Well, by "isolated" I meant more that if you gave me that single example of self-defense and told not to think about any other examples or perspectives that might draw me to different conclusion but instead to focus on self-defense and self-defense only then yeah, I'd probably be inclined to agree.

I really don't want to discuss US law as I have no clue about it and there are a lot of preconceptions I might have from one specific example of European law but it seems to me from what you wrote that US law also recognizes the difference between a guy who says "I killed him but it was self-defense" and a guy who says "I actually did not do that, nothing like that happened or I did not commit a crime". Intention is crucial because it decides whether you're guilty or not but consequence of killing a man is also somehow pronounced, even if it's symbolic.

I can see why you think that that may not be a fair perspective, but I do think it is important to consider the current context of criminal law. It seems that the way you frame the question of whether intentions or consequences are more important to criminal law is not fair as well since obviously criminal law is created in reaction to consequences and we do not criminalize unrealized intentions, however malicious they are. — Erik Faerber

And that is exactly where I think we stop for a moment and say "okay, so consequences seem to be more important". I don't think that criminal law starts from the point where we already have some kind of legislature and it just is. I think that process of deciding what behaviour needs to be punished and how is also what we call criminal law.

I suppose the way I wish to frame the question is "in the determination of criminal liability within criminal law, does the intent, or lack thereof, to commit a criminal action matter more than the fact that a criminal action was committed." I think that the self-defense point comes in handy here as it is an overruling of consequences by intentions although other examples of the intent/consequence clash such as criminal negligence muddy the waters. — Erik Faerber

Well, still, "criminal action being commited" seems to matter more because if court finds out that there was no change in outside world in any way (no action commited) there is absolutely no way to assign responsibility.

I see what the point is in the sense that in case of self-defense, I agree, it seems that in that isolated case even though there is a really bad consequence, intention seems to be more crucial here in determining criminal liability and that seems to be the main point of consideration. But even then there are many examples where you don't need bad intention to be found guilty, pretty much nobody driving a car has an intention to cause an accident but people are still being punished for this. Also notice how you can have same bad intentions but you won't be punished the same way for stealing as for killing a person. Even in the case of self-defense (but that probably varies vastly depending on legal system, that's why it's pretty hard to talk about "law in general") it's still a crime being commited (unlike a situation where for example you just simply did not do it), it's just a crime that you can't be assigned responsibility for.

Anyway, we seem to agree for the most part on reality and understand each other perspective, it's just really minute disagreement about what "more important" in that situation means.

First, I don't think that we are merely a product of our unconscious drives, only that our actions are a combination of practical reasoning and these drives, and that it is impossible to determine how much influence either of them has over the decision to do an action. — Erik Faerber

Well, I think that even though you can have many reasons to act a certain way there should be one reason in particular, at least objectively, that pushes you over the top. That reason should be conscious in order to be considered ethical. I could think of some examples where I'd think it's really apparent and reasonable to say that somebody really acted because of conscious decision he willingly took. But you might be right. Maybe we can't do that and we can never really determine what pushed us over the top and made us do certain thing. But I think if we say that, then it also means that we can never say whether something was ethical or not because we are never certain if it was conscious decision or unconscious drive of nature we had no control over that was our intention. Thus consequences probably also don't matter because they are merely a product of a drive we could not resist.

Interesting points. I think that because criminal law starts from a point of bad consequences, to resolve the issue we need to ask whether criminal law ever allows for intention to override these consequences. This seems to be present within self-defense law, where a killing in self-defense is literally termed a "justifiable homicide". When GOOD intentions are brought into the picture, the consequences of action are not as important as these intentions, unlike cases when NO intentions (manslaughter) or BAD intentions (murder) are held, in which consequences take priority. This implies that intentions of an act are more important to the law because they act as a side constraint on the responsibility for the action, thus controlling whether or not the consequence of an action even matters. Obviously you are correct that we cannot police bad intentions that result in either good or no consequences, but because we are arguing within the context of criminal law, a criminally-charged consequence must have already occurred in order for the law to consider it. — Erik Faerber

Okay, I can totally see what you mean. I agree, if you look purely from this perspective where we are already placed within the context of criminal law it seems like there will be a lot of cases where you'd be inclined to say that intention seems to take precedence over consequence. But I am not sure whether that's fair perspective to look from if you want to answer question "what's more important for criminal law - intention or consequence?". When you had already predetermined that every consequence you'll consider will be bad then obviously the question about intent will be much more important from there on out. But notice that criminal law also changes constantly and the way it changes (what new behaviours are penalized) is all about the consequence.

You are correct that random externalities can in some instances derail us from fulfilling our desired consequences, but it is not even clear that we are truly aware of our own intentions when we act. In the car example, Freudian theory would suggest that the seeming intention to brake and not risk crashing may possibly be masking an unconscious death drive (I don't think too much of Freud's theories but this is just a potential argument). Regardless of specifics, whether or not the intentions we believe ourselves to hold are the same as our actual intentions is impossible to determine. Because of this, I believe that we have more control over the results of our material actions than over the conscious and unconscious drives and influences that make up our mental state. — Erik Faerber

Yeah, sure. I was kind of speaking from the point of Kantian ethics which defends intentionalism so I should perhaps explain this more clearly. This philosophy generally says that the difference between animals and humans is that humans have the ability to act against their natural urges if they choose to. Only those kind of actions, where you are acting not like any animal would but like a human being, can be considered ethical. So basically intention needs to spring from conscious reason in order to be ethical, unconscious drives cannot be ascribed value of being ethical or unethical.

From that standpoint if we accept your premise then basically there is no ethics to be spoken of. We all act like animals. Even if we think we can act from a reason we probably don't because it might as well be unconscious natural urge. But if that's the case then I am also not sure how results matter, they are just consequences of behaviour that you had no choice over and as such were outside of your control, too.

I think such scenarios show that the distinction between 'consequentialism' and 'intentionalism' is artificial, in the sense that neither pure consequentialism or pure intentionalism captures the 'moral status' of an act - they are both 'one-eyed' over-simplifcations that have the dubious attraction of being simple and providing an easy-to-apply classification of acts into 'good' and 'bad' but with the huge defect of mis-classifying many real world situtations. — keithprosser

Yeah, of course. I think that you essentially need to find the right balance that suits your moral intuition.

I think ernestm is correct in this. The difference between murder and manslaughter is a good example of how the intent to kill or lack thereof affects how gravely the law judges an action. You are correct that the law doesn't deal with rectifying good consequences stemming from bad intentions, but that is due to the fact that criminal law is centered around determining how to judge responsibility for bad consequences and bad consequences only(perhaps not "bad", but that which the law deems "criminal"). The ultimate importance of intent within the law is shown in this stage, as the intent which led to this bad consequence has the final say in how responsibility is assigned. — Erik Faerber

I am not saying intention has no importance in criminal law. It very often does, sure. But I am not sure how you can say intention is more important than consequence when only when you have a certain consequence you can start considering intentions. There is a difference between murder and manslaughter, yes, one is penalized more harsher than the other. Now consider the difference between consequence and a lack of consequence - when nobody died criminal law doesn't even consider it (obviously you can speak about attempt or inchoate crimes but even then you have some "consequence" in outside world, sole intent not manifested in any way is probably outside of consideration of any criminal law in the world, that would be Orwellian "thoughtcrime"). When somebody died then it's just a matter of responsibility. The difference is far greater when you consider the consequences.

I think that the purpose of an action is the deciding factor in these situations. Within the first one, the purpose of the action is to overthrow the dictator in order to prevent violence. If we assume that the prevention of violence is a good thing that should be aspired to, then the fact that the action resulted in a worse state of affairs negates the importance of the good intentions.
However in the second scenario, while people may have many reasons to drive, the purpose of driving is never solely to not get in a crash, otherwise no one would ever drive due to the fact that risk of crashing exists. Because the crash is an external consequence not tied to the purpose for taking the action, it does not have any ethical strings attached to it. The fact that the driver got into a crash would not have any moral weight upon it unless there was some sort of factor which led to the driver taking an intentional action of crashing, thus shifting their purpose. — Erik Faerber

Well, consider example where driver A and driver B are on a road and they're in a situation where they need to apply the brakes. Driver A does try to stop the car with the very intent of not causing the accident in that situation and it works. Driver B does the very same thing, his intent is also not to cause an accident in that situation but it doesn't work because there was something wrong with the car that he could not reasonably foresee. Does the fact that external consequence is now somehow tied to the purpose for taking the action change that much?

The point was that you are not always in control of consequences of your actions the way you're in control of your intentions. The guy who wanted to overthrow the dictator might have never been able to reasonably foresee that this might happen and at the time it could seem like the best idea in the world to everybody. But sometimes in life things happen that are just outside of our control. And when you consider it, it feels very weird to attach some ethical importance to what was outside of your control.

Perhaps we should start by asking how one would verify or falsify the claim that either intentions or consequences are more important. Is there some empirical evidence that would help? Are there some moral axioms that a correct answer must either follow from or not contradict? — Michael

I don't think it's a scientific question. It's a philosophical discussion. It's been around forever and there is no right or wrong answer here. No ethical theory is free of problems. It's honestly a matter of what moral intuitions you have and how many of those intuitions that given ethical theory can capture for you.

In ethics, consequences are now generally considered more important. However the specific nature of 'consequence' itself can be difficult to define, due to problems with identifying whether there was intentional agency in the causality. So in law and morality, intent is usually more important. — ernestm

I am not sure. What I'd say is that consequentialism is pretty common intuition of many people not engaged in philosophy because it's actually really easy to understand and thus feels very appealing. But are consequences considered more important in ethics? Debatable. I feel like Kantian ethics that say something completely different is probably considered the most important ethical theory ever.

Also could you elaborate what do you mean that in law intent is usually more important? Hard to talk about every legal system but I'd say it's actually the other way around - criminal law for the most part doesn't even consider cases where there is only "good" consequence but the intent was "bad". On the other hand it very often considers cases where there was no "bad" intent but there is "bad" consequence.

So from a consequentialist perspective, the intentions that are directed towards the best possible outcome are those that are preferable. — darthbarracuda

I feel like what consequentialist perspective says is that intentions are not important at all. Let's say that you can save twenty people but in order to do so you have to torture a terrorist to get information out of him. It's not that consequentialist would say torturing a terrorist is an ethically good intent here, he would say that it's not what we need to focus on because the source of right and wrong is the end result which is that torturing a killer in order to save twenty people is the "good" end result.

An intention can be bad from the start. Cheating on tests not only conceals a lack of preparation, it also indicates a willingness to dishonestly obtain a good which others [hopefully almost all others] are seeking to obtain without subterfuge. A "good" might be obtained from the bad intention--without justifying it: perhaps this is her last class at University, and she has to pass it in order to graduate. Graduating--even if by guile--might be better for everyone than her not graduating and thus being unable to earn enough to support a family.

On the other hand, if the information she should have learned might be critical to the wellbeing of others, then there isn't an upside to her graduating. — Bitter Crank

Well, that's the problem purely in the realm of consequentialist theories - it's really hard to know what produces the most good in a given situation.

I'll say, in the perspective of observing oneself, intentions are more important than the consequences. However, in the perspective of observing others, consequences are more important than the intentions. — WiseMoron

That's actually very interesting observation and also true. It's really easy to subscribe to consequentialist theories when you're talking about other people because consequences matter to everyone. But very well known downside to those theories is that they may require you to detach from your own sense of self for the sake of producing the better result. I mean let's say the guy who kidnapped you and some other guy says that either you kill him or he will kill him but he will kill him in a way that will be much more painful. From a consequentialist perspective you are ethically obligated to kill him. Now, I think it's much easier to accept that when you're talking about other people because there is no sense of self involved here but if you yourself were to do that you'd probably feel a lot less inclined to say that killing the guy is ethically right choice here given the fact that it goes against every single moral commitment and belief you had in your life that were also the very essence of why you would call yourself an ethical person in the first place.

Consequences. I'm not a die-hard consequentialist, but intentions tend to rank very low in determining whether an action is good or not. Who cares if you had the best intentions to overthrow a violent dictator- if your actions lead to such catastrophe and loss of life that it makes the dictator's violence pale in comparision, in what way are your actions good? — Chany

Well, that's one example but consider the situation where person A and B are driving a car. They both drive the very same way but for some reason person B causes an accident that happened for a reason absolutely outside of his control. The results differ drastically, former is "good", latter is "bad". But are those situations ethically any different?