Moral Actions and Impediments

Welcome to our set of lectures for the second week of our course on ethics. In our previous video, I presented to you and I discussed with you the early questions of philosophers when it comes to ethics and morality. Particularly, this is the question of Socrates and of Aristotle. We discussed their questions and the perspectives that they have on moral actions and on morality itself. I also presented to you the concept of St. Thomas Aquinas on human actions and that all human acts are moral acts. This statement is what we are going to discuss this week. We will give you a much more in-depth discussion on moral actions and on human actions. As mentioned by Aquinas, all human acts are moral acts. This is opposed to another kind of act which he mentioned and which we have discussed as well in the previous lecture, the act of man. Much of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas comes from Aristotle and Aristotle discusses two kinds of actions in his book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. These actions are Involuntary actions and voluntary actions. So involuntary actions are those actions that we cannot help but do so. This is something that is out of our control, meaning we have no control over this kind of actions. This is something that is innate in us or is something that is natural to us. You can also say that this is something that we share. with other lower animals. You can classify involuntary actions as an act of man. Voluntary actions, on the other hand, we have some degree of control over it. This is something that we do that we are aware that we are doing these actions. Voluntary actions have three particular aspects. Number one, knowledge. Number two, voluntariness. Number three, freedom. Meaning, voluntary actions are freely done. Let us discuss these aspects. Number one, knowledge. When you perform a voluntary action, it's something that you are aware of. It means that you know that you are actually doing it. doing that action. So for example, when I go outside to buy ice candy, I know that I'm going to buy ice candy. So the act of buying ice candy is a voluntary action. Animals, on the other hand, well, we can say that they also have knowledge in the sense that they do things and that they know they do these things. But the kind of knowledge that they have are not the same as the knowledge that human beings have. What animals have is what we call imperfect knowledge. The next aspect is voluntariness. Voluntariness refers to our willingness to do the action in the sense that when we do it, it's out of our own will and out of our own volition. It was our choice to do this action. Lastly, voluntary actions are freely done. This means that you have the capacity to actually do the action. Voluntariness and freedom is something that you may think sound the same. So you may tend to interchange these two terms. However, freedom means that there are no hurdles in performing the action. No one or nothing is preventing you from doing the action. So that is what it means for a voluntary action to be freely done. So let's take our example a while ago when we go outside to buy ice candy from our neighbor. When we go to our neighbor to buy ice candy, after buying it, we go back to our house to eat that ice candy. The action is regarded as a voluntary action in the sense that number one, knowledge is present. You know that you are going to buy and that you are going to buy ice candy. Number two, Your action of buying the ice candy is out of your own volition. No one forced you to do it. Not your mother, not your father, not your older sibling. Lastly, it's freely done. You have the freedom and the capacity to do it. No one prevented you from doing it. So the second aspect that we discussed is voluntariness. There is this concept called directly voluntary and indirectly voluntary. A directly voluntary action is a kind of action wherein the consequence of that action is something that you intend. On the other hand, an indirectly voluntary action is wherein the consequence is a result of another action that you have intended. So let's take for example a pilot during wartime. The pilot dropped a bomb on a particular island. At the same time, the bomb killed a lot of people. The directly voluntary action was the dropping of the bomb. The Indirectly Voluntary Act is the killing of the people on the island. To be honest, this is very confusing which is why we are not going to use these terminologies. Rather, we will be using the terms deliberate action in comparison to voluntary action. This is a classification of action that is deliberate as opposed to an action that is simply voluntary. deliberate actions first and foremost are voluntary actions this means that deliberate action has your knowledge component your voluntariness component and your freedom component that is freely done a deliberate action is something that you know you're doing you chose to do and you freely did or you would freely do but the thing with deliberate action is the active presence of another component which is intent. This is something that you did intentionally. You may ask, are voluntary actions not necessarily deliberate actions? Well, not really. There are voluntary actions which are not deliberate actions. You know that you are doing it but you did not really intend to do it. Hence, all deliberate actions are definitely voluntary, but not all voluntary actions are necessarily deliberate. One great example is this. So, this is Manila City Hall, and this is the LRT. I like to use this very specific example because if you are riding the LRT, or if you have seen this on your way somewhere in Manila, you would see that the LRT here goes in a curved path. So when you ride the LRT, it goes on a curved path there. When the train reaches this curve, you are forced to sway. So the act of swaying is an involuntary action while, of course, you're riding on the train. Say, for example, you have another passenger beside you. So when the train went on this curved path, because of the force, you stepped on the foot of the other passenger behind you. So, you knew that you did that, but you did not intend to do it. So, it may be a voluntary action, but not necessarily a deliberate action. But, if you did that with the intention of stepping on the foot of the passenger, regardless of whether or not there is a force from outside, that would be regarded as a deliberate action. So when we are discussing moral actions, then as mentioned by Aquinas, we refer to human acts. So human acts or human actions refer to voluntary and deliberate actions. So definitely deliberate action is a moral action and it is something that is subject to morality. But voluntary actions, why should we concern ourselves with voluntary actions? when in fact there are things that we do without the intent to do it? Well, we do it simply because we are able to exercise our faculties, particularly our rational faculty or our rationality. When we do voluntary actions, remember that there are three elements at play. So that's knowledge, voluntariness, and freedom. Because of those three particular elements, voluntary actions are definitely moral action. This is something again unique to human beings. However, it's important to note that the gravity of the moral culpability or the moral accountability would depend on whether or not it's simply voluntary or it's deliberate. I think this is very much demonstrated in the difference between homicide and murder. So homicide is an instance where you kill a person, but you don't necessarily intend to kill that person. Murder, on the other hand, has an active presence of intent. So you intended to kill the person to begin with, that's why you killed the person. So murder definitely is something that necessitates moral culpability in the same sense that there's a presence of intent. But for homicide, it doesn't mean that just because there's no intent that you're no longer morally culpable in the first place. You know what you're doing, you still did it, and given your capacities, you have the option not to do it. So it was still your choice to do it or not to do it. The difference, however, is that there's no premeditated intent. So for example, your purpose of doing it may be just to defend yourself. You still have a certain sense of moral culpability. It's because if you don't have any moral culpability, what would happen to all the homicides? Would they just go without any form of justice? So the term moral here signifies two meanings. The first meaning of the term moral is the kind of act that we know to be voluntary and deliberate. Watching Netflix is a moral act simply because it's a human act. It's voluntary, it's deliberate. The second meaning refers to the rightness or the wrongness of an action. So for example, being honest is a moral act in the sense that it's right and in the sense that it's voluntary and deliberate. So those are the two meanings of the term moral. In this video, we will go through the challenges or the impediments of the elements of moral actions. Remember the elements knowledge, voluntariness, and freedom. These challenges are factors that affect these three aspects that would allow us to review the actions done and it would also allow us to overcome these particular impediments as well. Firstly, there is the impediment of ignorance. This is a particular impediment to the knowledge element of a moral action. There are two types of ignorance, invincible and invincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance is the kind of ignorance wherein we are not aware that we are ignorant. We see a lot of people like this, especially in social media. They are very ignorant of a lot of matters. but it seems that they are not aware that they are ignorant. The other kind of ignorance is vincible ignorance. This is the kind of ignorance wherein we have the capacity or the situation that would allow us to overcome that particular ignorance, meaning we can actually go from ignorant to being informed. Next is the concept of passion. Passion in philosophy particularly refers to our emotions. Sometimes, our emotions force us to do certain things. Likewise, sometimes our emotions prevent us from doing certain things as well. Passion being an impediment to moral actions is the reason why there is such a thing as a crime of passion. It is something that people do at the heat of the moment. For example, you saw your lover with another person in bed. The sudden surge of emotions may cause you to kill your lover or maybe both of them. This is something that can be regarded as a crime of passion. The next impediment is fear. So fear is something that can also cause us to act in a certain manner. So it's something that challenges us or that compromises voluntariness and freedom. We can also claim that this is something that compromises our knowledge as well. So an example of this may be instances of sexual assault wherein rape victims are forced to, for example, do things that they do not want to do and yet they do it. So you don't say that they did it out of choice. but rather they did it out of the situation, out of fear. Fear is what caused them to do it. Hence, it's something that compromises the elements of voluntariness and freedom. Another example is when someone puts a gun to your head. So here we are also going to the impediment of violence already. When someone puts a gun to your head and threatens to kill you if you don't give him your money or your things and you comply. you give him your money or your things it's absurd to say that what you did is something out of your choice and your choice alone so the concept of violence in this case compromises voluntariness and freedom as well so the next impediment is habit sometimes when we do things out of habit we do it naturally so it's really difficult for us to change a particular habit so in this case habit compromises both our voluntariness and our freedom because out of habit we do things naturally. The next impediment is mental condition. Certain mental conditions also compromise aspects of voluntary actions. For example, when we are schizophrenic, we would be hearing certain things which are not really there to begin with. These things may force us to do other things. which we would not have done if schizophrenia or the condition of schizophrenia is absent to begin with. Lastly, we have the impediment of socioeconomic status. This is something that is really very interesting when it comes to how a person's class or how a person's socioeconomic status compromises one, if not all, of the aspects of a voluntary action. So let's say, for example, a poor person stole your phone. because they don't have any more means to eat. He wasn't able to study so he wasn't able to get a good education which is the reason why he cannot find a job. So he can't find a job without a good education but they are poor and they are starving already. They were born in a kind of a situation wherein they have nothing. They don't have that much opportunity. These people were forced in the sense that they don't have any other opportunities to earn a living so in this case their socioeconomic status impedes all the aspects of a voluntary action their knowledge their freedom and their voluntariness so a poor person stole your phone so they can sell something so they can eat others you know they tend to become apathetic they would just say that these people just have to find a way in order for them to live. But if society hinders you from finding a way to live a good life or just to live and survive, the question is, are you morally culpable when it comes to that? When it's society already that is forcing you to do these things. And then others would say, no, society did not force you. That's out of your own volition. And it's really something that is within your control. It's your choice to do it. So it's something that's really very... much relevant especially nowadays. So let's use this as a point of reflection. Maybe this is something that we can reflect as we go through the course. So now the question is what's the use of knowing these impediments or challenges? Does the presence of these impediments change voluntary actions or even a deliberate action and turn it into an involuntary action and therefore not subject to moral evaluation? Well, not really. Moral... Actions, mainly voluntary and deliberate actions by principle or voluntary and deliberate actions. Going to the mall. watching netflix taking a bath these actions are by principle voluntary and deliberate however whenever we enact certain actions various factors come into play and therefore when we analyze the morality of these actions we have to take into account the presence of these challenges and impediment so for example when you're watching netflix while watching netflix by principle is a deliberate action When we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of you doing that action, we have to take into account the various impediments at play. Are you being forced to watch Netflix? Are you being threatened to do so? Is it out of habit? Is there a presence of violence? So we have to take all of this into account when we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of the action. It doesn't really change the action per se. making a voluntary and a deliberate action to an involuntary action and therefore not subject to moral evaluation. Rather, when we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of the action, we have to consider the presence of all these challenges and impediments that may impact the aspects of a moral action. Doing so would allow us to properly hold the person morally culpable or morally accountable, and maybe from then We can discuss and analyze how to hold the person morally liable for his or her own action. We have presented seven impediments or challenges to a moral action. Those are ignorance, both invincible and vincible, passion, fear, violence, habit, mental condition, and socioeconomic status. These impediments do not change the status of a moral action and make it an involuntary one. However, they play a vital role when we analyze a person's actions and when we discuss his or her moral liability. So, that's it for this week's video lecture series. For next week, we will be discussing about moral theories, particularly absolutism, relativism, egoism, emotivism. and hedonism.

This statement is what we are going to discuss this week. We will give you a much more in-depth discussion on moral actions and on human actions. As mentioned by Aquinas, all human acts are moral acts.

This is opposed to another kind of act which he mentioned and which we have discussed as well in the previous lecture, the act of man. Much of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas comes from Aristotle and Aristotle discusses two kinds of actions in his book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. These actions are Involuntary actions and voluntary actions.

So involuntary actions are those actions that we cannot help but do so. This is something that is out of our control, meaning we have no control over this kind of actions. This is something that is innate in us or is something that is natural to us. You can also say that this is something that we share. with other lower animals.

You can classify involuntary actions as an act of man. Voluntary actions, on the other hand, we have some degree of control over it. This is something that we do that we are aware that we are doing these actions. Voluntary actions have three particular aspects. Number one, knowledge.

Number two, voluntariness. Number three, freedom. Meaning, voluntary actions are freely done.

Let us discuss these aspects. Number one, knowledge. When you perform a voluntary action, it's something that you are aware of. It means that you know that you are actually doing it.

doing that action. So for example, when I go outside to buy ice candy, I know that I'm going to buy ice candy. So the act of buying ice candy is a voluntary action.

Animals, on the other hand, well, we can say that they also have knowledge in the sense that they do things and that they know they do these things. But the kind of knowledge that they have are not the same as the knowledge that human beings have. What animals have is what we call imperfect knowledge. The next aspect is voluntariness. Voluntariness refers to our willingness to do the action in the sense that when we do it, it's out of our own will and out of our own volition.

It was our choice to do this action. Lastly, voluntary actions are freely done. This means that you have the capacity to actually do the action. Voluntariness and freedom is something that you may think sound the same.

So you may tend to interchange these two terms. However, freedom means that there are no hurdles in performing the action. No one or nothing is preventing you from doing the action. So that is what it means for a voluntary action to be freely done.

So let's take our example a while ago when we go outside to buy ice candy from our neighbor. When we go to our neighbor to buy ice candy, after buying it, we go back to our house to eat that ice candy. The action is regarded as a voluntary action in the sense that number one, knowledge is present. You know that you are going to buy and that you are going to buy ice candy.

Number two, Your action of buying the ice candy is out of your own volition. No one forced you to do it. Not your mother, not your father, not your older sibling.

Lastly, it's freely done. You have the freedom and the capacity to do it. No one prevented you from doing it. So the second aspect that we discussed is voluntariness. There is this concept called directly voluntary and indirectly voluntary.

A directly voluntary action is a kind of action wherein the consequence of that action is something that you intend. On the other hand, an indirectly voluntary action is wherein the consequence is a result of another action that you have intended. So let's take for example a pilot during wartime.

The pilot dropped a bomb on a particular island. At the same time, the bomb killed a lot of people. The directly voluntary action was the dropping of the bomb. The Indirectly Voluntary Act is the killing of the people on the island.

To be honest, this is very confusing which is why we are not going to use these terminologies. Rather, we will be using the terms deliberate action in comparison to voluntary action. This is a classification of action that is deliberate as opposed to an action that is simply voluntary.

deliberate actions first and foremost are voluntary actions this means that deliberate action has your knowledge component your voluntariness component and your freedom component that is freely done a deliberate action is something that you know you're doing you chose to do and you freely did or you would freely do but the thing with deliberate action is the active presence of another component which is intent. This is something that you did intentionally. You may ask, are voluntary actions not necessarily deliberate actions? Well, not really. There are voluntary actions which are not deliberate actions.

You know that you are doing it but you did not really intend to do it. Hence, all deliberate actions are definitely voluntary, but not all voluntary actions are necessarily deliberate. One great example is this. So, this is Manila City Hall, and this is the LRT. I like to use this very specific example because if you are riding the LRT, or if you have seen this on your way somewhere in Manila, you would see that the LRT here goes in a curved path.

So when you ride the LRT, it goes on a curved path there. When the train reaches this curve, you are forced to sway. So the act of swaying is an involuntary action while, of course, you're riding on the train. Say, for example, you have another passenger beside you.

So when the train went on this curved path, because of the force, you stepped on the foot of the other passenger behind you. So, you knew that you did that, but you did not intend to do it. So, it may be a voluntary action, but not necessarily a deliberate action.

But, if you did that with the intention of stepping on the foot of the passenger, regardless of whether or not there is a force from outside, that would be regarded as a deliberate action. So when we are discussing moral actions, then as mentioned by Aquinas, we refer to human acts. So human acts or human actions refer to voluntary and deliberate actions.

So definitely deliberate action is a moral action and it is something that is subject to morality. But voluntary actions, why should we concern ourselves with voluntary actions? when in fact there are things that we do without the intent to do it? Well, we do it simply because we are able to exercise our faculties, particularly our rational faculty or our rationality.

When we do voluntary actions, remember that there are three elements at play. So that's knowledge, voluntariness, and freedom. Because of those three particular elements, voluntary actions are definitely moral action.

This is something again unique to human beings. However, it's important to note that the gravity of the moral culpability or the moral accountability would depend on whether or not it's simply voluntary or it's deliberate. I think this is very much demonstrated in the difference between homicide and murder.

So homicide is an instance where you kill a person, but you don't necessarily intend to kill that person. Murder, on the other hand, has an active presence of intent. So you intended to kill the person to begin with, that's why you killed the person.

So murder definitely is something that necessitates moral culpability in the same sense that there's a presence of intent. But for homicide, it doesn't mean that just because there's no intent that you're no longer morally culpable in the first place. You know what you're doing, you still did it, and given your capacities, you have the option not to do it.

So it was still your choice to do it or not to do it. The difference, however, is that there's no premeditated intent. So for example, your purpose of doing it may be just to defend yourself. You still have a certain sense of moral culpability.

It's because if you don't have any moral culpability, what would happen to all the homicides? Would they just go without any form of justice? So the term moral here signifies two meanings. The first meaning of the term moral is the kind of act that we know to be voluntary and deliberate. Watching Netflix is a moral act simply because it's a human act.

It's voluntary, it's deliberate. The second meaning refers to the rightness or the wrongness of an action. So for example, being honest is a moral act in the sense that it's right and in the sense that it's voluntary and deliberate.

So those are the two meanings of the term moral. In this video, we will go through the challenges or the impediments of the elements of moral actions. Remember the elements knowledge, voluntariness, and freedom.

These challenges are factors that affect these three aspects that would allow us to review the actions done and it would also allow us to overcome these particular impediments as well. Firstly, there is the impediment of ignorance. This is a particular impediment to the knowledge element of a moral action.

There are two types of ignorance, invincible and invincible ignorance. Invincible ignorance is the kind of ignorance wherein we are not aware that we are ignorant. We see a lot of people like this, especially in social media.

They are very ignorant of a lot of matters. but it seems that they are not aware that they are ignorant. The other kind of ignorance is vincible ignorance.

This is the kind of ignorance wherein we have the capacity or the situation that would allow us to overcome that particular ignorance, meaning we can actually go from ignorant to being informed. Next is the concept of passion. Passion in philosophy particularly refers to our emotions.

Sometimes, our emotions force us to do certain things. Likewise, sometimes our emotions prevent us from doing certain things as well. Passion being an impediment to moral actions is the reason why there is such a thing as a crime of passion.

It is something that people do at the heat of the moment. For example, you saw your lover with another person in bed. The sudden surge of emotions may cause you to kill your lover or maybe both of them.

This is something that can be regarded as a crime of passion. The next impediment is fear. So fear is something that can also cause us to act in a certain manner.

So it's something that challenges us or that compromises voluntariness and freedom. We can also claim that this is something that compromises our knowledge as well. So an example of this may be instances of sexual assault wherein rape victims are forced to, for example, do things that they do not want to do and yet they do it. So you don't say that they did it out of choice. but rather they did it out of the situation, out of fear.

Fear is what caused them to do it. Hence, it's something that compromises the elements of voluntariness and freedom. Another example is when someone puts a gun to your head. So here we are also going to the impediment of violence already. When someone puts a gun to your head and threatens to kill you if you don't give him your money or your things and you comply.

you give him your money or your things it's absurd to say that what you did is something out of your choice and your choice alone so the concept of violence in this case compromises voluntariness and freedom as well so the next impediment is habit sometimes when we do things out of habit we do it naturally so it's really difficult for us to change a particular habit so in this case habit compromises both our voluntariness and our freedom because out of habit we do things naturally. The next impediment is mental condition. Certain mental conditions also compromise aspects of voluntary actions.

For example, when we are schizophrenic, we would be hearing certain things which are not really there to begin with. These things may force us to do other things. which we would not have done if schizophrenia or the condition of schizophrenia is absent to begin with. Lastly, we have the impediment of socioeconomic status. This is something that is really very interesting when it comes to how a person's class or how a person's socioeconomic status compromises one, if not all, of the aspects of a voluntary action.

So let's say, for example, a poor person stole your phone. because they don't have any more means to eat. He wasn't able to study so he wasn't able to get a good education which is the reason why he cannot find a job. So he can't find a job without a good education but they are poor and they are starving already.

They were born in a kind of a situation wherein they have nothing. They don't have that much opportunity. These people were forced in the sense that they don't have any other opportunities to earn a living so in this case their socioeconomic status impedes all the aspects of a voluntary action their knowledge their freedom and their voluntariness so a poor person stole your phone so they can sell something so they can eat others you know they tend to become apathetic they would just say that these people just have to find a way in order for them to live. But if society hinders you from finding a way to live a good life or just to live and survive, the question is, are you morally culpable when it comes to that?

When it's society already that is forcing you to do these things. And then others would say, no, society did not force you. That's out of your own volition.

And it's really something that is within your control. It's your choice to do it. So it's something that's really very... much relevant especially nowadays.

So let's use this as a point of reflection. Maybe this is something that we can reflect as we go through the course. So now the question is what's the use of knowing these impediments or challenges?

Does the presence of these impediments change voluntary actions or even a deliberate action and turn it into an involuntary action and therefore not subject to moral evaluation? Well, not really. Moral...

Actions, mainly voluntary and deliberate actions by principle or voluntary and deliberate actions. Going to the mall. watching netflix taking a bath these actions are by principle voluntary and deliberate however whenever we enact certain actions various factors come into play and therefore when we analyze the morality of these actions we have to take into account the presence of these challenges and impediment so for example when you're watching netflix while watching netflix by principle is a deliberate action When we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of you doing that action, we have to take into account the various impediments at play.

Are you being forced to watch Netflix? Are you being threatened to do so? Is it out of habit? Is there a presence of violence? So we have to take all of this into account when we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of the action.

It doesn't really change the action per se. making a voluntary and a deliberate action to an involuntary action and therefore not subject to moral evaluation. Rather, when we are analyzing the rightness or the wrongness of the action, we have to consider the presence of all these challenges and impediments that may impact the aspects of a moral action. Doing so would allow us to properly hold the person morally culpable or morally accountable, and maybe from then We can discuss and analyze how to hold the person morally liable for his or her own action. We have presented seven impediments or challenges to a moral action.

Those are ignorance, both invincible and vincible, passion, fear, violence, habit, mental condition, and socioeconomic status. These impediments do not change the status of a moral action and make it an involuntary one. However, they play a vital role when we analyze a person's actions and when we discuss his or her moral liability. So, that's it for this week's video lecture series. For next week, we will be discussing about moral theories, particularly absolutism, relativism, egoism, emotivism.

and hedonism.

Transcript for:Moral Actions and Impediments

Transcript for:
Moral Actions and Impediments