On isomorphism: every version of utilitarianism I know of leads to a repugnant conclusion of one way or another, or even multiple ones. I don’t think that deontology and virtue ethics are nearly as susceptible. In other words, you cannot construct a utilitarian equivalent of an ethical system which is against suffering (without explicitly minimizing some negative utility) but does not value torture over dust specks.
EDIT: see the link in this lukeprog’s comment. for limits of consequentialization.
I agree with your point on utilitarianism, but it is only one form of consequentialization, it’s not the entire class. Consequentialism doesn’t need to lead to a repugnant conclusion.
If you translate Kantian ethics into consequentialism, you get a utility function with a large negative value for you torturing someone, lying, and doing several other things. Suppose a sadist comes up to you and asks where your children are, so that he can torture them. Lying to him has huge negative utility. Telling them where your children are does not. He’ll torture them, but since it’s not you that’s torturing them, it doesn’t matter. It’s his problem, or rather it would be if he was a Kantian.
Does a utility function that only prohibits torture if a specific person does it really count as being against suffering?
“He’ll torture them, but since it’s not you that’s torturing them, it doesn’t matter.”
That doesn’t remotely follow. Kantians are supposed to abstain from lying, etc, because of the knock on effects, because they would not wish lying to become general law. So “it’s not me who’s doing it” isthe antithesis of the Kantianism.
If you’re unwilling to lie to prevent torture, then it seems pretty clear that you’re more okay with you lying than the other guy torturing.
Under deontological ethics, you are not responsible for everything. If someone is going to kill someone, and it doesn’t fall under your responsibility, you have no ethical imperative to stop them. In what sense can you be considered to care about things your are not responsible for?
If someone is going to kill someone, and it doesn’t fall under your responsibility, you have no ethical imperative to stop them.
This isn’t true, at any rate, for Kant. Kant would say that you have a duty to help people in need when it doesn’t require self-destructive or evil behavior on your part. It’s permissible, perhaps, to help people in need self-destructively, and it’s prohibited to help them by doing something evil (like lying). You are responsible for the deaths or torture of the children in the sense that you’re required to do what you can to prevent such things, but you’re not responsible for the actions of other people, and you can’t be required (or permitted) to do forbidden things (this is true of any consistent ethical theory).
And of course, Kant thinks we can and do care about lots of things we aren’t morally responsible for. Morality is not about achieving happiness, but becoming worthy of happiness. Actually being happy will require us to care about all sorts of things.
This isn’t true, at any rate, for Kant. Kant would say that you have a duty to help people in need when it doesn’t require self-destructive or evil behavior on your part.
In other words, if it costs you nothing. You consider having no self-destructive or evil behavior on your part to be infinitely more valuable.
this is true of any consistent ethical theory
It is true by definition. That’s what “forbidden” means.
And of course, Kant thinks we can and do care about lots of things we aren’t morally responsible for.
We are not using the same definition of “care”. I mean whatever motivates you to action. If you see no need to take action, you don’t care.
In other words, if it costs you nothing. You consider having no self-destructive or evil behavior on your part to be infinitely more valuable.
No, there’s a lot of room between ‘costs you nothing’ and ‘self-destructive’. The question is whether or not a whole species or society could exist under universal obedience to a duty, and a duty that requires self-destruction for the sake of others would make life impossible. But obviously, helping others at some cost to you doesn’t.
Also, I was pretty careful to say that you can’t have a DUTY to help others self-destructively. But it’s certainly permissible to do so (so long as its not aimed at self-destruction). You are however prohibited from acting wrongly for the sake of others, or yourself. And that’s just Kant saying “morality is the most important thing in the universe.” That’s not so weird a thought.
“We are not using the same definition of “care”. I mean whatever motivates you to action. If you see no need to take action, you don’t care.”
No, we’re using the same definition. So again, Kant thinks we can and do care about, for example, the moral behavior of others. We’re not morally responsible for their behavior (but then, no ethical theory I know of asserts this), but we can certainly care about it. You ought to prevent the murderer at the door from finding the victim. You should do everything in your power, and it’s permissible to die trying if that’s necessary. You just can’t do evil. Because that would be to place something above the moral law, and that’s irrational.
It’s not plausible to think that if someone doesn’t act, they don’t care. If someone insults me, I generally won’t strike them or even respond, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off. I just think obeying the law and being civil is more important than my feelings being hurt.
But I’m just channeling Kant here, I’m not saying I agree with this stuff. But, give credit...there are very few ethical ideas as compelling and powerful and influential as his.
No, there’s a lot of room between ‘costs you nothing’ and ‘self-destructive’.
I got the impression that you aren’t allowed any self-harm or evil acts. If you won’t stop something for epsilon evil, then you care about it less than epsilon evil. If this is true for all epsilon, you only care an infinitesimal amount.
I don’t mean “costs nothing” as in “no self-harm”. I mean that a Kantian cares about not directly harming others, so directly harming others would be a cost to something. You could measure how much they care about something by how much they’re willing to harm others for it. If they’re only willing to harm others by zero, they care zero about it.
Also, I was pretty careful to say that you can’t have a DUTY to help others self-destructively. But it’s certainly permissible to do so (so long as its not aimed at self-destruction).
It’s also permissible under nihilist ethics. I’m not going to say that nihilism is anti-suffering just because nihilism allows you to prevent it.
I judge an ethical system based on what someone holding to it must do, not what they can.
You are however prohibited from acting wrongly for the sake of others, or yourself. And that’s just Kant saying “morality is the most important thing in the universe.”
If you are prohibited from acting wrongly under any circumstances, then the most important thing is that you, personally, are moral. Everyone else acting immoral is an infinitely distant second.
No, we’re using the same definition.
If someone insults me, I generally won’t strike them or even respond, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off.
We are not using the same definition. When I say that someone following an ethical framework should care about suffering, I don’t mean that it should make them feel bad. I mean that it should make them try to stop the suffering.
Although my exact words were “In what sense can you be considered to care about things your are not responsible for?”, so technically the answer would be “In the sense that you feel bad about it.”
I got the impression that you aren’t allowed any self-harm or evil acts. If you won’t stop something for epsilon evil, then you care about it less than epsilon evil. If this is true for all epsilon, you only care an infinitesimal amount.
This sounds right to me, so long as ‘self-harm’ is taken pretty restrictively, and not so as to include things like costing me $20.
In his discussion of the ‘murderer at the door’ case Kant takes pains to distinguish between ‘harm’ and ‘wrong’. So while we should never wrong anyone, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with harming people (he grants that you’re harming, but not wronging, the victim by telling the truth to the murderer). So in this sense, I think you’re right that Kantian deontology isn’t worried about suffering in any direct sense. Kant will agree that suffering is generally morally significant, and that we all have an interest in minimizing it, but he’ll say that it’s not immediately a moral issue. (I think he’s right about that). So this isn’t to say that a Kantian shouldn’t care about suffering, just that it’s as subordinate to morality as is pleasure, wealth, etc.
I judge an ethical system based on what someone holding to it must do, not what they can.
It seems to me arbitrary to limit your investigation of ethics in this way. The space of permissibility is interesting, not least because there’s a debate about whether or not that space is empty.
then the most important thing is that you, personally, are moral. Everyone else acting immoral is an infinitely distant second.
Agreed, though everything is an infinitely distant second, including your own happiness. But no one would say that you aren’t therefore passionately attached to your own happiness, or that you’re somehow irrational or evil for being so attached.
Are you saying that some consequentialist systems don’t even have deontological approximations?
It seems like you can have rules of the form “Don’t torture… unless by doing the torture you can prevent an even worse thing” provides a checklist to compare badness …so I’m not convinced?
On isomorphism: every version of utilitarianism I know of leads to a repugnant conclusion of one way or another, or even multiple ones. I don’t think that deontology and virtue ethics are nearly as susceptible. In other words, you cannot construct a utilitarian equivalent of an ethical system which is against suffering (without explicitly minimizing some negative utility) but does not value torture over dust specks.
EDIT: see the link in this lukeprog’s comment. for limits of consequentialization.
I agree with your point on utilitarianism, but it is only one form of consequentialization, it’s not the entire class. Consequentialism doesn’t need to lead to a repugnant conclusion.
If you translate Kantian ethics into consequentialism, you get a utility function with a large negative value for you torturing someone, lying, and doing several other things. Suppose a sadist comes up to you and asks where your children are, so that he can torture them. Lying to him has huge negative utility. Telling them where your children are does not. He’ll torture them, but since it’s not you that’s torturing them, it doesn’t matter. It’s his problem, or rather it would be if he was a Kantian.
Does a utility function that only prohibits torture if a specific person does it really count as being against suffering?
“He’ll torture them, but since it’s not you that’s torturing them, it doesn’t matter.”
That doesn’t remotely follow. Kantians are supposed to abstain from lying, etc, because of the knock on effects, because they would not wish lying to become general law. So “it’s not me who’s doing it” isthe antithesis of the Kantianism.
If you’re unwilling to lie to prevent torture, then it seems pretty clear that you’re more okay with you lying than the other guy torturing.
Under deontological ethics, you are not responsible for everything. If someone is going to kill someone, and it doesn’t fall under your responsibility, you have no ethical imperative to stop them. In what sense can you be considered to care about things your are not responsible for?
This isn’t true, at any rate, for Kant. Kant would say that you have a duty to help people in need when it doesn’t require self-destructive or evil behavior on your part. It’s permissible, perhaps, to help people in need self-destructively, and it’s prohibited to help them by doing something evil (like lying). You are responsible for the deaths or torture of the children in the sense that you’re required to do what you can to prevent such things, but you’re not responsible for the actions of other people, and you can’t be required (or permitted) to do forbidden things (this is true of any consistent ethical theory).
And of course, Kant thinks we can and do care about lots of things we aren’t morally responsible for. Morality is not about achieving happiness, but becoming worthy of happiness. Actually being happy will require us to care about all sorts of things.
In other words, if it costs you nothing. You consider having no self-destructive or evil behavior on your part to be infinitely more valuable.
It is true by definition. That’s what “forbidden” means.
We are not using the same definition of “care”. I mean whatever motivates you to action. If you see no need to take action, you don’t care.
No, there’s a lot of room between ‘costs you nothing’ and ‘self-destructive’. The question is whether or not a whole species or society could exist under universal obedience to a duty, and a duty that requires self-destruction for the sake of others would make life impossible. But obviously, helping others at some cost to you doesn’t.
Also, I was pretty careful to say that you can’t have a DUTY to help others self-destructively. But it’s certainly permissible to do so (so long as its not aimed at self-destruction). You are however prohibited from acting wrongly for the sake of others, or yourself. And that’s just Kant saying “morality is the most important thing in the universe.” That’s not so weird a thought.
“We are not using the same definition of “care”. I mean whatever motivates you to action. If you see no need to take action, you don’t care.”
No, we’re using the same definition. So again, Kant thinks we can and do care about, for example, the moral behavior of others. We’re not morally responsible for their behavior (but then, no ethical theory I know of asserts this), but we can certainly care about it. You ought to prevent the murderer at the door from finding the victim. You should do everything in your power, and it’s permissible to die trying if that’s necessary. You just can’t do evil. Because that would be to place something above the moral law, and that’s irrational.
It’s not plausible to think that if someone doesn’t act, they don’t care. If someone insults me, I generally won’t strike them or even respond, but that doesn’t mean I’m not pissed off. I just think obeying the law and being civil is more important than my feelings being hurt.
But I’m just channeling Kant here, I’m not saying I agree with this stuff. But, give credit...there are very few ethical ideas as compelling and powerful and influential as his.
I got the impression that you aren’t allowed any self-harm or evil acts. If you won’t stop something for epsilon evil, then you care about it less than epsilon evil. If this is true for all epsilon, you only care an infinitesimal amount.
I don’t mean “costs nothing” as in “no self-harm”. I mean that a Kantian cares about not directly harming others, so directly harming others would be a cost to something. You could measure how much they care about something by how much they’re willing to harm others for it. If they’re only willing to harm others by zero, they care zero about it.
It’s also permissible under nihilist ethics. I’m not going to say that nihilism is anti-suffering just because nihilism allows you to prevent it.
I judge an ethical system based on what someone holding to it must do, not what they can.
If you are prohibited from acting wrongly under any circumstances, then the most important thing is that you, personally, are moral. Everyone else acting immoral is an infinitely distant second.
We are not using the same definition. When I say that someone following an ethical framework should care about suffering, I don’t mean that it should make them feel bad. I mean that it should make them try to stop the suffering.
Although my exact words were “In what sense can you be considered to care about things your are not responsible for?”, so technically the answer would be “In the sense that you feel bad about it.”
This sounds right to me, so long as ‘self-harm’ is taken pretty restrictively, and not so as to include things like costing me $20.
In his discussion of the ‘murderer at the door’ case Kant takes pains to distinguish between ‘harm’ and ‘wrong’. So while we should never wrong anyone, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with harming people (he grants that you’re harming, but not wronging, the victim by telling the truth to the murderer). So in this sense, I think you’re right that Kantian deontology isn’t worried about suffering in any direct sense. Kant will agree that suffering is generally morally significant, and that we all have an interest in minimizing it, but he’ll say that it’s not immediately a moral issue. (I think he’s right about that). So this isn’t to say that a Kantian shouldn’t care about suffering, just that it’s as subordinate to morality as is pleasure, wealth, etc.
It seems to me arbitrary to limit your investigation of ethics in this way. The space of permissibility is interesting, not least because there’s a debate about whether or not that space is empty.
Agreed, though everything is an infinitely distant second, including your own happiness. But no one would say that you aren’t therefore passionately attached to your own happiness, or that you’re somehow irrational or evil for being so attached.
Are you saying that some consequentialist systems don’t even have deontological approximations?
It seems like you can have rules of the form “Don’t torture… unless by doing the torture you can prevent an even worse thing” provides a checklist to compare badness …so I’m not convinced?
Actually, this one is trivially true, with the rule being “maximize the relevant utility”. I am saying the converse need not be true.