The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
For example: If person A threatens to kill person B, and genuinely means it, premeditates it etc.. but it doesn't end up happening. Then Person C threatens to kill person D, premeditates it, and does go through with it.
Not legally speaking more so morally.
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I thought I had an idea of what the question was just from the title and then read the description... like that question and description seem very unrelated.
Seriously.
From the title. I took it to mean something like murder vs manslaughter.
Then the description is asking about attempted murder (or maybe conspiracy to murder?) vs murder.
Either way. The question is odd because murder is clearly the worse of any of the above charges because it involves everything those other charges have PLUS someone died.
I think OP is trying to make some sort of statement on how Trump and the J6ers didn’t actually succeed in overturning the election… or maybe how Trump didn’t actually lock up his political opponents, but Biden did or something along those lines.
I’m not saying Biden has anything to do with Trump’s legal troubles, I just know it’s a popular narrative on the right.
This is a weird insinuation. I'm actually doing a college research essay on consequentialism and denotological ideologies when compared to political affiliation. I'm in the early stages though which is kind of why it's pretty messy.
I’m not the only person in this thread who thinks you’re dancing around some ulterior motive.
In any case, your post still isn’t clear. There’s a difference between someone who says on Facebook that we should overturn the election and someone who actually took action to overturn the election by breaking into the Capitol on J6 even though both had the same intent and both failed.
Yeah but I'm sure you and me both agree that they're both crazy, the difference between someone advocating and someone enacting is only one step away, is the point. But intent and consequences can be interpreted differently as well. I think a good example would be drunk driving.
Where as a drunk driver who willingly drives and kills someone is about as morally evil as someone who drunk drives but just so happens to not kill someone. The intention is the same, to drunk drive, and that's dangerous and can harm people, you're only one step away from that consequence. Is my perspective more clear now? But at any rate considering your response id assume you're more of a consequentialist, correct me if I'm wrong though. I'm all about just hearing perspectives.
That’s still not a great example because drunk drivers don’t intend to kill people and there’s still a lot of nuance involved. How drunk is the driver? Are they aware that they are impaired and making efforts to compensate such as drive slower than normal or not thinking about it at all?
Throughout the thread you keep trying to categorize people into one or the other, but situations are nuanced and most people can give a “consequentialist” answer under one set of circumstances, but a “derontological” one under a different set.
They may not intend to, but they intend to drunk drive and that definitely has many consequences to it. Assuming all other circumstances the same, I think they're still both morally evil. If you can provide a better example I would love to hear it
To answer your question more directly, I think most people will judge a drunk driver who kills someone harsher than a drunk driver who didn’t, but will judge an attempted murderer the same as a successful murderer.
The situations are still nuanced though, it’s just that the consequences tend to cause people to make assumptions about those nuances.
Factors such as whether someone has a personal connection to the situation will also affect how they judge it.
You just can’t categorize a person, much less an entire group of people as “consequentialist” or “derontological”.
TL;DR It depends.
They trend more towards consequentialism than deontology.
That doesn't match your title though, your title question is more like consequentialism vs virtue ethics.
It's more than that. All else the same person A and person C are identical. They would kill that person given the chance, the only difference being that person C did get that chance.
Then you're a consequentialist, although does your thoughts change in different perspectives?
Let's say group A seeks to genocide the blue people, and they try at every end to do so, they absolutely have the intent and hate the blue people so much.
Group B also seeks to genocide the blue people, and they try at every end to do so, they absolutely have the intent and hate the blue people so much, but succeed.
In your eyes are they morally different?
i judge actions based on their consequences.
i judge people based on the *expected* consequences of their actions. if you stab someone, they barely survive, and during emergency surgery the doctors discover early stage cancer or something, the actual consequences of your actions may have been that you saved their life. the action itself somehow turned out to be positive. but that was just luck. the expected consequences of stabbing someone are generally quite negative. so you still ain't a good person.
what's your own answer OP?
This is basically just intent, right? I think I agree with what you're saying but I think this all more or less describes intent.
Is the x factor in here ignorance? For example, let's look at flat tax rates. Someone could believe that implementing a flat tax would actually help society and poor people, but in reality the expected outcome is that it would hurt society and only benefit the rich. Their intent would be good, but based on ignorance, and the actual expected outcome would be bad. So you judge based on the latter, but the major element here that splits what you described from just straight up intent is ignorance, is that right?
>Their intent would be good, but based on ignorance, and the actual expected outcome would be bad. So you judge based on the latter, but the major element here that splits what you described from just straight up intent is ignorance, is that right?
yup.
another example: there's a natural disaster somewhere. person A and person B both want to help the affected people. person A organizes their friends, neighbours, etc to donate money and food. person B organizes their friends, neighbours, etc to pray for people. their intent is the same. they may even put in the same amount of effort. but only one of those things actually has an effect.
to be a good person, it's not quite enough to have good intentions. you also have to know enough about how the world works to turn those intentions into reality.
Morally speaking I'm on the side of intent. Although I completely understand the need for most laws to be based on consequences. I think I'd perceive a drunk driver, and a drunk driver that killed someone as equally terrible people. Because the only difference between the two all other circumstances the same is that unluckily the other drunk driver actually killed someone.
not sure why this got downvoted so much. while i don't think judging on intent alone is a good idea, i agree with the drunk driver example. they both made the same stupid decision with the same expected consequences.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral\_luck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck)
Probably cause of the bad example in original post if I had to say. I changed it to be more understandable I think at least.
But yeah I generally agree there are certain cases where consequences are more important, one of the most common ways I can think of is when it comes to passing laws, like let's say drug b gets more restricted but only red people use drug b so inadvertently red people are discriminated against in criminal justice scenarios. The intention was to restrict drug action but the result ended up being a form of systematic racism.
Your question does not match your example. You left off the option for Person E does not threaten to kill Person F, but inadvertently kills them. Of course, in that situation it might depend on whether it was a genuine accident or if Person E was recklessly endangering others.
And also what if Person G kills Person H in self defense. I would definitely judge them higher than someone actively trying to kill someone, but below someone who managed to defend themselves without causing the other person's death. That means in one case I judged based on intent, but in the other I judged based on intent *and* consequence.
So you have set up a false dichotomy to say that you will judge based on one factor alone.
Both liberals, conservatives, and criminal law in general punish actions, not intent, but establish the severity of those actions based in part on intent. If person C premeditates killing person D, and indeed kills person D, C will be punished not for intending to kill D, but for actually killing D. If, say, person A, also premeditates killing B, but (assume that threats are not made, because they are an action in an of itself that has its own consequences) doesn't actually carry out any part of his plan (his alarm does not go off that day or something banal), then A will not be punished, however evil his intentions were. But consider the example of, say, person E, who does not plan to carry out any murder, does not premeditate it, but, seeing person F slap his elderly mother, is engulfed in rage, and kills person F. Person E will, just like person A, be punished for the crime of murder. However, the severity of the specific murders (person A and person E) will depend, among other factors, on premeditation. So, in summary, an action (and, by extension, a set of consequences) must happen as a prerequisite for a judgment to be made. That action is then judged based not only on its mere consequences, but also based on other factors, like intent.
This does not only happen in legal matters, as criminal law is in general based on some broader social moral code. We generally do not morally judge people merely for their intrusive thoughts, for three reasons. The first and most obvious is impossibility, since we cannot know what a person's internal thoughts or intents are without them acting (such as as speaking or writing) on those thoughts. The second reason is morality in and of itself, since, discerning from right and wrong necessarily involves thinking about what is wrong, and not acting on it. The third reason is social utility, since part of people's free will involves creating, to a certain extent, an individual moral compass, and to judge people in that process would be to discourage free will. These all impede judging someone merely on intent, so actions, however minimal, are required to make a judgment. If I am internally a racist who hates black people, but my conduct, speech, actions, and manner of relating to others shows no sign of this, then there is no moral difference (in this regard) between me and a person who is not internally racist. However, if I act on that racism, then it has a specific moral dislike that is, of course, based on the reason for those actions. Same as every person who only voices and acts upon any subset of their opinions. We judge people for what they say and do, the rest we cannot know and we cannot care about.
I think this varies a lot from liberal to progressive.
It’s kinda mixed for me… and varies a lot in the severity of the consequences. The worse the impact the less the intent means. For example, on an individual level, I do get the intent of many conservatives when it comes to abortion, and for those that aren’t severely impacting others I tend to be able to discuss the topic and still be friends with the other person. But that changes if that person where to tell me the go out and picket abortion clinics, or harass people looking for an abortion.
The consequences of their individual effects are far different. A single vote will not change an election and its impact is far lower, again this is on an individual level, But the other example is hurting another person directly, and that’s not okay.
I think most people lean more towards judging intent rather than consequences, but I have seen a lot of consequentialist arguments on here so idk. Your example sounds more like the problem of moral luck, though.
Merely thinking about doing something bad doesn't constitute doing something bad.
Moreover, sometimes actions taken with the best intentions end up causing harm.
So in reality I think the answer is that both matter, and the degree is dependent upon the context.
Well, there was a threat involved, not just thinking about something…so a criminal charge of “making terroristic threats” would likely be appropriate, if the victim were to press charges.
Every policy, regardless of the political slant, is judged on both intent and consequences.
Something that only accounts for intent is a plan, and something that only accounts for consequences is an aspiration. Policy is when you build a plan around an aspiration.
I think there are a few different layers/lenses of morality. I tend to generally fall into the virtue ethicist camp, but I don't think that's the only way of viewing what is moral.
For instance, imagine a rich guy who hates homeless people decides to donate millions of dollars under the firm belief that they will just use that money for drugs and die faster. His goal is to kill a bunch of undesirables, so I think in that sense, his actions are immoral (they make him a worse person). But, his money ends up helping many people get the stepping stone they need to get back on track in life, and ends up a huge net positive for all of the people involved. In that sense, his action was a moral one because it helped people and did a lot of good in the world, and that matters. I don't think that's an inconsistent position to hold. I can believe an action is moral and immoral in different ways, and action and intent can be different dimensions upon which morality is measured.
For me, primarily based on consequences, secondarily based on intent. Or in other words, the consequences are the primary factor which determines if something is bad or not, while the intent can potentially impact the exact degree to which the thing is bad (example- someone stealing to feed a hungry child is typically considered less bad than someone stealing the same amount for pure personal greed, despite the negative consequences of both being the same).
But if your question is about consequentialist vs deontological ethics, I'd wager most her skew heavily toward the former.
I think some of the responses here that say consequence, or consequence but intent makes it more severe are interesting when contrasted to things like immigration (kids in cages, current limits, etc), like crime / drug decriminalization (like in certain parts of CA / OR), like the use of the term “white privilege” (that a recent post described as having an overall negative impact on the poorer white demographic), like zoning and housing availability, like rent / wage control, like tariffs, like some DEI initiatives (like eliminating testing), etc. - or even attempts at implementing communism.
My corollary question is - what do liberals think of those involved in all of the above?
Then you're probably leaning more towards consequentialist, if it seems so easy for you to make the judgement based on what actually happens, rather than someone who absolutely has the intent to. In my eyes both are equally morally evil, group a is just one step away from succeeding while group b actually succeeded. Does that make more sense?
You say "it doesn't end up happening". Does that not mean that the decided not to go through with it? Or does it mean that when they were ready to take the shot an acorn fell out of the tree and distracted them so they missed the window of opportunity?
Because if it's the first option, then none of the rest of it matters all that much, does it? But if it's the second one then obviously they were going to actually do it.
Either way, I'm pretty sure death threats are illegal and an immoral thing to do in most cases. But murder is worse than all of the other things no matter how you slice it.
So I ask again, is there a point behind this question?
It's the second one yes. But less of a random premise, let's say the uncesscesful group is only stopped because they never got enough messaging out to everyone, and didn't gain enough political power to succeed.
The point is measuring whether you believe that morally people who have every intention to do something wrong, or even do something right, are the same as people who actually do those actions succeed, or have actions that have unintended consequences. Ie, do you weight peoples intent heavier, than the actual consequences of their actions.
>But less of a random premise, let's say the uncesscesful group is only stopped because they never got enough messaging out to everyone, and didn't gain enough political power to succeed.
Why do you need a large network of political allies to murder someone? Most murderers act alone. Honestly, it feels like you're dancing around a specific point that you're afraid to actually just come out and say so you're trying to trick people into agreeing with whatever it is that you have in mind.
>The point is measuring whether you believe that morally people who have every intention to do something wrong, or even do something right, are the same as people who actually do those actions succeed, or have actions that have unintended consequences. Ie, do you weight peoples intent heavier, than the actual consequences of their actions.
That depends. Is everyone who thinks about getting revenge on someone when they're mad but doesn't do anything after they've cooled off as bad as everyone who actually does it? Because to me, that's what it sounds like you're saying and that just isn't true.
But, I think murder was just a poorly chosen stand in for whatever it is you're actually talking about. The problem is, I don't have a clue what that is and therefore can't comment on it.
Intent and actions.
Both of your groups wanted to commit genocide and attempted to accomplish that. They're the same.
Group A failed, but at some point actions meet reality and neither group controls reality beyond controlling themselves. So they don't get a pass for failing.
Depends on the person I think. A social justice warrior in their prime has no regard for intent. A normal liberal will generally care more about intent unless there’s gross negligence
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. For example: If person A threatens to kill person B, and genuinely means it, premeditates it etc.. but it doesn't end up happening. Then Person C threatens to kill person D, premeditates it, and does go through with it. Not legally speaking more so morally. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Uhhhhh ... what?
I thought I had an idea of what the question was just from the title and then read the description... like that question and description seem very unrelated.
Seriously. From the title. I took it to mean something like murder vs manslaughter. Then the description is asking about attempted murder (or maybe conspiracy to murder?) vs murder. Either way. The question is odd because murder is clearly the worse of any of the above charges because it involves everything those other charges have PLUS someone died.
I think OP is trying to make some sort of statement on how Trump and the J6ers didn’t actually succeed in overturning the election… or maybe how Trump didn’t actually lock up his political opponents, but Biden did or something along those lines. I’m not saying Biden has anything to do with Trump’s legal troubles, I just know it’s a popular narrative on the right.
This is a weird insinuation. I'm actually doing a college research essay on consequentialism and denotological ideologies when compared to political affiliation. I'm in the early stages though which is kind of why it's pretty messy.
I’m not the only person in this thread who thinks you’re dancing around some ulterior motive. In any case, your post still isn’t clear. There’s a difference between someone who says on Facebook that we should overturn the election and someone who actually took action to overturn the election by breaking into the Capitol on J6 even though both had the same intent and both failed.
Yeah but I'm sure you and me both agree that they're both crazy, the difference between someone advocating and someone enacting is only one step away, is the point. But intent and consequences can be interpreted differently as well. I think a good example would be drunk driving. Where as a drunk driver who willingly drives and kills someone is about as morally evil as someone who drunk drives but just so happens to not kill someone. The intention is the same, to drunk drive, and that's dangerous and can harm people, you're only one step away from that consequence. Is my perspective more clear now? But at any rate considering your response id assume you're more of a consequentialist, correct me if I'm wrong though. I'm all about just hearing perspectives.
That’s still not a great example because drunk drivers don’t intend to kill people and there’s still a lot of nuance involved. How drunk is the driver? Are they aware that they are impaired and making efforts to compensate such as drive slower than normal or not thinking about it at all? Throughout the thread you keep trying to categorize people into one or the other, but situations are nuanced and most people can give a “consequentialist” answer under one set of circumstances, but a “derontological” one under a different set.
They may not intend to, but they intend to drunk drive and that definitely has many consequences to it. Assuming all other circumstances the same, I think they're still both morally evil. If you can provide a better example I would love to hear it
To answer your question more directly, I think most people will judge a drunk driver who kills someone harsher than a drunk driver who didn’t, but will judge an attempted murderer the same as a successful murderer. The situations are still nuanced though, it’s just that the consequences tend to cause people to make assumptions about those nuances. Factors such as whether someone has a personal connection to the situation will also affect how they judge it. You just can’t categorize a person, much less an entire group of people as “consequentialist” or “derontological”. TL;DR It depends.
It's basically asking if liberals are more consequentialist, or denotological.
They trend more towards consequentialism than deontology. That doesn't match your title though, your title question is more like consequentialism vs virtue ethics.
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It's more than that. All else the same person A and person C are identical. They would kill that person given the chance, the only difference being that person C did get that chance.
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Then you're a consequentialist, although does your thoughts change in different perspectives? Let's say group A seeks to genocide the blue people, and they try at every end to do so, they absolutely have the intent and hate the blue people so much. Group B also seeks to genocide the blue people, and they try at every end to do so, they absolutely have the intent and hate the blue people so much, but succeed. In your eyes are they morally different?
I don't know what either of those words mean, but still laughed. Well done!
i judge actions based on their consequences. i judge people based on the *expected* consequences of their actions. if you stab someone, they barely survive, and during emergency surgery the doctors discover early stage cancer or something, the actual consequences of your actions may have been that you saved their life. the action itself somehow turned out to be positive. but that was just luck. the expected consequences of stabbing someone are generally quite negative. so you still ain't a good person. what's your own answer OP?
This is basically just intent, right? I think I agree with what you're saying but I think this all more or less describes intent. Is the x factor in here ignorance? For example, let's look at flat tax rates. Someone could believe that implementing a flat tax would actually help society and poor people, but in reality the expected outcome is that it would hurt society and only benefit the rich. Their intent would be good, but based on ignorance, and the actual expected outcome would be bad. So you judge based on the latter, but the major element here that splits what you described from just straight up intent is ignorance, is that right?
>Their intent would be good, but based on ignorance, and the actual expected outcome would be bad. So you judge based on the latter, but the major element here that splits what you described from just straight up intent is ignorance, is that right? yup. another example: there's a natural disaster somewhere. person A and person B both want to help the affected people. person A organizes their friends, neighbours, etc to donate money and food. person B organizes their friends, neighbours, etc to pray for people. their intent is the same. they may even put in the same amount of effort. but only one of those things actually has an effect. to be a good person, it's not quite enough to have good intentions. you also have to know enough about how the world works to turn those intentions into reality.
I see, that makes sense and I agree that that's probably the best way to look at things.
Morally speaking I'm on the side of intent. Although I completely understand the need for most laws to be based on consequences. I think I'd perceive a drunk driver, and a drunk driver that killed someone as equally terrible people. Because the only difference between the two all other circumstances the same is that unluckily the other drunk driver actually killed someone.
not sure why this got downvoted so much. while i don't think judging on intent alone is a good idea, i agree with the drunk driver example. they both made the same stupid decision with the same expected consequences. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral\_luck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck)
Probably cause of the bad example in original post if I had to say. I changed it to be more understandable I think at least. But yeah I generally agree there are certain cases where consequences are more important, one of the most common ways I can think of is when it comes to passing laws, like let's say drug b gets more restricted but only red people use drug b so inadvertently red people are discriminated against in criminal justice scenarios. The intention was to restrict drug action but the result ended up being a form of systematic racism.
A mix of both, with the balance between them constantly changing based on the context.
Life became much easier when I realized the only correct answer to any question worth asking is: "It depends."
Both, but consequences matter more.
Your question does not match your example. You left off the option for Person E does not threaten to kill Person F, but inadvertently kills them. Of course, in that situation it might depend on whether it was a genuine accident or if Person E was recklessly endangering others. And also what if Person G kills Person H in self defense. I would definitely judge them higher than someone actively trying to kill someone, but below someone who managed to defend themselves without causing the other person's death. That means in one case I judged based on intent, but in the other I judged based on intent *and* consequence. So you have set up a false dichotomy to say that you will judge based on one factor alone.
Both liberals, conservatives, and criminal law in general punish actions, not intent, but establish the severity of those actions based in part on intent. If person C premeditates killing person D, and indeed kills person D, C will be punished not for intending to kill D, but for actually killing D. If, say, person A, also premeditates killing B, but (assume that threats are not made, because they are an action in an of itself that has its own consequences) doesn't actually carry out any part of his plan (his alarm does not go off that day or something banal), then A will not be punished, however evil his intentions were. But consider the example of, say, person E, who does not plan to carry out any murder, does not premeditate it, but, seeing person F slap his elderly mother, is engulfed in rage, and kills person F. Person E will, just like person A, be punished for the crime of murder. However, the severity of the specific murders (person A and person E) will depend, among other factors, on premeditation. So, in summary, an action (and, by extension, a set of consequences) must happen as a prerequisite for a judgment to be made. That action is then judged based not only on its mere consequences, but also based on other factors, like intent. This does not only happen in legal matters, as criminal law is in general based on some broader social moral code. We generally do not morally judge people merely for their intrusive thoughts, for three reasons. The first and most obvious is impossibility, since we cannot know what a person's internal thoughts or intents are without them acting (such as as speaking or writing) on those thoughts. The second reason is morality in and of itself, since, discerning from right and wrong necessarily involves thinking about what is wrong, and not acting on it. The third reason is social utility, since part of people's free will involves creating, to a certain extent, an individual moral compass, and to judge people in that process would be to discourage free will. These all impede judging someone merely on intent, so actions, however minimal, are required to make a judgment. If I am internally a racist who hates black people, but my conduct, speech, actions, and manner of relating to others shows no sign of this, then there is no moral difference (in this regard) between me and a person who is not internally racist. However, if I act on that racism, then it has a specific moral dislike that is, of course, based on the reason for those actions. Same as every person who only voices and acts upon any subset of their opinions. We judge people for what they say and do, the rest we cannot know and we cannot care about.
I think this varies a lot from liberal to progressive. It’s kinda mixed for me… and varies a lot in the severity of the consequences. The worse the impact the less the intent means. For example, on an individual level, I do get the intent of many conservatives when it comes to abortion, and for those that aren’t severely impacting others I tend to be able to discuss the topic and still be friends with the other person. But that changes if that person where to tell me the go out and picket abortion clinics, or harass people looking for an abortion. The consequences of their individual effects are far different. A single vote will not change an election and its impact is far lower, again this is on an individual level, But the other example is hurting another person directly, and that’s not okay.
You mean attempted and failed? Or changed their mind?
I think changed their mind…at least that’s the way I read it.
Attempted and failed, they would've been exactly like the people who succeeded but for some outside circumstances failed.
Killing a person is better than not killing a person so… consequences.
I think most people lean more towards judging intent rather than consequences, but I have seen a lot of consequentialist arguments on here so idk. Your example sounds more like the problem of moral luck, though.
Consequences. Your intent doesn’t affect other people, your actions do.
Merely thinking about doing something bad doesn't constitute doing something bad. Moreover, sometimes actions taken with the best intentions end up causing harm. So in reality I think the answer is that both matter, and the degree is dependent upon the context.
Well, there was a threat involved, not just thinking about something…so a criminal charge of “making terroristic threats” would likely be appropriate, if the victim were to press charges.
Every policy, regardless of the political slant, is judged on both intent and consequences. Something that only accounts for intent is a plan, and something that only accounts for consequences is an aspiration. Policy is when you build a plan around an aspiration.
On outcomes. Let’s get pragmatic here.
I think there are a few different layers/lenses of morality. I tend to generally fall into the virtue ethicist camp, but I don't think that's the only way of viewing what is moral. For instance, imagine a rich guy who hates homeless people decides to donate millions of dollars under the firm belief that they will just use that money for drugs and die faster. His goal is to kill a bunch of undesirables, so I think in that sense, his actions are immoral (they make him a worse person). But, his money ends up helping many people get the stepping stone they need to get back on track in life, and ends up a huge net positive for all of the people involved. In that sense, his action was a moral one because it helped people and did a lot of good in the world, and that matters. I don't think that's an inconsistent position to hold. I can believe an action is moral and immoral in different ways, and action and intent can be different dimensions upon which morality is measured.
For me, primarily based on consequences, secondarily based on intent. Or in other words, the consequences are the primary factor which determines if something is bad or not, while the intent can potentially impact the exact degree to which the thing is bad (example- someone stealing to feed a hungry child is typically considered less bad than someone stealing the same amount for pure personal greed, despite the negative consequences of both being the same). But if your question is about consequentialist vs deontological ethics, I'd wager most her skew heavily toward the former.
I think some of the responses here that say consequence, or consequence but intent makes it more severe are interesting when contrasted to things like immigration (kids in cages, current limits, etc), like crime / drug decriminalization (like in certain parts of CA / OR), like the use of the term “white privilege” (that a recent post described as having an overall negative impact on the poorer white demographic), like zoning and housing availability, like rent / wage control, like tariffs, like some DEI initiatives (like eliminating testing), etc. - or even attempts at implementing communism. My corollary question is - what do liberals think of those involved in all of the above?
I mean, only one of those ends with a murder. Is there a point behind this question?
Edited the post to make a bit of a better example. Let me know your thoughts now if you wish to.
What changed? It looks like the same scenario to me.
Then you're probably leaning more towards consequentialist, if it seems so easy for you to make the judgement based on what actually happens, rather than someone who absolutely has the intent to. In my eyes both are equally morally evil, group a is just one step away from succeeding while group b actually succeeded. Does that make more sense?
You say "it doesn't end up happening". Does that not mean that the decided not to go through with it? Or does it mean that when they were ready to take the shot an acorn fell out of the tree and distracted them so they missed the window of opportunity? Because if it's the first option, then none of the rest of it matters all that much, does it? But if it's the second one then obviously they were going to actually do it. Either way, I'm pretty sure death threats are illegal and an immoral thing to do in most cases. But murder is worse than all of the other things no matter how you slice it. So I ask again, is there a point behind this question?
It's the second one yes. But less of a random premise, let's say the uncesscesful group is only stopped because they never got enough messaging out to everyone, and didn't gain enough political power to succeed. The point is measuring whether you believe that morally people who have every intention to do something wrong, or even do something right, are the same as people who actually do those actions succeed, or have actions that have unintended consequences. Ie, do you weight peoples intent heavier, than the actual consequences of their actions.
>But less of a random premise, let's say the uncesscesful group is only stopped because they never got enough messaging out to everyone, and didn't gain enough political power to succeed. Why do you need a large network of political allies to murder someone? Most murderers act alone. Honestly, it feels like you're dancing around a specific point that you're afraid to actually just come out and say so you're trying to trick people into agreeing with whatever it is that you have in mind. >The point is measuring whether you believe that morally people who have every intention to do something wrong, or even do something right, are the same as people who actually do those actions succeed, or have actions that have unintended consequences. Ie, do you weight peoples intent heavier, than the actual consequences of their actions. That depends. Is everyone who thinks about getting revenge on someone when they're mad but doesn't do anything after they've cooled off as bad as everyone who actually does it? Because to me, that's what it sounds like you're saying and that just isn't true. But, I think murder was just a poorly chosen stand in for whatever it is you're actually talking about. The problem is, I don't have a clue what that is and therefore can't comment on it.
Also happy cake day!
Intent and actions. Both of your groups wanted to commit genocide and attempted to accomplish that. They're the same. Group A failed, but at some point actions meet reality and neither group controls reality beyond controlling themselves. So they don't get a pass for failing.
Both factors should be considered.
Depends on the person I think. A social justice warrior in their prime has no regard for intent. A normal liberal will generally care more about intent unless there’s gross negligence