Are There Genuine Reasons Against Intending Harm?
“Are bad intentions wrongs per se? In other words, are there normative reasons against intending harm and other bad effects which are not derived from reasons against harming or bringing those effects?
The defenders of the Doctrine of Double Effect and all those who subscribe to the thesis that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of actions, must answer these questions affirmatively. For there to be a genuine deontological constraint against intending harm, reasons against intending harm must be reasons per se.
In this talk, I evaluate and find wanting three kinds of theoretical justifications of reasons against intending harm as reasons per se: agent-centered, victim-centered, and impersonal. They state, respectively, that bad intentions are wrongs because they are bad for the agent, or for the victim, or because they are bad, period.
I conclude that although the failure of these justifications is not a decisive evidence to think that there are no genuine reasons against intending harm, it is a good enough evidence to raise serious doubt about it.”
The defenders of the Doctrine of Double Effect and all those who subscribe to the thesis that intentions are non-derivatively relevant to the moral permissibility of actions, must answer these questions affirmatively. For there to be a genuine deontological constraint against intending harm, reasons against intending harm must be reasons per se.
In this talk, I evaluate and find wanting three kinds of theoretical justifications of reasons against intending harm as reasons per se: agent-centered, victim-centered, and impersonal. They state, respectively, that bad intentions are wrongs because they are bad for the agent, or for the victim, or because they are bad, period.
I conclude that although the failure of these justifications is not a decisive evidence to think that there are no genuine reasons against intending harm, it is a good enough evidence to raise serious doubt about it.”
Anton Markoč is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Rijeka. He holds a PhD and an MA in Philosophy from Central European University and BSc and specialist degrees in Political Science from University of Montenegro. He specializes in moral and political philosophy, broadly construed, and has competence in similar fields, including the history of moral and political thought, moral psychology, and philosophy of action. His PhD dissertation, “It’s Not the Thought that Counts: An Essay on the Irrelevance of Intentions to the Moral Permissibility of Actions”, was supervised by János Kis and it defended the view that intentions are non-derivatively irrelevant to the moral permissibility of actions. In 2015, he was a Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard University, where he was supervised by T. M. Scanlon. In 2015-2016, he was an adjunct lecturer at University of Donja Gorica in Podgorica, Montenegro, where he taught courses in moral and political philosophy, while in 2014, he worked as a tutor in philosophy at CEU’s Roma Graduate Preparation Program.
