Judge by Intention
Updated 2026-08-10
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
The doctrine holds that liability and moral evaluation should rest on the actor's subjective intention and not merely on the observed result. Its strength is that it distinguishes the well-meaning failure from the negligent success, and its risk is symmetric: over-weighting motive excuses harmful consequences, while over-weighting outcome punishes good-faith effort that simply did not land.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Separate motive from outcome: state the intention and the result as two facts. - Set the weights: decide in advance how much each input will count. - Check both directions: refuse to excuse harm and refuse to punish good faith.
Anchor fast decisions
Moral evaluation has two independent inputs, intention and consequence, and collapsing them into one produces systematically wrong verdicts precisely in the cases where the two diverge. Making the weighting explicit forces each input to be assessed on its own evidence, which is what allows a good-faith failure to be told apart from a careless one.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- zh.wikisource.orghttps://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%89%E5%9C%8B%E5%BF%97/%E5%8D%B728verified
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