this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Better if you can achieve consistency in both.
What’s your context? Is this a theological question? A legal question? A political question?
a social question. I often hear that it is more important how people perceive what is being said, as opposed to what the intention of what was being said.
In that sense, I think it would be difficult to have consistency in both. Where I live, a lot of people think that how something is perceived is more important.
All I can say is that the greater the gap between what is intended and what others perceive, the more difficult things can become.
Politics (even family politics) is full of this stuff.
In some legal contexts intent really matters.
But intention can only ever be inferred (unless bluntly stated) you could argue that if people generally aren’t willing or able to examine things too closely, then perception becomes everything.
Someone else brought this up too which is why I originally was asking. I had to watch one of those anti-sexual harassment training videos at work. If I remember correctly, the dialog they used was "Remember, regardless of what you intended, the perception of what you said matters more" and they were talking about saying lewd things to coworkers.
So the person saying it doesn't find it to be sexual harassment to just say something lewd to someone, but someone else could hear it and perceive it as sexual harassment and the intent would just go out the window because it was perceived to be harassment.
Here's some further reading on intent as it relates to criminal law if you're interested.
Any legal problems regarding sexual harassment at the workplace would, for one, be in civil proceedings, not criminal, which typically don't require intent, and most importantly, almost certainly be the (legal) problem of the company and not you. You probably aren't going to personally get sued because you made an off-color joke in front of the wrong person, but the company can absolutely get sued for having a hostile workplace under a variety of laws, for which your personal intent is entirely irrelevant.
The key word is “some”.
You’ll find bullying is treated in a similar way - the perception of the person who heard or experienced something is significant, the intent of the person who said or did something much less so.
On the other hand, one could be misleading and mistaken by giving out incorrect information, but one could be lying if they are knowingly giving out incorrect information… (intent)