Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation

Description

This book argues that the moral quality of an act comes from the agent’s inner states. By arguing for the indispensable relevance of intention in the moral evaluation of acts, the book moves against a mainstream, "objective" approach in normative ethics. It is commonly held that the intentions, knowledge, and volition of agents are irrelevant to the moral permissibility of their acts. This book stresses that the capacities of agency, rather than simply the label "agent," must be engaged during an act if its moral evaluation is to be coherent. The author begins with an ontological argument that an act is a motion or a causing of change in something else. He argues that the source of an act’s moral meaning is in the agent: specifically, what the agent, if aware of relevant facts around her, aims to accomplish. He then moves to a series of critical chapters that consider arguments for mainstream approaches to act evaluation, including Thomson’s dismissal of the agent knowledge and volition requirements, Scanlon’s arguments for a derivative relevance of intentions to permissibility, Frowe’s "causal roles" of agents in the moral evaluation of acts, and Bennett’s explicit defense of the objective approach. The book concludes by offering the author’s preferred replacement for the objective approach, an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts. Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, just war theory, the ethics of self-defense, and philosophy of action. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments 1. Introduction Notes Bibliography 2. Objectivity and the Objective Approach 2.1 Preliminaries: Action Theory and Double-Effect Reasoning 2.2 Selected Scenarios 2.3 Objectivity 2.4 The Objective Claim, or the FOSOD, and its History 2.5 The Moral Theorists of the Objective Approach 2.6 Judith Thomson's Position 2.7 Thomson's Objectivity 2.8 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 3. A Case for Joining Deed and Doer 3.1 Agents and Acts 3.1.1 Motions and Meanings 3.1.2 The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes 3.1.3 Reasons, Agency, and Two Dimensions of an Act 3.1.4 A Wittgensteinian Objection from Scruton 3.1.5 Defining Human Acts 3.1.6 Para-Acts: When a Vital Link Is Cut 3.2 The Abstract Nature of Acts 3.3 The Source of an Act's Moral Quality 3.4 An Argument Using Decreasing Levels of Abstraction 3.5 Language and the Moral Evaluation of Acts and Agents 3.6 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 4. Alfred the Would-Be Wife-Poisoner 4.1 Knowledge and Agency in the Ancient Approach 4.2 Agent Knowledge, Acts, and Levels of Description 4.3 The Structure of Thomson's Scenarios 4.4 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 5. The Fat Man Falling From the Sky 5.1 The Ancient Approach and Willing 5.2 Acting without Agency 5.2.1 An Initial Objective Twist 5.2.2 Thomson's Implied Argument 5.2.3 Unwilled Acts and Impossible Duties 5.2.4 Benbaji Bites the Impossible Duty Bullet 5.2.5 Excusing the Impossible 5.2.6 Defining Duties 5.2.7 Selective Claims of Impossible Duties 5.2.8 Rights and Duties Beyond Hohfeld 5.2.9 Responsibility and Agency 5.3 DER, Intention, and Will 5.3.1 Thomson's Argument against Double Effect 5.3.2 Why DER Might Matter: Good Mixes with Evil 5.3.3 Substitution, Foreseen Deaths, and "Killing" 5.3.4 A Problem of Intuitions 5.3.5 Other Cases and Double-Effect Reasoning 5.3.6 Scanlon: Reducing Intention's Relevance 5.4 Rights' Hidden Role 5.5 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 6. Russian Roulette Morality and Future Facts 6.1 The Outcome as Criterion for Permissibility 6.1.1 Outcomes of Acts Are Where the Action Is 6.1.2 Applying Thomson's Theses in the World 6.1.3 Testing the Theses in Law 6.1.4 Testing the Theses in Everyday Life 6.2 Two Objections 6.2.1 Objection One: Thomson Does Not Mean Her Theses Universally 6.2.2 Objection Two: Thomson's "Advantaging" Scenarios 6.3 Future Facts 6.3.1 The Objective Stance and the Scenarios 6.3.2 Objective Future Facts 6.3.3 A Problem of Translation 6.4 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 7. Billiard Balls, People, and Causation 7.1 Causation and Human Action 7.1.1 Causation in a Human Act vs. Other Kinds 7.1.2 Causation and Human Planning 7.1.3 Strange Claims of Causation 7.1.4 Kinds of Causation Not Being Discussed Here 7.1.5 Physical Causation and its Complications 7.2 Thomson and Causality 7.2.1 A Crucial Distinction 7.2.2 A Crucial Definition 7.3 Frowe's Revised Causation Account 7.3.1 Frowe's Fundamentally Objective and Causal Account 7.3.2 Frowe's Framework: Threats, Bystanders, and Causation 7.3.3 Moral Responsibility 7.3.4 The "Causally Upstream" Criterion 7.3.5 The "Non-Moralized Account" of Threats 7.3.6 Causation and Victim 7.3.7 Causal Roles: A General Discussion 7.3.8 Labels and Frowe's Moral Argument 7.3.9 The Moral Weight of the Defensive 7.3.10 A Case of Causal Casuistry 7.4 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 8. A Dialogue with a FOSOD Defender 8.1 The Strong Distinction 8.1.1 Morality's Boundary and an Admission 8.1.2 Objective Descriptions of Acts 8.1.3 The Problem with the Boundary 8.1.4 The Second Order 8.1.5 Going Full FOSOD 8.2 The Voices of the Verbs 8.2.1 "Doing" Verbs, Knowledge, and Intentions 8.2.2 The Legal List of Verbs 8.3 Knowledge in Acts vs. "Knowability" 8.3.1 Knowledge in Another Form 8.3.2 The "Could Have Known" Condition 8.3.3 Bennett's Examples and the Agent Knowledge Criterion 8.3.4 What Agents Know or Should Know vs. Knowability 8.3.5 Sane Second-Order Standards for the First 8.3.6 Facts About Agents' States of Mind 8.4 Summary and Conclusion Notes Bibliography 9. How to Marry Deed and Doer 9.1 Two Missing Pieces 9.2 Some Strengths of this Approach 9.2.1 An Explicit Tradition 9.2.2 Goodness, a Link to Agency, and the Context of Human Acts 9.2.3 A Growing Subtlety and Organization 9.3 A Final Contrast Notes Bibliography Index