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Gabriel comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 12 - Less Wrong Discussion
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The idea of someone deserving death in itself is deontological (some people must be punished and that's a rule) while talking about the net utility of whatever is consequentialist. Ethics should be impersonal (that is, treat everyone equally) so a consequentialist ethical system that doesn't approve of death in general should never approve of a death of any single person as an end in itself.
Generally, it seems to me that for a consequentialist, talking about an act or a person being evil should only be computational shortcuts over the real substance of moral reasoning (which consists of assigning utility to world-states). Like in the common example of an airplane that we describe using aerodynamics because that's convenient even though really it runs on the same fundamental laws as everything else. We tend to use those shortcuts reflexively without really thinking what we are trying to say in consequentialist terms.
This.
Of course, the deontological view does have its place, specifically where it precommits to punishing undesirable behaviors even if there is no benefit to doing so after the behavior has occurred.
But would you want to "[punish] undesirable behaviors even if there is no benefit to doing so after the behavior has occurred"?
I would want to pre-commit to punishing criminals after the fact if I thought this would lead to a world where the pos-util of averted crime outweighed the neg-util of punishing people, but not if there were no benefit, and I would be doing this on consequentialist grounds. (I'm basically asking if the deontological view truly "has its place' in this scenario.)
Before the person made the choice of whether or not to do the undesirable behavior, I would want to have precommitted to punishing them if they did the behavior.
In the real world, punishing criminals (probably) does reduce crime. In a world where it didn't, precommitment wouldn't be a useful strategy. But it looks like we live in a world where it does.
Yes. And since we (probably) live in such a world, we can precommit to punishing criminals based on consequentialism. We don't need the deontological view for this.
I disagree with your implication that there is no benefit to punishing undesirable behaviors after they have occurred... there sometimes is.
In cases where there is in fact no benefit, though, then the fact that holding a deontological view precommits me to doing so is not a reason for me to hold that view.
Some disagree. And beware of "should" statements regarding "ethics".