The Voice of Conscience as Internal Speech

In some cases, the voice of conscience may take the form of internal speech, and we may engage in dialogue with ourselves about our past and present actions. We may talk to ourselves about what we should or shouldn't do, and we may ask ourselves what we should or shouldn't have done.

      Internal speech as the voice of conscience may precede external speech, which may take the form of publicly acknowledged responsibility for our past actions. The voice of conscience may in some cases bring to conscious awareness thoughts and feelings that wouldn't otherwise have been recognized and articulated. It may praise or condemn our past or present actions, and it may serve as a guide to possible future courses of action. 

      The voice of conscience may tell us how to atone and make amends for our past errors and moral failures. On the other hand, it may be silent if there is nothing to praise or condemn in our moral conduct. It may also be silent if we are lacking in conscience, and if we are motivated by purely selfish or narcissistic desires and concerns.

      Conscience as a moral faculty may also reserve judgment about actions that are morally neutral or inconsequential.

      For each of us, the voice of conscience may have distinctive characteristics. It may reveal a varying degree of urgency, intensity, persistence, resonance, and persuasiveness. It may be only one of many inner moral voices to which we may listen: other voices may include the voices of reason, wisdom, compassion, and understanding.

      The voice of conscience may always be present within us (or at least may always be accessible to us) if we retain the capacity for self-criticism and humility. However, it may have varying degrees of immediacy or remoteness with regard to our conscious awareness of it. 

      To the extent that it may reflect the attitudes, opinions, and judgments of other individuals, we may engage in dialogue with a variety of voices when we listen to it, and we may reflect on our actions from a variety of viewpoints.

      The voice of conscience may also be the voice of inner experience, the voice of the internal world of thoughts and feelings, the voice of the inner psychological world.

      What then does the state of speechlessness connote? That we are unprepared to express our thoughts and feelings? That we are so surprised, amazed, or shocked by events that we find ourselves unable to put our own thoughts and feelings into words? If we can have experiences that truly render us speechless, then thinking and feeling may not necessarily require speech as a medium of representation. There may be “speechless thought,” or thinking that occurs without internal speech. Indeed, internal speech as the voice of conscience may require the capacity to articulate thoughts and feelings.¹ If we cannot articulate our own thoughts and feelings, then we may also not be able to coherently formulate our moral judgments, and we may not be able to speak intelligibly to, or engage in substantive moral dialogue with, ourselves. 

      However, we may in some cases hold ourselves morally responsible for our inability to articulate our own thoughts and feelings, and if we regard such an inability as a moral failure, then the voice of conscience may bring this failure to our attention and censure or reprimand us.

      On the other hand, there are some things that we might very well say aloud but merely say silently to ourselves in order to avoid social disharmony or conflict.

      Internal speech produced by the voice of conscience may be monologic or dialogic.² Insofar as it simply dictates principles of moral duty, it may be monologic, but insofar as it allows moral questioning or invites moral reflection, it may be dialogic.

      The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1934) describes inner speech as speech for oneself. Inner speech is directed inwardly rather than outwardly, in contrast to social speech, which is addressed to others, and which serves the purpose of communicating with others.³

      The Canadian psychologists Alain Morin and James Everett (1990) describe inner speech as a mediator of self-awareness and self-knowledge. They suggest that the extent to which we use inner speech may partially account for the extent to which we have self-awareness and self-knowledge.⁴

      The Spanish philosophers Agustín Vicente and Fernando Martinez Manrique (2011) explain that the concept of inner speech shouldn't be confused with the concept that there is a language of thought (or the concept that thought requires a representational system corresponding to a language).⁵ Thinking may occur with or without inner speech.

      The habit that we may often develop of silently talking to ourselves while we are performing daily tasks may in some cases be a consequence of our experience of internal speech as readers and writers of verbal and non-verbal texts. Just as we may listen internally to the sounds of the words we are reading, so we may listen internally to the sounds of the words we are writing. Internal speech may occur when we imagine ourselves reading a text aloud or when we imagine ourselves hearing the voice of an author reading a text to us.  The imagined voice of the author may in fact be quite different from the author’s actual voice. It may be tempered or conditioned by our own subjective attitudes and personal experiences.

      The voice of conscience may be singular, insofar as each person may have their own individual voice that is in some way distinguishable from other voices.⁶ At the same time, it may be plural, insofar as individual voices may unite to express a shared or collective conscience.

FOOTNOTES

¹Caryl Emerson, “The Outer Word and Inner Speech: Bakhtin, Vygotsky, and the Internalization of Language” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Dec 1983, 245-264), p. 255.

²Simon McCarthy-Jones and Charles Fernyhough, “The varieties of inner speech: Links between quality of inner speech and psychopathological variables in a sample of young adults,” in Consciousness and Cognition, 20 (2011), p. 1586.

³Lev Vygotsky, Thought and Language, edited by Alex Kozulin (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986), p. 32.

⁴Alain Morin and James Everett, “Inner Speech as a Mediator of Self-Awareness, Self-Consciousness, and Self-Knowledge: An Hypothesis,” in New ideas in Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 3, (1990) pp. 337-356

⁵Agustín Vicente and Fernando Martinez Manrique, “Inner Speech: Nature and Functions,” in Philosophy Compass 6/3 (2011), p. 209.

⁶Dmitri Nikulin, On Dialogue (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), p. 41.

Looking Beyond Morality

Are there some actions that transcend morality? Are there some actions about which it is useless to say they should have been performed in this way or that way, or that they should have come about in this way or that way?

      Are there some things that we have to accept, and that have nothing to do with morality? Is there a realm of facts to which morality does not apply? Are there some things that have no moral meaning, unless we project it onto them?

      Why must we feel compelled to project some moral meaning onto everything and to insist that there is a moral purpose to everything? Perhaps some things have a purpose that transcends morality.

      Surely, there can be non-moral objects and properties, just as there can be moral objects and properties. Surely, actions can be motivated by non-moral purposes and intentions, just as they can be motivated by moral purposes and intentions.

      Must every action have a moral meaning? Why can’t there be morally neutral actions? If actions may in some cases be morally neutral, then their moral neutrality may depend on the context in which they occur. Actions that are morally neutral in one context may be morally right or wrong in another context.

      Does every object or property require a moral explanation or interpretation? Why can’t there be supra-moral objects or properties that are neither moral nor non-moral and that transcend moral explanation and interpretation?

      Why should moral properties necessarily have to be associated with, or supervene on, non-moral properties? Perhaps we should examine the arguments for and against a soft or moderate projectivism, according to which some properties are actually moral, while others are merely projected as moral. This kind of projectivism would also amount to a soft or moderate realism, according to which some moral properties exist independently of our perceptions of them, while others do not.  

      Subjective morality may try to make moral properties of non-moral properties (and moral objects of non-moral objects), while objective morality may try to avoid making moral properties of non-moral properties (and moral objects of non-moral objects).

      Moral objects may be objects of a moral world, while non-moral objects may be objects of a non-moral world. Could it be possible that there are parallel or coexisting worlds, a non-moral world and a moral world, which are independent of each other?

      A compound object (an object that includes more than one object) may include moral and non-moral parts. The non-moral parts of a compound object may not contribute to its overall moral value or may enhance its moral value by enhancing the value of its moral parts.

      What does it mean to say that a situation is beyond right and wrong? Perhaps it is, in some cases, to say that punishing an individual for having acted wrongly is not always the best way to persuade that individual to accept responsibility for his actions. Perhaps it is also, in some cases, to say that enacting retributive penalties against an individual for his having wronged others is not always the best way to help the victims of his wrongdoing to recover from the wrongs that he has done to them.

       What should we do when we find conventional moral norms to be insufficient to guide our actions? What should we do when we find a particular code of ethics or system of morality to be mistaken, misplaced, or unfounded? What exactly should a reevaluation of ethical or moral values in such cases entail? Is there perhaps a post-moral mode of thinking and acting or a way of looking beyond morality that we should adopt?

      

Prioritizing Moral Duties

Moral duties or obligations are requirements to perform actions in order to comply with given principles of morality. They are imperatives that must be satisfied in order for given moral standards to be fulfilled. Moral prescriptions, on the other hand, are directives to perform actions that are advised or recommended but not necessarily required or obligatory. Compliance with moral duties presupposes compliance with moral prescriptions; if actions are obligatory, then they must at least be advised or recommended. However, duties are more binding and stringent than prescriptions insofar as they require, rather than merely recommend, actions to be performed. The more binding nature of duties as compared with prescriptions also accounts for the fact that the moral consequences of failure to perform actions that are obligatory may be worse than those of failure to perform actions that are merely advised or recommended.

      If compliance with moral duties is by nature obligatory, then how do we choose among them when they conflict or compete with one another? For example, is it more important not to harm an individual’s well-being than it is to promote their well-being? Is the duty to respect the moral autonomy of an individual more important than the duty not to let them harm themself? Should the degree of harm that an individual may do to themself be the decisive factor in determining whether or not to interfere with their autonomy and prevent them from harming themself?

      Should the nature of our relation to the person to whom we owe a duty be the most decisive factor in determining the priority of that duty? For example, should the duty owed to a family member be considered to be of a higher priority than that owed to a non-family member? This is in fact what the ancient Chinese philosopher Mengzi (Mencius, 371-289 B.C.E.) says, that the duty to love one’s own parents is the most basic moral duty, and that this duty is more important than the duty to love other persons.¹

      Should the duty to promote the good of other persons be assigned a higher priority than the duty to promote one’s own good (if there is such a duty)? Should the duty owed to a friend be considered more important than the duty owed to a stranger? 

      One way of prioritizing moral duties is to divide them into primary and secondary duties. Another way, according to W.D. Ross (1930), is to divide them into prima facie duties (apparent duties, or duties at first appearance) and duties proper (duties in the final analysis, or actual duties). Examples of prima facie duties, says Ross, are the duty of fidelity (the duty to keep promises), the duty of gratitude for the kindness of others, the duty of reparation for wrongful acts, the duty to promote justice, the duty of beneficence (the duty to promote the greatest possible amount of good), and the duty of non-maleficence (the duty not to harm others). Ross admits that it may be difficult to establish any general rules for the proper prioritization of all these duties, but he does say that non-maleficence is a more stringent duty than beneficence.²

      Another way of prioritizing moral duties is to divide them into relative and absolute duties. Thus, Immanuel Kant (1785) divides moral imperatives into conditional (hypothetical) and unconditional (categorical) imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives are necessary for the attainment of ends beyond themselves, but the categorical imperative is necessary in itself, apart from its relation to any further end.³ According to Kant, the categorical imperative is the only moral imperative that is applicable to all situations, and it contains the principle of all duty.⁴

       Kant also divides moral duties into duties to oneself and duties to others, and into perfect duties and imperfect duties.⁵ Perfect duties must always be complied with, but imperfect duties allow some exceptions to compliance (if perfect duties must be complied with). However, these different kinds of duty are never actually in conflict, since the categorical imperative is the supreme principle of all duty.

      Another way of prioritizing moral duties is described by John Rawls (1971), who says that the duty not to infringe on the basic rights of individuals should be assigned a higher priority than the duty to promote the greatest possible amount of good for the greatest number of individuals. While utilitarianism may try to justify infringements on the basic rights of some individuals if these infringements produce a greater total amount of good for a greater number of individuals, Rawls rejects this position, saying that acts of injustice toward particular groups of individuals are never justified, unless those acts are necessary to prevent even greater injustice.

       According to Rawls, the duty to comply with “the principle of greatest equal liberty” (the principle that each individual should have an equal right to as much liberty as is compatible with the rights of other individuals) should be assigned a higher priority than the duty to comply with “the difference principle” (the principle that any social or economic inequalities that occur between individuals should be designed to benefit every individual), and should also be assigned a higher priority than the duty to comply with “the principle of fair equality of opportunity” (the principle that any social or economic inequalities that occur between individuals should belong to positions that are equally available to all individuals). Thus, the failure to comply with the principle of greatest equal liberty cannot be justified on the grounds that the difference principle and the principle of fair equality of opportunity have been complied with. Similarly, the duty to comply with the principle of fair equality of opportunity has a higher priority than the duty to comply with the difference principle. Thus, the failure to comply with the principle of fair equality of opportunity cannot be justified on the grounds that the difference principle has been complied with. The first principle of justice (the principle of greatest equal liberty) must be complied with before the second principle of justice (the difference principle, and the principle of fair equality of opportunity) are complied with, and the first part of the second principle of justice (the principle of fair equality of opportunity) must be complied with before the second part (the difference principle) is complied with, if justice is to be attained.

     From a utilitarian standpoint, the prioritization of moral duties is governed by the principle of utility: the duty to perform an action A has a higher priority than the duty to perform some  other action B if A has a greater utility (will produce a greater amount of good) than B.

      From the standpoint of moral relativism, the priority of a moral duty is always relative to the particular moral agent for whom compliance with that duty is obligatory, and it is also relative to the particular situation in which that moral agent is a participant. From the standpoint of moral absolutism or intuitionism, however, there are absolute moral duties (such as the command, “Thou shalt not kill”) that are not relative to the particular moral agent or situation.

      Is it more important not to do harm than to do good? If so, then perhaps negative moral duties (such as “Thou shalt not kill”) are more important than positive moral duties (such as “Honor thy father and thy mother”).⁶ 

      The admonition, primum non nocere (“first, do no harm”), is a principle of biomedical ethics that indicates the priority, for healthcare professionals, of the negative duty of not doing harm, as compared with the positive duty of doing good.

      A (personal, social, professional, moral, or religious) code of duty may in some cases be formulated in order to prioritize a set of duties, but in other cases it may simply list a set of duties and identify those individuals who must comply with those duties. Thus, the attempt to prioritize duties may be necessary even for someone who adheres to such a code.     

      The fact that positive duties (such as the duty of beneficence) may not necessarily have priority over negative duties (such as the duty of non-maleficence) means that moral judgment is always necessary in order to properly evaluate the relative importance of competing or conflicting moral duties.       

      The proper prioritization of moral duties requires that we be able to recognize and acknowledge our moral duties and that we be able to properly define and evaluate the relations between them. Thus, compliance with some moral duties may require that we not only recognize and acknowledge those duties, but also properly define the relations between those duties and other duties, and evaluate the relative importance of those duties as compared to other duties.

      A question that is raised by the attempt to prioritize moral duties is whether each duty that is prioritized will be complied with to the same degree or whether some duties will be complied with to a greater degree than others. It would be expected that the higher the priority assigned to a duty, the greater would be the importance of strict compliance with that duty, and thus the greater the incentive to strictly comply with that duty. It would similarly be expected that the lower the priority assigned to a duty, the less incentive there would be to strictly comply with that duty, and thus compliance with that duty would be expected to be less strict.

      The prioritization of moral duties may not be a problem for the moral intuitionist who holds that judgments about the relative importance of competing or conflicting duties can be made intuitively. However, it may be argued that if duties are seen as moral rules or principles of conduct, then there must also be rules or principles for the application of those rules or principles. Logical consistency may require that if we are going to assign importance to a given set of moral principles, then we must try to find the best way to apply them to the kinds of moral situations with which we will be confronted.

      The prioritization of duties may also not be a problem for the moral egoist who holds that the highest priority should always be given to those duties that promote their own personal advantage or gain, regardless of the needs and concerns of other individuals. For the moral egoist, the duties they owe to themself (if there are such duties) will always be of a higher priority than the duties they owe to others.

      The prioritization of duties may be a means of determining the proper amount of blame to be placed on persons who fail to comply with their moral duty, insofar as the higher the priority of a duty, the greater the amount of blame that may be placed on persons who negligently, willfully, or mistakenly fail to comply with that duty.

      The amount of blame that may properly be placed on persons for noncompliance with moral duty may also be determined by whether they actually recognized their duty. Failure to recognize moral duty may be due to defects in moral intuition, reasoning, judgment, and understanding (all of which may contribute to a person’s sense of duty).

      Given that a person may only be able to fulfill a limited number of obligations or commitments within a given amount of time, it may be important for that person to be able to prioritize those obligations or commitments so that they can fulfill those of higher priority before fulfilling those of lower priority. In this way, the amount of blame that person may incur by failing to fulfill all their obligations may perhaps be kept to a minimum.

FOOTNOTES

¹Mencius, translated by D.C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1970), Book III, Part B, Ch. 9.

²W.D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930), p.22.

³Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, translated by H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 82.

⁴Ibid., p. 92.

⁵Ibid., p. 89.

⁶Ross, The Right and the Good, p. 22.

REFERENCES

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by H.J. Paton. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Mencius. Translated by D.C. Lau. London: Penguin Books, 1970.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Ross, W.D. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930.

A Possible Misunderstanding of Modality in Kant's Groundwork

A phrase in Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals) that I think might have been more aptly expressed is the following:

“Alle Imperativen werden durch ein Sollen ausgedrückt” — "All imperatives are expressed by an ‘Ought'" (Chapter 2, 14^th paragraph),

which I think might have been better expressed as “Alle Imperativen werden durch ein Müssen ausgedrückt” — "All imperatives are expressed by a ‘Must.’" That is to say, if an action is imperative, it not merely “ought to” or “should” be performed, it “must” be performed, if a moral duty to perform that action is to be complied with.

The Concept of Futility

It may be important for us to carefully examine the concept of futility, insofar as such an examination may enable us to more clearly define the conditions under which it is morally permissible, advisable, or necessary to concede defeat in a given endeavor or field of activity. If we have made personal or moral commitments to try to achieve success in a given field of activity, then it may be necessary for us to be able to recognize when we should admit failure and concede defeat. If we have failed in a given endeavor but have fulfilled all our personal and moral commitments to try to achieve success, then we may in good conscience be able to terminate our participation and be free to turn our efforts to a different (and perhaps more productive) field of activity.

      How do we know when it is morally permissible, advisable, or necessary to surrender, admit defeat, or “throw in the towel"? How do we know when it is morally right or wrong to struggle against overwhelming odds? Can it be heroic in some cases to refuse to admit defeat when there is no chance of victory? Can a kind of nobility and dignity in some cases be achieved by refusing to surrender to inevitable defeat, and by continuing to struggle against overwhelming odds? When does such perseverance become reckless, foolhardy, or irresponsible?

      With what degree of certainty must we know that an action is futile before we describe it as such? What is the minimum likelihood or threshold of utility of an action that must be met in order for us not to consider that action to be futile?

      When is it acceptable, advisable, or justifiable for us to concede defeat in a game of chess, poker game, bicycle race, wrestling match, boxing match, research project, legal proceeding, advertising campaign, or political election?

      Futility may be described as an inability to produce any successful result, effect, or outcome. Futile actions are incapable of producing any benefit or accomplishing any useful purpose. They are useless and of no value by any reasonable standard of utility. They have no chance (or an extremely low likelihood) of being useful, effective, beneficial, or successful.

      The principle of futility may be roughly converse to the principle of utility. While the principle of utility may hold that actions are morally right or justified insofar as they are useful and promote good results, the principle of futility may hold that actions are morally wrong or unjustified insofar as they are useless and incapable of promoting good results. Futile actions may be actions for which there is no logical basis, practical rationale, or moral justification from the standpoint of the principle of utility.

      It is not the case that it is just as well not to perform futile actions as to perform them, because the performance of futile actions may often entail an expenditure of (physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological, social, material, or economic) resources that could be used for more productive purposes. Futile actions lack the utilitarian and consequential value that belongs to useful and consequential actions, and from a utilitarian or consequentialist standpoint they are therefore not worthy of being performed at all. Furthermore, the performance of futile actions may in some cases not only be unhelpful, but also potentially harmful. Such actions may promote an inability to adapt to a given situation, rather than promote the capacity to rectify or remedy that inability.

      An interesting question to consider, with regard to the concept of marginal utility, is whether the consumption of a product or service may have a progressively increasing marginal disutility, corresponding to its progressively decreasing marginal utility. That is to say, if the utility of each unit of a product or service becomes progressively less as more and more of the product or service is consumed, then the disutility of each unit may also become progressively greater.

      Similarly, if an action is futile but is performed repeatedly, then it may become more and more futile the more often it is performed. Repeated performance of that same useless action may increasingly become an exercise in futility.

      If an action is futile, then why should it be performed at all? If there is anything to be gained by performing the action, then it is not in fact futile.

      The performance of actions that are known to be futile may be counterproductive insofar as it may enable us to delude ourselves that we are doing something that is helpful or useful. Refusal to perform futile actions may in some cases be a means of asserting our moral integrity, rationality, agency, and decision-making capacity. However, it may in other cases be merely a refusal to comply with unreasonable requests or demands made by others that futile actions be performed (our refusal being based on our compliance with reasonable standards of moral conduct and our recognition of those cases in which requests or demands for futile actions to be performed are logically, morally, and legally unjustified).

     The nature of futility is an important object of investigation for medical ethics. A situation in which the possibility of futility must unavoidably be confronted is that in which a patient who is in complete cardiopulmonary arrest has not responded to extended attempts at CPR. Medical responders must at some point decide whether further CPR has any chance of success or whether it will be futile.

      The nature of futility is also an important object of investigation for military ethics. Assessment of the probability of military success is an element of just war theory, which questions the justification for a nation to engage in war if such engagement will clearly be futile. Some ethical questions that may need to be considered in relation to the nature of futility in military combat include: Does a soldier have a duty to perform futile actions ordered by his/her commanding officer if those actions will clearly result in the unnecessary deaths of fellow soldiers and civilians? Is the nature of futility, in some cases, merely a matter of personal viewpoint or subjective opinion?

      Some kinds of futility that we may have to confront in everyday life include

• the futility of trying to engage in a rational discussion with someone who does not want to engage in a rational discussion
• the futility of trying to negotiate with someone who does not want to negotiate
• the futility of trying to convince people to agree with all of our opinions
• the futility of trying to recall every sentence of a magazine article that we’ve just read
• the futility of trying to repair, rather than replace, an electrical system that has repeatedly broken down
• the futility of trying to start the engine of a car when the car’s battery is dead.

      One response that we can make to being confronted with the futility of trying to control things that we have no power to control is to adopt a stoic attitude. The philosopher Epictetus (c. 55-135 C.E.) says that wisdom is defined by a capacity to distinguish between those situations that are within our power to change and those situations that are not within our power to change. In order to attain harmony with the world, we may have to reconcile ourselves to those situations that are not within our power to change, but we do not necessarily have to reconcile ourselves to those situations that are within our power to change. Wisdom is defined by an ability to adapt to situations that are not within our power to change, while folly is defined by an inability to adapt to situations that are not within our power to change.

      Other responses that we can make to being confronted with the futility of trying to control things that we have no power to control are to trust in providence or to adopt a fatalistic attitude. Still other responses that we can make are to turn to religious faith or metaphysical skepticism. We may decide to put our faith in teachings such as that of Ecclesiastes 3:1, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,” or we may decide to be skeptical about any teachings that say there is a metaphysical purpose to things.

      Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial is, in part, concerned with the futility of our trying to convince ourselves that uncertainty is not an inherent aspect of our existence. The protagonist of the novel, Joseph K., is arrested one morning at his apartment, for some unknown offense, without any formal charges having been brought against him. He is later released and returns to his job as a bank clerk, but he is unable to discover what crime he is accused of having committed. He is unable to obtain any direct answer from the court as to whether he has any legal rights. Despite his continued efforts to resolve his case, he learns that no one who has been accused of an offense has ever received a definite acquittal. The most he can hope for is an ostensible acquittal or an indefinite postponement of his case. Eventually, he is again arrested, and he discovers the futility of trying to avoid his cruel fate.

      An action may be described as futile if it cannot possibly produce any benefit and cannot possibly be effective or successful. We may therefore need to examine three criteria for the futility of an action: the action’s inability to be beneficial, its inability to be effective, and its inability to be successful. The inability of an action to be beneficial, effective, or successful may be a sufficient ground for describing that action as futile.

      The effectiveness of an action may be defined as the action’s ability to do whatever it is intended to do, and the successfulness of an action may be defined as the action’s accomplishment of whatever it was intended to accomplish. If there is no chance of an action’s being beneficial, effective, or successful, then the criteria for futility are fulfilled.
      It should be noted that the effectiveness of an action is here defined as its ability to produce its intended effect, and not just any effect at all. Actions capable of producing an effect other than their intended effect may therefore be futile if they cannot possibly produce any benefit or accomplish any purpose.
      It should also be noted that some actions intended to be beneficial turn out to be harmful or detrimental. Such actions are not futile if there is actually some benefit they could have produced, had they been successful.
      It should also be noted that some actions that are unsuccessful in producing any benefit or effect are merely of no consequence. But they are not futile if they could possibly have been beneficial, effective, or successful.
      The futility of an action is always dependent on the circumstances under which that action is performed. An action that is useful under a given set of circumstances may be futile under another set of circumstances. An action may also be absolutely or relatively futile under a given set of circumstances. In declaring that an action is futile, we should always be careful to verify that we have considered those circumstances under which that action could have been beneficial, effective, or successful.

REFERENCES

The Discourses of Epictetus. Edited by Christopher Gill. Translation revised by Robin Hard. London: J.M. Dent, 1995.

Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.