Intending

[Timsup2nothin]

In my opinion, intentions matter in so far as they reveal to you what someone is likely to do in the future. In this example your stated intentions appear to have no impact whatsoever on the future decisions you are going to make, and therefore our intuitions feel that the don't really matter.

In a case where someone intended to do the right thing, and took all the appropriate steps to make it happen, but an uncontrollable or unfortunate event took place that caused a harmful outcome - in those cases most people really care about intentions. I think we care because they reveal what this person is likely to do or not do in the future.

The appearance that my intentions appear to have no impact on future decisions is rooted strictly in past performance. I made the example very specific so it would be easy to follow that, but now let's generalize...

If the intention is, under rational examination, to do something that isn't going to happen, does it matter if it is 'good or bad'?

Back to specifics...

Is one person's intention to provide a McMansion for every homeless person in Los Angeles 'better' than someone else's intention to make the homeless just disappear in puffs of smoke?

Now another generalization...since we are discarding the good intention because it seems disconnected from future decisions, and that appearance is rooted in past performance, are we not saying that it is performance that actually matters?

Specifically, on one of those nights where I drove to the bar with the best intentions, someone else went to the bar for a few drinks and a good time, maybe lie their way into some girl's favors. Before they even got started they saw me, drunk and belligerent, beat some poor sap to a pulp...and they ended up spending their Saturday night at the ER after driving the sap there, keeping them company through the ordeal. Neither of us was effective in following through on our intentions. Does it matter that his were 'bad'? Does it matter if he has a 'track record' of fulfilling his intentions that is far better than mine? Or is it just the outcome, right now, that matters...and all this about intentions and track records of fulfilling on intentions is totally irrelevant.

 

[ulyssesSgrant]

I tend toward the opposite view. There was a public argument a while back between Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris where this issue came up. Harris claimed that the West is morally superior to the terrorists because while we may kill way more civilians than they do, we don't intend to do that - it's "collateral damage," not "murder." Chomsky replied that there is no doubt that the Germans and Japanese in World War II mostly believed that what they were doing was for good reasons and to get a good outcome - their intentions were good. Howard ZInn even posited that the concept of intentionality in the context of war crimes was largely invented so that the crimes of the Allies, which mostly consisted of dropping bombs on civilians from airplanes, could be handwaved away.

I have found those arguments to be essentially unanswerable. There is no doubt that when the US invaded Iraq, we did not intend many of the bad consequences that occurred. Certainly we did not intend to inflict half a million excess deaths on the Iraq population. In my view, what we intended hardly matters. What we actually did matters.

I read this email exchange too, Harris mostly made a fool of himself as far as I could tell. They did both agree that intentions should be considered. Chomsky said he did consider them.

Harris is a consequentialist oddly enough, he just really emphasizes intention as a guide what someone will do in the future, and therefore of significant consequentialist consideration.

Well, sure, but I think implicit in the 'intentions v outcomes' dichotomy is that the outcomes are the outcomes of your choices. If the outcomes were the result of factors outside your control then they aren't really relevant to a moral accounting of your actions.

I don't think so, things can be outside of your control but still the result of your decision. Like if you're the leader of a country and you decide to bring your troops home, but what actually ends up happening is they die in a plane crash along the way, I think you'd agree intentions go a long way. If you're a leader and you decide to remove an evil dictator harming their people, but what actually ends up happening is your generals are careless and end up harming and killing a lot of innocent people, that is of moral relevance.

 

[Farm Boy]

Absence of intent means the absence of action. The opposite is not always true.

Action is what you do in this moment, naught or aught, the now. Intent is what you think the action will do, intent is the self, the ought.

Living totally in a moment is often phrased as moving beyond the self, be it of eastern thought and meditation or giving yourself up in prayer. Transcending the self in ought to be a better futurenow.

Right?

 

[Lexicus]

I don't think so, things can be outside of your control but still the result of your decision. Like if you're the leader of a country and you decide to bring your troops home, but what actually ends up happening is they die in a plane crash along the way, I think you'd agree intentions go a long way. If you're a leader and you decide to remove an evil dictator harming their people, but what actually ends up happening is your generals are careless and end up harming and killing a lot of innocent people, that is of moral relevance.

Your first example doesn't really make sense. I've deployed a single plane's worth of troops somewhere? In the second example, the "remove evil dictator" thing has a sufficiently poor track record that the leader's intentions don't matter to me at all. I'll address that first example if you improve it a bit, but will you address the example of the HOLOCAUST please? If intentions are so important why do we conclude pretty much universally that the Holocaust is about the most evil thing that's ever been done despite the fact that most of its perpetrators genuinely believed they were doing something that was necessary to make the world better?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Outcomes are more important than intentions, but it's hard to envision a real scenario where you get persistently good outcomes w/o intentions that align.

Certainly we did not intend to inflict half a million excess deaths on the Iraq population. In my view, what we intended hardly matters. What we actually did matters.

In that particular case I doubt stated intent = actual intent at point of decision being made.

If the intention is, under rational examination, to do something that isn't going to happen, does it matter if it is 'good or bad'?

It's evidence that it is bad. Not as bad intending to cause harm outright, but worse than neutral.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's evidence that it is bad. Not as bad intending to cause harm outright, but worse than neutral.

So the fact that giving every homeless person a McMansion is obviously not going to happen makes it an actually bad intention? That seems unsupportable.

 

[ulyssesSgrant]

Your first example doesn't really make sense. I've deployed a single plane's worth of troops somewhere? In the second example, the "remove evil dictator" thing has a sufficiently poor track record that the leader's intentions don't matter to me at all. I'll address that first example if you improve it a bit, but will you address the example of the HOLOCAUST please? If intentions are so important why do we conclude pretty much universally that the Holocaust is about the most evil thing that's ever been done despite the fact that most of its perpetrators genuinely believed they were doing something that was necessary to make the world better?

Meh, okay I feel like you're being difficult here. Let's say there is a small team of navy seals, they have been deployed somewhere for a potential mission. You decide it is too dangerous for them to do the mission, so you give the order that they should return. The plane crashes on the way back due to a freak accident and they all die.

I think intentions often matter and they often don't, it just depends on the situation. There are many levels of intentions too. At a high level, the perpetrators of the holocaust might have believed they were doing something good, but at another level, it wasn't like they accidentally systemically enslaved, abused, and murdered millions of people, they did that on purpose, it was their intention. Higher level intentions of the greater good might very well be irrelevant, but at the some level, like in my example above, they certain matter.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So the fact that giving every homeless person a McMansion is obviously not going to happen makes it an actually bad intention? That seems unsupportable.

Yes, it is a bad intention because it won't happen in reality and attempting it will do more harm than good (for most definitions of harm and good). You get a bad outcome attempting something that was knowably not happening. That's bad.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yes, it is a bad intention because it won't happen in reality and attempting it will do more harm than good (for most definitions of harm and good). You get a bad outcome attempting something that was knowably not happening. That's bad.

Fair enough. This does seem to fall once again into the overflowing bin of evidence for "outcomes matter, intentions are irrelevant."

 

[Gori the Grey]

Maybe better to say "it's important for intentions to be good".

After all, that road to Hell ain't gonna pave itself, amirite?

 

[red_elk]

Action is what you do in this moment, naught or aught, the now. Intent is what you think the action will do, intent is the self, the ought.

Living totally in a moment is often phrased as moving beyond the self, be it of eastern thought and meditation or giving yourself up in prayer. Transcending the self in ought to be a better futurenow.

Right?

Intent is often subconscious. Far more often than we realize.

 

[Farm Boy]

I agree with that. People are not as nice as they think they are.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There's a supportable theory that the outcome is always what was actually intended, people are just dishonest about what they intend.

 

[ulyssesSgrant]

There's a supportable theory that the outcome is always what was actually intended, people are just dishonest about what they intend.

Hmm, I don't think that always is going to be defensible, but I'm on board with it things being far more intentional that we admit.

 

[Lexicus]

Meh, okay I feel like you're being difficult here. Let's say there is a small team of navy seals, they have been deployed somewhere for a potential mission. You decide it is too dangerous for them to do the mission, so you give the order that they should return. The plane crashes on the way back due to a freak accident and they all die.

I think intentions often matter and they often don't, it just depends on the situation. There are many levels of intentions too. At a high level, the perpetrators of the holocaust might have believe they were doing something good, but at another level, it wasn't like they accidentally systemically enslaved, abused, and murdered millions of people, they did that on purpose, it was their intention. Higher level intentions of the greater good might very well be irrelevant, but at the some level, like in my example above, they certain matter.

Again I am not sure of the relevance of "freak accidents" to moral responsibility. At a certain threshold of unpredictability I think most of the assumptions we require to actually make moral judgments no longer hold.

 

[ulyssesSgrant]

Again I am not sure of the relevance of "freak accidents" to moral responsibility. At a certain threshold of unpredictability I think most of the assumptions we require to actually make moral judgments no longer hold.

I think we basically agree then. An accident is an accident, something on purpose is something on purpose. Whether something was an accident, or on purpose, matters since someone shouldn't be held responsible for accidents, even if they were a result of their decision. That is all I mean when I say intentions do sometimes matter.

 

[Phrossack]

I have to admit, the more I read of philosophical threads like this, the closer I slide to amoral, self-interested nihilism. I doubt that's a good thing.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hmm, I don't think that always is going to be defensible, but I'm on board with it things being far more intentional that we admit.

When I was a youngster I had this long winded theory and life plan about how I was going to retire at forty-five. I would say that absolutely nothing followed anything like the path I laid out...and yet I retired at 45, intention fulfilled. If you back out of the specifics and details, the always may look more supportable.

 

[Farm Boy]

After all, that road to Hell ain't gonna pave itself, amirite?

And if they aren't, there is no need for a road to stay where you are.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Deep.