>Like, if someone treads dog poo into my house on their shoes, it doesn't really matter if they did it by mistake, or spent ages walking around town trying to find some dog poo to step in before coming to my house; the effect is that there is now dog poo on my carpet.
So, whether it's your own two year old or a malicious adult, you think it's wrong to respond differently because they both produced the same harm?
I think it's not wrong to treat an adult exactly like you would a child if he's acting like one. I interpret parent poster as trying to make a point about how we cannot tell anything about intent so we should judge on the action, solely.
> I think it's not wrong to treat an adult exactly like you would a child if he's acting like one.
So, are you saying that the malicious adult poo-tracker is being childish and should be treated with the leniency we afford to children?
> I interpret parent poster as trying to make a point about how we cannot tell anything about intent so we should judge on the action, solely.
Why on Earth do you think we can't deduce someone's intent? In the case I posited, you can know the intent of both the child (no malicious intent) and the malicious poo-tracker (malicious intent). In many other cases, you can also deduce intent from someone's behavior.
So, whether it's your own two year old or a malicious adult, you think it's wrong to respond differently because they both produced the same harm?