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pengvado comments on Deontology for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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Any talk about consequences has to involve some counterfactual. Saying "outcome Y was a consequence of act X" is an assertion about the counterfactual worlds in which X isn't chosen, as well as those where it is. So if you construct your counterfactuals using something other than causal decision theory, and you choose an act (now) based on its consequences (in the past), is that another overlap between consequentialism and deontology?
I can't parse your comment well enough to reply intelligently.
What I think pengvado is getting at is that the concept of "consequence" is derived from the concept of "causal relation", which itself appears to require a precise notion of "counterfactual".
I read Newcomb's paradox as a counter-example to the idea that causality must operate forward in time. Essentially, one-boxing is choosing an act in the present based on its consequences in the past. This smells a bit like a Kantian counterfactual to me, but I haven't read Kant.
There are many accounts of causation; some of them work in terms of counterfactuals and some don't. (I don't have many details; I've never taken a class on causation.) There is considerable disagreement about the extent to which causation must operate forward in time, especially in things like discussions of free will.
Don't. It's a miserable pastime.
I'm pretty satisfied with Pearl's formulation of causality, it seems to capture everything of interest about the phenomenon. An account of causality that involves free will sounds downright unsalvageable, but I'd be interested in pointers to any halfway decent criticism of Pearl's approach.
Thanks for affirming my suspicions regarding Kant.