You and I disagree about whether this is collateral damage, not because we have a different definition of collateral damage, but because we disagree about whether there is intent in this situation.
If the end-goal is to have sex with a woman, and you choose to hurt this woman to gain it, then her being hurt is part of the plan—and is thus intentional. It is an important sub-goal of the main plan, which is what makes it intentional.
You could have instead chosen to buy her flowers, flatter her, or to choose a different woman (one that does not need hurting for you to gain the end-goal of sex). The presence of acceptable alternatives is one reason why I consider this situation to not be a case of mere collateral damage, but of intent.
So, I realize this is completely tangential to your main point, but: if the army launches an attack against a military target that happens to be located in a civilian neighborhood, knowing perfectly well as they do so that civilians are going to be killed in the process, I’d consider that a pretty good example of both collateral and intentional damage.
Yep—I agree. It’s a classic case that covers both ends of the spectrum.
It also only tends to trip up people that fall for the fallacy of the excluded middle ;)
In this case, it matches my pattern of “intentional damage” and therefore ethically questionable, in my opinion.
That’s not to say that if more evidence came up eg information about how it’s the only alternative, or if the “greater good” outweighed the downsides… it might still be the only preferable choice… but in any case, I’d take a strong interest in the ethics involved before making the decision if I were put in that position.
“unintentionally” in my head means literally “done with intent”.
Ie, if I decide “I hate Joe Bloggs” and then I get in my car, drive until I see him walking alongside the road and intentionally choose to jump the curb and run him over—then I would say that I intentionally killed Joe Bloggs because that is the outcome that I intended to happen.
however—if instead, I get in my car, and am driving down the road, my brakes fail and I see a whole classful of schoolchildren crossing the road… and my only option to not kill them is to jump the curb, which I do… but Joe Bloggs happens to be there and I see that he’s there and choose one death over many…
Well—I would consider that him being killed was unintentional. The main intent of my action was not “I want Joe Bloggs dead” but “I want not to kill the schoolchildren”. It was unintentional to my main aim.
It does seem to—which made me think about exactly which cases I’d consider one or the other. So here goes again… :)
In the example above—I am trying avoid causing hurt to the children—therefore if I hurt one person because it’s the only way to avoid hurting multiple people, it is ethically-difficult… but, in my head, ok in the end because the re is no other option available. If you had the opportunity to choose even less collateral damage (eg slamming on the brakes) you would do so.
In the case of intentionally hurting one woman in order to gain advantage for onself—this does not apply. Especially because you are intentionally hurting another person to help onseself—the sex is the eventual goal… but the hurt is chosen as a necessary step for that goal—there are no other means being considered.
In the case of breaking up with a person—you are intending that you and they not be with one another anymore—you are not hurting them with the intent to hurt them—therefore the “collateral damage” is unintentional. - Also the expectation is that you will both be better off apart (on average). Yes, there are rare cases where an unstable person will not recover… but on average I’d say that if you were trying to have a relationship with the kind of person that was suicidal—you might be better off not being with them… that is obviously an ethical dilemma that will never be covered by a cut-and-dried rule.… but I can safely say that in my head—if I were to leave somebody whom I suspected to be suicidal—I’d be leaving them, not with the intent that they choose to commit suicide—therefore the harm would be unintentional (also, I’d make sure to call somebody that could help them with their suicidal tendencies… but that’s by-the-by).
As to the case where we’re deliberately choosing to kill people that are located in a civilian location… I’d consider it ethically questionable, because you are deliberately choosing to kill people… not just to avoid killing other people (as in the schoolchildren case).
There is intent to kill—even if these particular people are not part of the main intent.
I’d consider it less ethically questionable if they found a way to try to kill these targets without damage to the surrounding areas.
… in fact, in thinking more, I think a big differene is the actual intent itself. Are you trying to Gain by the hurt, or to Reduce a Bad Thing?
I think it’s more ok to hurt to reduce a worse Bad Thing, than it is to simply Gain something that you’d otherwise not have.
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that more pain is bad, and less pain is good. (You already seem to be assuming this, which is fine, I just want to make it explicit.)
Most of these examples are cases of evaluating which available option results in less pain, and endorsing that option. This seems straightforward enough given that assumption.
The example of breaking up with someone is not clearly a case of that, which sounds like the reason you tie yourself in knots trying to account for it.
So, OK… let me approach that example from another direction. If I suffer mildly by staying with my partner, and my partner suffers massively by my leaving him, and the only rule we have is “more suffering is worse than less suffering,” then it follows that I should stay with my partner.
Would you endorse that conclusion?
If not, would you therefore agree that we need more than just that one rule?
Suffering mildly by staying one a person is one thing—but what I had in mind while thinking of that example is that breaking up is painful, but over quickly—whereas staying on in a relationship that isn’t working is bad for both partners—not just the one leaving. - and lasts for a long time (probably decades if you keep at it).
The one that would be “happy if you just suffered quietly a little” can also be not as happy as they would be if the relationship ended and they found somebody that really wanted to be with them. oh, and it isn’t always just a little suffering involved for the wanting-to-leave partner. Plus the factor that perhaps the one wanting to leave may be wanting to make a third person happy…
Of course, if it’s just a small inconvenience to one person—then I wouldn’t advocate breaking up at all. Relationships are “about” compromise on the small things to gain over the long term.
Obviously it all depends on circumstance and we cannot make a single rule to fit all possible permutations...
“unintentionally” in my head means literally “done with intent”.
I’m going to assume you mean “without,” here.
It’s not how I use the word, but yes, it makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
That said, to go back to the original example… if you consider “hurting a woman in order to have sex with her” a pretty good example of intentional damage.… it follows that the main aim in that example is not to have sex, but to cause pain?
Oh—and in any case—thanks for asking these questions. It’s helping me clear up what’s in my head at least a little. I appreciate not only that you are asking—but also that you’re asking in a way that is quite… erm approachable? not-off-putting perhaps? :)
Yep, good catch. bad (ok, non-existent) proof-reading on my part. :)
And you’re right—nutting it out a bit more has made me think more about what I consider intentional or not—and also what the main intent is or not.
In the case of “hurting a woman to have sex”—you are deliberately choosing to hurt her to gain. I think the difference is that the intentionally “hurting a woman to have sex” is more pre-meditated than having no choice but to jump the curb and kill one person instead of many.
Goals build on other goals. Your end-goal is to have sex… but if you make it your temporary goal to reduce her self-esteem to make the main goal more likely, then you are intending her to be hurt, in order to further your goal.
In the case of, say, jumping the curb to avoid children your main goal is avoiding children… jumping the curb is not something you choose as a sub-goal… if there were any other way—you’d choose that instead. It’s not a goal in and of itself, it’s your last possible resort—not your best possible choice.
Anyway—not sure I’m being very clear here—either with you, or in my head. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to extract from one’s emotions. I know there’s been some psychological research on this kind of thing—and AFA my fuzzy memory serves—it’s fairly common to see a moral difference between the “intending to hurt somebody to further a goal” vs “unintentionally having to choose to hurt somebody to help something worse not happen” situation.
I don’t think there is a clear dividing line here—because there a confounding of what’s “moral/ethical” with whats “intentional”.. I think there are two things tangled together that are difficult to separate. I get the feeling that I’m trying to define both at once.
In my head now is that “intentional is generally non-ethical” “unintentional is generally less unethical… but it depends on the main goal and whether or not you are trying to gain, or reduce Bad Things...” :)
I agree with you that this discussion is unhelpfully confounding discussions of intention with discussions of right action, and it also seems to be mingling both with a deontological/consequentialist question.
For my own part, I would say that if I have the intention to perform an act and subsequently perform that act, the act was intentional. If I perform the act knowing that certain consequences are likely, and those consequences occur, then the consequences were intentional.
If the consequences are good ones and I believed at the time that I performed the act that those consequences were good ones, then the resulting good was also intentional.
All of this is completely separate from the question of what acts are good and what acts aren’t and how we tell the difference.
And just to be clear: you say that if Sam does the latter and Pat does the former, Sam has done something worse (or less permissable, or more culpable, or something like that) than Pat, even though the girl is just as hurt in both cases.
Mainly because in most RL situations, it’s a choice between: “girl might get hurt in the backlash” and “girl definitely will be hurt”.
In my head it feels like the difference between manslaughter and murder. Collateral damage versus target.
Even though the person is still dead—a person that negligently kills somebody is an idiot that really needs to clean up their act, but still might be an ok person (as long as you don’t trust them with anything important). Whereas a murderer is somebody you wouldn’t want to be alone with… ever.
Back to PU—the guy who accidentally hurts a girl while earnestly trying to have sex with her is a bit of a social klutz… but the guy who actively hurts a girl to have sex with her is somebody I would not trust and would actively un-invite from all my social dealings.
I actually think the critical issue with pick-up is where the benefits go. In the trolley problem five lives is almost tautologically worth more than one life—in pick-up, though, it’s pushing the fat man in front of trolley … to get laid. Okay, it’s not a fat man’s death in pick-up, but who can say that the girl’s suffering is worth the sexual pleasure? Well, it might be possible to determine, but all of us are culturally programmed to definitely not trust the one guy that benefits to evaluate the situation fairly.
Pick-up artists look sleazy because we don’t trust them to make the right decision with such incentives looming. I don’t think it has a whole lot to do with whether the act is wrong or whether it just causes some wrong consequences. Well, to the extent that it does, I think that this issue muddies the water. From your own post, even, actions of the permissible type in trolley problems still count as manslaughter.
Ah—you said just what I was thinking (and much better). Yes, totally agree. There’s a big difference if the action is taken for personal gain, rather than some other reason.
I certainly agree that the lower chance of causing harm is preferably to the higher chance of causing harm.
That said, I prefer to simply say that, and I mostly consider all this talk of intentionality and collateral damage to muddy the waters unnecessarily in this case.
Anyway. My social/moral intuitions are similar to yours, for what that’s worth.
That said, I also know someone who has accidentally killed (been driving a car in front of which someone walked), and I know someone who has deliberately killed (fired a bullet from a gun into another person), and when I think about those actual people I find I trust the latter person more than the former (and I trust both of them more-than-baseline).
So I don’t put a lot of confidence in my social/moral intuitions in this area.
Hmmm—interesting point with the guy who killed. As I mentioned before—I don’t think there’s one rule to rule them all”.
In my mind, “targetted” is worse than “non-targetted” but there are mitigating circumstances due to other social rules (eg “person B is a policeman killing a dangerous guy waving a loaded gun at a crowd” is less worse than “drunk-driver that killed a guy on the road”)
Was your person B killing for the purposes of personal gain? I think that may tip the balance for me. In a pure application of just the rule we’ve been discussing—if the “action” performed was purely for personal gain, then I’d hold person B more culpable than person A (though A’s not off the books entirely).
Well, so, first off, I do not have privileged access to person B’s purposes. So the most honest answer to your question is “How would I know?”
But, leaving that aside and going with inferences… well, my instinct is to assume that he wasn’t. But, thinking about that, it’s pretty clear to me that what underlies that instinct is something like “I like person B and consider him a decent chap. A priori, a decent chap would not kill someone else for the purposes of personal gain. Therefore, person B did not kill for the purposes of personal gain.”
Which makes me inclined to discard that instinct for purposes of analysis like this.
Person B was a soldier at the time, and the act was a predictable consequence of becoming a soldier. And at least one of the reasons he became a soldier in the first place was because being a soldier provided him with certain benefits he valued. But there were no particular gains that derived from the specific act of killing.
So… I dunno… you tell me? He received personal gains from being in the environment that led him to pull the trigger, and was aware that that was a plausible consequence of being in that environment, so I guess I’d say that yes, he killed for purposes of personal gain, albeit indirectly.
But I suspect you’re now going to tell me that, well, if he was a soldier in a military action, that’s different. Which it may well be.
Mostly, I think the “for purposes of personal gain” test just isn’t very useful, in that even my own purposes are cognitively impenetrable most of the time, and other people’s purposes are utterly opaque to me.
Yes, that one definitely sounds like it falls into grey area. I think the “gain” one only works well if the personal gain is clear-cut. It’s a heuristic, not a hard-edged rule
eg killing somebody to gain their money (to spend on beer and hookers) is generally considered wrong. Killing somebody to stop the performing other bad acts is generally less so. Killing somebody to gain their money to buy medicine for the sick… who knows?
I get the feeling that the rules have a fuzzy-edge so that we can deal with the human-error-margin involved. As you say—often we can only guess at the real motives behind other people’s actions—and our guesses may well be wrong. It means we’re open to interpreting things because we want them a certain way, rather than because they definitely are, but it’s possibly the best we can do with the information we have.
Sure, if we try to come up with hard-edged rules at the level of the superficial form of the act (e.g., “don’t kill people”), we wind up in a huge tangle because of the “human error margin”—that is, the complexity of behavior.
For legal purposes we have to do it that way, and law is consequently a huge tangle.
For purposes of figuring out what the right thing to do next is, I mostly think it’s the wrong way to go about it altogether.
I agree with what you say here, but think that in my mind, there is one more dividing line—that I think Marius comment has made clearer to me. that being a narrowing-down of your own definition of “intentional”, but only including those acts where you are particularly seeking to enact an action that causes harm.
Perhaps there are two uses of “intentional”—the definition you’ve given, and the extra definition that I also use (I kinda use both depending on context).
Intentional-1: In the process of my actions, I choose an act that I’m pretty sure I know of the consequences (in this case harmful).
Intentional-2: I “with intent” seek out a particular act whose consequences I know are harmful—I intend to cause those consequences.
One question that might help you clarify: Fundamentally, is the divide in your head “more interested in taking steps to promote the side effect or in taking steps to avoid it” or “seems to consider the side effect acceptable”?
I think the example of a drunk driver might be an accessible one. Your goal is to get yourself and your car home; your intention is not to hit anyone. In fact, you’d be extremely sad if you hit someone, and would be willing to take some steps to avoid doing so. You drive anyway.
Do you put the risky driving in your intentional category? If you think intentionality means “treats it as a thing to seek rather than to avoid where convenient”, the risk is unintentional. If you think intentionality means “seems to consider the side effect acceptable”, then the risk is intentional because you weren’t willing to sober up, skip drinking, or take a cab.
Thats a very good question, I think your “treats it as a thing to seek” is a good dividing line.
I will admit that I have not fully explored all the grey-areas here before, and was even unsure if there was a strict dividing line—but what you have said here rings true in the cases we’ve considered here.
In the case of hurting a woman to have sex—you are intentionally seeking to hurt her as the path to your objective. In the case of the car-jumping, you are not seeking to have the guy killed. On drunk-driving, I think you are being negligent, but not intentionally seeking to hurt somebody.
Nope—collateral damage is damage done unintentionally. “hurting a woman in order to have sex with her” is a pretty good example of intentional damage.
My definition is pretty clear about which is the unethical of these two.
You are using the word incorrectly. This is independent of what behavior is ethically acceptable.
All damage that is incidental to the primary purpose of an action is collateral damage.
Additional note: Calling Bob collateral damage when you run him over so that you don’t kill lots of children is a correct usage.
You and I disagree about whether this is collateral damage, not because we have a different definition of collateral damage, but because we disagree about whether there is intent in this situation.
If the end-goal is to have sex with a woman, and you choose to hurt this woman to gain it, then her being hurt is part of the plan—and is thus intentional. It is an important sub-goal of the main plan, which is what makes it intentional.
You could have instead chosen to buy her flowers, flatter her, or to choose a different woman (one that does not need hurting for you to gain the end-goal of sex). The presence of acceptable alternatives is one reason why I consider this situation to not be a case of mere collateral damage, but of intent.
So, I realize this is completely tangential to your main point, but: if the army launches an attack against a military target that happens to be located in a civilian neighborhood, knowing perfectly well as they do so that civilians are going to be killed in the process, I’d consider that a pretty good example of both collateral and intentional damage.
Yep—I agree. It’s a classic case that covers both ends of the spectrum.
It also only tends to trip up people that fall for the fallacy of the excluded middle ;)
In this case, it matches my pattern of “intentional damage” and therefore ethically questionable, in my opinion.
That’s not to say that if more evidence came up eg information about how it’s the only alternative, or if the “greater good” outweighed the downsides… it might still be the only preferable choice… but in any case, I’d take a strong interest in the ethics involved before making the decision if I were put in that position.
Huh.
I agree with you here, but I now have no idea what you meant by “collateral damage is damage done unintentionally.”
Yes, this doesn’t seem consistent with how you drew the distinction earlier.
“unintentionally” in my head means literally “done with intent”.
Ie, if I decide “I hate Joe Bloggs” and then I get in my car, drive until I see him walking alongside the road and intentionally choose to jump the curb and run him over—then I would say that I intentionally killed Joe Bloggs because that is the outcome that I intended to happen.
however—if instead, I get in my car, and am driving down the road, my brakes fail and I see a whole classful of schoolchildren crossing the road… and my only option to not kill them is to jump the curb, which I do… but Joe Bloggs happens to be there and I see that he’s there and choose one death over many…
Well—I would consider that him being killed was unintentional. The main intent of my action was not “I want Joe Bloggs dead” but “I want not to kill the schoolchildren”. It was unintentional to my main aim.
Does that make sense?
It makes sense on its own but it contradicts what you said earlier about the cases cousin_it suggested.
It does seem to—which made me think about exactly which cases I’d consider one or the other. So here goes again… :)
In the example above—I am trying avoid causing hurt to the children—therefore if I hurt one person because it’s the only way to avoid hurting multiple people, it is ethically-difficult… but, in my head, ok in the end because the re is no other option available. If you had the opportunity to choose even less collateral damage (eg slamming on the brakes) you would do so.
In the case of intentionally hurting one woman in order to gain advantage for onself—this does not apply. Especially because you are intentionally hurting another person to help onseself—the sex is the eventual goal… but the hurt is chosen as a necessary step for that goal—there are no other means being considered.
In the case of breaking up with a person—you are intending that you and they not be with one another anymore—you are not hurting them with the intent to hurt them—therefore the “collateral damage” is unintentional. - Also the expectation is that you will both be better off apart (on average). Yes, there are rare cases where an unstable person will not recover… but on average I’d say that if you were trying to have a relationship with the kind of person that was suicidal—you might be better off not being with them… that is obviously an ethical dilemma that will never be covered by a cut-and-dried rule.… but I can safely say that in my head—if I were to leave somebody whom I suspected to be suicidal—I’d be leaving them, not with the intent that they choose to commit suicide—therefore the harm would be unintentional (also, I’d make sure to call somebody that could help them with their suicidal tendencies… but that’s by-the-by).
As to the case where we’re deliberately choosing to kill people that are located in a civilian location… I’d consider it ethically questionable, because you are deliberately choosing to kill people… not just to avoid killing other people (as in the schoolchildren case).
There is intent to kill—even if these particular people are not part of the main intent. I’d consider it less ethically questionable if they found a way to try to kill these targets without damage to the surrounding areas.
… in fact, in thinking more, I think a big differene is the actual intent itself. Are you trying to Gain by the hurt, or to Reduce a Bad Thing?
I think it’s more ok to hurt to reduce a worse Bad Thing, than it is to simply Gain something that you’d otherwise not have.
This really does seem unnecessarily complicated.
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that more pain is bad, and less pain is good. (You already seem to be assuming this, which is fine, I just want to make it explicit.)
Most of these examples are cases of evaluating which available option results in less pain, and endorsing that option. This seems straightforward enough given that assumption.
The example of breaking up with someone is not clearly a case of that, which sounds like the reason you tie yourself in knots trying to account for it.
So, OK… let me approach that example from another direction. If I suffer mildly by staying with my partner, and my partner suffers massively by my leaving him, and the only rule we have is “more suffering is worse than less suffering,” then it follows that I should stay with my partner.
Would you endorse that conclusion?
If not, would you therefore agree that we need more than just that one rule?
We certainly need more than just one rule. :)
Less pain frequently seems better than more pain.
Suffering mildly by staying one a person is one thing—but what I had in mind while thinking of that example is that breaking up is painful, but over quickly—whereas staying on in a relationship that isn’t working is bad for both partners—not just the one leaving. - and lasts for a long time (probably decades if you keep at it).
The one that would be “happy if you just suffered quietly a little” can also be not as happy as they would be if the relationship ended and they found somebody that really wanted to be with them. oh, and it isn’t always just a little suffering involved for the wanting-to-leave partner. Plus the factor that perhaps the one wanting to leave may be wanting to make a third person happy…
Of course, if it’s just a small inconvenience to one person—then I wouldn’t advocate breaking up at all. Relationships are “about” compromise on the small things to gain over the long term.
Obviously it all depends on circumstance and we cannot make a single rule to fit all possible permutations...
I’m going to assume you mean “without,” here.
It’s not how I use the word, but yes, it makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.
That said, to go back to the original example… if you consider “hurting a woman in order to have sex with her” a pretty good example of intentional damage.… it follows that the main aim in that example is not to have sex, but to cause pain?
Oh—and in any case—thanks for asking these questions. It’s helping me clear up what’s in my head at least a little. I appreciate not only that you are asking—but also that you’re asking in a way that is quite… erm approachable? not-off-putting perhaps? :)
You’re welcome.
Yep, good catch. bad (ok, non-existent) proof-reading on my part. :)
And you’re right—nutting it out a bit more has made me think more about what I consider intentional or not—and also what the main intent is or not.
In the case of “hurting a woman to have sex”—you are deliberately choosing to hurt her to gain. I think the difference is that the intentionally “hurting a woman to have sex” is more pre-meditated than having no choice but to jump the curb and kill one person instead of many.
Goals build on other goals. Your end-goal is to have sex… but if you make it your temporary goal to reduce her self-esteem to make the main goal more likely, then you are intending her to be hurt, in order to further your goal.
In the case of, say, jumping the curb to avoid children your main goal is avoiding children… jumping the curb is not something you choose as a sub-goal… if there were any other way—you’d choose that instead. It’s not a goal in and of itself, it’s your last possible resort—not your best possible choice.
Anyway—not sure I’m being very clear here—either with you, or in my head. This is the kind of thing that is difficult to extract from one’s emotions. I know there’s been some psychological research on this kind of thing—and AFA my fuzzy memory serves—it’s fairly common to see a moral difference between the “intending to hurt somebody to further a goal” vs “unintentionally having to choose to hurt somebody to help something worse not happen” situation.
Edit: Looks like PhilGoetz mentions it in his comment about trolley problems
I don’t think there is a clear dividing line here—because there a confounding of what’s “moral/ethical” with whats “intentional”.. I think there are two things tangled together that are difficult to separate. I get the feeling that I’m trying to define both at once.
In my head now is that “intentional is generally non-ethical” “unintentional is generally less unethical… but it depends on the main goal and whether or not you are trying to gain, or reduce Bad Things...” :)
OK, I think I’m kinda following this.
I agree with you that this discussion is unhelpfully confounding discussions of intention with discussions of right action, and it also seems to be mingling both with a deontological/consequentialist question.
For my own part, I would say that if I have the intention to perform an act and subsequently perform that act, the act was intentional. If I perform the act knowing that certain consequences are likely, and those consequences occur, then the consequences were intentional.
If the consequences are good ones and I believed at the time that I performed the act that those consequences were good ones, then the resulting good was also intentional.
All of this is completely separate from the question of what acts are good and what acts aren’t and how we tell the difference.
Looks like Shokwave has formulated the distinction a bit better with his comment here
To reinterpret based on cousin_it’s example, the difference is:
“Say something → girl is hurt, get sex” vs “hurt girl → get sex”
I take issue with the latter as I consider it intentional(my definition) damage. The former is unintentional(my definition).
OK.
And just to be clear: you say that if Sam does the latter and Pat does the former, Sam has done something worse (or less permissable, or more culpable, or something like that) than Pat, even though the girl is just as hurt in both cases.
Yes?
Yep.
Mainly because in most RL situations, it’s a choice between: “girl might get hurt in the backlash” and “girl definitely will be hurt”.
In my head it feels like the difference between manslaughter and murder. Collateral damage versus target.
Even though the person is still dead—a person that negligently kills somebody is an idiot that really needs to clean up their act, but still might be an ok person (as long as you don’t trust them with anything important). Whereas a murderer is somebody you wouldn’t want to be alone with… ever.
Back to PU—the guy who accidentally hurts a girl while earnestly trying to have sex with her is a bit of a social klutz… but the guy who actively hurts a girl to have sex with her is somebody I would not trust and would actively un-invite from all my social dealings.
I actually think the critical issue with pick-up is where the benefits go. In the trolley problem five lives is almost tautologically worth more than one life—in pick-up, though, it’s pushing the fat man in front of trolley … to get laid. Okay, it’s not a fat man’s death in pick-up, but who can say that the girl’s suffering is worth the sexual pleasure? Well, it might be possible to determine, but all of us are culturally programmed to definitely not trust the one guy that benefits to evaluate the situation fairly.
Pick-up artists look sleazy because we don’t trust them to make the right decision with such incentives looming. I don’t think it has a whole lot to do with whether the act is wrong or whether it just causes some wrong consequences. Well, to the extent that it does, I think that this issue muddies the water. From your own post, even, actions of the permissible type in trolley problems still count as manslaughter.
Ah—you said just what I was thinking (and much better). Yes, totally agree. There’s a big difference if the action is taken for personal gain, rather than some other reason.
I certainly agree that the lower chance of causing harm is preferably to the higher chance of causing harm.
That said, I prefer to simply say that, and I mostly consider all this talk of intentionality and collateral damage to muddy the waters unnecessarily in this case.
Anyway. My social/moral intuitions are similar to yours, for what that’s worth.
That said, I also know someone who has accidentally killed (been driving a car in front of which someone walked), and I know someone who has deliberately killed (fired a bullet from a gun into another person), and when I think about those actual people I find I trust the latter person more than the former (and I trust both of them more-than-baseline).
So I don’t put a lot of confidence in my social/moral intuitions in this area.
Hmmm—interesting point with the guy who killed. As I mentioned before—I don’t think there’s one rule to rule them all”.
In my mind, “targetted” is worse than “non-targetted” but there are mitigating circumstances due to other social rules (eg “person B is a policeman killing a dangerous guy waving a loaded gun at a crowd” is less worse than “drunk-driver that killed a guy on the road”)
Was your person B killing for the purposes of personal gain? I think that may tip the balance for me. In a pure application of just the rule we’ve been discussing—if the “action” performed was purely for personal gain, then I’d hold person B more culpable than person A (though A’s not off the books entirely).
Well, so, first off, I do not have privileged access to person B’s purposes. So the most honest answer to your question is “How would I know?”
But, leaving that aside and going with inferences… well, my instinct is to assume that he wasn’t. But, thinking about that, it’s pretty clear to me that what underlies that instinct is something like “I like person B and consider him a decent chap. A priori, a decent chap would not kill someone else for the purposes of personal gain. Therefore, person B did not kill for the purposes of personal gain.”
Which makes me inclined to discard that instinct for purposes of analysis like this.
Person B was a soldier at the time, and the act was a predictable consequence of becoming a soldier. And at least one of the reasons he became a soldier in the first place was because being a soldier provided him with certain benefits he valued. But there were no particular gains that derived from the specific act of killing.
So… I dunno… you tell me? He received personal gains from being in the environment that led him to pull the trigger, and was aware that that was a plausible consequence of being in that environment, so I guess I’d say that yes, he killed for purposes of personal gain, albeit indirectly.
But I suspect you’re now going to tell me that, well, if he was a soldier in a military action, that’s different. Which it may well be.
Mostly, I think the “for purposes of personal gain” test just isn’t very useful, in that even my own purposes are cognitively impenetrable most of the time, and other people’s purposes are utterly opaque to me.
Yes, that one definitely sounds like it falls into grey area. I think the “gain” one only works well if the personal gain is clear-cut. It’s a heuristic, not a hard-edged rule eg killing somebody to gain their money (to spend on beer and hookers) is generally considered wrong. Killing somebody to stop the performing other bad acts is generally less so. Killing somebody to gain their money to buy medicine for the sick… who knows?
I get the feeling that the rules have a fuzzy-edge so that we can deal with the human-error-margin involved. As you say—often we can only guess at the real motives behind other people’s actions—and our guesses may well be wrong. It means we’re open to interpreting things because we want them a certain way, rather than because they definitely are, but it’s possibly the best we can do with the information we have.
Sure, if we try to come up with hard-edged rules at the level of the superficial form of the act (e.g., “don’t kill people”), we wind up in a huge tangle because of the “human error margin”—that is, the complexity of behavior.
For legal purposes we have to do it that way, and law is consequently a huge tangle.
For purposes of figuring out what the right thing to do next is, I mostly think it’s the wrong way to go about it altogether.
I agree with what you say here, but think that in my mind, there is one more dividing line—that I think Marius comment has made clearer to me. that being a narrowing-down of your own definition of “intentional”, but only including those acts where you are particularly seeking to enact an action that causes harm.
Perhaps there are two uses of “intentional”—the definition you’ve given, and the extra definition that I also use (I kinda use both depending on context).
Intentional-1: In the process of my actions, I choose an act that I’m pretty sure I know of the consequences (in this case harmful).
Intentional-2: I “with intent” seek out a particular act whose consequences I know are harmful—I intend to cause those consequences.
Intentional-2 is a sub-set of Intentional-1
One question that might help you clarify: Fundamentally, is the divide in your head “more interested in taking steps to promote the side effect or in taking steps to avoid it” or “seems to consider the side effect acceptable”?
I think the example of a drunk driver might be an accessible one. Your goal is to get yourself and your car home; your intention is not to hit anyone. In fact, you’d be extremely sad if you hit someone, and would be willing to take some steps to avoid doing so. You drive anyway.
Do you put the risky driving in your intentional category? If you think intentionality means “treats it as a thing to seek rather than to avoid where convenient”, the risk is unintentional. If you think intentionality means “seems to consider the side effect acceptable”, then the risk is intentional because you weren’t willing to sober up, skip drinking, or take a cab.
Thats a very good question, I think your “treats it as a thing to seek” is a good dividing line.
I will admit that I have not fully explored all the grey-areas here before, and was even unsure if there was a strict dividing line—but what you have said here rings true in the cases we’ve considered here.
In the case of hurting a woman to have sex—you are intentionally seeking to hurt her as the path to your objective. In the case of the car-jumping, you are not seeking to have the guy killed. On drunk-driving, I think you are being negligent, but not intentionally seeking to hurt somebody.
yep—sounds about right to me.