Kant Or Mill? Or neither? Effectual Significance vs. Intent

The difference of note between Kant’s and Mill’s moral philosophy resides in where an act becomes moral. Kant claims that intent is the deciding factor in determining the moral worth of action. Intent meaning something along the lines of “what you are willing-to-be-done at the moment you attempt to make it reality.” Whereas Mill claims that an act is only moral when it is in accord with the Greatest Happiness Principle. That is to say, an act is only of moral worth when it produces the greatest amount of happiness. Essentially, moral worth is derived from intent behind the action for Kant, whereas moral worth is derived from the consequence of the action for Mill.

Mill and Kant present us with fairly contradictory views. I believe that most of us have probably sided with one of them by this point, and why wouldn’t we? Isn’t there a clear answer as to which formulation is of greater value? Well, I am not sure there is a clear way to tell this. In fact, I cannot decide, and I’ll tell you why.

The existence of individual moral responsibility necessitates a free, autonomous will. Without such a will, no action could be attributed to an individual while simultaneously claiming that the individual willed it. That is, no one could say the individual chose to act that way. If one cannot make the choice, then one cannot be morally responsible.

Accepting this short explanation, then it seems reasonable that Kant would aim to formulate a moral system based in the will and derive moral worth from it.

To play with Kant a little, as long as a person willed a particular thing in accordance with the Categorical Imperative, then the act would be considered morally good. Not only this, but it would considered morally good no matter what the outcome of the action was. The outcome of the action doesn’t have to be absolutely terrifying, but, taking a different road, let us assume that the action fell through for some reason and had no effect. The action would still be morally good even though the action was nullified and practically useless.

So what good can anything produce that is not actualized? Willing and intending are great things, and we cannot be without them (for then there would be no moral responsibility and morality wouldn’t mean a thing). Yet if the action never has any effectual significance, can we really say it has moral value? Or if the action has an effect opposing the intention, can we really still claim the person to be moral?

Mill’s utilitarian system seems to fix this problem. An action has no moral worth without effectually producing something. This is so since an action that does not produce anything cannot relate to the Greatest Happiness principle. It is the consequence that determines the moral worth of an action. Regardless of intent, an action that does nothing is amoral and an act that produces the opposite of the intention is morally wrong if it goes against the Greatest Happiness principle. But, there are major objections to this as well.

The two objections I will make regard and Aristotelian strategy and David Hume’s view of cause and effect relationships. First, presenting the Aristotelian strategy: It seems that if the consequence is the determining factor in the moral worth of action, then all moral actions are vain and empty or a person continues to act when dead. To elaborate, every cause produces an effect and that effect in turn is a cause for some other effect and so on to infinity. Thus, an act either becomes morally neutral in the long run (committing as much bad as good) or a person acts morally for eternity even though they may not be living.

From Hume’s point of view, no one actual knows the cause of an effect. Our view of cause is something we project on the world. One can see a billiard ball hit another and from that experience say, “That red ball caused the blue one to move.” Yet, we do not really know the cause (read Hume’s explanation for more insight). We only claim it in retrospect. To help see this, it is possible that temperatures and wind forces could have stopped the red ball from moving and “caused” the blue to move without anyone knowing about it. Thus, our acts aren’t necessarily associated with our perception of the cause. *Edit* And thus a purely consequentialist view has no moral significance due to this separation.

According to these two objections, it seems that that we cannot purely rely on consequences; If not for the above reasons, then for the reason that we cannot associate moral responsibility with acts according to a consequentialist point of view. At the very least, since acts are morally determined by their consequences and do not take into account the will, it seems very hard to establish a moral responsibility since this only comes with a the will and thus one’s intent.

So it seems we need an account of morality that satisfactorily takes into account both the will (the intent) and the consequence associated with an action (the effectual significance).