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.
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