Question to Robert on his paper Preference and Prevention: A New Paradox of Deontology.
Why can't we create more moral room here for a robust deontologist and just say: Five Killings >> One Killing to Prevent Five, basically violation of a deontic constraint is vastly, vastly dispreferred more so than any number of deaths, because a (hardcore bullet-biting) deontologist would vastly disprefer even 1 Billion Killings over One Killing to Prevent 1 Billion?
So the vast dispreference between 5 and 6 (failed prevention) can still exist in the moral gulf of violating a deontic principle. Apologies if I don't follow the reasoning in advance!
The difficulty is that we're talking about a preference chain with the following ends points:
Five Killings > ... >> ... > Six Killings.
Now, if you add more "vast preferences" as internal steps, e.g. Five Killings >> One Killing to Prevent Five, that just makes it *all the more impossible* for the deontologist to squeeze sufficient internal degrees of preferability in between Five Killings and Six. Because the difference between Five and Six is just one more generic killing. None of the internal "links in the chain" (so to speak) can be stronger than the total difference in preferability between the two end points.
(Note also that every killing in the situation is a violation of the deontic constraint against killing; none of them are mere accidental deaths.)
Around 1h33m, "utilitarians" who have purity ideas/vibes about being vegetarian/vegan are definitely not behaving in a utilitarian way. That's closet deontological behavior.
It reminds me of Richard's work on 'naive instrumentalism' vs 'principled proceduralism'.
I would be interested in any takes on deontology and virtue ethics as approximations/good heuristics in the cases where consequences are hard to map out (ie all cases?).
I like Daniel's example of the conjoined twins at 26:20! As he points out, things like biology and physics are arbitrary. Suppose they were very different. How would the new norms -- the current versions of which he takes to underlie current rights -- get decided upon? He says "society" decided the norms we have now and that establishes rights. But I wish he would expand on that. Unfortunately, the subject got changed at 28:58.
"... think it intrinsically matters that people made a decision together. I think that society has sort of made a decision that we're not going to kill each other. And that has some authority over us. To be honest, I'm a little bit mystified by how this works." -- Daniel
Back when the neanderthals were around, what rights were there then?
With the challenge trials, there is a way to get the no-exploitation people on board -- developing Richard's suggestion a bit further:
Make the payment so high that even middle-class people want to sign up so that demand for participation way exceeds supply, and then ration participation via random lottery. Thus, it won't just be the most needy people participating.
The funny thing is there were so many *volunteers* for Covid challenge trials (via 1DaySooner) that one wouldn't have needed to offer any monetary compensation at all. It was a bunch of (presumably relatively privileged) young altruists wanting to do it! But the medical ethics establishment just couldn't deal with the idea.
I was a bit puzzled by Daniel's response to the self-effacing point (at around 45 minutes). Here is how I understood the dialectic roughly:
Richard's argument is that deontology is self-effacing in a much more problematic way then utilitarianism. Utilitarians shouldn't necessarily want people to believe utilitarianism, as people in the real world are imperfect, and believing it might lead them to perform worse actions. This is a little strange, but also not too much, as the aim of utilitarianism isn't that people believe it, but that people act in accordance with it.
However for deontology it's not a contingent self-effacing. Rather the problem is that the deontologist should prefer that others do not *successfully* follow the theory. That seems like a much worse problem for the theory, as it has nothing to do with what happens to be the case regarding what rules humans are good at following, and is rather a problem within the theory itself.
Daniel's response, as far as I can tell, is that it's good that people believe deontology and act as it prescribes, as doing so is good for the world (put crudely).
However, the problem I see here (and which Richard points out too) is that the Utilitarians will say exactly the same things here! Daniel's response here is that his point isn't to show why utilitarianism is wrong, but why deontology is not self-effacing (we have all these good reasons to want it to be promulgated).
This is what I found very puzzling! What he says shows that we should want people to believe deontology when utilitarianism tells us to. But we should be careful what the level of the disagreement is here: The objection isn't to having people believe deontology, but to deontology as a normative-ethical theory, and we should keep the question of which theory is correct separate from the question of what the correct theory tells us to do.
To hone in on the actual question under dispute, we should then look at cases where deontology and utilitarianism gives different verdicts--the easiest way being with thought-experiments, I guess. These are cases where some action produces the best outcome, yet, say, violates a right. It is exactly in these cases where the problem arises, since what you should want a person to do from the 3rd person, given the theory, comes apart from what you should do from the first person, given the theory.
Focusing on the cases where the two coincide (like with general rules for society in real life) seems a bit like a distraction then: The fact that there are cases where verdicts coincide doesn't help the problem that in the cases where they don't, deontology leads us to hope that people don't follow deontology. And so pointing to the former cases doesn't help solving the problem at hand.
Especially when all cases of the former kind (where you should hope people follow deontology) are cases where utilitarianism agrees with the deontological verdict--whereas for cases of the latter kind what you should hope for is that people successfully follow utilitarianism not deontology. That is, whenever deontology and utilitarianism differ, utilitarianism gets the right verdict (in this context).
This might have been a bit rambly, but I hope my point is reasonably clear. (And sorry if this point is addressed later on.)
Thanks! And yeah, as you mention in your post, I think market capitalism is good (even if I'd favor more redistribution on the margins), so socialist revolution sounds like a very bad idea to me. Sorry I don't have time to read the books etc. that you recommend on the topic.
Well, revolution would only happen under certain material conditions, so it is not like we do revolution tomorrow or anything haha. We need to convince many people. And i think people would be convinced when their lives shall become harder due to capitallism's own natural contradictions (or conflicts). I am just posting all that to convince you guys that when you pick a side during the revolution, please don't pick the fascist side.
I think kids have a harder time appreciating the consequences of their decisions, so we (rightly) treat their consent as less meaningful, deferring instead to their guardians.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that it’s “good” math, just suitably mathy and sciencey arguments. Whenever you see a statement that presumes a “scientific consensus“ or implies statistical certainty— that’s just politics.
Love this!
Question to Robert on his paper Preference and Prevention: A New Paradox of Deontology.
Why can't we create more moral room here for a robust deontologist and just say: Five Killings >> One Killing to Prevent Five, basically violation of a deontic constraint is vastly, vastly dispreferred more so than any number of deaths, because a (hardcore bullet-biting) deontologist would vastly disprefer even 1 Billion Killings over One Killing to Prevent 1 Billion?
So the vast dispreference between 5 and 6 (failed prevention) can still exist in the moral gulf of violating a deontic principle. Apologies if I don't follow the reasoning in advance!
The difficulty is that we're talking about a preference chain with the following ends points:
Five Killings > ... >> ... > Six Killings.
Now, if you add more "vast preferences" as internal steps, e.g. Five Killings >> One Killing to Prevent Five, that just makes it *all the more impossible* for the deontologist to squeeze sufficient internal degrees of preferability in between Five Killings and Six. Because the difference between Five and Six is just one more generic killing. None of the internal "links in the chain" (so to speak) can be stronger than the total difference in preferability between the two end points.
(Note also that every killing in the situation is a violation of the deontic constraint against killing; none of them are mere accidental deaths.)
Around 1h33m, "utilitarians" who have purity ideas/vibes about being vegetarian/vegan are definitely not behaving in a utilitarian way. That's closet deontological behavior.
Great discussion!
Tangentially relatedly, I thought this post from a few years ago is under-appreciated (I only came across it recently!) https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/aDNPgm2v2boBbj8wK/deontology-and-virtue-ethics-as-effective-theories-of consequentialist ethics
It reminds me of Richard's work on 'naive instrumentalism' vs 'principled proceduralism'.
I would be interested in any takes on deontology and virtue ethics as approximations/good heuristics in the cases where consequences are hard to map out (ie all cases?).
I like Daniel's example of the conjoined twins at 26:20! As he points out, things like biology and physics are arbitrary. Suppose they were very different. How would the new norms -- the current versions of which he takes to underlie current rights -- get decided upon? He says "society" decided the norms we have now and that establishes rights. But I wish he would expand on that. Unfortunately, the subject got changed at 28:58.
"... think it intrinsically matters that people made a decision together. I think that society has sort of made a decision that we're not going to kill each other. And that has some authority over us. To be honest, I'm a little bit mystified by how this works." -- Daniel
Back when the neanderthals were around, what rights were there then?
With the challenge trials, there is a way to get the no-exploitation people on board -- developing Richard's suggestion a bit further:
Make the payment so high that even middle-class people want to sign up so that demand for participation way exceeds supply, and then ration participation via random lottery. Thus, it won't just be the most needy people participating.
The funny thing is there were so many *volunteers* for Covid challenge trials (via 1DaySooner) that one wouldn't have needed to offer any monetary compensation at all. It was a bunch of (presumably relatively privileged) young altruists wanting to do it! But the medical ethics establishment just couldn't deal with the idea.
Interesting!
I'm really enjoying listening to this!
I was a bit puzzled by Daniel's response to the self-effacing point (at around 45 minutes). Here is how I understood the dialectic roughly:
Richard's argument is that deontology is self-effacing in a much more problematic way then utilitarianism. Utilitarians shouldn't necessarily want people to believe utilitarianism, as people in the real world are imperfect, and believing it might lead them to perform worse actions. This is a little strange, but also not too much, as the aim of utilitarianism isn't that people believe it, but that people act in accordance with it.
However for deontology it's not a contingent self-effacing. Rather the problem is that the deontologist should prefer that others do not *successfully* follow the theory. That seems like a much worse problem for the theory, as it has nothing to do with what happens to be the case regarding what rules humans are good at following, and is rather a problem within the theory itself.
Daniel's response, as far as I can tell, is that it's good that people believe deontology and act as it prescribes, as doing so is good for the world (put crudely).
However, the problem I see here (and which Richard points out too) is that the Utilitarians will say exactly the same things here! Daniel's response here is that his point isn't to show why utilitarianism is wrong, but why deontology is not self-effacing (we have all these good reasons to want it to be promulgated).
This is what I found very puzzling! What he says shows that we should want people to believe deontology when utilitarianism tells us to. But we should be careful what the level of the disagreement is here: The objection isn't to having people believe deontology, but to deontology as a normative-ethical theory, and we should keep the question of which theory is correct separate from the question of what the correct theory tells us to do.
To hone in on the actual question under dispute, we should then look at cases where deontology and utilitarianism gives different verdicts--the easiest way being with thought-experiments, I guess. These are cases where some action produces the best outcome, yet, say, violates a right. It is exactly in these cases where the problem arises, since what you should want a person to do from the 3rd person, given the theory, comes apart from what you should do from the first person, given the theory.
Focusing on the cases where the two coincide (like with general rules for society in real life) seems a bit like a distraction then: The fact that there are cases where verdicts coincide doesn't help the problem that in the cases where they don't, deontology leads us to hope that people don't follow deontology. And so pointing to the former cases doesn't help solving the problem at hand.
Especially when all cases of the former kind (where you should hope people follow deontology) are cases where utilitarianism agrees with the deontological verdict--whereas for cases of the latter kind what you should hope for is that people successfully follow utilitarianism not deontology. That is, whenever deontology and utilitarianism differ, utilitarianism gets the right verdict (in this context).
This might have been a bit rambly, but I hope my point is reasonably clear. (And sorry if this point is addressed later on.)
Fantastic conversation! Hey Richard, did you look at my criticism of effective altruism (in practice, not principles... EA principles are good.)? https://rajatsirkanungo.substack.com/p/the-only-good-criticism-of-effective
Thanks! And yeah, as you mention in your post, I think market capitalism is good (even if I'd favor more redistribution on the margins), so socialist revolution sounds like a very bad idea to me. Sorry I don't have time to read the books etc. that you recommend on the topic.
Well, revolution would only happen under certain material conditions, so it is not like we do revolution tomorrow or anything haha. We need to convince many people. And i think people would be convinced when their lives shall become harder due to capitallism's own natural contradictions (or conflicts). I am just posting all that to convince you guys that when you pick a side during the revolution, please don't pick the fascist side.
At 1:52:00 on paternalism, what about kids? Do they own their own body? Can they consent?
I think kids have a harder time appreciating the consequences of their decisions, so we (rightly) treat their consent as less meaningful, deferring instead to their guardians.
True, but I'm an adult and I can be pretty dumb too :)
But I bet you’re smarter than you used to be!
Politicians use math all day to justify doing reprehensible things and to justify not doing great things.
I don't know if I've *ever* heard a politician appeal to math. Usually they prefer narratives.
Oh, I wouldn’t say that it’s “good” math, just suitably mathy and sciencey arguments. Whenever you see a statement that presumes a “scientific consensus“ or implies statistical certainty— that’s just politics.