On Intention in Regard to Morality

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.