Topics Ethics

Question Some acts become morally wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of them. (For example, in an answer on Feb. 16, Charles Taliaferro says "internet stalking" is wrong because "the people you are studying so closely would not want this, should they ever know about it.") What is the moral status of such an act if the victim doesn't find out about it? In case that sounds too obscure, here are two other examples (from real life): 1. Ogling: if a man looks at a woman and feels attracted to her (but does not say or do anything), and she finds him repulsive, she would feel that she had been wronged if she knew about his attraction, but has no way to know about it. 2. Jewish law requires a group of 10 Jews to worship (defined as people whose mothers were Jewish). I know a non-Jew (Jewish father only) who tricked a group of 9 orthodox Jews by claiming to be Jewish and praying with them. If they knew he wasn't Jewish by their standards, they would have been harmed, but they had no way to find out. In the ogling case, one commits a wrong merely by thinking, but the Judaism case is a matter of outward behavior. In all cases, it is the victims' knowledge of the crime that causes the harm. One might be tempted to say these acts are wrong because the victim might find out, but it's easy to construct situations where this couldn't happen--say, the victims are strangers whom the perpetrator will never meet again. I'm very curious what philosophers have to say about this.

Accepted:
February 23, 2011

Comments

Charles Taliaferro did not write that internet stalking is wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of it. According to you, he wrote that it's wrong due to the fact that the victim would mind if she knew. So, according to him, it can be wrong even if the victim never finds out.

This is worth correcting because what interests you is, I think, different from what you're asking. You are asking what the moral status is of acts that become wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of them when the victim has no such knowledge. The answer is easy, such acts are not wrong. If the only thing that makes the act wrong is the victim's knowledge of the act, then the act cannot be wrong when the victim has no such knowledge.

I think what you are really interested in is: when does the sole fact that some "victim" finds out about an act render this act wrong? To tackle this question, let's draw a distinction. One way one can harm a person is by frustrating an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of hers. Another way of harming a person is by causing her to believe that an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of hers has been frustrated. When a person's beliefs track the truth, then these two go hand in hand: the guy who smashes in your windshield is harming you by damaging your car and also by causing you to worry about what to do about the damage. But sometimes the two harms come apart. Someone may be distraught over having lost a fortune in a financial fraud, but luckily his wife sold all their shares in that fraudulent investment a week earlier, so he lost no money at all (the poor bloke may still suffer a heart attack when he learns about the fraud, and he's then harmed by the fraud even though he's lost no money).

Somewhat similar to such factual error, there is also error in evaluation. An old and incurably old-fashioned guy may believe that his worthwhile goal of being a successful father would be frustrated if his daughter rejected ordinary family life in favor of a lesbian relationship. Actually, he's wrong about this: she can lead a fully flourishing life in a lesbian relationship, and such a relationship therefore does not show that he has failed as a father. Still, if the father were to find out (or even to be told falsely) that his daughter is in a lesbian relationship, then he would suffer the second harm: he would feel intense distress at her supposedly miserable existence and his failure to raise her in a way that would have protected her from such an awful fate.

This story can lead us to a good case of what you call an act that becomes morally wrong only due to the victim's knowledge of it. While there is normally nothing wrong with the daughter exchanging a serious kiss with her partner, this act can become wrong when performed in front of the father (because of the great -- albeit ungrounded -- distress it will cause him). Or, to go backwards, the kiss loses its wrongness when performed out of the father's sight because it does not really frustrate an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of his. It merely gives him (if he sees it) the false belief that there has been such a frustration.

We see now how you might resolve specific cases. Start with internet stalking. Contrary to what your quote from Charles Taliaferro seems to suggest, the mere fact that the other person would not want this cannot be enough to show that it's wrong. The father would not want his daughter to be in a lesbian relationship, and it's not wrong for her to be in one. So we need to examine whether internet stalking frustrates an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of the person being stalked. I would think that, highly unusual cases aside, this is not the case. If this is correct, then it's not wrong to internet-stalk someone so long as can be sure that one's "victim" either doesn't mind or won't find out. (Let me point out an asymmetry to the previous case, though. Internet stalking typically does not advance an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of the stalker. For this reason, it's not too demanding to ask that the agent refrain unless she can ensure to a very high degree of probability that her "victim" will not be greatly upset by finding out. She should assure herself that the victim either wouldn't be upset or won't find out. By contrast, a lesbian love relationship typically does advance important, worthwhile interests or goals or desires of the partners. The demand that they refrain would impose great genuine costs on them. And it is therefore not wrong to accept some unavoidable degree of risk that the father will find out. It may not be too much to ask that the daughter be discreet, but it would be too much to ask that she refrain (or even start a heterosexual relationship to make her father feel that he's been a successful dad).

Now to your case of the repulsive man. Feeling attracted is not an act, he has no control over it and so it cannot be wrong. But it could be wrong for him to go near her again where he might once more feel this attraction. Is it wrong? I don't think so. Suspecting that she would be very upset if she found out, he should keep his feelings under wraps. But no important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of hers is frustrated merely by his (to her unknown) feeling of attraction. Should he suspect, however, that he might not be able to contain himself and then reveal his strong attraction, then it would be wrong for him to linger about her unnecessarily and hence to run the risk that he will greatly upset her. ("Unnecessarily," because it would not be wrong for him to continue to be around her, even at the risk of losing control and upsetting her, if this were the only way for him to keep his job, say.)

Your prayer case depends a bit on the theology. If the relevant G-d exists and practices strict liability, then the fake Jew ruined the prayer and thereby frustrated an important, worthwhile interest or goal or desire of the other nine. If the relevant G-d exists but gives people credit for doing their best to observe His instructions, then the fake Jew may have done nothing wrong because G-d accepted the prayer of the other nine (who prayed in good faith) and he even spared them the trouble of casting about for an authentic tenth. Likewise, the fake Jew does no harm if the relevant G-d does not exist (he doesn't ruin the prayer because it is pointless anyway).

Let me add an obvious case of my own: the "cheated" partner. Those who are in a serious relationship typically have a strong desire that this relationship be honest and they be genuinely loved by their partner. This is a worthwhile and important desire. One would thus typically harm one's partner if one made her believe, falsely, that her desire is fulfilled in the present relationship. If she knew that her desire is not fulfilled, she would have a chance to fulfill it with another partner. By pretending, one is sparing her the smaller, more temporary harm of learning that her partner does not love her but is also imposing on her the greater harm of leading her life without a partner's genuine love.

These brief standard case descriptions are meant to illustrate a general approach toward resolving the questions that interest you. But then real human lives are rich, complex, and often convoluted, and it would be impossible to do justice to all such diversity in a few paragraphs. My discussions of these standard cases should not then be taken to support any rigid rules.