The confusion is often stated thusly: “deontological theories are full of injunctions like ‘do not kill’, but they generally provide no (or no interesting) explanations for these injunctions.”
I think if someone said this, what they probably mean (i.e., would say once you cleared up their confusion about terminology and convention) is something like “deontology does not seem compatible with any meta-ethical theories that I find plausible, while consequentialism does, and that is one reason why I’m more confident in consequentialism than in deontology.” Is this statement sufficiently unconfused?
Yes, that sounds perfectly clear and unproblematic to me, as well as a good way to get at issues which may help decide the consequentialism vs deontology debate.
I think if someone said this, what they probably mean (i.e., would say once you cleared up their confusion about terminology and convention) is something like “deontology does not seem compatible with any meta-ethical theories that I find plausible, while consequentialism does, and that is one reason why I’m more confident in consequentialism than in deontology.” Is this statement sufficiently unconfused?
Yes, that sounds perfectly clear and unproblematic to me, as well as a good way to get at issues which may help decide the consequentialism vs deontology debate.