Here's one our department was debating over lunch yesterday.
If you do something to someone that doesn't "hurt" them in any clear, direct way -- and they never know that it happened -- have you actually done anything wrong? This gets to the nature of what it means to committ an offense. To help explain, let me give a couple examples we came up with:
First imagine a "peeping tom" type scenario where someone (say a teenage male) looks in on someone else while they are in the shower (say an attractive female). Let's say the woman never knows that the peeping tom looked at her and no one else can ever find out.
Interestingly, simply from a simplistic utilitarian perspective, assuming the male derived some kind of pleasure from peeping, and the woman (if she never finds out) does not experience any (direct anyway) harm from it -- it seems we could actually call it a "good thing," and certainly not a bad one. So was it wrong of the tom? Did he commit any offense against the woman if she never finds out or is never aware of the tom?
Another example of what we after:
Let's say you have a vegetarian friend over for dinner and you make a nice soup for the first course. Now you could easily use chicken stock instead of vegetable stock in the recipe and your friend would probably never know. So let's say you do it. Your friend assumes its a vegetarian soup. He likes it a lot. And he leaves and no one ever knows, including your friend of course, that it was chicken stock instead of vegetable stock. If he never knows that he ate the chicken stock (and thus violated his own code -- let's say he's a vegetarian for ethical reasons), did you really commit any wrong?
This is tricky. Anyone can hop into this conversation and say "YES!" it was an offense and the person is a "victim" of a wrong act in both these cases. The tough part is explaining WHY. Any attempts?
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Yes, this is wrong. It's wrong because you know that what you are doing is not honoring the other person's values and their ethical stance. Say for example your wife cheats on you and never tells you. She knows that she is being unfaithful and has violated the sanctity of marriage. Just because no one knows doesn't mean that it is not wrong or hurtful to the other person. The husband in the above example may not know that his wife cheated on him outright, but he may notice a change in behavior or how she acts towards him. In this way it is indirectly hurtful to the husband if he doesn't know and directly hurtful if he ever finds out. The root of the offense is that the person who commits an act knows that what they are doing could potentially hurt someone, directly or indirectly, and they choose to do it anyway.
Yes, it is wrong. It's like the question if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a noise? The fact that there are no witnesses or others who have the knowledge of the event does not, therefore, change the ethics of the situation. In the first example of the peeping Tom, that lady has "certain unalienable rights" as a human being. One is the right to privacy on her own property. Regardless of whether nobody knows of the peeping Tom's offense, it still violates the woman's right. It's not about harm being done, but about whether rights were violated.
Another view on this issue has to do more with the damage done to self than to another. Often, in our society we define "sin" or "offense" as something that only harms another person. This reasoning says that "if it does not hurt another, then it is not wrong." However, we don't take into account the harm of sinning against ourselves. Sin basically harms at least two of three individuals: it always is an offense to God, it always is an offense to ourselves and our own spiritual and emotional progression/integrity/character, and almost always it is an offense to another person. Even if we don't directly hurt someone else (taking drugs for instance...that only hurts us right?), we often hurt those around us who care about us, including parents, brothers, sisters, spouses, girl/boyfriends, friends, etc. We do not have the right to say "my life is my own," becuase our life indeed, belongs to God, our family, and ourselves. Committing even a small offense or sin can have dramatic effects in the big picture.
This is the same argument that Gaucon presents with the ring that grants invisible powers. We discussed whether there existed both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for acting justly towards others. One could act justly because he wants praise from his peers (strictly external motivation) or he acts justly for the sake of being just (strictly internal motivation). We can spin this same stream of logic and consider the implications of the unjust acts that produce internal and external benefits or consequences. People act unjustly benefit themselves and disregard the harm they inflict on others. Unjust act neglect the well-being and dignity of others for internal gratification and selfish fulfillment. I do not believe that you can commit an unjust act against another individual without degrading that person in one way or another. In the example with the vegetarian, the cook wanted see if he could cleverly trick the vegetarian, unknowingly, into abandoning his or her ethical code. Say the vegetarian was Hindu and believed that souls can be reincarnated in animals. The cook just tricked the vegetarian into eating someone who they believe could have been an ancestor. Justice is an idea that comes with civilizations. We need civilization because humans desire community. In order to live in community, we must respect the inherent rights of our neighbors. Otherwise, civilization spins into perpetual total war and fail. Tricking a vegetarian shows a deliberate disregard for that person’s fundamental beliefs.
In the world of physical senses, these actions indeed cause no harm to anyone involved. In fact, both instances probably offered pleasurable experiences to the eye of the boy and to the tongue of the vegetarian. Yet if anyone believes in an objective and unchanging morality that exists superiorly to any sensuous experiences, these actions are wrong no matter who physically sees them or is affected by them. The moral consequentialist may argue that these actions are completely permissable. But wouldn't the acceptance of assumed "inconsequential" immoral actions discount the entire notion of morality? I agree with laconeus that our idea that our own actions affect only us is incomplete--our actions and their affects in us can spread to every person with whom we interact, especially those closest to us. Yet the ultimate factor in this argument is whether or not morality is real and binding all the time. I would argue that it indeed is, or else it would not exist with any authority.
Defining "good" or not is not only based on your own, or even, others', opinions. Assuming absolute morals, some things are wrong regardless of whether or not you derive pleasure from them. If someone were to have sex, for example, with someone else who "never knew about", no pain experienced, etc, this does not make it alright merely because one person is unaware. An act is immoral because of the act itself, and not necessarily because of how people are affected.
I agree with a lot that's already said, so I won't reiterate it.
But how about thinking about it from this perspective: YES! the action was was an offense, but the person at the receiving end of the action is not a victim (since they'll never know the difference).
Either way, the actions were wrong.
Really this comes back to moral realism...according to one of the greatest philosophers of the period. BJ the Tornado, no philosophers really believe in any type of relativism, but that there are absolutes in truth and morality. According to the absolute morality, then anything against morality is wrong, and one who commits an act against morality-regardless of another party's knowledge- is always wrong.
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