I think we may get some good discussion here on a variety of topics. Feel free to ask a question or even answer or shed light on things that others think about. Personal preference is important here and opinions will be the standard. I'll start with this:

I have been to a strip club once in my life. I didn't enjoy it much and I think there are better ways to share the company of a female than shoving money in here G-string. I was 18 when I went and married my wife at 23. She hates the thought of me ever going and the fact is, I never would again. The thing is, I wouldn't go based on my own preference, regardless of what she thinks.

Now take "Random Guy" and he loves strip clubs. He marries and swears off them forever out of respect for his new bride. Although he never attends again, he constantly has the urge to go.

Question - Who is better in your eyes: The man without the desire or the man who resists the urge?

I think many subjects can fall into this category. Is a priest who has the desire to be with a teenage boy but resists the urge to be commended or condemned for his thoughts vs. potential actions?

I realize there are no "right" answers to these questions but any insight would be interesting.

Hah, this is an interesting question.

Obviously the person restraining himself has to work much harder, but I don't think effort=being a better person. I believe much of what we are is determined by nature, and some people are born with different urges than others. That's why I would say that people born with fewer addictions/weaknesses are strictly speaking the better people.

I agree with Paxsoprano's point, but I'll share a thought of my own too.

It's strange because you have to respect the discipline of a person to resist an 'evil' urge, regardless of what that urge is. Everyone has an idea or philosiphy on how to live a good life or how to be a good person. We sometimes get urges to do things that don't agree with our own philosophies. I suppose resisting the temptation shows a level of commitment and belief to the philosophy and also an attempt to do something "right". I respect that. However, I would rather spend time with someone who cheats on his girlfriend than a priest who thinks about touching little boys (without ever acting on it), but then you're getting into the lesser of two evils thing.

Tough question. I'll think some more about it and see if I can offer up some more ideas.

quote:

Originally posted by paxsoprano:
That's why I would say that people born with fewer addictions/weaknesses are strictly speaking the better people.

No, those people just have an easier time being good people. If you're doing the right thing, whether you have to work at it or not, you're still doing the right thing.

In my opinion, P-Bo and Random Guy are equally good people, at least in the eyes of their wives.

quote:

Originally posted by P-Bo:
Question - Who is better in your eyes: The man without the desire or the man who resists the urge?.

Not that this helps, but Immanuel Kant would say the person who resists the urge is the only one doing the MORAL thing. Doing (or not doing) something because you WANT to (or don't) isn't acting morally, it's acting from inclination, according to Kant, and that's not moral action.

Aristotle would say that learning to resist your urges to go to the strip club is part of your moral education, and that you will (eventually) become someone who doesn't NEED to resist those urges.

quote:

Originally posted by philosopherEric:
Doing (or not doing) something because you WANT to (or don't) isn't acting morally, it's acting from inclination, according to Kant, and that's not moral action.

I'm not sure if I don't understand or if I disagree...are you saying that Kant thinks no action taken based on one's inherited traits can be moral, and that all moral actions must stem from conquering inherited traits?

Honestly, I think deep down we are all evil people, and the only think that differs among us is the degree of that evil. I would define evil as the inability to control one's own actions, whether that be for food, sex, strippers, money, etc. In this case I would say P-Bo is a "better" person than the random guy because he is not driven by this particular weakness (although P-Bo may not be less evil if he is driven by other, more sadistic urges than the random guy).

quote:

Originally posted by philosopherEric:
Not that this helps, but Immanuel Kant would say the person who resists the urge is the only one doing the MORAL thing. Doing (or not doing) something because you WANT to (or don't) isn't acting morally, it's acting from inclination, according to Kant, and that's not moral action.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that doing something you want to do can't be moral (some people may be more naturally predisposed to do good things), but I think I generally agree with Kant here. I would say that there's not really any merit in refraining from doing something you don't want to do anyways. You're just lucky if you don't feel like doing some immoral act.

You can't control what you hunger to do. That's entirely out of your control. So I would say that I would be a fervent admirer of a priest who had a strong desire to touch little boys but restrained himself from ever doing it. He willingly suffers to protect others. Saying that someone is better because they don't have any urges to do bad things is like saying someone is better because they were born with more beautiful hair than another person.

quote:

He willingly suffers to protect others.

When you look at it this way, it makes a whole lot of sense. This whole discussion merely scratches the surface of larger issues in society such as abortion, homosexuality, and insanity court rulings, to name a few.

All these things have one common thread – faith. Faith, as in having faith in the honesty of others. One thing on Earth that we will never truly know is the content of another man's mind. A person can lie until the day they die and there is no guaranteed way to know the truth. This pertains to things that can't be proven physically in front of the naked eye. I think this explains why so many people turn to religion as a means to explain the things have no explanation.

Example:
RL has a chocolate chip cookie on his kitchen table. I sneak in and eat it without anyone seeing and without any recorded history of my act. RL accuses me of eating his cookie and I stand trial (quite possibly the trial of the century). I fail a lie detector and I confess under the influence of truth serum. When I'm in a sober state though, I continue to deny it. Up until the day I die from lethal injection, I never confess to eating RL's cookie. At this point, going off what I had told people, no one can 100% know that I did it. They can have suspicions beyond the shadow of a doubt but they can't prove what only I know.

This may be where religion gives people hope that someone, somewhere, in another dimension created us, controls us, and can make us answer for every thought and action we ever had or took. The alternative to this belief can be very scary indeed if you let your mind stay on topic for too long.

I don't know about you guys (actually, I do ), but I don't know anybody who doesn't have urges to do something which they believe is wrong. I'm also not going to get into a rating system where something is more wrong than something else. (You know, I'm not going to rate the bad things on a 0-100 Metacritic scale.) Everybody does good and bad things, and some impact more people than others.

Now, this doesn't exactly answer P-Bo's question, but not doing a "bad" thing is always "good". It's only when you start talking about things like "you want to do it in your heart" (which is basically a morally-based, religious-type question) where you get into all these degrees of "goodness and badness" or some absolute RULE. This question gets foggy when different cultures, historical eras, and politics are involved. We strive for some Absolute Truth and Defining Morality, but we can never know it. We can aspire to it, but that depends on who your God/god is, but humans can't really know unless they convince themselves they are God.

Actually Brother P-Bo, God and I are examining the Hidden Camera Tapes now. Your ass is still grass.

Sorry about that. Carry on.

quote:

Originally posted by paxsoprano:

I'm not sure if I don't understand or if I disagree...are you saying that Kant thinks no action taken based on one's inherited traits can be moral, and that all moral actions must stem from conquering inherited traits?

I'm pretty sure Kant wasn't addressing inherited traits at all. I don't think he considered inherited traits to be the stopping point: for Kant, our rational mind (which is beyond any genetic traits) is the root of morality.

The critics debate this at times, but it seems to me clear that the moral action comes from conquering your inclinations and desires (which you might call part of your DNA now). Doing what you WANT to do is different from doing what you OUGHT to do most of the time, he thinks. The key issue is the (perpetual) conflict between the RATIONAL (which is the moral) and the NONRATIONAL. I think he would agree with your general pessimism about the human condition, though, pax.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: philosopherEric,

Mark Twain would probably have agreed with Pax as well: "Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. -- Mark Twain

I love the old, cycnical Twain.

Still, I think the whole debate about man being inherently evil or good is kind of silly really, especially when it's used to justify some political theory. To me, that kind of rationalization is complete and utter bosh, usually employed to portray the status quo as the best Homo sapiens is capable of and ignoring the fact that similar pronouncements could've been made at any point in human history and, if accepted, would've precluded any progress.

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
Mark Twain would probably have agreed with Pax as well: "Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. -- Mark Twain

I love the old, cycnical Twain.

Still, I think the whole debate about man being inherently evil or good is kind of silly really, especially when it's used to justify some political theory. To me, that kind of rationalization is complete and utter bosh, usually employed to portray the status quo as the best Homo sapiens is capable of and ignoring the fact that similar pronouncements could've been made at any point in human history and, if accepted, would've precluded any progress.

I'm not sure how saying that men are inherently evil would encourage the status quo. Man might be the only species on Earth that possesses malice, but it is also the only species that is capable of rationality, which means that continual progression is the natural state of humanity.

OK, I think I understand what Kant is saying. I'm just not sure how much of what we do is motivated by the "nonrational." Some traits, like alcoholism or wanting to see strippers, I think can be correctly labeled as immoral, irrational weaknesses, but what if someone is particularly good at math and wants to be an engineer? That person might be drawn to mathematics, but most people would classify such an inclination as a strength, not a weakness, even though the inclination toward mathematics might be just as "natural" as the alcoholic's inclination for booze.

Keep in mind, pax, that Kant is using 'rational' and 'nonrational' in a very specific, very strict sense. For ethics, being rational is taking the action you wish to do and subjecting it to the Categorical Imperative. The most common version of the CI is:

Act only on that maxim which you can, at the same time, will to be a universal law.

In other words, what you're willing to do, you must also allow OTHERS to do as a universal principle. So LYING is out, because by lying you authorize everyone to lie, but you don't want to be lied to yourself. I'm guessing you can see how it goes. It is a rational test for the UNIVERSALIZABILITY of your actions. Kant thinks that anything nonrational (emotions, inclinations, presumably genetic dispositions) can (and should) be overcome by rationality and the CI.

This is, of course, WAY oversimplified. I spend almost two full weeks (four classes) on this when I teach ethics to undergrads.

pE,

One thing I've always wondered about, but never took the time to find the answer to (as you know, I try to avoid ethics as a discipline whenever possible) is what is the appropriate scope when applying the CI? I imagine this is an issue that is still being debated, but how does Kant get out of the problem of either having such broad maxims that there is no room for special circumstances (I'm thinking of a case like lying to the Nazis about Anne Frank being hidden in the attic) or such narrow maxims that every moral decision seemingly leads to its own maxim (Would I will as a universal law that given these circumstances, with this background information, at this time and place, etc...)
I know that is a very phil 101 question, which I'm sure you've had to answer a bunch, so I'm hoping you can clear things up a bit.

quote:

Originally posted by keylimetrev:
pE,

One thing I've always wondered about, but never took the time to find the answer to (as you know, I try to avoid ethics as a discipline whenever possible) is what is the appropriate scope when applying the CI? I imagine this is an issue that is still being debated, but how does Kant get out of the problem of either having such broad maxims that there is no room for special circumstances (I'm thinking of a case like lying to the Nazis about Anne Frank being hidden in the attic) or such narrow maxims that every moral decision seemingly leads to its own maxim (Would I will as a universal law that given these circumstances, with this background information, at this time and place, etc...)
I know that is a very phil 101 question, which I'm sure you've had to answer a bunch, so I'm hoping you can clear things up a bit.

It's a great question, and still broadly debated, but I think the answer falls within the scope of broad, and not narrow, application of the CI. The CI, as I understand Kant's vision of it, was meant to applied in token-instances of situations BUT the types aren't supposed to be narrow. You can't have a permissible kind of lie (a 'little white lie') but other types of lies labelled impermissible, as far as I can see. I think Kant, himself, goes hardline on lying: if the Nazis come to your door and ask for Anne Frank, you have to tell the truth. It's possible to argue that the Nazis are a special case (some have claimed that the CI need not apply when there is widespread rejection of it or if the person who asking you the question is non-rational themselves) but I think the line is simple: no lying. Ever. Period. If you let 'special circumstances' get into the picture, you open the door for exactly what Kant wants to reject: treating yourself as the exception to the rule and saying "do as I say, not as I do."

That's one version of interpretation of Kant himself. COntemporary Kantians can try to soften that line as they see fit, and do.

quote:

Originally posted by philosopherEric:
The most common version of the CI is:

Act only on that maxim which you can, at the same time, will to be a universal law.

To me, that would only be right if you could get everyone else to follow that theory, and since that's extremely unlikely, that theory doesn't make much sense. You as an individual have only a very limited effect on others' behavior, so the most moral thing to do is to consider the state of the world and the behavior of everyone else and, given that, to act in such a way as to do as little harm and as much good as possible. Pretending that everyone else will act like yourself is a useless academic exercise. The don't-lie-even-to-Nazis scenario highlights the absurdity of Kant's notions.

True enough, although Kant thought it (the CI) to be a necessary conclusion of all rational minds/agents. If you were fully rational, you MUST apply the CI.

By the by, I disagree with Kant. I've been explicating him, but I didn't want anyone to get the impression I'm a Kantian. I'm not.

quote:

It's a great question, and still broadly debated, but I think the answer falls within the scope of broad, and not narrow, application of the CI. The CI, as I understand Kant's vision of it, was meant to applied in token-instances of situations BUT the types aren't supposed to be narrow. You can't have a permissible kind of lie (a 'little white lie') but other types of lies labelled impermissible, as far as I can see. I think Kant, himself, goes hardline on lying: if the Nazis come to your door and ask for Anne Frank, you have to tell the truth. It's possible to argue that the Nazis are a special case (some have claimed that the CI need not apply when there is widespread rejection of it or if the person who asking you the question is non-rational themselves) but I think the line is simple: no lying. Ever. Period. If you let 'special circumstances' get into the picture, you open the door for exactly what Kant wants to reject: treating yourself as the exception to the rule and saying "do as I say, not as I do."

And I ask : Would you tell where Anne Frank is?
Universally speaking.
I know I wouldn't because I know that they would suffer. And instead of having the thought I led to Frank family's sufferings and death, I would prefer the thought of lying to someone. I know it sounds a little selfish but I think the reason that I wouldn't like them to suffer is not because I wouldn't like the idea of me leading the nazis to them but because I generally don't like the idea of someone being hurt by someone else. Is this bad?