Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e330580
G. Sher
This chapter discusses the value of the freedom of mind that we would lose if our thoughts were subject to moral restrictions. By internalizing restrictions on thought, we not only lose access to various forms of knowledge but also relinquish authorship of our beliefs and cut ourselves off from important aspects of our personalities. More important yet, we flatten out our experience in ways that make us far less interesting both to ourselves and others. The subjective realm is both a retreat in a hostile world and an endlessly expansive playground, and we needlessly surrender both advantages by letting morality in.
{"title":"Encomium","authors":"G. Sher","doi":"10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e330580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e330580","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses the value of the freedom of mind that we would lose if our thoughts were subject to moral restrictions. By internalizing restrictions on thought, we not only lose access to various forms of knowledge but also relinquish authorship of our beliefs and cut ourselves off from important aspects of our personalities. More important yet, we flatten out our experience in ways that make us far less interesting both to ourselves and others. The subjective realm is both a retreat in a hostile world and an endlessly expansive playground, and we needlessly surrender both advantages by letting morality in.","PeriodicalId":382434,"journal":{"name":"A Wild West of the Mind","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132493823","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0003
G. Sher
This chapter examines the connections between thought and harm from an ex ante perspective. It asks whether the antecedent risk that a given belief, attitude, or fantasy will have a harmful impact on another is ever high enough to render that thought impermissible. The kinds of harms that are discussed include the frustration of others’ private desires, the infliction of offense and hurt feelings, and various forms of economic and physical damage. The chapter’s conclusion is that while the risks that are posed by some thoughts approach the permissibility threshold, none actually crosses the line.
{"title":"Moral Risk","authors":"G. Sher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the connections between thought and harm from an ex ante perspective. It asks whether the antecedent risk that a given belief, attitude, or fantasy will have a harmful impact on another is ever high enough to render that thought impermissible. The kinds of harms that are discussed include the frustration of others’ private desires, the infliction of offense and hurt feelings, and various forms of economic and physical damage. The chapter’s conclusion is that while the risks that are posed by some thoughts approach the permissibility threshold, none actually crosses the line.","PeriodicalId":382434,"journal":{"name":"A Wild West of the Mind","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121450155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0002
G. Sher
Private thoughts can lead to public harms in a variety of ways. They can do so by motivating those who harbor them to perform harmful acts, by motivating their own hurtful or destructive communication, and by being unintentionally disclosed by persons who don’t mean to communicate them. In addition, although mind-reading is presently impossible, that may change in the future, and if it does, it will be a further source of mischief. The questions that this chapter addresses are, first, whether a thought’s actually causing harm in one of these ways can make its previous occurrence morally wrong, and, second, whether a thought’s posing the risk of causing harm in one of these ways can make having it now morally wrong. Of these questions, the current chapter answers all versions of the first, and some versions of the second, in the negative. The remaining versions of the second question are carried over to the following chapter.
{"title":"Harmful Thoughts","authors":"G. Sher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Private thoughts can lead to public harms in a variety of ways. They can do so by motivating those who harbor them to perform harmful acts, by motivating their own hurtful or destructive communication, and by being unintentionally disclosed by persons who don’t mean to communicate them. In addition, although mind-reading is presently impossible, that may change in the future, and if it does, it will be a further source of mischief. The questions that this chapter addresses are, first, whether a thought’s actually causing harm in one of these ways can make its previous occurrence morally wrong, and, second, whether a thought’s posing the risk of causing harm in one of these ways can make having it now morally wrong. Of these questions, the current chapter answers all versions of the first, and some versions of the second, in the negative. The remaining versions of the second question are carried over to the following chapter.","PeriodicalId":382434,"journal":{"name":"A Wild West of the Mind","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116374418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0004
G. Sher
According to many virtue ethicists, a wrong act is one that a virtuous person would not perform. Because most virtues involve dispositions to feel and think as well as act, a natural extension of this claim may appear to support the conclusion that it is morally wrong to have vicious thoughts. However, because moral reasons are widely thought to be very strong if not overriding, any such argument must be backed by an explanation of how a thought’s viciousness can give us a suitably strong reason not to have it. This chapter examines the two most promising theories of virtue and vice, eudaemonism and Platonism, and concludes that neither provides the needed explanation.
{"title":"Vicious Thoughts","authors":"G. Sher","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197564677.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"According to many virtue ethicists, a wrong act is one that a virtuous person would not perform. Because most virtues involve dispositions to feel and think as well as act, a natural extension of this claim may appear to support the conclusion that it is morally wrong to have vicious thoughts. However, because moral reasons are widely thought to be very strong if not overriding, any such argument must be backed by an explanation of how a thought’s viciousness can give us a suitably strong reason not to have it. This chapter examines the two most promising theories of virtue and vice, eudaemonism and Platonism, and concludes that neither provides the needed explanation.","PeriodicalId":382434,"journal":{"name":"A Wild West of the Mind","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115960238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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