Topics Ethics

Question Can we differentiate, in ethics, between the morality/immorality of an action and that of a person? For example, it seems a lot of people would have trouble making up their minds about the following scenario: I help a friend study for her upcoming math exam. Unknowingly, and through no fault of my own, I teach her the wrong material, and she ends up failing. To solve the issue of whether my action was moral or not, can we not say that though my action itself was immoral, (assuming we're following utilitarianism here) I cannot myself be blamed, for my intentions were best and I was acting in a way that I believed would help her. Can I make this distinction? Is it common for philosophers to do this?

Accepted:
October 19, 2008

Comments

Yes, philosophers do make the distinction you are looking for here, but it gets a little complicated.

On the one hand, even philosophers interested in consequences can talk about character traits in the way you want--because it is obviously arguable that some character traits are more likely to produce good consequences than other character traits. On the other hand, some philosophers (called "virtue theorists") think that the evaluation of actions and their consequences is really secondary (and parasitic upon) the evaluation of character traits. But most virtue theorists do not simply regard the virtues as having the right motivations. Consider a case I recently argued professionally--I call it the case of the kindly klutz. Someone wants to help an ailing person across the street, but so misjudges her own strength that she ends up breaking the arm of the person she sought to help. I think we might give her some credit for her motivations, but would fault her for her bad judgment, and thus say that although she has the right motivations to be kind, she does not really have the fully realized virtue of kindness. So, I think that complete virtues also require something like a reliability condition.

Anyway, my point is that we can certainly distinguish between good outcomes and good intentions, but we should also realize that good intentions alone are not enough to make us blameless if things do go wrong.