A Wild West of the Mind

Can unexpressed thoughts be morally wrong? Are people subject to moral condemnation not only for their malicious, biased, and cruel actions, but also for their private malice, biased beliefs, and ugly fantasies? Although many would answer "yes," George Sher argues in A Wild West of the Mind
that none of the main approaches to morality support this view and that to accept it would be to relinquish an essential aspect of our mental freedom. To preserve that freedom, we must allow our beliefs to follow the evidence wherever it leads and must give our private feelings, attitudes, and
fantasies free rein. As so understood, the realm of the purely mental is a morality-free zone, one within which no thoughts or attitudes are either forbidden or required. Even when our beliefs are irrational or repugnant and our desires reflect badly on our character, it is never morally wrong for
us to have them.

A Wild West of the Mind advances a provocative thesis of normative ethics and offers a powerful defense of freedom of mind. Broad in scope and tightly argued, the book will have much to offer philosophers working in ethics, free will, and epistemology.

"This book defends the thesis that no thoughts are morally forbidden-that as long as we don't act on them, even the nastiest attitudes, most biased beliefs, and vilest fantasies are not morally off limits. The book divides into two parts, the first a critical examination of the reasons for believing that thoughts are subject to moral regulation, the second a discussion of the mental freedom that we gain if they are not. The earlier chapters discuss attempts to defend the moral regulation of thought on consequentialist and deontological grounds and from the point of view of virtue theory. In each case, the verdict is not favorable to moralism. The book's second, more positive section defends a conception of freedom of mind in which freedom from moral regulation plays a central role. In the spirit of Orwell, it argues that because the course of thought is unpredictable, mental freedom requires the ability to follow one's thoughts wherever they lead. It argues, as well, that without this form of mental freedom, we would be far less interesting both to others and to ourselves. Even when some of what we think is ugly, there is beauty and value in our being able to think it"--