I didn’t want to hijack this thread, so I thought I’d start a new one. In it one poster said that he thought the motivation of the actor is an important part of judging the action’s morality- and I disagreed. I use the example of two slave-owners- one who whips his slave who attempted to escape, and this slave-owner believes he is “helping” the slave to understand his proper place on the plantation (and he truly believes the slave will be happier once he accepts that he will be a slave forever on this plantation). The second slave-owner whips his slave because he is a sadist and it gives him pleasure.
In my opinion, both of these actions are equally evil- it doesn’t matter that the first slave-owner had (sort of) “good” intentions towards the slave.
Being the other poster in question, I’ll make some remarks, though with New Year’s Eve and all, I might not be able to follow up for a day or two.
The intent, or motivation, of the actor is a major part of what makes a given action moral or immoral.
In the example given, both acts are wrong, because slavery is morally wrong, and the slave owner is violating his duty to the slave, a fellow man, to refrain from doing him harm. That said, the former (whipping as punishment, to reinforce the social order) is less wrong than the latter (whipping to induce pain, for the gratification of the whipper).
I’ll follow up with this: does this irrelevance of intent follow with actions that are right, rather than wrong?
And lastly, is the use of intent by the criminal justice system, to determine liability for criminal acts, thus in need of change?
But there is a large degree of overlap between those concepts, is there not? The acts that are the least moral tend to be the first prohibited by law in any culture: murder, rape, theft, assault.
Does that mean the act, for purposes of morality, can be wholly divorced from the circumstances? Said circumstances would include intent and consequences.
I would argue that it cannot. The same action can be right in one instance, and wrong in another, based purely on circumstances.
Further, I’d argue that the absolutism you advocate discourages one from making the kind of distinctions that further human understanding. In the matter of colonialism from the other thread, dismissing the difference in intent between British and Belgian colonialism is detrimental to deriving moral lessons from the respective outcomes, and the equivocation involved is unjust to the Brits involved, and too forgiving of the Belgians.
No, but those circumstances also include other things (like other events going on at the time).
Yes, but only based on other things going on at the time. Killing can be morally acceptable, but not just because the killer thinks its right- it actually has to be right (say, to save the life of an innocent that is about to be murdered). If the killer thinks he’s saving a life, but he’s mistaken, then it may be morally negligent (he should have known that the killing wouldn’t save a life), or it may be a tragic accident (he couldn’t have known better) or someone else may be morally culpable (he was deceived).
I disagree. The Belgian Congo colonization wasn’t worse than various British enterprises because of intent, it was worse because it killed and tortured more people (relatively speaking). And when one speaks of these kinds of historical events, the relative evil (IMO) isn’t particularly instructive- the Holocaust may be worse than the Armenian Genocide (for example), but they’re both so monstrously wrong that it doesn’t really matter which was worse. While the British and other colonizations weren’t as bad as genocides, they were very, very bad- they killed, tortured, exploited, and displaced lots and lots of people, and it’s appropriate to speak of them as terrible crimes (sadly, in human history, just one or a few out of many, many terrible crimes).
Human history is of course filled with such crimes, and worse. I have no problem with discussing such events in the context of the time they happened (e.g. the British were not particularly bad as far as colonizers go). But it’s important to recognize the morality of these events. When discussing things like colonization, or slavery, I try to make a point in my mind to think of the point of view of the victims- a slave in 19th century America is essentially, morally, at war with the entire United States of America (except for other slaves and abolitionists, perhaps). A Kenyan or Indian, resisting the British rule that displaced his family, is similarly at war with the entire British Empire. And if you look at both situations like a war with two sides, there are pretty clear good guys and bad guys.
Intent does matter a lot, but only in a “reasonable man” sort of way. To use the example of the slavers from the OP; they fail the reasonable man test.
The people of the time were more than sophisticated enough to know that what they were doing was wrong, and the suffering they were causing was blatantly obvious. It took blatant self delusion and willful ignorance for them to convince themselves otherwise; so no, “good” intent on the part of the second slaver doesn’t let him off. His “good” intent is just part of how he excuses his evil behavior, part of an entire worldview twisted for the purpose of making him feel good about himself while he exploits and abuses people. Anyone who really wanted to could see how evil slavery was; not just by modern standards, but their own. They fail the reasonable man test because any reasonable man would have known they were in the wrong, and did know they were wrong.
I both do and do not agree with you here, DT. That is, I think it’s possible for a person to sufficiently ignorant as to believe what those slaveholders is, but it’s more than likely that such a person is being willfully ignorant, and that willfulness increases their culpability.
I’m not sure how much that matters, though. Unless you’re Charlie Xavier, it’s difficult if not impossible to truly know another person’s motives, only what they claim their motives to be.
I could buy that it was possible in, say, ancient Rome or Greece; not in the American South. Highly implausible at best. The mere existence of functioning non-slaveholding states - especially since those states were pulling ahead of them in prosperity - disproved any claims they made about how what they were doing was necessary or benevolent or even useful to anyone but themselves. Someone in ancient times at least could have looked around at the universality of slaveholding in ancient civilizations and just said “well, it’s an unfortunate necessity of civilization to have slaves”; by the time of the Old South that excuse no longer existed.
Which is in my opinion why they were so irrational on the subject; they spent generations convincing themselves that what they were doing was necessary and a moral good. And the more evidence that piled up against them, the more they had to withdraw from reality and the more delusional they became because admitting they were wrong by then would have been both a huge admission of guilt and have economically ruined them.
I think the term epistemic closure fits here when describing the mindset of slave-owners. There was just nothing that would change their minds (obviously some changed their minds, but not many)- I think when one has invested their lifestyle in such an institution as slavery, the possibility that it could be wrong has to be fought (for many, at least) because it would otherwise be profoundly damaging to one’s sense of self. Thus the tragedy of slavery affects both the slaves and the slave-owners.
The problem with *deontological *ethics (motivation of action > result of action) is that such an ethical system often results in outcomes that are not emotionally congruent with a sentient human being.
The opposing system of ethics is known as teleological ethics.
I certainly disagree that only the act is relevant. I can think of a thousand examples where identical acts can result in vastly different consequences, and vastly different… let’s say casualties. To return to the OP example, let’s pretend the owners give precisely the same amount of whipping to each slave. But one slave dies and one survives.
I would argue that the morality of an act involves at least three components, only two of which are comtemplated in the OP. There is the intent, the action, and the consequences of the action.
I would further argue that the act itself is the least important of the three in determining the morality of the act. For a more modern example, think about the prank phone call of the Australian djs.
The problem with *deontological *ethics (motivation of action > result of action) is that such an ethical system often results in outcomes that are not emotionally congruent with a sentient human being.
That’s true, but I would say that many times a rational person needs to act without knowing the full consequences of his actions will be.
A case in point would be an examination of the actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. By no means am I an advocate of slavery, but I have to believe that given the circumstances that Gen. Lee was facing, it was ethical for him to order Pickett’s Charge…some historians look at Pickett’s Charge as a tragic mistake.
And yet, it’s amazing how often people broadcast their intentions, in what they say, what they write, and what they post on FaceBook. You’d think people would hold immoral views much closer to their vests, but it isn’t always so.
Yes, but in any of your three scenarios (a killing to save a life, a killing to save a life that turned out to be unnecessary, and a killing that didn’t save a life, done in the mistaken belief that it was), the killer’s intent mitigates the wrongness of the act: completely, in the first scenario, and partially in the others. Intent is still a key.
I would argue that even if the British efforts had resulted in more suffering (which they may well have, they were done over a longer period and in more places) than the Belgian, the Belgian efforts would still be morally worse, because of the intent behind it. This doesn’t stop both from being wrong, of course; the nature of this discussion is one of degrees.
The relative evil isn’t the instructive part; the difference in intent is. The British Ray and the Belgian Congo have significantly different lessons to teach a modern audience.
At this point, it’s worth pointing out that any endeavor that lasts over a century and involves thousands of participants, like a nation’s colonial empire, will have thousands of individual motivations underlying it. I don’t doubt that some British colonial officers had cruel robber’s motivations akin to the Belgian Congo, just as I don’t doubt that others committed themselves wholly to the betterment of the Indian people. We can try to gauge the overall consequences, but it is difficult to nail down singular motivations in activities with so many participants.
True enough, though not all enemies of the British Raj were good guys: the Thuggee cult, for instance. And this moral war against the United States doesn’t make the Nat Turner rebellion’s murder of children justified, for another example.
I agree with all your points here, though the “good” slaver’s intent isn’t meant to let him off, but to compare him favorable with the sadistic slaver.
One aspect that’s long fascinated me is that only something like 6% of the Confederate population were themselves slave-owners. Reid Mitchell’s Civil War Soldiers provided some answers as to why these men were willing to break up the union, and fight and die in war with no tangible benefit to themselves, but it’s still hard for me to grasp.
Yes, but consequentialism (teleological ethics) easily becomes the-ends-justify-the-means, and can be used to excuse all manner of evil on the basis of the greater good. It also has little to offer when the consequences of an actor’s choice is unknown to him at the time the decision is made. Deontological ethics’ focus on the rights of others is more appealing to me, at any rate.
I agree, though I’d put the intent first, consequences second, and act third.