It depends on the specifics of the deontological rules that are followed. If deontological rules (aka preferences) are consistent, they can’t be money-pumped any more than a consistent utility function can.
It’s worth noting that Deontology and Utilitarianism just are different ways of generating preference ordering of actions, and if they generate the same actions, they are completely indistinguishable from each other. If an action-set (actions taken in a sequence of contexts) does not contain any preference reversals, it won’t be money-pumped. This is independent of metaethical framework.
For your more limited semi-deontological case, it’s not particularly clear exactly what the contradicions are. Assuming there are some, an attacker (or inconvenient universe) would make you pay MORE utility than it takes to set up the situation where you’d want to kill someone with your bare hands.
But truly, that particular rule is not very binding in today’s world, so it probably doesn’t cost you very often. It’s not really deontology if it never matters. Other deontological strictures, which DO change your behavior because they don’t align with maximizing your utility, will do more damage (to your utility, even if not literally “money-pump”).
Yes. Deontological constraints, to the extent that they bite in practice, will result in you getting less utility than if magically you hadn’t had them at the moment they bit.
This is not an argument against deontological constraints, any more than it would be an argument against valuing welfare for men to point out that this will sometimes come at the cost of welfare for women. Everything has tradeoffs, and obviously if we impose a deontological constraint we are expecting it to cost utility at least in some circumstances.
It depends on the specifics of the deontological rules that are followed. If deontological rules (aka preferences) are consistent, they can’t be money-pumped any more than a consistent utility function can.
It’s worth noting that Deontology and Utilitarianism just are different ways of generating preference ordering of actions, and if they generate the same actions, they are completely indistinguishable from each other. If an action-set (actions taken in a sequence of contexts) does not contain any preference reversals, it won’t be money-pumped. This is independent of metaethical framework.
For your more limited semi-deontological case, it’s not particularly clear exactly what the contradicions are. Assuming there are some, an attacker (or inconvenient universe) would make you pay MORE utility than it takes to set up the situation where you’d want to kill someone with your bare hands.
But truly, that particular rule is not very binding in today’s world, so it probably doesn’t cost you very often. It’s not really deontology if it never matters. Other deontological strictures, which DO change your behavior because they don’t align with maximizing your utility, will do more damage (to your utility, even if not literally “money-pump”).
Yes. Deontological constraints, to the extent that they bite in practice, will result in you getting less utility than if magically you hadn’t had them at the moment they bit.
This is not an argument against deontological constraints, any more than it would be an argument against valuing welfare for men to point out that this will sometimes come at the cost of welfare for women. Everything has tradeoffs, and obviously if we impose a deontological constraint we are expecting it to cost utility at least in some circumstances.