Why are intentions morally important

Following Kiowa tradition, only men can own war bonnets and each feather represents a war deed. Did Christina Fallin do something ethically prohibited in posing in a war bonnet? Does it make a difference that she claims to love and respect Native American culture? Explain your reasoning.

How should educators teach students about cultures other than their own? Do you think it is possible to avoid perpetuating stereotypes of other cultures? Would it make a difference if this were simply a business decision to sell records?

What if the artist created this image as a way to engage viewers in critiquing both Native American and non-Native American cultures?

This video introduces the behavioral ethics concept known as moral intent. If a person has no moral intent, then moral awareness and moral decision making are useless. One of the most significant findings in behavioral ethics research in the past ten years is that most people wish to and do think of themselves as being ethical and yet, they often daily, if not more often lie a little or cheat a little to get what they want.

How do people who want to be good give themselves permission to be bad? There are many reasons, but the human ability to rationalize is one of the most significant factors. We all use rationalizations and see others use them on a daily basis. We need to keep our eye on our colleagues and call them out when they use rationalizations to give themselves excuses to fail to do the right thing. But we must also monitor our own rationalizations, which is easier to do if we are familiar with the most common ones.

This video is the third of a four-video package that addresses how people can be their best selves. Looking at the entire process, it seems sensible to conclude that a person who wishes to act ethically must 1 recognize ethical issues when he or she runs across them see Moral Awareness ; 2 have the ability to reach a defensible resolution of the question as to what is the right thing to do in that setting see Moral Decision Making ; 3 desire to do the right thing this video, Moral Intent ; and finally, 4 be able to act on that intent see Moral Action.

The four videos in this package address these four aspects of leading a moral life. As the video notes, these four steps were originally enunciated by Professor James Rest and colleagues, although they have been adapted slightly in these four videos. To learn about related behavioral ethics concepts, watch Moral Equilibrium and Moral Imagination.

Terms defined in our ethics glossary that are related to the video and case studies include: integrity, moral equilibrium, moral imagination, moral reasoning, moral relativism, morals, and values. Behavioral ethics draws upon behavioral psychology, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and related disciplines to determine how and why people make the ethical and unethical decisions that they do.

Much behavioral ethics research addresses the question of why good people do bad things. It is widely recognized in philosophy and in everyday life that emotional reactions are relevant for the moral evaluation of persons.

However, emotions also have an effect on the evaluation of the moral worth of actions. His behaviour is therefore less blameworthy; and from this it follows that an emotion such as fear has an influence on the morality of our behaviour.

In addition, emotions also affect our thinking. This shows again the effect of emotions on the moral evaluation of actions. However, emotions are not part of our character; they are a component of our personality. Habits are not aspects of our character but of our personality. If somebody has the habit of staying up late, he does not do it in order to reach one of his goals. He may have had a goal at the time he started staying up late, but as soon as this has become a habit, his goals are not any longer sufficient to explain this behaviour.

Habits are thus different from motives and intentions. But they are also different from traits of character. This can be shown by the following observation: When our actions are based on our character, we decide to do them. However, when we do something habitually, we do not decide to do it. If I have the habit of locking my front door, I do not decide each time to lock it; I do it almost without thinking. However, if I lock the door because I am wary a trait of character , I do decide each time to lock it.

This can be seen when we consider this simple example: John has the habit of slamming the door of his car when he drives off early in the morning. Mental disorders also are relevant to the moral goodness and badness of actions.

For instance, persons who suffer from compulsions are not only a burden on themselves but their behaviour can also be very irritating to other people. If someone is persistently controlling whether everything in his apartment is exactly in the place it is supposed to be, his behaviour can be very disturbing for his family.

But if we are told that he suffers from a compulsive disorder, this information will change our moral evaluation. If his compulsion is very severe, it may even be inappropriate to evaluate his behaviour morally at all. In both cases, his mental disorder influences our moral evaluation. We refer therefore also in this and similar cases to personality when we evaluate the moral worth of an action.

It encompasses the latter all traits of character are thus personality—traits but it includes also motives, emotions, habits, mental disorders, and other aspects. The account presented here could be objected to by referring to E. We are then told that A is very affluent while B is badly off. However, it seems to me obvious that what renders her action morally better are not these circumstances as such. They are only relevant because they allow us to draw conclusions with reference to B's character.

We can infer from A's action that he is not entirely indifferent to some others and that he is willing to help them. B's donation allows us to draw the same conclusion.

Furthermore, however, it shows that she is prepared to make sacrifices for others and it is because of this additional quality that we judge B's action morally better than A's. However, they do not refute my thesis that it is personality which basically renders our actions morally good or bad. But most deontologists do not share Kant's moral rigorism and regard also benevolence as a good—making property see, for instance, Ross, However, they distinguish them in very different ways.

It would, however, require too much space, to discuss these differences. Smith , — As already mentioned, intentions can also be the objects of our moral evaluations, but in this paper I will focus only on actions.

Milo , — Adams , Broad , —6 , Hutcheson , —61 and Oakley , See also Aristotle EN b 15— There are, however, many others that also contribute to the moral worth of our actions; for instance, intelligence, extraversion, anxiety, or neuroticism. As said, it goes far beyond the scope of this paper to investigate how they influence moral goodness. For my present purposes it is only important to show that personality traits have an effect on the morality of actions.

I think, however, that this is an unduly broad definition. Adams, R. Common projects and moral virtue. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13 , — Alston, W. Motives and motivation. Edwards Ed. New York: Macmillan. Anscombe, G. Intention 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett. Beardsley, E. Moral worth and moral credit. The Philosophical Review, 66 , — Moral disapproval and moral indignation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 31 , — Bennet, J.

The act itself. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Blum, L. Friendship, altruism, and morality. Brandt, R. Ethical theory. Englewood Cliffs, N. The structure of virtue. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 13 , 64— Facts, values, and morality.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broad, C. Some of the main problems of ethics. Sellars Eds. New York: Appleton—Century—Crofts. Analysis of some ethical concepts. Cheney Ed. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff. Davidson, D. How is weakness of the will possible?

In: J. Feinberg Ed. London: Oxford University Press. Ewing, A. Second, consider the case of Oscar Pistorius, assuming that he shot his girlfriend by mistake.

More generally, is there anything morally wrong with keeping guns and ammunition in a home where others, perhaps children, also live? Such gun owners claim that they need their guns for protection against burglars and others who mean them harm. In contrast with lawbreakers, these gun owners do not intend to hurt anyone other than criminals.

Indeed, they really just want to scare away criminals and be left alone. Opponents respond that they are putting other people, including their own children, at risk of being shot accidentally or by mistake. Of course, there are many controversies over the level of these risks, but sad news stories make most people aware that there is some risk—and probably significant risk—of accidental or mistaken shootings.

Then, if we judge such gun owners by the foreseeable consequences, their acts are morally questionable at best. However, if we judge them by their intentions, they are totally blameless. These security-concerned gun owners might be negligent in some cases, but their only intended goal is safety. The problem is that this way of thinking leads to many accidental and mistaken shootings. Yet, the missiles that Hamas has shot at Israel have actually killed only a very small number of Israeli civilians reportedly only three [4] , largely because Israeli defenses are so effective.

In contrast, Israeli military retaliations have caused a much, much greater loss of life among civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Thousands have been killed or seriously and permanently injured, and the Israeli military knew that these harms would occur when they fired. Nonetheless, Israel denies doing anything morally wrong, because their intentions were pure.

Again, the emphasis on intentions leads them and their supporters to dismiss the known harmful consequences of their actions as morally justified or even irrelevant, despite widespread criticism from the international community. The common pattern in these cases is shared by many more examples and teaches important lessons about the modern world, human nature, and morality. Back in the days of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, it made sense to worry primarily about the intentions of neighbors, because the main danger to each person was intentional harm.

People were less likely to kill their neighbors by accident or mistake because they knew their neighbors and were separated from their enemies by more space than an arrow could shoot. However, the technological advances of the modern world make it much easier to kill people by accident or mistake or by known-but-unintended side effects.