Are you a consequentialist or a deontologist?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

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[politicus]

I am a deosequentialist.

[°Leprechaun]

other/both the two are not mutually exclusive

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Consequentialist, tho I believe God provides guidance based on details beyond our ability to perceive as to the consequences of actions, so in that sense I am a weak deontologist.

[DC Al Fine]

Absolutely a deontologist

[/]

Intentionalist

[Antonio the Sixth]

Neither of these really works on its own, but I guess I lean more toward (Kantian) deontologism.

Consequentialism is, at heart, circular logic.

[TJ in Oregon]

Neither: I believe in virtue ethics.

I suppose some may argue that isn't contradictory to deontology, but they clearly have different connotations.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Personally, deontologist because I don't consider myself able enough and I take pride in controlling certain actions.

When evaluating others, particularly intelligent or talented policy leaders, but really anyone, certainly consequentialist. That's how I voted.

[Antonio the Sixth]

To elaborate: the problem with consequentialism is that it creates a completely artificial and ultimately meaningless between "causes" and "consequences", as if the two were separate categories of reality. However, causes and consequences don't exist in an absolute, but only relatively to each other. Every action is a consequence of something and a cause of something else. Thus, saying that "an action is right or wrong depending on whether its consequences are right or wrong", which only amounts to shifting the question of whether its right or wrong forward, without ever providing a substantial answer. And the fun thing is, you can do this over and over, since every consequence is itself the cause to further consequences! At the end of the day, this allows consequentialists to defend the morality of basically anything.

Honestly, it is baffling that some moral philosophers still take consequentialism seriously. It should long have been thoroughly disqualified as a moral theory and subject to the same ridicule as nonsense like the ontological argument.

[politicus]

other/both the two are not mutually exclusive

That has always been the position of us deosequentialists.

[Foucaulf]

Think I've moved away from Kantianism and toward some looser rule-based belief. Two points:

- Deontology, as a term, is actually mutually exclusive to utilitarianism, as it was only first used in the 20th century in Britain as the hodgepodge of theories that reject the methods of utilitarianism.

Every action is a consequence of something and a cause of something else. Thus, saying that "an action is right or wrong depending on whether its consequences are right or wrong", which only amounts to shifting the question of whether its right or wrong forward, without ever providing a substantial answer. And the fun thing is, you can do this over and over, since every consequence is itself the cause to further consequences! At the end of the day, this allows consequentialists to defend the morality of basically anything

This is not serious. Who says people should be infinitely forward looking?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Every action is a consequence of something and a cause of something else. Thus, saying that "an action is right or wrong depending on whether its consequences are right or wrong", which only amounts to shifting the question of whether its right or wrong forward, without ever providing a substantial answer. And the fun thing is, you can do this over and over, since every consequence is itself the cause to further consequences! At the end of the day, this allows consequentialists to defend the morality of basically anything

This is not serious. Who says people should be infinitely forward looking?

So how do you determine which link of the endless causality chain is worthy of moral analysis? Isn't it inherently arbitrary? Doesn't it allow you to pick and choose the so-called "consequence" that most benefits your case?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Every action is a consequence of something and a cause of something else. Thus, saying that "an action is right or wrong depending on whether its consequences are right or wrong", which only amounts to shifting the question of whether its right or wrong forward, without ever providing a substantial answer. And the fun thing is, you can do this over and over, since every consequence is itself the cause to further consequences! At the end of the day, this allows consequentialists to defend the morality of basically anything

This is not serious. Who says people should be infinitely forward looking?

So how do you determine which link of the endless causality chain is worthy of moral analysis? Isn't it inherently arbitrary? Doesn't it allow you to pick and choose the so-called "consequence" that most benefits your case?

No. The only consequences that matter are those that result from the action in question. At a personal level one should consider all that one can perceive, not merely a single consequence of one's choice. As I pointed out earlier, the weakness in consequentialism as a guide to what to do is that we don't always perceive all of the consequences of an action. That is where deontology comes in, but even there the validity of deontology depends upon the assumption that the rules one follows, whatever their source may be, are able to provide a better guide to the consequences of an action and how to weigh those consequences than our own limited ability to foresee.

[sparkey]

Deontology, in the sense that people's actions should absolutely be judged by a system of rules. Human nature is well suited to following rules, and absolutely not well suited to predicting the outcome of actions (act consequentialism) or fairly judging "virtue" (virtue ethics).

It is, however, absolutely appropriate to discuss the consequences of having certain rules in place, and I don't think that judging ethical systems should be divorced from empirical observation of how rules work in practice. I stop short of rule consequentialism due to complications with measuring what is "good" even when judging the rules rather than the actions, but that's the more practical form of consequentialism, for sure.

[Why]

I have never heard of these long words or understand what they mean so perhaps I do not belong in this thread.

However I looked at wikipedia and it linked consequentialist with the horrid phrase "the end justifies the means".  If the means is wrong, it is wrong no matter the aim.

There is right and there is wrong. Do right, do not do wrong. But more than that, want to do what is right, do not want to do what is wrong.

[anvi]

Consequentialist, for the most part.  Definitely not a deontologist.  Deontology depends on a universalizability condition, which I don't think works for most of the moral decisions we have to make on a daily basis because of its incredible degree of abstraction.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Of these, deontologist fits me far better.  I completely reject consequentialism, because I believe the means matter as much as the ends.

[Gustaf]

To elaborate: the problem with consequentialism is that it creates a completely artificial and ultimately meaningless between "causes" and "consequences", as if the two were separate categories of reality. However, causes and consequences don't exist in an absolute, but only relatively to each other. Every action is a consequence of something and a cause of something else. Thus, saying that "an action is right or wrong depending on whether its consequences are right or wrong", which only amounts to shifting the question of whether its right or wrong forward, without ever providing a substantial answer. And the fun thing is, you can do this over and over, since every consequence is itself the cause to further consequences! At the end of the day, this allows consequentialists to defend the morality of basically anything.

Honestly, it is baffling that some moral philosophers still take consequentialism seriously. It should long have been thoroughly disqualified as a moral theory and subject to the same ridicule as nonsense like the ontological argument.

The ontological argument gets more crap than it deserves.

I am not a consequentialist. I like Kant but I also like virtue ethics a bit, so I'm a bit moderate hero on that stuff.