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Peterdjones comments on Rationality Quotes: June 2011 - Less Wrong
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So consequentialism says "doing right is making good". But it doesn't say what "making good" means. So it's a family of moral theories.
What moral theories are part of the consequentialist family? All theories that can be expressed as "doing right is making X" for some X.
If I show that your moral theory can be expressed in that manner, I show that you are, in this sense, a consequentialist.
And if i can show that consequentialism needs to be combined with rules (or something else), does that prove consequentialism is really deontology (or something else)? It is rather easy to show that any one-legged approach is flawed, but if end up with a mixed theory we should not label it as a one-legged theory.
Then you should end up violating one of the axioms and getting a not-consequentialism.
All consequentialist theories produce a set of rules.
The right way to define "deontology", then, is a theory that is a set of rules that couldn't be consequentialist.
if you mix consequentialism and deontology, you get deontology.
If you mix consequentialism and deontology you get Nozickian side-constraints consequentialism.
Good example. You could have consequnentialism about what you should do, and deontology about what you should refrain from.
Considering that: this whole discussion was about how Robert Nozick isn't (wasn't?) a consequentialist, I think for these purposes we should classify his views as not consequentialism.
Would you count Timeless Decision Theory as deontological since it isn't pure consequentialism?
No, it's a decision theory, not an ethical theory.
I don't understand the distinction you're making.
Decision theories tell you what options you have: Pairs of actions and results.
Ethical theories tells you which options are superior.
Perhaps an example of what I mean will be helpful.
Suppose your friend is kidnapped and being held for ransom. Naive consequentialism says you should pay because you value his life more then the money. TDT says you shouldn't pay because paying counterfactually causes him to be kidnapped.
Note how in the scenario the TDT argument sounds very deontological.
It sounds deontological, but it isn't. It's consequentialist. It evaluates options according to their consequences.
"Consequences" only in a counterfactual world. I don't see how you can call this consequentialist without streching the term to the point that it could include nearly any morality system. In particular by your definition Kant's categorical imperative is consequentialist since it involves looking at the consequences of your actions in the hypothetical world where everyone performs them.
You don't need decision theories for that. You can get that far with physics and undirected imagination.
How about this:
Physics tells you pairs of actions and results.
Ethical theories tell you what results to aim for.
Decision theories combine the two.
That's only true if you're a human being.
That is not my understanding. The only necessary addition to physics is "any possible mechanism of varying any element in your model of the universe". ie. You need physics and a tiny amount of closely related mathematics. That will give you a function that gives you every possible action -> result pair.
I believe this only serves to strengthen your main point about the possibility of separating epistemic investigation from ethics entirely.