Judging the Rightness and Wrongness of an Action From Connors & McCormick:

How then do we judge whether an action is right or wrong? We need to consider the following:

1. Intent - what is the goal of our action? what do we want to happen? It must be obvious that in order for an action to be good, the intention must be good. One cannot a good action with a bad intention!
   
2. Means - how do we accomplish our goal? what do we do in order to reach that goal? Intention alone is not enough for us to judge whether an action is right or wrong. For example, scientist wants to look for a cure for cancer in order that he may save lives-however the only way he can do that is through life-threatening experimentation with 2 month old babies. Is that okay? Of course not.
   
3. Circumstances
4. Consequences
5. Alternatives
   

  ¶ 10:43 am 1 comments

  Dimensions of Actions Before we move on to actual cases, I would like to discuss actions. There are two levels of acts:

1. Subjective dimension. We say that an action comes from a person: an action is not without an actor.
   
1. Thus we say that an action is a decision made by a person, and that person is changed and formed by those decisions. (For example, your decision to go to school today opened a number of possibilities for the day. Your decision to go to school also means that you are not at home, and cannot do certain things). We are thus limited and at the same time enriched by our decisions.
2. These actions bear the stamp of our character to the extent that we have freely chosen these actions
   
2. Objective dimension. Our actions have impact on the real world.
1. Actions have consequences regardless of intentions
2. It shows that human actions are not only personal but always interpersonal and social.
   

  ¶ 7:11 am 0 comments