Frankspencer
Socrates is right. It was a widespread claim in Athens.

Still - people are not motivated by the fact that they won't get caught: they won't get caught if they don't do action x, either. What motivates them is the desire that x is worth doing; not getting caught simply removes the brakes. (Noone ever thinks that something is worth doing simply because they won't get caught, and to the extent that would-be criminals are rational, they will take the chance of getting caught into their consideration. But it's not what gets them out of the house in the first place.)

You're right that, sometimes, wrongness adds to the thrill, and this is something of a paradox at first glance. But not all that much of one: the action isn't done because it's wrong; it's done because it's thrilling in some way. As we might Miltonsatanically say: "Evil, be thou my good." But the point is just that it does thereby become good, at least in context.

The same sort of thing fits with at least some terrorist tactics: the intention may not be to kill as such, but to shock as a means to promoting some (good) end. (I read a samizdat terrorist pamphlet from the late 1970s that conceded this point: most terrorists would prefer not to shed blood, but are willing to do so because they think that it is worth it in the end. That fits my account perfectly.)

As I said, Hitler is a problem case - and I do have difficulty there. But, as I also said, so does everyone else. To this extent, I think that he's not all that useful in moral debate: he kind of falls off the end of the spectrum, and it's difficult to say anything meaningful that isn't at the same time exculpatory.

I grant that many "decisions" are no such thing, because they aren't matters of deliberation - but I don't think that that makes all that much difference: if pressed, I suspect that I might want to tell a story about agents' characters, rather than their actions, being the proper object of scrutiny. We're back to Greece with that - Aristotle this time (who, in my world, is modified by a bit of Nietzsche... but that's a different story). So there's no rationalising or explaining away - it's just a matter of shifting the focus. For me, it's people, not actions, that're bad.

Is the smothering example a Thos. Hardy reference, BTW? "Done because we are too many..."
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 11 Dec 2007, 16:13, Reply)