[kingkilr]

I've also never been faced with the decision to torture someone or not, that doesn't stop me from making moral judgement about those actions either. The point of an ethical system is to help you make judgements about decisions, if your answer to every ethical question is, "I've never had to make that decision" your ethical system is useless.

[foldr]

There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a bad person." I think the OP was saying we should be cautious in making judgments of the second sort.

[Silhouette]

> There's a difference between saying "what John did is wrong" and "John is a bad person."

I disagree. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. If John repeatedly does bad things, then John is a bad person. How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

[kareemm]

we tend to judge people by their actions, not their intent, but ourselves by our intent, not our actions.

that is to say that you sit in harsh judgement of mark zuckerberg only seeing his actions without truly understanding his intentions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

[foldr]

Surely it has to be possible for a good person to do bad things (at least occasionally). I think it would be going a bit far to eliminate the distinction entirely.

>How are we to judge a person fairly, if not by how they conduct themselves?

That is kind of the point. Arguably, you just can't judge people fairly, because you never know what's going on inside. That doesn't mean that you can't criticize people's actions, just that you should be cautious about making more fundamental judgments about their character.

[Silhouette]

I find myself acknowledging that we all make mistakes for the second time in as many posts...

Sure, someone's moral character isn't a black-and-white question. People aren't really "good" or "bad" in absolute terms, so in a sense calling anyone a "good person" or a "bad person" can only ever be a generalisation based on the balance of what they do.

In this case, however, if someone repeatedly does very bad things, they'd better also be doing even more very good things to make up for it, or I think it's fair to apply the "bad person" label.

[foldr]

The point is that people have an inner life which isn't necessarily reflected in their actions. Someone might do "good" things all the time, but if you could read their thoughts and see their motivations, you might not necessarily consider them to be as good as they appear. Similarly, someone who's done a lot of bad things might not seem so bad if you knew their inner motivations. Actions only give you half the picture (if that).

You also seem to be making a terminological point about when it's ok to apply the term "good person" or "bad person", but that's a red herring. You can use those terms however you like, but it doesn't have anything to do with what I was saying.