Ethical First Principles

[tongodeon]

I've been getting presented with a lot of ethical thought experiments lately. Often in real world contexts by people who don't read this blog. At work someone asked me why we can't trade box office futures but we *can* gamble in Vegas. On a different online forum someone asked me whether killing an enemy soldier for your country is any better than

Comments

[rwx]

but immoral from a deontological system that forbids murder

Note that it's also necessary for the system in question to classify euthanasia as murder for this to be the case. One of the advantages to approaching deontological systems as being based on the duty to follow rules rather than being based purely on the rules is it allows for easier clarifications of these sorts of argument, imho.

[tongodeon]

True. I was trying to come up with situations that were compatible with A and B but not C for each instance of A, B, and C and it's hard to construct *any* hypothetical situation which is always compatible or incompatible with every interpretation of each ruleset. Which kinda proves my point. This stuff is pretty nebulous.

[matrygg]

silversunshadow is very interested in ethics and has done the philosophical groundwork you seem to be looking for. You might want to send her a message if you have any questions.

[tongodeon]

She's welcome to comment here. I guess I'm just wondering if I've missed any other major schools of thought or whether I've misinterpreted any of the big three.

[talldean]

I'm wondering if there's a word for intent-based consequentialism. That is, judging the morality of an action by the morality of the intent.

Perhaps with modifiers for negligent homicide, but still, the intent's there.

[tongodeon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics#Immanuel_Kant

[simont]

(dropping in via link from pw201)

Yes, me too. I tend to think that the appropriate thing is to judge the action based on both the consequences you intended it to have, and the consequences that you could reasonably have predicted it was likely to have: if either (or both) is bad, it's a bad action. (Where 'reasonably predicted' allows for the possibility of accidents that were genuinely blameless, and also for blaming a small child less than an adult for the same action because they didn't know any better.)

I've always assumed that this is still a basically consequentialist setup, in that it's still a system in which you start by deciding what sorts of consequences you like, and then apply a procedure based on that to tell you what actions you should approve of; in that respect it's still much more like consequentialism than it is like either of the other competing brands (so in particular I'm unconvinced that Kantian ethics is quite the same thing). But yes, it would be nice if there were some sort of recognised term for it.

[tongodeon]

Kant argued that the only absolutely good thing is a good will, a position which is considered deontological rather than consequentialist. Obviously a consequentialist case can be made - a world of people with good intentions would be nicer than a world of people with bad intentions. Then again any consequentialist position can be supported with a deontological argument by asserting that the consequences happen that way due to the principle's inherent "just so" moral truth.

What about edge cases? Let's say that certain errors in the general population's judgement caused more bad than good. Our tenancy to commit unnecessary genocide while trying to protect against exaggerated or illusory threats. Economic bubbles resulting from well intentioned effort to bring wealth and comfort to their families

[grouchyoldcoot]

Hey, what happened to the Golden Rule? It's a rule and thus deontological, but the statement of the rule is qualitatively and syntactically different from your other examples of deontological rules.

[tongodeon]

My understanding - which is totally a layperson's understanding and might be misguided - is that the ethical first principles help establish ways to determine whether something is moral or not. For example cultivating the habit of doing unto others is a potential virtue and therefore compatible with virtue ethics, but it's also a strict deontological rule that you can follow for its own sake, and you could also say that its consequences are beneficial as long as you're not the only person doing it, so it's potentially compatible with all three standards.

[rwx]

some of the non-religious deontological systems are primarily elucidations of that rule and further generalizations of it. For example, Kant's categorical imperative includes

Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.

which is basically similar when translated through german and philosopher speak.

[ikkyu2]

Do you not find that trying to reason from first principles is like watching a butterfly and wondering where the hurricane that its wingbeats triggered is going to strike?

[tongodeon]

I wouldn't know, I've never tried starting with first principles. I do often end up at first principles when the question of "what exactly do you mean" becomes relevant.