Moral Intent . . . and a Lie in Which We Can All Believe?

I've been thinking about the wank (you know the one) and it struck me as interesting the way in which in literary analysis intent is illegitimate, but in moral analysis it's much more important. Unless you're a consequentialist or a utilitarian or one of the handful of other positions which eschew intent in moral analysis, too, but we won't go there. In general, though, I think we are okay with people making mistakes (underestimating the cultural literacy of their audience, say) and not so much with people doing things that they know are wrong. Unless you're an error theorist, in which case everyone falls into the first case, but we won't go there either.

(The most damning facts about the accused parties in the recent cases is the way in which they are reported to have acted after producing the texts, the comments they made which interpretive conventions lead us to read as to having been made in their own voices and thus cause us to construct their intent in a certain way, as being having not made a good-faith effort. I say this without firsthand knowledge. A fact can be damning without being true.)

But then it occurred to me that when we perform moral analysis we perform the same sort of Foucauldian process in constructing intent as we do when reading a text. We don't have knowledge about the actual intent of a moral agent (even if they are ourselves!) anymore than we do of an author. Only instead of an "author-function," we'd get something along the lines of a "moral-agent-function." Which would be all well and good, but with ethics aren't we much more invested in finding out what really happened (i.e., with the moral-agent-function being equivalent with the moral agent) than we are with literary analysis. Which is (I think?) because literary analysis doesn't compel us to any action that's more significant than hitting the back button (or, at most, writing a review that can wreck a career) while moral judgments lead to categorical imperatives which can literally be a matter of life and death. (Murder or self-defense? A person's life hangs in the balance! Or, you know, flaming a plagiarizer.)

In the soi-disant "real world," while we can't circumvent the theoretical limits of intent (we can't subpoena a ding an sich) we can cut through some of the practical ones--and often do, especially in extreme cases. Also, the law has protections built into that assume that when "the real truth" is obscured from us (as it inevitably is) the defendent at least is given the benefit of the doubt. (Too often the protections are circumvented, but that's paranoia for another day. Note to self: why haven't you mailed that cheque to the ACLU?)

The result isn't necessarily any closer to the truth, but it assuages our fears. We get a truth that we can swallow. We don't need a truth that is Truth, just one that we can unite behind as a community . . . a shared reality, a shared lie, in which we all can believe.

[I think I need a tag for discussing intent issues. "Author-function"? "Authorial intent"? "Intentional fallacy"? I wish I could make polls.]