I am having a lot of trouble accepting Scanlon’s argument
claiming that intention does not affect moral permissibility. I understand that
he is separating the moral principles into critical and deliberate uses and
that deliberate uses are the only factors that should contribute to determining
moral permissibility. I understand that logically, it makes sense to separate
the assessment of the act and the assessment of the agent, however, I do not believe
that is always possible or if this is necessarily a good thing.
I think about assessing moral permissibility more as a
scale. You can split the scale halfway, one side morally permissible and the
other side morally inpermissible. The act’s relative place on the scale can be
determined by the deliberate uses of moral principles, according to Scanlon’s
definition. However, it can be changed in increments based on other
contributors, one major factor being intent of the agent. Though I consent that
intention is not as important as the act itself, I do believe that certain
intentions can tip certain actions from one side of the scale to the other.
Scanlon’s argument against this reasoning might be when he says, “what makes an
action wrong is the considerations that count decisively against it, not the
agent’s failures to give these reasons the proper weight” (pp. 23). He thinks
that only deliberate uses of moral principles should answer permissibility
questions.
Take this example:
A person is rock climbing up the side of a cliff but falls,
and he is now dangling from his bungee cord, suspended in midair. An extremely
muscular powerlifter sees this man in distress and has the ability to pull him
to safety. However, the powerlifter hates this man, and if he would save him,
he would pull him up in such a way that he would be slammed against the cliff
and be in a paralyzed state for the rest of his life. Though the act itself
would be deemed permissible, regardless of intention, the intent would push
this act into the impermissible category.
Ignoring or factoring intent into categorization of
permissibility may often still yield the same result, but I believe it should
be viewed more as a scale for examples like I just described.
I think the spectrum is an interesting way to evaluate moral permissibility and brings up many interesting factors regarding whether an action is moral permissible or impermissible. I am not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with it without further investigation, but I like the idea of the spectrum because I think it highlights many of the important characteristics about ethics that this course focuses on (blame and praise) and if we bring this idea up now, we can apply it when looking specifically at cases when blaming and praising are involved.
ReplyDeleteIf we factor both the outcome of the action and the intent of the action into evaluating where a case falls on the spectrum, we can address Scanlon’s argument about the proper “weight” of outcomes. For clarity, I am saying that weight of the intention and the weight of the outcome play together to determine the “net permissibility” of the action. If someone had really good intentions but did the wrong thing, it would not hold as much weight as someone who did the wrong thing with bad intentions. Neither do intention not consequence serve as the leading determinate of the permissibility of an actions, they both serve as factors in deciding where actions fall on the spectrum. I understand that this continues to make things a little ambiguous as Scanlon argues against in his initial opposition against using intention in determining permissibility, but I do not agree that ethics is supposed to be black and white; many factors SHOULD be taken into account when evaluating the moral permissibility of cases.
Sam, I have the same issues as you with cases concerning permissible (or even laudable) acts that are performed with bad intentions. In addition to the example you provided, another we have previously discussed in class is the case of saving a drowning child from a pool only so one can torture him. Scanlon addresses these issues with deliberative and critical employment, stating that the action should be judged separately from the person/intention. While we still grant the act of saving the imperiled victim permissibility, we criticize the savior for his moral depravity. This makes sense and functions so that there is never controversy regarding whether or not to save someone’s life in such situations. After all, it is the savior we fear, not the act of saving.
ReplyDeleteHowever, putting myself in the victim’s shoes and trying to bring it down to real, practical life, it is much more difficult to view it this way. In these cases in which I will be saved only to be tortured, I think I would rather drown in the pool or fall off the cliff. This makes me look at the act of saving (in these cases) to be against my wishes because it is these particular acts that will directly lead to my torture. It is because I am saved that I am available to be tortured by my savior.
Theoretically, it makes perfect logical sense that the inherent act of saving is not harmful, and we would not want potential saviors to hesitate in these situations. Thus, I think labeling the act of saving as permissible in general is appropriate. However, in cases where it is difficult to disassociate the saving from a fate worse than death, I agree that it would be ideal to make exceptions.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any plausible way to do this. A scale is difficult because that would require quantification of the good and evil of particular actions and intentions. As we read in Sterba’s piece, it is difficult to rank evils against one another, and even if it can be done, it may be disrespectful to the victims. Thus, I feel like Scanlon’s approach is the best logical way to address these issues, and we must take advantage of his concept of critical employment to properly condemn these sadistic saviors.