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Are all good actions good? Are all bad actions bad?

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Something I've been asking myself for some time is the following:
If a person commits a good action with bad motive, is that action good or bad?
Or the opposit, is a bad action with a good motive bad?
Ofcourse I'm talking about morally good/bad, right/wrong etc.

I'll throw out some scenarios for you so you might see a little better what I'm talking about.

Scenario A
Person A owns a small grandma/granpa style bakery, when his business one day lack some cash he borrows it from the local gangster Person B. Person B helps the loan shop out and lend him the money for a normal fee, the same he would have been given at any bank for lending their money. The bakery is soon up and running once again, going great. When Person A dies, he have yet to give the money back to Person B who knew that if he didn't collect the debt, it would grow to the point that he could take the bakery from the now dead Person A, so that his children gets nothing.

Was the action of lending the money good or bad?

Scenario B
Person A is a crime boss, on the orders of him his crew robs and beat up the locals in an area of the city. A person from this area Person B, tries to talk some sence into him but without results, the cops are helpless and won't do anything. When Person A orders the hit of a local shop owner Person B takes action. He gets a gun and shoots Person A.

Was the action of killing the ruthless crime boss good or bad?

Try to see it as a whole, nothing like "well the action is good but the motive is bad", because what interestes me is what it is as a whole.. And please don't get to locked into the scenarios because they're just exampels, not really the question I want you all to answer.

My point of view:
I think the whole good/bad thing is blurry.. According to the law it's close to only the action who decides the punishment, the motive is not as importat..
I can't honestly say if i think a good action with bad motive is good or bad, while at the same time I can't really say if a bad action with a good motive is good or bad.. But of the two, I think the later is better then the first..

@Wizzy,

Quote:

Something I've been asking myself for some time is the following:
If a person commits a good action with bad motive, is that action good or bad?
Or the opposit, is a bad action with a good motive bad?
Ofcourse I'm talking about morally good/bad, right/wrong etc.

I think you have to ask 'good for who'? If a person does something good for someone else, but the agent's motivation was for ill, then the action was good for the other person and harmful to the agent.

Quote:

Scenario A
Person A owns a small grandma/granpa style bakery, when his business one day lack some cash he borrows it from the local gangster Person B. Person B helps the loan shop out and lend him the money for a normal fee, the same he would have been given at any bank for lending their money. The bakery is soon up and running once again, going great. When Person A dies, he have yet to give the money back to Person B who knew that if he didn't collect the debt, it would grow to the point that he could take the bakery from the now dead Person A, so that his children gets nothing.

Was the action of lending the money good or bad?

The gangster was lending with interest. What the gangster did was not entirely morally acceptable. Though, we might say that it is good the owners of the bakery keep their shop, assuming, of course, the gangster does not take it from them.

Quote:

Scenario B
Person A is a crime boss, on the orders of him his crew robs and beat up the locals in an area of the city. A person from this area Person B, tries to talk some sence into him but without results, the cops are helpless and won't do anything. When Person A orders the hit of a local shop owner Person B takes action. He gets a gun and shoots Person A.

Was the action of killing the ruthless crime boss good or bad?

I get the feeling you can answer these as well as I can. That Person A no longer terrorizes the city is good, but taking a life is not good.

Quote:

My point of view:
I think the whole good/bad thing is blurry.. According to the law it's close to only the action who decides the punishment, the motive is not as importat..
I can't honestly say if i think a good action with bad motive is good or bad, while at the same time I can't really say if a bad action with a good motive is good or bad.. But of the two, I think the later is better then the first..

Good and bad are defined in terms of each other - without "bad" there is no "good". And good and bad in any given situation is different. We might highlight certain things which are usually harmful - bad intent, killing, that sort of thing. But good and bad is circumstantial.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

I think you have to ask 'good for who'? If a person does something good for someone else, but the agent's motivation was for ill, then the action was good for the other person and harmful to the agent.

- - - - - - - -

Good and bad are defined in terms of each other - without "bad" there is no "good". And good and bad in any given situation is different. We might highlight certain things which are usually harmful - bad intent, killing, that sort of thing. But good and bad is circumstantial.

Yeah sure but can't a good motive make a bad action good? If you get what I'm saying..
And 'good for who' shouldn't mather should it? It's allways morally good to give money to the needy, although it might hurt your personal finances, because the action to give to the more needy is good and the intention of helping the more needy is also good...
Good Action + good motive = Good Deed...

Also a robbery where you steal money for your own gain is allways bad..
Bad action + bad motive = bad deed..

But:
Bad action + good motive = what?
Good action + bad motive = what?

Thus I said that good and bad is blurry, because this is hard to answer isn't it? I belive it is anyways although I will give you that my examples wheren't that good...

@Wizzy,

Quote:

Yeah sure but can't a good motive make a bad action good? If you get what I'm saying..

A good motive makes a bad action good in that the motivation for the bad action was good.

Quote:

And 'good for who' shouldn't mather should it? It's allways morally good to give money to the needy, although it might hurt your personal finances, because the action to give to the more needy is good and the intention of helping the more needy is also good...
Good Action + good motive = Good Deed...

I think the 'good for who?' and 'good in what respect?' do matter a great deal. I disagree with the notion that ethical judgments are black and white. Ethics depend upon circumstance.

Quote:

But:
Bad action + good motive = what?
Good action + bad motive = what?

Thus I said that good and bad is blurry, because this is hard to answer isn't it? I belive it is anyways although I will give you that my examples wheren't that good...

I think the answer to your equations are good and bad. If the act was bad, but your motive was good, then you shouldn't have acted as you did, but your heart was in the right place. If the act was good, then you acted properly, but the bad motivation causes you harm.

Am I making any sense?

@Didymos Thomas,

Good is what you think is good, bad is what you think is bad. It's all there is. Of course it's influenced by society, culture and religion. But deep down you know what is right and what is wrong for you and you alone.

Good things can have bad outcomes. Bad things can have good outcomes. it's just one of the many unwritten laws that somewhere deep down we all know to be true. No matter how much examples, how many brain teasers and how many discussions it will always come down to that.

@Wizzy,

Wizzy wrote:

Something I've been asking myself for some time is the following:
If a person commits a good action with bad motive, is that action good or bad?
Or the opposit, is a bad action with a good motive bad?
Ofcourse I'm talking about morally good/bad, right/wrong etc.

I'll throw out some scenarios for you so you might see a little better what I'm talking about.

Scenario A
Person A owns a small grandma/granpa style bakery, when his business one day lack some cash he borrows it from the local gangster Person B. Person B helps the loan shop out and lend him the money for a normal fee, the same he would have been given at any bank for lending their money. The bakery is soon up and running once again, going great. When Person A dies, he have yet to give the money back to Person B who knew that if he didn't collect the debt, it would grow to the point that he could take the bakery from the now dead Person A, so that his children gets nothing.

Was the action of lending the money good or bad?

Scenario B
Person A is a crime boss, on the orders of him his crew robs and beat up the locals in an area of the city. A person from this area Person B, tries to talk some sence into him but without results, the cops are helpless and won't do anything. When Person A orders the hit of a local shop owner Person B takes action. He gets a gun and shoots Person A.

Was the action of killing the ruthless crime boss good or bad?

Try to see it as a whole, nothing like "well the action is good but the motive is bad", because what interestes me is what it is as a whole.. And please don't get to locked into the scenarios because they're just exampels, not really the question I want you all to answer.

My point of view:
I think the whole good/bad thing is blurry.. According to the law it's close to only the action who decides the punishment, the motive is not as importat..
I can't honestly say if i think a good action with bad motive is good or bad, while at the same time I can't really say if a bad action with a good motive is good or bad.. But of the two, I think the later is better then the first..

Philosophers have tended to call actions "right" or "wrong". Philosophers, who are sometimes called, "consequentialists" have graded actions in terms of their consequences for those affected by the consequences, and actions whose consequences are good have been said to be actions which are right, and actions with bad consequences, wrong. So, it seems to me that an action may have a good motive, say love for a child, but it is easy to think of an action motivated by love, which may have bad consequences (smothering love for the child, for example) And it is just as easy to think of an action which has a bad motive, but which has good consequences. Whether we should judge an action by its motive, or by its consequences, is an old and vexed question in moral philosophy. Immanuel Kant held that since no one could be sure of what the consequences of his action would be, since chance often takes a hand, all a person can do is make sure that his motive was a good one. On the other hand, the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, thought that Kant's view was unthinking, and that a moral person had to take the probable consequences of his action into account before deciding whether to do that action. Mill thought that Kant was really confusing the moral worth of the action with the moral worth of the person who was performing the action. The moral worth of the action was a function of the probable consequences of the action. But the moral worth of the person had to be judged in terms of the persons motive. And a good person might (as we saw) perform wrong actions from good motives; and, of course, a bad person may perform a right action for bad motives.

In his play, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot has Thomas Becket says, "The greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason". But, of course, Mill would not agree.

@Vasska,

Vasska wrote:

Good is what you think is good, bad is what you think is bad. It's all there is. Of course it's influenced by society, culture and religion. But deep down you know what is right and what is wrong for you and you alone.

Good things can have bad outcomes. Bad things can have good outcomes. it's just one of the many unwritten laws that somewhere deep down we all know to be true. No matter how much examples, how many brain teasers and how many discussions it will always come down to that.

I don't fully agree with that statement that good or bad is personal views, ofcourse it is true to some point but as you said this is usually based on culture (mostly I would say atleast). So it's not totaly up to the induvidual..

And if you're talking about the social view on moral right and wrong it normally breakes down to if you hurt somebody but your self or not, but drug using is usually seen as morally wrong but you only hurt yourself don't you?

But I'm asking what YOU think, not what's what but what YOU think makes an action good or bad, is it mostly based on the acctuall action or the reason you do the action you do?

Do you honestly think that a career criminal think of himself as evil? But never the less, he is still viewed as evil by society isn't he?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy wrote:

Philosophers have tended to call actions "right" or "wrong". Philosophers, who are sometimes called, "consequentialists" have graded actions in terms of their consequences for those affected by the consequences, and actions whose consequences are good have been said to be actions which are right, and actions with bad consequences, wrong. So, it seems to me that an action may have a good motive, say love for a child, but it is easy to think of an action motivated by love, which may have bad consequences (smothering love for the child, for example) And it is just as easy to think of an action which has a bad motive, but which has good consequences. Whether we should judge an action by its motive, or by its consequences, is an old and vexed question in moral philosophy. Immanuel Kant held that since no one could be sure of what the consequences of his action would be, since chance often takes a hand, all a person can do is make sure that his motive was a good one. On the other hand, the philosopher, John Stuart Mill, thought that Kant's view was unthinking, and that a moral person had to take the probable consequences of his action into account before deciding whether to do that action. Mill thought that Kant was really confusing the moral worth of the action with the moral worth of the person who was performing the action. The moral worth of the action was a function of the probable consequences of the action. But the moral worth of the person had to be judged in terms of the persons motive. And a good person might (as we saw) perform wrong actions from good motives; and, of course, a bad person may perform a right action for bad motives.

In his play, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot has Thomas Becket says, "The greatest treason is to do the right thing for the wrong reason". But, of course, Mill would not agree.

Well said, and I know about the consequence view on the moral of an action.

I just didn't mention it because I wanted the good/bad thing to come before the result of the action, trying to judge an action just based on what the person knows when he does the action. Ofcourse as Mill thought, the person have to take the consequences into concideration when performing the action.

So what's your standpoint? What do you think makes an action good or bad? You can take the consequences aproach if you wish to, just want to know what you think...

@Wizzy,

Quote:

Good is what you think is good, bad is what you think is bad. It's all there is.

If I steal your stereo, and think my action is good because I have a new stereo, the action was still wrong.

Quote:

But deep down you know what is right and what is wrong for you and you alone.

We may be the most capable of evaluating our own needs, but if I feel, deep down, that I am justified in committing arbitrary murder this is no justification for such an action.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas wrote:

If I steal your stereo, and think my action is good because I have a new stereo, the action was still wrong.

We may be the most capable of evaluating our own needs, but if I feel, deep down, that I am justified in committing arbitrary murder this is no justification for such an action.

I did not talk about justification, and will never talk about it in the sense of good or bad actions. I think somewhere along the way we started mixing everything up because it's so difficult so say that something is either wrong or good if there are two sides of the story.

If i steal a stereo from you it can be to sell it and buy food from it. I think we must define a line between personal gain (like stealing) and all others(like helping).

@Wizzy,

Wizzy wrote:

Well said, and I know about the consequence view on the moral of an action.

I just didn't mention it because I wanted the good/bad thing to come before the result of the action, trying to judge an action just based on what the person knows when he does the action. Ofcourse as Mill thought, the person have to take the consequences into concideration when performing the action.

So what's your standpoint? What do you think makes an action good or bad? You can take the consequences aproach if you wish to, just want to know what you think...

I think that Kant, too, thought that you have to take the consequences into consideration when you decide whether a certain kind of action (e.g. being truthful) is the right thing to do. Where he and Mill differ is that Mill thought that we should not only take the consequences into account when we consider what kind of action we should do, but that we should take into account the consequences of the particular action we are deciding to do. So that even if it is true, in general, that being truthful has good consequences, there can be some particular occasions when it would be right to lie. Kant would disagree and argue that if it was generally the right thing to be truthful, we should not, just for the sake of a particular situation, deviate from the rule that we must always be truthful. So, in his famous essay, "On the Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives" he tells us that even if a potential murderer asks us to disclose the hiding place of our friend, so that he can murder him, it would not be right to lie to the murderer.

I, myself, am a trimmer. I am mostly with Mill, only more so. For instance, I would weigh the consequences of my action to my child more than I would to everyone affected by my action.

@kennethamy,

Actions are actions, how can something physical be either good or bad. The perception/interpretation of the consequences are what are good or bad. Value Judgement is not in the physical world it is in the minds of the participants/witnesses. Motive can be argued good or bad, Interpretation of an action's consequences can be argued good or bad, but the action can't be argued either way.

@Wizzy,

I think there's a lot more to answering a question than determining whether it is 'good' or 'bad'. For me 'good and 'bad' are simply extreme acts of judgement which confuse an issue with variable definitives; both 'good' and 'bad' are entirely variable, they could mean anything to anybody, yet they are using in defining roles, in order to add an absolute edge to an answer.

In my opinion, you could say that a killing could be an act of justice, for example if somebody killed a violent abuser; in this context suffering was ended, the killer acted according to natural laws, and ended the actions of a destructive person. Now you could say that this was a 'good' thing, but then you would simply be escaping a proper explanation, avoiding any real insight and treating your audience like prejudiced fools. Secondly, although killing tends to be considered morally 'bad', it is prevalent and practically everybody requires the extermination of those who will kill them, so it seems to me to be an act of self-preservation, something that I am sure everybody considers 'good'.

My conclusion is that 'good' and 'bad' are extremely lame answers to questions, and have been invented an propogated by a religious society that intends to crush the intelligence of individuals by removing their ability and right to a proper explanation.

@Wizzy,

All good actions must be seen as natural or rational, and if natural, it needs no justification, and if it is rational it has been considered, and prosecuted, with the greatest likely hood of producing good as an object. Forget the imaginary cases. Life produces moral choices that are all real, all the time. We do not learn to do in the future by considering hypotheticals. Rather, the true object of morality is to create a good person so the good person can produce a good society.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

All good actions must be seen as natural or rational, and if natural, it needs no justification, and if it is rational it has been considered, and prosecuted, with the greatest likely hood of producing good as an object. Forget the imaginary cases. Life produces moral choices that are all real, all the time. We do not learn to do in the future by considering hypotheticals. Rather, the true object of morality is to create a good person so the good person can produce a good society.

Well, you probably won't agree with me but one of the more natural actions should be murder shouldn't it? I mean, all animals kills and fights yet those two thing are conciderd evil and bad in modern society.

I would like to claim that the opposit is more true then your statement, that all natural actions are looked upon as bad (violence, sex, curiosity etc.) and that to be a 'good' person, you have to be able to deny your nature to a great extent. Ofcourse there's exceptions to this but all of those are impossible to deny and survive such as eating, sleeping and going to the toilet.

@Wizzy,

Wizzy wrote:

Something I've been asking myself for some time is the following:
If a person commits a good action with bad motive, is that action good or bad?
Or the opposit, is a bad action with a good motive bad?
Ofcourse I'm talking about morally good/bad, right/wrong etc.

I'll throw out some scenarios for you so you might see a little better what I'm talking about.

Scenario A
Person A owns a small grandma/granpa style bakery, when his business one day lack some cash he borrows it from the local gangster Person B. Person B helps the loan shop out and lend him the money for a normal fee, the same he would have been given at any bank for lending their money. The bakery is soon up and running once again, going great. When Person A dies, he have yet to give the money back to Person B who knew that if he didn't collect the debt, it would grow to the point that he could take the bakery from the now dead Person A, so that his children gets nothing.

Was the action of lending the money good or bad?

Scenario B
Person A is a crime boss, on the orders of him his crew robs and beat up the locals in an area of the city. A person from this area Person B, tries to talk some sence into him but without results, the cops are helpless and won't do anything. When Person A orders the hit of a local shop owner Person B takes action. He gets a gun and shoots Person A.

Was the action of killing the ruthless crime boss good or bad?

Try to see it as a whole, nothing like "well the action is good but the motive is bad", because what interestes me is what it is as a whole.. And please don't get to locked into the scenarios because they're just exampels, not really the question I want you all to answer.

My point of view:
I think the whole good/bad thing is blurry.. According to the law it's close to only the action who decides the punishment, the motive is not as importat..
I can't honestly say if i think a good action with bad motive is good or bad, while at the same time I can't really say if a bad action with a good motive is good or bad.. But of the two, I think the later is better then the first..

Wizzy,

" To god all things are right and good, only to man some things are and some things are not. Hericlitus

"There is no such thing as right or wrong, only thinking makes it so." Shakespeare

Ponder it a bit, it is all subjective, a judgment, an evaluation.

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Wizzy,

" To god all things are right and good, only to man some things are and some things are not. Hericlitus

"There is no such thing as right or wrong, only thinking makes it so." Shakespeare

Ponder it a bit, it is all subjective.

I agree, but not fully..

Ofcourse there's good and bad, why do we have prisons if it wasn't? And people using the moral issues as a job?

Now ofcourse it's allways up to the induvidual but at the same time our culture and values affects this alot and if a nation didn't have any moral judgement system our society wouldn't work, but the problem with laws are that they rearly concider the motive behind the action, and that's where my question comes into play, can actions that society view as bad be justifyed and conciderd good depending on the motive behind them?

@Wizzy,

Wizzy wrote:

I agree, but not fully..

Ofcourse there's good and bad, why do we have prisons if it wasn't? And people using the moral issues as a job?

Now ofcourse it's allways up to the induvidual but at the same time our culture and values affects this alot and if a nation didn't have any moral judgement system our society wouldn't work, but the problem with laws are that they rearly concider the motive behind the action, and that's where my question comes into play, can actions that society view as bad be justifyed and conciderd good depending on the motive behind them?

Wizzy,

Justice is seldom rounded to the nearest term, but, we must try. In criminal law a judge passing sentence on an individual is not only considering the law broken but whether that was the intent of the individual. If it is found that, that indeed was his entent, it is then considered, under what circumstances the individual was brought to this action. That which is done of necessity, or done though a lack of understanding, as well as those who are deemed mad, recieve reasonable sentences as a result of weighing the circumstances under which they were operating at the time of said crime.

@Wizzy,

Wizzy wrote:

I agree, but not fully..

Ofcourse there's good and bad, why do we have prisons if it wasn't? And people using the moral issues as a job?

Now ofcourse it's allways up to the induvidual but at the same time our culture and values affects this alot and if a nation didn't have any moral judgement system our society wouldn't work, but the problem with laws are that they rearly concider the motive behind the action, and that's where my question comes into play, can actions that society view as bad be justifyed and conciderd good depending on the motive behind them?

If I do a good thing for a bad reason, is it still a good thing?
If I do a horrible thing for on a well-intentioned motive, is it still horrible?

I don't think such sweeping terms as "bad" and "good" should be contingent on motive... almost ever. Motives are guessed at; they're our perceptions of someone's "why". It's a dangerous road wrought with judgementalism and vilification. The more we increase or decrease the severity of judgment based on someone's perception of someone else's motives, the more we descend into subjectiveness. Let's keep it all above board, shall we?

I believe that motives *should* be considered, but only as a lessor, mitigating factor when "passing judgment". The vast preponderance of weight must be given to the effects of the act. Now, I know someone's just itchin to toss out the manslaughter scenario so I'll say it now; Yes, there are situations where motive can be *very* important. But by and large, when judging acts of all types, across the whole spectrum of daily life, a good "judge" must keep his eye on the ball - what are the effects?

... my two cents Smile

@Khethil,

Khethil,

Your right of course, the judge or jury do for the most part keep their I on the prize, and the prize is social harmony, social order. The topic of this tread though is what is good and bad [evil]. I think it is clear that these things do not exist accept as the sensitivities of the society at large or according to the establishment of a morality and/or values of a given culture."To god all things are right and good, only to man somethings are and somethings are not." Objectively there is no such thing as good and bad [evil] there is no meaning whatsoever accept that which comes from a subject or a subjective collective, all meaning is subjective.

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