pragmatist comments on Ethical frameworks are isomorphic - Less Wrong

6 Post author: lavalamp 13 August 2014 10:39PM

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Comment author: Viliam_Bur 15 August 2014 07:58:55AM *  4 points [-]

This reminds me of a part of Zombie Sequence, specifically the Giant Lookup Table. Yes, you can approximate consequentialism by a sufficiently complex set of deontological rules, but the question is: Where did those rules come from? What process generated them?

If we somehow wouldn't have any consequentialist intuitions, what is that probability that we would invent a "don't murder" deontological rule, instead of all the possible alternatives? Actually, why would we even feel a need for having any rules?

Deontological rules seem analogical to a lookup table. They are precomputed answers to ethical questions. Yes, they may be correct. Yes, using them is probably much faster than trying to compute them from scratch. But the reason why we have these deontological rules instead of some other deontological rules is partly consequentialism and partly historical accidents.

Comment author: pragmatist 15 August 2014 03:26:12PM 1 point [-]

But the reason why we have these deontological rules instead of some other deontological rules is partly consequentialism and partly historical accidents.

Why is it partly consequentialism? In what sense did consequentialism have any causal role to play in the development of deontological ethical systems? I highly doubt that the people who developed and promulgated them were closet consequentialists who chose the rules based on their consequences.