When thinking about deontology and consequentialism in application, it is useful to me to rate morality of actions based on intention, execution, and outcome. (Some cells are “na” as they are not really logical in real world scenarios.)
In reality, to me, it seems executed “some” intention matters (though I am not sure how much) the most when doing something bad, and executed to the best ability matters the most when doing something good.
It also seems useful to me, when we try to learn about applications of philosophy from law. (I am not an expert though in neither philosophy nor law, so these may contain errors.)
Intention to kill the person
Executed “some” intention
Killed the person
”Bad” level
Law
Yes
Yes
Yes
10
murder
Yes
Yes
No
8-10
as an example, attempted first-degree murder is punished by life in state prison (US, CA)
Yes
No
Yes
na
Yes
No
No
0-5
no law on this (I can imagine for reasons on “it’s hard to prove”) but personally, assuming multiple “episodes”, or just more time, this leads to murder and attempted murder later anyways; very rare a person can have this thought without executing it in reality.
No
Yes
Yes
na
No
Yes
No
na
No
No
Yes
0-5
typically not a crime, unless something like negligence
No
No
No
0
Intention save a person (limited decision time)
Executed intention to the best of ability
Saved the person
”Good” Level
Yes
Yes
Yes
10
Yes
Yes
No
10
Yes
No
Yes
na
Yes
No
No
0-5
No
Yes
Yes
na
No
Yes
No
na
No
No
Yes
0-5
No
No
No
0
Intention to do good
Executed intention to the best of personal ability1[1]
I’m not sure what work “to the best of personal ability” is doing here. If you execute to 95% of the best of personal ability, that seems to come to “no” in the chart and appears to count the same as doing nothing?
Or maybe does executing “to the best of personal ability” include considerations like “I don’t want to do that particular good very strongly and have other considerations to address, and that’s a fact about me that constrains my decisions, so anything I do about it at all is by definition to the best of my ability”?
The latter seems pretty weird, but it’s the only way I can make sense of “na” in the row “had intention, didn’t execute to the best of personal ability, did good”.
I think this is conditioning on one problem with one goal, but I haven’t thought about the other good collectively (more of a discussion on consequentialism).
For best of personal ability, I think the purpose is to distinguish what one can do personally, and what one can do to engage collaboratively/collectively, but I need to think through that better it seems, so that is a good question.
My reason on the na for “have intention, no execution/enough execution, did good” is: there is no action, so we cannot even infer correlation. An example is, I want to help A, but I didn’t do anything. A is saved anyways, by another person. So there is no action taken on my part.
When thinking about deontology and consequentialism in application, it is useful to me to rate morality of actions based on intention, execution, and outcome. (Some cells are “na” as they are not really logical in real world scenarios.)
In reality, to me, it seems executed “some” intention matters (though I am not sure how much) the most when doing something bad, and executed to the best ability matters the most when doing something good.
It also seems useful to me, when we try to learn about applications of philosophy from law. (I am not an expert though in neither philosophy nor law, so these may contain errors.)
Possible to collaborate when there is enough time.
I’m not sure what work “
to the best of personal ability” is doing here. If you execute to 95% of the best of personal ability, that seems to come to “no” in the chart and appears to count the same as doing nothing?Or maybe does executing “to the best of personal ability” include considerations like “I don’t want to do that particular good very strongly and have other considerations to address, and that’s a fact about me that constrains my decisions, so anything I do about it at all is by definition to the best of my ability”?
The latter seems pretty weird, but it’s the only way I can make sense of “na” in the row “had intention, didn’t execute to the best of personal ability, did good”.
I think this is conditioning on one problem with one goal, but I haven’t thought about the other good collectively (more of a discussion on consequentialism).
For best of personal ability, I think the purpose is to distinguish what one can do personally, and what one can do to engage collaboratively/collectively, but I need to think through that better it seems, so that is a good question.
My reason on the na for “have intention, no execution/enough execution, did good” is: there is no action, so we cannot even infer correlation. An example is, I want to help A, but I didn’t do anything. A is saved anyways, by another person. So there is no action taken on my part.