pengvado comments on Deontology for Consequentialists - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Alicorn 30 January 2010 05:58PM

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Tags: philosophy metaethics consequentialism utilitarianism deontology ethics

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Comment author: Alicorn 30 January 2010 07:26:58PM *  4 points [-]

E.g. "Of course lying is wrong, because if lying were the general habit, communication would be impossible" or variants thereof.

Dude. "Counterfactuals." Fourth thing on the bulleted list, straight outta Kant.

The trouble, it seems to me, is that consequentialist moralities are easier to ground in human preferences (current and extrapolated) than are deontological ones, which seem to beg for a Framework of Objective Value to justify them.

I take exception to your anthropocentric morality!

This is borne out by the fact that it is extremely difficult to think of a basic deontological rule which the vast majority of people (or the vast majority of educated people, etc.) would uphold unconditionally in every hypothetical.

And if we lived on the Planet of the Sociopaths, what then? Ethics leap out a window and go splat?

If someone is going to argue that their deontological system should be adopted on the basis of its probable consequences

See here for what this is like.

Comment author: pengvado 30 January 2010 07:55:45PM *  10 points [-]

"Counterfactuals." Fourth thing on the bulleted list, straight outta Kant.

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?

Comment author: Alicorn 30 January 2010 08:01:09PM 0 points [-]

I can't parse your comment well enough to reply intelligently.

Comment author: loqi 30 January 2010 09:42:31PM 3 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Alicorn 30 January 2010 09:48:46PM 6 points [-]

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.

I haven't read Kant.

Don't. It's a miserable pastime.

Comment author: loqi 30 January 2010 10:24:29PM 5 points [-]

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.

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