, and that we're prepared to make this assessment retrospectively.
Aristotle tends to a similar view. The label "happy" can only properly be applied after a person is dead, "because life includes many reversals of fortune, good and bad, and the most prosperous person may fall into a terrible disaster in old age, as the Trojan stories tell us about Priam. If someone has suffered these sorts of misfortunes and comes to a miserable end, no one counts him happy": Nicomachean Ethics, book 1, chapter 9.
***
In action movies, the hero is faced with the choice of certain safety, or almost certain death. He chooses death, but almost invariably triumphs, against the odds. Everything works out neatly -- and this success is a type of validation.
And even if things don't work out, wouldn't we still judge that the hero made the right decision? Well, I think we would. We have a whole grab-bag of beliefs ready to hand -- "Place others before the self", "Self-sacrifice is noble", "One should be courageous", and so forth. Consequences aren't dispositive of everyday morality; they're not the only thing that go into our moral judgments.
But they do help... In real life, is the failed hero validated? Take a different type of movie. On watching films like "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist", one can be struck by the emptiness of everyday moral guidelines when such beliefs are divorced from human well-being. (Compare the church service in Bergman's "Winter Light".)
There is a despairing "So what?" that overshadows such situations, despite all the Atticus Finch romance of hopeless causes. If it's World War II, and I'm a German citizen who shelters a French soldier, and both of us are discovered, the end.... Well, so what? So what if I made the proper everyday decision? It's still not clear that I made the right decision. -- The soldier and I vanish without a trace, and the world rolls on, uncaring.
| 61 |
| Vote |
Add To: 
Comment by Dido