act =

object (objective or what)

intention (subjective or why)
circumstances (who, when, where, how & consequence)
we must disambiguate the concept, act, to distinguish between the cluster concept of
act (which includes both material and formal causes) as used to refer to intrinsic evils
and the classically dened act as used to refer to a physical act (i.e. only a material
cause)
"intrinsic evils" refer to cluster concepts, which are also tautological insofar as their
moral conclusions are already included in their denitions because various physical evils
(material causes) will have already been linked to subjective intentions (formal causes),
ergo, as such they refer to this or that nexus of action, intention and motive
even once dening an act in terms of both material and formal causes, a fallibilist
epistemology resists absolutizing its proscription, conceding only its virtually
exceptionless nature
competing deontologists tie themselves up in paradoxical knots trying to preserve
absolute consistency in moral principles, such as, for example, regarding lying ... but the
real solution, in extreme cases, where our concepts strain to bear the weight exerted by
our radical human nitude, lies into a retreat from an overwrought absolutistic,
infallibilistic, rationalistic, deductivistic, a prioristic, physicalistic, legalistic, rigoristic
deontologism to a
fallibilist, probabilist, inductivist, proportionalist, casuistry, which analyzes the
exceptions that reality indeed can present for otherwise virtually --- not absolutely --exceptionless proscriptions, navigating, cumulative case-like, toward a preponderance of
holistic value-realizations
as godel made us aware, we cannot ever prove that the axioms of our formal systems
are both complete and consistent
as hawking conceded, faced with such a choice, the good money bets on consistency
and does not otherwise aspire to completeness
the practical upshot, by analogy, being that we cannot, in principle, absolutely proscribe
acts because our inventory of any relevant formal, nal, efcient, material instrumental
and logical causes remains, ineluctably, incomplete ....

so, while we ordinarily navigate quite well with virtually exceptionless intrinsic evils
employing deontological principles, we must fall back on other epistemic resources,
which better parse moral realities in more exceptional cases, hence, casusitry ...
and understand and accept that its deliverances might be merely adequate or true
enough, beautiful enough, good enough, in the same way and to the same degree that
any imago Dei will correspond to the True, Beautiful & Good
intrinsic evil, deontology, proportionalism, tautology, cluster concept, fallibilism,
casuistry, cluster concept