![Hundie Jo [Dot] Com](http://www.hundiejo.com/wp-content/plugins/ttftitles/cache2/7d6a910bbe08845c0836a517a70936d5.png){kind=small}
Henry Imler February 12th, 2006
In all the ethics courses I have taken, deontology has reined supreme. Consequentialism is always seen as the easy way out for the morally weak. However, it seems to be practiced by just about everyone.
I must admit a certain appeal that Consequentialism holds over me. It’s most common form is Utilitarianism, which combines hedonism with Consequentialism. At the surface, Utilitarianism is unsatisfactory. It seems absurd that mere maximization of pleasure is the basis for right behavior.
However, at the surface, Deontology is also unsatisfactory. It seems that consequences do matter. The rules for Kant are iron-clad and meant to be made in a vacuum. However, no such moral vacuum exists. All choice happens in a context. It is due to this context that we must allow Consequentialism in the door to help us.
Most attacks on Consequentialism are really attacks on what measure of good the particular flavor of Consequentialism is being combined with. The easiest example is Utilitarianism, which tries to maximize the amount of pleasure in the world. Utilitarianism is criticized by calling to attention that just because something maximizes the pleasure, it is not necessarily a good act. For example, suppose that the murder of 20 people would result in the happiness of 100,000,000 people.
However, Consequentialism does have its merits. A lie told to save a life, for example is often seemed to be noble. If not, expand it further. Imagine for a moment that you are living in a totalitarian state. The police are exterminating all people of a particular decent, let’s call them the Plates. A family of 20 are hiding in you basement. The police come and ask you if you are harboring any Plates. You lie, which under a deontology is a morally impermissible act, but you save the 20 Plates. Clearly you used Consequentialism to evaluate the situation and determine the correct course of behavior. Your duty not lie was usurped by your duty not to allow the deaths of innocent people. It is from this example I want to glean my proposal.
I want to see if we can use deontology as the good we are trying to maximize via Consequentialism.
You can substitute most any rule-based ethic theory for deontology here. I could have easily used Divine Command Theory instead, but I want to avoid all arguments on the dictation.
Under my proposal all universal rules hold. However, we use Consequentialism to break ties and order possible acts. Consider the following:
A-1
- W and w are wrong acts on their own (deontology).
- There are only two choices w and W in situation X.
- W has worse consequences than w.
- We have a duty to chose w over W in situation X (Consequentialism)
- Therefore, the choice of w over W is a Re .
How is this possible? How can a w be an R? It is only R relative to a W. That means that the moral status of an act is tied to its situation. I want to liken this to the relativity of motion in the natural world. In the realm of moving objects, everything is in motion and there is no “privileged observer” from which one can measure an object’s motion from. Similarly, no choice takes place in a vacuumed. All choices have a context. With the simple addition of the duty to always choose the least wrong action we can modify deontology to be flexible enough to be applied in the real world. In order to avoid confusion of a (w-W) action being confused with a plain r or R, I will use the tern Re.
If the choice of w over W is an Re , like #5 above claims, what does the converse lead to?
A-2
- R and r are right acts on their own (deontology).
- There are only two choices r and R in situation X.
- R has better consequences than r.
- We have a duty to chose R over r in situation X (Consequentialism)
- Therefore, the choice of r over R is a W.
Does this hold? Does it point to a form of altruism?
As much as I am uncomfortable with the idea, I am afraid it does. It seem to restrict our moral liberty by dictating that the “most right and least wrong” action always be taken. Just as we have a duty; that is, we are morally compelled to always choose the lesser of two evils, the same principle, if applied evenly, dictates that must always choose the most right action. This holds, if, and I believe only if, the phrases “most right” and “least wrong” are equivalent. This can only be correct if we are speaking of the opposites, ~most = least and ~right = wrong.
So, what are we left with? We must arrange all choices on a scale as follows:
I use the word choice as a term for a possible action. I don’t use action (what deontology is primarily concerned with) nor result (what Consequentialism is primarily concerned with) because the two are irrevocably connected. The one is the outworking of the other and cannot be separated. It is the choice between to action/result pairs that is of primary concern in ethics.
Deontology; or Divine Command Theory, or Virtue Ethics, or intuitionalism; dictates that if a choice is W/R, but Consequentialism orders the choices and demands that we do the most right or the least wrong. Logically, anyone that holds m . r must also hold the opposite, ~(m . r), which is ~m . ~r. As such, they all for a w over a W act to be R, relative to W over w. There is where the ethical relativism lies.
The Ethical Relativism of modern ethics is a misnomer. For in regular ethical relativity, choices are not held in relation to each other, just that multiple groups of ethical evaluations can be held as equal and opposite authorities at the same time. In real Ethical Relativism, each choice is assigned a W/R value by deontology. Because no choice is made in a vacuum, it is then ordered by its effects and is assigned a spot on the scale. We add to deontology the role that we must do the most right action. As such, each choice is also measured in relation to the available choices. This difference is the ultimate W/R of the choice. Deontology is the scale and Consequentialism is the greater than / less than operator.
This means that we must do the most good possible, not just good always.
- Ethics
- Comments(8)
[...] I want to build a personhood and ethical theory that uses the above principles, allows for the moral worth of the past-persons and person-like beings. The ethical side of the theory would use my formulation of ethical relativity, which is nothing like ethical relativism, but instead uses consequentialism to resolve conflicts within a deontological framework. [...]
Henry,
Your thought process above is intriguing, but it seems flawed to me. Your argument ignores the idea that the moral laws that deontology demands we obey serve as a sort of compensation for the the limitations of our perceptions. In other words, the reason that we must not lie to “save a life” is that we have no way of perceiving the evil caused by our lie. The law which says, do not lie, exists precisely because without it, we would have no idea of how to do good or how to perceive evil. When we say, I will break the law to prevent someone else from breaking it, you have argued that the law is worthless (or in effect that it was already broken).
Take the example of the gunman who says to a mother, choose which child I should kill and I will let the other live. I say, that she must answer, I will not be part of your evil. You and I will both stand before God and answer for what we have done.
One last thing: the person who chooses to break the law to prevent a greater evil, presumes upon the future. While it would be surprising if a gunman were to rush in and shoot the murderer before he could kill either of the woman’s children, it cannot be denied that the future has yet to be accounted for. Again, I would say that the law compensates for our limited perception.
Anyway, I hope this made sense,
Take care,
Charles Churchill
You make wonderful sense, Charles, and bring up very good points.
While I admire the moral stance of the mother in the example, but that is a 1:1 ratio. I would say that any of her possible actions will have equally bad outcomes. A better example of my argument, since it is somewhat based in consequences, is if a gunman asked a mother to choose between killing one child or four other children. If she answers nothing, all five children would perish. what is she to do then?
One of the major factors here is whether we have a duty to preserve life. If we do, we at once have a duty not to lie and to preserve life in my example of the Plates.
I admire the stance that the law protects one from the bad outcomes of their choices. Even granting that, which I would contest, it still does not account for situations where no matter what one does, a duty is being violated.
I would think the mother should answer just the same as in the previous example (she could also plead with the gunman to value life and to do no evil), as she should recognize that the man asking the question has not given her an option that satisfies the law. So she chooses the third option, which is not to answer him. She does no evil, and the man with the gun must then choose what he will do with the law. He is pretending that his choice now belongs to her (but he is not truly giving her power over him, or she could say, put down your gun, and let’s all go out to dinner instead) (This is all not to say that there are not situations where the law assigns one individual full or partial responsibility for another individual’s actions - but in this example, I do not believe this is so)
The world is full of such false dichotomies. The American Presidential elections is one such example. We are never obligated to cast our vote for one of the two candidates. We are never obligated to choose between what may well be two evils. If both men fail the minimum standards of the law (whatever law that may be) for office, we can vote for neither.
I guess in the end, I would return to this: the only reason we think we should preserve life is because the law that we hold to be true has told us that preserving life is good. If the same law tells us we must not lie, then we are bound to keep both points of the law or to discard it and say it is not a law at all. If we say that the law places a higher emphasis on life than lying, we must prove this and not just assert it (Take Jesus and the Pharisees when he healed the man on the Sabbath. Which of you if your ox fell in a ditch on the Sabbath would not get him out. Christ clearly attests that honoring the Sabbath is a weighted sort of thing.)
I think that’s all I’ve got. Again, I’m sorry for the ramble and I hope I’m not annoying you with my comments.
Charles Churchill
First things first, you are welcome to argue this or anything else here until you are blue in the face. I enjoy considering other points of view on what I put forth.
The woman in the above case does have partial power to affect change in that situation. She does not have full power over the situation, but she does have some. I would say that just like
I get the sense that you think that there is never a time when one only has a choice between two evils, even in non-action. It is my contention that if the woman is able to preserve life, she has a duty to do so.
I think that most Christians would maintain that there is a duty to preserve life. That is the argument against euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. The duty to preserve life overcomes the right to decide actions for one’s self.
Now, when the duty to preserve life comes into conflict with another, what is someone to do? Do you deny that there is the duty on the mother to preserve life? I liken it to the case of Christ and David when it comes to the laws on the Sabbath.
I don’t deny that the law that is written upon our hearts demands that we don’t lie and demands that we do preserve life. I don’t deny that. However, I am asking what happens when those duty’s conflict? Geisler argues for a graded absolutism. I was taking a natural philosophy approach to arguing this issue, not arguing from Scripture. I think that you can really make a successful argument on both grounds.
Henry,
I understand what you are saying regarding the woman having limited power in this situation, which is why I said that she should argue with him regarding the value of life. My issue is with the scenario. If the woman was at a railroad switch and a train was hurtling toward either car A with five people in it, or car B with one person in it, then there might be a valid reason to throw the switch toward car B (but even there, it’s tricky) But a guy with a gun? Imagine that Jesus was the woman, would he say kill the one child? I imagine he would answer along the lines of what he said to Satan when he took him up on top of the temple, or when he showed him the kingdoms of the world. It’s a Christian principle that if you don’t accept the presuppositions, you don’t accept the question, and I think that applies here.
That is the argument against euthanasia and physician assisted suicide
The argument against euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is that the law says not to kill. Regarding the duty to preserve life, that’s not what the law says. We assume that what the law values is life. What the law values is holiness (which is achieved by conformance to the law). And the law says, the only way that you are holy is by keeping the law. Period. End of story. Break one and you’ve broken them all. Break one, and you’ve got to ask yourself, why am I so fired up about keeping the others?
The question of a scenario where one must break one or another law is tricky. It really comes down to the sovereignty of God. I’ve certainly never encountered such a situation. I can’t even say that I’ve heard a hypothetical situation that qualifies. I think it’s fair to say that Christ never encountered such a situation (and if God’s not sovereign, what a toss of the dice that was - please don’t suggest to me, that Jesus Christ broke a single facet of the law)
In this other post you make the statement: You have a duty to reveal the information and a duty not to lie, therefore you must remain silent. While this does rid oneself of the problem in some situations, there is always the issue when the storm troopers search your house if you remain silent. In those cases, the same difficulty arises. Sometimes there is no third choice. This is the difficulty with hypothetical situations. If God is truly sovereign, then the universe is a sequence of ordered events. In other words, read the following passage and then consider this. In what follows, the law did not necessarily preserve life, but it does tell us who, among the living and the dead, love God.
I think that’s all I’ve got again. I appreciate you discussing this with me on my level. You could have easily have taken the discussion into a realm of terminology where my barrier to entry would be quite high.
[...] Real Ethical Relativity by admin [...]
[...] Norman L. Geisler, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, presents a Christian view of how to deal with consequences in conjunction with divine command theory in his article entitled Absolutes? Absolutely!. I thought it was an interesting read in light of my earlier post on Ethical Relativity. [...]