Many forms of classical deontological ethics have rules like “don’t lie” or “don’t murder” as absolutes. A while ago, I saw a book by a Catholic writer that argued that when hiding people wanted by Nazis if one was asked directly by a Nazi if one was hiding someone the ethical thing would be to say yes. A consequentialist will look at that and disagree quite strongly. In practice many deontological systems won’t go that far and will label some deontological constraints at different priority levels, so most Catholic theologians would as I understand it see nothing wrong with lying in that context. Similarly, in both classical ethics as discussed in both Islam and Judaism, lying in such a context would be considered the right thing to do. But some other deontological constraints may override- for example in Orthodox Judaism, idolatry cannot be engaged in even to save a life.
In practice most strong deontologist end up having systems that in most contexts look very similar to what the consequentialist would do outside a few circumstances.
Thanks! OK, so a classical deontological rule might be, “don’t lie” as an absolute. Suppose that a person has this particular rule in their ethical system. It is entirely context and consequence independent.
Since I don’t have time to read articles about meta-ethics at the moment, I wanted to guess the gist of the argument that this could be expressed in consequentialist terms.
Is it as simple as if someone tells a lie, then there is something that is now ‘bad’ about the universe and this is framed as a consequence? For example, something as simple as ‘a lie has been told’ or perhaps a little bit more subtle, that now a person is in the negative state of being a liar. So that there is a negative ‘consequence’ of the lie, but it just happens to be an absolutely immediate consequence.
Then the distinction would be that deontologists compute over consequences that are immediate results of an action or state (that is, of the action or state itself), while consequentialists will compute over the consequences of that action or state (where consequence has the usual meaning of second or third or nth effects).
Many forms of classical deontological ethics have rules like “don’t lie” or “don’t murder” as absolutes. A while ago, I saw a book by a Catholic writer that argued that when hiding people wanted by Nazis if one was asked directly by a Nazi if one was hiding someone the ethical thing would be to say yes. A consequentialist will look at that and disagree quite strongly. In practice many deontological systems won’t go that far and will label some deontological constraints at different priority levels, so most Catholic theologians would as I understand it see nothing wrong with lying in that context. Similarly, in both classical ethics as discussed in both Islam and Judaism, lying in such a context would be considered the right thing to do. But some other deontological constraints may override- for example in Orthodox Judaism, idolatry cannot be engaged in even to save a life.
In practice most strong deontologist end up having systems that in most contexts look very similar to what the consequentialist would do outside a few circumstances.
Thanks! OK, so a classical deontological rule might be, “don’t lie” as an absolute. Suppose that a person has this particular rule in their ethical system. It is entirely context and consequence independent.
Since I don’t have time to read articles about meta-ethics at the moment, I wanted to guess the gist of the argument that this could be expressed in consequentialist terms.
Is it as simple as if someone tells a lie, then there is something that is now ‘bad’ about the universe and this is framed as a consequence? For example, something as simple as ‘a lie has been told’ or perhaps a little bit more subtle, that now a person is in the negative state of being a liar. So that there is a negative ‘consequence’ of the lie, but it just happens to be an absolutely immediate consequence.
Then the distinction would be that deontologists compute over consequences that are immediate results of an action or state (that is, of the action or state itself), while consequentialists will compute over the consequences of that action or state (where consequence has the usual meaning of second or third or nth effects).