A further note on Konrad Scheffler's question:
>�... a clear distinction is made between murder and attempted
murder, with the latter being treated as far more forgiveable than the
former. This is true even in cases where the actions and intentions and
therefore (IMO) the culpability of the perpetrator are identical. How do
lawyers defend this?<
Although I do not think that today's criminal law (in the U.S.) is merely or
primarily an expression or reflection of the notions I am about to mention,
it may be helpful to recall that the tension between the idea of punishing
(or rewarding) only thought and the idea of punishing (or rewarding) only
actions or results is a very old one.
Examples:
***
People are damned for what they _think_: Pietists (and, except for the grace
of God, we're all damned, for none of us think entirely pure thoughts);
Immanuel Kant sometimes said or suggested that only intentions count [he
faced a world, he thought, controlled by inexorable natural laws, which left
the hypothesis of human freedom in something of a pickle; Kant was a "closet
Pietist," a German Pietist in philosophical garb]
People are damned for what they do, not for what they think: Hegel and the
Catholic Church once both moved in this direction, although neither of the
two fully embraced the proposition that only actions & results matter (BTW,
Hegel was quite wrong to think of himself as a Protestant philosopher; his
morality was essentially Roman Catholic)
***
Worst of all possible worlds:
People are damned for what they think and they are damned for (merely)
because of what they do or cause to happen: totalitarianism, Stalin,
Darkness at Noon; i.e., begin by peering into men's souls and damn them for
subversive thoughts; and then torture, kill, etc. people if they do the
wrong thing, no matter what they thought or intended (the Great Leader: "if
you _do_ subversive things or cause subversion, you are a subversive
miscreant, even if you thought you were advancing the Revolution; this is
the Logic of History")
***
Doctrines of salvation:
Justification by faith (at one extreme, Pietism; but no one can _earn_
salvation)
Justification by good works (at the other extreme); you are what you do: by
their fruits you will know them (but you need luck to win salvation; unless,
of course, you are quite prescient and powerful)
***
Few philosophers or religions go to either extreme (i.e., either
consequences count or intentions count, one or the other category of things
counts, but not both)[Stalinism may be the exception] but most philosophers
and Western religions tried to find the appropriate straddle between
the thesis that
(wo)man is what (s)he thinks;
and the thesis that
(wo)man is what (s)he does.
In this respect, criminal law is no different from those philosophers and
religions.
