- Actions in and of themselves can't be good or bad.
- What makes them good or bad are their consequences/logical implications.
- Actions can be "intrinsically wrong" if they necessarily imply/lead to a bad consequences. For example murder is intrinsically wrong since it necessarily implies the unjustified death of someone.
- Actions can also be "contingently wrong", if, practically, they lead to bad consequences, but don't necessarily. For example, incest is only contingently wrong: in most circumstances it would lead to problems, but it is possible for people to engage in incest without any repercussions.
- A lot of confusion in thinking and discussions about morality come from not properly distinguishing between intrinsically wrong and contingently wrong.
NOTE: I'm seriously rethinking my statements in this post. More to come.
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1 comment:
I can't agree with your distinction between 'intrinsically' & 'contingently'.
If I put poison in someone's coffee - is that intrinsically or contingently wrong? After all - there is a 20% chance of death, a 70% chance of it just making the person sick and a 10% chance it won't even notice it. (In this example I'm not very good at poisons)
If I get a sniper rifle, hide and pick people at random and pull the trigger - is that intrinsically or contingently wrong?
By your definitions, the action of attempted murder is only 'contingently wrong' because in the real world nobody is ever 100% successful.
In both of those cases there is a probability that there would be no repercussions - the victims wouldn't even know they were targeted let alone be traumatised. (Yes, guns & poisons do fail in the real world)
One alternative is to say that no action is wrong and it is the motivation behind it that makes it wrong. So if I share the news of a friend's drug addiction with someone else - is it wrong or right?
1. Intention of hurting them - and it did hurt them. Wrong
2. Intention of hurting them - but it actually helped them. ??
3. Intention of helping them - and it did help them. Right
4. Intention of helping them - but it actually hurt them. ??
The normal answer is that it is intention that matters. The way the law handles this is usually to say that it is based on what you knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.
So it is murder if I get a hand-grenade and throw it into an apartment, killing the occupants. I could argue that I didn't know for a fact that someone was in there - it could have been empty for all I knew. I just like throwing grenades around for the fun of it. Yet it would be considered murder because I *SHOULD* have known that it was likely to kill someone.
In the same way, sharing gossip about a friend's problem can be 'wrong' if I should know that it is likely to hurt them .. even if I'm an idiot who believes that this will be the magic one in a thousand case where gossip actually helps someone.
So - since you know (or should know) that the tantalum in your computer or phone was mined in terrible conditions were human rights are violated to make money to serve your needs ... is it intrinsically or fundamentally wrong for you to buy a new computer of phone?
Mac
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