Quote:
Originally Posted by kennethamy  Philosophers have tended to call actions "right" or "wrong". Philosophers, who are sometimes called, "consequentialists" have graded actions in terms of their consequences for those affected by the consequences, and actions whose consequences are good have been said to be actions which are right, and actions with bad consequences, wrong. So, it seems to me that an action may have a good motive, say love for a child, but it is easy to think of an action motivated by love, which may have bad consequences (smothering love for the child, for example) And it is just as easy to think of an action which has a bad motive, but which has good consequences. Whether we should judge an action by its motive, or by its consequences, is an old and vexed question in moral philosophy. Immanuel Kant held that since no one could be sure of what the consequences of his action would be, since chance often takes a hand, all a person can do is make sure that his motive was a good one. On the other hand, the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, thought that Kant's view was unthinking, and that a moral person had to take the probable consequences of his action into account before deciding whether to do that action. Mill thought that Kant was really confusing the moral worth of the action with the moral worth of the person who was performing the action. The moral worth of the action was a function of the probable consequences of the action. But the moral worth of the person had to be judged in terms of the persons motive. And a good person might (as we saw) perform wrong actions from good motives; and, of course, a bad person may perform a right action for bad motives.
In his play, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot has Thomas Becket says, "The greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason". But, of course, Mill would not agree. |
Well said, and I know about the consequence view on the moral of an action.
I just didn't mention it because I wanted the good/bad thing to come before the result of the action, trying to judge an action just based on what the person
knows when he does the action. Ofcourse as Mill thought, the person have to take the consequences into concideration when performing the action.
So what's your standpoint? What do you think makes an action good or bad? You can take the consequences aproach if you wish to, just want to know what you think...