1.
You are driving down a winding mountain road with your family in the car, when a beautiful dog leaps out in front of your vehicle. You have the choice of swerving out of the way, and risking the life of your family on the mountain incline, or hitting this obviously well-loved dog. You hit the dog.
2. Your neighbor's dog often keeps you up at night. So, you study its daily behavioral habits, and endeavor to set up a situation in which you are able to hit the dog with you car, making it look like an accident.
In both of these situations, an action you have taken leads to the death of the dog. However, in the first, no one blames you for the death, while in the second, you are clearly a dog-killer. Why do we make a distinction here? Is it valid?
In the first situation, "killing a dog" is not the action you are taking. The action you are taking is "staying on the road to keep my family safe". You wish the dog were not there; and you would act in the same way if it weren't. The reason you are not blamed is because the object of your action (keeping your family safe) has been correctly judged to be more important than the life of the dog.
In the second situation, your action is "killing the dog". Your thoughts and use of the car are predicated on the dog being there; its death is the purpose of your act.
"But wait," says the dog-killer. "My object wasn't killing the dog; my object was getting a good night's sleep. The dog was incidental to this. I wish it weren't between me and my sleep, but that's the way it played out. This is the same as the situation on the mountain road." Are you, the dog-killer, correct?