The results of running are different from jogging - roughly speaking, the speed at which the legs and hence the body move - and this is what differentiates them as actions.
Ah, but is that individuation, or just a description? At what speed, precisely, does the individuation occur between the two terms? What about for hustling? Or for sprinting? Or power-walking? There is no answer to these questions, other than personal opinions that defy the level of individuation that you seem intent on.
The nature of the action is given, though, by its results (or, if you prefer, the sort of event that it is - but if Davidson is correct then events themselves are individuated by the causal relationships in which they participate).
As stated previously, I disagree. I don't think that the nature of an action is determined by its results, as that means that an action has no particular moral dimension unto itself, but rather that it's a question mark, with its morality assigned after the fact based on little more than circumstance.
I mentioned killing upthread. Killings, hittings, etc are actions typically taken to have moral significance - even innocent killings still have a moral significance that (for instance) head scratchings typically lack. And a killing is such precisely because of its result - namely, a death. (Likewise a head scratcing - its result is a scratching of the head.)
And I hold that this is the result of having an imprecise definition for your action, hence the difference between "killing" and "murder."
I cited works and chapters for Pogge. I think that's good enough for the internet (in publication I would cite page numbers). I cited a book for Duff - I assure you if you read it you'll find that it is as I've presented it.
Again, this isn't sufficient if you want to present supporting evidence in a debate. You want to say that this supports your claim (though I find an appeal to authority to be of little value in a debate of personal moral philosophy), then you need to actually showcase the material in question, rather than saying that it's to be found elsewhere and the person you're debating can go look it up.
These books are not in the public domain, so I can't link to them if that's what you want. And I'm not proposing to type out pages of text.
In essence, you're saying that you can't produce the material in question, and so can't meet the burden of proof. That's fine, but in that case you shouldn't cite the material in question.
I honestly do believe that you're not especially familiar with the work on crime and punishment of Duff, Gardner, Tadros, Tasioulas etc on crime and punishment. If you were, you're know that (i) they defend deontological and not consequentialist theories of wrongdoing, (ii) that they think that what makes actions like killings and hittings and robbings and the like wrong is primarily that they violate the interests of others when there is a duty of non-violation (and hence are, in at least once sense of that word, harms), and (iii) that that they argue that a morally adequate criminal law should (more or less) track moral responsibility.
All this proves is why it is, I believe, folly to read someone's intentions from they're actions. Leaving aside the issue that you're once again citing the contents of these works without providing verification (besides your previous statements to go look them up), you don't know that I don't know this material, you're making an interpretation based on what I've said, and interpretations are capable of all manner of mistakes.
Far better, don't you think, not to make those assumptions in the first place?
The fact that you asserted upthread that deontological morality denies that the wrong of action is a consequence of the way it thwarts the interests of others - an assertion which is false, assuming that "deontological" is meant to bear the meaning that contemporary English-speaking moral philosophers give it - reinforces my sense that you are not that familiar with the works of these authors.
See above. The fact that I have a different opinion in this regard (one which does not make the system of morality I've outlined any less deontological in nature) does not mean, in and of itself, that I'm not familiar with the material in question. That's your attempt to read my intentions from my actions, showcasing the flaw in doing so. (It also doesn't seem very relevant, since I'm not sure what my disagreement with such works would prove or disprove.)
Given that you reject not only the general approach of these authors - whom I would label, at least roughly, neo-Aristoteleans of the contemporary Oxford school - but also Kantianism (upthread you objected to Kant's universalisation method for identifying the content of the categorical imperative, and your rejection of all references to results of action presumably debars you from using "treatment of others as ends and not merely as means" as a criterion of evaluation), and given that you haven't actually named any major figure with whom you at least roughly agree, interpreting your position is not easy.
I disagree here also; I think it's very easy, since I've flat-out told you what my position is. No interpretation is necessary.
Upthread you suggested that, from the moral point of view, attempted murder and murder are the same thing. This made me think that you regard "intended result" as central to individuating and evaluating actions. Yet in your most recent post you say that I "grossly overestimate the importance of a person's intent . . . in determining the morality of the actions they take."
Of course the "intended results" are not relevant to what I was proposing, that's because the individuation of action is, as demonstrated above, operating from what I consider to be a flawed premise. The nature of the action, in and of itself, is something that resists individuation, at least at the level you seem to be looking for. The best you can get in that regard is disagreement over what the nature of the action actually is (e.g. what sort of action an action is), but that's a personal decision (reflective of the larger debate on moral philosophy as a whole), since two people can disagree over whether someone is running or jogging, and there's no way of saying who's right or wrong.
So you think morality of an action turns not on its internal/necessary results (eg that a killing entails a death), nor on its downstream, contingent consequences for aggregate welfare (because you reject consequentialism), nor on the intention of the one who performs it (as per the quote in the previous paragraph), but on something else - the nature of the action, where that is ascertained without reference to its internal/necessary results, its contingent consequences, or the intention with which it is performed.
I hope you can see why I find that this a difficult view to make sense of.
Well, to be perfectly honest, not really, since it makes perfect sense to me; that's why I've been trying to explain it for quite a few posts now.
