Topics Ethics

Question I'm intuitively very much a consequentialist, and I have difficulty understanding intuitively how deontology could possibly be correct. Doesn't the correctness of an act ultimately boil down to what effects it has? Stabbing a person seems wrong because that would have the consequence of causing harm to someone else. If stabbing people didn't hurt them (or inconvenience them in any way, I suppose), it doesn't seem like it would be wrong at all. How can a rule or act be considered morally meaningful except in terms of the consequences it has on others?

Accepted:
December 20, 2011

Comments

Suppose Simon gets enormous pleasure out of humiliating people. Is it okay for him to humiliaite someone just for the fun of it? To ask whether his pleasure is greater than the distress he causes his victim sounds like a very bad way to begin. The pleasure he takes arguably makes a bad situation morally worse. Would we really want to say that the greater his glee, the weaker the case against his conduct?

Since you mentioned deontology, we can make a connection to Kant's view. Simon is someone who treats other people merely as means. That gets lost if we simply tote up the consequences.

Consequence do matter, of course; you're quite right about that. The question is whether they're all that matters, and the answer seems plausibly to be no.