A tough one, but I'll take a stab at it:





A little learning is dangerous - it is not enough to mean well, you must also be prepared, else doing nothing may be better. An example of this is the recent Russian rescue/massacre of the patrons of the Nord-Ost theater; the fentanyl gas caused dozens of deaths primarily because physicians were not in attendance nor told to expect a narcotic gas. Recovery would have been simple and effective with precautions.



The example Nagel provides, though, seems to contradict my point! The hero has no time to prepare an effective rescue sortie. Like I said, it's tough, and I may easily be wrong on the interpretation.

Bruce:



Remember a few years ago, a Chiefs running back--Joe Delaney, maybe?--tried saving a couple kids who were out in the middle of a lake. He drowned because he didn't know how to swim. Yet he was trying to save lives. Are we to lessen our judgment of his action because he was unlikely to succeed?

I'm not saying I agree with Nagel, just trying out a plausible interpretation of his comment. As your example (and even Nagel's example) shows, preparation time may be at quite a premium, or nonexistent. In the case you cite, it was better to try than do nothing. Of course, Nagel could have been having a bad day, and written arrant nonsense, and we amateurs are scratching our collective heads trying to find a signal in the noise....

Mr. Judd;



Most of the rank and file of the Communists were trying to do "the right thing", to care for and improve the state of their fellow men. They failed. Should we hold them blameless for the destruction they wrought?

oj - I believe Nagel is a consequentialist, that is he believes that the objective consequences of an act are the key to determining its moral status. Therefore, he must reject the moral significance that Christians attach to inner state - to spirit. For us Christians, by contrast, the most morally significant acts are inner ones -- the acts of recognizing and loving what is good.



AOG - the Communists were trying to achieve an evil that they mistakenly thought was good. They are culpable for the intellectual mistake as well as the evil action. A rescuer who drops his rescuee is trying to achieve a genuine good, and accurately apprehends the good. The two cases are not the same.

I might add re the Communists, that intellectual mistakes of that sort are almost always combined with grave sins of the will and spirit -- with hatred, the desire to dominate or enslave, the "will to power," and perhaps the desire to remain ignorant of reality and live a fantasy. A person of good will could hardly remain ignorant of the evil of Communism for long.

AOG:



Initially, I think we can say they were behaving morally when they tried to reform societies that were unjust. It's only the resort to evil means and the continuation with the system once they saw the results that made them immoral.

pj:



So if I try to run someone down because I hate them and in dodging my car they also avoid a falling tree branch, have I done good?

I think PJ's explanation is the best. I even briefly considered it, but rejected it - who could believe such ca-ca? Surely results and
intentions must both count.

Can I interject the reasonable man theory?



Merely having a sincere wish to do good creates no morality. (I speak from recent, bitter experience. Somebody asked my help. I consented but was out of my depth. The result was disastrous. Stupid or immoral? Maybe both.)



Anyhow, to take as extreme a situation as I can think of (like we used to do in religion class), your friend has a brain tumor and you decide to perform surgery. Goal:

good. Motive: the best. Outcome: the worst.



To me, a moral action would be one in which the goal is clearly desirable (and perhaps also desired by the target, but maybe not always), the chances somewhere above hopeless, the means reasonable, the attempt made as efficiently as possible in the circumstances.



To cite one of my favorite examples, it was hardly immoral of the Danes to surrender to the Germans on April 9, 1940.

oj - Well, there are variations of consequentialist theories in which that would be the case. Very few philosophers are so extreme, however -- probably not even Peter Singer of Princeton, who is a sort of professional provocateur, always following consequentialist ideas to their logical but ludicrous conclusions.



Most consequentialists would say that you have to evaluate potential actions ex ante, at the time of decision, and therefore should estimate the probability distribution of consequences. In your example, if 99% of the time the your target would end up dead and 0.1% of the time you'd accidentally save him, then consequentialists would say it was a bad act, even if it worked out well.



Of course in the quotation, Nagel argues that an ex post realization, which may not provide much evidence of the ex ante probability distribution, is relevant to evaluating the moral act. This is difficult to fathom.