 I've never liked ethics. To me, most ethical questions contain a bunch of unexamined presuppositions and frame philosophical problems in the wrong way. A central question in ethics is, for any given situation, what is the right thing to do? Now growing up in a Christian evangelical household, I heard this question a million times, but I think it's a misleading question which causes more confusion than clarity. For this piece, I'll be using the term ethics loosely and interchangeably with the term morality, which in common usage, they mean the same thing. In my worldview, ethics does not concern itself with right or wrong action. It's not concerned with actions at all. Rather, all ethical problems are about intention. Doing the right thing makes far more sense when understood as having the right intention. Let me give you an example. It's your nephew's birthday and he's turning six. You know that he wants pie as a present. You have all the ingredients necessary on the table and can cook a delicious pie in minutes. You have a choice. Bake the kid a pie or not. Naturally, you make the pie and he eats it, has an allergic reaction, and dies immediately. Your actions directly cause the death of an innocent child. Are you a monster? Morally guilty? Well, from my perspective, the answer is easy. Don't look at the actions, don't look at the conclusions, look at the intent. If you didn't mean to kill the kid, if nobody knew he was allergic to pecans, then you've not done a bad thing. Ethically speaking, your actions are irrelevant. This is true even when we ramp up the stakes. Instead of a simple allergic reaction to pie, let's say you make your nephew some chicken soup. He's ill and you want him to feel better. Fortunately, you have your own chickens, so you know the soup's going to be healthy. You make a batch and you bring it to his family. Ah, but little do you know, your chickens were carrying a nasty strain of avian flu. He gets sick and contagious, spreads the disease to the rest of his family members, which ultimately starts a pandemic. Millions of people die. Are you morally responsible for the death of millions? I'd say, of course not. Now, if this is true, if millions of innocent people dying as a consequence of one's action does not determine an action's moral status, then I think we can confidently say that morality has nothing to do with action. Now, let's say instead you knew your chickens were diseased, or that you knew your nephew was allergic to pecans. Well then it becomes equally clear. You intended to kill, so therefore you're morally guilty. I'll give you another example. Say that you wanted to kill your nephew, but you were mistaken about his allergy. He's actually allergic to walnuts, not pecans. So instead of dying, he actually enjoys the pie. You made his day. Your actions directly created happiness in a six-year-old and fulfilled his birthday wishes. Are you in the right? No, of course not. You wanted him dead. The positive results were just an unintended consequence. Thinking about ethics this way gets around a number of problems, like the infamous trolley problems. Consider one version. You find yourself in front of train tracks and a lever. A train is headed towards 10 children who are tied to the tracks. If you pull the lever, the train will be diverted to another track, one with five elderly people who are tied to the rails. So the dilemma is this. If you do nothing, 10 children will die, but if you actively intervene, five old people will die. What's the right thing to do? Are you morally responsible for letting the children die if you do nothing? Or are you only responsible if you intervene and pull the lever? Is it morally okay to substitute a few old people for several young people? Now there's a million different variations to this idea and a million and one different responses. I can't help but find my resolution to be the easiest. There's no right action to take. What's more important is the actor's intention. This means that different people could act differently in the same circumstances. My actions, which would be pulling the lever, will be based on my own sincere valuation to cause the most good in the world. Your actions, say not pulling the lever, might have the exact same intention, although we make opposite choices. Now perhaps, say my pulling the lever to save the children causes more harm than good. Let's say all of those kids that are saved turn out to be little hitlers. While all of those old people that I killed were cancer curing doctors. But morally speaking, it wouldn't matter. My intention was morally correct. Now a skeptic might say, oh Steve, are you saying that anything goes as long as your intention is pure? I'd say yes, although it seems like a dangerous precedent, it actually solves a few more problems. Consider the case of an incompetent person. Let's say that he has brain damage and does not have a clear grasp of cause and effect. In my view, he can still act morally, regardless of the potential damage of his actions. If he sincerely believes swinging a knife around is a loving thing to do, then he's morally correct in doing so. Now this does justify the actions of lunatics, it's true. The religious zealot who blows himself up, if his intention is right and he sincerely acted out of love, then I don't believe he's acted immorally. Now fortunately, I do have one catch. Truly having the right intention means you care about cause and effect. If you love your fellow man, you must understand the importance of researching your beliefs. Acting out of ignorance when avoidable reflects poorly on an individual's intention. I cannot morally condemn the man with brain damage, but I can condemn the lazy zealot who acts out of ignorance and really doesn't care about the accuracy of his beliefs. So in essence, morality is entirely internal, it's not external. It only appears external because well-intentioned people usually act in ways that we like, we clearly see their actions, but we can't clearly see their intentions, so the cart gets put before the horse. I suggest a simple alternative. Let's recognize that actions flow from intentions, questions of causality deal with actions, questions of morality deal with intentions.