= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Alicorn comments on Deontology for Consequentialists - 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 (247)
If I know he's going to murder six million Jews, that's relevant. If I stab him because he took my parking space and for this reason, he does not go on to murder six million Jews, I have achieved no moral victory.
I'm not sure this scenario enlightens me. It seems to be about available information rather than deontologism vs consequentialism. From the way you describe it, both the deontologist and the consequentialist will murder Hitler if they know he's going to become Hitler, and won't if they don't.
The consequentialist will not in fact kill Hitler if they don't know he's Hitler, but it's part of their theory that they should.
That seems like a fairly useless part of consequential theory. In particular, when retrospecting about one's previous actions, a consequentialist should give more weight to the argument "yes, he turned out to become Hitler, but I didn't know that, and the prior probability of the person who took my parking space being Hitler is so low I would not have been justified in stabbing him for that reason" than "oh no, I've failed to stab Hitler". It's just a more productive thing to do, given that the next person who takes the consequentialist's parking space is probably not Stalin.
Real-life morality is tricky. But when playing a video game, I am a points consequentialist: I believe that the right thing to do in the video game is that which maximizes the amount of points I get at the end.
Suppose one of my options is randomly chosen to lead to losing the game. I analyze the options and choose the one that has the lowest probability of being chosen. Turns out, I was unlucky and lost the game. Does that make my choice any less the right one? I don't believe that it does.