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gmcrews-40

How about a post on understanding consequentialism for us deontologists? :-)

The Wikipedia defines deontological ethics as "approach to ethics that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules."

This definition implies that the Scientific method is a deontological ethic. It's called the "scientific method" after all. Not the "scientific result."

The scientific method is rule based. Therefore, if there is not a significant overlap between the consequentialist and deontologist approaches, then consequentialism must be non-scientific.

And if a consequentialist is non-scientific, then how can she reliability predict consequences and thus know what is the ethical or moral thing to do?

Who is the "real" doppelganger?

gmcrews40

Perhaps you should have used the example of the bicycle. Remove any requirement for athletic skill, and the practical distinction between the propositional and procedural fades considerably.

For example, as a kid, I was able to ride a bicycle the first time I tried. Of course, it had training wheels.

Another example. As a young man, I was able to pilot (taxi out, take off, and fly) a small aircraft the first time I tried. (This was 1974, before the common use of simulators.) I had informed my instructor that although I had never even been in a small aircraft before, I had an engineering science education and had already studied the relationships of the basic instrumentation (especially the airspeed indicator) to a wing's angle-of-attack. After a certain amount of grilling, he let me go for it and he never had to touch the controls.

My point is that I can be successful without ever having to admit propositional knowledge is actually true. I just have to be able to take advantage of its utility in predicting outcomes. I consider this the distinction between engineering and science.