Can the means justify themselves if the ends (or other motivations) are unjust?

[inthesomeday]

In each of your personal moralities, is it possible for the actions of a group or person to be justified in your eyes because you agree with the action itself, despite perhaps disagreeing with the motivating source of the action or the intended goal of the action?

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Sure. Short answer, a lot of good things are done by people who are in fact making their living at it.

 

[Synobun]

Yes. Opposing someone at every turn by simple virtue of who they are is too exhausting.

 

[aelf]

Depends. One way of looking at is, the amount of charity the mafia does cannot make it a bunch of good people.

But the majority probably prefers, say, a polite bigot than a well-meaning SJW. Humans tend to find it very hard to appreciate anything beyond the surface.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yes, although I'd perhaps disagree with the use of the word "justified" in this context. But actions can be good or perfectly acceptable in their own right, regardless of motivation.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's the outcome that matters. If someone who despises puppies and is trying to kill puppies saves 2 billion human lives while failing to kill any puppies, it would be strange to disagree with whatever action that person took on the basis of their motivation.

That the person in this example is utterly incompetent at his/her own utility function is a side benefit. I very much agree with the outcome while finding the motivation bizarre and repulsive, though I'd be very curious how one led to another in this case .

Depends. One way of looking at is, the amount of charity the mafia does cannot make it a bunch of good people.

On balance, presumably the mafia also takes actions you disagree with. If the mafia somehow only did charity while claiming to be organized crime, I doubt you'd disagree with the charity aspect.

OP isn't looking for character judgments, but rather whether actions can/should be judged on their own merit regardless of motivation. The answer to that question is "obviously yes", even if I trust the future actions of those with known negative motivations less.

 

[Senethro]

My initial reaction is: Surely only moral actors can be judged morally. Actions divorced from their actors could be measured by their utility (or some other value scale) but can't themselves be good or evil.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My initial reaction is: Surely only moral actors can be judged morally. Actions divorced from their actors could be measured by their utility (or some other value scale) but can't themselves be good or evil.

Sounds like a rejection of absolute morality . Though I agree that there is none.

 

[inthesomeday]

But isn’t moral judgement of a person applicable derived from their actions?

 

[Ryika]

I think actions should be judged by their effects, but actors should be judged on their intentions.

To me the interesting thing is how we judge the actors that do good things for bad reasons.

If a guy shoots a dog that is about to kill a baby, but does so because they just want to live out their fantasy of killing something and doesn't even realize that he'll save the baby in the process, how would we judge such a person? Surely we won't declare him a hero (assuming we somehow know his motivation), but at the same time, we will likely also not see him as the ruthless dogslayer that he is either, simply because the positive effects of his actions "warp" our perception of the situation and give him some goodwill that he does not really deserve.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

But isn’t moral judgement of a person applicable derived from their actions?

It must be for it to have meaning. You can make a case not to judge it solely based on actions perhaps (though I'm not sure what else you'd use), but you certainly can't ignore the actions and have a coherent framework with which to make judgments.

Absent an evaluation of actions, you could assign positive morality to people who go on massed killings but truly believe that it's good for some reason, or negative morality to the puppies example above. That doesn't make sense and I'm not sure a coherent moral framework can make such conclusions (it would likely self-contradict).

I think actions should be judged by their effects, but actors should be judged on their intentions.

This shouldn't hold when intended consequences were not reasonably expected based on actions.

If a guy shoots a dog that is about to kill a baby, but does so because they just want to live out their fantasy of killing something and doesn't even realize that he'll save the baby in the process, how would we judge such a person? Surely we won't declare him a hero (assuming we somehow know his motivation), but at the same time, we will likely also not see him as the ruthless dogslayer that he is either, simply because the positive effects of his actions "warp" our perception of the situation and give him some goodwill that he does not really deserve.

The odds of someone conveniently targeting an aggressive dog at random just as it's attacking a child and not realizing a probable sequence of events for dog + child in the near future are pretty small, assuming person in question is still able to think in coherent fashion. It's not unreasonable to instead conclude that he took an opportunity where living out his fantasy to blast some bullets into the animal would finally not be condemned.

If said person otherwise shows restraint and doesn't kill dogs, I'm not convinced he is actually less of a hero than someone who just acted in the moment to save the baby. If we're seeing the same outcome and same actions ultimately chosen in each context before and after, it's not clear why he should be penalized relative to other people for his motivations, whether stated or just suspected.

If he's not competent and just happened to roll lotto-ticket odds on the timing of his random killing then it's unlikely his future behaviors (or previous ones, for that matter) will be consistent with anything praiseworthy.

 

[Ryika]

The odds of someone conveniently targeting an aggressive dog at random just as it's attacking a child and not realizing a probable sequence of events for dog + child in the near future are pretty small, assuming person in question is still able to think in coherent fashion. It's not unreasonable to instead conclude that he took an opportunity where living out his fantasy to blast some bullets into the animal would finally not be condemned.

If said person otherwise shows restraint and doesn't kill dogs, I'm not convinced he is actually less of a hero than someone who just acted in the moment to save the baby. If we're seeing the same outcome and same actions ultimately chosen in each context before and after, it's not clear why he should be penalized relative to other people for his motivations, whether stated or just suspected.

If he's not competent and just happened to roll lotto-ticket odds on the timing of his random killing then it's unlikely his future behaviors (or previous ones, for that matter) will be consistent with anything praiseworthy.

You're overthinking my example.

The point is that, if an actor does something "bad" with the intention of doing something "bad" and accidentally does something "good" in the process without intending to do so, then that action should be evaluated on the outcome, while he should be evaluated on his motives.

Of course in the real world, things are rarely as clear-cut, and given that we are not omniscient, we will likely not have the ability to judge actions and actions that easily.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The point is that, if an actor does something "bad" with the intention of doing something "bad" and accidentally does something "good" in the process without intending to do so, then that action should be evaluated on the outcome, while he should be evaluated on his motives.

Fundamentally, I disagree. It's not reasonable to punish someone even in the relative sense for doing the same action in the same context with the same result as someone else, just because you perceive that said person had negative motivations.

Doing so amounts to giving someone a demerit for thought crimes. I hold that if this is the only instance he ever shot or will shot a dog, evaluating him on his motives is questionable.

 

[Archon_Wing]

In each of your personal moralities, is it possible for the actions of a group or person to be justified in your eyes because you agree with the action itself, despite perhaps disagreeing with the motivating source of the action or the intended goal of the action?

Yes, by necessity. Otherwise, nobody will be able to do much if at all if we're suspcious any beneficial action from them is trying to take over the world potentially.

You probably shouldn't buy products from supervillains though.

 

[Ryika]

Fundamentally, I disagree. It's not reasonable to punish someone even in the relative sense for doing the same action in the same context with the same result as someone else, just because you perceive that said person had negative motivations.

Doing so amounts to giving someone a demerit for thought crimes. I hold that if this is the only instance he ever shot or will shot a dog, evaluating him on his motives is questionable.

I'm not talking about (criminal) punishment, I'm talking about moral judgements.

If a guy shoots a dog that would have otherwise killed a child, obviously, they should not be punished for the property damage they've caused/animal cruelty, because the rescue of the child justifies that behavior. The justice system simply does not ask for the intentions of an action if that action itself was justified, because no crime has been committed in the first place. Only if the action was not justified would the intent of the shooter become of interest.

But if we're still omniscient and know that the person's intent was to kill that dog just for their enjoyment, and that they did not have knowledge about the fact that they would save a child, then we should still judge them on the intent of their action. Because clearly, their intent shows that they're likely not a good person, and the accidental good outcome of their actions does not change anything about that.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm not talking about (criminal) punishment, I'm talking about moral judgements.

It's a lesser punishment, but still a punishment.

This guy could justifiably make the case he is not being given a fair shake for doing an action that, absent any notions of his motivation, would be considered helpful.

If we're omniscient and know somebody has bad intentions, we also we know what their other actions past and future entail.

It is actually future actions that knowledge of motivation allows us to predict. If anticipated experience is inconsistent with predictions, we'd question our belief about said person's motivation (we believe Johnny wants to start fires this weekend and that it's his top priority, but we then observe he just goes snorkeling). Motivation has to have a causal link to action to be meaningful. If we're omniscient we can conveniently bypass all that and just know what the person will do, but that's not very interesting from the standpoint of making moral judgments. If you're omniscient you already know and can immediately conclude whether anybody has a utility function that you find acceptable.

 

[Ryika]

It's a lesser punishment, but still a punishment.

Moral judgement is not a "punishment", it's the natural reaction to ones actions. You know something about a person, therefor, you alter your behavior with that knowledge in mind.

Punishment is when you go beyond that and try to equalize some injustice that (you think) has happened.

This guy could justifiably make the case he is not being given a fair shake for doing an action that, absent any notions of his motivation, would be considered helpful.

He could try, but I don't think it's a particularly strong case. Clearly, like I said in my second post, we would "cut him some slag" because the outcome of his action was positive, but that does not rehabilitate him in any way. His intentions are what tell us about what kind of guy he is, not the outcome of his action.

If we're omniscient and know somebody has bad intentions, we also we know what their other actions past and future entail.

It is actually future actions that knowledge of motivation allows us to predict. If anticipated experience is inconsistent with predictions, we'd question our belief about said person's motivation (we believe Johnny wants to start fires this weekend and that it's his top priority, but we then observe he just goes snorkeling). Motivation has to have a causal link to action to be meaningful. If we're omniscient we can conveniently bypass all that and just know what the person will do, but that's not very interesting from the standpoint of making moral judgments. If you're omniscient you already know and can immediately conclude whether anybody has a utility function that you find acceptable.

This is again just making my example into more than it was meant to be. We're "omniscient" in the sense that we know his motivation and that he did not know about the good thing he's doing, not that we can literally see all that was, is and will be. Ergo, all of this this is completely irrelevant to the topic.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You know something about a person, therefor, you alter your behavior with that knowledge in mind.

However, in this case what you "know" is something questionable, a perception in motivation you can only observe with evidence of behavior patterns. In practice, moral judgments typically alter how people treat each other. This guy is experiencing "altered behavior" for the same action that other people would be treated more favorably for doing.

His intentions are what tell us about what kind of guy he is, not the outcome of his action.

What if we extended this example further, such that despite this guy's worst intentions he somehow lives the life of a saint, and all his action outcomes wind up being good?

Is this person still held in lower regard because we know his intentions were harmful, despite the actual behaviors being consistently beneficial? I don't see a strong case for that. The picture you're painting only makes sense because it's something that happens only rarely, and as such the known motivation would allow us to anticipate that he will not consistently do "good" actions, that this was an improbable event. If he somehow violates that anticipation and constantly does "good" actions despite "bad" motivations it's time to start questioning the conclusion about the motivations rather than the outcomes.

 

[aelf]

On balance, presumably the mafia also takes actions you disagree with. If the mafia somehow only did charity while claiming to be organized crime, I doubt you'd disagree with the charity aspect.

Ah, semantics at its finest. Not.

 

[EnglishEdward]

If I fall through a hole in the ice, and a person pulls me out; I approve of their action in rescuing me.

The fact that the person may only have pulled me out was because they intended to steal my wallet is another matter entirely.