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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Ok, replace Nazi soldier asking for whether there are jews in the attic with your Nazi neighbour asking for whether you have a potato peeler they could borrow because theirs broke.

I suspect deontologists would still not see lying to not giving your Nazi neighbour a potato peeler as just as good a trade compared to lying to not let Nazis capture a Jewish family.

Consider two worlds, identical except in world A Alice refuses to reveal whether she is hiding Jews in the attic/Bob gives his Nazi neighbour a peeler while in B it's the other way around where Alice reveals the location of the Jews while Bob refuses the potato peeler. According to the deontologist's position both these worlds are equally good/bad, but I suspect very few people would in reality see it that way.

This reads like a low IQ straw-man (deontoligists are so dumn herp a derp a derp). Please explain the intervening steps in your logic because I'm not seeing it.

We've had this argument way back before Nazis and Jews, when it was "if the Roman soldiers stop you to ask if you're a Christian during one of the persecutions, are you obliged to tell them the truth?" and indeed some of the Fathers came down on the side of "lying is always wrong so yes you must tell the truth":

  1. But whether a lie be at some times useful, is a much greater and more concerning question. Whether, as above, it be a lie, when a person has no will to deceive, or even makes it his business that the person to whom he says a thing shall not be deceived although he did wish the thing itself which he uttered to be false, but this on purpose that he might cause a truth to be believed; whether, again, it be a lie when a person willingly utters even a truth for the purpose of deceiving; this may be doubted. But none doubts that it is a lie when a person willingly utters a falsehood for the purpose of deceiving: wherefore a false utterance put forth with will to deceive is manifestly a lie. But whether this alone be a lie, is another question. Meanwhile, taking this kind of lie, in which all agree, let us inquire, whether it be sometimes useful to utter a falsehood with will to deceive. They who think it is, advance testimonies to their opinion, by alleging the case of Sarah, who, when she had laughed, denied to the Angels that she laughed: of Jacob questioned by his father, and answering that he was the elder son Esau: likewise that of the Egyptian midwives, who to save the Hebrew infants from being slain at their birth, told a lie, and that with God's approbation and reward: and many such like instances they pick out, of lies told by persons whom you would not dare to blame, and so must own that it may sometimes be not only not blameworthy, but even praiseworthy to tell a lie. They add also a case with which to urge not only those who are devoted to the Divine Books, but all men and common sense, saying, Suppose a man should take refuge with you, who by your lie might be saved from death, would you not tell it? If a sick man should ask a question which it is not expedient that he should know, and might be more grievously afflicted even by your returning him no answer, will you venture either to tell the truth to the destruction of the man's life, or rather to hold your peace, than by a virtuous and merciful lie to be serviceable to his weak health? By these and such like arguments they think they most plentifully prove, that if occasion of doing good require, we may sometimes tell a lie.

It's very easy to plume yourself on virtue when the case is put as "I wouldn't tell the Nazis about the Jews in the attic, unlike you dumb deontologists"; show me your virtue when it's "of course I'm going to lie to save my neck". More practical, but the halo isn't as shiny there.

This is why casuistry. You guys did not invent hard cases and how to deal with real-world problems when they rub up against theory and principle.

You're arguing against a strawman of deontology. Do you seriously think any actual deontological system values all possible types of "helping nazis" as equally bad? In the comment you responded to @jfk mentioned a hierarchy of values, is it so hard to apply that same logic to different actions within the same category? Both lying and helping nazis are both "performing an action", so your assertion seems to be that they must therefore be of equal moral worth since there is at least one category containing both of them.

Once you start placing different values of different types of "helping nazis" you're back to consequentialism but with extra steps, for how do you decide what types of helping nazis are worse than others?

Consider a case where a Nazi soldier asks you for the passcode to a safe which contains some amount of money inside. The Nazi wants to take the money inside and use it for general Nazi purposes. You can lie and tell him you don't know the passcode in which case he won't get the money or give him the passcode by telling the truth. I think it is clearly worse to tell him the passcode if the safe contains $1 billion vs if the safe contains 50 cents plus a used chewing gum wrapper.

In the latter case it might very well be worth just giving the password instead of lying, but in the former case you really shouldn't do it.

How do you decide how much worse handing $1 billion to the Nazis is vs handing them 50 cents under a deontological system to see if the "badness" is more or less than telling the lie "I don't know the passcode to the safe" if not for some form of consequentialism?

See my comment here. Moral philosophies in general are consequentialist, in the sense that they do consider consequences.

Literally just google it and the top result says:

Deontology is usually contrasted with consequentialism (and both with virtue ethics). Whereas consequentialists maintain that the right action is determined solely by its consequences, deontologists deny this and hold that the right action is not determined solely by its consequences.

Consequentialism asserts consequences are all that matters. Disagreeing with that assertion doesn't mean ignoring consequences entirely, nor does considering consequences necessarily mean you cannot consider anything else.

You're familiar with timeless decision theory right? That's deontology, not consequentialism.

Moral theories tend to merge at the complex end imo. In practice a timeless decision theory supporter will not be commonly referred to as a deontologist, even though his theory is on the surface similar to the categorical imperative, with the law being less universal (eg, the action of lying is divided instead of being considered in whole, and allowed/ordered in the particular nazi cases).

The common understading of deontology is absolutism : “Absolutists assert that there are exceptionless moral rules or intrinsically wrong actions that are absolutely wrong and may never be performed, whatever the consequences. “

The TDT guy (for the record, close to my own position) can, and will, claim that his theory results in the best outcome (as opposed to doing your duty for duty’s sake), making him a consequentialist again, for real this time.

Have I been deontologing wrong this whole time? I didn't think deontologists were incapable of considering consequences, I thought they just also considered other things as well, like duty, rules, rights etc. The difference between a deontologist and a consequentialist, I thought, was that the consequentialist doesn't beat himself up for taking necessary but unfortunate actions.

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