lessdazed comments on Deontology for Consequentialists - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Alicorn 03 February 2010 05:28:13PM *  10 points [-]

I feel like I've summarized it somewhere, but can't find it, so here it is again (it is not finished, I know there are issues left to deal with):

Persons (which includes but may not be limited to paradigmatic adult humans) have rights, which it is wrong to violate. For example, one I'm pretty sure we've got is the right not to be killed. This means that any person who kills another person commits a wrong act, with the following exceptions: 1) a rights-holder may, at eir option, waive any and all rights ey has, so uncoerced suicide or assisted suicide is not wrong; 2) someone who has committed a contextually relevant wrong act, in so doing, forfeits eir contextually relevant rights. I don't yet have a full account of "contextual relevance", but basically what that's there for is to make sure that if somebody is trying to kill me, this might permit me to kill him, but would not grant me license to break into his house and steal his television.

However, even once a right has been waived or forfeited or (via non-personhood) not had in the first place, a secondary principle can kick in to offer some measure of moral protection. I'm calling it "the principle of needless destruction", but I'm probably going to re-name it later because "destruction" isn't quite what I'm trying to capture. Basically, it means you shouldn't go around "destroying" stuff without an adequate reason. Protecting a non-waived, non-forfeited right is always an adequate reason, but apart from that I don't have a full explanation; how good the reason has to be depends on how severe the act it justifies is. ("I was bored" might be an adequate reason to pluck and shred a blade of grass, but not to set a tree on fire, for instance.) This principle has the effect, among others, of ruling out revenge/retribution/punishment for their own sakes, although deterrence and preventing recurrence of wrong acts are still valid reasons to punish or exact revenge/retribution.

In cases where rights conflict, and there's no alternative that doesn't violate at least one, I privilege the null action. (I considered denying ought-implies-can, instead, but decided that committed me to the existence of moral luck and wasn't okay.) "The null action" is the one where you don't do anything. This is because I uphold the doing-allowing distinction very firmly. Letting something happen might be bad, but it is never as bad as doing the same something, and is virtually never as bad as performing even a much more minor (but still bad) act.

I hold agents responsible for their culpable ignorance and anything they should have known not to do, as though they knew they shouldn't have done it. Non-culpable ignorance and its results is exculpatory. Culpability of ignorance is determined by the exercise of epistemic virtues like being attentive to evidence etc. (Epistemologically, I'm an externalist; this is just for ethical purposes.) Ignorance of any kind that prevents something bad from happening is not exculpatory - this is the case of the would-be murderer who doesn't know his gun is unloaded. No out for him. I've been saying "acts", but in point of fact, I hold agents responsible for intentions, not completed acts per se. This lets my morality work even if solipsism is true, or we are brains in vats, or an agent fails to do bad things through sheer incompetence, or what have you.

Comment author: lessdazed 24 July 2011 01:13:22AM 2 points [-]

Rather than take the "horrible consequences" tack, I'll go in the other direction. How possible is it that something can be deontologically right or wrong if that something is something no being cares about, nor do they care about any of its consequences, by any extrapolation of their wants, likes, conscious values, etc., nor should they think others care? Is it logically possible?

a rights-holder may, at eir option, waive any and all rights ey has, so uncoerced suicide or assisted suicide is not wrong...the would-be murderer who doesn't know his gun is unloaded.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 July 2011 02:38:16AM 1 point [-]

You seem to answer your own question in the quote you chose, even though it seems like you chose it to critique my inconsistent pronoun use. If no being cares about something, nor wants others to care about it, then they're not likely to want to retain their rights over it, are they?

The sentences in which I chose "ey" are generic. The sentences in which I used "he" are about a single sample person.

Comment author: lessdazed 24 July 2011 03:24:23AM 3 points [-]

So if they want to retain without interruption their right to, say, not have a symmetrical spherical stone at the edge of their lawn rotated without permission, they perforce care whether or not it is rotated? They can't merely want a right? Or if they want a right, and have a right, and they don't care to exercise the right, but want to retain the right, they can't? What if the only reason they care to prohibit stone turning is to retain the right? Does that work? Is there a special rule saying it doesn't?

As part of testing theories to see when they fail rather than succeed, my first move is usually to try recursion.

not likely to want to retain their rights over it

Least convenient possible world, please.

Regardless, you seem to believe that some other forms of deontology are wrong but not illogical, and believe consequentialist theories wrong or illogical. For example, a deontology otherwise like yours that valued attentiveness to evidence more you would label wrong and not illogical. I ask if you would consider a deontological theory invalid if it ignored wants, cares etc. of beings, not whether or not that is part of your theory.

If it's not illogical and merely wrong, then is that to say you count that among the theories that may be true, if you are mistaken about facts, but not mistaken about what is illogical and not?

I think such a dentology would be illogical, but am to various degrees unsure about other theories, which is right and which wrong, and about the severity and number of wounds in the wrong ones. Because this deontology seems illogical, it makes me suspect of its cousin theories, as it might be a salient case exhibiting a common flaw.

I think it is more intellectually troubling than the hypothetical of committing a small badness to prevent a larger one, but as it is rarely raised presumably others disagree or have different intuitions.

I don't see the point of mucking with the English language and causing confusion for the sake of feminism if the end result is that singular sample murderers are gendered. It seems like the worst of both worlds.

Comment author: Peterdjones 18 January 2013 06:21:49PM 0 points [-]

Kant's answer, greatly simplified, is that rational agents will care about following moral rules, because that is part of rationality.