Module 4: The Morality of Human Acts

Unit Overview

Humans are said to be evaluative in nature. Whenever a person does something we

find others analyzing his/her behavior and commenting that it was good, bad or at
times indifferent. Ethics is said to be a philosophical treatise which studies human
behavior and tries to determine whether the act performed was morally right or wrong.
It cannot content itself with simply registering facts; it attempts to reflect on the
meaningfulness or meaninglessness of such facts, establish or reject them on a rational
basis, understand their implications, draw relevant consequences and, above all, intuit
their ultimate cause. There is a continuous effort made for studying our own moral
beliefs and our moral conduct and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we
help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and morally based. This
contributes towards establishing sound moral foundation on which people build their
lives. Hence one can reasonably aver that Ethics represents a broad framework for
determining a core value system one uses for our day to day existential situation.

Unit Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students must have:

• defined the concept of human acts and acts of man

• understood the theories of determinism and indeterminism with the analysis of
human action
• analyzed the factors that generally influence the morality of human action
Lesson 1: Understanding of Human Act

Scholastic philosophy outlines a distinction between Actus Hominis and Actus

Humanus i.e. ‘Acts of Man/Human’ and ‘Human Acts’ respectively. Not every act that
a human being does is a typically human act. Human activities, like the circulation
of blood, heart beat, over which normal people in general have no control are not
classified as human acts. Such acts which are beyond the control of humans and
those which they share in common with animals are called as ‘Acts of humans’. Acts
of humans, then, are involuntary and therefore, not morally responsible for them.

On the other hand a ‘Human Act’ is one which proceeds from knowledge and from
consent of free will. Or in other words it is an act which emanates from the will with
a knowledge of the end or goal to which the act leads. The Human act is to be
distinguished from acts of humans which are performed without intervention of
intellect and free will. An act is termed as distinctively a human act which is voluntary
in character, that is, the human person under consideration could have done it
differently if s/he had so willed or chosen. It is an act which is in some way under
the control or direction of the will, which is proper to humans. Such an act is
performed by a person deliberately and intentionally in order to realize some foreseen
end/s. Thus one can rightly assert that a voluntary act proceeds from the will with
the apprehension of the end sought, or, in other words, is put forth by the will
solicited by the goodness of the object as presented to it by the intellect. Such acts,
moreover, proceed from the will's own determination, without necessitation, intrinsic
or extrinsic.

The Constituent Elements of Human Act

Constituent elements of the human act refer to the inner causes or the constituting
elements which generate a human person to undertake a certain act. The
 understanding of the human act indicates that there are two essential elements which
constitute a human act: The Intellectual Element and The Volitive Element.

1. The Intellectual Element

Knowledge is one of the important qualities which distinguish humans from other
sentient beings. Absolute truth in all situations and matters might be beyond human
capabilities. But we humans can attain truth and that not all truths are relative are
undeniable facts, as Epistemology will have established. The denial of such assertions
only results in re-asserting them, by the very act itself. Universal scepticism and
absolute relativism are found to be self-contradictory and as such are philosophically
untenable doctrines.

The faculty of willing can make a choice for something and seek it only when it is first
known. This act of knowing is undertaken by the faculty of the intellect. The human act
is voluntary when its different elements and its implications are sufficiently known by
the agent or the doer prior to the operation of the will. This process of knowing entails
certain important conditions:

(i) adequate knowledge of the aspired object,

(ii) attention to the action by which the particular object is to be
pursued and
(iii) judgment on the value of the act.

The fulfillment of the above elements is found to be essential, for, human person cannot
consciously and freely will something without having proper knowledge about what the
object one is concerned with and therefore conscious of the act one is to perform in
order to achieve the desired aim. It is also required that one evaluates the action
undertaken in its concrete nature as a desirable good or an undesirable evil. Such an
appraisal includes judgment on the moral or ethical value of the act.

Furthermore, the goodness or the badness of a particular human act is judged only under
those of its aspects which are sufficiently known. For instance a person who robs and
kills a person not knowing him to be his brother, he is guilty of criminal injury but not
culpable of offence of fratricide.

However, from the above discussion one should not presuppose that we have full
knowledge of the act and its implications every time we undertake a human act. There is
still room left for mistakes. What we affirm here is that with right effort the person can
have sufficient knowledge of the object and its other considerations which are essential
for the making of a human act.

2. The Volitive Element

Another important characteristic which sets apart the human person from animals is
that of voluntariness or what we commonly designate as free will. It is the task of
the intellect to conceptualize the good, to propose it to the will as something
desirable, and to judge the suitability of the means in its attainment. This awareness
which is based on certain amount of reflection is very important in the analysis of the
human act. It can occur in varying degrees depending on which, they can affect the
morality of the act. However, just this awareness is insufficient for the production of
the human act. It is required that the presented good is willed freely by the person.
The volitive dimension points that the will can freely make a choice of the concrete
object in which the good is sought. Thus when we hold a person morally responsible
for his/her action, we assume that the act was done freely, knowing and willingly.
The idea of responsibility would seem then to connote and presuppose that of free
will.
 If a human person for some valid reason is not free to choose what he/she would like
according to his/her insight and will, but has to act against one’s will, his/her action is
not free and consequently such an act cannot be designated as a human act. For instance
a mentally disturbed person feels compelled to do something again and again but he/she
is conscious of the object one is concerned with and also the end of the action with which
the object is pursued, yet such an act will not be voluntary because its execution is done
with psychic compulsion and not with free will.

So an act to be a free act and consequently a human act, it is to be done without any
internal or external compulsion. The degree of compulsion determines to a large extent the
voluntariness of the action and consequently the culpability of the person. For instance a
high degree of compulsion may almost render the act involuntary and subsequently reduce
the degree of culpability One must note that anything that is an object of the will, we
call the thing willed.

But not everything that is willed is necessarily an effect of the will; for e.g. the setting
of a house on fire which is not caused, but desired by someone, is something willed
but is not the effect of the will. Thus when what is willed is both the object and the
effect of the will, we call it voluntary. One can conclude the discussion on the two
constitutive elements of the human act: intellectual and volitive, by affirming the
essential union of the knowledge and will in the generation of the human act.

Process involved in a Voluntary Act

Very often a voluntary act, performed by an agent knowingly and freely in order to
realize some foreseen end, is not a spontaneous reaction. It involves a dynamic process.
Voluntary action has its advent in the mind. It begins with a feeling of want or a craving
or a desire which is either real or ideal. Such an impulse, though to a certain extent
painful, is mixed with pleasure which arises from the anticipation of satisfaction of this
craving by the attainment of the desired object.

The person also has awareness of the means that are required to attain the proper
object. In a simple action, where there is no conflict of motives, the choice is easily
made and the desired action is performed. However, in our daily course of living many
of our actions are of a complex nature which often involves a conflict of motives thereby
causing difficulty in the matter of choice that eventually delays decision and the
performance of the act. Hence, when the self is confronted with divergent and
competing motives the mind experiences a challenge generated by conflict of motives.

In order to tackle this, the mind deliberates on the merits and demerits of the different
courses of action that are available. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages
the mind chooses a particular motive and a particular action to achieve the end. This
act of selection of one motive to the exclusion of others results in decision. The decided
motive is subjectively evaluated as the strongest motive among the others. The
decision phase is often converted immediately into action and the decision is actualized.
However at times the decision might be postponed for a future fulfillment in which case
there is scope for resolution. Resolution refers to the capacity of remaining committed
to the decided motive. The state of decision or resolution gives way to the actual
performance of a bodily action which is technically designated as a human act. The
undertaking of the external bodily action produces changes in the external world,
certain of these are foreseen consequences whereas many others are unforeseen
consequences.
Activity 15

Instruction: Interpret: View an episode of a popular soap story or film depicting

concrete situations and answer the questions below in your own words.

1. What is good about the person (the moral agent in the story) and his / her
actions?
2. What might motivate the person to act in this way (e.g. concern for those
in need etc.)?
3. Why was the person willing to make personal sacrifices (i.e. comfort, safety)
to help others?
4. Why did the person act morally?
Lesson 2: Impediments for Human Acts

In the process of performing a human act the individual might encounter certain obstacles
which though may not nullify the human act and make it involuntary but they may reduce
the imputability or culpability of the individual, thereby making him less responsible for the
particular act. In this section, we shall elaborate some of the main impediments which
might affect either the intellectual or the volitive constituent (or both together) of the
human action.

6.3.1 Ignorance

This to a great extent affects the intellectual dimension of the human act. It is elucidated
as lack of adequate knowledge in an individual with regard to the nature or moral quality
of an act one is performing or proposes to perform. Ignorance is mainly of two categories:
Invincible ignorance and Vincible ignorance. The former is explained as that ignorance
which cannot be dispelled by reasonable diligence a prudent individual would be expected
to exercise in a given situation. Such ignorance almost renders the act performed as
involuntary and consequently the individual may not be imputable for the act for what is
unknown cannot be the object of volition. On the other hand, Vincible ignorance is that
which could be eliminated by the application of reasonable diligence. Here the agent has
not put in enough effort to gain the required knowledge and as such the concerned person
is culpable or imputable for the act performed under such type of ignorance. However the
degree of imputability depends on the extent of the individual’s cupable negligence.

6.3.2 Passion

It is often connoted as a powerful or compelling emotion or feeling for instance an

experience of strong hate or sexual desire. Passion is said to be a strong tendency towards
the possession of something good or towards the avoidance of something evil. The more
the intensity of the emotions, the less the capability for making balanced and objective
deliberation. Thus passion is considered as an obstacle to human act. One can enumerate
two main kinds of passions: Antecedent and Consequent. The former refers to passion
elicited without the consent of the will. Here the person might not be fully responsible for
the passion and as such the culpability is much less if not fully absent. Consequent passion
is passion which is within the control of the will, therefore the agent is responsible for the
arousal of the passion and as such imputable for the act.

6.3.3 Habit

Habit is an acquired tendency for doing something as a result of repeated practice. It may
be voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether it was imbibed with consent of a person
or without. Habits usually do not render an act non-human, because though they exert
certain coercion they can be overcome by a committed effort. As such imputability of acts
from habit increases or decreases depending upon the effort exerted.

6.3.4 Fear

It is defined as the shrinking back of the mind on account of an impending evil considered
to be difficult to avoid or even impossible at times. Fear may be grave or mild according to
whether it is caused by a grave evil whose avoidance is rather difficult if not impossible, or
only by a mild evil which can be easily avoided. Fear is characterized as highly grave when
it exercises great deterrence on an average person for e.g. fear of killing. Fear is relatively
grave when the threatened evil is generally considered as objectively slight but it scares a
particular person subjectively depending on the person’s emotional disposition. Fear
hampers the use of reason and as such destroys voluntariness. Fear in general does not
fully destroy the voluntariness of action but merely reduces its gradation and as such
usually lessens its culpability. Only in extreme cases when the highly grave fear totally
impairs the two constitutive elements the act done out of fear may be regarded as
involuntary.
Activity 16

Instruction: Justify or prove: construct an argument for or against and support with
evidence while you identify what impediments of human acts might affect your decision-
making.

1. Your best friend is about to get married. The ceremony will be performed in one hour,
but you have seen, just before coming to the wedding, that your friend’s fiancee has
been having an affair. If your friend marries this woman, she is unlikely to be faithful, but
on the other hand, if you tell your friend about the affair, you will ruin his wedding.

Question: Would you, or would you not, tell your friend of the affair?

2. There is a train that, much to your horror, is about to run over your grown up son, who
has been tied to its track. It just so happens that you have just enough time to flip a
switch that will send the train down a different track, saving your son. However, tied to
the other track, is your granddaughter, the daughter of the very son in danger of being
run over. Your son is begging and pleading with you not to flip the switch, not to kill his
daughter.

Question: What would you do?

Lesson 3: Factors Determining the
Morality of Human Acts

Analyzing the morality of the human act is said to be a complex enterprise since it is
affected by so many conditions which are within and without. Most of the moralists
agree that to judge the goodness or badness of any particular human act, three
elements must be weighed from which every act derives its morality. They are: the
Object of the act, the Circumstances surrounding the act, and the End or Intention
that the one performing the act has in mind.

1. The Object of the Human Act

It is that which the action of its very nature tends to produce. Or in other words it refers
to the effect which an action primarily and directly causes. It is necessarily the result
of the act without taking into account the circumstances or the end. For example the
object of setting fire to hut of a slum-dweller is to burn whereas the end might be
revenge. The object is usually regarded as the primary factor for moral judgement of a
human act. From the viewpoint of object an act is generally classified as morally good,
bad or indifferent. For a morally good act, the object of it must be good.

2. The Circumstances contextualizing the Human Act

These include all the particulars of the concrete human action which are capable of
affecting its morality. They are such things as the person involved, the time, the place,
the occasion, which are distinct from the object, but can change or at times even
completely alter its moral tone. Circumstances can make an otherwise good action
better for e.g. giving food to a person who is almost dying of starvation. They can make
good an act which is otherwise indifferent, for e.g. sitting with a person who is feeling
lonely. But they can also make worse an act which is evil in its object for e.g. robbing
a beggar from his/her only meal of the day. Since all human actions occur in a particular
context i.e. at a certain time and at a certain place, the circumstances must always be
considered in evaluating the moral quality of any human act.

3. The End or the Intention of the Agent in performing a Human Act

The end or intention of a human act is the purpose that prompts one to perform such
an act. Every human act, no matter how trivial, is done with some intention. It is
the reason for which the agent performs a particular act. It is the effect that the agent
subjectively wills in his/her action. At times it can so happen that the intention of the
agent coincides with the object of the human act, for e.g. offering a glass of water to
a thirsty person to quench thirst. However at other times both of them might be
different. For e.g. a captured spy may commit suicide in order to safeguard the secrets
of the country. A human act to be morally good the agent or doer must have a good
intention—he must want to accomplish something that is good in one way or another.

The end too can affect the morality of the human act just as circumstances do. A good
intention can make better an act which is good in its object, for e.g. helping a poor
person to start a small business with the intention of making him independent. Also the
end can worsen a act which is already evil in its object, for e.g. killing the father, who
is the only breadwinner in the family, so that his children might be on the street. To a
great extent many of the actions that we do which otherwise might be indifferent
morally in themselves, but they receive their moral quality from the intention behind
them.

According to the moralists a human act is said to be morally good when it is good in its
object, circumstances and also in the intention, for it is believed that an action is good
when each of these three factors is conformed to order (Bonum ex integra causa). If
even one of these determinants is contrary to order, the action will be bad, at least in
part (Malum ex quocumque defectu).
 Activity 17

Instruction: Describe: provide a detailed account while you determine the different Factors Determining the
Morality of Human Acts based on the situation below.

Situation: Lea is a sophomore in high school and a member of a local theater group in a nearby
city. She likes school, but her passion for singing and acting is huge.

Lately there has been talk going around that some members have been exempt from auditions for
the last few productions. Leah knew in the “real world” that can happen sometimes. Some
productions have such huge numbers of applicants and so little time that the more experienced, well
known actors and singers sometimes get bumped up into the cast without having to try out. But,
this wasn’t Broadway, this was a local teen theater group and the whole idea was to give everyone a
chance to prove him or herself. She and her friends talked about the rumor and how, if it was
true, how unfair it was.

It’s one thing to know someone probably deserves to be cast in the production, but another to just
put that person in without letting others compete for the same role. They felt close enough to their
choir director to talk to him about it. He said he couldn’t imagine that applicants were being exempt.
Lea’s friends talked about going to the director, but didn’t want to jeopardize their relationship with
him. He was intimidating and, after all, what if he took offense or got mad? Their future chances for
good roles could be compromised.

The first week of tryouts for the next musical production Lea was called into the director’s office. He
told her she was in for one of the main singing parts. She was ecstatic at first. It was the role she
had wanted more than any other. It was a starring spot and would set her up for amazing roles in
the future. Then, she realized the director meant she didn’t have to audition. He explained that
they simply didn’t have enough time to see every performer’s audition. They knew her work and
knew she was right for the role.

Lea was conflicted. What would she say to her friends? How would she explain this to them?
What’s more, the choir director agreed with her and her friends that everyone should audition. What
would she tell him ? She decided she would raise the question to the head director before she left
his office. She asked, “ What do I tell my choir director or the rest of the cast?” He replied, “ They
don’t need to know. This is often done with the strongest performers. Just skip the audition and
we’ll take care of the rest.”

Questions:
a. What should Lea do? What would you do?
b. What position did the director put Lea in? Do you think it was fair of him?
c. Do you think she should tell her choir director about all this? What about her friends?
d. What do you think are the possible outcomes if Lea were to tell her choir director? What if
she were to tell her friends?
e. Would you talk to your parents about this if you were in Lea’s place? What do you think they
would do? Would you agree?