Intention Versus Consequence: Separating the Rightness of Actions from the Praiseworthiness of Agents

Abstract

This paper examines whether performing a right action for a defective motive makes that action morally wrong. It argues that the question conflates three assessments that moral philosophy keeps apart, namely the deontic status of an act, the moral worth of an act, and the standing of the agent who performs it. Drawing on the utilitarian and Kantian traditions and on the contemporary literature concerning moral worth, the paper argues that the second and third assessments are sensitive to motive in a way that the first is not, at least for actions that produce a benefit and create no separate harm. John Stuart Mill states the position directly, holding that an agent’s motive bears on what the agent is worth without settling whether the act itself was right. Kant’s distinction between acting from duty and acting merely in accordance with duty suggests, on one reading, that his claim about motive concerns the moral worth of an action rather than its rightness, although that reading is contested. The contemporary debate reinforces the distinction, because it treats moral worth as a status that only some right actions possess. The paper concludes that an action producing a benefit without causing separate harm remains right even when its motive is self interested, although such a motive reduces the credit its agent deserves and may justify caution about that agent in the future.