Good deed requires a good intention?

RandolphEsq

Sorry if this has been done before but with no searching for the moment I will assume it hasn't.

The issue I want to raise is about 'good' deeds and the mindset of the person carrying out the good deed. Is a conscious intention to help out a person a requirement for a good deed in order for the deed to become a good deed as opposed to a deed? Or is a deed 'good' by the sole nature of how the deed helps a person?
What if a person intends to do a good deed, but fails and ends up hurting the person they intended on helping; can the intention be appreciated as if a good deed was carried out, and the 'bad' deed thus ignored?

Joe1919

RandolphEsq wrote: »

...What if a person intends to do a good deed, but fails and ends up hurting the person they intended on helping; can the intention be appreciated as if a good deed was carried out, and the 'bad' deed thus ignored?

You might be interested in reading about the 'Doctrine of Double Effect'.
There are some interesting examples e.g.

" 2. A doctor who intends to hasten the death of a terminally ill patient by injecting a large dose of morphine would act impermissibly because he intends to bring about the patient's death. However, a doctor who intended to relieve the patient's pain with that same dose and merely foresaw the hastening of the patient's death would act permissibly. "

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

raah!

I don't think you can really apply the words good or bad to actions in themselves at all, but to the intentions only. You could stretch it to define somebody eating some cheese so they'd be able to kill people later as a "bad" action if you were to apply it to actions, you could deduce that eating cheese is bad from that. So regardless of what good or bad are at all you can only apply them to intentions, or ideas. I think.

e04bf099

Intentions are "good/bad" only, but we usually speak in the subject-predicate structure, which is merely for the purposes of brevity.

Here is an example that might sound like a misrepresentation of Husserl. I don't think it is:
Imagine a horse with it's head outside a horse box. We do not see the body of the horse but it is implied in the indexical statement that "there is a horse over there." All that is part of "Being" a horse and it's potential activity, or our protentions of how it will resond to stimulii, and also the grapheme/phoneme of the word "horse" (which is part of what the horse is as much as it's right foot), is implied in said statement.

This is the kind of brevity and lack of explication that makes us resort to subject-predicate statements of "good/evil". This does not deny the objectivity of such statements, only that such statements tend towards the irreal and irrational should we represent them as descriptions of actions, as opposed to descriptions of intentions and interests.

ChocolateSauce

I would say that a deed done with bad intentions but with a good outcome is an accident.

Joe1919

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

I would say that a deed done with bad intentions but with a good outcome is an accident.

Whistleblowers often fall into this category. For example, an employee has a row with his boss and reports him for tax evasion.
The act in this case could be considered good (reporting a tax dodger). However, the intention of the employee is to 'get even' or revenge.

Hence the act of whistle blowing may be considered a 'good act with bad intentions' by many in the case where the whistleblower is motivated by revenge because although the act may be good, the intention (revenge) is 'evil'.

Moreover, even when the intention of the whistleblower is good, it may be suspected that he acted for personal gain/ envy/ revenge/jealousy.
Hence whistleblowing is very problematic and risky and whistleblowers are often unpopular and may need special legal protection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower