In other words, consequentialists say “you should always consider consequences,” while I take Kant to say that one should sometimes consider consequences, and sometimes not.
Kant, and deontologists are deontologists because they take the intention (or something like it) to be what determines the moral value of an action. In some sense, a Kantian would always think about the consequences of the action, but just wouldn’t take the consequences to determine the moral value of an action. So for example, if I leap into a river to save a drowning baby, then Kant is going to say that my act is to be morally evaluated independently of whether or not I managed (despite my best efforts) to save the drowning baby. I’m not morally responsible for an overly swift current, after all.
However, Kant would say that understanding my intention means understanding what I was trying to bring about: you can’t evaluate my action’s intentions without understanding the consequences I sought. What doesn’t matter to the deontologist is the actual consequence.
Consequentialists and deontologists don’t really differ much in this. Consequentialists, after all, have to draw certain boundaries around ‘consequences’, having to do with what the agent can be called a cause of, as an agent. If I take my ailing brother to the hospital, only to be hit by a meteor on the way, I didn’t therefore act badly, even though he’d have lived through the day had I left him at home. Finally, consequentialists will evaluate courses of action based on expected utility, if only because actual utility is unavailable prior to the action. No consequentialist will say that moral judgements can only be made after the fact.
Well, whenever you say something like “this system of deciding whether an action is right or wrong is flawed; here is a better system,” this doesn’t make sense unless the two systems differ somehow. But then, the meta level can be collapsed to “these acts (which the former system considered right) are actually wrong; these other acts (which the former system considered wrong) are right.” Sounds like a moral judgement to me (or possibly a family of infinitely many moral judgements).
Systems can differ in their “outputs”—the sets of acts which they label “right” or “wrong”—or in their implementation, or both. If system A is contradictory, and system B isn’t, then system B is better. And that’s not a moral judgement.
They do seem to converge. Kant himself laid down a sort of hardcore deonotology in the Groundwork, and then spent the rest of his career sort of regressing toward the mean on all kinds of issues.
Kant, and deontologists are deontologists because they take the intention (or something like it) to be what determines the moral value of an action. In some sense, a Kantian would always think about the consequences of the action, but just wouldn’t take the consequences to determine the moral value of an action. So for example, if I leap into a river to save a drowning baby, then Kant is going to say that my act is to be morally evaluated independently of whether or not I managed (despite my best efforts) to save the drowning baby. I’m not morally responsible for an overly swift current, after all.
However, Kant would say that understanding my intention means understanding what I was trying to bring about: you can’t evaluate my action’s intentions without understanding the consequences I sought. What doesn’t matter to the deontologist is the actual consequence.
Consequentialists and deontologists don’t really differ much in this. Consequentialists, after all, have to draw certain boundaries around ‘consequences’, having to do with what the agent can be called a cause of, as an agent. If I take my ailing brother to the hospital, only to be hit by a meteor on the way, I didn’t therefore act badly, even though he’d have lived through the day had I left him at home. Finally, consequentialists will evaluate courses of action based on expected utility, if only because actual utility is unavailable prior to the action. No consequentialist will say that moral judgements can only be made after the fact.
To put it another way, the more you fix the problems in C-ism, the more it looks like D-ology and vice versa.
The convergence is probably due to (and converging to) whatever we use to judge, in both cases, that what we’re doing is “fixing the problems”.
I don’t see why that should itself be a moral judgement, if that is what you were getting at?
Well, whenever you say something like “this system of deciding whether an action is right or wrong is flawed; here is a better system,” this doesn’t make sense unless the two systems differ somehow. But then, the meta level can be collapsed to “these acts (which the former system considered right) are actually wrong; these other acts (which the former system considered wrong) are right.” Sounds like a moral judgement to me (or possibly a family of infinitely many moral judgements).
Systems can differ in their “outputs”—the sets of acts which they label “right” or “wrong”—or in their implementation, or both. If system A is contradictory, and system B isn’t, then system B is better. And that’s not a moral judgement.
They do seem to converge. Kant himself laid down a sort of hardcore deonotology in the Groundwork, and then spent the rest of his career sort of regressing toward the mean on all kinds of issues.