• Aryamoy Mitra
    156
    Here's a rather perilous, but invigorating line of thought I chanced across - while spectating House MD.

    Imagine a physician credited with the sustenance of thousands of lives, who's just been assigned the purview of a genocidal autocrat's healthcare (one of the series' episodes was built around this plot).
    What are the arguments for, and against him/her deliberately ending this individual's life?

    If the aforethought associated with an exercise is egregious or of immoral motive, the intentionalism-based consensus lies in it being an unethical one irrespective of its consequences. Herein, there lies a philosophical necessity of condemnation. If its influences are serendipitous, the consequentialist and utilitarian perspectives will be approving, and vice versa. Conversely, if a morally premeditated act eventually exhibits unfavorable ramifications, the dynamic is reversed. Intent is granted, but utilitarian satisfaction is not. The two appear to be founded on antithetical modes of reason.

    Here are two matrices that describe the above.
    https://imgur.com/a/1ONuiKS

    My understanding may be flawed. If these relations are not concretely defined, I'd love to know.

    If they are concretely defined, however, the only available overlap is an unequivocally moral exercise that is characterized by both commendable intent and consequence. Most acts are not subject to this definition, meaning that one must necessarily rationalize them in another way in order to satisfy both philosophical standards.

    Since consequences are objectively determinate, it seems natural to use the ambiguity of intent to one's advantage. Returning to the hypothetical circumstance listed above, does the practitioner in question possess the right to redefine his intent for himself, and thus, ascribe to himself a moral stature?

    For instance, a physician placed in the conundrum may elect to be adaptable, and assume either of the following intents:

    A) Apprehending against, and eliminating the eventuality of political genocide
    B) Deliberately dispossessing a waking, sentient individual of his life and bereaving his family and friends of him/her

    One may choose to disregard intent B, and instead pursue a valorous cause with an 'ends justifying their means' motive. Of course, there's no mechanism whereby you can commit what is, essentially an act of homicide, without intending to do so. That's merely impractical. It's just the case, that the first intent is relatively accentuated in the moments leading up to the act - allowing it to supersede one's compunctions against the second.

    There is another uncertainty to be grappled with: if an immoral intent is passive, and does not actively manifest, can it be forgiven upon a utilitarian outcome? Even if one is constituting their judgement on a distilled basis of intent, can an intractably immoral motive be overlooked if a more meaningful one is at play?

    If this inconsistency is resolved, one may ask posit an even greater abstraction:
    Are intentionalism and consequentialism fundamentally irreconcilable, with one another? If not, how might one construct an epistemology that integrates the two?
  • Echarmion
    2.7k
    Since consequences are objectively determinate, it seems natural to use the ambiguity of intent to one's advantage.Aryamoy Mitra

    If consequences were always determined by intention, there would be no difference between intentionalism and consequentialism. The two would necessarily line up. The divide only exists because intentions do not necessarily determine consequences.

    Returning to the hypothetical circumstance listed above, does the practitioner in question possess the right to redefine his intent for himself, and thus, ascribe to himself a moral stature?Aryamoy Mitra

    This would only be a fiction. The actual intent to act necessarily includes all contingent steps towards the ultimate goal. One therefore has to reckon with all possible consequences, not just the positive ones.

    There is another uncertainty to be grappled with: if an immoral intent is passive and does not actively manifest, can it be forgiven upon a utilitarian outcome?Aryamoy Mitra

    We'd have to differentiate between the passive "character" of a person and a specific intent. An intent selects a set of actions in other to arrive at a desired outcome. It governs the entire sequence of events from start to finish. It can therefore also include more than one outcome. If we talk about an intent manifesting, it makes more sense to me to look at the actions as manifestations, not the outcomes.

    If this inconsistency is resolved, one may ask posit an even greater abstraction:
    Are intentionalism and consequentialism fundamentally incommensurable? If not, how might one construct an epistemology that reconciles the two?
    Aryamoy Mitra

    If we understand intent as that which selects an outcome, and then selects the actions to bring about that outcome, then the two views are merely the halves of an overall theory of action. The consequences, insofar as they are predictable, are properly part of the intent. Insofar as they are not predictable, why should they have any moral weight?
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    Interesting question. I'd like to frame the intentionalism-consequentialism pairing in, coincidentally, a physician-patient setting. A disease has a history of its own - it begins at one point and progresses with time and then, some say, it reaches a point of no return beyond which all treatment will fail and the patient's fate is sealed. In moral issues the point of no return divides intentionalism and consequentialism.
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156
    That's a very interesting take. I'd never thought of intent and consequence being two halves (possibly even two sides of the same coin) of action, but perhaps they are.
  • Aryamoy Mitra
    156
    If I understand your analogy correctly, a physician loses power of all consequence when a disease becomes incurable - but the intent to save the patient in question sustains. Is that it?
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    If I understand your analogy correctly, a physician loses power of all consequence when a disease becomes incurable - but the intent to save the patient in question sustains. Is that it?Aryamoy Mitra

    Yeah!
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