Hmm, think of the same scenario of perceivable behavior but with a different set of imperceivable intentions: Person A violently shoves person B to the ground (this being the exact same act with an identical degree of harm upon person B in crashing to the ground) but, in this version, the act is performed with the intention of saving person B’s life from the assassination attempt of person C. The discernable outcome of harm (and of a saved life) remains the same; the sole difference now is in the private intentions with which the act of shoving person B is performed by person A. — javra

In this scenario person A has committed a moral act, remember my position is that not all harm is immoral, that is, if you have good reasons for the harm, and in this case person A does, then it's not immoral. Intention although important is not always the deciding factor. One can have good intentions and yet still commit an immoral act, as in accidental harm that should or could have been foreseen. In this case it's clear that person A committed a moral act by preventing a greater harm. There is also an important point here, that is, that all immoral acts have the property of harm, but not all moral acts lack harm, some do some don't.

Intention although important is not always the deciding factor. One can have good intentions and yet still commit an immoral act, as in accidental harm that should or could have been foreseen. — Sam26

Say a person is clumsy and accidently knocks over a book on the coffee table while walking. Do we blame them for so doing? Of course, if the item is both one of great value to us and becomes destroyed in being so knocked over, many of us would feel heightened degrees of anger at the occurrence and, some, will then readily blame the individual for the outcome.

I’m not claiming that this isn’t a murky area for both philosophy and for law. I do however maintain that where there to be intention in so knocking over the item, regardless of the item’s value to us, the scenario would now become drastically different. So I yet uphold the importance of intention to ethics.

There is also an important point here, that is, that all immoral acts have the property of harm, but not all moral acts lack harm, some do some don't. — Sam26

I find myself fully agreeing with this. I should add: especially when "property of harm" encompasses intention to do harm.

I also don't associate immoral acts with sin, that is, sin is a religious word that carries religious connotations. In fact, I don't believe in sin in terms of an act against God, which is deserving of punishment, or that it's something we need to be saved from. In the sense that evil is equated with sin, I would disavow evil too. — Sam26

Well after a lot of soul-searching, I think I do accept the reality of sin, although I know it's a tremendously unpopular view to take. I am a Buddhist convert, and in most Buddhist literature, you will read that Buddhism doesn't contain the concept of sin. But I don't think that's true - read older translations of texts and commentaries, and the word appears frequently; there are several Buddhist terms, including asava (outflows) and klesa (defilements) which provide an equivalent. However, the cardinal error of humans is not sin, in Buddhism, but avidya, ignorance (which I'll come back to).

My understanding of the etymology of 'sin' (as there are several) is that it is derived from the concept of 'missing the mark'. So that has a connotation of a cognitive error, a mistaken judgement. (The other etymology has something to do with 'blood' and is more common amongst the mainstream Christian denominations.)

I think a lot of the reason that the idea of 'sin' has been rejected is because it has been contaminated (pardon the irony) by Calvinism, for whom it is this kind of dreadful cosmic miasma, the only escape from which is via unquestioning faith in the dogma. (Not for nothing has Calvin been dubbed 'the Ayatollah of Geneva'.) Whereas, in other readings, although sin is evil, it doesn't have the absolute nature that it is accorded by the Calvinist idea of 'total depravity'; I think overall that Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a much more balanced view of human nature.

The cardinal difference between the Buddhist avidya and the Christian 'sin' is the former is cognitive, whereas the latter is volitional. The former is a mistake in the understanding; the latter is the inherited consequence of the original sin, and a corruption of the will, about which we can do nothing other than believe - we can't even will what is good. But both concepts speak to what I regard as the fact of innate human moral insufficiency, whether due to 'beginningless ignorance' or 'original sin'.

I think that nowadays, the concept of sin persists, albeit in a different guise, namely that of guilt - and that long essay I have linked to is one of the better philosophical essays of 2017 in my view (and notice the audio version provided, I listened to it on a long car trip recently.)

There is one point that I failed to mention in my last post. A good intention or a good will is a necessary feature of all moral acts. I can't see how one could commit a moral act unintentionally. Moral actions necessitate a good will or good intentions. However, these are separate and distinct from immoral actions which can happen regardless of intention.

In the case of the book, my contention is that it's not necessarily an immoral action. It can become an immoral act if the person who accidentally destroyed the book doesn't make reparations, that is, if they ignore the harm done. The harm in this case is the destruction of the book, which is property that belongs to someone. If the person doesn't have the means to make reparations they should do all they can to make it right. This is a more complicated situation than the other examples, but I believe it can still be fit into this moral code. Also, in this situation your idea of intention becomes very important. If for example the person doesn't have the means to correct the situation, what matters is the intent to do so, that's what corrects it to some degree.

I agree with most of what you've stated.

However, these are separate and distinct from immoral actions which can happen regardless of intention. — Sam26

Can you exemplify something of this nature. I can't think of any example right now.

Many of the Christian ideas of sin and original sin come from a Biblical perspective, and although I have a good understanding of some of these doctrines, I don't think they are credible. Which is to say, that they're dependent upon a certain view of reality that, at least for me, lack good evidence. Moreover, they go against the testimonial evidence, of many people who have experienced an NDE, which I believe puts them in direct contact with the other side, so to speak. However, this discussion would take us far afield.

Sure I can give an example where intention doesn't mean much at all, in fact you could have good intentions and still commit an immoral act. You are driving and are distracted by the angry conversation you're having with your wife, and in that moment you run a red light and accidentally kill someone. It's done unintentionally, but it's something you could have avoided if you were paying attention. It's clearly your fault and you know it's your fault. Harm has clearly been done, the person was killed, and it's an accident that could have been avoided if you had been paying attention. By not paying attention you are responsible for the death of another. This is analogous to driving under the influence, that is, you might not have the intention of killing another, but the result is that by driving under the influence, which you know to be wrong, killed another. The same is true in my above example, you know that if you don't pay sufficient attention to the road you can cause bodily harm to another, but you ignored this important point.

The same is true in my above example, you know that if you don't pay sufficient attention to the road you can cause bodily harm to another, but you ignored this important point. — Sam26

Nitpicking here. To me this example presents a choice between two alternatives. One alternative is that of paying attention to the road, which you know to be ethical, at expense of short-term loss of ego’s pride (or something to the like). The other is that of focusing in on an argument at expense of being attentive to where you’re driving. The individual, given the presence of this choice between now momentarily sensed alternatives, is culpable for the decision made. This is so strictly due to the willed intention to pursue the second alternative at the expense of the first. So we find the individual at fault for vehicular manslaughter on grounds of what the individual intentionally chose. As you say, same enough with drunk driving, or with talking on mobiles while driving, etc.

I think something without intention would be running over a person due to a momentary instance of vertigo, or epilepsy, etc., that was unforeseeable. While proving that such was the case can be exceedingly difficult, were it to in fact be proven to have been the reason for the momentary lack of attention given while driving, would the outcome then still be considered an immoral act by the driver? Here, there was no conceivable intention on the part of the driver that could have been alternatively acted on which would have prevented the accident.

Likewise with a blown tire that deviates the car’s trajectory.

I don't think there is any clear intention involved in the accident. You weren't even thinking, just reacting to the argument. It's not like someone says, I'm going to have this argument in spite of the fact that I might kill someone. It's just something that's happening at the moment. Again, they're not thinking, and thus not even aware of the act that's about to happen.

We differ on how much of a person’s behaviors we deem to be intentional. Acts of passion—I think they’re legally called—could be deemed acts of lack of thought that hold harmful results. The guy who kills his significant other when finding them cheating is, thus, to me, guilty of an immoral act due to his choices—regardless of how guilty he feels afterward. To some lesser degree, a heated argument while driving could be considered an instance of these acts of passion. Again, I personally find the individual culpable for the ensuing harm due to the choices made and, thus, the intentions held. In the case of the driver, the car could have been pulled over, for instance—especially once the argument gets out of hand. Still, I again acknowledge it’s a murky area. To concede a little, at some unfortunate instances a momentary lack of attention (say, when reaching over for a water bottle while driving … minor instances of non-attention which we’ve all been involved in at one point or another) can result in a lot of harm (like a kid just then running out into the street before you chasing after a ball).

I’m personally OK with there being a difference of opinion in relation to how much of this ought to be considered intentional (by which I mean volitional). I again was nitpicking.

No problem Javra, good discussion.

good discussion. — Sam26

Ditto.

The issue with intention that has not been addressed is that they are constrained by their position in an infinite future. Your examples all focus solely on what the perpetrator 'intended' to be the immediate outcome of their action, Consider person A in the example (pushing the would be assassination victim). Person A's intention might be to harm Person B (immoral), but maybe to teach person B a lesson for some act of harming another perpetrated by person B (A is now moral again? depending on your view of punishment), but person B's act (for which he's being punished) was part of a war to overthrow an totalitarian dictator (A is immoral again), but the totalitarian dictator was only trying to bring stability after the overthrow of a particularly evil tyrant (A is back on the good side) ... and so on.

It's not that any of these facts might be considered 'newly come to light', I'm specifically suggesting that they might all be known to both A and B at the time of the pushing. Now is A moral or immoral for pushing B. Do we take the outcome A intends immediately, one step removed, two steps ... how many? A may well intend there to be several outcomes of his action. In fact A would be something of an idiot if he were to presume that his action was going to have one single, clear, and entirely exclusive outcome. SO which of these do we use to determine A's intention?

We could then add in some contemporaneous consequences that A can foresee. What if A knows that C is aiming a gun at B? He really wants to harm B by pushing him to the ground, but doesn't want to see B killed. Now is he moral or not?

Your 'intentional by neglect' examples (drink driving, carelessness), which you've branded immoral by intent are similarly time-constrained. How far into the future do we expect people to predict the consequences of their actions? It's easy to determine (using the 'intention' model) that drinking and driving might expose other road users to danger and so one's intentions in doing so are immoral, but what about paying taxes, giving to charity with multiple and long-lasting consequences? How far into the future are the outcomes (or possible outcomes) of our actions by which others judge what our 'intentions' were? What point in the potentially infinite distant future do we take to be the 'final' state of the world A is trying to achieve by his actions?

These problems are essentially the reason why virtue ethics persists, even though you're focusing on intent you still have a consequentialist ethic because you're using the consequences of the perpetrators actions as a means of determining their intentions, it therefore suffers from the same problem as all other consequentialist ethics, what point in the future do we use to judge?

These problems are essentially the reason why virtue ethics persists, even though you're focusing on intent you still have a consequentialist ethic because you're using the consequences of the perpetrators actions as a means of determining their intentions, it therefore suffers from the same problem as all other consequentialist ethics, what point in the future do we use to judge? — Inter Alia

All your examples simply change the facts of the cases. If you change the facts, then the outcomes are going to be different. Moreover, there will always be examples that are more complicated, which involve what people know, what people should have known, or even possible future outcomes.

My particular brand of ethics is definitely not a consequentialist view, that is, that it's based on some fact or facts brought about by someone's acts or intentions. My particular brand of ethics is more closely related to a deontological view, which are based on rules or principles. Thus we have a duty to act a certain way. For example, one might say we have a duty to act in a way that brings about the least amount of harm. Thus, if you were hiding Jews in your attic during WW2 and the Nazi's came to your home and asked if you were hiding Jews, your duty would be to lie. First, because the action of telling the truth would lead to murder, thus telling the lie would lead to the least amount of harm. In fact, Kant might say that the Nazi's have no right to the truth because of what they intend to do, because of the evil they will commit.

The problem with any theory, including ethical theories, is that it's difficult to find one that covers every possible scenario. All we can do is try to live as closely as we can to certain principles, and make the best decisions we can based on the information we have.

The two consequentialist theories that come to mind are utilitarianism and hedonism, which in my humble opinion are not good ethical theories. However, trying to put forth a theory of ethics in this thread would be further than I want to go, at least for now. All I will say is that for me the best possible ideas of ethics are principle, rule, or duty based.

because the action of telling the truth would lead to murder, thus telling the lie would lead to the least amount of harm — Sam26

I don't understand how this is not consequntialist. You seem to be deriving the ethical rightness of an action from it's immediate consequences. I can see how you are filtering consequences by intent (only that subset of actions leading to harmful consequences that are motivated by the intention to bring about those consequences are immoral) but the whole ethic still relies entirely on the judgement of consequences and so still suffers from the same problem. Consequences for whom, and for how far into the future?

I tend to agree that Ethics needs to avoid consequetialism in general (personally I'm a virtue ethicist), but your use of 'intent' here necessitates a level of understanding that I think is unobtainable.

So, what if the home owner has been threatened with violence by the Jewish family if they reveal their whereabouts? The home owner might still not want the Jews killed but also fears for his own welfare either way, how do we now determine his intent to decide which is his moral course? He, like most people in the real world, will have more than one outcome in mind as a result of his actions, with more than one timescale applicable to each.

I do think intent is important, but you haven't read my posts carefully if you think intent is the primary factor. My focus is on the harm done, but that's not all of the focus obviously.

I understand your position to be that those actions where there is both harm and the intention to cause harm are immoral, as I summarise in my parenthesis above.

That being the case, determining if an action will cause harm becomes necessary (harm to whom and for how far into the future?) as does determining intent (what if a person intends multiple outcomes?).

Have I still misunderstood something?

Hello. I’m having a hard time understanding your position, at least as things currently stand.

Taking things one step at a time, as regards intention: My reading of your post(s) leads me to presume you disassociate intention—i.e., volition, or will—from sentient action … be these actions of the body or solely of the intellect (e.g., the planning out of bodily action). Action devoid of will, to me, equates to inanimate, entropy-driven (this at least at the macro scale) activity. Were a large bolder to hit a loved one due to extreme wind, I do not find the bolder culpable precisely because the bolder did not will this to be. Where a human (to me, a will-endowed being) to hurl a large bolder toward a loved one, I would then find the human culpable precisely because the human did will this to be.

How can ethics—of any variety: virtue ethics or otherwise—be upheld when the element of volition/will/intention is not considered paramount to the issue?

As a more precise example, to me, a will to anything, happiness and/or flourishing included (i.e., will to eudemonia) necessarily holds will—hence intention—as a prerequisite. Eudemonia in the absence of will to me is nonsensical. If there’s belief that eudemonia does not require will for its being, how then does one make sense of eudemonia in the absence of intention to both better optimize it and maintain it?

I’ll address issues such as those of forethought in light of both short- and long-term durations after I can better understand, hopefully, this perspective of ethics not grounded in intention/volition/will.

Yes, you are on to something! I was not all that familiar with the term meta-ethics, but the way you have described it makes sense. Described as such, you are correct that my original post is merely about the source of our knowledge of the moral good; which is meta-ethics. The focus was not on the essence of morally good intentions and acts; which is normative ethics. This discussion was brought up later on, almost as a tangent; and to this, I claim that the Golden Rule is a sure way to test the moral goodness of an intention and act. While the two topics are related insofar that they deal with ethics, the claims are not dependant on one another.

I also agree about the views that morality is objective, and that predicting the consequences of an act is a good way to determine moral goodness, as this method follows from the Golden Rule.

It is possible, therefore, that determining whether an action is moral, can only be only be done in the context of the perpetrator's acquired knowledge of morality (in the normative sense) because although innately born with the concept of what is 'good' and what is 'evil', they may have no moral knowledge at all i.e. have no clue as to whether their actions will achieve or frustrate the achievement of that state. — Inter Alia

If I understand you correctly, you are saying that although we may all have theoretical knowledge of the moral good, we may lack the knowledge of the right course of action in a given situation. That may be, and this is where the Golden Rule becomes a useful tool. How should I act? The same way I would want others to act towards me in the same situation if the roles were reversed.

I understand, but it's an important part of my view of ethics, there are many who view ethics as subjective and/or relative. [...] So it's my view when talking about justice that we have a view of justice that's has some objective standard. — Sam26

I completely agree.

Your response to the self-sealing fallacy is not sufficient. [...] Thus, because of the way your argument is framed, it's self-sealing as far as I can tell. — Sam26

Well, in theory, we could always ask the individuals whether they have an inclination to seek justice for themselves or not; but I see your point that this is not practicable to do in a large scale. Much like for intentions, we cannot be certain about inclinations from mere observations. However, we have a few solutions left: (1) reasonable claim, and (2) empirical data by observing ourselves.

(1) Reasonable claim: For a given behaviour, it is not more reasonable to assume that the person was seeking justice rather than injustice to themselves?
(2) Empirical data within ourselves: I already asked, but do you not personally have an inclination to seek justice rather than injustice for yourself?

I don't think it's true that necessarily all unjust people know their unjust (you seem to be basing this on the idea of innate knowledge). — Sam26

It must be so, because if they sincerely did not know that their act was causing some harm, then it would be an honest mistake; which is a mistake, but is not unjust.

What is the evidence that we have innate knowledge, as opposed to knowledge gained in some other way. — Sam26

Specifically regarding morality, I summarize here the argument from my original post, which has yet to be refuted: if knowledge is necessary for intentions, and intention is necessary for moral language, then knowledge is necessary for moral language. And we know it cannot be learned from observation, because as Mr. Wayfarer stated earlier, we cannot entail 'what ought to be' from 'what is'. Therefore, either moral language does not exist, or if it does, then its knowledge must be innate.

Generally speaking, there is a test to determine if a knowledge is innate or not, but let's save it for another time, for the sake of keeping this post somewhat short.

Great discussion. I want in. Is either harm or intention essential to morality? Consider the following cases.

(1) Harm without intention: a rock falls on someone. This is not immoral.
(2) Harm with intention: A person intends and successfully kills someone innocent. This is immoral.
(3) Intention without harm: A person intends but fails to kill someone innocent. This is still immoral. I personally would not appreciate this. Would you?
(4) No harm, no intention: A rock; that's it. Clearly not morally bad, and yet, also not morally good.

If the above judgements are correct, then it follows that harm is not essential, where as intention is, unless there exists a case where morality exists without intention.

A few things to note:

• Although it is difficult, or even impossible, to discover some's true intention, true intentions still exist.
• In more complex cases, the intended outcome is more challenging to achieve, but this does not change the intention itself. I.e, willing good or willing harm as the end.

(I haven't worked out how to reply to multiple people yet)

There's a few things to unpick here, but they mainly centre around the contention that;

Although it is difficult, or even impossible, to discover some's true intention, true intentions still exist. — Samuel Lacrampe

and

In more complex cases, the intended outcome is more challenging to achieve, but this does not change the intention itself. I.e, willing good or willing harm as the end. — Samuel Lacrampe

We have no proof that 'True' intentions exist, indeed, if you are of a physicalist, or materialist persuasion, the evidence from neuroscience is very much that we do not have one true motivation, but that multiple desires compete to find a course of action that satisfies them. Think of an animal which desires both to not be eaten and to eat. It finds a patch of grass near a predator, it might choose to eat there with one eye looking out, or eat but only for a short time. It's action is determined by the balancing of two desires, which is the 'True' intention? Humans, are, if anything, even more complex. So already (2) is looking shaky. We know the innocent person gets murdered (outcome is 'Bad', we don't want to live in a society where innocent people get murdered), we may well be able to determine from the evidence that the person intended to kill them, but did they do so because they desired to create a society where innocent people get murdered (the 'Bad' outcome of all this)? How could we know? Maybe they did so because the person stole from them and they considered stealing an offense punishable by death. A society with no thieves in it would be 'Good' (at first glance) would it not? Was this his 'True' intention, and he's simply very stupid or misguided as to what such a society would really be like (lots of innocent people dying by mistake, for a start)?

I won't continue to list exceptions, the point I'm making is that these 'complex' scenarios are actually real life, and there's a very sound reason for it to do with our theory on Meta-ethics. If everyone actually knows what 'Good' is and this knowledge is not just arbitrarily placed in the brain for no reason, then they must at some level be motivated to do 'Good' and avoid 'Bad'. I'm a monist and an atheist, so for me 'Good' is put there by evolution, but I would argue the same is true for theists and dualists, 'Good' must still be there for a reason and so we must still at some level be motivated to do it. Making pretty much all of our action the result of more than one desire (intention) competing, just like the grazing animal.

Leaving the difficulty of assessing 'True' intention to one side for a moment, we have the complication of determining outcome. You say that "...it follows that harm is not essential", but this does not quite get us out of the mire that consequentialism leaves us in. We must still, by this 'intention/outcome' based system, determine what the outcome would have been in order to rule that (3) is immoral and obviously we are using what the outcome actually was in case (2). So we still haven't answered the questions - outcome for whom and over what timescale (how far into the future), which become important the more complex the situation. I'm not sure I see the value in an ethical theory which only works for the simple cases, but which breaks down in more complex ones because the amount of knowledge required becomes to great.

In summary both the 'do unto others...' and the intention/harm rules share the same problem, they use only the accumulated knowledge of the person determining the action. In simple situations this is perfectly adequate, which is why both seem fine when used in such cases, they give us the answers we were expecting. But as soon as the cases become more complex, the knowledge of one individual starts to look inadequate, their ability to see into the future to assess all consequences, their ability to take into account the effect of their actions on multiple people over multiple timescales. This is why societies have, over millennia, evolved guides that are much more generalised, ones which seem to work in the long term, but which require a bit of a leap of faith to an extent, that everything will pan out OK if they're followed. These are the 'Rules' of rule utilitarianism, the 'Virtues' of virtue ethics, the prima facae 'Duties' of deontology. Personally I'm a virtue ethicist, but I would argue, as above, that at least one of these generalised approaches is required, an aim for our actions that has nothing to do with the immediate outcome, neither the actual one, nor the one we 'intended'.

It's not that will/intention is not allowed for. Personally I'm a compatibilist, so I don't actually believe in free will, but that aside, what I'm saying is that because intention is not a single thing, it cannot be used to judge the morality of an action. No-one intends one, and only one, outcome for any action, they might have an immediate outcome in mind, but hope that leads to a whole chain of events, they might be satisfying two or even a dozen different desires at the same time by their actions, which one are we going to use to judge them by? Someone might assassinate an evil dictator, they want the evil to stop but are also quite keen on the glory and notoriety their action will bring, are they right for ridding the world of an evil man, or wrong for killing someone just to gain notoriety? What if they also quite like the whole mission/killing thing (like in a video game), their family are encouraging him so he will make them happy by doing so, he personally has suffered under the dictator's rule so he'll get revenge. Some of these motives are morally acceptable, other aren't so how would we use will/intention here to judge? That's essentially the point I was making, not that we have no will, quite the opposite in fact, we have lots of will, much of it contradictory and competing.

Number 3 still causes harm to a person's character (the one trying to commit the murder), that is, even if you try and fail to do what you intended, it's still immoral as you say, but I would argue that you did harm to yourself. One could also argue that it diminishes the culture in which one lives, so in a sense it does harm to others. I also said that sometimes it's harder to discern the harm, but one could argue that the harm is present. It would take a more detailed explanation of what makes a good character, and also those things that harm one's character.

Although your 4th example is not an example of something immoral, it's is an example of a natural evil, which does cause harm. Thus, not only do all immoral acts cause harm, but all evil, immoral or natural cause harm.

This often (but not always) occurring competition of vying intentions in one single mind is very well explained by David Hume in his Bundle Theory of the Self. It’s a theory I’ve deeply abided by since I first read his works back in University days. Yet one must recognize that health is greatly dependent on there being a unitary functionality of mind, of the mind’s total bundle of intentions. The further one deviates from this, the unhealthier the mind is (typically) appraised to be. While this is a very complex issue, I do modify Hume’s theory to include a singular first-person point-of-view—the “I” its often labeled—which at times engages in its own chosen intentions and which—I would argue—is itself, at least in part, a dynamic, unified composite of the mind’s lesser intentions. It’s a big topic though, at least for me.

In terms of how we would then use will/intention to judge ethical issue, we’d judge what the first-person point of view either actively choose (here, between alternatives) or else engages in (here, by not rejecting its unconscious mind’s intentions—e.g. emotions which goad—but, instead, becoming unified with these intentions; e.g., one feels pangs of envy and, instead of rejecting them as wrong, one then becomes envious and acts out due to so being).

At the end of the day though, this enters into an entirely different topic: that of how the mind works. So we can find a working common base, are we in agreement that ethics is contingent on the presence of will? If not, please furnish examples where this is not the case, so I may better understand.

To your direct question first, I'm afraid the answer is no, although I realise such a fundamental shift in axiom might end this otherwise fascinating conversation. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a compatibilist, so I don't even really believe in free will, but I certainly don't think morality requires it. All I'm interested in is how to guide people's behaviour to help bring about the society that I firmly believe all people (of sound mind) would want to live in. I personally believe this universality of meta-ethics results from the evolution of a social species, but it is also evidenced in the coincidence of moral objectives in all societies (even where actual opinion on how to achieve those objectives might differ widely). I'm not sure how it got there is very important, so long as we agree it's there.

So, given that we all want to live in this (very) broadly similar type of society, we need a set of behaviours which are going to achieve it in the long-term. In small hunter-gather groups living in stable savannah environments it's possible (though by no means necessary) that evolution could instil the appropriate behaviours also, in addition to the objective, but as soon as the environment changes, the group changes, or both change, we are left with just an objective and no instinctive means of achieving it.

All of our actions have wide reaching and multiple consequences sometimes continuing into the distant future. To expect any one person to determine what they are each time they make a single decision is absurd, even whole societies would find the task a challenge, so society develops generalised guides as to the sort of actions that will probably lead to the society we're aiming for in whatever environment we find ourselves in - Virtues. Being virtuous is my morality.

Nowhere in that do I see the need to determine the 'true' will of the person taking the action, society wants that person to act in a certain way for the good of the community as a whole and is justified in taking steps to encourage them to do so, I don't see any reason why they should care whether the person is intending the outcome we're all trying to avoid or not. This kind of thinking is a left-over from the fire-and-brimstone Calvinism (or any other similar religion) where it's all about culpability and punishment, where it is necessary to be sure someone intended the harm. I don't believe in all that, so I do not need to know the intention of the person, I don't need to know if they freely engaged in some immoral act fully aware of the consequences, or whether they did so out of ignorance, I just don't want them to do it, and will take whatever steps are necessary (and are themselves moral) to prevent them from doing so.

To your direct question first, I'm afraid the answer is no, although I realise such a fundamental shift in axiom might end this otherwise fascinating conversation. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a compatibilist, so I don't even really believe in free will, but I certainly don't think morality requires it. All I'm interested in is how to guide people's behaviour to help bring about the society that I firmly believe all people (of sound mind) would want to live in. — Inter Alia

And you maintain that this interest is devoid of your intention/will? I find it hard to believe that you do.

The discussion is so far pleasant to me as well. Been thinking about it and I can’t overcome the sense that you’ve been equivocating the meaning of “will/intention/volition” in you previous posts—to paraphrase, in some stating that there is a multiplicity of intentions/wills in each being and in other stating that there is no will. Because of this, I’m having a difficult time making out what you mean.

Yet this reminds of a case in point scenario: the interpreted meaning of words we use to express beliefs is itself contingent on our appraisals of the speaker’s intentions. As one example of this, whether the speaker is sincere, very subtly sarcastic (such that we don’t notice while others do), or (successfully) deceptive in what they say is not contingent on the phenomena commonly available to both speaker and interlocutor; instead, it is at least partly contingent on the non-phenomenal intentions of the speaker (and, partly, the abilities of the interlocutor to discern these intentions). BTW, unpleasant (or, at least at times, unethical) as the latter two possibilities of sarcasm and deception are, they nevertheless do occur in some human interactions. As another example: Whether “senses” in the one phrase, “good senses are quintessential to a moral life,” addresses a) “the physiological senses via which perception of phenomena occur”, b) “the intellectual capacities for understanding—which was once termed as nous in Ancient Greek, form which the term noumenal is derived”, c) “pragmatic worldviews otherwise expressed as perspectives of common-sense”, d) “the capacity for interpersonal emotive faculties such as those of empathy, i.e. for feelings (but not of the tactile kind) which are interpersonal (as in, “I feel you”)—or e) even a conflation of all these previous meanings—will be fully contingent on i) what the speaker/writer intends by the word “senses” and ii) what the listeners/reader interprets the speaker/writer as intending by expressing this word.

Other examples are possible.

Whether will (intention) is metaphysically describable as “free” or not: How does one justify any interpersonal interaction if the issue of intention is to be completely done away with? (… this both on the part of all others and on the part of one’s own self—as in, one’s own momentary intention to further interact in a pleasant discussion)

I’m hoping this subject matter might better pinpoint our own stances in regard to will/intention.

So your position is that an immoral act is always harmful because the person that causes the immoral act always harms themselves. In your view, is the act immoral because the person harms themselves, or do they harm themselves because the act is immoral? If the former, then how do you know they harm themselves? If the latter, then what makes the act immoral besides intention?

Otherwise, I agree that harm is essential to physical evil.

I'm glad you're still interested.

As I wrote earlier, I'm a compatibilist which means I don't believe in free will, not I don't believe in any kind of will at all. So I have never (intentionally) stated that there is no will, only that it is not free. A person may exhibit several desires for both long and short term outcomes, but they will all be the result of previous thoughts, which in turn are the result of previous thoughts and so on until you get to the first thought which is the result of a genetic instruction to fire the first neuron etc. It just 'feels like' we're making free choices and I think that feeling is really important to acknowledge and make use of in our discourse (hence I'm not a determinist). Your example with language lays out perfectly why I think talking as if 'will' were free is so useful even if we might ultimately believe it isn't.

So, that aside, I'm not claiming that people's actions are not driven by will/intention/desire, but that we don't need to know (and probably can't know) what those will/intention/desires actually are behind any given action in order to judge it moral or immoral.

How does one justify any interpersonal interaction if the issue of intention is to be completely done away with? — javra

In much the same way as we talk freely about someone's 'choice' even if we think that all of their thoughts are simply the result of a deterministic chain set in motion at some incomprehensible 'start of time'. We presume someone has intentions behind the interaction, we come to terms with the fact that we cannot possibly hope to understand what they all are, but that with a very large margin of error and a bit of (hopefully) charitable guesswork we can move on by telling our own little story about what their intentions were, safe in the knowledge that we're telling ourselves a story about what our own intentions are too. I'm no psychotherapist, but I'm pretty sure the whole discipline would be out of business if we all had an absolutely comprehensive and flawless understanding of our own intentions in any given action.

So your position is that an immoral act is always harmful because the person that causes the immoral act always harms themselves. In your view, is the act immoral because the person harms themselves, or do they harm themselves because the act is immoral? If the former, then how do you know they harm themselves? If the latter, then what makes the act immoral besides intention? — Samuel Lacrampe

If there is no harm done when one acts, then I don't see how an act can be called immoral, i.e., what would make it immoral other than the harm done? Also, in an earlier post I showed how intent is not necessarily a feature of an immoral act, the example being an accident where one didn't intend to cause harm, but harm happened nevertheless. Most immoral acts that people commit are intentional, but not all, is what I'm saying. This is the point of calling some immoral acts accidental, it's an accident because someone didn't intentionally set out to harm someone, as opposed to intentionally doing something to harm someone. This is clearly seen in a drunk driving example, or even in an example where someone is not paying sufficient attention to what their doing. In each example one is held accountable for their actions in spite of not intentionally harming others.

Since I believe that all immoral acts have the property of harm, that is, that harm is necessarily a property of an immoral act. Thus, both your questions, ("...is the act immoral because the person harms themselves, or do they harm themselves because the act is immoral?") are answered in the affirmative. I've already explained how intention isn't necessarily a feature of an immoral act. The latter part of your question is essentially the same as the former. It's the same as A=B and B=A.

What's essential to a moral act is not essential to an immoral act, and it's here that people are getting confused. All moral acts have the necessary feature of intentionality, but not all immoral acts. Why? Because one cannot accidentally do what's morally correct. What makes moral actions praiseworthy are their intentionality. If one does the right thing unintentionally, then it's not a moral action, but it can be called a right action. Although it's the case that all moral actions can be called right actions, or correct actions, not all right or correct actions can be called moral actions. For example, I can choose to turn right, which is the correct choice if I want to go to Boston, but whether I go left or right is not a moral question.

It must be said that one's view of what makes an act immoral is essential to whether or not harm is a necessary property. For example, if I believe that all immoral acts proceed from what people decide is immoral, then harm is not an essential property of all immoral acts. However, if one believes that what makes something immoral is the property of harm, and that harm can be shown objectively, then it can and does follow that harm is an essential property of immorality. Calling something immoral doesn't make it immoral. Some religious people think that dancing is immoral, given their ideas about gyrating bodies leading to sexual contact.

Another important point of what makes something both immoral and accidental is responsibility, I'm held responsible for the act of driving drunk and causing harm to someone or myself, because of what I could have reasonably foreseen in terms of my actions. Thus it not about intention, but about what one should have known about certain actions, and thus we are responsible for actions taken that could lead to harm.