Deontology suffers from a lot of problems common to rule-based systems. Godel, of course—there will be situations that aren’t provably allowed nor prohibited (or if everything is covered, there will be contradictions).
Utilitarianism (a special-case of consequentialism) has to deal with Arrow’s theorem, and the impossibility of having an aggregate that satisfies everyone. Among other issues with over-simple application and assumption of linearity.
Consequentialism generally has the knowledge problem—prediction is hard, especially about the future. And versions of consequentialism that aren’t pure “expected-personal-value-maximizing” have the same Arrow and measurement and aggregation problems.
I’d love it for people not to focus on “why X, which I don’t propose, is wrong.” Focus instead on “why Y, which I recommend you adopt, is right, despite these failures.”.
Note that a lot of these examples aren’t about pure deontologists. They’re some kind of simple deontology with a fallback to consequentialism. Or deontologists who still use consequentialism to check for outcomes. I won’t argue that there ARE any pure-moral-theory humans, but it’s not necessarily a ding on deontology that the outcomes in these examples are uncomfortable for consequentialists.
Deontology suffers from a lot of problems common to rule-based systems. Godel, of course—there will be situations that aren’t provably allowed nor prohibited (or if everything is covered, there will be contradictions).
Utilitarianism (a special-case of consequentialism) has to deal with Arrow’s theorem, and the impossibility of having an aggregate that satisfies everyone. Among other issues with over-simple application and assumption of linearity.
Consequentialism generally has the knowledge problem—prediction is hard, especially about the future. And versions of consequentialism that aren’t pure “expected-personal-value-maximizing” have the same Arrow and measurement and aggregation problems.
I’d love it for people not to focus on “why X, which I don’t propose, is wrong.” Focus instead on “why Y, which I recommend you adopt, is right, despite these failures.”.
Note that a lot of these examples aren’t about pure deontologists. They’re some kind of simple deontology with a fallback to consequentialism. Or deontologists who still use consequentialism to check for outcomes. I won’t argue that there ARE any pure-moral-theory humans, but it’s not necessarily a ding on deontology that the outcomes in these examples are uncomfortable for consequentialists.