Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation

The book argues that the moral quality of an act comes from the agents inner states and that intentions are essential to the moral evaluation of acts. It challenges the mainstream, objective approach in normative ethics and offers an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts as a replacement.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 27 December 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The moral quality of an act is determined by the inner states of the agent performing it, according to the book. By emphasizing the essential significance of intention in the moral assessment of actions, the book challenges the conventional, objective approach in normative ethics. It is widely believed that the intentions, knowledge, and volition of agents are irrelevant to determining the moral permissibility of their actions. This book emphasizes that the capacities of agency, rather than merely the label "agent," must be engaged during an act for its moral evaluation to be coherent.

The author begins with an ontological argument that an act is a motion or a causing of change in something else. He argues that the source of an act's moral meaning lies in the agent: specifically, what the agent aims to accomplish if aware of relevant facts around her. He then proceeds to a series of critical chapters that examine arguments for mainstream approaches to act evaluation, including Thomson's dismissal of the agent's knowledge and volition requirements, Scanlon's arguments for a derivative relevance of intentions to permissibility, Frowes' causal roles of agents in the moral evaluation of acts, and Bennett's explicit defense of the objective approach.

The book concludes by offering the author's preferred replacement for the objective approach, an Aristotelian-Thomist view of acts. Acts, Intentions, and Moral Evaluation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, just war theory, the ethics of self-defense, and philosophy of action.

Weight: 621g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032298252