[This post is my attempt to explain why EAs who value the practical protections offered by deontic constraints neednât take that to undermine their belief in consequentialism as a moral theory. People saying âwe need more deontologyâ could be clearer about whether theyâre just talking about endorsing certain commonsense practical norms, or about deontological justifications of those norms. I think EA has always acknowledged the importance of good practical norms, and those who point to widespread utilitarian beliefs as somehow in tension with this are (IMO) making the mistake I diagnose below.]
Distinguish practical norms from the theoretical question of what justifies them.
Hypothesis: many are drawn to deontology as a result of conflating these two. People sensibly want to endorse good practical norms like RɪɢĘá´s (Donât violate rights, even if you think itâs for the best). And they assume that this commits them to a deontological theory of why thatâs a good norm. But that assumption is mistaken. No such theoretical commitment is required.
After explaining why this is so, Iâll introduce a conceptually simple alternativeâdeontic fictionalismâfor those who find two-level consequentialism hard to fathom.
[Image caption: Why not have your cake and eat it too?]
Background: Norm content vs justification
The distinction between a theoryâs criterion (or moral goals) and its recommended decision procedure is central to consequentialism. But others donât always realize this.[1] Much confusion in moral theory stems from people conflating the practical question of whether to endorse a norm against X with the theoretical question of whether agents have non-instrumental reason to avoid doing X. These are different questions!
Utilitarians and moderate deontologists alike agree that (i) you shouldnât go around carving people up for their organs, and (ii) there are conceivable exceptions to this rule. Thereâs no surface-level practical difference in this respect.[2] The difference is not in whether itâs wrong to kill, but why.
Consider again the norm RɪɢĘá´s (Donât violate rights, even if you think itâs for the best).
RɪɢĘá´s is an excellent practical norm! I endorse it wholeheartedly. (One can imagine exceptions to it, of course, as any moderate deontologist will agree; but that doesnât undermine its status as a good norm, well worth inculcating in ourselves and others.)
Now, I think the justification for RɪɢĘá´s is ultimately instrumental: that respecting rights seems likely to result in better actions, yielding better outcomes, than would disregarding them. I think thatâs a better justification than what deontologists offer, which is why I reject deontology. The dispute between the theories is not so much about what norms to embrace, but why.
People sometimes get confused at this point, since RɪɢĘá´s doesnât look, on its face, like a âutilitarianâ norm or decision procedure. The content of the norm makes no approving references to promoting value. But thatâs fine, because moral theories arenât accounts of what norms to embrace. Theyâre accounts of fundamental (non-instrumental) reasons (including reasons to embrace some norms over others). Utilitarianism, in particular, fundamentally tells us to promote value. So if embracing RɪɢĘá´s promotes value, then utilitarianism straightforwardly implies that we should embrace RɪɢĘá´s.
Moreover, this isnât even âself-effacingâ (which is something else that people often seem to get confused about).[3] Acting well is compatible with accurately appreciating that the reasons to embrace RɪɢĘá´s are instrumental rather than non-instrumental.[4] So we can perfectly well maintain a utilitarian perspective on the world, and deliberately follow utilitarian reasonsâaiming to maximize expected valueâwhile embracing RɪɢĘá´s. This is all perfectly coherent, so long as we appreciate that following RɪɢĘá´s has higher expected value than blindly following naĂŻve calculations. Utilitarian reasons then direct us to let RɪɢĘá´s constrain our actions. (And no, this still isnât rule utilitarianism.)
Deontic Fictionalism
Some Christian philosophers are religious fictionalists: granting that their religion isnât literally true, but embracing its rituals and practices nonetheless. When they affirm their churchâs dogmas, thereâs an implicit âaccording to the fictionâ qualifier attached. They donât mean this in a dismissive way, though. They think itâs a good and worthwhile pretense to engage in, perhaps for social or emotional reasons.
Itâs interesting to consider whether some who are initially drawn to âcommonsenseâ deontology might be satisfied with deontic fictionalism: granting that the theoretical claims of deontology are misguided, but endorsing the practical norms. If it makes it easier for them to maintain motivation, then engaging in deontological pretenseâbehaving as if the theory were trueâmight turn out to be good and worthwhile. Thatâs something you can do without getting stuck with deontologyâs theoretical baggage.
On this picture, one can even use moral language like ârightâ and âwrongâ in a way that tracks deontological verdicts: âItâs wrong to push the guy in front of the trolley, even if it would save more lives.â But thereâs an implicit âaccording to the fiction of deontologyâ qualifier attached. Youâre well aware that, in principle, thereâs always most reason to do whatâs best, and to hope for the best outcome. But youâre now using moral language to do something other than relate the reasons-facts. Maybe youâre instead using it to express support for practical norms like RɪɢĘá´s. Indeed, given how poorly others mark the distinctions explained in this post, it may even be that this non-literal mode of moral communication is less misleading for many audiences than the alternative of affirming your literal theoretical beliefs (which they might misinterpret as support for naĂŻve utilitarian practical norms).
Three Options
Compare three different ways one might respond to the instrumental reasons to embrace RɪɢĘá´s and related practical norms:
(1) Prudent (two-level) consequentialism, where one accepts RɪɢĘá´s and related norms as instrumentally good heuristics, while denying both (i) that these norms specify non-instrumental reasons, and (ii) that such non-instrumental reasons are necessary to justify following the norms.
(2) Deontic fictionalism, where one accepts RɪɢĘá´s and related norms due to endorsing (on instrumental grounds) behaving as if deontology[5] were true, without any commitment to the literal truth of deontological theory.
(3) Deontology (via self-effacing consequentialism), where instrumental reasons motivate one to (somehow) believe that deontology is trueâor to convince others to believe it.
I personally think #1 is the ideal way to go. But if some find it difficult to grasp, option #2 may prove a conceptually simpler alternative that still maintains epistemic integrity (for those who agree that the theoretical case for consequentialism is strong).
Given these alternatives, it doesnât seem plausible to me that thereâs any practical reason to prefer #3. Whenever people suggest practical reasons to embrace deontological moral theories, one may counter with deontic fictionalism instead. (And when theyâre ready to take off the training wheels, they can shift to prudent consequentialism: dropping the pretense entirely while keeping on following good norms like RɪɢĘá´s, just for the actually-right reasons.)
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See, e.g., post-FTX anti-utilitarian takes on philosophy twitter, as represented in meme form here.
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One can carefully engineer hypothetical cases to pry the two views apart. But even then, I argued, utilitarians will typically see grounds to criticize the agent (e.g. for recklessness) even if they approve of the act in retrospect, given that it turned out for the best. And, seriously, what kind of person doesnât approve of things turning out for the best? Not a good one, Iâd suggest.
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Itâs always possible for a decent moral view to be self-effacing, because having true beliefs isnât the most important thing in the world. If an evil demon said âAgree to moral brainwashing or Iâll torture everyone for eternity,â then youâd obviously better agree to the brainwashing. But thatâs not whatâs going on here. Absent evil demons, we donât need false moral beliefs.
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Sometimes people say things which seem to imply that instrumental reasons donât count. (âUtilitarians have no in principle objection to slavery!â What, you mean the suffering of the slaves is not enough? âBut it could in principle be outweighed by other considerations!â Thatâs true of moderate deontologists, too. âWell, okay, but it just makes all the difference if some of the outweighed reasons were non-instrumentalâŚâ Why? Iâm starting to worry that youâre really not giving enough weight to the suffering of the slavesâŚ) So itâs maybe worth being explicit at this point that all this talk of âinstrumental reasonsâ is shorthand for the most obviously important reasons that there are, namely those to save and improve lives.
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Ideally, in a more beneficentric form than one usually finds in the wild.
I love this pieceâsuper well argued. Your argument applies to virtue ethics too if you replace âRIGHTSâ with any virtue claimed to be intrinsically valuable by the virtue ethicist.
Good point, and a nice addition to the fictionalist reasoning. I would love to see a âfictionalist virtue ethicsâ in addition to a fictionalist deontology.
Richardâexcellent postâitâs clear, compelling, reasonable, and actionable.
A key question concerning your three options is more psychological than philosophical: which kinds of people, with which cognitive, personality, and moral traits, should adopt options 1, 2, or 3, in terms of keeping them from using bad utilitarian reasoning (e.g. self-serving, biased, unempirical, convenient moral reasoning) that violates other peopleâs ârightsâ or deters them from pursuing âvirtuesâ? (Just to be clear, I endorse utilitarianism as a a normative ethical theory; the question here is just how to weave some good norms and rules into our prescriptive morality that we use ourselves in day-to-day life, and promote to others.)
I suspect that many deontologists assume that most people canât handle options 1 or 2, in the sense that those options wouldnât reliably protect us against rights-violating faulty-utilitarian reasoning of the sort that humans evolved to be very good at (according to the âargumentative theory of reasoningâ from Huge Mercier). So these deontologists see it as their job to promote option 3 as if itâs trueâeven though they might, in their heart of hearts, know that theyâre really promoting option 2. However, I suspect that, following science, Nietzsche, secularism, and the collapse of traditional theological and metaphysical bases for deontology, lots of intelligent people simply canât buy into option 3 any more. So, option-3-style arguments just canât carry as much weight as they used to, and canât motivate rule-like constraints on faulty-utilitarian reasoning.
Conversely, if most people adopt option 1 (prudent two-level consequentialism), I think they might be too tempted to engage in self-serving faulty-utilitarian reasoning. (Arguably this is what we saw with the FTX debacleââitâs OK to steal clientsâ crypto deposits if itâs for the greater goodâ). However, thatâs an empirical question, and Iâm open to updating.
My hunch is that for most people most of the time, option 2 (deontic fictionalism) strikes the best balance between evidence-based consequentialism and fairly strong guide-rails against self-serving faulty-utilitarian reasoning. So, I think itâs worth developing further as a sort of psychologically pragmatic meta-ethics that could work pretty well for our species, given human nature.
Thanks! Yes, agreed itâs an open empirical question how well people (in general, or particular individuals) can pull off the specified options.
I wouldnât be terribly surprised if something like (2) turned out to be best for most people most of the time. But I guess Iâm sufficiently Aristotelian to think that if weâre raised since childhood to abide by good norms, later learning that theyâre instrumentally justified shouldnât really undermine them that much. (They certainly havenât for meâmy wife finds it funny how strongly averse I am to any kind of dishonesty, âdespiteâ my utilitarian beliefs!)
Simple and useful, thanks.
What about the deontologist who says âI canât agree to moral brainwashing because that would involve being complicit in an objective wrongâ? I donât see how this position reduces to or implies the belief that âhaving true beliefs [is] the most important thing in the worldâ.
Or by âdecent moral viewâ did you mean âdecent consequentialist moral viewâ?
Avoiding complicity (whatever that amounts to) also isnât literally the most important thing in the world. Note that even most deontologists reject âthough the heavens fallâ absolutism.