Many consequentialist systems consider the morality or immorality of an action to be a function of the consequences expected by the agent at the time when it makes the decision. For any act, there is a possible universe where that act results in harmful consequences relative to the alternatives. What matters is how harmful it typically is, when executed by an agent in the same epistemic state.
I would guess that among humans we consider self-harming behaviour a sign of mental incompetence, since people don’t usually desire their own suffering. Hence someone who takes “stupid” actions is probably believing that the actions lead to excellent consequences, in which case you can prevent such behaviour through psychological treatment rather than punishment.
Well, OK, but if “better addressed through psychological treatment than punishment” is equivalent to “not immoral”, then it seems that by that reasoning my harming others isn’t immoral either, as long as I’m incompetent enough to expect an increase in value from my actions.
I guess so. But harming anyone at all can still be considered bad. “Immoral” simply has a connotation (or maybe even an additional denotation?) of “blameful” that means it can basically only be applied to competent agents.
Many consequentialist systems consider the morality or immorality of an action to be a function of the consequences expected by the agent at the time when it makes the decision. For any act, there is a possible universe where that act results in harmful consequences relative to the alternatives. What matters is how harmful it typically is, when executed by an agent in the same epistemic state.
I would guess that among humans we consider self-harming behaviour a sign of mental incompetence, since people don’t usually desire their own suffering. Hence someone who takes “stupid” actions is probably believing that the actions lead to excellent consequences, in which case you can prevent such behaviour through psychological treatment rather than punishment.
Or something like that.
Well, OK, but if “better addressed through psychological treatment than punishment” is equivalent to “not immoral”, then it seems that by that reasoning my harming others isn’t immoral either, as long as I’m incompetent enough to expect an increase in value from my actions.
I guess so. But harming anyone at all can still be considered bad. “Immoral” simply has a connotation (or maybe even an additional denotation?) of “blameful” that means it can basically only be applied to competent agents.