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jimrandomh comments on Deontological Decision Theory and The Solution to Morality - Less Wrong
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Comments (91)
Wait a second - is theree a difference of definitions here? That sounds a lot like what you'd get if you started with a mixed consequentialist and deontological morality, drew a boundary around the consequentialist parts and relabeled them not-morality, but didn't actually stop following them.
I presume prudential concerns are non-moral concerns. In the way that maintaining an entertainment budget next to your charity budget while kids are starving in poorer countries is not often considered a gross moral failure, I would consider the desire for entertainment to be a prudential concern that overrides or outweighs morality.
I guess that would yield something similar. It usually looks to me like consequentialists just care about the thing I call "prudence" and not at all about the thing I call "morality".
That seems like a reasonable summary to me. Does it seem to you that we ought to? (Care about morality, that is.)
I think you ought to do morally right things; caring per se doesn't seem necessary.
Fair enough.
Does it usually look to you like consequentialists just do prudential things and not morally right things?
Well, the vast majority of situations have no conflict. Getting a bowl of cereal in the morning is both prudent and right if you want cereal and don't have to do anything rights-violating or uncommonly destructive to get it. But in thought experiments it looks like consequentialists operate (or endorse operating) solely according to prudence.
Agreed that it looks like consequentialists operate (1) solely according to prudence, if I understand properly what you mean by "prudence."
Agreed that in most cases there's no conflict.
I infer you believe that in cases where there is a conflict, deontologists do (or at least endorse) the morally right thing, and consequentialists do (oale) the prudent thing. Is that right?
I also infer from other discussions that you consider killing one innocent person to save five innocent people an example of a case with conflict, where the morally right thing to do is to not-kill an innocent person. Is that right?
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(1) Or, as you say, at least endorse operating. I doubt that we actually do, in practice, operate solely according to prudence. Then again, I doubt that anyone operates solely according to the moral principles they endorse.
Right and right.
OK, cool. Thanks.
If I informed you (1) that I would prefer that you choose to kill me rather than allow five other people to die so I could go on living, would that change the morally right thing to do? (Note I'm not asking you what you would do in that situation.)
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(1) I mean convincingly informed you, not just posted a comment about it that you have no particular reason to take seriously. I'm not sure how I could do that, but just for concreteness, suppose I had Elspeth's power.
(EDIT: Actually, it occurs to me that I could more simply ask: "If I preferred...," given that I'm asking about your moral intuitions rather than your predicted behavior.)
Yes, if I had that information about your preferences, it would make it OK to kill you for purposes you approved. Your right to not be killed is yours; you don't have to exercise it if you don't care to.
Does the importance of prudence ever scale without bound, such that it dominates all moral concerns if the stakes get high enough?
I don't know about all moral concerns. A subset of moral concerns are duplicated and folded into my prudential ones.