Consider the following example,

A thief plots to steal from an old woman one Sunday morning, a time when he knows she will be at church. The thief smashes open a window into the old woman's house, and upon entering, discovers her unconscious on the floor, not at church. Suddenly afraid and not wanting to be mistaken for having committing a murder, the thief runs away.

Unbeknownst to the thief, however, the woman had become unconscious due to a toxic carbon monoxide leak in her home. In smashing open the window, the thief allowed oxygen to reach the old woman, and she regained consciousness. Unwittingly, the thief had saved her life.

In the above example, the intent of the thief had been what many would consider to be evil (theft), but the outcome of his actions resulted in the saving of an innocent life, something many consider to be good. Was the thief's attempted theft then a good, or evil, action? (Footnote 1)

I wish to propose a solution to the issue of intent-versus-outcome in morality.

Absolute Good can be defined as that which has solely beneficial outcomes. An outcome is described as being beneficial when it either:

• Improves the total happiness of all agents involved in the act.
• Improves the overall physical health of all agents involved in the act.

Alternatively, Absolute Evil is defined as the exact opposite - an action which has solely detrimental outcomes.

Given the above, we can then consider every action's morality to be defined by two 'axis'. The first of these is the intent of the action, that is, the instigating agent's predicted outcome. The moral intent of an action is determined by the degree to which the instigator believes their action will be detrimental or beneficial (subconsciously or otherwise).

The second axis by which an action's morality is to be considered is the outcome of the action. This is the objective beneficial or detrimental outcome of the action.

When both the moral intent and the moral outcome are the same (ie, if the overall intent was good and the overall outcome was good, or vice versa), then the outcome is said to be congruent with the intent. Conversely, if the intent and outcome are different, they are said to be incongruent.

As such, the absolute morality of an action can be determined by averaging the moral intent and moral outcome. (Footnote 2) This will result in an approximate absolute moral value, which will be slightly more good or evil than the original intent of evil or good respectively. In the example above, the absolute moral value of his actions would be slightly more good than his original intent.

Thus, the morality of an action can be represented graphically, with the y-axis representing the moral intent of the action, and the x-axis representing the moral outcome of an action. This is depicted in the image below. (Footnote 3)



(Hopefully the above image works, if not, click on this link: Axial Morality)

Footnotes

• 1. Granted, the man never actually committed a crime. The purpose of this example was to illustrate how situations can arise wherein a moral consequence is contrary to the moral intent. There are other examples of this, such as euthanasia, etc.
• 2. Of course, as we can never accurately and objectively measure every single outcome of an action, these averages will be rough and slightly inaccurate. Nevertheless, it is the purpose of this post not to describe the practical application of axial morality, but to discuss it as a ethical concept.
• 3. Again, this could not be used accurately, as there is no mathematical measurement for the moral value of an object. This image is meant to be only a visualisation of axial morality.