intent, actions, and outcomes: Philosophy Forums

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intent, actions, and outcomes
Which determines moral status?

Which determines the moral status of something?
the intention		0	0%
the action	rabeldin, HalcyonGlaze	2	29%
the outcome		0	0%
the intention and the action but not the outcome	alliop, keda	2	29%
the intention and the outcome but not the action	cjwalker89	1	14%
the action and the outcome but not the intention		0	0%
some are more important than others	unenlightened	1	14%
they all have equal weight		0	0%
other	Absolutely Relative	1	14%
7 votes

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intent, actions, and outcomes

Cuthbert
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Posted 05/07/08 - 05:57 AM:	#26
HalcyonGlaze wrote: Rather, it is to show that your example actions are bad. You chose those two, undoubtedly, because you thought they were the "same" actions with different "intentions" which have different moral outcomes. You neglected the idea that I could believe neither action has those set-in-stone outcomes you were trying to show. Sure, hypothetically, it COULD be true. But I don't see a reason why they both would be. I see reasons only for the former being true, and absolutely nothing for the latter. Although, I'd have to clarrify that those "circumstances" actually make the "Action" a different physical action. Hence no two actions are really the same. It's also true that no two actions are exactly the same. At the very least they happen in different times and at different places. But not all the ways in which actions differ are equally or at all relevant to the moral evaluation of them. You can hold that intention does not matter in evaluating acts or agents. But you would then have to hold that two actions that are the same in all aspects that matter for moral evaluation, but differ in intention, should be evaluated the same. I gave a counter-example to that. In the example I gave, we could agree that all the other morally relevant features of the two actions are the same and that only the intention of the agent differs. E.g. you mention consent. We could suppose that both the surgeon's patient and the sadist's victim are unconscious, and that neither can give consent. There may be other relevant features. They can also be held constant. E.g. the consequences could also be identical: let's assume that the surgeon saves the patient's life and the sadist accidentally saves his victim's life. And so on. Even so, it's clear that a surgeon setting out to save someone's life with a well-founded belief that he can do so is doing something more admirable than a sadist setting out to gratify his strange desires.

WW_III_ANGRY
All knowing prick

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Posted 05/07/08 - 07:07 AM:	#27
I don't think this is so easily generalized. Each situtation must be looked at independantly.

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