How can you really believe that motives, intentions, reasons etc have absolutely nothing to do with the moral weight of an action? If i am someone who is loved by most that i encounter and i accidentally shoot myself while cleaning my gun this would cause much sadness. By your terms this action would be deemed immoral.
A) You took a risk in owning a gun and therefore i have no sympathy for your situation.
C) Instead of trying to twist and turn this to fit my whacked view on morals, I’m going to realize that this just does not sit right with me. While its hard to deem this action moral it is defiantly not immoral. Maybe moral if you were cleaning your weapon because you want it to function properly if you ever needed it to protect yourself or family. But this once again proves the point that the moralness of an action has to do with your motives/reasons etc.
October 27, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Part of the definition of utilitarianism is “your action is good in so far as it increases happiness in a way you can reasonably predict.” If something happens accidentally like the example you used above, it is not something that you can reasonably predict. You shot yourself on accident and had no way of forseeing this event. I know Mill says the act is moral if it increases overall happiness and of course this would decrease overall happiness, but it is something that just happened with no prior thoughts so would this still be considered immoral to Mill?
October 29, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Im not sure if this makes your example good or bad but it makes me feel that some actions are irrelevant to morality. It doesnt seem like this action can really be morally wrong or right. I mean how would you view the act of sitting down in an empty chair. It may increase your happiness since you no longer have to stand but does that make it moral? another point is that you say morality depends on your motives or reasons. in your example what were the motives or reasons for shooting yourself? Im not sure there were any since it was an accident.
October 30, 2008 at 3:46 pm
I think that’s true that some actions are irrelevant to morals. My point is that my action of accidently shooting myself would be demmed immoral by a utilitarian while I feel that this action is not moral or immoral, just unfortunate.