Pranav

MISJUDGEMENT AND GUILT

Guilt is an emotion that is someone’s response to his immorality in a given context, at least as per him and his internalised moral premises (implicit or explicit). Volition is the basis of morality, i.e. an action is moral or immoral if and only if it is tied to volitional decision-making. Thus, someone’s immorality is the volitional evasion of what he himself considers right and/or wrong.

Hence, guilt is an invalid (i.e. irrational) response if one has made an honest (i.e.unintentional) error in one or more of the following: (1) his moral premises, (2) his application of his moral premises (due to an insufficient or incorrect grasp of the facts). To truly understand why guilt is invalid in these contexts, we must understand the purpose of guilt. Purpose? Indeed, like any aspect of volitional consciousness, guilt is tied to purpose. Why? Because the purpose of morality is to guide one’s choices to align them toward values; hence, the purpose of guilt is to pressure our volitional consciousness against the violation of our internalised system of values. I have emphasised “volitional” here because the root of the violation is choice, i.e. volitional action.

In this light, it is clear to see the sheer irrationality and ineffectiveness of accepting guilt for honest errors. The purpose of guilt is to help align our volition toward values, but when an honest error is made, the volition is already aligned toward values; here, the remedy of the error is not guilt but learning. Here, it is important to understand what an honest error, and to do so, it is important to understand the limits of a fully volitional mind, i.e. a rational mind (since rationality is the fullest exercise of volition):

One cannot consider what is not in his knowledge
One cannot think and act beyond one’s capacity
One would not consider what, to him, is irrelevant
One must not consider the arbitrary
One cannot hold in focus what is outside his current context
One would not draw on his knowledge without realising its use
That is, without grasping its relevance in his current context
One’s focus is finite; not all his knowledge can fit in it
The concrete expressions of abstractions are not always obvious

One of the greatest harms one can do to his self-esteem and rationality is to accept unearned guilt, because by doing so, he is undercutting his own values by treating his volitional alignment to his values as flawed when it is not. It is akin to being diagnosed with a disease one does not have; the needless stress and treatment is often worse than useless.