On intention
in regard to morality
When discussing
consequentialist ethics one is oft contradicted by the argument that;
”intention matters, while consequentialist ethics only cares for
consequences, therefore it must be something false in this theory”
I intend here to show that intention is important in assessing the
consequences of actions and that this is not a valid contradiction to
consequentialism.
When
considering intention I must first bring up the question of what I
mean by intention, I define it as the motive for an action.
Intention in
regard to actions
Kantians
usually refer to good will, or positive intention as the only good
without restriction. To quote Kant “Nothing in the world –
indeed nothing even beyond the world – can possibly be conceived
which could be called good without qualification except the good
will.
One quite naturally wants to
agree with this statement, as it seems natural to us that ”good
will” cannot be bad.
When we examine intention we
can see that it is only good in so far as it leads to good
consequences when we look at the actions they produce, this is the
only way that intention is good when used to assess actions.
If we consider helping other
people as something good, as it leads to happiness and/or greater
value in life for both parties; we can judge positive intention as a
motive which leads to this action and no negative actions, while a
negative intention would be one that leads to unwanted consequences
while it also may lead to the good consequence.
One can give this example
for this; if one man saves another from drowning because he takes
pleasure in helping people, because of an intuition that anything else would be
wrong, we can see this as positive intention. On the other hand, if a
man saves another to later torture and murder him but changes his
mind and lets the other go, we will can see it as negative intention.
Both these intentions lead to the same action, the other man is saved
in both cases. The postive and negative intentions has case lead to
the same consequence, which if one values human life, can be deemed a
good consequence.
If the man with the negative
intention had done what he first intended, it would universally have
been seen as a bad act. drowning is indeed, not as bad as being
tortured and then killed.
We can therefore conclude
that in the case of actions, intentions count only in so far they
impact the consequences, They are of secondary import to the
consequences whose importance is primary when regarding actions.
Intention in
regard to moral character
We have
affirmed that intentions can only be of importance in their relation
to the consequences they create, when regarded to actions.
I will now
consider that intentions should be used when judging someones moral
character. Here the intentions are of great importance, but are still
not of primary importance to its goodness.
We must ask
what a good moral character is; this would be defined as a character
that generally leads to good consequences. intention is the way our
moral character shows itself practically to the world though our
actions, in this way they become the core of what must be analyzed if
one is to make claims about ones own moral character or that of others. It is here that intentions become truly important as a
part of morality, not as a good in itself
Exceptions to
what generally would be considered good moral character, but composes
an important aspect of it nonetheless
If we assume
that stealing is in general wrong, because it leads to bad
consequences, i.e the breaking of the level of trust needed to upkeep
some kind of civil order in a society will be broken if stealing
becomes the norm.
The positive
intentions are therefore good because they adhere to those general
principles of conduct which lead to good consequences for society and
generally for the individuals themselves.
Another
fundamental characteristic of a good moral character is the abilty to
make exceptions to the very same general principles of conduct when
necessity requires it. These kind of exceptions could for example be,
stealing medicine to save the life of someone, as the normal rule
must give way to save lives if there is no other way to save that
life. As the consequences created by the relatively minor crime of
stealing is of less import if compared to the consequences if we
would let people die unnecessarily.
Good moral
character is therefore the character of someone who is predisposed to
create good consequences for himself and others to greatest extent
possible, which includes the ability to make rational exceptions to
what is generally considered good conduct to create good
consequences.
None of these
conclusions matter very much though, if one has not understood what good consequences are. That will I hope, be
discussed shortly.
