I can perfectly understand the idea that lying is fundamentally bad, not just because of its consequences. My problem comes up for how that doesn’t imply that something else can be bad because it leads to other people lying.
The only way I can understand it is that deontology is fundamentally egoist. It’s not hedonist; you worry about things besides your well-being. But you only worry about things in terms of yourself. You don’t care if the world descends into sin so long is you are the moral victor. You’re not willing to murder one Austrian to save him from murdering six million Jews.
Hitler may not be the best example since it’s not obvious to me that Hitler’s death would have resulted in fewer lives lost during the genocides of the 20th century, because a universe without Hitler would have had a more powerful USSR.
I don’t think your assessment is accurate, because of the following facts:
USSR actually ended up more powerful, enlarged, and with greater prestige in 1945 -- for the exact reason that Germany, its main strategic rival, went on to pursue a suicidal attack against it under Hitler.
The German-Soviet war itself opened the opportunities for genocidal and near-genocidal campaigns by both sides, especially Germans, and it would have to have been an awfully large decrease in Soviet-perpetrated genocide to balance that.
Not counting the deaths related to the military operations, the overwhelming number of killings done by Stalin had already been finished by 1941. After that, the situation under him was of course awfully bad, but there was nothing like the enormous, Holocaust-scale mass killing projects he undertook in the 1930s.
If I know he’s going to murder six million Jews, that’s relevant. If I stab him because he took my parking space and for this reason, he does not go on to murder six million Jews, I have achieved no moral victory.
I’m not sure this scenario enlightens me. It seems to be about available information rather than deontologism vs consequentialism. From the way you describe it, both the deontologist and the consequentialist will murder Hitler if they know he’s going to become Hitler, and won’t if they don’t.
That seems like a fairly useless part of consequential theory. In particular, when retrospecting about one’s previous actions, a consequentialist should give more weight to the argument “yes, he turned out to become Hitler, but I didn’t know that, and the prior probability of the person who took my parking space being Hitler is so low I would not have been justified in stabbing him for that reason” than “oh no, I’ve failed to stab Hitler”. It’s just a more productive thing to do, given that the next person who takes the consequentialist’s parking space is probably not Stalin.
Real-life morality is tricky. But when playing a video game, I am a points consequentialist: I believe that the right thing to do in the video game is that which maximizes the amount of points I get at the end.
Suppose one of my options is randomly chosen to lead to losing the game. I analyze the options and choose the one that has the lowest probability of being chosen. Turns out, I was unlucky and lost the game. Does that make my choice any less the right one? I don’t believe that it does.
In Kantian deontology the actions of someone else can generate a positive obligation. In particular, your are obligated to punish those who violate the Categorical Imperative. You’re definitely obligated to punish Hitler after the fact. Beforehand is trickier (but this is more a metaphysics of time issue than a ethical issue, you could probably make a case for timeless punishment under Kantian deotology).
My point wasn’t punishment. If I were to kill an innocent man to keep Hitler from getting into power, that would still save him from murdering millions, and there’d be a net decrease in the murder of innocent people.
If anything, this version is even more clear cut, since it’s not clear if you’re really saving someone if they end up dead.
The only reason you can justify not doing it is if you think it’s more important for you to not be a murderer than Hitler.
Your excellent comment would have been improved by instead saying “murdering 11 million in concentration camps” or better yet “beginning a war that led to over fifty million dead”.
Many consequentialist theories might have a special term in which it is bad (for people, to be sure) if a culture or a people is targeted and destroyed. If Poland had ~35 million people, including ~3 million Jews, and Hitler killed ~6 million Polish civilians, including nearly all the Jews, he did worse than if he would have killed 6 million at random, as he killed ~6 million innocent people and one innocent people (sic). In another sense, there may have been similar suffering among Polish Jews and non-Jews (perhaps more aggregate suffering among non-Jews if the non-fatal suffering of the other Poles is included, but as a point of historical fact the average suffering by a Jew before death was probably greater than the average Pole’s before death 1939-45). Perhaps killing a people isn’t very bad, and our condemnation to it has to do with how hard it is to kill a people without killing people, the second of which is the important bad thing.
Similarly, the mode of death and capacity of the dead varies greatly among consequentialism and deontology, but a singular mention of the murdered somewhat indicates deontological thinking. How much worse is a murder than a killing (of a volunteer soldier? Of a draftee? Of a weapons manufacturing worker? Of a power plant worker? Of an apprentice florist who has nearly reached draft age)?
Broadly speaking, when generalizing over consequentialism I wouldn’t focus on those murdered, but of those who died. Doing so would have more clearly indicated that your point wasn’t punishment.
Your excellent comment would have been improved by instead saying “murdering 11 million in concentration camps” or better yet “beginning a war that led to over fifty million dead”.
My reference to historical events would have been slightly more complete? Referencing historical events isn’t important. I wasn’t even so much referencing the event as referencing that it always gets referenced. Hitler just happened to end up in the middle of a popular thought experiment.
Many consequentialist theories might have a special term in which it is bad (for people, to be sure) if a culture or a people is targeted and destroyed....
So? My point is that, even if you accept a given action is inherently bad, if it’s bad for anyone to do it, it may be worth while for you to do it. It only works out as Deontology if you assume that actions can only be bad if you’re the one doing them. More specific thought experiments can show that it only works if they’re only bad if you’re doing them right at this very moment.
Broadly speaking, when generalizing over consequentialism I wouldn’t focus on those murdered, but of those who died.
If it was just bad to die, no deontologist would argue that there’s anything wrong with killing one guy to keep him from killing another. I was assuming for the sake of argument. it was just murder that was bad.
I can perfectly understand the idea that lying is fundamentally bad, not just because of its consequences. My problem comes up for how that doesn’t imply that something else can be bad because it leads to other people lying.
The only way I can understand it is that deontology is fundamentally egoist. It’s not hedonist; you worry about things besides your well-being. But you only worry about things in terms of yourself. You don’t care if the world descends into sin so long is you are the moral victor. You’re not willing to murder one Austrian to save him from murdering six million Jews.
Am I missing something?
Hitler may not be the best example since it’s not obvious to me that Hitler’s death would have resulted in fewer lives lost during the genocides of the 20th century, because a universe without Hitler would have had a more powerful USSR.
For that matter, Germany could’ve picked a different embittered, insane would-be dictator. They weren’t in short supply.
I don’t think your assessment is accurate, because of the following facts:
USSR actually ended up more powerful, enlarged, and with greater prestige in 1945 -- for the exact reason that Germany, its main strategic rival, went on to pursue a suicidal attack against it under Hitler.
The German-Soviet war itself opened the opportunities for genocidal and near-genocidal campaigns by both sides, especially Germans, and it would have to have been an awfully large decrease in Soviet-perpetrated genocide to balance that.
Not counting the deaths related to the military operations, the overwhelming number of killings done by Stalin had already been finished by 1941. After that, the situation under him was of course awfully bad, but there was nothing like the enormous, Holocaust-scale mass killing projects he undertook in the 1930s.
If I know he’s going to murder six million Jews, that’s relevant. If I stab him because he took my parking space and for this reason, he does not go on to murder six million Jews, I have achieved no moral victory.
I’m not sure this scenario enlightens me. It seems to be about available information rather than deontologism vs consequentialism. From the way you describe it, both the deontologist and the consequentialist will murder Hitler if they know he’s going to become Hitler, and won’t if they don’t.
The consequentialist will not in fact kill Hitler if they don’t know he’s Hitler, but it’s part of their theory that they should.
That seems like a fairly useless part of consequential theory. In particular, when retrospecting about one’s previous actions, a consequentialist should give more weight to the argument “yes, he turned out to become Hitler, but I didn’t know that, and the prior probability of the person who took my parking space being Hitler is so low I would not have been justified in stabbing him for that reason” than “oh no, I’ve failed to stab Hitler”. It’s just a more productive thing to do, given that the next person who takes the consequentialist’s parking space is probably not Stalin.
Real-life morality is tricky. But when playing a video game, I am a points consequentialist: I believe that the right thing to do in the video game is that which maximizes the amount of points I get at the end.
Suppose one of my options is randomly chosen to lead to losing the game. I analyze the options and choose the one that has the lowest probability of being chosen. Turns out, I was unlucky and lost the game. Does that make my choice any less the right one? I don’t believe that it does.
Same for the consequentialist, no?
In Kantian deontology the actions of someone else can generate a positive obligation. In particular, your are obligated to punish those who violate the Categorical Imperative. You’re definitely obligated to punish Hitler after the fact. Beforehand is trickier (but this is more a metaphysics of time issue than a ethical issue, you could probably make a case for timeless punishment under Kantian deotology).
My point wasn’t punishment. If I were to kill an innocent man to keep Hitler from getting into power, that would still save him from murdering millions, and there’d be a net decrease in the murder of innocent people.
If anything, this version is even more clear cut, since it’s not clear if you’re really saving someone if they end up dead.
The only reason you can justify not doing it is if you think it’s more important for you to not be a murderer than Hitler.
Your excellent comment would have been improved by instead saying “murdering 11 million in concentration camps” or better yet “beginning a war that led to over fifty million dead”.
Many consequentialist theories might have a special term in which it is bad (for people, to be sure) if a culture or a people is targeted and destroyed. If Poland had ~35 million people, including ~3 million Jews, and Hitler killed ~6 million Polish civilians, including nearly all the Jews, he did worse than if he would have killed 6 million at random, as he killed ~6 million innocent people and one innocent people (sic). In another sense, there may have been similar suffering among Polish Jews and non-Jews (perhaps more aggregate suffering among non-Jews if the non-fatal suffering of the other Poles is included, but as a point of historical fact the average suffering by a Jew before death was probably greater than the average Pole’s before death 1939-45). Perhaps killing a people isn’t very bad, and our condemnation to it has to do with how hard it is to kill a people without killing people, the second of which is the important bad thing.
Similarly, the mode of death and capacity of the dead varies greatly among consequentialism and deontology, but a singular mention of the murdered somewhat indicates deontological thinking. How much worse is a murder than a killing (of a volunteer soldier? Of a draftee? Of a weapons manufacturing worker? Of a power plant worker? Of an apprentice florist who has nearly reached draft age)?
Broadly speaking, when generalizing over consequentialism I wouldn’t focus on those murdered, but of those who died. Doing so would have more clearly indicated that your point wasn’t punishment.
My reference to historical events would have been slightly more complete? Referencing historical events isn’t important. I wasn’t even so much referencing the event as referencing that it always gets referenced. Hitler just happened to end up in the middle of a popular thought experiment.
So? My point is that, even if you accept a given action is inherently bad, if it’s bad for anyone to do it, it may be worth while for you to do it. It only works out as Deontology if you assume that actions can only be bad if you’re the one doing them. More specific thought experiments can show that it only works if they’re only bad if you’re doing them right at this very moment.
If it was just bad to die, no deontologist would argue that there’s anything wrong with killing one guy to keep him from killing another. I was assuming for the sake of argument. it was just murder that was bad.