I feel like this post misses the point of deontology and basically just re-asserts “but (naive) consequentialism is right!” 15 times in a row.
I don’t really know what kind of knots academic ethicists have tied themselves up in, but my case for deontology routes through the benefits of making commitments to certain policies for the sake of coordination and facilitating trust, and in other cases as a way of handling your bounded rationality, in-particular under pressures of motivated reasoning. None of these scenarios engage with that, so I have trouble imagining that it spells a strong counterargument against at least the kind of deontology that I think makes sense.
Deontology is distinct in that it says that even if you had a perfect guarantee that an action would have good consequences taking into account all second-order effects, you still shouldn’t do it sometimes if it violates rights. That’s what I was arguing against. The way LessWrong uses these terms is idiosyncratic.
I feel like this post misses the point of deontology and basically just re-asserts “but (naive) consequentialism is right!” 15 times in a row.
I don’t really know what kind of knots academic ethicists have tied themselves up in, but my case for deontology routes through the benefits of making commitments to certain policies for the sake of coordination and facilitating trust, and in other cases as a way of handling your bounded rationality, in-particular under pressures of motivated reasoning. None of these scenarios engage with that, so I have trouble imagining that it spells a strong counterargument against at least the kind of deontology that I think makes sense.
Sorry for the late reply, forgot that I’d posted this on LessWrong an don’t check regularly.
The view you have described—that you should follow deontic norms because it has good consequences—is not deontology. It is a kind of consequentialism of a kind that thinks a big part of producing good consequences is following good norms. This piece wasn’t arguing against that position, and I actually agree with that position! For more see https://utilitarianism.net/types-of-utilitarianism/#multi-level-utilitarianism-versus-single-level-utilitarianism
Deontology is distinct in that it says that even if you had a perfect guarantee that an action would have good consequences taking into account all second-order effects, you still shouldn’t do it sometimes if it violates rights. That’s what I was arguing against. The way LessWrong uses these terms is idiosyncratic.