That was my point: intent is instrumental in shaping action, therefore intent should be given more weight in assigning moral or legal responsibility than unintended consequences. By definition, the agent has no conscious control over the latter. If you simply want to use ultimate consequences as the barometer of responsibility and completely discount intent, Chomsky could've plausibly said that the terrorist attacks weren't all that bad because they didn't inflict as many casualties as the AIDs virus does on a daily basis. Why should we care that the latter aren't agents if we don't care about what agents actually attempt to do?
> It is not supposed to wash your soul in the Blood of
> the Lamb. You can commit adultery in your wicked heart to your heart's
> wicket content. The law only cares if your behavior violates its rules. I
> forgetw hy we got onto this. --jks
I believe the argument was over whether or not we should care that Clinton and crew tried to minimize civilian casualties when they decided to bomb the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant.
-- Luke