Yo you did an amazing job on this video. Clear concise, and incredibly insightful. I look forward to more of ur videos 💛. I’d love to see ur breakdown of Cognivism vs Non-cognivism
I really appreciate this video and can finally put a name to some of the concepts I learned growing up. My mother is Mormon and my father is Catholic so I can appreciate a lot of the deontological (I hope I'm using that right) or "inflexible" characteristics of religion. This is the foundation of why I fell away from both traditions as the principles of love and acceptance really clash with a lot of the intolerance towards deviation. Also, it was really boring to sit in mass or Sunday school but now I can explain it in a way to make me look smarter!
Yeah, deontology isn't always inflexible and inflexible ethics (absolutism) aren't always deontological. Deontology is rules-based ethics. But you're probably using it right. I'm glad you found the video useful!
Honestly, to me, all the problems people bring up regarding intent being insufficient grounding for morality, can be easily solved through the concept of "reasonable foreseeability". Which, as luck would have it, is also a concept the legal system has adopted for decades. I've yet to hear any objections to it. An example is probably in order. You're eating a bag of peanuts, and you friend asks you for some. You give him the peanuts, he eats them, and ends up in the hospital due to an allergic reaction. Was it bad of you to give your friend the peanuts? The utilitarian would say yes, but the obvious answer is of course no, since you did not intend for it to happen. Crucially, you also had no information your friend was allergic. If you did have that information, then it would be "reasonably foreseeable" that he would go to the hospital, and then your good intent explanation is no longer sufficient. The only real objection is that what counts as "reasonable" is not well-defined, but that's a problem for all moral systems, not just this one, this morality is not a reason-based process in my view. If you didn't know your friend was allergic, but you knew his father is, and that it is also heritable, is it then reasonably foreseeable? What if it's only 50% heritable? It quickly gets muddy. And I would say in cases where it is muddy, air on the side of forgiveness, since they displayed good intent.
Interesting. But as they say "the path to hell is paved with good intentions" (not that I believe in a hell, but we can take the quote to mean hell in a figurative sense). How much do you think the idea of reasonable foreseeability gets around this problem? If due to a lack of information, you couldn't reasonably foresee that something you did would harm people, how much do you still bear the moral burden for that harm (perhaps because you were acting out of ignorance)? I suppose this is just another question of what "reasonable" means.
@Wade Allen Well, that path to hell usually happens when people are dogmatic. And when you're dogmatic, you aren't receptive to new information. There's probably many ways of articulating this, but essentially what it boils down to is that to be reasonable, you have to actively be informed to some degree. You can't just close your eyes to information that would allow you to foresee the consequences of your actions, and then feign ignorance that you didn't have the information. That's not what a reasonable person does. I should also note that this standard of "reasonable" is more or less personal to an individual, since not everyone have the same intellectual capacity and whatnot.
"Deontology is consequentialism in disguise" interesting, I've been thinking the opposite. Utilitarianism is about maximizing well being and minimizing suffering for the most number of people, that seems like a deontological view. Something like "one must always maximize well being" and "one must always minimize suffering"
I could see that. The reason I think it's the other way around is because deontology is typically a context-independent system of morality, whereas consequentialism is a context-dependent system. Deontology says "do this regardless of the circumstance or the consequences." One action could be very bad in one context and very good in another. So a strict, rules-based morality is often dysfunctional. That being said, if you broaden the rule so much that it simply becomes what you said, "one must always maximize well-being/minimize suffering" that does sound a bit deontological, because it's an imperative, but that statement also contains an appeal to the consequences (maximizing well-being or minimizing suffering), whereas a deontological rule such as "don't kill" doesn't make any appeal to the consequences, so is much more purely deontological. Though the point that I was making in the video is that the reason these deontological rules get created in the first place is because people noticed that some actions typically lead to results that they liked or didn't like, so they codified the actions themselves without thinking of context-dependence and how the results might not always be the same in all contexts. Or because they had some misguided notions of what the gods wanted. Though I would also say that the optimal morality is probably one that includes both a duty-based morality as well as a consequentialist attitude.
Nice video. That being said, I have some disagreements. In your opening statement, you misrepresent deontology with the book printing example. You cite consequences of an action (The environmental footprint causing some greater bad), as a justification for why an action would be deontologically bad. Deontology would state that the action is bad in it itself because it uses other people (we may or may not loop in the environment here with some kind of property rights), as a means to the end of gaining money from selling books. Additionally, deontology is an ethical/moral framework, not a political one or a theory of justice. You can certainly derive the latter from the former, but insofar as you bring up examples of what one should do in response to someone who has done an immoral action, deontology is not really the right place to look for answers. Deontology will tell you that murder is wrong, but taken at face value, it does not really tell us how to punish murderers. Something like libertarianism and its NAP as an application of deontology would say something on the lines of "You forfeit your right to self-ownership when you take the life of another, which is why capital punishment or self defence is justified". It is a logical extension of Kant's CI. Kant's CI is precisely what you should (or rather must) do at all times, regardless of circumstance. In its first formulation, it is basically the obligation as a rational (and thus morally bound) decision-maker to be internally consistent. "Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." Under Kant's deontology, from which most deontology is based on, it is rationally incoherent to be immoral. It literally disobeys the laws of logic and reason. And in your point that deontology is just consequentialism, I would argue it goes the other way. Whereas you don't need consequentialism in order to formulate your rules (as Kant did with rational obligations), you need some underlying deontological framework to understand why a certain end is bad. Utilitarianism might say that killing 1 to save 100 is good, but it would still need some kind of deontological understanding to know why death, or killing is bad. It just takes a consequentialist view of outcomes. All utilitarianism is just a regress to at least one deontological truth. Finally, there is some trouble in arguing from intuition, as not all people would share that intuition. For example, you make the claim that it seems morally right to be able to do things to people if it is for their own good, even if they don't consent. But, many like myself would disagree with this. And, when rights do overlap, this largely comes from the fact that we take a general principle and apply it to specific cases, creating derivations of that law (such as do not murder, do not lie etc). However, we need to recognize that some rights are more "fundamental" than others, with the most fundamental being a sort of categorical imperative which you MUST follow, by the very nature of existence.
In the beginning of the video, I was using book-printing to show that things can be bad in an obvious way that escapes the confines of deontology. I was not showing that it's deontologically bad, I was showing that it's bad in a consequentialist way that we can probably all agree on, and so deontology is missing something because it doesn't account for scale. In a deontological framework, selling books is either a good or a bad, no matter the scale (whether that's for exploitation of human labor reasons or environmental reasons or whatever). Though I do admit, if a watcher of this video can't agree that printing millions of books is bad (at least partially bad, I'm not claiming it's all bad. Because while it does harm to the environment, it helps spread knowledge), perhaps because they don't care about the environment, then I won't be getting through to them. So I agree with the limits of arguing from intuition or from agreed upon principles. I also agree that it's rationally incoherent to be immoral. In my view any failure in ethics is a failure in reasoning. And to your point about consequentialism flowing from deontology rather than the other way around, I would stand my ground. You said "utilitarianism might say that killing 1 to save 100 is good, but it would still need some kind of deontological understanding to know why death, or killing is bad" but the thing is, if death or killing isn't bad just once, then the deontological rule fails. I would also refer you to my response on this subject to Dharma Defender in this comment section.
@@WadeAllen001 Well, you can say that something is more or less "bad" under a deontological framework, but what deontology rejects is the idea of "sacrifice". You can take your blanketly bad things (like murder) and say it is WORSE that you killed two people as opposed to one person. However, Deontology would reject saying: let's kill this one person in order that those two won't die. Why? That would be sacrificing the life of one person, which is a fundamental moral wrong. It is treating that one person as but a means to an end. Deontology rejects any sort of cost-benefit calculus. Deontology outlines certain "bad" things that you may never do, or certain obligations that you must always do. Amongst the "bad" things that you may never do (at least in a Kantian deontology) is to utilize utilitarian calculus in a way that places people as a means to an end. The basic structure of utilitarianism is to do the action that results in the greatest "goodness", or creates a world with the most "goodness". In essence, moral decision making can be done with mathematical equations. Simply multiply the number of people by the weight of the action on each and add. If the sum is positive, you can do it, or must. However, we can sort-of integrate the two ideas if we ascribe infinite weight to certain things, like human life. We can say that human life, or treating people as ends, has infinite value, such that even one violation of this would outweigh any benefits. That is my conception of a deontology under consequentialist analysis. The reason I bring this up is to show what it means that certain actions are impermissible, period. The reason why they are bad is because they violate the fundamental moral obligation of the CI, which necessarily, by rationality, be true. I find it hard to understand how is it possible to be in a logical contradiction in the same way as under Kant's CI when using utilitarianism? Under utilitarianism, killing 1 person out of cold blood is bad because either you assume axiomatically that death is some ends you wish to avoid (which I'll discuss later about deontology being util), or because that person's death causes more bad ends. However, if I, a rational being, kill someone out of cold blood, it isn't really a logical contradiction. By contrast, under the CI, all rational beings, because of their rationality and freedom, are things in themselves, with their own ends. To use another person as merely a means to your own ends is to reject the basis for your ends, namely, that all humans are ends in themselves. You fall under similar logical contradictions with the first formulation of the CI, where say with lying, you have to will a world in which everyone lies, yet also where you could formulate a maxim of "lying" whenever it benefits you. However, there wouldn't be such a concept of lying vs telling the truth in a world where people simply state what is convenient for them, as a matter of natural law. Thus, it is impossible for "lying whenever it pleases you" to be a universal maxim, as it would have been impossible to formulate if it really were a maxim in our world. Finally, I'll touch on your comment to Dharma Defender. You state: " The reason I think it's the other way around is because deontology is typically a context-independent system of morality, whereas consequentialism is a context-dependent system. Deontology says "do this regardless of the circumstance or the consequences." One action could be very bad in one context and very good in another. So a strict, rules-based morality is often dysfunctional. ". However, why is it that one action can become good or bad under different circumstances? Under utilitarianism, it is because it leads to different ends. Yet, why is one end better than another? Utilitarianism might say that murder is bad, because death should be avoided. However, they can't give you a reason why death is bad without regressing down to fundamentally deontological points. Indeed, there is no reason why death should be the specter of morality. There is no difference in utilitarianism between suicide and murder, because it is the same outcome: someone is dead. In fact, if the killer receives some pleasure from the murder, one could even argue that murder is better than suicide, which is often more grief-stricken. However, we know these actions to be different, at least on a moral plane (you can argue from deontology that suicide is wrong, but that's a different way of going about it). A rights-based deontology would state that suicide is at least permissible, because people have perfect freedom to do what they want to with their bodies. But, utilitarianism would say that you MUST act to stop that person from doing anything that harms themselves, because it creates a net-negative "goodness" sum in the world. In essence, utilitarianism is simply the calculus, or the tool by which we weigh the ends of actions according to certain deontologically derived value judgements. If we state that death is good, then morally good actions are actions that maximize death. You don't know what to maximize under utilitarianism unless you have some kind of axiom. Deontology is similar, in that it has things it aims to maximize, but it focuses more on negative actions (things you can't do), and takes these aims as infinite, as I showed earlier.
Great video that's why I'm commenting so much. I love the dialogue. I had this discussion in class a couple of days ago, and the notion came to me that there's a bit of a word play when it comes to deontological dilemmas with respect to killing. Now we know that murder is wrong in murder is not the same as killing. So let's use the example if a loved one was about to be murdered by another individual and I a deontologist happened to step in to prevent such actions without the intent to kill and that person who was the murderer happened to die by my hand, bue to my actions would still be justified or wrong? Since my intention was not out of malice to murder. Am I looking at this right?.
I suppose it would depend on the type of deontology. If it's a set of rules to be followed regardless of intention, then it would be wrong from that perspective. If intention is as important as action, then it would be justified. But I think your example does a good job at showing the limitations of deontology. For instance, if your loved one was about to be murdered and your intention WAS to kill the attacker (to prevent them from killing your loved one). Would that be wrong? I would say no.
@@WadeAllen001 thank you. To your last comment. Then you would be killing out of malice and revenge. Then this would be considered murder. Kantain ethics would say that we are all rational people that deserve the right to live.
I fully recognize that deontology has some significant problems and I dont think it should account for the entirety of someone's moral framework. However, looking at other more fluid moral systems doesn't sit right with me either. If morals don't really exist outside of the human experience, if they are just concepts that we have created and (for the most part) agreed to follow, then that would mean they aren't inherently binding and there isn't any real reason to follow them. If that's the case, we could assign moral values to just about anything and make exceptions as arbitrarily as we'd like. Oh, I stepped in shit today? Now my mood is ruined and that gives me a free pass to kill someone. That's a bit of a stretch, granted, but the point still stands. Deontology puts a very firm limit on what kind of actions we can carry out. Unlike other moral systems, it is reliable and consistent (even to great detriment.)
Respectfully, I cannot stress enough how incorrect and frankly dangerous I think this is. For one thing, deontology is a concept created by humans, so if your conclusion was actually a reasonable one then deontology wouldn't escape the same arbitrariness as any other moral system. But the main error is in how you're interpreting "morals don't really exist outside of human experience" (which I'm not so sure about anyway, as I don't think morals only deal with humans, it's just that humans are the only species we can communicate our desires to so we can't expect other animals to act morally (and it's hard to act morally when you're in a state of survival anyway, like wild animals are), but that doesn't mean we have any excuses to treat other animals immorally). Saying that morals don't exist outside of human experience is not the same thing as saying that morals are made up or arbitrary. It's only saying that if all humans ceased to exist then there would be no one around to understand morality. And further, if there were no conscious creatures in existence, then morality would not exist at all. It's not as if morality is some fundamental feature of the universe. Something being dependent on consciousness, on feelings, does not make it arbitrary. Morals are still based on something concrete, and that something, I would argue, is biology. Conscious creatures have been programmed through the eons to have certain desires, and to be able to communicate those desires. The most basic desires being the desire to not die, to avoid pain, and to experience pleasure. Of course they aren't hard and fast rules, and there are circumstances in which things change. Morality, I would argue, is the process of learning to live in such a way as to satisfy the most desires of others, or at least to avoid impinging upon desires (and I mean desires here in a more all-encompassing way, all the things that would enhance someone's wellbeing). And there are perfectly selfish reasons to do this. For instance, by caring about someone else's wellbeing, they're more likely to treat me well. So I would say that morality is discovered, not invented (or made up). Of course the difficulty comes in the complexity of it all. There often aren't easy answers in ethics. So we have a lot yet to discover about how best to treat each other, but that fluidity, that development of ethics, doesn't mean it's arbitrary, it means we're still discovering what's right.
A Christian would look at your opening dialogue and say that this is due to original sin (evil). It's like rot in a tree or some type of fruit, because our reality is flawed we will never see Utopia or a perfect system.
It's more than just your actions that are punished in the next life. It as deep as your thinking as well as your actions. If you take into consideration. Matthew 5:21-22 Murder 5:25,26pp - Lk 12:58,59 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister, will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. Please keep in mind "You fool" isn't nearly just calling someone a fool. It's much deeper than that. With hatred in the heart. The anger is unrighteous anger Here: First, Jesus warns that the very act of murder finds its roots in an angry, murderous spirit: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:22a). God, who examines the very thoughts and intents of the heart, will issue judgment upon unrighteous anger. Next, Jesus warns against name-calling, using “raca” as an example (verse 22b). Raca comes from the Aramaic term reqa. It was a derogatory expression meaning “empty-headed,” insinuating a person’s stupidity or inferiority. It was an offensive name used to show utter contempt for another person. Jesus warned that the use of such a word to describe someone was tantamount to murder and deserving of the severest punishment of the law. Jesus then issues a third warning against those who call someone a “fool” (verse 22c). Murder begins in the heart, and epithets such as “raca” and “fool” are signs that there is hatred lurking within. The hatred that causes one person to hurl insults is the same hatred that causes another to commit murder. The attitude of the heart is the same, and it’s this attitude that makes a person morally guilty before God. Jesus not only warns us against expressing unrighteous anger, which can lead to murder, but clearly commands that disparaging denunciations and name-calling be avoided. Such abusive words reveal the true intents of one’s heart and mind for which we will be held in judgment: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV).
You disagree that the hypothetical children take their lessons from a different source? Or you disagree that source B (obeying authority) has almost nothing to do with morality? Or that the kid who fears his teacher only refrains from doing bad things in order to prevent a personal suffering, whereas the other kid refrains from doing bad things in order to prevent the suffering of others? I'm sorry, I say a lot in that section you pointed out, so I'd like to know what it is exactly you disagree with.
@@WadeAllen001 I don't think that "source B" is an accurate depiction of deontology. From what I understand of Kant, didn't he say that morality comes from internal reasoning, rather than being dictated by an outside source?
@@davidberman3201 Right, I do make distinctions between Kantian deontology and other forms of deontology throughout the video. So you'd be right in saying that that analogy of the two children is not a critique of Kantian deontology. Rather, it's a critique of the religiously inspired deontology (divine command theory) and other moral philosophies like it that are about obedience to moral laws, which I find to be more common these days in regular people. For the most part this video isn't about Kantian deontology (though I do mention it a few times, but each time I do I believe it's to say that Kantian ethics is different), but about the sorts of deontology I see in people today (as deontology is just the perspective of caring about the moral valence of the action itself rather than the consequences of that action. Child B is learning that the action of hitting is bad as a rule, rather than learning from the consequence of that action). A critique from this video that is relevant to Kantian deontology would be that this internal reasoning is actually just consequentialism in disguise. Kant's categorical imperative comes down to how to create the best world (ex: is a world where no one lies better than a world where some people lie?), which is ultimately a question of consequences (what is the consequence of lying), or so I would argue.
I'm studying Deontology right now. I think Utilitarianism is rubbish, but I don't know enough about Deontology to take it seriously. I'm more of a virtue ethicist.
Awesome work man, thanks! I’m trying to write an essay about Kagan’s arguments against deontological constraints so I found this real helpful
This was *really* good. You explained a lot of difficult concepts in an easy to understand way. Wish you'd do more philosophy content!
I certainly will do more philosophy content. I just make videos at a snail's pace.
Yo you did an amazing job on this video. Clear concise, and incredibly insightful. I look forward to more of ur videos 💛. I’d love to see ur breakdown of Cognivism vs Non-cognivism
That's a good idea. I'll add it to my idea list.
Amazing normative ethics video. Certainly moved me closer to pure consequentialism.
I really appreciate this video and can finally put a name to some of the concepts I learned growing up. My mother is Mormon and my father is Catholic so I can appreciate a lot of the deontological (I hope I'm using that right) or "inflexible" characteristics of religion. This is the foundation of why I fell away from both traditions as the principles of love and acceptance really clash with a lot of the intolerance towards deviation. Also, it was really boring to sit in mass or Sunday school but now I can explain it in a way to make me look smarter!
Yeah, deontology isn't always inflexible and inflexible ethics (absolutism) aren't always deontological. Deontology is rules-based ethics. But you're probably using it right. I'm glad you found the video useful!
This video was fantastic, thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Honestly, to me, all the problems people bring up regarding intent being insufficient grounding for morality, can be easily solved through the concept of "reasonable foreseeability". Which, as luck would have it, is also a concept the legal system has adopted for decades. I've yet to hear any objections to it.
An example is probably in order. You're eating a bag of peanuts, and you friend asks you for some. You give him the peanuts, he eats them, and ends up in the hospital due to an allergic reaction. Was it bad of you to give your friend the peanuts? The utilitarian would say yes, but the obvious answer is of course no, since you did not intend for it to happen. Crucially, you also had no information your friend was allergic. If you did have that information, then it would be "reasonably foreseeable" that he would go to the hospital, and then your good intent explanation is no longer sufficient.
The only real objection is that what counts as "reasonable" is not well-defined, but that's a problem for all moral systems, not just this one, this morality is not a reason-based process in my view. If you didn't know your friend was allergic, but you knew his father is, and that it is also heritable, is it then reasonably foreseeable? What if it's only 50% heritable? It quickly gets muddy. And I would say in cases where it is muddy, air on the side of forgiveness, since they displayed good intent.
Interesting. But as they say "the path to hell is paved with good intentions" (not that I believe in a hell, but we can take the quote to mean hell in a figurative sense). How much do you think the idea of reasonable foreseeability gets around this problem? If due to a lack of information, you couldn't reasonably foresee that something you did would harm people, how much do you still bear the moral burden for that harm (perhaps because you were acting out of ignorance)? I suppose this is just another question of what "reasonable" means.
@Wade Allen Well, that path to hell usually happens when people are dogmatic. And when you're dogmatic, you aren't receptive to new information. There's probably many ways of articulating this, but essentially what it boils down to is that to be reasonable, you have to actively be informed to some degree. You can't just close your eyes to information that would allow you to foresee the consequences of your actions, and then feign ignorance that you didn't have the information. That's not what a reasonable person does. I should also note that this standard of "reasonable" is more or less personal to an individual, since not everyone have the same intellectual capacity and whatnot.
"Deontology is consequentialism in disguise" interesting, I've been thinking the opposite. Utilitarianism is about maximizing well being and minimizing suffering for the most number of people, that seems like a deontological view. Something like "one must always maximize well being" and "one must always minimize suffering"
I could see that. The reason I think it's the other way around is because deontology is typically a context-independent system of morality, whereas consequentialism is a context-dependent system. Deontology says "do this regardless of the circumstance or the consequences." One action could be very bad in one context and very good in another. So a strict, rules-based morality is often dysfunctional. That being said, if you broaden the rule so much that it simply becomes what you said, "one must always maximize well-being/minimize suffering" that does sound a bit deontological, because it's an imperative, but that statement also contains an appeal to the consequences (maximizing well-being or minimizing suffering), whereas a deontological rule such as "don't kill" doesn't make any appeal to the consequences, so is much more purely deontological.
Though the point that I was making in the video is that the reason these deontological rules get created in the first place is because people noticed that some actions typically lead to results that they liked or didn't like, so they codified the actions themselves without thinking of context-dependence and how the results might not always be the same in all contexts. Or because they had some misguided notions of what the gods wanted.
Though I would also say that the optimal morality is probably one that includes both a duty-based morality as well as a consequentialist attitude.
Bro that's Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, not Kant
Nice video. That being said, I have some disagreements. In your opening statement, you misrepresent deontology with the book printing example. You cite consequences of an action (The environmental footprint causing some greater bad), as a justification for why an action would be deontologically bad. Deontology would state that the action is bad in it itself because it uses other people (we may or may not loop in the environment here with some kind of property rights), as a means to the end of gaining money from selling books.
Additionally, deontology is an ethical/moral framework, not a political one or a theory of justice. You can certainly derive the latter from the former, but insofar as you bring up examples of what one should do in response to someone who has done an immoral action, deontology is not really the right place to look for answers. Deontology will tell you that murder is wrong, but taken at face value, it does not really tell us how to punish murderers. Something like libertarianism and its NAP as an application of deontology would say something on the lines of "You forfeit your right to self-ownership when you take the life of another, which is why capital punishment or self defence is justified". It is a logical extension of Kant's CI.
Kant's CI is precisely what you should (or rather must) do at all times, regardless of circumstance. In its first formulation, it is basically the obligation as a rational (and thus morally bound) decision-maker to be internally consistent. "Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law." Under Kant's deontology, from which most deontology is based on, it is rationally incoherent to be immoral. It literally disobeys the laws of logic and reason.
And in your point that deontology is just consequentialism, I would argue it goes the other way. Whereas you don't need consequentialism in order to formulate your rules (as Kant did with rational obligations), you need some underlying deontological framework to understand why a certain end is bad. Utilitarianism might say that killing 1 to save 100 is good, but it would still need some kind of deontological understanding to know why death, or killing is bad. It just takes a consequentialist view of outcomes. All utilitarianism is just a regress to at least one deontological truth.
Finally, there is some trouble in arguing from intuition, as not all people would share that intuition. For example, you make the claim that it seems morally right to be able to do things to people if it is for their own good, even if they don't consent. But, many like myself would disagree with this. And, when rights do overlap, this largely comes from the fact that we take a general principle and apply it to specific cases, creating derivations of that law (such as do not murder, do not lie etc). However, we need to recognize that some rights are more "fundamental" than others, with the most fundamental being a sort of categorical imperative which you MUST follow, by the very nature of existence.
In the beginning of the video, I was using book-printing to show that things can be bad in an obvious way that escapes the confines of deontology. I was not showing that it's deontologically bad, I was showing that it's bad in a consequentialist way that we can probably all agree on, and so deontology is missing something because it doesn't account for scale. In a deontological framework, selling books is either a good or a bad, no matter the scale (whether that's for exploitation of human labor reasons or environmental reasons or whatever). Though I do admit, if a watcher of this video can't agree that printing millions of books is bad (at least partially bad, I'm not claiming it's all bad. Because while it does harm to the environment, it helps spread knowledge), perhaps because they don't care about the environment, then I won't be getting through to them. So I agree with the limits of arguing from intuition or from agreed upon principles.
I also agree that it's rationally incoherent to be immoral. In my view any failure in ethics is a failure in reasoning.
And to your point about consequentialism flowing from deontology rather than the other way around, I would stand my ground. You said "utilitarianism might say that killing 1 to save 100 is good, but it would still need some kind of deontological understanding to know why death, or killing is bad" but the thing is, if death or killing isn't bad just once, then the deontological rule fails. I would also refer you to my response on this subject to Dharma Defender in this comment section.
@@WadeAllen001 Well, you can say that something is more or less "bad" under a deontological framework, but what deontology rejects is the idea of "sacrifice". You can take your blanketly bad things (like murder) and say it is WORSE that you killed two people as opposed to one person.
However, Deontology would reject saying: let's kill this one person in order that those two won't die.
Why? That would be sacrificing the life of one person, which is a fundamental moral wrong. It is treating that one person as but a means to an end. Deontology rejects any sort of cost-benefit calculus.
Deontology outlines certain "bad" things that you may never do, or certain obligations that you must always do. Amongst the "bad" things that you may never do (at least in a Kantian deontology) is to utilize utilitarian calculus in a way that places people as a means to an end.
The basic structure of utilitarianism is to do the action that results in the greatest "goodness", or creates a world with the most "goodness". In essence, moral decision making can be done with mathematical equations. Simply multiply the number of people by the weight of the action on each and add. If the sum is positive, you can do it, or must.
However, we can sort-of integrate the two ideas if we ascribe infinite weight to certain things, like human life. We can say that human life, or treating people as ends, has infinite value, such that even one violation of this would outweigh any benefits.
That is my conception of a deontology under consequentialist analysis.
The reason I bring this up is to show what it means that certain actions are impermissible, period. The reason why they are bad is because they violate the fundamental moral obligation of the CI, which necessarily, by rationality, be true.
I find it hard to understand how is it possible to be in a logical contradiction in the same way as under Kant's CI when using utilitarianism?
Under utilitarianism, killing 1 person out of cold blood is bad because either you assume axiomatically that death is some ends you wish to avoid (which I'll discuss later about deontology being util), or because that person's death causes more bad ends. However, if I, a rational being, kill someone out of cold blood, it isn't really a logical contradiction.
By contrast, under the CI, all rational beings, because of their rationality and freedom, are things in themselves, with their own ends. To use another person as merely a means to your own ends is to reject the basis for your ends, namely, that all humans are ends in themselves.
You fall under similar logical contradictions with the first formulation of the CI, where say with lying, you have to will a world in which everyone lies, yet also where you could formulate a maxim of "lying" whenever it benefits you. However, there wouldn't be such a concept of lying vs telling the truth in a world where people simply state what is convenient for them, as a matter of natural law.
Thus, it is impossible for "lying whenever it pleases you" to be a universal maxim, as it would have been impossible to formulate if it really were a maxim in our world.
Finally, I'll touch on your comment to Dharma Defender. You state: "
The reason I think it's the other way around is because deontology is typically a context-independent system of morality, whereas consequentialism is a context-dependent system. Deontology says "do this regardless of the circumstance or the consequences." One action could be very bad in one context and very good in another. So a strict, rules-based morality is often dysfunctional.
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However, why is it that one action can become good or bad under different circumstances? Under utilitarianism, it is because it leads to different ends. Yet, why is one end better than another?
Utilitarianism might say that murder is bad, because death should be avoided. However, they can't give you a reason why death is bad without regressing down to fundamentally deontological points. Indeed, there is no reason why death should be the specter of morality. There is no difference in utilitarianism between suicide and murder, because it is the same outcome: someone is dead. In fact, if the killer receives some pleasure from the murder, one could even argue that murder is better than suicide, which is often more grief-stricken.
However, we know these actions to be different, at least on a moral plane (you can argue from deontology that suicide is wrong, but that's a different way of going about it). A rights-based deontology would state that suicide is at least permissible, because people have perfect freedom to do what they want to with their bodies.
But, utilitarianism would say that you MUST act to stop that person from doing anything that harms themselves, because it creates a net-negative "goodness" sum in the world.
In essence, utilitarianism is simply the calculus, or the tool by which we weigh the ends of actions according to certain deontologically derived value judgements. If we state that death is good, then morally good actions are actions that maximize death.
You don't know what to maximize under utilitarianism unless you have some kind of axiom.
Deontology is similar, in that it has things it aims to maximize, but it focuses more on negative actions (things you can't do), and takes these aims as infinite, as I showed earlier.
Great video that's why I'm commenting so much. I love the dialogue. I had this discussion in class a couple of days ago, and the notion came to me that there's a bit of a word play when it comes to deontological dilemmas with respect to killing.
Now we know that murder is wrong in murder is not the same as killing. So let's use the example if a loved one was about to be murdered by another individual and I a deontologist happened to step in to prevent such actions without the intent to kill and that person who was the murderer happened to die by my hand, bue to my actions would still be justified or wrong? Since my intention was not out of malice to murder. Am I looking at this right?.
I suppose it would depend on the type of deontology. If it's a set of rules to be followed regardless of intention, then it would be wrong from that perspective. If intention is as important as action, then it would be justified. But I think your example does a good job at showing the limitations of deontology. For instance, if your loved one was about to be murdered and your intention WAS to kill the attacker (to prevent them from killing your loved one). Would that be wrong? I would say no.
@@WadeAllen001 thank you. To your last comment. Then you would be killing out of malice and revenge. Then this would be considered murder. Kantain ethics would say that we are all rational people that deserve the right to live.
@@WadeAllen001 I really appreciate the dialogue. I'm really trying to grasp and understanding of these philosophical views.
That was brilliant!
I have been told to all theories of ethic have problems that don't hold up. Even Virtue Ethics! Deontolgy =Joker, Batman Utilitarian or Virtue Ethics.
Divine Deontolgy is a. Good is what God says is good. B. Good is good because a clergy person said that God said it is good according to scripture.
I fully recognize that deontology has some significant problems and I dont think it should account for the entirety of someone's moral framework. However, looking at other more fluid moral systems doesn't sit right with me either. If morals don't really exist outside of the human experience, if they are just concepts that we have created and (for the most part) agreed to follow, then that would mean they aren't inherently binding and there isn't any real reason to follow them. If that's the case, we could assign moral values to just about anything and make exceptions as arbitrarily as we'd like. Oh, I stepped in shit today? Now my mood is ruined and that gives me a free pass to kill someone. That's a bit of a stretch, granted, but the point still stands. Deontology puts a very firm limit on what kind of actions we can carry out. Unlike other moral systems, it is reliable and consistent (even to great detriment.)
Respectfully, I cannot stress enough how incorrect and frankly dangerous I think this is. For one thing, deontology is a concept created by humans, so if your conclusion was actually a reasonable one then deontology wouldn't escape the same arbitrariness as any other moral system. But the main error is in how you're interpreting "morals don't really exist outside of human experience" (which I'm not so sure about anyway, as I don't think morals only deal with humans, it's just that humans are the only species we can communicate our desires to so we can't expect other animals to act morally (and it's hard to act morally when you're in a state of survival anyway, like wild animals are), but that doesn't mean we have any excuses to treat other animals immorally). Saying that morals don't exist outside of human experience is not the same thing as saying that morals are made up or arbitrary. It's only saying that if all humans ceased to exist then there would be no one around to understand morality. And further, if there were no conscious creatures in existence, then morality would not exist at all. It's not as if morality is some fundamental feature of the universe. Something being dependent on consciousness, on feelings, does not make it arbitrary. Morals are still based on something concrete, and that something, I would argue, is biology. Conscious creatures have been programmed through the eons to have certain desires, and to be able to communicate those desires. The most basic desires being the desire to not die, to avoid pain, and to experience pleasure. Of course they aren't hard and fast rules, and there are circumstances in which things change.
Morality, I would argue, is the process of learning to live in such a way as to satisfy the most desires of others, or at least to avoid impinging upon desires (and I mean desires here in a more all-encompassing way, all the things that would enhance someone's wellbeing). And there are perfectly selfish reasons to do this. For instance, by caring about someone else's wellbeing, they're more likely to treat me well. So I would say that morality is discovered, not invented (or made up). Of course the difficulty comes in the complexity of it all. There often aren't easy answers in ethics. So we have a lot yet to discover about how best to treat each other, but that fluidity, that development of ethics, doesn't mean it's arbitrary, it means we're still discovering what's right.
A Christian would look at your opening dialogue and say that this is due to original sin (evil). It's like rot in a tree or some type of fruit, because our reality is flawed we will never see Utopia or a perfect system.
It's more than just your actions that are punished in the next life. It as deep as your thinking as well as your actions. If you take into consideration. Matthew 5:21-22
Murder
5:25,26pp - Lk 12:58,59
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister, will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Please keep in mind "You fool" isn't nearly just calling someone a fool. It's much deeper than that. With hatred in the heart. The anger is unrighteous anger
Here:
First, Jesus warns that the very act of murder finds its roots in an angry, murderous spirit: “But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matthew 5:22a). God, who examines the very thoughts and intents of the heart, will issue judgment upon unrighteous anger. Next, Jesus warns against name-calling, using “raca” as an example (verse 22b).
Raca comes from the Aramaic term reqa. It was a derogatory expression meaning “empty-headed,” insinuating a person’s stupidity or inferiority. It was an offensive name used to show utter contempt for another person. Jesus warned that the use of such a word to describe someone was tantamount to murder and deserving of the severest punishment of the law.
Jesus then issues a third warning against those who call someone a “fool” (verse 22c). Murder begins in the heart, and epithets such as “raca” and “fool” are signs that there is hatred lurking within. The hatred that causes one person to hurl insults is the same hatred that causes another to commit murder. The attitude of the heart is the same, and it’s this attitude that makes a person morally guilty before God. Jesus not only warns us against expressing unrighteous anger, which can lead to murder, but clearly commands that disparaging denunciations and name-calling be avoided. Such abusive words reveal the true intents of one’s heart and mind for which we will be held in judgment: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV).
Hard disagree at 16:42
You disagree that the hypothetical children take their lessons from a different source? Or you disagree that source B (obeying authority) has almost nothing to do with morality? Or that the kid who fears his teacher only refrains from doing bad things in order to prevent a personal suffering, whereas the other kid refrains from doing bad things in order to prevent the suffering of others? I'm sorry, I say a lot in that section you pointed out, so I'd like to know what it is exactly you disagree with.
@@WadeAllen001 I don't think that "source B" is an accurate depiction of deontology. From what I understand of Kant, didn't he say that morality comes from internal reasoning, rather than being dictated by an outside source?
@@davidberman3201 Right, I do make distinctions between Kantian deontology and other forms of deontology throughout the video. So you'd be right in saying that that analogy of the two children is not a critique of Kantian deontology. Rather, it's a critique of the religiously inspired deontology (divine command theory) and other moral philosophies like it that are about obedience to moral laws, which I find to be more common these days in regular people. For the most part this video isn't about Kantian deontology (though I do mention it a few times, but each time I do I believe it's to say that Kantian ethics is different), but about the sorts of deontology I see in people today (as deontology is just the perspective of caring about the moral valence of the action itself rather than the consequences of that action. Child B is learning that the action of hitting is bad as a rule, rather than learning from the consequence of that action).
A critique from this video that is relevant to Kantian deontology would be that this internal reasoning is actually just consequentialism in disguise. Kant's categorical imperative comes down to how to create the best world (ex: is a world where no one lies better than a world where some people lie?), which is ultimately a question of consequences (what is the consequence of lying), or so I would argue.
@@WadeAllen001 Ok, thanks for the explanation
I'm studying Deontology right now. I think Utilitarianism is rubbish, but I don't know enough about Deontology to take it seriously. I'm more of a virtue ethicist.