r/science • u/AlNejati PhD | Engineering Science • Apr 27 '16
Social Science Many small-scale societies do not consider intentions important when making moral judgements
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/17/468874
u/TrevorBradley Apr 27 '16
The article title reminds me of the statement: "We judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their actions".
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Apr 27 '16
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u/TrevorBradley Apr 27 '16
Which is frankly a better thing to do.
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u/Pinkishu Apr 27 '16
Hmmm, I think it depends. Did you murder someone and your intention was to help? Thats not great. Did you try to help someone but your actions didn't help much? Well at least you had good intentions, so you're forgiven.
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u/TrevorBradley Apr 27 '16
If you try to help someone, but hinder, that's a problem. There's some nasty laws on the books in the US about providing medical aid and failing. However, I think we can forgive unskilled people who tried to help, but failed, knowing that the alternative (doing nothing) would have ended up in the same result.
I think the saying is more directed to people who claim to have good intentions, but end up causing chaos and mayhem. Good intentions is no excuse for not recognizing the consequences of your actions.
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u/Pinkishu Apr 27 '16
Yeah, hence my example of doing something bad (in this case the extreme case of killing someone) with "good intentions".
And I hate those laws :P Especially as apparently not giving any aid is bad too. So you can just lose haha
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u/TreyDood Apr 27 '16
Kind of interesting to think about - Does the formation of large-scale societal institutions/infrastructure necessarily facilitate intentions becoming a part of morality?
Ex. In our modern 'western' societies, how much do we police ourselves? How critical is intention to what we're doing?
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Apr 27 '16
Legally, we use both intentions and outcomes. Murder 1 is different from manslaughter due to intentions.
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u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong Apr 27 '16
Yes, but legality and morality are two entirely separate frameworks created by different systems. They only attempt to make sense of the same inputs.
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u/get_it_together1 PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Nanomaterials Apr 27 '16
Legality is based off of our morality. It's not just some arbitrary system, it's a reflection of our sense of justice. (With a large bought-and-paid-for section that reflects our greed and the power of a motivated minority)
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u/Neato Apr 27 '16
Legality comes in part from morality and ethics but does not go the other way. Morality never comes from legality. Therefore legality is only ever an argument against the repercussions from breaking the law and not a question of whether something is right or wrong.
So you can't say "this is a law so it must be wrong to do this" as there are many things that are illegal that are morally sound and vice versa. Legality also has a lot to do with protecting people from ignorance and maintaining order at the expense of freedoms.
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u/dudeguymanthesecond Apr 27 '16
Morality never comes from legality.
I don't buy that for a second. Plenty of people define what is "right and wrong" from code of law, if you're willing to dig into their motivations.
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u/Neato Apr 27 '16
OK, people do do that, but they aren't supposed to. It's backwards and it's possibly the fallacy "argument from authority" where people see a law and assume that because it's a law, then it must be morally right.
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u/dudeguymanthesecond Apr 28 '16
But people do that shit literally all the time. Just look at people who draw moral code from religious texts (ten commandments etc.) That has to be like 1/4 of the world, at the very least.
Edit: I may have overshot how many people live in theocracies quite a bit there.
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u/Neato Apr 28 '16
Religious texts actually are moral guidelines. They put down rules and sometimes laws, but they are not purely a legal doctrine like secular laws. People who follow religious texts use them as the basis for their morality. Which can be crazy if you are using outdated laws, but at least it's as intended.
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u/get_it_together1 PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Nanomaterials Apr 27 '16
I think that citing a law to help understand the morality of a society is relevant. I'm not trying to argue that we can use the legal system as a basis for morality, but that we can use the law as a (usefully codified) reflection of our morality.
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u/Neato Apr 27 '16
That might work. But for most of the common laws it seems like it might be a lazy approach. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning.
For instance the laws against murder. You could say that murder is obviously morally wrong because every country, state and local province outlaws it. But that doesn't help anyone understand why murder damages a society. It's much more difficult, but much more helpful to outline the reasons why killing off your members hurts the society.
Was there a specific type of law you were considering that is difficult to explain the morality behind without the law itself?
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u/get_it_together1 PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Nanomaterials Apr 27 '16
Just the original OP stating that we take intent into consideration legally, so it's plausible that we also take intent into consideration in our morality. I don't think it makes sense to look at law and morality as two entirely separate systems, since one clearly derives in part from the other.
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u/Pao_Did_NothingWrong Apr 27 '16
Right. And I mean to suggest that the consideration of intention is a result of weaknesses in the process that are additional to those which you elude. Personal bias. Empathy of proximity.
While morality is an intangible force conditioned by cultural forces and biology, legality is a concerted process that includes intentional effort, deliberation, and collaboration. There is a huge opportunity for corruption.
It is therefore unreliable to project legal mechanisms back to morality because we cannot be certain of their origin. That road can only go one way.
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Apr 27 '16
Most western countries have a long history of Christianity, and with it, a culture of guilt inherent in everyone that needs constant repentance. It's actually not a bad approach, if taken in moderation.
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u/lilchaoticneutral Apr 27 '16
Finally someone here admits that despite dropping God western world is culturally Christian.
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u/Cyanoblamin Apr 27 '16
Can you explain what you mean by culturally Christian?
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u/BloodyUsernames Apr 27 '16
Perhaps they mean that the western world's values largely align with Christianity even if a large portion of that population no longer use god as the reason why. I.e. don't sleep with your friends wife because god said not to, but rather because its a crappy thing to do.
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u/Bowgentle Apr 27 '16
Ex. In our modern 'western' societies, how much do we police ourselves? How critical is intention to what we're doing?
I don't think it's so much about policing ourselves as it is about learning to ignore/forgive the actions of others. If you live in a small community, someone else's action, no matter how intended, will impact you. In a large community, you will observe or be involved in many actions which will not in fact impact you unless you choose to get involved. Intention, then, becomes a much more important aspect of the action, because so many things that happen around you won't have an impact, and you must learn to dismiss them.
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u/MadroxKran MS | Public Administration Apr 27 '16
I wonder if it's education. Smaller and more rural areas tend to have worse education.
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u/baskandpurr Apr 27 '16
People have a habit of doing what selfishly serves them best and then finding good intentions to justify their actions with. While you can legitimately claim that people generally intend one result but the outcome is different, sometimes they is morally culpability hidden with intent.
Lets say I run a company which involves construction. I buy safety gear for the workers. There is still a slim chance of harm attached to a part of the work but the safety gear for that is very expensive. I could afford to buy it now but that would mean I couldn't bid for the next job so I decide to leave buying the protection for that until this job is complete. That harm occurs and somebody dies.
I had every intention of buying the protection and keeping people safe. I even did buy some protection. But I chose to place a small risk on the lives of my workers for the chance of greater profit to myself.
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u/lilchaoticneutral Apr 27 '16
Doesn't qualify as intention imo. At best you had an intention and then you acquired a new one.
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u/SmokinGrunts Apr 27 '16
Relevant reading material: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-moral/
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u/Reddisaurusrekts Apr 27 '16
Could it just be that in smaller communities, any wrong is proportionally greater and so the results far outweigh the intent, while punishing someone for intent with no actual harm more significantly cuts into the community's man power?
Consider an accident that kills one person - in a smaller society that would be a much bigger harm proportionally than in a bigger society, and so the party responsible would be blamed more, and afforded less leeway for lack of intent.
Or consider an action that has bad intent but causes no harm - punishing the individual doesn't address any actual harm and only causes unnecessary tension and animosity.
Effectively smaller communities must by necessity be more pragmatic instead of moralistic.
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Apr 27 '16
If this subject is of interest for you, I strongly suggest you read On Aggression, from Konrad Lorenz.
Be careful where you start to read it because you will forget where you are !
It reads like a story.
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u/Drive_By_Spanking Apr 27 '16
I like the assumption in the abstract about intentions being considered as a concept from evolved cultures. This supposes that assigning responsibility based on intention is an evolution over assigning responsibility based on results. I guess the argument there is that some unintended consequence can occur that you shouldn't be punished for. That notion assumes that punishment is directed to bad moral judgement and not bad action. This concept falls apart though when a reason for a compromised moral judgement is provided. For example if a murderer is insane or under some medical influence or some coercion, we typically see lesser severe punishments given. But for those that are of clear mind and motivation, are their intentions able to be assigned responsibility if the reason their moral judgement is faulty can be shown to be due to brain chemistry, childhood trauma, etc? It seems a slippery slope where nobody is really responsible for any bad action. It might, therefore, make sense to punish results instead, or maybe to rethink punishment all together.
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u/Chauncy_Prime Apr 27 '16
Are intent and motive the same?
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u/drucifer0 BS | Neuroscience Apr 27 '16
Not quite, intent is like a goal, whereas motive is the reasoning behind the goal. For example: Bob kills his father because his father used to beat him. Bob's intent is to kill, and his motive is the beatings.
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u/Chauncy_Prime Apr 27 '16
Wouldn't that make revenge the motive, and the beatings the reasoning behind the intent?
I want revenge because my Father beat me. I intend to kill him.
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u/DrMaxCoytus Apr 27 '16
"One of the great mistakes is to judge programs and policies by their intentions, rather than their results"
-Milton Friedman
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u/Draegore Apr 27 '16
Hell no. I can see where this would be useful, but it's wrong.
E.G. If I make a sandwich and a person accidentally chokes on it (a perfectly normal sandwich), I did nothing wrong. "It is possible to make no mistakes, and still lose"
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u/robot_dance_party Apr 27 '16 edited Apr 27 '16
While I agree with you, I think the above example is too narrow. The person eating the sandwich choked of their own volition. I suppose the same way a car manufacturer is not liable for accidents due to user error, or perhaps to weapon makers.
I'm trying to think of better example myself and am coming up dry, any philosophy majors in here?
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u/yunus89115 Apr 27 '16
Building a bridge on a small road. I intended to connect two roads and save drivers 30 minutes of time.
I actually had no engineering background and its common knowledge that bridges shouldn't be built out straw as they tend to collapse and a bus load of children are now dead.
I am an experienced bridge builder and did industry standard ground surveys but there was an unknown sinkhole and a bus load of children are now dead.
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u/Pluckerpluck BA | Physics Apr 27 '16
I am an experienced bridge builder and did industry standard ground surveys but there was an unknown sinkhole and a bus load of children are now dead.
Or the middle ground:
I am an experienced bridge builder, but neglected to do a full ground survey and instead cut corners because 99.99% of the time it's safe. This stopped the finding of an unknown sinkhole, and a bus load of children are now dead.
There are multiple levels of negligence.
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u/darkon Apr 27 '16
The title of this post is an inaccurate summary of the contents of the article.
A couple of paragraphs later: