“The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent… . Motive makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it indicates a good or bad habitual disposition, a bent of character from which either useful or hurtful actions are likely to arise..." - John Stuart Mill, 1863
Do you agree with this? It aligns with the old saw that the road to hell is paved with good intentions... though one could also take that to condemn those who simply intend to act well, but, when the opportunity arises, act in a selfish, foolish or immoral fashion.
If you were in need, and someone helped, would their help be more valuable if they acted out of compassion rather than duty? Would their help be meaningless if they helped you by mistake or just as a result of what they were doing anyway? Would you be less grateful if they received pay for their assistance?
Now, help is help, but we are inclined to place extra value on compassionate or selfless acts, on acts carried out at some risk to the agent or against their interests. It would seem somehow odd not to appreciate the intention. Mill does state that the intention speaks to the moral character of the agent and so our intuition makes sense.
There's an interesting thought experiment. If a CEO is told that a development will be bad for the environment and he says, 'I don't care! Do it anyway!' and the environment suffers, we are inclined to blame him. But if he is told the development will be good for the environment and he says, 'I don't care! Do it anyway!' and the environment benefits, we do not praise him. One thing this suggests is that we are more concerned about harm than we are pleased by benefit. But it also suggests that we find it psychologically easier to condemn than to praise.
If a person does a bad action, not only are they likely to be categorised as a 'bad person', but we are not unduly interested in their reasons - which we would perhaps see as excuses and attempts at self-justification. Do we always treat the person who does a good action symmetrically? Maybe. But I suppose we might, if they were a multi-billionaire donating to charity, ask if it was to ease their conscience or wonder what percentage of their income it represented. It depends, perhaps, on the regard in which we hold the person to start with and whether we are likely yo view them - or their group - favourably. In that case, we might be as willing to question the motives for the bad action, if the agent were someone we had initial sympathy for.
Say the person who did a bad action explained that it was a mistake, or they were deluded into thinking it would have a good outcome or they did it in a just cause. We might alleviate some of the blame. Possibly only if we already had reason to regard them positively already. And what of the reverse? If the Good Samaritan explained that he did it to get to heaven and didn't really care about the injured traveler in the slightest, would we praise him less? What about if he only did it because he thought the injured person was a fellow Samaritan? Or if he was doing it for a dare or a bet?
Our moral judgments are complicated and sometimes perverse. Do we want the world to be better or for people to be better? Maybe it doesn't matter - the two would surely influence each other.
I've been thinking about the demonstrations for Black Lives Matter and about the rioting. I'm inclined to excuse a lot in the cause of bringing attention to matters of real injustice. I can also see how situations escalate and emotions can change a demonstration into aggression, destruction, even violence. I don't know how to draw a line. I mean, I do - walking and chanting with placards, yes; destroying public property, well, I can understand the motivation but I feel a 'no'; violence, 'no'. Yet the words are easy to write. I wasn't there. And I haven't suffered the that discrimination. And I have not felt extreme disenfranchisement and dissociation.
Then I think of those who condemn, who are angry, and I understand. Yet I wonder if they understand what is happening within the event, the emotional pulls that are related to accelerating feeling rather than pursuit of a real end. And then I wonder if all this understanding matters. Or, more pertinently, how you scale up the knowledge of intentions and moral character of a friend, someone you know, and apply it to a group that you don't know. How can we expect some groups in society to find it at all straightforward to inhabit the mental, the emotional, the socio-cultural, the historical space of another group?
Of course, the accepted mantra is integration - get to know people. But while you may know individuals, how does someone who feels part of a group really know another group? That's where the problem lies. We can get on, as Rutger Bregman seems to state, in our little bands, as individuals who know each other. But this living in big communities, we're in the early days of the experiment. We need some better ways of working it out so that we can make better moral judgments, more generous ones. So that we can all feel heard. So that we feel part of the big 'we' not the group 'we'.
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