If One Thinks About Raping Someone in the Woods and No One Knows, is it Wrong? An Argument for the Moral Relevance of Thoughts*

Sammanfattning

There are arguments around the nature and boundaries of the moral domain, with this current paper aiming to delineate one of these arguments. With a basis in George Sher's (2021) discussion of cognitions (beliefs, fantasies, attitudes and some thoughts), the paper defends the notion that they are, in fact, morally relevant. By combining the logic of truth-aptness with the phenomenology of agency, the paper demonstrates that private mental states can be regarded as genuine acts. These acts are shown to be morally relevant due to them being (i) directed, (ii) allowing for psychological agency, and (iii) endorsing a moral object. From this, cognitions can constitute and produce genuine, unfelt harms towards the subject and frustrate desires. It would indicate that the privacy of the mind provides no exemption from moral accountability; to think is to act, and to act is to be subject to the moral domain.