Evil thoughts without actions?

Question

Can a thought without a corresponding action be morally wrong?

More fully, under which approaches to morality do thoughts, in and of themselves, carry moral significance?

In particular I'm looking for approaches that yield affirmative answers to the initial question.

In in some (naive) utilitarian approaches, I can see arguments in the negative: since there are no (significant -- maybe there is some very minor self-harm) negative outcomes from just the thought itself, they're not really bad. This is where my intuition lies.

The only positive case I can think of is under theism: the thought can be an affront to God. But I have only vague notions on this so any elaboration on the idea of "thought sins" under specific religious dogma would be appreciated.

Answer 1

If thoughts have a statistical tendency to lead to actions the more they are thought about, then how does one prevent evil action-causing thoughts from leading to actions? There does seem to be some need to think evil action-causing thoughts, in order to understand those committing evil actions. So perhaps there are ways to protect against those actually manifesting. (We don't want our Behavior Analysis Unit people to start committing serial murder.)

Some, including I think Josef Pieper in The Concept of Sin, would argue that actions aren't evil, only character can be evil. One's 'character' would be defined as the entity which plays the critical role in allowing/encouraging certain thought patterns to be expressed, while barring others. This is because many actions are ambiguous without knowing intention. Society does a pretty good job of preventing many non-ambiguous, seemingly-quite-evil actions from being done on a whim; and so, people will produce various ambiguous indicators that perceptive people could see as possibly leading to truly evil actions. I'm also drawing upon the idea of an "intelligent action" from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue.

Ultimately, I'd say that someone's telos, or final purpose, is what can truly be evil. I don't want to go Machiavellian and ignore means, but MacIntyre makes an excellent case that means without ends are indistinguishable from good-seeming means that are merely a way of cloaking terrible ends. Morality can be a façade for the Nietzschean imposition of power by the strong upon the weak. The solution to this is something like Aristotle's polis, in which all citizens would agree upon a shared telos, in which all would then play their various parts. This minimizes the chance that people will be taken advantage of in a way not clearly visible, and it maximizes each person's ability to will something much bigger than themselves.

In summary, yes, thoughts can be evil. If my final purpose is to impose Communism and I am willing to force-starve millions of people, the evil started well before the starving. One might say that the evil started when I decided it was ok to sacrifice innocent people.

Answer 2

There's a famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus seems to establish mental purity as a moral standard: Matthew 5:21-28

21 “You have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago, Don’t commit murder,[a] and all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment. 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with their brother or sister will be in danger of judgment. If they say to their brother or sister, ‘You idiot,’ they will be in danger of being condemned by the governing council. And if they say, ‘You fool,’ they will be in danger of fiery hell. 23 Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift at the altar and go. First make things right with your brother or sister and then come back and offer your gift. 25 Be sure to make friends quickly with your opponents while you are with them on the way to court. Otherwise, they will haul you before the judge, the judge will turn you over to the officer of the court, and you will be thrown into prison. 26 I say to you in all seriousness that you won’t get out of there until you’ve paid the very last penny. Law of adultery 27 “You have heard that it was said, Don’t commit adultery.[b] 28 But I say to you that every man who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery in his heart.

Former President Jimmy Carter famously referred to the passage when asked about his moral character, by saying he had "lusted in his heart."

Generally, however, this is viewed as part of the central Christian doctrine that no human being is free of sin, rather than as an achievable goal.

Answer 3

Yes. Jesus said: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man;" Matthew 15:19,20

An evil thought emanates from the inner man as an immoral act. Hence, the penalty for pre-meditated murder is higher than murdering someone in a fit of rage: less evil thinking took place in the latter case.

And ultimately: For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23:7

Answer 4

Today, it seems that religious traditions more often hold the position that thoughts in themselves can be immoral. However, the idea originally came from the Pagan philosophers. For one example, consider Cicero:

“Virtue may be defined as a habit of mind (animi) in harmony with reason and the order of nature. It has four parts: wisdom (prudentiam), justice, courage, temperance.”

(As translated on Wikipedia's article on Cardinal Virtues, taken originally from De Inventione). Thus, if virtue is a habit of the mind, clearly actions alone do not suffice in being virtuous.

My understanding is that this line of thought was also held by Plato and by the Stoics, although I'm short on time to dig up further examples.

Answer 5

Morality is subjective, with every person having their own, unique interpretation of what is right and wrong. Therefore the answer to the question is strictly affirmative.

Since thoughts are physical, electro-chemical processes, thinking is in itself an action, even though the direct effects of the action are (in the absence of MRI and similar instructments) almost undetectable. On this basis, there is no difference between a thought and any other kind of action, and there are numerous other actions that an individual can take that have equally undetectable effects - consider for example moving your eyes from one character on a page to the next. A more meaningful distiction would therefore be on the measureable effect of the action.

From a logical point of view the question could therefore be rephrased as 'can an action with no significant consequences be morally wrong?' It could even be extended to include actions with significant consequences that have no harmful effects. If the answer to this is 'yes' (which it is according to my first paragraph), then the implication is that some people are being judged by others as being wrong, even though they have caused no harm, distress, discomfort or other negative effect to anyone or anything else.

Answer 6

I don't understand the question.

Why would you be unable to judge thoughts as being morally wrong? If someone is thinking about kidnapping me, I'm perfectly within my rights to judge their thoughts as being immoral, and to claim that they are thinking evil thoughts. Why wouldn't I be? I don't see what would make thoughts immune to moral evaluation.

I believe you may be confusing our ability to morally judge with the concept of acting upon those convictions. For example, we can imprison criminals because they have committed such behaviors that society has the right to protect itself from them. We don't imprison people for though-crime, because it's obviously almost impossible to prove, and doesn't directly harm anyone until the thoughts manifest as actions.

To answer your question:

Can a thought without a corresponding action be morally wrong?

Yes it can. There is nothing stopping your from morally evaluating a thought.

Answer 7

IMO, 'intent' must be a component of the entire thought before it crosses into 'morally wrong'.

I do a lot of work with network security and auditing/compliance. To be effective for customers, I must seek out and imagine ways that might compromise customer systems. I can't do that without those ways being expressed as thoughts.

If having those thoughts should be judged similarly to the actions implied by those thoughts, then 'evil thoughts' should be judged similarly to 'evil acts'. But there is a delineation that involves intent, and that indicates to me a clear difference in quality.

To me, a negative thought about someone crosses into immorality when it carries with it a feeling that could be expressed as "I would like this to happen." The mind is a blend of cognitive thought and emotive feeling. Those two general aspects of 'mind' shouldn't be considered separately since we cannot hold them separately in our minds. When judging a thought, judge it in its entirety; or don't judge at all (which is usually best anyway).

Answer 8

We have Freedom Of Thought, defining "thoughtcrime" is unethical

One of the ethical standards that the world has reached consensus about is:

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 18 of the UDHR states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

If we adhere to this article, then it becomes unethical to limit thoughts. Therefore any proclamation that paints some thoughts to be wrong or unethical, is therefore unethical in itself. By this article, thought can only be considered unethical, if we adhere to — this is no joke — unethical ethics, because we must disregard an article of ethics (Article 18 of the UDHR) to implement anything that paints thought as unethical.

The UDHR was drafted in 1948 and while article 18 was the subject of some contention, it was never freedom of thought and conscience that was up for debate, but freedom of religion and the right to leave/change religion. Some theocracies were not happy with that, but they eventually relented.

In the spirit of the period, while the UDHR was being worked out was the same time that George Orwell put to us that thoughtcrime is a violation of human rights, as so eloquently described in his famous 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The definition of what thoughcrime is, and why it is bad, is perhaps the main reason why Nineteen Eighty-Four is considered a very important piece of literature.

So the answer to your question is: if we are adhering to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or in any other way keep entertaining the notion that defining "thoughtcrime" is unethical, then thought itself cannot be unethical. This is because we have instead preempted any such ethics — ethics that state (some) thought to be unethical — by saying such ethics are unethical in themselves.

_{By curious consequence: this argument makes most of the world's religions unethical, since they all define at least one form of thoughtcrime, the most famous in western culture of course being the Ten Commandments, along with defining the Seven Deadly Sins}

Answer 9

There is no such thing as an evil thought. Or, maybe to say it another way - the evil in thought exists only in the condemnation of said thoughts.

As soon as a thought is classified as evil, there is resistance to that thought. That thought then begins to gain traction, substance, power. The more the thought is resisted the greater it becomes and the more likely it is that the thought will transform into some action.

Conversely, you can have all the horrible thoughts that you want, and if you allow them to exist, they vanish into the emptiness of their own insignificance.

There is a Buddhist quote that says something like,

Be careful what you say. Words have a way of turning into physical things.

Thoughts are basically words spoken to ones self. These words can be incredibly powerful and can (and do) devastate human life. Think about the evil actions that take place in the world. They all spring from either internal or external conversations. It is impossible to take an action without some accompanying dialog (internal or external).
Note: I am not including Zen-like states of action without an actor.

That said - looking at my above statement about words vanishing into the emptiness of their own insignificance might seem contradictory.

However the power of any dialog can only exist if the listener grants the words weight. If someone says to me, "You're an assh*le!", that may or may not impact me. The only way it will impact me is if I repeat it to myself and give it substance.

I can either give it substance by resisting it - I'm not an assh*le. What do you mean? How can you call me an assh*le when you are always..blah blah blah - or by succumbing to it - I guess maybe I really am an assh*le. God, what a loser I am. Maybe I shouldn't even try...blah blah blah. In either case, it is the power of my internal conversation that grants any power to the external conversation.

My thoughts are extremely powerful in the above case - and they unquestionably have an evil edge to them. Either they are weighted with self-deprecation or self-protection - both of which are a mask or buffer between life and the SELF (God would perhaps be an appropriate synonym here).

But if instead of any of the above nonsense, I relate to the external conversation as it is, and give it space to exist without identifying with it, then it will disappear and it will be meaningless - something like Oh, he said I'm an assh*le. Then the thought/words are not evil and contain no power.

There is no requirement that another person be involved for this type of scenario to manifest. I make a mistake - I have a thought; I see something that reminds me of a personal failure or loss - I have a thought; I am sitting in my car with breeze blowing in my hair - I have a thought.

My father suffers from OCD. He will have images in his head of murdering his wife and son (he remarried and has a young child - my brother). These are terribly painful images that he will never act on, but that have nonetheless caused him a great deal of anxiety. He was terribly ashamed of having thoughts that seemed to come from out of nowhere, and he thought the fact that he would even have such a thought meant something terrible about him.

Then one day he had an insight. He realized that thoughts don't mean anything. Since he knew he would never do what these mental projections suggested, he began to relate to them the same way he relates to a sneeze or a burp.

All that happens is that something floats across his field of consciousness. This something has no weight nor any bearing on anything real. When he has an "evil thought" nowadays (note: their frequency diminished greatly once he stopped resisting them), he just says to himself, "Thank you for sharing", and lets the thought pass; and it does - soundlessly vanishing into the ether from whence it came.

The evil in a thought is never inherent in the quality or content of the thought - but in the response one has to the thought.

Something James Carse said seems apt:

"All evil is an attempt to eliminate evil".

Answer 10

"It is bad for your sooooooooooooooooooul!!".

Mmmh, might be but I can't know for sure about it personally.

What I know though is that, even if you are theoretically free to think whatever you want, bad thoughts can/could drive you crazy.

Also, in some cases it could drive you to eventually make that action, which could be bad.

Overall though, having thoughts is something normal that you can try to regulate, don't take it too seriously unless it is clearly driving you too crazy.

Bad thoughts though, IMO, aren't generally good for yourself but what really matters, I guess, is how far you get that idea.

I prefer, personally, trying to have self-discipline and trying to have peaceful thoughts: As a challenge, as something making me feel more peaceful with myself and feel better overall and because, ultimately, violence ain't ever solved anything the right way. :)

Answer 11

I believe that this is a matter of your self-conception. You can decide for yourself

Thoughts that, would they be uttered, could provoke negative reactions by fellow human beings because they are incompatible with the idea of moral that has been adopted by the larger part of the respective society would be considered evil by those.

This can vary through time and location. For instance, if you had lived in the middle ages and thought about burning witches, I assume that it would have been likely that other people would share your opinion. Your thought would not alone be considered unevil, but even the opposite.

So I would say that the only factor that matters is, are you feeling like you are thinking evil thoughts?

One can't judge the thoughts of others without a certain narcism. Have you read Orwell's '1984'? In the dystopic world where the novel takes place, people get judged by the tought-police for thinking thoughts that are classified as intolerable by the party.

Answer 12

Morality exists as a system of principles to determine what is considered "good" and "evil". The term "evil" is defined by the system of morality which has deemed a concept as contrary. When most people use those terms, "evil" thoughts cannot be considered "moral" thoughts, because one term is defined as contrary to the other.

The "negative" that your intuition leans toward necessitates that negative consequences define what is considered "morally wrong" (which you have separated from the term "evil").

In this case, the moral axiom you have defined, is simply that you aren't the cause of negative consequences, meaning that thoughts aren't "morally wrong" - only if they don't cause negative consequences.

However, under these conditions, you have allowed for the existence of what you call "evil thoughts" that would not be considered immoral - by your use of the terms.

If you hold this to be true, then you are consistent and are able to have "evil" thoughts without having "morally wrong" thoughts.

Though, conventional use of the concept of morality contradicts your proposed use of the concept of morality, as well as its relation to the concept of "evil".