Are Consequences Worse Than Intentions?
When I posted about my friend the evangelist, there were some excellent comments from Andrew, and the chaplain about whether intentions or consequences are more important in deciding what is moral.
Now, I think that from a purely practical point of view, you can’t separate the two. And I really don’t know what’s worse.
I’m currently thinking that having good intentions does mitigate you from the blame for bad consequences, and that there being no bad consequences, doesn’t mean that it’s ok that your intentions were bad. So that should mean that intentions determine morality most.
On the other hand, it’s actually the consequences that are important to everyone else, and really, it’s the impact on everyone else that I think we should concern ourselves with. So that would mean that it’s more important to limit the consequences of people’s actions than the intentions behind them.
This ethics and morality stuff gets confusing. On balance, I’d like to suggest aiming for good intentions - which is reasonably easy to control - and not bad consequences. Naturally if you do something with good intentions, then you are planning for there to be only good consequences, but minimising the (almost inevitable) bad consequences is probably more helpful than trying to force the good consequences.
I think it’s like “do as little harm as you can”. What does anyone else think?
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3 Responses to “Are Consequences Worse Than Intentions?”
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It was good intentions that caused the gulags of Russia, the concentration camps in Warsaw and the killing fields of Cambodia. Everyone has “good intentions” — the only question is whether the intentions truly are good, which, of course, focuses on the ends.
It’s been said that the ends do not justify the means. The other camp is that the “whatever necessary” is fine, as long as the end result is desirable. I disagree with both — the ends and the means must justify themselves together.
So, in a sense, I agree with you. I think they are inseparable. However, the ends /can/ illegitimize the original intentions.
I tend toward the idea that consequences are more important than intentions. That doesn’t mean that intentions should be dismissed completely, but what matters the most, in the long run, are the actual effects of actions undertaken.
I like what Stephen said in the previous comment: the ends and the means must justify themselves together. Ends and means have odd ways of effecting and transforming each other over time. It’s important to pay attention to these transactions and make appropriate adjustments in both behavior and goals.
What does our moral intuition say? Let us take a quick example of killing somebody in a car accident. I think most of us can agree that the following scale of culpability is fairly accurate:
1) A deliberate suicide. Somebody throws himself in front of your car deliberately to kill themselves. You cannot stop in time and the person dies. Most of us would agree that you have no culpability for this.
2) A simple accident. You get distracted and kill somebody. You have some culpability for this, but most of us would regard it as a simple tragedy.
3) Drunk driving. You get loaded, get into your car, and kill somebody. Most of us would agree that you have a great deal of culpability here.
4) Deliberate homicide. You get into your car fully sober and deliberately run down and kill somebody. Your culpability here is clearly apparent, practically 100%.
However, we also clearly take consequences into account. If you get loaded and get into your car, drive around, and don’t kill anybody, are you just as culpable for murder as you are if you do kill somebody? Culpable for what murder? This isn’t to say that you’re innocent; obviously there was a risk that you would kill somebody, but I think most people won’t judge you as harshly if nothing bad came of it than if something bad did.
I do take some issue with Stephen Thomas’s example. It was not good intentions that caused the gulags of Russia, the concentration camps in Warsaw, and the killing fields of Cambodia. It was ruthless ambition and a base desire to kill their “enemies” and dissenters. Crediting these murderers with good intentions does them far too much credit. They certainly didn’t have good intentions towards the people they killed.
Interestingly, “the ends justify the means” is almost unique in my moral philosophy. I generally argue that very few moral disputes are actually disputes about morals; they are virtually always disputes about facts instead. “The ends justify the means” is one of the few genuine moral disputes I’ve ever identified. There are people who quite seriously, and with a straight face, argue in favor of utilitarianism which assumes that the ends do justify the means. There are deontological ethicists who quite strenuously argue that the ends never justify the means. Both appear to be arguing from strongly held moral intuitions. It is quite a puzzle.