More on the centrality of morality

I think we can imagine a species which have moral agency, but moral agency is a minor part of their flourishing. I assume wolves don’t have moral agency. But now imagine a species of canids that live much like wolves, but every couple of months get to make a very minor moral choice whether to inconvenience the pack in the slightest way—the rest is instinct. It seems to me that these canids are moral agents, but morality is a relatively minor part of their flourishing. The bulk of the flourishing of these canids would be the same as that of ordinary wolves.

Aristotle argued that the fact that rationality is how we differ from other species tells us that rationality is what is central to our flourishing. The above thought experiment shows that the argument is implausible. Our imaginary canids could, in fact, be the only rational species in the universe, and their moral agency or rationality (with Aristotle and Kant, I am inclined to equate the two) is the one thing that makes them different from other canids, but yet what is more important to their flourishing is what they have in common with other canids.

At the same time, it would be easy for an Aristotelian theorist to accommodate my canids. One needs to say that the form of a species defines what is central to the flourishing, and in my canids, unlike in humans, morality is not so central. And one can somehow observe this: rationality just is clearly important to the lives of humans in a way in which it’s not so much these canids.

In this way, I think, the Aristotelian may have a significant advantage over a Kantian. For a Kantian may have to prioritize rationality in all possible species.

In any case, we should not take it as a defining feature of morality that it is central to our flourishing.

One might wonder how this works in a theistic context. For humans, moral wrongdoing is also sin, an offense against a loving infinite Creator. As I’ve described the canids, they may have no concept of God and sin, and so moral wrongdoing isn’t seen as sin by them. Could you have a species which does have a concept of God and sin, but where morality (and hence sin) isn’t central to flourishing? Or does bringing God in automatically elevate morality to a higher plane? Anselm thought so. He might have been right. If so, then the discomfort that one is liable to feel at the idea of a species of moral agents where morality is not very important could be an inchoate grasp of the connection between God and morality.

Forgiving the forgiven

Suppose that Alice wronged Bob, repented, and God forgave Alice for it. Bob, however, withholds his forgiveness. First, it is interesting to ask the conceptual question: What is it that Bob withholds? On my account of objective guilt, when Alice wronged Bob, she gained a normative burden of guilt (minimally, she came to owe it to Bob that she think of herself as guilty), and forgiveness is the removal of that normative burden.

Now in forgiveness, God removed Alice’s normative burden not just to himself, but to Bob. For if God did not remove Alice’s normative burden owed to Bob, then it would be in principle possible that Alice is in heaven—having been forgiven by God—and yet still carries the burden of having wronged Bob. But no one in heaven has a burden.

But if Alice’s normative burden owed to Bob has also been removed by God, and forgiveness is the removal of the burden, then what is it that Bob is withholding?

I think the answer is that there are two parts of forgiveness: there is the removal of the burden of objective guilt and the acknowledgment of the removal of that burden. When God has removed the burden of objective guilt from Alice, all that’s left for Bob to do is to acknowledge this removal.

Note, too, that it would be rather bad for Bob to fail to acknowledge the removal of Alice’s burden, because we should acknowledge what is real and good, and this removal is real and good.

One might think this problem is entirely generated by the idea that God can forgive not just sins against God but also sins against other people. Not so. There seems to be a secular variant of this problem, too. For there seems to be a way in which one’s normative burden of objective guilt of wrongs against fellow humans can be removed without God’s involvement: one can repent of the wrong and suffer an adequate punishment. (Of course, any wrong against neighbor is also a sin against God, and this only removes the guilt with respect to neighbor, unless the punishment is adequate to sin against God, too.) In that case, the burden is presumably removed, but the victim should still acknowledge this removal.

This points to a view of forgiveness on which we ought to forgive those whose normative burden has been removed. If we think that God always forgives the repentant, then this implies that we should always forgive the repentant.

This is close to Aquinas’s view (in his Catechetical Instructions) that we are all required to forgive all those who seek our forgiveness, but it is even better (“perfect” is his phrase) if we forgive even those who do not.

A perhaps underemphasized aspect of Christ's atonement

Usually, Christ’s sacrifice of the Cross is thought of as atonement for our sins before God. This leads to old theological question: Why can’t God simply forgive our sins, without the need for any atoning sacrifice? Aquinas’s answer is: God could, but it’s more fitting that the debt be paid. I want to explore a different answer.

Suppose that when you do a wrong to someone, you come to owe it to them to be punished. But now instead of thinking of God as the aggrieved party, think of all the times when we have done wrong to other human beings. Some of them have released or will release us from our debt through forgiveness. But, probably, not everyone. But what, now, if we think of Christ’s sacrifice as atomenent for our sins before the unforgiving. We don’t need to pay to other unforgiving humans the debt of being punished, because Christ has paid it on our behalf.

This neatly answers the question of why God’s can’t simply forgive us our sins: God can simply release us from our debt to God, but it is either impossible or at least significantly unfitting for God to simply release us from our debt to fellow human beings.

Here is a consequence of the story. If we fail to forgive our fellow human beings, that is yet another way in which we become shamefully co-responsible for Christ’s sufferings, since now Christ is atoning for these fellow human beings before us. We should then be ashamed of ourselves, especially given that Christ is also suffering for us.

The story isn’t complete. Christ’s atonement applies not just to my sins against my neighbor, but also to my sins against God alone and my sins against myself. But once we have seen that some atoning sacrifice is needed on our behalf, the idea of a total atoning sacrifice, capable of atoning for everyone’s debts to everyone, including to God, looks even more fitting.

Material and formal mortal sin, and an insidious form of scrupulosity

This post is aimed primarily at Catholic readers, and especially Catholic readers given to a certain mode of scrupulosity (a disorder where one is unduly and irrationally worried about one’s sinfulness) I will describe further on down. I will say a little about the distinction between material and formal sin, then discuss a special form of scrupulosity that is enabled by knowing the distinction, and end with some philosophical considerations that should help defuse this form of scrupulosity.

Background:

The Catholic tradition distinguishes material and formal sin. Material sin is an action that is objectively in itself against the moral law. Formal sin, on the other hand, is an action insofar as one is morally culpable for it. Formal sin requires that one believe the action to be wrong and that one be sufficiently free in performing the action. Talking of something as material sin, or material sin of a certain sort, is talking of the act in itself. Talking of it as formal sin, or a formal sin of a certain sort, is talking of the relation between the agent and the act.

One can have material sin without formal sin: if in a very difficult medical ethics case, a doctor is told by a panel of otherwise trustworthy bioethicists that an operation is permitted, and performs the operation, and it turns out the bioethicists were wrong, the doctor has committed a material sin, but is unlikely to be guilty of formal sin.

The distinction can also be used not simply to remove responsibility but to reduce it. The Catholic tradition distinguishes mortal sin, which separates one from God by a definitive (but forgiveable, since God’s grace is immense) act of rejection, from venial sin, which does not definitively reject God. Given this, you can have mortal material sin which is not formally mortal. In such a case, you might not be clear enough on the grave wrongness of the action or you might be insufficiently free for the sin to be formally mortal, although you have enough clarity and enough freedom for formal venial sin.

A form of scrupulosity:

At the same time, logically speaking, things can go in the other direction. You can have material sin without formal sin. If the difficult medical operation is in fact permissible, but the trustworthy bioethicists tell the doctor that it is wrong, and the doctor performs it while believing it to be wrong, the doctor commits a formal sin without a material sin.

Similarly, it should be logically possible to have a sin that is materially venially sinful but which is formally mortally sinful because the agent misjudges the act as much worse than it is.

In my late teens and 20s, I suffered a lot from scrupulosity: I was constantly afraid that I had committed a mortal sin, in a way that was disproportionate to my actual moral failings (which I had plenty of, but mainly they weren’t the ones I was scrupulous about). And the possibility of a materially venially sinful act that is formally mortally sinful worried me a lot. I would say to myself things like: “Granted, on reflection, this was not objectively a mortal sin, and maybe not even a sin at all, but maybe at the time I thought it was grave, and so I was formally mortally sinning.” And I would engage in fruitless and agonizing soul-searching to figure out what it was that I was thinking when I was engaging in the act. I know I am not alone in suffering from this.

But even though it is logically possible to have a formally mortal sin that is materially venial, it is a striking historical fact that the Catholic tradition typically uses the formal-material distinction to excuse rather than to accuse, to the point where one fairly recent writer in a very helpful piece on scrupulosity actually writes that it is impossible to have the materially venial but formally mortal combination.

I thought about this, and realized that there is actually an asymmetry between using the formal-material distinction to lower responsibility and using it to boost responsibility. Here it is. Cases where a materially mortal sin is formally venial due to the agent’s error are easy to get given our individual and communal fallenness. All that’s needed is that the agent have enough considerations—say, coming from errors circulating in the community—against the thesis that the act is gravely wrong to induce sufficient doubt to make the action as done by the agent no longer be a definitive rejection of God.

But cases where a materially venial sin becomes formally mortal due to the agent’s error require that the agent definitely see the action as wrong. And that requires a more thoroughgoing kind of epistemic malfunction. It’s not enough that error induce sufficient doubt—that’s quite easy, hence the commonality of the responsibility-reducing case—but the error has to sufficiently silence the truth to make the agent definitely believe the erroneous thing. For without definite belief that the action is gravely wrong we do not have formally mortal sin.

Imagine that Bob is committing gluttony by eating one more potato than he should, and due to some error—perhaps grounded in an eating disorder—he starts worrying that eating this potato is a mortally sinful case of gluttony, but he continues eating nonetheless. But here is something else that is likely: unless Bob is very far gone down the path of error, he likely has a bit of common sense testifying in him that eating an extra potato is not a serious matter. On the one hand, then, he has error pulling him to think that it is mortally sinful to eat the potato, but on the other hand, he has common sense. The result is very likely to be a divided mind, rather than a mind definitely believing that the action is mortally sinful, and hence it is very unlikely that the action be formally a mortal sin.

In other words, it is easy to muddy the waters enough to reduce responsibility, but it is a lot harder to come to the kind of definite erroneous belief that would be required to increase responsibility.

And a fortiori it is even harder to have a case where an action isn’t materially sinful at all but due to error it becomes formally mortally sinful. Again I think such cases are possible, but I expect they are quite rare.

Finally, I would think that the rare cases where the formal-material distinction functions to raise responsibility are going to be even rarer in Catholics. For Catholics not only have conscience, but they have the Church’s guidance, and so it is even harder for them to be definitely mistaken.

Closeness and Double Effect

The Principle of Double Effect (PDE) is traditionally a defense against a charge of bringing about an effect that is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring about, a defense that holds that although one foresaw the effect, one did not intend it.

One of the main difficulties for PDE is the closeness problem. Typical examples of the closeness problem are things like dropping bombs on an enemy city in order to make the civilians look dead (Bennett), blowing up the fat man in the mouth of the cave when there is no other way out (Anscombe), etc.

If we think of intentions as arrows and the wrong-to-intend act as a target, one strategy for handling closeness problems is to “broaden intentions”, so that they hit the target more easily. Thus, if you intend something “close enough” to an effect you count as intending (or something similar to intending, say accomplishing) that effect. There are interesting general theories of this (e.g., O’Brien and Koons), but I do not think any of them cover all the cases well.

Another strategy, however, is to broaden the target. This strategy keeps intention very sharp and hyperintensional, but insists that what is forbidden to intend is broader. A number of people have done that (e.g., Quinn). What I want to do in this post is to offer a way of looking at a version of this strategy.

The PDE is correlative to absolute wrongs. There aren’t that many absolute wrongs. For instance, Judaism lists only three kinds of acts as absolute wrongs, things that may not be done no matter the benefits:

• idolatry

• murder

• certain sexual sins (e.g., adultery and incest).

Now, intention enters differently into the definitions of these acts. Arguably, idolatry is very much defined by intentions. The very same physical bending of one’s midriff in the very same physical circumstances (e.g., standing facing an idol) can very easily be an act of idolatry or a back exercise, precisely depending on what one is intending by this bow. Such pairs of cases can be manufactured in the case of murder, but they will involve very odd assumptions. We can imagine a surgeon or an assassin cutting someone’s chest with the same movement, but it is in fact very unlikely that the movement will be the same. In the case of idolatry, we might say that more work is being done by intention and in the case of murder more work is being done by the physical act. And sexual wrongdoing is a very complex topic, but it is likely that intention enters in yet different ways, and differently in the case of different sexual wrongs.

We can think of an absolute prohibition as having the following structure:

1. For all x₁, ..., x_n, when U(x₁, ..., x_n), it is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring it about that I(x₁, ..., x_n).

Here, U(x₁, ..., x_n) is a contextual description which needs to obtain but need not be intended to have a wrong of the given type, and I(x₁, ..., x_n) is a contextual description which needs to be intended. For instance, for murder, prima facie U(x₁, x₂) might specify that x₁ is an act whose patient is known to be a juridically innocent person x₂, while I(x₁, x₂) will specify that, say, x₁ is the killing of x₂. It’s enough that the murderer should know that the victim is an innocent person—the murderer does not need to intend to kill them qua innocent. But the murderer does need to intend something like the killing.

Note that in ordinary speech, when we give absolute prohibitions we speak with scope ambiguity. Thus, we are apt to say things like “It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent person”, without making clear whether “intentionally” applies just to “kill” or also to “innocent person”, i.e., without making it clear what is in the U part of the prohibition and what is in the I part.

Observe also that in the case of idolatry, more work is being done by I than by U, while in the case of murder, the work done by the two parts of the structure is the same.

So, now, here is a general strategy for handling closeness. We keep intention sharp, but we broaden (i.e., logically weaken) I by shifting some things that we might have thought are in I into U, perhaps introducing “known” or “believed” operators. For instance, in the case of murder, we might say something like this:

2. When x₁ is known to be the imposition of an arrangement x₂ on the parts or aspects of an innocent person that normally and in this particular case precludes life, it is absolutely wrong to bring about x₁ with the intention that it be an imposition of arrangement x₂ on parts or aspects of reality.

And in the case of idolatry, perhaps we keep more in I, only moving the difference between God and the false god to the nonintentional portion of the prohibition:

3. When x is known to be a god other than God, it is absolutely wrong to intentionally bring it about that one worships x.

And here is an important point. How we do this—how we shuffle requirements between I and U—will differ from absolute prohibition to absolute prohibition. What we are doing is not a refinement of Double Effect, but a refinement of the (hopefully small) number of absolute prohibitions in our deontological theory. We do not need to have any general things to say across absolute prohibitions how we do this broadening of the intentional target.

There might even be further complexities. It could, for instance, be that we have role-specific absolute prohibitions, coming with other ways for aspects of the action to be apportioned between U and I.

Forgiveness of sins

It is very plausible that God can forgive wrongs we do to him. But a very difficult question which is rarely discussed by philosophers of religion is how God can forgive wrongs done to beings other than God.

This puzle seems to me to be related to the mystery of the line: “Against you [God], you alone, have I sinned” in Psalm 51:4, a line that seems on its face to contradict the obvious fact that the sins in question (David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah) seem to be primarily against human beings. Perhaps also related is Jesus’s puzzling statement: “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18).

I think the answer to all of these questions may lie in a metaphysics and axiology of participation on which all the value of creatures is value had by participation in God, so that only God is good in the primary sense and only God is sinned against in the primary sense, which in turn gives God the normative power to forgive all wrongs, including wrongs directly against God as such as well as wrongs against God’s goodness as participated in by creatures.

Against the actual truth of transworld depravity

Here is an interesting result. If the Biblical account of creation is true, then Plantinga’s Trans-World Depravity (TWD) thesis is false. All this doesn’t affect Plantinga’s Free Will Defense which only needs the logical possibility of TWD, but it limits its usefulness a little by making clear that the defense is based on an actually-false assumption. (Quick review: Plantinga uses the logical possibility of TWD to argue for the logical possibility of evil. That argument would survive my critique. But he also suggests that TWD is epistemically possible, and hence could be the heart of a theodicy. That move does not survive, I think.)

I’ll take TWD to be:

1. Every significantly free creature in every feasible world does wrong.

A feasible world is one that would eventuate from God’s strongly actualizing the strongly strongly actualized portion of it.

But now consider this thesis which is very plausible on the Biblical account of creation:

2. At least one human made a significantly free right choice before any human made a free wrong choice.

For the first sin in the Biblical account is presented as Eve’s taking of the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3. But prior to that, indeed prior to Eve’s creation, Adam was commanded to take care of the garden (Gen. 2:15). It would have been a sin for Adam to fail to do that, and since this was before the first sin, it follows that Adam must have done it. Moreover, Adam being a full human being presumably had freedom of will, and hence was capable of refusing to work the garden. Hence Adam’s decision to obey God’s command to work the garden was a significantly free choice before any human made a free wrong choice.

Now, I don’t take the story of Genesis 2-3 to be literally true, but it tells us basic truths about the entry of evil into the world, and hence it is very likely that the structural claim (2) carries over into reality from the story.

I now argue that:

3. If (2) is true, then TWD is false.

Right after the first human made a significantly free right choice, God had the power to prevent any further significantly free choices from ever being made. Had God exercised that power, the world would have contained a creature—namely, the human who made the significantly free right choice—that is a counterexample to TWD. Moreover, the world where God exercises that power is plainly feasible. Hence, (1) is false, since in (1) there is a significantly free creature that does the right thing.

That said, Plantinga’s TWD is stronger than it needs to be for his defense. All he really needs to work with is:

4. Every feasible world that contains a significantly free creaturely right choice contains a free creaturely wrong choice.

And the world where God intervenes and prevents significantly free choices after the first human significantly free right choice is not a counterexample to (4), since prior to the creation of humans there was already sin by angels.

Note, though, that someone who wants to defend (4) by invoking the prior sin of angels needs to hold that the first humans would have sinned in their first significantly free choice had God not created angels or not given angels significant free will, no matter what circumstances the first humans were placed in. In other words, the defender of (4) has to hold that the actual righteousness of the first human significantly free choice has a strong counterfactual dependence on angelic freedom. The only plausible way I know of defending something like this is to say that angelic free choices are a part of human causal history and that essentiality of origins is true. So, interestingly, to hold that the weakened TWD thesis (4) is true seems to require both invoking the sin of angels and essentiality of origins.

Moreover, the defender of the actual truth of (4) would need to hold that the first angelic wrong choice preceded the first angelic significantly free right choice. For suppose an angelic significantly free choice came before any angelic sin. Then, again, God could have suspended free will right after that choice, and not created humans at all, and we would have a feasible world that is a counterexample to (4). Next, suppose that the first angelic significantly free choice was simultaneous with the first angelic sin. Presumably, the two were committed by different angels. But God could have suspended the freedom of those angels who in the actual world sin (this does not even require Molinism: God doesn’t need to know that they would sin to suspend their freedom), and plausible the simultaneous significantly free right choices of the other angels would still have eventuated. And then God could have suspended freedom altogether, thereby furnishing us with another feasible world that is a counterexample to (4).

One can modify (4) in various ways to get around this. For instance, one could say this:

5. Every feasible world that contains a significantly free creaturely right choice and that contains many generations of significantly free creatures contains a free creaturely wrong choice.

But note that if (5) is true, then one needs to invoke more than the value of freedom in saying that God is justified in creating a world with evil. One needs the value of multi-generational freedom.

Adding infinite guilt

Bob has the belief that there are infinitely many people in a parallel universe, and that they wear numbered jerseys: 1, 2, 3, …. He also believes that he has a system in a laboratory that can cause indigestion to any subset of these people that he can describe to a computer. Bob has good evidence for these beliefs and is (mirabile!) sane.

Consider four scenarios:

1. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the odd-numbered people.

2. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the people whose number is divisible by four.

3. Bob attempts to cause indigestion to all the people whose number is either odd or divisible by four.

4. Bob yesterday attempted to cause indigestion to all the odd-numbered people and on a later occasion to all the people whose number is divisible by four.

In each scenario, Bob has done something very bad, indeed apparently infinitely bad: he has attempted infinite mass sickening.

In scenarios 1-3, other things being equal, Bob’s guilt is equal, because the number of people he attempted to cause indigestion to is the same—a countable infinity.

But now we have two arguments about how bad Bob’s action in scenario 4 is. On the one hand, in scenario 4 he has attempted to sicken the exact same people as in scenario 3. So, he is equally guilty in scenario 4 as in scenario 3.

On the other hand, in scenario 4, Bob is guilty of two wrong actions, the action of scenario 1 and that of scenario 2. Moreover, as we saw before, each of these actions on its own makes him just as guilty as the action in scenario 3 does. Doing two wrongs, even two infinite wrongs, is worse than just doing one, if they are all of the same magnitude. So in scenario 4, Bob is guiltier than in scenario 3. One becomes the worse off for acquiring more guilt. But if 4 made Bob no guiltier than 3 would have, it would make Bob no guiltier than 1 would have, and so after committing the first wrong in 4, since he would already have the guilt of 1, Bob would have no guilt-avoidance reason to refrain from the second wrong in 4, which is absurd.

How to resolve this? I think as follows: when accounting guilt, we should look at guilty acts of will rather than consequences or attempted consequences. In scenario 4, although the total attempted harm is the same as in each of scenarios 1-3, there are two guilty acts of will, and that makes Bob guiltier in scenario 4.

We could tell the story in 4 so that there is only one act of will. We could suppose that Bob can self-hypnotize so that today he orders his computer to sicken the odd-numbered people and tomorrow those whose number is divisible by four. In that case, there would be only one act of will, which will be less bad. It’s a bit weird to think that Bob might be better off morally for such self-hypnosis, but I think one can bite the bullet on that.

Loss of vice and growth of virtue

Here is a pattern in the moral life. People have a conversion experience and puts away “the gross sins of the flesh” like robbery, drug abuse, violence or fornication. And then they struggle for decades with faults sins like laziness, unkindliness, vanity, impatience or judgmentality. What’s going on? It seems like at the outset they put away the bigger moral faults, and then they were left with smaller ones. Why is it that it takes so much longer to fight off the smaller ones? Why doesn’t it get easier, given that the faults are smaller? This is frustrating!

Instead, the experience sometimes seems to be like when you take a piece of unstretchable rope by two ends and pull. It is easy to get the initial big sag out. But as the sag gets smaller, it gets harder and harder to get it out.

Here is a thought. There are two ways of quantifying one’s moral state: the degree of vice and the degree of virtue. And the two are not related in a simple way, with one being the negation of the other. In ordinary circumstances, it doesn’t take much virtue to exclude murder from one’s life. But it does take a lot of virtue to exclude vanity from one’s life. To cease murdering is to lose much vice but is not to gain much virtue. To cease being vain, though, is not to lose much vice but it is to gain much virtue (is this true if one is still murdering, though?).

The “ordinary decent person” is perhaps not much more vicious than St. Teresa of Calcutta or St. Francis. But the “ordinary decent person” is far less virtuous.

Note that this is true even if we limit the discussion to what one might call “obligatory virtue”, i.e., the virtue that is opposed to vice rather than supererogatory virtue. The virtue involved in eliminating vanity is an obligatory virtue, though the virtue involved in giving up property for the sake of God and the poor, as St. Teresa and St. Francis did, is supererogatory. Yet the ordinary person is far less obligatorily virtuous than St. Teresa or St. Francis.

There may be an inverse relationship between vice and obligatory virtue: the more you have of the one, the less you have of the other. But a small increase of vice can correspond to large losses of virtue, and vice versa. It’s be a bit like that between the amount of sag in the rope and the horizontal force you need to push the ends with to balance the rope. As the sag goes to zero, the horizontal force goes to infinity.

The frustration I mentioned in the first paragraph then may be misplaced. For while it may seem like the moral life stalls after an initial burst of energy, the stalling may only be there if we measure the progress by the amount of vice. But if we measure by the amount of virtue, there might be steady increase throughout, just as a rope may linearly increase in tension, even though the sag seems not to be changing much.

(But may God have mercy on us!)

(While pushing metaphors perhaps too far, note that on the other hand the sag can’t go to infinity if the rope is unstretchable, since eventually we run out of rope. Likewise, perhaps, there is a limit to our vice, set by our nature. This fits with the idea of evil as a privation of the good.)

The DIY urge, Satan's sin and Pelagianism

I've got a big DIY urge. My motivations usually include being too cheap to buy something (typically because I'm saving up for something else--right now, a 3D printer). A fair amount of the time there is vanity--wanting to brag online, say. Sometimes perhaps there is a minor motivation (which really should be much stronger) to repair things rather than wastefully throwing them out. And sometimes the activity itself is very pleasant (I really enjoy using power tools like a sewing machine, a drill press or a stand mixer; I like the smell of solder rosin or freshly cut softwood wafting in the air). But I think often the strongest motivation is the intrinsic pull of doing things myself.

According to Aquinas, that motivation is why Satan sinned. He wanted the good things that God was going to give to him, but he didn't want them from God--he wanted getting them himself. In other words, the first sin is Pelagianism.

This makes me a bit worried about my DIY urge. Is it an echo of the Satanic pride that led to the downfall of the universe?

Not necessarily. Aquinas' discussion of the first sin is driven by two theses: (a) Satan was very smart and (b) Satan's motivations were good. So Aquinas needs needs to identify a good motivation that led him to sin, not simply by a stupid mistake. It is thus central to Aquinas' story that the DIY urge that Satan had was a good motivation: there is a genuine good in achieving good things by oneself. But in order to achieve that good, Satan refused God's gift of grace, settling for (lesser, presumably) goods that he could get by himself.

The fundamental motivation behind the DIY urge is good, thus. But there is a serious danger that it misses what St. John Paul II called our "nuptial nature": that it is our nature to give ourselves to others and to receive others' gift of themselves. Satan refused God's gift. The parallel danger in the DIY case is that it not turn into a refusal of the gift of others' creativity and labor, a refusal to acknowledge that (to use older language) we are social animals.

Of course, the products of commerce are not gifts personally directed to us. (After all, we have to pay for them!) But there is a sense in which they still have some gift-like nature. People have chosen not to be subsistence farmers, but to make stuff for others. There is an imperfect duty somewhere around here to participate in the back-and-forth of commerce, which bears some relevant resemblance to the back-and-forth of gift giving and reciprocation. And so, like all things, the DIY urge needs moderation, not just for reasons like not wasting time or avoiding vanity, but lest it become a denial of our social nature.

Calvinism and the Problem of Evil

Two of our former Baylor graduate students, David Alexander and Daniel Johnson, have put together what looks like a very interesting anthology on the problem of evil as connected with Calvinism. Some authors are Calvinists but at least one (myself) is a critic of Calvinism. The authors are: Daniel Johnson, Greg Welty, Heath White, James Bruce, David Alexander, Paul Helm, Hugh McCann, Alexander Pruss, James Anderson, Christopher Green, Matthew Green and Anthony Bryson.

Endangerment and harm

Suppose I deliberately endanger you, but the danger doesn't befall you. Then there is a sense in which I do you no harm, but there is also a sense in which imposing the danger on your was a harm to you. You have a claim against me for my endangerment of you.

But one can also endanger people who never exist. For instance, if I give you a drug that has a high probability of physically harming your future children if you have any (let's say I assign a certain moderate probability to your having children), but you never actually have any children. There I might be harming you in some way, but I don't harmed them, since they never exist to be harmed. One can tweak the case so there are no parents to be harmed. Maybe I expect intelligent life to evolve on some planet with moderate probability, and I set up a device to harm some intelligent beings on that planet once they evolve, but no life evolves there.

There are thus two probabilities in endangerment. There is the probability that there is going to be potential victims at all and the conditional probability that a potential victim will be harmed given that there is going to be a potential victim at all. And the probability of harm is the product of these two probabilities.

It is a very interesting question whether there is a significant moral difference between a case where

• I deliberately cause a probability 1/4 of harm to a person I know for sure to exist

versus a case where

• I deliberately cause a probability 1/2 of (same as above) harm to a person I assign probability 1/2 to the existence of (i.e., I deliberately cause it to be the case that if that person exists, she has chance 1/2 of suffering that harm)

when we suppose that in the first case the danger did not in fact befall the person while in the second case the person did not in fact exist.

The consequentialist intuitions that we all have to some degree pull one to saying that there is no difference. On the other hand, in the first case there is a person that I have failed to love and respect her in the way that she deserves, while there is no such failure of love and respect in the second case. In fact, if one has a picture of morality as essentially involving interpersonal relations, it is difficult to see how any wrongdoing has happened in the second case if in fact the person never comes to exist.

A theist might be able to maintain both something like the consequentialist intuition and the idea that moral failures are primarily failures of interpersonal relations. There is a deep and mysterious message in Scripture expressed by the Psalmist saying to God: "Against you, you alone, have I sinned" (Ps 51.4). The Psalm heading connects this with David's sin against Uriah, which makes this message particularly puzzling, since it seems clear that David sinned against both Uriah and God. But suppose we take really seriously the idea that all positive attributes are acts of participation in God. Uriah's dignity, then, is an act of participation in God's dignity, and its value entirely derivative from God's infinite dignity. In some sense, then, David's wrongdoing against Uriah really just is a wrongdoing against God. Now suppose that David had been wrong, and there never had been a Uriah. (Maybe Bathsheba was an unmarried woman who created a myth of an Uriah in order to protect herself from unwanted advances.) The wrongdoing against God's dignity would have been just the same. The wrongdoing against Uriah wouldn't have been there, but that wrongdoing's "culpatory force" was entirely derivative from the culpatory force of the wrongdoing against God, since Uriah's dignity was an act of participation in God's dignity. If we have something like this picture, then we really can say that all moral failures are primarily failures of interpersonal relations and yet hold the two cases, the one where there is an endangered victim and the one where there turns out not to be one, to be morally on par. For all respect and love is ultimately and implicitly for God, though perhaps God qua participated in or participable in by a creature.

Emotional perception

On Friday I was feeling somewhat poorly and in the interests of public health (not that I minded!) I opted out of participation in the PhD graduation dinner and Saturday's commencement. Sunday I felt somewhat worse, and today rather worse (nothing serious, just the usual "flu-like" symptoms, and both of our big kids had such in the preceding two weeks). But there is one piece of relief: It is good to have been right about the fact that I was getting sick.

It is not particularly bad to have suffered physically and similarly it is not particularly good to have enjoyed physical pleasure. But it is bad (or at least it feels bad--which is evidence for its being bad!) to have been wrong and similarly it is good to have been right. The value here isn't the value of being recognized by others as having been right or wrong. Nor is it the value of oneself presently recognizing oneself as right or wrong. For one hopes (though perhaps not simpliciter, if the prospect is particularly nasty) that one be right and that one not be wrong, not just that one recognize oneself or be recognized as right or wrong. The recognition is just the icing or mould on the top of a good or bad cake.

Eternalists have a difficulty with the fact that it doesn't seem bad to have suffered physically (bracketing any present suffering from painful memories, of course), even though past suffering is just as real as present suffering. Presentists have a difficulty with the fact that it seems to be bad to have been wrong and to be good to have been right.

I think eternalists can make a better go of it, though. Feelings like the pleasure of having been right or the pain of having been wrong are a kind of perception of normative features of the world. But not all truth is equally perceived. I am now visually aware that I have two hands, and properly so. But were I now visually aware that you have a head, my visual system would be malfunctioning. For although, dear reader, you do have a head, your head is not presently within my field of view. It is thus a part of the correct functioning of my visual apparatus that I be presently aware of my hands but not your head, even though all three parts (my two hands and your one head) are equally real.

Likewise, then, some goods and bads are appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., my having been right about getting sick--and some goods and bads are not appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., the unpleasantness of the last time I had a cavity filled. These goods and bads may be equally real (assuming that pain itself really is bad--there is room for discussion here, but it is at least extrinsically bad), but it could be (I am not sure about the first one, actually) that my having been right is appropriately within my emotional field of view while my having suffered (not at all severely--he really is an excellent dentist) at a past dental visit is not.

But we sometimes mistake absence of perception for perception of absence, like an infant who cries that the parent has left the room or the adult who sees no objection to an action and all too hastily concludes the action is permissible. Not emotionally seeing the past pain as bad--i.e., a not being pained by the past pain--is mistaken by us for seeing the past pain as not being bad.

The eternalist should thus say that the past physical pains and pleasures are bad or good, in the same way that present ones are, but we do not see their badness or goodness. Thus, the eternalist attributes to the agent a misinterpretation of absence of perception. The presentist, however, should say that having been right or wrong is not presently good or bad (though maybe it was good or bad), but we misperceive it as such. The eternalist thus attributes more correctness to our emotional perception, while attributing a well-known generalized cognitive error in explaining what went wrong. The presentist has to say our emotional perception is just wrong. I prefer the eternalist explanation.

A similar issue comes up for Christ's suffering on the cross. With a number of theologians, I take the center of our Savior's suffering not to be the horrific suffering of nails ripping through his flesh, but his deep emotional awareness of the horribleness of the totality of our sins (perhaps with the help of the hypostatic union or beatific vision bringing the particularities of all of humankind's sins to him). But this leads to a query: Why did Christ only have this awareness on the cross? We do not see him constantly and equally weighed down by this suffering earlier in life? Was he failing to have a correct emotional awareness? But now we can say: Not at all. It is the salient goods or bads that are within the field of view of correct emotional perception. And it is on the cross, at the high point of the sacrifice for our salvation from these sins (the high point: for all his life was such a sacrifice), that this became fully salient, in such a way that this perfect man--who is also true God--emotionally bore the full weight of our sin.

Note, too, that this is a story about Christ's sufferings that is difficult for the presentist to give. For it is difficult for the presentist to explain why earlier and later, and hence then-unreal, sins were bad at the time of Christ's crucifixion. Perhaps the presentist has to say that Christ's suffering came from an erroneous emotional perception of past and future sins as then-bad?

Redemption in Christ from individual and cosmic sin

There is a danger in seeing Christ's work of redemption as solely focused on one's individual sins. But at the same time the lived experience of Christians is precisely an experience of redemption from individual sins that block union with God and neighbor: "How can I ever be friends with Him, or with him, or with her, or with them, after I did that to Him, or to him, or to her, or to them?" In the context of one's individual repentance, a focus on the sin of the world and the deeply rooted social dimensions of sin, may be a distraction or even an excuse. "It's not my sin, but our sin." And it is not far from our sin to nobody's sin. Adam shifted the blame for his sin onto Eve, and Eve onto the serpent. It would have been no better if they shifted it onto the world.

None of this denies that there are structures of sin that are of cosmic importance, and that the means by which the individual sinner is redeemed is through-and-through ecclesial. But we must also not overestimate the importance of cosmic sin. For there is nothing worse in the world than mortal sins, and it is only individuals who commit those, and thereby separate themselves from God and one another. Moreover, to the true lover, the beloved is a cosmos. And God loves each of us.

Another version of the first-sinner argument against Calvinism

1. (Premise) Any circumstances that are sufficient to determine a person with a character free of moral failings to do wrong are exculpatory for such a person.
2. (Premise) There was a first wrongdoing and it was not done in exculpatory circumstances.
3. So, either the first wrongdoer was not determined by circumstances and character, or the first wrongdoer had antecedent moral failings. (1 and 2)
4. (Premise) the first sinner did not have antecedent moral failings.
5. So, the first wrongdoer was not determined by circumstances and character. (1 and 4)

Premise (2) seems to be a part of the standard Christian picture. Nobody thinks Satan first sinned in circumstances that are exculpatory. Premise (4) follows from the fact that moral failings are evils, and evils came from sin (in the full sense of a wrongdoing the agent is responsible for—"formal" sin in Catholic terminology).

That leaves (1). But consider this line of thought. Suppose I was tortured and under torture I turned in my friends. Am I responsible or has the torture taken away my responsibility? Here is a test. I imagine whether a person free of moral failings would have been determined to do the same under torture of this intensity. If so, then the torture is of sufficient intensity to be exculpatory for me, and presumably likewise for her. (It doesn't quite follow that I am exculpated. For I could still be responsible for my sin in exculpatory circumstances, if my action is overdetermined by the exculpatory circumstances and something I am responsible for.)

A dialog on rhetoric, autonomy and original sin

L: Rhetorical persuasion does not track truth in the way that good arguments do. The best way for us to collectively come to truth is well-reasoned arguments presented in a dry and rigorous way, avoiding rhetorical flourishes. Rhetoric makes weaker arguments appear stronger than they are and a practice of giving rhetorically powerful arguments can make stronger arguments appear weaker.

R: Rhetoric appeals to emotions and emotions are truth-tracking, albeit their reliability, except in the really virtuous individual, may not be high. So I don't believe that rhetorical persuasion does not track truth. But I will grant it for our conversation, L. Still, you're forgetting something crucial. People have an irrational bias against carefully listening to arguments that question their own basic assumptions. Rhetoric and other forms of indirect argumentation sneak in under the radar of one's biases and make it possible to convince people of truths that otherwise they would be immune to.

L: Let's have the conversation about the emotions on another day. I suspect that even if emotions are truth-tracking, in practice they are sufficiently unreliable except in the very virtuous, and it is not the very virtuous that you are talking of convincing. I find your argument ethically objectionable. You are placing yourself intellectually over other people, taking them to have stupid biases, sneaking under their guard and riding roughshod over their autonomy.

R: That was rhetoric, not just argument!

L: Mea culpa. But you see the argumentative point, no?

R: I do, and I agree it is a real worry. But given that there is no other way of persuading not very rational humans, what else can we do?

L: But there are other ways of persuading them. We could use threats or brainwashing.

R: But that would be wrong!

L: This is precisely the point at issue. Threats or brainwashing would violate autonomy. You seemed to grant that rhetorical argument does so as well. So it should be wrong to convince by rhetorical argument just as much as by threats or brainwashing.

R: But it's good for someone to be persuaded of the truth when they have biases that keep them from truth.

L: I don't dispute that. But aren't you then just paternalistically saying that it's alright to violate people's autonomy for their own good?

R: I guess so. Maybe autonomy isn't an absolute value, always to be respected.

L: So what objection do you have to convincing people of the truth by threat or brainwashing?

R: Such convincing—granting for the sake of argument that it produces real belief—would violate autonomy too greatly. I am not saying that every encroachment on autonomy is justified, but only that the mild encroachment involved in couching one's good arguments in a rhetorically effective form is.

L: I could pursue the question whether you shouldn't by the same token say that for a great enough good you can encroach on autonomy greatly. But let me try a different line of thought. Wouldn't you agree that it would be a unfortunate thing to use means other than the strength of argument to convince someone of a falsehood?

R: Yes, though only because it is unfortunate to be convinced of a falsehood. In other words, it is no more unfortunate than being convinced of a falsehood by means of strong but ultimately unsound or misleading arguments.

L: I'll grant you that. But being convinced by means of argument tracks truth, though imperfectly. Being convinced rhetorically does not.

R: It does when I am convincing someone of a truth!

L: Do you always try to convince people of truths?

R: I see what you mean. I do always try to convince people of what I at the time take to be the truth—except in cases where I am straightforwardly and perhaps wrongfully deceitful, sinner that I am—but I have in the past been wrong, and there have been some times when what I tried to convince others of has been false.

L: Don't you think that some of the things you are now trying to convince others of will fall in the same boat, though of course you can't point out which they are, on pain of self-contradiction?

R: Yes. So?

L: Well, then, when you strive to convince someone by rhetorical means of a falsehood, you are more of a spreader of error than when you try to do so by means of dry arguments.

R: Because dry arguments are less effective?

L: No, because reasoning with dry arguments is more truth conducive. Thus, when you try to convince someone of a falsehood by means of a dry argument, it is more likely that you will fail for truth-related reasons—that they will see the falsehood of one of your premises or the invalidity of one of your inferences. Thus, unsound arguments will be more likely to fail to convince than sound arguments will be. But rhetoric can as easily convince of falsehood as of truth.

R: I know many people who will dispute the truth conduciveness of dry argument, but I am not one of them—I think our practices cannot be explained except by thinking there is such conduciveness there. But I could also say that rhetorical argument is truth conducive in a similar way. The truth when attractively shown forth is more appealing than a rhetorically dressed up falsehood.

L: Maybe. But we had agreed to take for granted in our discussion that rhetorical persuasion is not truth tracking.

R: Sorry. It's easy to forget yourself when you've granted a falsehood for the sake of discussion. Where were we?

L: I said that reasoning with dry arguments is more truth conducive, and hence runs less of a risk of persuading people of error.

R: Is it always wrong to take risks?

L: No. But the social practice of rhetorical presentation of arguments—or, worse, of rhetorical non-argumentative persuasion—is less likely to lead to society figuring out the truth on controversial questions.

R: Are you saying that we should engage in those intellectual practices which, when practiced by all, are more likely to lead to truth?

L: I am not sure I want to commit myself to this in all cases, but in this one, yes.

R: I actually think one can question your claim about social doxastic utility. Rhetorical persuasion leads to a greater number of changes of mind. A society that engages in practices of rhetorical persuasion is likely to have more in the way of individual belief change, as dry arguments do not in fact convince. But a society with more individual belief change might actually be more effective at coming to the truth, since embodying different points of view in the same person at different times can lead to a better understanding of the positions and ultimately a better rational decision between them. We could probably come up with some interesting computation social epistemology models here.

L: You really think this?

R: No. But it seems no less likely to be correct than your claim that dry argument is a better social practice truth-wise.

L: Still, maybe there is a wager to be run here. Should you engage in persuasive practices here that (a) by your own admission negatively impact the autonomy of your interlocutors and (b) are no more likely than not to lead to a better social epistemic state?

R: So we're back to autonomy?

L: Yes.

R: But as I said I see autonomy not as an absolute value. If I see that a person is seriously harming herself through her false beliefs, do I not have a responsibility to help her out—the Golden Rule and all that!—even if I need to get around her irrational defenses by rhetorical means?

L: But how do you know that you're not the irrational one, about to infect an unwary interlocutor?

R: Are you afraid of being infected by me?

L: I am not unwary. Seriously, aren't you taking a big risk in using rhetorical means of persuasion, in that such means make you potentially responsible for convincing someone, in a way that side-steps some of her autonomy, of a falsehood? If by argument you persuade someone, then she at least has more of a responsibility here. But if you change someone's mind by rhetoric—much as (but to as smaller degree) when by threat or brainwashing—the responsibility for the error rests on you.

R: That is a scary prospect.

L: Indeed.

R: But sometimes one must do what is scary. Sometimes love of neighbor requires one to take on responsibilities, to take risks, to help one's neighbor out of an intellectual pit. Taking the risks can be rational and praiseworthy. And sometimes one can be rationally certain, too.

L: I am not sure about the certainty thing. But it seems that your position is now limited. That it is permissible to use rhetorical persuasion when sufficiently important goods of one's neighbor are at stake that the risk of error is small relative to these.

R: That may be right. Thus, it may be right to teach virtue or the Gospel by means that include rhetorical aspects, but it might be problematic to rhetorically propagate those aspects of science or philosophy that are not appropriately connected to virtue or the Gospel. Though even there I am not sure. For those things that aren't connected to virtue or the Gospel don't matter much, and error about them is not a great harm, so the risks may still be doable. But you have inclined me to think that one may need a special reason to engage in rhetoric.

L: Conditionally, of course, on our assumption that rhetoric is not truth-conducive in itself.

R: Ah, yes, I almost forgot that.

The holiness of the Church and clerical scandals

Does gravely immoral activity by the clergy detract from the holiness of the Church as it is on earth, the Church militant? It sure seems so. But I want to argue, very speculatively (and I will withdraw the claim if it turns out that the Church teaches otherwise), that it directly detracts no more—or at least not significantly more—than equally gravely immoral activity by similar numbers of laity would.

Consider the three features we desire the Church as found on earth to have: doctrinal orthodoxy, liturgical integrity and holiness of life.

The doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical integrity of the clergy does indeed especially contribute to the doctrinal orthodoxy and liturgical integrity of the Church. If a priest or especially a bishop is unorthodox, all other things being equal, that in itself detracts more from the orthodoxy of the Church on earth than when a lay person is unorthodox, simply because of the teaching role of the clergy. Similarly, if a priest or bishop engages in liturgical anarchy, say by changing some prayers at Mass, that detracts from the liturgical integrity of the Church more than if a lay person does so, all other things being equal.

But when a deacon, priest or bishop (including a pope) is wicked, that no more (and no less) directly detracts from the holiness of the Church than when a non-cleric person is wicked, when the degree of wickedness is the same. We can see this by considering the happier flip-side. Think of a non-cleric like St Teresa of Avila (she was a nun, of course, but a nun is a non-cleric[note 1]) and a priest like St John of the Cross. The holiness of their lives directly contributed to the holiness of the Church. But it would, I think, be mistaken to say that St John's holiness contributed more, or was a more central contribution, than St Teresa's just because St John was a priest and St Teresa was not. To say that would be to engage in clericalism, and is perhaps a species of the same error that leads to Donatism. The clergy's activity makes a special constitutive contribution to the Church's orthodoxy and liturgical integrity. But a layperson's holiness is just as constitutive of the holiness of the Church as the holiness of a deacon, priest or bishop. Mary makes a greater direct contribution to the holiness of the Church than any deacon, priest or bishop—not counting Christ the High Priest—ever did or would.

Of course, wickedness in a deacon, priest or bishop (and especially when the bishop is pope) typically has a greater negative effect on the Church's holiness, because it is more likely to scandalize others, leading them either to imitate the wickedness or abandon the faith. This indirectly detracts from the Church's holiness.

Suppose every single Catholic priest next year committed some particular grave and scandalous sin. That would be a terrible thing, would have a very unfortunate negative effect on the Church, and may God preserve us from this disaster. But it would no more directly detract from the Church's holiness than if some other group comprising 0.04% of the world's Catholic population committed an equally grave sin.

That said, a sin that is otherwise of the same sort may be graver when committed by a cleric, because (a) the cleric bears a responsibiity for avoiding the further negative effects and (b) is less likely to be excusable through ignorance. The above assumes we are dealing with sins of equal gravity.

Christ promised that the Church would be holy. The above argument shows that an argument based on clerical crimes that the Catholic Church cannot be Christ's Church because Christ's Church is holy is no stronger than argument based on equal numbers of non-clerical crimes would be. But an argument based on the crimes committed by non-clerics would fail: we do not expect the Church's holiness to imply the sinlessness of her members. The Church while holy as a body—the body of Christ—is yet a Church for sinners who need Christ's reforming grace. Thus the argument based on clerical crimes also fails.

And then, of course, there is always Boccaccio's argument.

The unavoidability of sin

Aquinas says that without grace we can avoid each individual mortal sin but not all mortal sin, at least not for a significant length of time.

On its face, this seems contradictory. After all, I can avoid the first mortal sin. If I avoid it, then I should be able to avoid the next one. And so on. And hence I should be able to avoid all mortal sin.

But this argument mistakenly agglomerates what one can do. For instance, suppose that there is a mine field with a thousand mines. I know how to defuse a mine, but I have an independent probability of 10% of slipping and detonating the mine. It's correct to say that each mine can be defused by me—being able to do this with 90% reliability is sufficient for this—but it is incorrect to say that I can defuse the whole minefield. It is appropriate to look at the minefield that one is to defuse and think: "This is an impossible task without help."

The person without grace is unable to presently control her future actions in favor of the good. Each individual action is in her power, but she cannot control them all at once. Hence she can rightly look with trepidation at her future moral life and say: "This is an impossible task without help."

But a virtuous person can control future actions in favor of the good en masse, by growing in virtue and resolving to do good.

How can I knowingly and freely do wrong?

I accept the following two claims:

1. Every free action is done for a reason.
2. If an action is obligatory, then I have on balance reason to do it.

Consider cases where I know that an action is obligatory, but I don't do it. How could that be? Well, one option is that I don't realize that obligatory actions are ones I have on balance reason to do. Put that case aside: I do know it sometimes when I do wrong. So I know that I have on balance reason to do an action, but I refrain from it. But then how could I have a reason for my refraining? And without a reason, my action wouldn't be free.

It strikes me that this version of the problem of akrasia may not be particularly difficult. There is no deep puzzle about how someone might choose a game of chess over a jog for a reason. A jog is healthier but a game of chess is more intellectually challenging, and one might choose the game of chess because it is more intellectually challenging. In other words, there is a respect in which the game of chess is better than the jog, and when one freely chooses the game of chess, one does so on the basis of some such respect. The jog, of course, also has something going for it: it is healthier, and one can freely choose it because it is better in respect of health.

Now, suppose that the choice is between playing a game of chess and keeping one's promise to visit a sick friend. Suppose the game of chess is more pleasant and intellectually challenging than visiting the sick friend. One can freely choose the game of chess because there are respects in which it is better than visiting the friend. There are, of course, respects in which the game of chess is worse: it is a breaking of a promise and a neglecting of a sick friend. But that there are respects in which visiting the sick friend is better does not make there be no reason to play chess instead, since there are respects in which the chess game is better.

But isn't visiting the sick friend on balance better? Certainly! But being on balance better is just another respect in which visiting the sick friend is better. It is still in some other respects better to play the game of chess. If one freely chooses to play the game of chess, then one chooses to do so on account of those other respects. That one option is on balance better is compatible with the other option being in some respects better. It is no more mysterious how one can act despite the knowledge that another option is on balance better than how one can act despite the knowledge that another option is more pleasant. The difference is that when one chooses against an action that one takes to be on balance better, one may incur a culpability that one does not incur when one chooses against an action that is merely more pleasant, but the incurring of that culpability is just another reason not to do the action.

But isn't it decisive if an action is on balance better? Isn't it irrational to go against such a decisive reading? Well, one can understand a decisive reason in three ways: (a) a reason that in fact decides one; (b) a reason that cannot but decide one; and (c) a reason that rationality requires one to go with. That an action is on balance better need not be what decides you, even if in fact you do the on balance better action. Now, granted, rationality requires one to go with an on balance better action. But that rationality requires something does not imply you will do it.

But if you don't, aren't you irrational, and hence not responsible? Well, if by irrational one means lack of responsiveness to reasons, then that would indeed imply lack of responsibility, but that is not one's state when one chooses to do the wrong thing for a reason. It need not even be true that one is not responsive to what is on balance better. For to be responsive to a reason does not require that one act on that reason. The person who chooses the chess game over the jog is likely quite responsive to reasons of health. If she were not responsive to reasons of health, it might not be a choice but a shoo-in. Likewise, the person who chooses against what is on balance better is responsive to what is on balance better, but goes against it.

Now, of course, the person who knowingly does what she knows she on balance has reason not to do, does not respond to the reason in the way that she should. In that sense, she is irrational. But that sense of irrationality is quite compatible with responsibility.

The unthinkable

Typically when we say that some course of action is unthinkable, we have already thought it.  Perhaps there is an equivocation, though.  Maybe what we mean is that the course of action is one that we can think about with theoretical reason, but cannot deliberate about with practical reason.  But isn't the revulsion from the course of action in fact a matter of the will?  Maybe it is a matter of the will, but not of the will in respect of deliberation?

I've seen a classic moral theology textbook say that if you've deliberated whether to commit a mortal sin, you've already committed a mortal sin.  Of course, it is presupposed here that you're aware that the action you're deliberating about is a mortal sin.  Maybe the idea is this.  Deliberation involves weighing the pros and cons of an action.  But as soon as you've realized that a course of action involves you in mortal sin, it is illegitimate to weigh the pros of the course of action.  If you do so, you're implicitly conditionally attaching your will to the mortal sin, conditionally on the pros being great enough.  It would be a mortal sin to explicitly conditionally attach your will to a mortal sin--for instance, to resolve to commit adultery if you win the lottery.  Whether the implicit conditional attachment in deliberation yields mortal sin is something I am not so sure about.  But it is surely sinful.

Of course this needs to be distinguished from a non-deliberative consideration of the benefits of a gravely wrong action.  There can be good reason to engage in such consideration.  For instance, one might try to think through the benefits of a sinful action in order to come up with a rhetorically powerful exhortation against the action, by contrasting the induced decay of soul with the temporariness of the benefits.