"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
Yeah, he only tried to do good. I guess that makes him vile.



Ethics of Intentions
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There is an ethical premise that holds the evaluation of actions by
the intentions of the actions. This idea is compatible with any standard of
value. It is the claim that the consequences of an action are not important
morally. Only the desired results.

If morality is a guide to living, it can only be so if the outcome of
action moral is in your interest. By claiming that only intentions matter,
ethics becomes useless. It is left strictly as a method of evaluating the
actions of others. It cannot act a a guide to your actions.

The Ethics of Intentions is derived from the understanding that people
who intend to harm will eventually succeed. It is a way of judging them evil
by the fact that they want to harm people, not that they do. But this is
faulty. It is the impending actions that are evil. The fact that the person
is malevolent implies they will take the actions. But it is the actions that
are destructive.

A newspaper article a few years ago portrayed a mother who had
murdered her young daughter. The mother had come to believe that the world
was a place of suffering, and happiness was impossible. She killed her
daughter in order to save her from the torment of living. Under the Ethics
of Intentions, she should be praised as a hero.


Copyright © 2001 by Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands