So, this is a question on ethics...

[2ndRateMind]

...I've been thinking about, recently, off and on.

It's about intentions and outcomes. The current state of law in the Anglo-Saxon tradition is that intentions matter. A great deal. If you deliberately and purposefully murder your wife for the life insurance, you can expect a considerably harsher sentence than if you accidentally run her over while parking the car in the garage. Even though the consequences may be the same: one dead wife.

Yet, the three main approaches to ethics, deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics, all seem to stress outcome rather than intention. For deontologists, the idea is to obey the rules, because the rules will determine for you a better outcome (maybe in this world, or the next), than if you simply ignore them.

So far as utilitarianism goes, what is moral is simply the state of affairs that leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Actions and rules are right insofar as they promote that end, and wrong insofar as they don't.

And virtue ethics basically seems to suggest that the best way to achieve eudaimonia, or human flourishing, as an end, is to decide what the virtues are, and live out your life in accordance with developing them.

So, whatever, all the three academically respectable mainstream approaches to ethics appeal to outcome, rather than intention, as their justification for what makes an activity moral or immoral.

The problem with this is that we are not prescient; often enough, we just don't know what the outcomes of our activities may be. The world is complex and complicated, and we do not generally know enough about it to forecast with any accuracy the end result of our actions.

This train of thought leads me to suspect that all we can reasonably be held to account for, (come the end of days), is our intentions. They are more certainly under our own control than outcomes.

So, my question for the forum is, is contemporary ethics misguided in its emphasis on outcomes, or am I misguided in my emphasis on intentions?

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 8 by JehovahsWitness]

I do not think your religious concerns inconsequential at all. I am just concerned by their consequences.

Best wishes, 2RM.

...Time will tell who is right and who is wrong on this issue...

Indeed it will. But I do not think we need, or should, wait on the end of days to decide the matter. We can deploy a well-intentioned, sweet, rational, reason to arrive at a provisional conclusion. Don't you think? Or are we just to accept the rules as ordained by God, to be kept for that reason, and no other?

Best wishes, 2RM.

[wiploc]

[Replying to post 6 by JehovahsWitness]

I retract my remark.

People have spoken up on behalf of Germans and Jehovah's Witnesses, which leaves me to speak for dogs.

Some breeds follow rules out of a desire to please. Others (like Schipperkes) are food motivated; they follow rules in the hope of being rewarded.

[/img]

[Wootah]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind]

I certainly think Jesus was correct when he said if we lust we commit adultery or hate we commit murder. And that is about intention. People often do not see who they are because we do not get to show our intentions in society for fear of getting caught.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 8 by JehovahsWitness]

I do not think your religious concerns inconsequential at all. I am just concerned by their consequences.

Best wishes, 2RM.

...Time will tell who is right and who is wrong on this issue...

Indeed it will. But I do not think we need, or should, wait on the end of days to decide the matter. We can deploy a well-intentioned, sweet, rational, reason to arrive at a provisional conclusion. Don't you think? Or are we just to accept the rules as ordained by God, to be kept for that reason, and no other?

Best wishes, 2RM.

Agreed and as I indicated, I like my other Jehovah's Witnesses brothers have employed a well-intentioned, sweet, rational, reason to arrive at a provisional conclusion. I'm sure you are not going to insist your provisional conclusion is right and ours is wrong. Are we just to accept that God ordained rules are not be obeyed for no reason than because you say so?


JW

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 6 by JehovahsWitness]

I retract my remark.

People have spoken up on behalf of Germans and Jehovah's Witnesses, which leaves me to speak for dogs.

Some breeds follow rules out of a desire to please. Others (like Schipperkes) are food motivated; they follow rules in the hope of being rewarded.

[/img]

I would like to take a position on the issue as well, of the dogs I've known, and I have known many, most barely follow the rules at all...

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind]

I think you incorrectly classify virtue ethics as outcome oriented. Virtue ethics are about living your life by a standard, it is believed that by doing this you will effect good in the world which is the very meaning of morality but the method is not outcome oriented but intention oriented. You should be intending every single day and with every single action to affect this standard and with it to effect good in the world.

I think I prefer this moral system. If drink driving is severe enough that you endanger the lives of those around you, maybe treat everyone equally by the law. Someone who kills someone while drink driving committed the same crime in my eyes as someone who was drink driving without harming anyone. I don't know that murder is an appropriate charge but a criminal conviction should be warranted for those that brazenly endanger others out of selfish motivations and poor planning.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 8 by JehovahsWitness]

I do not think your religious concerns inconsequential at all. I am just concerned by their consequences.

Best wishes, 2RM.

...Time will tell who is right and who is wrong on this issue...

Indeed it will. But I do not think we need, or should, wait on the end of days to decide the matter. We can deploy a well-intentioned, sweet, rational, reason to arrive at a provisional conclusion. Don't you think? Or are we just to accept the rules as ordained by God, to be kept for that reason, and no other?

Best wishes, 2RM.

Agreed and as I indicated, I like my other Jehovah's Witnesses brothers have employed a well-intentioned, sweet, rational, reason to arrive at a provisional conclusion.

OK. So, humour me a little. Explain that reasoning, preferably in words of one or two syllables, so that my poor second rate mind might have some chance of comprehending it.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 1 by 2ndRateMind]

I think you incorrectly classify virtue ethics as outcome oriented. Virtue ethics are about living your life by a standard, it is believed that by doing this you will effect good in the world which is the very meaning of morality but the method is not outcome oriented but intention oriented. You should be intending every single day and with every single action to affect this standard and with it to effect good in the world...

I think you have a point. And thank you for addressing the theme of the thread.

In response, I would say that there needs to be a reason why you should live your life according to some standard. In short: 'Why should I be moral?' You state one such plausible reason, in that 'by doing this you will effect good in the world' That's an outcome. Aristotle suggests another, eudaimonia, which can be approximately translated as 'human flourishing'. Aristotle thinks it is good for us as individuals, as well as the world, to be virtuous. That's another outcome. And so this is why I think, at root, virtue ethics is a consequentialist philosophy.

I would agree that there are few moral actions without good intentions, however.

Best wishes, 2RM.

[Filthy Tugboat]

[Replying to post 18 by 2ndRateMind]

I think perhaps we need to establish how we define the word "moral" I understand moral to necessarily mean to effect good in the world. The means of being moral can then judge how we go about doing that and what we focus on in establishing criteria for understanding actions and their relationship to morality. So virtue is focused on intent, act virtuously at all times and mean well in all of your actions. Whereas others tend to reflect only on the outcomes, if good comes then what was done was good.

What do you think it is to be moral regardless of method?

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 18 by 2ndRateMind]


What do you think it is to be moral...

Well, I'll take my prompt on this from academic ethics, which are not entirely reconciled, as yet.

So:
1) Obedience to the laws (from deontology)
2) Promoting human well being (from utilitarianism)
3) Developing and manifesting virtue (from virtue ethics)

But, of course, ideally all three simultaneously.

Best wishes, 2RM.