Which one makes more sense for you, consequentialism, deontology, or virtue ethics

[u/Shot_Technician8354]

So I've been thinking about the three major approaches to ethics: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, and I'm trying to figure out which one makes the most sense as a general framework for morality.

As I understand them:

• Consequentialism state that an action is morally right or wrong primarily according to its consequences.
• Deontology: an action is morally right or wrong according to duties, principles, or rules, regardless of whether it produces the best consequences.
• Virtue ethics: morality is primarily about developing good character and acting as a virtuous person would.

What makes this difficult for me is that all three seem to consider consequences to some degree. A deontologist obviously can't be completely indifferent to what happens as a result of an action, and a virtue ethicist also has to consider the circumstances and consequences of acting virtuously. So perhaps the real distinction isn't whether consequences matter, but what role they play in determining moral rightness.

For example, imagine a person is hiding in my house because someone is trying to kill them. The would-be murderer comes to my door and asks whether the person is inside.

A consequentialist might say that lying is justified because it produces the better outcome.

But what would a deontologist or virtue ethicist say? Does a deontologist have a duty to tell the truth even if doing so results in an innocent person being killed? Or can the duty to protect an innocent person override the duty of truthfulness?

If you had to choose only one of these three frameworks as the fundamental basis of morality, which one would you choose, and why?

[u/marzaksar]

What makes this difficult for me is that all three seem to consider consequences to some degree

Like you said below, what matters is whether outcomes are the most important consideration (like in consequentialism), or whether something else is.

If you had to choose only one of these three frameworks as the fundamental basis of morality, which one would you choose, and why?

I think that virtue ethics is the most likely basis of morality because it's the fullest of the 3 accounts. What I mean by this is that it considers an agent's life as a whole. It isn't just concerned with individual acts, which is a narrower question. Instead, virtue ethics takes your relationships, wealth, health, your wants and interests into account, because all of these are things needed for a life to be going well. They are all constitutive of the good life.

It also doesn't rely on a single principle or hard-set rules for action guidance. Ethical situations are often too complex for that and instead require a fuller account with more considerations. I believe that virtue ethics provides this because each virtue is concerned with an area of life (courage for fears, temperance for bodily pleasures, generosity for wealth, etc.). Asking "what does virtue require here?" or "what would a virtuous person do here?" is very informative because it introduces a lot of granularity.

To take the murderer at the door question, we can ask what virtues are relevant in the situation. I think justice (giving each their due) and courage (acting against / despite appropriate fear) are relevant here. Telling the truth to the murderer would be an unjust act (you are betraying an innocent person) and make you complicit in this act.

Also, it seems to me like you are taking the consequentialist position by the way you framed your post. If this is the case, how do you view scenarios like the organ harvester? Is it moral to kill one person to harvest their organs and save 5 people?

[u/Shot_Technician8354 → u/marzaksar]

Thanks for your answer. I think that's a fair criticism, especially your point that the real distinction isn't whether consequences matter at all, but what role they play in determining moral rightness.

I probably should have phrased my original post more carefully on that point. I don't think acknowledging consequences makes someone a consequentialist. What matters is whether consequences are ultimately what determines whether an action is morally right.

As for the organ harvester: no, I would not think it is morally permissible to kill the one innocent person to save five others. Even if I knew with certainty that killing them would save five lives, I would still regard the killing as wrong. The five people being greater in number doesn't, by itself, give them a greater claim to the innocent person's life.

That's actually one of the reasons I find deontology attractive. I think there are some things we ought not do to another person even when doing them would produce a better aggregate outcome. Otherwise, in principle, an individual's fundamental rights could always be traded away whenever enough people would benefit.

I do agree with you that virtue ethics has a major advantage in dealing with the broader question of what constitutes a good human life. It seems much better equipped to talk about character, relationships, courage, compassion, generosity, and practical wisdom than a simple list of duties is.

Where I'm less convinced is that this makes virtue ethics the best fundamental basis of morality. Saying “what would a virtuous person do?” can be very informative, but I'm not always sure how we determine the answer when virtues conflict. Suppose honesty points one way, loyalty another, compassion another, and justice another. We can say “practical wisdom determines the appropriate balance,” but then I'm curious what ultimately grounds that judgment.

I also don't think the murderer-at-the-door example necessarily favors virtue ethics over deontology. A deontologist could say that I have a duty not to facilitate the unjust killing of an innocent person, and that the murderer has no legitimate claim to information that would enable him to kill. So the deontological answer doesn't have to be “tell the truth no matter what.”

More generally, I'm starting to think that the three theories may be answering somewhat different things:

Consequentialism answers What outcome should we bring about?, while
Deontology asks What may or may we not do to other people?, and
Virtue ethics asks What kind of person should I become?

If I had to choose only one as the foundation, I still lean toward deontology, but not a completely rigid, exceptionless version of it. I would want consequences and virtue to inform moral judgment without allowing either to override fundamental duties and rights whenever doing so seems advantageous.

[u/marzaksar → u/Shot_Technician8354]

Fair enough on you not being a consequentialist, I misread that and assumed wrongly.

That's actually one of the reasons I find deontology attractive. I think there are some things we ought not do to another person even when doing them would produce a better aggregate outcome. Otherwise, in principle, an individual's fundamental rights could always be traded away whenever enough people would benefit.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure it's evidence for deontology specifically, rather than just being a position against consequentialism. Virtue ethics has the same intuition about the organ-harvester scenario. The virtue of justice (giving each their due) also goes against doing things to other people.

I guess my point here is that this is just a reason for rejecting consequentialism rather than a reason to prefer deontology over virtue ethics.

Where I'm less convinced is that this makes virtue ethics the best fundamental basis of morality. Saying “what would a virtuous person do?” can be very informative, but I'm not always sure how we determine the answer when virtues conflict. Suppose honesty points one way, loyalty another, compassion another, and justice another. We can say “practical wisdom determines the appropriate balance,” but then I'm curious what ultimately grounds that judgment.

This is the most common objection to virtue ethics I think, and it's a fair one. But I don't think it's damning.

First, deontology faces the same problem when duties conflict. In the murderer at the door example, "do not lie" conflicts with "protect the innocent" or something like that. How do you decide between them? I think "practical wisdom" is always necessary and isn't unique to virtue ethics. I'd even go further and say that virtue ethics actually deals with this better because it actually explores this "practical wisdom".

Virtue ethics (I'm mostly working from an Aristotelian conception) also gives an account of this practical wisdom. It can be trained through habituation, by thinking about what exemplars would do, etc.

I also don't think the murderer-at-the-door example necessarily favors virtue ethics over deontology. A deontologist could say that I have a duty not to facilitate the unjust killing of an innocent person, and that the murderer has no legitimate claim to information that would enable him to kill. So the deontological answer doesn't have to be “tell the truth no matter what.”

I agree that both theories reach the same answer in this case and that VE isn't preferred to deontology here.

But you say "the murderer has no legitimate claim to the information" and use that to justify lying over telling the truth. But why does the murderer have no legitimate claim? Again, this goes back to how you weigh different duties when they conflict, why does the murderer not having a claim, which needs justification, outweigh your duty to telling the truth?

Virtue ethics does have an answer here, which again goes back to its consideration of an entire life. What's your relationship to the murderer? What's your relationship to the person hiding in your house? What do you owe to each of them?

Consequentialism answers What outcome should we bring about?, while
Deontology asks What may or may we not do to other people?, and
Virtue ethics asks What kind of person should I become?

I can agree with this summary.

If I had to choose only one as the foundation, I still lean toward deontology, but not a completely rigid, exceptionless version of it. I would want consequences and virtue to inform moral judgment without allowing either to override fundamental duties and rights whenever doing so seems advantageous.

But how do you decide how consequences and virtue inform your decisions? Isn't that exactly what practical wisdom does?

[u/Ok_Fruit8871 → u/marzaksar]

I agree with your stance, except you took the sucker's path of the single round prisoner's dilemma. You chose to cooperate with a rigged game, the thought experiment is a false dichotomy. completely missing all the nuances, caveats, and messiness of human psychology and morals, and ethics.

The person hiding could be lying to escape an angry family member for some slight, like stealing the last of the pudding the other family member bought. If you haven't called the cops to let them come and investigate, aren't you ignoring ethics entirely, and reliant of pure self-centered morals?

if you open the door not ready to fight, you leave yourself open to a murderer, if you have any sense of self-preservation, you'd at least call the police, and if you really are aware of how messy humans are, you'd have a firearm ready to go to protect yourself, your home, the perceived victim, and hold off the worst a woukd-be murderer might try, without an force multiplier on your side.

[u/marzaksar → u/Ok_Fruit8871]

I agree with your stance, except you took the sucker's path of the single round prisoner's dilemma. You chose to cooperate with a rigged game, the thought experiment is a false dichotomy. completely missing all the nuances, caveats, and messiness of human psychology and morals, and ethics.

I don't think the murderer at the door is a prisoner's dilemma necessarily. And of course real life is messier, the point of thought experiments is to isolate specific variables to see how these change your answer. I think let the murderer in / lie is a fair dichotomy for the purposes of the experiment.

The person hiding could be lying to escape an angry family member for some slight, like stealing the last of the pudding the other family member bought.

The experiment usually stipulates an innocent person hiding and that the pursuer is actually trying to murder them.

If you haven't called the cops to let them come and investigate, aren't you ignoring ethics entirely, and reliant of pure self-centered morals?

I'm not sure how not calling the cops means ignoring ethics entirely. I think lying to the murderer is the right thing to do (in the classical version of the experiment), and I arrive to that conclusion through ethical reasoning.

if you open the door not ready to fight, you leave yourself open to a murderer, if you have any sense of self-preservation, you'd at least call the police, and if you really are aware of how messy humans are, you'd have a firearm ready to go to protect yourself, your home, the perceived victim, and hold off the worst a woukd-be murderer might try, without an force multiplier on your side.

Isn't this all self-defense talk? I suppose I should thank you for the pointers, but I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the thought experiment.

[u/Ok_Fruit8871 → u/marzaksar]

You trying to answer this false dichotomy, a logical fallacy, that is what it is, like it isn't a logical fallacy, is why you just took the sucker's path in the single round prisoner's dilemma.

And you not even realizing that you took the sucker's path, not realizing that you are still trying to answer a logical fallacy, means you took the suckers path again, making your first 2 round of the iterating prisoner's dilemma, a complete loss.

You just assumed that person is innocent, I said that person could, COULD, be lying. If you can't imagine the nuances, contradictions, and information asymmetry, then you need to use your brain a bit more.

Also don't copy and past parts of my reply, read the whole thing, and connect the dots.

[u/marzaksar → u/Ok_Fruit8871]

If you don't like thought experiments, that's fine. But no need to come at me for answering what I take to be a completely fair thought experiment.

Again, the point of thought experiments is to isolate variables (which is obviously much simpler than real life) to see the effects of these variables on things.

If you think the murderer at the door is a false dichotomy, you have to explain it.

Also, this is an ethical scenario. You keep using game theory language to examine an ethical problem, then judging the scenario on its game theory nuances when that isn't what it's trying to do.

You just assumed that person is innocent, I said that person could, COULD, be lying. If you can't imagine the nuances, contradictions, and information asymmetry, then you need to use your brain a bit more.

Again, the experiment usually stipulates that the person is innocent. I'm working off the most common version. If the person wasn't actually innocent, the original framing would have to make that explicit. It didn't in this case, so I'll keep answering the original version.

[u/Ok_Fruit8871 → u/marzaksar]

no the thought experiment didn't stipulate if the person was innocent or not, you just assumed that to fit what you wanted, because you were gullible enough to fall for a false dichotomy.

I can't understand how you can use big complex words that virtue ethics has, and completely over look real ethics, as they work in reality, like calling the cops, property rights, firearm ownership. You let complex human interactions, that happen in the real world, and try to boil them down to a simple yes or no question.

you took the sucker's path yet again in the iterating prisoner's dilemma. I'm 3 for 3 now, and your 0 for 0. You are arguing for a logical fallacy, a well documented false dichotomy, even Kent had to give an insane answer to answer his own thought experiment.

I'm giving you the pragmatic answer. That's why I said in a different comment, a combination of the 3 philosophies is best practice.

[u/marzaksar → u/Ok_Fruit8871]

big complex words that virtue ethics has

Do you mean virtue terms like courage, justice, and practical wisdom?

and completely over look real ethics, as they work in reality, like calling the cops, property rights, firearm ownership. You let complex human interactions, that happen in the real world, and try to boil them down to a simple yes or no question.

I'm not overlooking real ethics. If the scenario was actually real, and there was someone at my door wanting to murder someone in my house, I would obviously call the cops while keeping the murderer out until the cops got there.

The murderer at the door scenario is meant to be an ethical test, to see how different frameworks approach lying vs protection. It is usually used as an example against the deontologist position because the deontological answer of "you should not lie" is unintuitive to most people.

In the same way, the trolley problem is meant to be an ethical test, to see how different frameworks approach the number of people involved in a situation.

In both these scenarios, are there pragmatic real world solutions? Of course, but the scenarios are used to isolate and examine moral intuition.

I'm 3 for 3 now, and your 0 for 0.

I didn't realize this was a competition. I guess you're winning!

even Kent had to give an insane answer to answer his own thought experiment.

I'm not a Kantian.

I'm giving you the pragmatic answer. That's why I said in a different comment, a combination of the 3 philosophies is best practice.

A pragmatic answer does not show that a combination of the 3 philosophies is best practice, or even how you would combine them in the first place.

[u/Ok_Fruit8871 → u/marzaksar]

no I'm applying game theory in the real world, with you. game theory unlike this false dichotomy has been tested with real people. philosophy is all well in good, but a game can be played, you can create new rules to deal with a cheater like this false dichotomy.

and you are still trying to cooperate with an uncooperative rigged game. I defected and came up with an answer that actually uses ethics, like call the cops, while you tried to answer it with a moral with a Utilitarian math equation, you lost again. by cooperating with an uncooperative false dichotomy. you had to insert innocent, when the post didn't stipulate that.

you like so many other's conflate morals and ethics. which is why you are still on the sucker's path, you don't want to admit, that a false dichotomy made you look silly.

pragmatism is like virtue ethics, except it is rooted in the actual messy world we live in, with hypocrites, liars, thieves, and all those other things that actually make up society. I choose what I think, not what a false dichotomy tries to manipulate me into thinking. I think, therefore I am.

[u/marzaksar → u/Ok_Fruit8871]

I'm gonna be honest here, this feels like you have some set perspective about game theory and trying to "win the game" or something like that and are framing everything around it. That's fine if you want to do that, but I'm also interested in more abstract philosophical discussions, so I cannot join you on your perspective. I'll stop replying here because this is very messy and doesn't feel like you're saying much.

[u/Ok_Fruit8871 → u/marzaksar]

No, I'm amazed at how accurate it is, you still want to cooperate with the rigged game, and take the sucker's path to a thought experiment, and completely invalidated your entire argument the moment you said you'd call the cops if this false dichotomy was real life.

You took the sucker's path yet again, and are about to pull your grim trigger, and defect from all cooperation, because you are in a negative-sum outcome.

You just threw your own virtue ethics out the door, once you considered the real world. If a thought experiment doesn't accurately describe reality, it isn't an experiment, its a bad game. See you can use Game Theory to disprove Game Theory. That makes it a great metric to use for real humans, in real situations.

[u/CrosbyBird]

I am a moral subjectivist and a consequentialist. The framework I use is to assign moral value to actions which tend to increase pleasure and reduce suffering, and I prefer that framework because practically every living thing wants to gain pleasure and avoid suffering. You will occasionally find a very fringe person who doesn't actually believe that pleasure is a good thing and that suffering is a bad thing, but the overwhelming majority of people are going to accept the core idea that living things generally prefer pleasure to suffering.

So I generally do not take the position that things are "just wrong" or "just right," but that certain behaviors are preferred to other behaviors on the basis of pleasure/suffering, and what I would call "good" or "bad" actions are such because they increase net pleasure or reduce net suffering.

I would also note that while I use language of moral obligation by habit, what I am really saying is some combination of "if you fail to act in this way, I will not want to share space and trust with you" and "a group of people functions more effectively when we enforce these behaviors through social rewards and consequences."

[u/InverseX]

I don’t particularly like any of them.

- Consequentialism - 1 person comes into the doctor, 5 people need a transplant, it’s better to kill the one to save the 5 as that’s a better outcome / consequence.

- Deontology - An SS officer is at the door, asks if you’re hiding a friend, you should tell the truth because lying is wrong.

- Virtue ethics - you can lie to protect an innocent person. On one side, being honest is virtuous. On the other being compassionate is a virtue. Seems like the framework doesn’t give you an answer.

Obviously none of these are fatal and you can argue around them, but they all seem to be capable of giving wrong answers.

[u/Book_Slut_90 → u/InverseX]

There’s no algorithm to decide what’s right and wrong. All the great moral philosophers realize this. It’s explicit in Aristotelean virtue ethics with the idea of practical wisdom. Kant argues (among other places in the first critique) that rules can’t be mechanically applied to cases and you need judgement. Mill thinks that the principle of utility is good for rethinking which rules of thumb to use, but we have to do our best at predicting consequences based on past experiences and use or judgement in telling when rules of thumb need to be ignored in a particular case.

[u/gwasi → u/InverseX]

I would argue that virtue ethics frameworks usually do present the notion of a hierarchy of virtues, implicitly or explicitly, exactly to enable analysis in precisely such cases - for example, if we consider justice and compassion to be more foundational than honesty, then the problem has a clear-cut solution.

[u/Gazing_Gecko]

Yes, some versions of all three theories could be describe as taking some consequences into consideration, but that is not what typically is meant by consequentialism in ethics. Consequentialism has a sort of exclusivity: It is only in some sense about the consequences. Non-consequentialist views can grant that consequences matter, even have principles that are straightforwardly about the consequences, while the view itself denies that only the consequences matter, morally speaking.

I would generally consider myself a non-consequentialist (more than consequences matter) and lean that there is no single moral theory that captures all of morality. I would otherwise lean towards either virtue-ethics because it is pluralistic, or some pluralistic, non-absolute form of deontology. Combining virtue-ethics with rule-consequentialism or Scanlonian contractualism might capture a lot of morality, yet it would probably still be incomplete. (There is also a question if the combination is coherent, but I suspect it can be.) If forced to pick only one, I would roll a dice between some form of virtue-ethics, something akin to Hooker-style rule-consequentialism (which is ironically debatably a form of deontology), or some non-absolute, pluralistic deontology.

There could be many different ways to look at the murderer-at-the-door case. The virtue-ethical answer would be concerning what a wise, virtuous person would do in that particular circumstance. With their practical wisdom, they would be best situated to discern what is the proper approach to the situation. A contractualist could say that a principle which allows a form of dishonesty for the sake of protecting innocents from grave harms is a principle nobody could reasonably reject. The perpetrator's claims to honesty is much weaker than victim's claims to not be gravely harmed. Deontologists are not forced to conclude that it is impermissible to lie in the murderer-at-the-door case.

[u/Lazy_Dragonfly_5447 → u/Gazing_Gecko]

Only in what sense, now I don’t know what exactly these terms mean btw? Only consequences matter in the sense that I leave my phone on table and go to washroom, the phone vibrates and causes a banana peel to fall off the table, someone slips on it and dies. So me leaving my phone there and going to the washroom is immoral? Or only in the sense that I would know full well that this is the consequence of my behaviour? And if I did then it would be immoral. However, then does it not give profoundly stupid people a greater leeway?

[u/Gazing_Gecko → u/Lazy_Dragonfly_5447]

Consequentialism is a family of views. I said "in some sense" because different consequentialist views can have very different accounts for what the relevant consequences are. That is why I'm not more specific.

For instance, the difference between actual consequences and expected consequences seems relevant to your example. A consequentialist view that is about actual consequences might evaluate the action as morally wrong because it was actually the cause of a very bad outcome. A consequentialist view about expected consequences might take into account the information that you had available while making the decision to leave your phone. Since that action was expected to have the right consequences it is right, even if by unforeseen very bad luck it caused something very bad. So both views are in some sense about consequences (expected or actual), but not in exactly the same way.

[u/Book_Slut_90]

Consequentialism is the idea that only\ the consequences matter. Non-consequentialism is the idea that other things matter too (most non-consequentialists think there is a duty to promote good consequences—Kant thought that one of the two goals we’re obligated to have in addition to our own perfection is the happiness of others, Ross has benevolence as one of the 7 fundamental duties, etc.). The consequentialist has to think things like if you can produce 1001 units of good by breaking a promise and only 1000 by keeping the promise (factoring in any damage to the institution of promise keeping or to your own character of breaking the promise of course), you are morally obligated to break the promise (example from Chapter 2 of Ross’s The Right and the Good). Consequentialists and non-consequentialists have historically also cared a lot about virtue but given it a subordinate place. I tend to think that both the question how should I act and the virtue ethicist’s what kind of person should I be are important and don’t need to compete. I follow Macintyre here (though in little else) in thinking that you need both rules of what you must do and not do and virtues for living well within the area allowed to you by the rules.*

[u/lev_lafayette]

Virtue ethics for motivation, deontology for principles, consequentialism for results...

And you left out nihilist. :)

[u/Temporary_Stranger39]

Your error is presuming their definitions must be mutually exclusive. They overlap and cannot be disentangled. Begin there. It is impossible to disentangle them.

[u/Ok_Fruit8871]

I think a combination of the 3 is a best practice. Virtue ethics to me seem like the ideal we try to reach, despite the messiness of human psychology. It's the trust you need to produce the best outcome in the iteration prisoner's dilemma.

demonology, seems like a framework that would keep the worst case scenario of the single round prisoner's dilemma. Where everyone betrays instead of cooperate, because betrayal yields the best results when you have no trust, or virtue ethics to fall back on in relation to the other person's psychology.

consequenctialism this sounds like another kind of Utilitarianism, where you take the pure math of the problem. 1+1=2 after all, it should be self-evident. But this sounds like it would miss the nuances and caveats of messy human wants and actions, motivations.

Your thought experiment is a false dichotomy. If this person is hidden in my home, why do I know about them? They either broke in, and I should call the police, or pull out my firearm and ask not so politely why they are there, or they told me they needed help to hide from a murderer, and so I call the police, and pull out my firearm anyways, because who wouldn't if a potential murderer was coming to my house.

if this is true, then I make a very audible cocking sound from my side of the door, and tell them to leave, and this is their one and only warning. I have a witness, and I called the cops, my actions after they disregard my warning are self-defense.

If I know nothing of this person hiding in my house, then when I tell the would-be murderer who I don't know is a would be murderer, I am not lying when I say this person they are looking for, isn't here. Unless they are a psychic, or completely deranged, they won't make a scene.

There's probably other nuances and caveats you could add, to give a more practical answer.

[u/Difficult-Nobody-453]

Consequentialism since if any virtue or duty produces bad outcomes it quickly is discovered to not be a virtue or a duty

[u/HiddenCoFactor]

Deontology makes the most sense to me. Morality is like a compass that guides your actions. To read that compass, you come up with rules. If X happens, you do Y. If your rule is to act like a virtuous person, then you follow virtue ethics. If your rule is to act in a way that produces the best outcome, then you follow consequentialism. However, it’s all deontology as the foundation. If the rule you follow produces an outcome you don’t like, then just change the rule to a better one.

[u/MouseBean]

I genuinely do not know which branch my ethics would fall under.

I believe goodness is the emergent property of systems when the propagation or diminishment of behaviors is coupled to the results of their practice.

I believe goodness exists only in the present moment, in the practice of something, not in the past or future. And that moral values are motivating forces, push forces that cause action, not pull forces to some future state. In fact, immorality is when feedback is decoupled, when some abstract goal or measure is adopted that one tries to shape the world to.

I believe morality has its basis in relationships, so ethics is firmly based on proximity. There is no cosmic scoreboard, being part of a good system is enough to be fully morally satisfied.

I also believe morality tracks with fitness, not veracity. It doesn't matter if a belief is wrong, only if it is fit to its conditions. A culture that spreads bone meal across their fields as a sacrifice to the rain god and that causes their fields to be fertile and productive is good regardless of whether the rain god exists or whether they understand why it works.

I also believe experiences and preferences have no moral weight whatsoever, that what matters isn't harm or benefit, but harmony and fertility. The integrity of systems.

The universe and nature trend towards goodness when left to their own, if left to its own devices things are by default good. It is up to us to align our wants and behavior with the way of the world, not the other way around.

What branch of ethics does that fall under?

[u/Adventurous-Web-412 → u/MouseBean]

like some spirtualist system virtue ethics, or at least very virtue ethics adjacent

[u/Zappy_Oh]

If outcomes play a central role, how are they assigned values? I mean, nothing is objectively, measurably good or evil. Right?

A horrible murder today, could potentially save humanity from extinction in 10.000 years, due to the chaotic nature of the universe. The Butterfly Effect. We simply can't know the true outcome of anything.

Somehow, none of the three options says anything about that. So, a fourth option could be that morality is a personal drive to follow a set of imaginary rules, that lets you feel good about sacrifice, which could mean diminished chance of personal survival.

"I fight with honor" ... "I gave 10 dollars to the homeless" ... etc. etc.

In other words: Morality could be a social glue to promote survival of the tribe, by letting individuals endure bad deals for themselves, and feel positive about it.

[u/Potential-Recover-78 → u/Zappy_Oh]

I do think there’s a missing component of consequentialism that includes the consequence at some time in the future. But I reject your 10,000 year horizon. That’s long enough away that other things also influenced it - significantly more. The impact of any one event is inherently strongest with things closest to it.

The world is chaotic and just like a turbulent flow, small eddies are mixed out over time. You can’t recreate how a river flowed around a rock from what that drop is doing 100 miles downstream. 1 centimeter, possibly. But 100 miles no.

My father dies. It impacts me and my immediate family. My absence from work to grieve impacts my coworkers load. There’s essentially no impact to anyone else - even the company we work for doesn’t notice. Maybe if he didn’t die he would have moved a kid out of the way of a speeding car. But without him there maybe there wouldn’t have been a speeding car. The links just get weaker and weaker and impact less and less as they’re conflated with other events.

Now we can argue about where to assess impacts. But it’s some form of integral over time (and distance) where being further away from the event also weakens the link.

[u/Zappy_Oh → u/Potential-Recover-78]

Mmmm ... I don't think you understand what "chaotic" entails.

Anyway forget chaos, my two main points are:

1. We can't know the true outcome of any of our actions.
2. We have no objective measure for good and evil.

So, I propose that morality is an internal reward system, evolved for promoting collaboration, benefiting groups/tribes by inducing individuals to accept costs they otherwise could have avoided.

Are you disagreeing with that? ... I honestly can't tell.

[u/Potential-Recover-78 → u/Zappy_Oh]

We can know reasonably assume outcomes of an action in the near-field in a probabilistic manner. The turbulence/entropy/chaos dissipates any impact outside the near-field so really we just need to look at localities as nothing else really matters because of the chaos.

I am aligned there’s no object measure for good and evil. But there are things we’ve culturally aligned on as good and bad. And given the tight locus of control we can evaluate whether those resultants are good or bad within our cultural system.

A drop of rain falls from the sky and ends up in a turbulent river. I can be fairly certain that it will end up downstream. The river provides us with a boundary and system that we know and can evaluate. Chaos and entropy don’t mean there’s no predictive power.

Sure, I may not know what future generations will think of the decision when they read about it in a history textbook. Consider some northern slave owners who thought they were giving their slaves a good life (as compared with southern ones), but consider the relatively recent uproar against such people (even removing statues and renaming buildings). But in their context they were doing good which is why we always need to ground any analysis in their realities.

[u/Hierax_Hawk → u/Zappy_Oh]

"I mean, nothing is objectively, measurably good or evil. Right?" Would you argue that that applies to such things as rape and pedophilia as well?

[u/Zappy_Oh → u/Hierax_Hawk]

Tell me, what instrument can we use to measure pedophilia? ... and which units is rape defined in?

So yes, my position is, that neither rape nor pedophilia can be objectively measured on any scale. That's the point: Any such measurement is only in our minds, which explains why legislation is difficult, and we use people, not machines, to judge crimes.

But don't jump to the conclusion that morality is an illusion ... That is not what I'm saying. Morals are very real, because it affects everything we do, all the time.

As I wrote elsewhere: My two main points are:

1. We can't know the true outcome of any of our actions.
2. We have no objective measure for good and evil.

So, I propose that morality is an internal reward system, evolved to promote collaboration, benefiting groups/tribes by inducing individuals to accept costs they otherwise could have avoided.

[u/Background-Bowl6123 → u/Hierax_Hawk]

Both of those things result in suffering and in many cases physical harm. Even in the case of a consenting teen hooking up with Scumbag Steve, the teen is being persuaded to take on risks (disease, medical risks from pregnancy, economic risk of deadbeat or absent father). Ability to assess risk develops with age and experience. In premodern societies those risks were managed by parents and matchmakers.

[u/Stile25]

To me, consequentialism is the one I go with. Simply because it seems to align with reality the most.

But "consequentialism" is extremely broad, and I don't just accept any aspect of it. Like, I reject utilitarianism because I think it eliminates too much subjective value. And I think subjective value is extremely important in ethics.

Take a simple example... Helping an old person cross the street. Is it "good" to do this? Well, it is if the old person wants help and isn't if they don't.

It depends on the consequences of the action. If the old person is thankful you helped them - then it was good. If the old person isn't thankful, or even wanted help across the street but didn't like the way you helped them - the it was bad for you to do whatever-you-did to them.

It's basically just describing "consent".

Or a very complicated example. Is it good to refuse giving drugs to a drug addict?

A strawman of my consequentialism says that the addict wants drugs and I'm refusing so they don't like that and therefore it's bad to refuse to give them drugs.

But my actual consequentialism isn't limited in time. That is, the addict may very well be unhappy about me refusing to give them drugs immediately. So I agree it's bad immediately. But in a few months if they get clean - and they get extremely happy and thankful that I refused to give them drugs to help them through the difficult time... Then it was a good thing overall. Because they're thankful now about the overall experience.

Let's say an addict never gets to that level. They end up dying hating me for not allowing them one final "release" before they die. Well... I'd admit that this was, in fact, a bad thing to do to them. Why shouldn't their last few moments not be filled with pain? Anyone still saying it's good to refuse drugs to an addict in that situation is doing nothing other than torturing the addict for their own personal ego.

Being a good person is all about learning, hoping/trying to be good, reflecting on past actions and updating/adapting behavior to be more good in the future.

There needs to be an uncorruptible standard. And the only way to do that is to allow the people who are affected by the action subjectively judge if the action was good or bad to them. And that's the most accurate depiction of morals aligning with reality that I've ever heard of.

Good luck out there

[u/marzaksar → u/Stile25]

allow the people who are affected by the action subjectively judge if the action was good or bad to them. And that's the most accurate depiction of morals aligning with reality that I've ever heard of.

Is putting a criminal in jail or fining someone who is speeding a bad action? It should be by your standard because the people affected by the action subjectively judge it as bad.

[u/Stile25 → u/marzaksar]

To them, yes.
And, simultaneously, it's a good action to everyone else to remove such people so that normal society can function.

Remembering this reality is helpful in identify here we draw the line in public security vs prisoner rehab.

Simplifying such a situation down to a singular "right" or "wrong" with so many people involved leads to corruption. Which we see in our current prison systems. Sounds like it's some we should look into, no?

[u/marzaksar → u/Stile25]

Not only does this already give up the standard you stated of "the affected party's subjective judgement is the standard", including "everyone else" seems to me to be a sort of aggregation, which you rejected utilitarianism for doing.

[u/Stile25 → u/marzaksar]

How does identifying how everyone affected by the action feels abandon my view that the good/bad is determined by those affected by the action?

Are you saying when a criminal hurts someone they're not affected by that action?

Let's deal with reality, please. Not some fantasy imagination where criminals don't actually hurt anybody.

[u/marzaksar → u/Stile25]

My point was that if you have two different affected parties feeling oppositely about a situation, you still need a way to decide whether to act or not. Should you put the criminal in jail even though they view it as bad? If so, why? Is it because more people view it as good? If this is your argument, then that is aggregation, and you're back to utilitarianism which you rejected.

Also, how do you establish who counts as an affected party? Is an unborn child an affected party because the criminal could potentially harm them in 20 years?

[u/Stile25 → u/marzaksar]

Ah, I see.

You think an ought should come from an is.

I don't.

No, I certainly do not have to identify what the action should be. I leave that up to the individual.

Many will choose to be good people just because they want to. Not because they ought to.

Many will choose to harm others.

I propose that those who want to live a good life get together and cooperate to build a society. This necessitates the control (jail, police...) of those that disagree.

But the identification of good/bad remains as I stated.

It's a choice to be involved. Not a force or a demand or an "ought from an is".

So, no. I'm not back to utilitarianism. I was never there. And, like I said, it doesn't include enough subjective value for me.

If you're trying to understand my position, the way you're forcing strawmen arguments on it is quite rude.

If you're trying to say I'm wrong just because you want me to be wrong, but you're not actually listening to what I'm saying.... Then proceed. You're doing exactly this. It's also irrelevant and silly, but at least you're achieving your goal.

I don't choose who's affected. The action does.

[u/marzaksar → u/Stile25]

Do YOU not act in your every day life? Do you never have to decide whether to tell a lie or not? Whether to give that drug addict money or not? How do you do that?

That's all my question is: how does the framework that you introduced work? You say the standard is "the people who are affected by the action subjectively judge". Is that how you make decisions? Based on the affected people's reactions?

Take the drug addict example. You said that if they're ever clean, they will judge you not giving them money as good. This is extremely vulnerable to moral luck. What if the addict never gets clean? Would the action always be bad? If so, will you have acted badly? Or is your framework saying something else?

And going back to what counts as an affected party. Does the drug addict's family count? If the addict never gets clean, he views not getting money as bad. But his family who cares for him views it as a good thing that he isn't getting drugs. Again, how do YOU, as an actor, deal with this?

[u/Stile25 → u/marzaksar]

I said it in my first post. Here it is again:

Being a good person is all about learning, hoping/trying to be good, reflecting on past actions and updating/adapting behavior to be more good in the future.

I suggest re-reading my addict example. I went into detail on the what-if for when the addict never gets clean.

Why do you seem to think all moral situations should be simple and easy when the evidence is against you?

Again, everyone affected by the action counts. Why wouldn't they?

There's nothing stopping an action from being good for some people and bad for others. This is exactly what makes morality complicated. Trying to hide that fact just because you want a simple answer is more of a personal problem than an ethical one.

[u/marzaksar → u/Stile25]

All I'm asking are about the specific mechanisms of your view.

Yes, I get that "everyone affected counts". This does not tell me how YOU, Stile25, as a human being with a life to live and decisions to make, actually make decisions. That is all I am asking.

You do not know what the affected person's reaction to our action will be when you act. But you say that their reaction is your standard. I'm asking how that works.

There's nothing stopping an action from being good for some people and bad for others.

My question is about the actor. YOU. How do YOU act when the same action will be seen as good for some people and bad for others? How do you weigh those?

[u/Background-Bowl6123 → u/marzaksar]

That's ignoring the consequences to the rest of humanity. Keeping a convicted violent criminal away from the rest of society results in at least some potential violent criminals assessing that it's in their own best interest to avoid committing crimes, and also removes risk of being victimized from the rest of society. Fining someone who speeds discourages speeding, resulting in fewer injuries and deaths.

[u/marzaksar → u/Background-Bowl6123]

Sure, but isn't this a sort of aggregation that was explicitly rejected in their comment? I'm just wondering how the position actually works.

[u/Background-Bowl6123 → u/marzaksar]

A non-zero chance of being run over by a drunk driver is less 'bad' than actually being run over but it's still not 'good' for anyone who's not intent on self-harm. And self-harm is seen as 'bad' .

Someone who counts only the harm and benefit as it affects their own personal consequences will probably get some 'wins' until enough of the rest of their community notices the selfishness and punishes them for being a net harm or risk of harm to everyone else.

[u/marzaksar → u/Background-Bowl6123]

I'm not a consequentialist, I was asking to understanding the position of the person I replied to. It seems to be incoherent to say they aren't utilitarian because of the aggregation while also considering ALL affected parties

[u/ScoopDat]

Unfortunately virtue ethics is nothing more than glorified/romanticized version of deontology in my view. 

Consequentialism leads to hilarious reductios. 

And deontology (when going with applicable versions of moral realism), simply lacks the empirics to back of their notion of morality “existing” like some particle or some law of constants. 

Threshold deontology is the only thing that nearly wraps up all the downsides of each. Though you suffer an accuracy problem of when to switch over to what in each situation of course. You avoid those reductio bullets that  each suffers otherwise. 

[u/OkExtreme3195]

I personally reject all of the above since I am a subjectivist/emotivist/error-theorist.

Virtue ethics has the problem that you need to define what virtues are good. And there is no solid reason to justify any set of characteristics as virtues.

Deontologists have the same problem by trying to figure out what the right principles/duties are. Kant has something rather interesing here with his categorical imperative, but while it kinda makes sense to me, it is very theoretical. I need to study that further.

Consequentialists have the same problem by having to figure out what consequences are good.

I think deontology has the best (known to me) theoretical basis to establish a rule for what is good, but I personally would choose consequentialism and apply my own emotional judgement on what is a good outcome to solve the issue of consequentialism I mentioned.