Thank you, George Smith, for such an important question.
First, some clarifying remarks. By asking about the relative importance between intention and action, I assume that what is meant by “action” is actually the consequence or outcome of the action. For instance, when Smith shoots Jones, the outcome would be the death, injury, or perhaps, if Jones is a serial killer, the salvation of the lives of Jones’ many victims. Thus, in evaluating an action (Smith shooting Jones) we might think that there are at least two relevant elements we need to pay attention to: the intention of Smith (what did Smith mean to do/accomplish in shooting Jones) and the outcome (what was the real-world result of Smith’s action). However, which of these is the more important consideration in moral evaluation?
Let’s try to complicate our original example with some complexities. Suppose that Smith shoots and kills Jones. Suppose in one case, Smith, angry at Jones for beating him in MarioKart (we’ve all been there), intentionally shoots and kills Jones while he sleeps. In another case, Smith, who is taking hypnotherapy to cure his MarioKart addiction, is told to shoot Jones as he sleeps while he (Smith) is hypnotized. Smith carries out the deed only to wake up covered in the blood of his most worthy MarioKart opponent. Smith, in this case, did not intend to kill Jones; he was hypnotized. Notice that the action and the outcome remain the same in both cases: Smith shoots Jones and Jones dies. If action and outcome were ALL that mattered, the evaluation of both cases would be the same. However, we usually think that Smith in the first case ought to be evaluated much differently than Smith in the second case. In fact, we might think that the action Smith performed in the first case is much different than the action in case two. The first we call murder; the second is, at worst, manslaughter. The intention thus changes the sort of action performed.
One the other hand, suppose that Smith in the first case walks into Jones’ room and, with flashbacks of spinning turtle shells, points the gun at Jones’ head and pulls the trigger. Imagine two possibilities: first, the gun fires normally, killing Jones; and, in the second, Smith, nervous and shaky, misses Jones, the bullet travels through the floor and strikes a would-be terrorist about to initiate a deadly attack. In both possibilities, Smith intends to kill Jones. The outcome of the action (Jones death or the saved lives of the terrorist’s victims) surely changes the way the action is to be evaluated. In the first possibility, the death of Jones means that Smith is a murderer; in the second, Smith is a hero. Yet, this seems to open up moral evaluation of actions up to all sorts of arbitrary moral luck, which is problematic. Consider the priest who saved a four-year old boy from drowning. The boy ended up being Hitler. Was the priest wrong to save the boy, even though his death would have saved the lives of millions? We might think that the priest’s intention was what mattered.
Furthermore, notice that even the presence of bad intentions and bad outcomes don’t necessarily lead to a bad evaluation. Suppose Smith, intending to kill Jones, shoots him from a distance. Smith misses, striking the tree behind him, which releases a swarm of murder hornets that sting Jones repeatedly. Since Jones is highly allergic to hornets, unbeknownst to Smith, Jones dies quickly. Even though Smith intended to kill Jones, and Jones dies, it is unclear whether Smith is responsible for Jones death.
What do you think? Intentions or actions – which is more important? Let us know in the comments.
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I have a Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of South Carolina where I wrote a thesis on Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy under Konstantin Pollok. I am currently doing a PhD at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) in the project “Universal Moral Laws” under Pauline Kleingeld. I am interested in Kant’s legal and political philosophy as well as contemporary jurisprudence and republicanism. Predictably, then, my favorite philosophical work is Kant’s Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. This work contains, in my mind, some of most important ideas for the possibility of universal and objective moral laws.