The problem with moral obligation › Intending an outcome and foreseeing it

The paper's discussion of Sidgwick concerns the relation between intention and responsibility. Anscombe rejects a treatment of intention that includes every foreseen consequence of voluntary action. She thinks that collapses a distinction relevant to ethical judgment.

Her example concerns someone responsible for supporting a child. Deliberately withdrawing support, whether as an aim or a means to another aim, differs from accepting imprisonment rather than doing something disgraceful when imprisonment foreseeably prevents support. The cases have a similar bad consequence but differ in what the agent intends.

The example is an argument about description and responsibility. It is not a complete decision about every possible obligation involving imprisonment or family support. Its role is to show why the similarity of an outcome does not by itself settle whether responsibility is identical.

Foreseeing a harm does not make the harm intended merely by definition. Equally, saying that harm was unintended does not automatically excuse the action. A person can be responsible for taking an unreasonable risk or ignoring alternatives. The distinction requires investigation rather than functioning as a verbal escape.

A hypothetical modern illustration can make the same point. Someone might knowingly cause inconvenience as a side effect of keeping an urgent commitment, or deliberately create the inconvenience to pressure another person. Calling both outcomes foreseeable leaves out the different purposes. It also leaves open whether either action was justified.