Intention Versus Consequence

It’s interesting to think about what matters more in our lives. Most of ethics and its challenges can be summed up as a battle between intentions and consequences.

There are ethical standpoints like Utilitarianism that state that intentions do not matter and only consequences do. This means that it doesn’t matter even if an evil person is evil because he accidently did good consequences and this extends far beyond where it’s okay to have slaves since it benefits most people.

But regardless when we judge people, should we hold their intention or consequences to a greater degree?

If someone commits a crime then should we care more that he had a good intention or rather what consequences came from his actions whether intentional or not nor whether it was good or not.

This battle has been one that philosophers have been fighting for a long while (from the beginning). From an ethical standpoint, it seems obvious to consider both intention and its consequences.

If we care about intention, that may mean we want to protect well-intentioned people even though they may be naive but if we do the opposite: it means that we consider the side effects it has on society.

A good example of this is giving away the villagers' fish instead of teaching them how to hunt it. Giving it away may be of good intention but from a consequence standpoint, it’s far less beneficial than teaching it.

Of course, that’s a mild example where intentions and consequences don’t contradict much but what about this: giving away huge sums of money to a beggar out of kindness but instead he gets targeted by the local gangs or other beggars.

On the whole, it seems a crux between whether we are kinder or not but think about this: should the innocent culprit who accidentally had a car crash and killed a person be considered guilt-free and have no prison sentence? Would you live in such a society?

If we encourage such examples then the justice system may not function anymore. The justice system is also a social contract between the culprit and victim… if the victim gets justice then the victim’s loved ones would not engage in violence and accept the culprit’s fate but if the culprit’s fate was not served however, that would cause widespread instability across society.

If we take the opposite example: considering only people who had good consequences yet some of them had impure intentions then eventually the one with impure intentions would commit crimes or get away when they shouldn’t be. In the short-term, it may seem fine because the outcomes look good but in the long-term, it won’t because it’s the people we inhabit that make up society.

Ultimately, both should be considered but whether intention or its consequences gets priority is a question to be asked.

Some may say they can co-exist equally but that’s very hard to quantify in real life. It seems like in real life, we first look at the consequences and give punishment but if the intention was pure, we reduce the sentence accordingly.

Food for thought.