= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
djcb comments on Open Thread: August 2009 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (188)
One thing that I've been wondering about (but not enough to turn it into a proper thread) is how to talk about consequentialist morality. Deontologists can use thought experiments, because they're all about rules, and getting rid of unnecessary real world context makes it easier for them.
Consequentialists cannot use tricks like that - when asked if it's ok to torture someone in a "ticking bomb" scenario, answering that real world doesn't work like that due to possibility of mistakes, how likely is torture to work, slippery slope, potential abuse of torturing power once granted etc. is a perfectly valid reply.
So if we cannot really use thought experiments, how are we supposed to talk about it?
I doubt there actually are any strict consequentialists (or strict deontologists for that matter). E.g., would anyone be in favour of not punishing failed murder attempts?
To me, consequentialism/deontology always seem like post-hoc explanations of our not all too rational moral intuitions -- useful to describe the 'moral rules playing field', but not saying very much about who people really decide how to act.
What does punishment have to do with consequentialism -- Are you hypothesizing that not punishing failed murder attempts would reduce the number of successful murders, but that even people claiming to be consequentialists and claiming to value that consequence wouldn't consider that solution? I would certainly be in favor of any reduction in punishment if it can be shown that the reduced punishment is more of a deterrent than the original.
Or are you saying that a murder attempt shouldn't count as murder if no one actually died, and comparing that to your intuition of judging the intentions rather than the consequences? But intentions do matter when evaluating what effect a given punishment policy has on the decisions of potential murderers.
Well, strict consequentialists determine the goodness or badness of an action only by the consequences, not by the intentions of the actor. And that seems to fly in the face of our moral intuitions (as in the attempted murder example), which is why I hypothesized that there are not many strict consequentialist.
As you suggest, a possible way out would be to say that we punish even attempted murder, because it might discourage others to attempt (and possibly succeed) doing the same. And that is what I would call a 'post-hoc explanation'.