Consequences: Intentional vs Unintentional

In considering ethics, it is generally accepted that the intentional consequences of an action are of primary importance in determining whether a decision was ethical. It's generally held that a person who acts intentionally to cause harm is "worse" than an individual whose actions happened to cause harm, but that causing harm was not their intention.

I expect this is because ethics is based on reason: the factors that were taken into consideration in making a decision can be said to have influenced that decision, and any factor that was not taken into consideration had no impact on the decision, though they may have had an impact on the consequences.

However, failure to consider consequences, while not a deliberate choice to do harm, is not entirely ethically inconsequential. In arrears, we consider an individual to be responsible for any harm that results as a consequence of their actions, regardless of whether they were intentional. And as such, we consider an individual responsible for considering all possible consequences of an action in making the decision whether to undertake the action itself.

Said another way, failure to consider the consequences is a failure of ethics, though not as grievous as considering, but disregarding, the same consequences.

Even so, there remains a mitigating factor for unintentional consequences of an action: whether it was possible for the consequences to be foreseen. We accept the imperfection of human logic: we are not by nature omniscient, and therefore there are factors that are not known that will lead to outcomes that cannot be predicted. And in such instances, we further mitigate the culpability of the individual in making a decision.

For past action, there remains some argument over what "could have been known", coupled with suspicion about the honesty of a person who suggests that the reason they failed to predict an outcome was that they did not know. Much is left to conjecture.

However, for future action, the scope of knowledge is a matter of fact: the individual who makes a decision knows what they know before the decision is made, and any knowledge that comes to light after the decision is made (or when the action is initiated and cannot be prevented) can accurately be said to have been "not known" in making the decision - though one may argue in arrears that the decision-maker failed to exercise due diligence.

Another factor in gauging future consequences is probability. There are seldom instances where we can be perfectly certain before taking an action of what the consequences will actually be. We are limited to assessing the likelihood of consequences - and we make a decision based on the likelihood of outcomes.

In this way, decision-making is different from the act of assessing past decisions: once an action has occurred and consequences have resulted, we have better knowledge (not entirely perfect, but much more accurate) of the consequences of the action.

Form this, a future decision cannot be accurately assessed as being "good," but merely whether it is sound: if the individual who makes the decision has made a sufficient effort to discover the possible consequences, and made a decision based on a sufficiently reasonable assessment of the likelihood of outcomes, we can then say that the person has made an ethically sound decision, regardless of what the actual outcome happens to be when the action is undertaken.

The evaluation of sufficiency remains arguable. This should be considered.

Ethics and Law

It was suggested that, when considering the ethics of consequences, that there is limited value in considering the consequences of past actions, except as a method of deriving guidance, from experience, for making decisions that will have consequences in the future.

Past action is also the primary concern of law, which seeks to add punishment in arrears as a method of justice, to "correct" the effects of a historical action and to add to the negative consequences of future actions of the same nature. If a person acts in a way that harms others, but does no harm to himself, he may not be dissuaded from undertaking the same action again in future, and doing further harm to others.

This leads to the topic of law, which is a different topic than I had intended to address in this blog - but it cannot be altogether avoided, as the judicial system adds punitive consequences to an action: one may undertake an action that is not harmful to anyone, and the legal system may cause harm to the actor.

When making a decision in which one may expect there to be legal consequences, to oneself of others, these consequences bear consideration and may influence the decision. However, they are inconsequential to the ethical consideration of an action: what is prohibited by law is not necessarily "wrong" and what is permitted (or required) by law is not necessarily "right."

Neither would it be correct to say that the legal consequences are consequences of the action itself. The action of punishment (or reward) is the result of an entirely separate decision, often made by an entirely separate actor.

From a practical perspective, it is worthwhile to consider punishment or reward in the decision as to whether to take an action. From an ethical perspective, punishment and reward are a separate matter.

Complexity of Consequences

The plurality of "consequences" is not incidental: an action may, and generally does, have multiple consequences. The act of building a fire may have the consequence of producing heat, but it also produces light, consumes fuel, and emits smoke. On a small scale, the additional consequences may seem irrelevant, but when the scale increases, the consequences become more significant: by building numerous, large fires over a long period of time, the consumption of fuel and emission of smoke can have significant impacts on the environment.

My sense is that, in considering actions, the entirety of the consequences of that action should be taken into consideration. One of the fundamental flaws I have noticed in other sources is that an action is considered to be ethical or unethical due to one specific consequence, ignoring all of the other consequences of that action. It is also my sense that the multiplicity of consequences makes evaluating ethics complex: if some of the consequences are good, and others are bad, assessing the rightness of the action necessitates a great amount of consideration.

To further the complexity, an action is not taken in isolation. To return to the previous example, the act of building a fire requires other actions to be undertaken in advance (one must gather fuel and choose a location) as well as necessitating other actions in arrears (it could reasonably be suggested that an individual who creates a fire must also extinguish it, dispose of the ashes, and restore the site - though whether these are necessary is arguable).

I expect this will require quite a few entries to address these considerations. For the present, the point seems to be that a given action has multiple consequences, and the process of evaluating an action must strive to be comprehensive in consideration of all of these consequences.

However, the evaluation of consequences is not as simple as a checklist. The practice of making "lists" of outcomes, good and bad, and deciding that the longer list "wins" is imprecise, as there is the matter of the degree of impact. One cannot consider any positive impact ("by lighting a fire, I provided warmth") to be the equivalent of any negative impact ("by lighting a fire, I have burned down my neighbor's house"). All consequences are not equal - though the evaluation of the degree of rightness or wrongness of action is dependent on the determination of right and wrong, which is a topic that has been postponed.

Ethics of Consequences

In the context of action, it was concluded that an action is not ethical in and of itself, but the consequences of that action provoke a consideration of the ethics. In a fundamental sense, an ethical evaluation assesses the consequences of an action were good or bad - and from there, to work backward: if the consequences were good, the action was good.

It is possible to take another step backward: consequences arise from actions, which arise from decisions. In fact, it seems essential to do so. If ethics focuses entirely on actions that have already been taken, it has no value in guiding behavior. That is not to say that there is no point in analyzing pas actions: while the past cannot be changed, the lessons taken from it provide guidance for future decisions, which is the value of ethics.

It is also possible to take a second step backward: consequences arise from actions, which arise from decisions, which are made by people. This returns to the previous question of whether a person can be considered to be ethical, but arrives at the same tautology that led me to dismiss "person" as the subject of evaluation: a good person makes good decisions, which might imply that every decision made by a good person is a good decision.

While there remains the concept of the "good person," my sense is this is useful evaluation, as social existence depends on trust, and trust is earned over time by an individual who makes good decisions (based on the notion that a person's character guides them to act in a consistently good or bad manner) - but this bears further consideration. For the present, we focus on consequences, as each decision to act may be good or bad, independent of the person who makes that decision (i.e., a good person does not always make good decisions, but may make a bad decision, hence the good or bad rests in the decision, and not the person).

It must also be acknowledge that, thus far, "good" and "bad" have been considered in an overly vague and general sense. It is presumed that a positive or beneficial outcome is "good" whereas a negative or harmful outcome is "bad." It seems to me that these concepts are far more complex than that, but I will continue along that line of logic and return to the "essence" of good/bad at a later time.

So to revisit the second step backward: consequences arise from actions, which arise from decisions, which are made on the basis of motives. And while that seems logical, the chain of causation weakens: while we can consider the motives that drive a decision as a method for evaluating the ethics of the decision, the consequences of the action may not entirely jibe with the motives. That is to say that we can appreciate the desire to do good, but ultimately assess ethics not merely by the desire, but by the outcome. And even in evaluating decisions in advance of outcome, "good intentions" do not guarantee a good outcome, nor pardon the actor from any negative consequence of his action.

Ethics of Actions

In considering the context of action, it was considered that any "act" involves an actor, who takes an action, which has consequences. And after consideration, it was determined that the actor cannot be considered the source of ethics, any more than an inanimate object. This leaves action and consequence as the possible sources. The present post will consider the action.

The notion of separating action from consequence is not novel, but was considered by Immanuel Kant who, in The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), sought to define a "categorical proposition" - which, in plainer terms, is an action that is right in and of itself, and should thus be performed regardless of the consequences. He arrived at the conclusion that such a thing does not exist, and I do not presently intend to rehash or summarize his argument, merely to concede that this idea is not my own invention.

To return to the context of use, action is performed by an individual, but it is not performed merely to act, but to achieve an outcome from undertaking an action - which therefore leads to the sense that the action is incidental, and the consequences are to be considered, as they are the motivation that led to the action having been undertaken. Said another way, were it not for the consequences, the action would not have been undertaken.

It is also worth noting that an identical action may lead to different consequences under different circumstances. To slice with a knife is not considered unethical if the object beneath the blade is a loaf of bread, but it may be considered unethical if the object beneath the blade is a human being, and yet it may not be considered unethical if the person holding the knife is a surgeon performing a procedure on a patient, and again becomes unethical if the surgical procedure is unnecessary to aid the patient but is instead done as a justification to get money from his insurer. In each of these instances, there is no difference in the action, but in the consequences.

While it may seem that, by process of elimination, we have arrived at the conclusion that "consequences" are the basis of ethics, this notion bears further consideration.

Ethics of Persons

In a previous post, I considered the ethics of objects, and arrived at the conclusion that ethics cannot correctly be applied to objects, in that an object is not inherently right or wrong, good or evil, except in its use.

The concept of "use" implies that there is an actor, who takes an action, that has consequences. Each of these components bears consideration - and for the present post, I will consider the ethics of the actor - the individual who undertakes an action - and consider whether the actor is subject to ethical consideration.

The question of whether a person is inherently good or evil was explored in classical (Greek) philosophy and perpetuates to this day in certain schools of religious doctrine. Such systems maintain that there are persons who are inherently good and persons who are inherently evil, and they should be considered as such regardless of what actions they undertake.

This line of thinking quickly degenerates into logical quagmire. Is a person good because they do good, or is the doing of good what makes a person good? If a good person does only evil, is that person still good? Is everything a good person does to be considered good? Is a person who does mostly good and some evil a good person or an evil person? The contradictions in these questions arise because the quality of good is applied to both the actor and the action, and is resolved by accepting that one of them is good or evil, and the other is unimportant to matters of ethics.

If we are to eliminate either actor or action as subject to ethical consideration, and assuming that the actor is the source of good or evil would suggest that a person who is good or evil is not subject to judgment - they simply are what they are and do what is in their nature to do, and will remain essentially good or evil. Such a perspective makes ethics moot, and as such must be considered of no value to ethics. The result is that the action, rather than the actor, is to be taken as subject of ethical consideration, but the action. This will be considered in further detail in the next post.

To make a distinction, the present inquiry is to the nature of a person as the source of good or evil rather than the character of a person, which represents something quite different: our expectations of their future behavior based on past behavior. There may be some merit to this assertion, and there may be some value to knowing the character of a person when predicting the course of action they may be expected to choose - but this bears separate consideration.

Ethics of Objects

Central to the study of ethics is determining the criteria by which something can be considered "right" or "good." Fundamental to that question is the identity of the "something" that is assessed - and while my working definition of ethics already identifies the decision to act as the subject of ethical scrutiny, my sense is that it merits further consideration.

For the present post, I'll explore "things" - objects - with the aim of considering whether they are correctly excluded as the subject of ethics. However, the notion that an object can be inherently good or evil seems entirely absurd. An object "does" nothing - it undertakes no actions, and therefore cannot be held accountable for its intentions, or any consequences.

The consideration of the ethics of an object becomes slightly less absurd if the object has the potential to do harm: a berry that is poisonous might do harm to someone who consumes it, a rock with a sharp edge might do harm to someone who treads upon it, a tree might do harm if it should fall upon someone.

Objects with the potential to do harm are considered to be "dangerous" rather than "unethical." Under certain circumstances, we might consider it to be ethical for a person to prevent them from doing harm, but this is entirely beside the point: the object itself is not assessed by the standards of ethics.

To go a step further: what of objects that are designed or fashioned so as to be dangerous? A product may be unsafe, or it may even designed to be used to inflict harm (such as a poison). But even in these instances, an object is still merely dangerous - if any question of ethics arises, it is generally asked of the person who designed the object, or the person who uses it, or of the person who provides it to another to be used.

Thus far, I have considered ethics only in the negative view - that which is wrong, evil, or harmful. But if objects were considered in the positive view - that which is right, good, or helpful - my sense is that I would arrive at the same conclusion: that an object that is designed or used to have a positive effect is not inherently right or good, but is potentially beneficial - and any ethical assessment is made of the design, use, or provisioning of such an object for a beneficial purpose.

This may be more germane in the context of business, where an individual seeks to obtain an object due to its potential to be put to a beneficial use, but exploring that dynamic can be done in greater detail at another time.

And finally, to round things out, there are objects that seem neither inherently dangerous nor potentially beneficial - though it may be argued that any object can be dangerous or beneficial depending on how it is used. This further underscores the conclusion that it would be incorrect to apply ethics to an object, but to the action that involves its use.

This may bear further consideration, but for now, I feel that I've exhausted this line of inquiry, and arrived at the conclusion that ethics is not applicable to objects.

Functional Definition of Ethics

I realize that I failed to arrive at a working definition of "ethics" in my post "What is Ethics?" In that meditation, I considered ethics as an academic discipline, but the definition of ethics as a branch of philosophy seems insufficient.

With that in mind, here is an attempt at a working definition of the term, which is likely to be refined as I continue to consider the subject:

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that considers "right and wrong" in the context of human action as a means toward providing guidance for making decisions that will lead to "right" action.

To expound on this definition:

Ethics is defined as a branch of philosophy, which is explained in detail in the previous post. The only additional detail I would like to add at this time is that philosophy deals in abstractions, seeking to discuss the general nature of things, with an eye toward applying general principles to specific situations that may arise.

The consideration of "right and wrong" also distinguishes ethics from the other branches of philosophy (metaphysics and epistemology). In addition to considering whether the outcome of an action is "right," the notion of "right" itself is a topic to be considered.

The context of human action is also worth including. While it would seem self-evident, I have encountered instances where an attempt is made to apply the concept of ethics to "things" rather than actions, and to actions over which human beings had neither influence nor control. The latter, however, may be subject to further consideration.

The function of ethics is defined as providing guidance, with the implication that it is to be applied to the future. Ethics can, and often does, evaluate the actions of the past - and while there may be some value in doing so (to judge and punish wrongdoers), its principle value is as a guide for actions to be taken in the future.

The specification of decision-making is likewise an area that may require further consideration. Ultimately, we refer to actions as being ethical or unethical, but every action is preceded by a decision and it is only here that ethics can have a meaningful impact.

And finally, the objective of ethics is defined as leading to "right" action. While it is possible that an individual might assess ethics with the intention of pursuing "wrong" or abandoning "right," ethics is most often employed to define the correct or desirable course of action, and negative consequences are a failure to consider ethics rather than the deliberate choice to define and follow a "wrong" course of action.

What is Ethics?

In an academic sense, "ethics" is defined as one of the three branches of philosophy, the other two being metaphysics and epistemology. It's not my intention to take on a broader focus in this blog, but it seems worthwhile to explore the broader perspective, if only in a proscriptive sense - i.e., to focus the present study by examining similar considerations that will be "out of scope."

Metaphysics denotes the study of reality, and seeks to answer a fundamental question: how do we know what exists? It questions whether the things we accept to be "real" actually are. We may believe something to exist because or our sense perception (we can see and touch an object), or because we have a memory of it, or because we have been told of it by someone else - but it is also possible that we are deluded, our memory is faulty, or someone is seeking to deceive us.

Epistemology denotes the study of truth, and addresses the question: how do we know that which we know? It goes beyond the metaphysical consideration of mere existence to consider the way in which we validate information, through a process of logic, to determine whether a statement or conclusion is true or false. Just as metaphysics considers whether a physical object is grounded in reality, epistemology considers whether an accepted fact is grounded in logic.

Ethics demotes the study of right, and addresses the question: how do we know what action to take? It questions whether a course of action, intended or merely considered, is "right" or "wrong" - and, as a prerequisite to that assessment, what constitutes the "rightness" of a given action. This is the topic of the current study.

Correspondingly, metaphysics and epistemology are not the topic of the present study, but are presupposed by it. Ethics may seek to consider the question "is it right to grow wheat" (or in the context of business ethics, whether is it right to grow and sell wheat) without pausing to consider questions such as: "does wheat exist?" or "how do we know what makes it grow?"

These may be valid questions, to their respective branches pf philosophy, but are largely irrelevant to evaluating the ethics of a given situation.

Preface

I’ve started this blog as my own attempt to study and consider the topic of business ethics. I’ve suffered through a number of books on the topic, gritting my teeth as the flaws in their premises led to very shaky conclusions and, ultimately, an entirely untenable body of theory.

And yet, I have the sense that it is an important topic, and one that is lacking adequate definition. Given that Western culture is largely composed of individuals who spend a majority of their productive years in service to companies, it seems that this would be a significant area of inquiry, foundational to our identities as individuals and to the character of our culture.

As a result, I have the sense that anyone who is interested in the topic (such as myself) is left very much alone to ponder things for themselves. Hence, this blog.

I don’t expect it will be updated frequently, or that it will be of much interest to anyone other than myself, though I generally feel that public scrutiny and feedback is useful in refining ideas – so for what it’s worth, my plan is to try to work things out in this medium.