Deontological Moral Theories Research Articles

Consequentialism and deontological prohibitions

Abstract It is widely held that deontological moral theories are agent-relative because they include prohibitions on actions such as killing, or breaking promises, which cannot be understood as giving the same goal to different agents. They are thus thought to be inconsistent with consequentialism, in its traditional, agent-neutral form. However, the standard argument for this claim is incomplete, a problem which has led some to make the surprising claim that consequentialism and deontology can be reconciled. I defend the orthodox view, by developing a novel way of establishing agent-relativity, which involves showing that a moral theory admits of interpersonal dilemmas: possible situations where, whatever everyone does, someone must have acted wrongly.

La théorie morale implicite du serment d’Hippocrate

Hippocrates remains famous for having been the first to provide the clinic with a rigorous method, capable of satisfying the demands of reason. A paradigmatic figure in the emergence of rationalism in the West, a contemporary of Socrates and Plato, the father of medicine also marked with his spirit of rigor an “oath‿ promised to great fortune. Through its “performative‿ vocation, the oath has a purpose that differs from that of deontology, the standards of which are governed by regulatory and legal concerns. More than deontology, it’s relevant to compare the oath to the moral theories that make up the philosophical landscape of ethics today. Regardless of the content of its rules, the Hippocratic discourse lends itself to reflection on its overall tone and internal coherence. From its “substantial marrow‿, it’s possible to extract a certain way of conceiving ethics which still makes sense today. As an overall ethical vision, Hippocrates' philosophical thought balances a deontological moral theory with an ethics of prudence.

Why Impossible Options Are Better: Consequentializing Dilemmas

AbstractTo consequentialize a deontological moral theory is to give a theory which issues the same moral verdicts, but explains those verdicts in terms of maximizing or satisficing value. There are many motivations for consequentializing: to reconcile plausible ideas behind deontology with plausible ideas behind consequentialism, to help us better understand deontological theories, or to extend deontological theories beyond what intuitions alone tell us. It has proven difficult to consequentialize theories that allow for moral dilemmas or that deny that “ought” implies “can.” This article argues that the problem is best solved by allowing impossible actions as inputs into consequentializations. It shows that all other approaches that have been advocated are inadequate. It also argues that progress in consequentialization, and in formal ethics more generally, requires thinking about more than just wrongness and permissibility; we should think about contrary-to-duty obligations and degrees of wrongness as well.

Existe um fundamento para afirmar um dever de cooperação internacional? Ensaio sobre o direito internacional no quadro da ética prática kantiana

This study investigates whether there is a basis to assert that there is a duty of international cooperation or if the collaboration among states is only an act of courtesy. This work seeks to justify that duty on the deontological moral theory of Kantian tradition to show that his conception of practical reason requires a duty of international cooperation. The hypothesis is that there is a duty both morally and legal to international cooperation. For the construction of this argument, it is verified how the idea of ethical duty is articulated in the direction of political action and how it is possible to transpose the Kantian ethical building in direction to the international relations through the development of a moral and legal cosmopolitanism. Finally, it is verified that the contemporary unfolding of some of these precepts can sustain a duty of international cooperation by States.

Subjective Deontology and the Duty to Gather Information

Holly Smith has recently argued that Subjective Deontological Moral Theories (SDM theories) cannot adequately account for agents’ duties to gather information. I defend SDM theories against this charge and argue that they can account for agents’ duties to inform themselves. Along the way, I develop some principles governing how SDM theories, and deontological moral theories in general, should assign ‘deontic value’ or ‘deontic weight’ to particular actions.

A Critique of MacIntyrean Morality From a Kantian Perspective

This article is a critical examination of MacIntyre’s notion of morality in reference to Kant’s deontological moral theory. The examination shows that MacIntyre (a) criticizes Kant’s moral theory to defend virtue ethics or neo-Aristotelian ethics with a weak notion of morality; (b) favors the idea of local morality, which does not leave any room for moral assessment and reciprocity in an intercultural domain; and (c) fails to provide good arguments for his moral historicism and against Kant’s moral universalism.

The Elementary Epistemic Arithmetic of the Law II: The Inadequate Resources of Moral Theory for Dealing with the Criminal Law

In this lecture, I identify two key areas of the theory of crime and punishment that are demonstrably not derivable from deontological or retributive moral theory. In the first section, I will show that deontological moral theories are helpless when faced with the challenge of either justifying or deriving a standard of proof for criminal trials. In the second section, I will show that existing moral theories of punishment (especially Retributivism) in fact are nothing of the sort, in that they lack the resources to justify or derive a schedule of punishments or even a nonarbitrary definition of the just deserts for any given crime. Put differently, while Deontic theories stress the importance of convicted defendants receiving their just deserts, they have no machinery for figuring out what the just deserts are for any given crime. This pair of arguments is an ambitious agenda so let me turn to it straightaway

Threshold Constraints and Laws of War

The laws of armed conflict forge a balance between deontological humanitarian concerns on one hand, and consequentialist military-advantage concerns on the other hand. Yet the literature provides inadequate theoretical foundations for the balances these rules make at a structural level. In this paper, I explain how the standard humanitarian account and the first-wave economic account cannot alone explain the diversity of rules and principles observed in the formal doctrine and in state practice. States’ revealed preference for norms fleshing out those “minimum standards” can not be brushed aside as mere “behavioral regularities.” Many of these minimum standards are the result of purely instrumental coordination, since all belligerents are better off with full compliance under conditions of transparency and effective enforcement. But recognizing that states sometimes act for non-instrumental reasons supplements rather than falsifies claims that states act rationally under other circumstances. By adopting and deploying recent advances in law and economics that seek to bridge the gap between consequentialist and deontological moral theories, I show how the complex system of the laws of war are the product of both kinds of concerns. This working paper applies the threshold constraint framework to an emerging class of problems in the laws of armed conflict related to cyberwarfare. Uncertainty, risk-shifting, threshold-constraint concerns, and cost-reduction preferences play important roles in shaping law-of-armed-conflict rules, which in turn constrain and channel the tactical options states can select in carrying out armed conflict. These concerns also have institutional-design effects when states are uncertain about how technological progress will change battlefield conduct. This draft ends by explaining and understanding how states might seek to change those rules in light of anticipated (and even unknown) changes in battlefield technology.

Does Neuroscience Undermine Deontological Theory?

Joshua Greene has argued that several lines of empirical research, including his own fMRI studies of brain activity during moral decision-making, comprise strong evidence against the legitimacy of deontology as a moral theory. This is because, Greene maintains, the empirical studies establish that “characteristically deontological” moral thinking is driven by prepotent emotional reactions which are not a sound basis for morality in the contemporary world, while “characteristically consequentialist” thinking is a more reliable moral guide because it is characterized by greater cognitive command and control. In this essay, I argue that Greene does not succeed in drawing a strong statistical or causal connection between prepotent emotional reactions and deontological theory, and so does not undermine the legitimacy of deontological moral theories. The results that Greene relies on from neuroscience and social psychology do not establish his conclusion that consequentialism is superior to deontology.

Culpability and the Definition of Deontological Constraints

At the core of deontological moral theory are constraints on producing good states of affairs. There are certain things that one must not do, according to deontology, even if doing so would produce better consequences overall. Incorporating constraints is thus an important determinant of deontology's non-consequentialism. There is, moreover, powerful reason to think that deontology is right to incorporate these constraints. The fact that one may not kill a healthy person in order to harvest his organs so that five others may live, to take the textbook example, seems to substantiate the existence of constraints: five lives are better than one, and yet it would be uncontroversially wrong to kill the one to save the five. On this picture, one is permitted (and perhaps required) to maximize the good in the absence of a constraint, but where a constraint is in effect, such maximization is forbidden. Despite their commonsense appeal, however, deontological constraints are among the most fugitive concepts in normative ethics. In this article, I discuss and criticize Michael S. Moore's recent attempt to provide an account of constraints in "Patrolling the Borders of Consequentialist Justifications," which is incorporated into his magnum opus, Causation and Responsibility (Oxford, 2009). On his view, roughly, when we act on the basis of an intention to cause harm, and that act strongly causes the intended harm, which would not have occurred without the act, then we violate a constraint. I make three principal objections to this account: first, I deny that intentions have any bearing on the rightness of action; second, I deny that strong, direct causation is either necessary or sufficient for wronging another in violation of a constraint; third, and more generally, I argue that locating the source of constraints in the conditions of an agent's culpability makes constraints on what one may do to others too self-regarding.

Karyn Lai, Learning from Chinese Philosophies: Ethics of Independent and Contextualised Self, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006, 218 pp., ISBN: 0754633829, hb

Learning from Chinese Philosophies explores early Confucianism and Daoism in order to engage today’s problems. By bringing into thoughtful play Confucian ideas of self and society and Daoist understanding of situated self, the author uses the debate between the two philosophies to argue for her understanding of Confucian moral thinking and Daoist metaethics. According to Lai, Daoist metaethics question dichotomous frameworks and discuss the unity of opposites enabling dynamic interplay of nonantagonistic polarities. Lai not only rejects comparisons of Confucianism to consequentialist and deontological moral theories, but also the view that Confucian ethics is a form of virtue ethics. Instead, she argues that the Analects is a manual for moral decision making that requires skills “to unravel and analyse the complex features of particular situations and to pick out those which are morally relevant.” Together, Confucianism and Daoism offer views of interdependent relationality that help to reconceptualize contemporary problems and criticize existing thinking and practices. Lai applies what she has learned from these two Chinese philosophies in a critique of feminist care ethics. Despite a few flaws, this is a clearly written work with stimulating interesting ideas and it lives up to the promise of demonstrating the continued relevance of Chinese philosophies.

What is Consequentialism? A Reply to Howard-Snyder

If there is a moral reason for A to do X, and if A cannot do X without doing Y, and if doing Y will enable A to do X, then there is a moral reason for A to do Y. This principle is plausible but mysterious, so it needs to be explained. It can be explained by necessary enabler consequentialism, but not by other consequentialisms or any deontological moral theory. Or so I argue. Frances Howard-Snyder objects that this argument fails to establish consequentialism as understood by ‘most philosophers’, because it fails to establish agent-neutrality. I respond by distinguishing consequentialism, which need not be agent-neutral, from utilitarianism, which claims agent-neutrality. Howard-Snyder also presents a schema for a non-consequentialist theory that is supposed to explain moral substitutability. I respond that her explanation cannot be completed without introducing incoherence into deontological moral theories.

Two Puzzles for Deontologists: Life-Prolonging Killings and the Moral Symmetry Between Killing and Causing a Person to be Unconscious

Some form of agent-relative constraint against the killing of innocent personsis a central principle in deontological moraltheories. In this article I make two claimsabout this constraint. First, I argue that somekillings of innocents performed incircumstances usually not taken to exculpatethe killer are not even pro tanto wrong.Second, I contend that either there is noagent-relative constraint against the killingof innocents or this constraint has a verydifferent shape from that which deontologistsnormally take it to have. My defence of theseclaims rests on two propositions. First, inkilling someone one may actually prolong thatperson's life. Roughly, life-prolongingkillings are possible, because to kill someoneis to perform an act that causes someone'sdeath and it might well be true that, had onenot performed this act, one's ``victim'' wouldhave died earlier. Second, all other thingsbeing equal, killing and causing a person to beunconscious are morally equivalent. Both ofthese propositions are defended in thearticle.

The Structure of the Moral Dilemma in Shiloh

The Structure of the Moral Dilemma in Shiloh Claudia Mills (bio) Children's literature has long had the role of providing moral instruction and shaping moral development.1 Some notable children's books, however, go beyond the task of transmitting and inculcating accepted values to portray children engaged in a process of real moral reflection that can itself transcend and challenge our shared values. Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Newbery-winning novel Shiloh is remarkable for its recognition of certain fundamental ambiguities and limitations in the morality we share. The moral dilemma that eleven-year-old Marty Preston faces in the novel is extraordinarily complex, raising challenges both to how we reason about our obligations to members of the moral community and to how we define the scope of that community. The latter may occasion the novel's most significant philosophical triumph in its illumination of how we fail to apply even our most central and unambiguous moral principles to children and to animals. In "real life," children struggle with sometimes extraordinary seriousness to develop into full-fledged moral agents. In The Moral Life of Children (1968) and The Moral Intelligence of Children (1997), Robert Coles provides moving case studies of children trying to sort through their moral obligations against a background of their parents' beliefs, their religious beliefs, and the transmitted beliefs of their culture. Children also seem to have a natural curiosity about the philosophical dimensions of their lives, as shown by Gareth Matthews's depictions of his successful attempts to engage children in philosophical dialogue (1980). I want to suggest that this capacity for philosophical perplexity, turned toward the moral seriousness of our lives, makes Shiloh a wonderful vehicle for engaging children in sophisticated moral reflection, for the questions Shiloh raises are ones that the professional philosophy literature itself has been struggling to answer. [End Page 185] The Generation of Moral Dilemmas Is there always a right answer to the question "What should I do?" Many of us are tempted by the view that even if it may be difficult to determine what we should do in a given situation, there is indeed a correct answer. The task of moral theory, then, is to array the totality of our correct moral judgments into one systematized framework, providing an explanation and justification of how they fit together into one unified whole. The two leading secular moral theories developed since the eighteenth century are consequentialism (identified in its utilitarian form with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) and deontology (identified with Immanuel Kant). According to consequentialism, the right act in any given situation is the act that produces the best consequences, usually understood in terms of the welfare of all those affected by the act. (Important for our purposes is that utilitarian consequentialists such as Bentham historically have defended the extension of moral considerability to all sentient creatures, including nonhuman animals, so that in evaluating actions we must look at their implications for both human and animal welfare.) On deontological (obligation-based) moral theories, the right thing to do is established by invoking moral obligations grounded in some way other than by appeal to consequences. For example, according to Kant, we must act only on maxims (principles) that can be consistently universalized and only with respect for other persons as ends in themselves. A number of philosophers, however, have asked whether there is indeed always a right answer to the question "What should I do?" They suggest that we may sometimes face real moral dilemmas, which all the resources of moral theory are inadequate to resolve. A moral dilemma is more than merely a difficult moral choice. According to one recent definition, a "moral dilemma is a situation in which an agent S morally ought to do A and morally ought to do B but cannot do both, either because B is just not-doing-A or because some contingent feature of the world prevents doing both" (Gowans 3). Here the world presents us not with a merely difficult choice between a right action and a wrong action but with an impossible choice between two simultaneously required but mutually incompatible right actions, or, viewed otherwise, between two wrong actions, since...

An Error About the Doctrine of Double Effect

This paper claims as erroneous the current widespread representation of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) as primarily condemning as intrinsically bad actions involving intentional harm. The DDE's Four Conditions are in fact used solely for justifying certain intrinsically good actions with both intended good and unintended bad effects. Though contemporary writers assign a minor justificatory role to the DDE this is incompatible with their attribution to it of a primary prohibitive role. Not only is the conduct cited by these writers as justifiable under the DDE so morally innocuous as to require no justification, but any attempt to justify it by appeal to the DDE leads to incoherence. We finally suggest reasons for this misinterpretation in current concerns with the structure of deontological moral theories.

An Argument for Consequentialism

The most common way to choose among moral theories is to test how well they cohere with our intuitions or considered judgments about what is morally right and wrong, about the nature or ideal of a person, and about the purpose(s) of morality.1 Another kind of intuition is often overlooked. We also have intuitions about principles of practical and moral reasoning, such as those captured by deontic logic. In order to be principles of reasoning rather than substance, these principles must be consistent with all substantive moral theories. But consistency is not enough. We want the deeper kind of coherence that comes only with explanation. A moral theory that simply reports the principles behind common moral reasoning but cannot explain why these principles are so common or so plausible is inferior in this respect to another moral theory which not only includes the principles but also explains why they are true. Why is the explanatory theory better? Because we want a moral theory to help us understand moral reasoning, and such understanding is gained only when our principles are explained. Without such understanding, our intuitions do not seem justified, and we cannot know whether or how to extend our principles to new situations. These are reasons to prefer a moral theory that explains our principles of moral reasoning. This preference for explanation provides a new method for choosing among competing moral theories. I will illustrate and apply this method in this paper. First, I will argue that a certain principle holds for reasons for action in general and for moral reasons in particular. Next, I will argue that this principle of moral reasoning cannot be explained by deontological moral theories or by traditional forms of consequentialism. Finally, I will outline a new kind of consequentialism that provides a natural explanation of this principle of moral reasoning. Its explanatory power is a reason to prefer this new version of consequentialism.

Deterrence and Moral Theory

IntroductionIssues in public policy have been challenging and remaking moral theory for two centuries. Such issues force us to question fundamental principles of ethics while they cast doubt on our ability to generalize from traditional intuitions. No issue poses more remarkable difficulties for moral theory than nuclear weapons policy. Because the consequences of their deployment and therefore possible use could be grievous beyond those of any previously conceivable human action, these weapons frame the conflict between outcome-based, especially utilitarian, and action-based deontological moral theories more acutely than perhaps any other we have faced. Just because nuclear weapons may bring about the most grievous outcome imaginable, they elevate concern with outcomes over concern with actions. More generally, they wreak havoc with the focus on the morality of individual choices and actions, set limits to the notion of intention and the doctrine of double effect, call into question the so-called just-war theory, and overwhelm the intuitionist basis of much of ethical reasoning.

Grounds for Recognition of Conscientious Objection to Military Service: The Deontological-Teleological Distinction Considered

This study of the grounds for recognition of conscientious objection to military service focuses on the conventional distinction between deontological and teleological moral theories. It is analytically proved that if it is possible to justify conscientious objection on deontological grounds, then this must necessarily be the case even on some teleological grounds.

Rights and Capital Punishment

Discussions of the morality of capital punishment, and indeed discussions of the morality of punishment in general, usually assume that there are two possible justifications of punishment, a deterrence justification associated with utilitarianism and other consequentialist moral theories, and a retributive justification associated with deontological moral theories. But now that rights-based theories are attracting the increasing attention of moral philosophers it is worth asking whether these theories may not employ a different justification of punishment, with different consequences for the morality of particular forms of punishment. I will argue that rights theories do employ a different justification of punishment, and that this justification combines many of the attractive features of the deterrence and retributive justifications while avoiding their unattractive features. In particular, I will argue that the rights-based justification has more attractive consequences for the morality of capital punishment than either the deterrence or retributive justifications.