What matters more, intention or consequence?

[ceecee]

I had heard that much of it was motivated by property disputes - accusers trying to take over land/property of rivals by getting them denounced as witches.

This is much more believable. Land ownership was always the way that a person accumulated wealth.

 

[magpie]

To make this post somewhat on topic:
Serious question--where does intent come from? Is it innate? Learned? Other?

[MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION] touched on this question earlier, probably more eloquently than I can. Our intentions are probably influenced by our circumstances. They're probably influenced by consequences. As far as making choices goes, I think we all do make conscious decisions with the idea of inducing a particular sort of outcome. It's so much in our nature that it seems weird to question where it comes from. If you were living someone else's circumstances would you have the same intentions that they do?

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Consequences are the most important thing by a mile. A little counter-intuitive, but everything about reality at this moment is a consequence of something, it is the actual content that matters to us. Defining the desirable consequence can be tricky. Happiness, or avoiding pain, or things like that are common but casual phrases. Maybe we can say a good consequence increases positive feelings or reduces negative ones. Using that as the reference for happiness, I tend to go to the old formation that best consequence is the one that leads to the most happiness for the most people for the most time. I also tend to think that though it is difficult to quantify with precision at this time, there's probably only so much happiness one person can experience, so there's a limit to how much can be gained out of one person's happiness.

Anyway, enough about defining a good consequence, and more about why I think it's more important. Actions matter because actions have different results, i.e. consequences. But suppose an action strictly reduced the happiness and increased unhappiness in the world relative to before it was done. How could that action possibly be considered good, regardless of what it was in and of itself? That's usually where intent comes in. The regardless of the result the action shows an intent. Well, first of all, an action doesn't definitely show us an intent, we just interpret one. If you think figuring out how whether or not someone is happy is hard, try figuring out exactly what someone's intentions are. But even if you could, intentions only have value because of how they relate to consequences. Because I see someone has a certain intention, I can make at least a rough prediction about what they might try to achieve, meaning I may guess what kind of actions they will take, and I might know what kind of consequences they have, and whether those are good or bad on the whole. It's just a rather fuzzy predictor of the future. It all winds back to the consequences.

 

[Florence Atley]

where does intent come from? Is it innate? Learned? Other?

[MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION] touched on this question earlier, probably more eloquently than I can. Our intentions are probably influenced by our circumstances. They're probably influenced by consequences. As far as making choices goes, I think we all do make conscious decisions with the idea of inducing a particular sort of outcome. It's so much in our nature that it seems weird to question where it comes from. If you were living someone else's circumstances would you have the same intentions that they do?

Wow! Such a great question! I totally agree with you, hel. I would expand upon your statement that it is "in our nature" to say that people are greatly biased toward their particular skill sets and ever-changing desires. For example, if you ask an architect what should be done to a house will be different than if you asked an electrician, not just because they are more educated in their particular field, but for the same reason that they were drawn to that field in the first place - they enjoy it. And if you ask me what I want to do for fun today, then ask me again tomorrow, it will probably be different. So it seems the answer to where intentions come from includes both nature-nurture as well as the unpredictable nature of the human heart. Our inherent irrationality is what differentiates us from the robots, right

 

[GIjade]

I was hoping we could talk about motivation, intent, action, and consequence without resorting to reductive, easy, and obfuscatory terms like narcissism, sadism, or evil.

Does anyone ever not act from a place of good intention, or not assume they're doing the right thing? What makes an action wrong or bad? If what makes an action wrong is that someone is harmed by it, does the intention of the person who carried out the harmful action matter? What matters more, the intention of the person not to harm or the fact that a person was harmed? Can a person even be harmed by someone who did not intend to do harm? Does anyone ever intend to harm?

Well of course some people intend to do harm. There are crazy people in the world. But as far as intention and consequence, intention does matter, but if a person is harmed by a person whose intention wasn't to harm him/her, that should perhaps be explained to the person who was harmed. Think?

 

[Virtual ghost]

I would say that this depends on the scare of impact:

If it is small it matters more what was intention behind the act, but as the scale increases the consequences get more and more weight.

 

[Mole]

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

A narcissist will only ever admit to good intentions, no matter what the consequences of their actions to others.

Narcissism feels good, narcissism is made warm and cosy by togetherness, and succeeds by denying the harm done to others.

 

[kyuuei]

I like this question. I was always taught growing up that it was consequences. My parents reflected this heavy heavy bias towards consequences mean everything and intention means little. It definitely influenced my personality growing up.

But, excluding kids and all that, I think as adults you have to balance the intents and the consequences. Intentions can appeal to a lot of things--like forgiveness, and understanding and even new ideas and concepts. I like to think of science when I think of intent, because a lot of failure in science with good intentions can still create a lot of awesome data and new ideas. But at the end of the day, the consequences are what (you and) the people around you have to live with and deal with. To me, that still does make it the more important of the two.. mostly because it does require active thought and critical thinking.

 

[Hitoshi-San]

Not always the case, but usually I'd have to say intention. Like, I can't give any examples of consequence off the top of my head, but it's not like everything in the world can be black & white all the time

Think about it, if some kid brought a gun to school with the intention of shooting it up but they get caught, have the gun confiscated and are thrown in jail, that's a time when they're still wrong because they intended to hurt people.

If another kid spills juice on the white carpet but didn't mean to but it stains the carpet, that's another example. It's not wrong because he didn't mean to hurt anyone, or maybe it is wrong, I don't know.