Thursday, September 15, 2011

A Consequence of Consequentialism

As in some of my previous posts I would like to return to the topic of consequentialism. As may be apparent, I have been leaning towards this normative ethical theory for reasons I have discussed before, namely the problematic issues inherent in the deontology (the main competing theory to consequentialism). Now that I have thought about it some more though I would like to bring up one of the problems that arise from the consequentialist perspective.

The biggest problem I had with consequentialism initially was the issue of intent, since from a consequentialist perspective the only thing that determines the morality of an act is its consequences, not the action or the intent of the actor. If you claim that the intent of the person performing an act is of significant relevance in judging whether or not that action is moral, you are now no longer primarily concerned with consequences.

As an example of this say a person (Jim) owns a large forest near a town. Jim decides to build a house for the poor. Since he is a professional lumberjack Jim chooses and cuts down the trees himself from his forest. After cutting down one particular tree unfortunately it ends up falling on a young boy exploring the forest, killing him. He never intended for the tree to hurt anyone and is deeply upset at the unfortunate event.

According to a consequentialist viewpoint only the consequences of an action are what judge an action as being morally wrong or right. So therefore Jim's act of cutting down the tree while having no intent to hurt the child (in fact his intention was to help people in need) is deemed immoral, no different than if Jim were a murderer who intentionally cuts down the tree to kill the boy.

This definitely seems problematic since how can you say that both events are morally equivalent? Certainly in the second scenario Jim should be judged as having committed an immoral act, but what about Jim's actions in the first instance? Was his actions in the first scenario moral or at least morally neutral simply because he didn't intend to hurt the child? All agree from both a deontological as well as a consequentialist perspective that the second scenario was indeed immoral, because harm was intended and harm was caused. However, I would not lay Jim in the first scenario blameless and his actions morally acceptable since his actions did indeed cause more harm than good.

Although it was unintentional he is still responsible to make amends since his actions were the most relevant cause of the boys demise. So while I see how people may want to lay him blameless due to his pure intent, I still find it acceptable to call his action immoral. This may be a disturbing conclusion, but I think holding this position is better overall since while people are blamed or praised for things that can rightfully be called accidents, it encourages us to take precautionary measures and to think very seriously about the actions we take or do not take.

There is still the issue of how the actions of Jim the intentioned murderer and Jim the intentioned philanthropist could be judged equally under this framework. While it is conceivable that we will lay a significant amount of blame on the intentioned philanthropist Jim, clearly we should blame the intentioned murderer Jim much more. This is where I will step out of my consequentialist perspective just a bit to concede that it only makes sense to judge these two scenarios differently not based on consequences, but rather based on intentions. While I do so I still hold that the consequences are the most significant factor in determining whether or not an action is moral. However, once it has been decided that a party has committed an immoral (or moral) action based solely on the consequences, then it can be decided based on the individuals intentions, and possibly other factors not related to consequence, how much blame (or praise) to attribute to that individual. Thus the consequences determine whether or not a person is praised or blamed and other factors determine the level of praise or blame deserved.

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