Re: Adultery and Sin

Alec Brady wrote:

On 09 Jul 2006 18:13:48 +0100, Gareth McCaughan
<Gareth.McCaughan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Alec Brady wrote:

Nothing can "make" you feel anything, Peter[1]. If you feel angry or
despondent or ashamed or offended, you can use that as a jumping-off
point to discover your own emotional trigger-points and do something
about them.

That's if you want to, of course. There's no complusion about this.
But if you choose not to, that's hardly Ken's fault.

I think this goes a bit too far, at least if that "nothing" in
the first paragraph is intended seriously.

It is intended seriously, but by 'feel' I didn't mean every sense of
that word - I was only referring to emotional 'feeling'.

I hadn't thought that you were referring to physical
sensations.

Oh, right. It was when you said "Most people aren't expert martial
artists, and when you try to slap them in the face they get slapped
and it hurts", I assumed you were talking about physical hurt.

I was, there, but that was intended as an analogy -- obviously
not a very successful one, in the event -- to help explain
what seemed wrong to me about what you said. That is: it
seemed to me that your reasons for saying -- if indeed you
did intend to be so general -- that no fault accrues to
someone who "makes someone feel" bad psychologically by
insult or mockery, were exactly parallel to reasons for
saying that no fault accrues to someone who "makes someone
feel" bad physically by assault and battery, at least assault
and battery of the more counterable kinds.

More specifically, I understood your argument to be this:

1 When someone insults or mocks you, that doesn't
*directly* cause you to feel bad; the causation
goes via routes you can influence.

2 There are mental techniques you can employ to avoid
feeling bad in such circumstances. (Let's say:
cultivating an awareness that what someone else
says about you reflects only what they happen to
want to say, and not necessarily anything about
you; or, accepting yourself as you are, so that
anything "bad" anyone truthfully says about you
doesn't upset you.)

3 Therefore, if someone insults and mocks you and you
consequently feel bad, that's because of how *you* are,
and they can't rightly be blamed for it.

and suggested (well, gesticulated too-vaguely towards)
a parallel, apparently-to-me equally good, argument
as follows:

1 When someone attempts to slap you in the face, that
doesn't *directly* cause you to be in pain; the causation
goes via routes you can influence.

2 There are physical techniques you can employ to avoid
suffering pain in such circumstances. (Let's say:
learning skilful ways to block blows without pain;
or learning ways to move when hit that result in
the blows causing no pain or injury.)

3 Therefore, if someone goes to slap you and you consequently
get slapped and hurt, that's because of how *you* are,
and they can't rightly be blamed for it.

The elaborations on the mental and physical techniques
concerned are certainly sketchy and probably outright wrong;
their purpose is just to indicate the general kind of
techniques I have in mind.

What I meant about taking the word "nothing"
seriously was that you seemed to be saying not only
that *in this instance* any dysphoria[*] on Peter's part
was eminently avoidable and not at all Ken's fault,
but that *in general* if anyone says anything to Peter
(or, I take it, to anyone possessed of a reasonably
normal set of faculties) then any ensuing dysphoria
is eminently avoidable and the fault of the "victim".

[*] Is that the right word, or is it too specific?

Too specific, but I know what you mean. I'd say 'distress', but the
words are up for grabs - if you want to use 'dysphoria' that's ok.

If it's "too specific" then it isn't "ok" in the sense
I most care about. If all I wanted as to enable you to
know what I meant, I could probably have said "wossname";
you're a clever chap. :-)

I wouldn't say 'fault', no. But If they say "look how you *made* me
feel," they're wrong. Like if an abusive husband says to his beaten
wife "look what you *made* me do," he's wrong. OK, maybe not exactly
like that, but the nature of the wrongness is the same.

Well, you *did* say "fault".

| That's if you want to, of course. There's no compulsion about this.
| But if you choose not to, that's hardly Ken's fault.

I find your analogy with an abusive husband unenlightening,
I'm afraid. (I think I can think of situations in which someone
might sincerely and non-insanely say "look what you made me do"
having just harmed someone else, but they aren't ones I'd
be inclined to characterize by using the words "abusive"
and "beaten" as you did. I can of course think of situations
in which someone might say those words and the terms
"abusive" and "beaten" would be just right, but they seem
to me to be importantly disanalagous to what we're talking
about here. One important disanalogy, which may in fact apply
to both sorts of situation: I think we have obligations not to
hurt other people that don't have corresponding obligations
not to hurt ourselves.)

Back to the abusive husband: suppose he beats his wife for something
she's done - say, he's caught her having a girly phone chat with one
of her friends. Clearly that is a causal antecedent of his anger, but
is he right to say "look how your behaviour made me react"? It's
correct to tell him "no, she's not the one who makes this be your
reaction".

Right. (It wouldn't necessarily be him who does, either;
there might be no person who makes it be his reaction.)

Suppose (for some good reason) his wife was knowingly provoking him
(maybe to obtain evidence against him); does that fact about her
intentions make it correct for him to claim that she has made this be
his reaction? I say not. Whether his reaction is right or wrong can't
be determined by unavailable facts like her private intentions, it's
the information available to him that determines the reasonableness of
his reactions.

But whether *she made it be* his reaction can surely be affected
by whether she had any such intention.

Imagine that her husband's brain has the following peculiar
feature (as a result of a bizarre evolutionary accident, or
a depraved hypnotist, or a science-fictional neurosurgeon,
or whatever): if anyone says the words "my maiden aunt in
Winnipeg" to him then he will become insanely angry and start
breaking things and hitting people.

Now, scenario 1: his wife happens to say those words as part
of an ordinary conversation. It's clear that she bears no
fault for what he does; probably he doesn't either. Whether
he was "made" to act as he did is probably a question without
an answer.

Scenario 2: his wife knows about this strange predisposition
of his, and for some reason (good or bad) wants him to become
very angry and start breaking things and hurting people. So
she says those words in order to make him do this, and he does.
It's clear -- I think -- that she *does* bear some fault for
what he does, and (I don't know about you but) I would be much
more inclined than in scenario 1 to say that she made him get
angry and start breaking things and hurting people.

Of course, people don't generally have such clear-cut and crazy
dispositions. But most of us *do* have dispositions to become
upset when people insult or mock us; you've argued that these
dispositions, like the husband's in my strange imaginary scenarios,
are irrational; and they are well enough known that when someone
is upset "by" insult and mockery it's generally nearer to scenario 2
than to scenario 1.

I see two possibly significant differences. Firstly, these
dispositions are more resistible than (according to my
stipulation) the husband's reaction to "my maiden aunt
in Winnipeg". That obviously shifts some of whatever blame
ensues to the person reacting, at least if they were actually
in a position to resist. (They might not be, despite being
theoretically capable of it, if effective resistance requires
mental disciplines they don't know about.)

Secondly, when the husband above gets angry it's typically
others who get hurt; when someone reacts badly to insult
or mockery it's typically they themselves who get hurt.
I expect that has little significance psychologically, but
it seems relevant morally. (Because you can generally be
blamed for hurting others, but not usually for hurting
yourself. So if the wife in scenario 2 is the only person
who's hurt by the husband's angry actions, perhaps she
deserves no blame; but if the husband is hurt, she does.)

I agree, if the wife knowingly provokes her husband, she bears some
responsibility; but that doesn't make him right to say that she *made*
him feel angry. Similarly if Ken takes the rise out of Peter knowing
how Peter will react, he bears some responsibility; but that doesn't
make it right for Peter to say "you made me feel bad"

(Actually, looking back, I see that this was never Peter's claim; he
was talking about how Ken's pedantry had the *potential* to make
others feel. This doesn't change my basic point, but it makes Peter's
claim less stark).

I think it largely invalidates your point, because saying
"pedantry has the potential to make others feel bad" isn't
really a claim that the pedantry, all on its own, forces
people to feel bad. (And when we say "the sun rises" we don't
mean that the sun moves outward relative to the earth's
gravitational field; and when we say "I'm standing on solid
ground" we don't mean that the ground isn't composed mostly
of empty space. Natural language is imprecise and often
just plain wrong when taken literally. You know all this,
which makes it puzzling that you seem to be writing as if
you don't.)

I don't think Peter was really claiming any more than this:
sometimes, if Ken mocks people, they will be upset, and
predictably so, and Ken will bear some of the blame for
that.

[SNIP: various things about which I haven't anything
interesting to say, even by my own doubtless low standards]

I wasn't talking about *your* ethics and etiquette, but about
those of someone who deliberately, or at least knowingly, "makes"
someone else feel bad. (I repeat that I'm not claiming that Ken
is such a person in this instance.)

Ah, ok, yes. I agree, it's impolite to take advantage of someone's
known vulnerability. That doesn't make it wrong for me to tell that
person that his vulnerability is also a causal antecedent of his
reaction, and how he might do something about that vulnerability.

We appear, at this point, to be in violent agreement.
Splendid. :-)

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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