RE: Not A Poll: Does Motivation Affect Morality?
May 14, 2016 at 9:27 pm
(This post was last modified: May 14, 2016 at 9:32 pm by Excited Penguin.)
(May 14, 2016 at 3:39 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: Mostly just replying to the OP:
Personally, I think your outward words and actions are the biggest factors in decency/morality, and motivation doesn't really matter at all. In the case of the first example, both men made a morally correct choice by donating to charity. Personally, I don't grade people on how much charity they give, so I wouldn't consider the larger donation to be "more moral." At this point in the equation, both men are equally moral.
James, however, didn't stop there. According to your example, he actively tried to make John feel inferior about his own donation. James almost certainly wouldn't want this done to him in kind, which makes example 1 a violation of the most basic moral tenet: The Golden Rule. The action of making John feel inferior is technically a separate action, since there are probably over 100 ways James could do that without it having anything to do with charity, so the morality of that action should be judged separately.
If James knows that John will feel upset and inferior about his smaller donation even if James says nothing, and James donates with that intention, then it might be a little foggier, but I would still say this violates the golden rule (albeit in a slightly different way).
I, for one, wouldn't want somebody taking advantage of a natural vulnerability I have, especially to do something petty and manipulative with the intention of upsetting me, and I doubt James would, either, so James has again violated TGR. Even though the donation itself is the thing upsetting John, fucking with his head like that is still a separate action from making the donation (even though they're the same act, making this example kind of weird). In that case, I would still separately judge the act of charity and the act of malice.
Buying shoes is morally neutral, and buying medicine for your kid is a moral obligation, so the women are equally moral in how they spent the money (in my opinion). The act of theft is equally immoral in both cases. The taking of the money and the spending are, again, separate actions. There's no real need to drag intentions into any of it.
There are several problems with your basic moral tenet. Would you like me to enumerate some of them, or should I let you figure them out for yourself by extrapolation?
The bulk of what you said is practically superflous. I'm sure you can figure that out yourself by editing your own reply, should you feel the need to do so.
What you did practically say, however, is that apparently I can give 5 cents to a drunk beggar who I know is trying to save up to buy booze, and Bill Gates could give all his money to the best working charities out there, and yet we'd be morally equal in that particular equation, nothing else being taken into consideration.
You're smart, but you're also afflicted by the need to pander to idiots, so you inadvertently modify your own remarks so as to be more socially acceptable, even at the cost of rationality. It's ok*, the world is what it is, and it's far simpler to change yourself than to change it. Just be aware of what you're doing so you can at least get better at it and your hipocrisy isn't apparent enough to annoy me.
