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Deontology vs Consequentialism

Entry 2415, on 2025-10-20 at 17:08:06 (Rating 2, Philosophy)

I'm going to talk about moral philosophy in this post, so if you know nothing about that or it doesn't interest you, you might want to move on. Alternatively, if you know something about the subject, you might also want to move on to avoid my naive rantings since, I am not an expert. If anyone is left reading this, thanks!

In recent weeks I have heard a repeated discussion of how we should know what is right and wrong, and when different moral standards should be applied. There are two main ways to establish what is good: deontology and consequentialism. Very broadly speaking these refer to the concept that there are certain things which are just natural duties or obligations and require no further explanation (deontology), and that we should establish the right and wrong of something from its eventual consequences (consequentialism).

If you are a religious person, this becomes easier, because there are certain things which your religion tells you are right and wrong and you can take a deontological approach to morality, although there will be things not covered by the belief system because they weren't an issue when the religion originated or might be too trivial for the deity to bother with, which might require an alternative approach.

But even religious people make decisions based on practicality. For example, the Bible can be used to justify slavery or to condemn it, depending on which parts you read and how you interpret them, so in that case the person might still be making a consequentialist decision on this. There is also the decision on which religion to follow and to what extent. I would expect a "casual" Christian to have far different views about morality than a fundamentlist Muslim, for example.

The more puzzling case is when non-religious people advocate for a deontological approach. They might say that freedom of speech is a non-negotiable right, for example, but where do they think this right comes from? It can't be from a god because they don't think one exists, and if it is of human origin, surely that implies an element of imperfection which can never be used to justify an absolute. I find it very odd.

So what are my thoughts on this? Well I reject the idea of any absolute, inarguable morality, although we might reach a point where what is considered moral is so widely believed and such a clearly good things that we could almost say it is absolute.

I use a similar argument around the word "fact". I would suggest that outside of maths and formal logic, facts do not exist and everything is open to debate, but there are some things which are so clearly "true" that we can refer to them as facts as a sort of shorthand.

For example, someone asks me if evolution is a fact I might sometimes say yes, because it has so clearly happened, but if I am pushed on it I will admit that it is not a fact, just a well accepted theory. But the same argument can be applied to anything: that the Earth isn't flat, that gravity always pulls stuff towards the center of mass, that the Sun will rise tomorrow. I cannot absolutely prove any of those, but the word "fact" is still a good approximation for them.

So getting back to morality, I would say there are some moral principles that have been derived through a consequentialist framework, but are so will accepted that they can still be treated as fundamental.

So what are they?

I think free speech should be one. By that I mean, anything goes, except when there is a clear incitement to unlawfulness or a clear disruption of reasonable privacy. For example, if I say we should all meet at the corner in 30 minutes and kill Bob, that would not be fair free speech, and if I say Bob's password for his bank account is "bob12345" that would be an unreasonable violation of his privacy. But if I say I think Israel is on the side of good, or trans women are really men, or black people commit more crime, or Donald Trump is a good president, all of those should be fine.

And I think personal freedom should be maximised. I'm not saying people should have the freedom to do anything they want, because my freedom must be curtailed when it starts affecting someone else, but we should at least try to maximise it outside of those situations. For example, believe whatever religion you want, but don't let it lead you to violence; and follow whatever political or social ideology suits you, but don't expect me to comply with its dictates.

I think we should treat all people as if they were created equal. It's silly to say that they actually were created equal, because that is clearly untrue, but we should strive for equality of opportunity, which does not mean equity of outcome! So everyone should be able to get similar education, ability to work and generate income, and should be equal in law, but if all of those are true and there is still some inequity, we should be prepared to concede that it might be just because some people are better at some things than others.

Finally, I think facts matter and we should accept their existence. This might seem contradictory with what I said about facts above, but I'm happy with interim or even "uncertain" facts. As I said, the word is just an approximation for the real situation. So people are entitled to their own opinions (see free speech above) but not their own facts. That's why I reject philosophies like postmodernism which denies absolute facts, and cultural relativism which dismisses the superiority of one culture over another. It might be nice to believe that all perspectives have equal validity, but is it true?

If we have free speech, personal freedom, equality, and truthfulness we are off to a pretty good start in getting good consequences, wouldn't you say? Who needs deontology?


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I do podcasts too!. You can listen to my latest podcast, here: OJB's Podcast 2025-10-08 Suicidal Empathy: We need empathy, but not suicidal empathy..
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