What does punishment have to do with consequentialism—Are you hypothesizing that not punishing failed murder attempts would reduce the number of successful murders, but that even people claiming to be consequentialists and claiming to value that consequence wouldn’t consider that solution? I would certainly be in favor of any reduction in punishment if it can be shown that the reduced punishment is more of a deterrent than the original.
Or are you saying that a murder attempt shouldn’t count as murder if no one actually died, and comparing that to your intuition of judging the intentions rather than the consequences? But intentions do matter when evaluating what effect a given punishment policy has on the decisions of potential murderers.
Well, strict consequentialists determine the goodness or badness of an action only by the consequences, not by the intentions of the actor. And that seems to fly in the face of our moral intuitions (as in the attempted murder example), which is why I hypothesized that there are not many strict consequentialist.
As you suggest, a possible way out would be to say that we punish even attempted murder, because it might discourage others to attempt (and possibly succeed) doing the same. And that is what I would call a ‘post-hoc explanation’.
What does punishment have to do with consequentialism—Are you hypothesizing that not punishing failed murder attempts would reduce the number of successful murders, but that even people claiming to be consequentialists and claiming to value that consequence wouldn’t consider that solution? I would certainly be in favor of any reduction in punishment if it can be shown that the reduced punishment is more of a deterrent than the original.
Or are you saying that a murder attempt shouldn’t count as murder if no one actually died, and comparing that to your intuition of judging the intentions rather than the consequences? But intentions do matter when evaluating what effect a given punishment policy has on the decisions of potential murderers.
Well, strict consequentialists determine the goodness or badness of an action only by the consequences, not by the intentions of the actor. And that seems to fly in the face of our moral intuitions (as in the attempted murder example), which is why I hypothesized that there are not many strict consequentialist.
As you suggest, a possible way out would be to say that we punish even attempted murder, because it might discourage others to attempt (and possibly succeed) doing the same. And that is what I would call a ‘post-hoc explanation’.