So, I wasn’t attempting to answer the question “Are deontologists necessarily subject to ‘pumping’?” but the different question “Are people who work entirely off moral intuition necessarily subject to ‘pumping’?”. Imm’s question—if I didn’t completely misunderstand it, which of course I might have—was about the famous framing effect where describing the exact same situation two different ways generates different preferences. If you work entirely off intuition, and if your intuitions are like most people’s, then you will be subject to this sort of framing effect and you will make the choices I ascribed to Imm in that little bit of dialogue, and the result is that you will make two decisions both of which look to you like improvements, and whose net result is that more people die. On account of your choices. Which really ought to be unacceptable to almost anyone, consequentialist or deontologist or anything else.
I wasn’t attempting a defence of Eliezer’s metaethics. I was answering the more specific question that (I thought) Imm was asking.
I did mean I was making a deontological distinction between saving and killing, not just a framing question (and I didn’t really mean that scenario specifically, it was just the example that came to mind—the general question is the one I’m interested in, it’s just that as phrased it’s too abstract for me) Sorry for the confusion.
(Eliezer.)
So, I wasn’t attempting to answer the question “Are deontologists necessarily subject to ‘pumping’?” but the different question “Are people who work entirely off moral intuition necessarily subject to ‘pumping’?”. Imm’s question—if I didn’t completely misunderstand it, which of course I might have—was about the famous framing effect where describing the exact same situation two different ways generates different preferences. If you work entirely off intuition, and if your intuitions are like most people’s, then you will be subject to this sort of framing effect and you will make the choices I ascribed to Imm in that little bit of dialogue, and the result is that you will make two decisions both of which look to you like improvements, and whose net result is that more people die. On account of your choices. Which really ought to be unacceptable to almost anyone, consequentialist or deontologist or anything else.
I wasn’t attempting a defence of Eliezer’s metaethics. I was answering the more specific question that (I thought) Imm was asking.
I did mean I was making a deontological distinction between saving and killing, not just a framing question (and I didn’t really mean that scenario specifically, it was just the example that came to mind—the general question is the one I’m interested in, it’s just that as phrased it’s too abstract for me) Sorry for the confusion.