What is ethics? Is this ethical, why?
By: Oliver Hu
Tags: Ethics, Morals

Notes on Deontological Ethics

[Deontological Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/)

For the essence of consequentialism is still present in such positions: an action would be right only insofar as it maximizes these Good-making states of affairs being caused to exist.

The two criticisms pertinent here are that consequentialism is, on the one hand, overly demanding, and, on the other hand, that it is not demanding enough:

* for consequentialists, there is no realm of moral permissions, no realm of going beyond one’s moral duty (supererogation), no realm of moral indifference. All acts are seemingly either required or forbidden. And there also seems to be no space for the consequentialist in which to show partiality to one’s own projects or to one’s family, friends, and countrymen, leading some critics of consequentialism to deem it a profoundly alienating and perhaps self-effacing moral theory

* On the other hand, consequentialism is also criticized for what it seemingly permits. It seemingly demands (and thus, of course, permits) that in certain circumstances innocents be killed, beaten, lied to, or deprived of material goods to produce greater benefits for others. Consequences — and only consequences — can conceivably justify *any* kind of act, for it does not matter how harmful it is to some so long as it is more beneficial to others.

**A well-worn example** of this **over-permissiveness of consequentialism** is that of a case standardly called, Transplant. A surgeon has five patients dying of organ failure and one healthy patient whose organs can save the five. In the right circumstances, surgeon will be permitted (and indeed required) by consequentialism to kill the healthy patient to obtain his organs, assuming there are no relevant consequences other than the saving of the five and the death of the one. Likewise, consequentialism will permit (in a case that we shall call, Fat Man) that a fat man be pushed in front of a runaway trolley if his being crushed by the trolley will halt its advance towards five workers trapped on the track. We shall return to these examples later on.

The most familiar forms of deontology, and also the forms presenting the greatest contrast to consequentialism, hold that some choices cannot be justified by their effects — that no matter how morally good their consequences, some choices are morally forbidden

In this sense, for such deontologists, **the Right is said to have priority over the Good**. If an act is not in accord with the Right, it may not be undertaken, no matter the Good that it might produce (including even a Good consisting of acts in accordance with the Right).

### Agent-centered Deontological Theories

An agent-relative reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons; **. An agent-relative reason is so-called because it is a reason relative to the agent whose reason it is; it need not (although it may) constitute a reason for anyone else.** Thus, an agent-relative *obligation* is an obligation for a particular agent to take or refrain from taking some action; and because it is agent-relative, the obligation does not necessarily give anyone else a reason to support that action. Each parent, for example, is commonly thought to have such special obligations to his/her child, obligations not shared by anyone else. Likewise, an agent-relative *permission* is a permission for some agent to do some act even though others may not be permitted to aid that agent in the doing of his permitted action. Each parent, to revert to the same example, is commonly thought to be permitted (at the least) to save his own child even at the cost of not saving two other children to whom he has no special relation

At the heart of agent-centered theories (with their agent-relative reasons) is the idea of agency. The moral plausibility of agent-centered theories is rooted here. **The idea is that morality is intensely personal, in the sense that we are each enjoined to keep our own moral house in order**. Our categorical obligations are not to focus on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus of our categorical obligations is to **keep our own agency free of moral taint**.

Agent-centered theories famously divide between those that emphasize the **role of intention** or other **mental states** in constituting the morally important **kind of agency**, and those that emphasize the **actions of agents** as playing such a role.

On the first of these three agent-relative views, it is most commonly asserted that it is our intended ends and intended means that most crucially define our agency. If we intend something bad as an end, or even as a means to some more beneficent end, we are said to have “set ourselves at evil,” something we are categorically forbidden to do.

Three items usefully contrasted with such intentions are *belief*, *risk*, and *cause*.

If we predict that an act of ours will result in evil, such prediction is a **cognitive state** (of belief); it is **not a conative state of intention** to bring about such a result, either as an end in itself or as a means to some other end. In this case, our agency is involved only to the extent that we have shown ourselves as being willing to tolerate evil results flowing from our acts; but we have not set out to achieve such evil by our acts.

Likewise, a risking and/or causing of some evil result is distinct from any intention to achieve it. We can intend such a result, and we can even execute such an intention so that it becomes a trying, without in fact either causing or even risking it. Also, we can cause or risk such results without intending them.

For example, we can intend to kill and even try to kill someone without killing him; and we can kill him without intending or trying to kill him, as when we kill accidentally. Intending thus does not collapse into risking, causing, or predicting; and on the version of agent-centered deontology here considered, it is intending (or perhaps trying) alone that marks the involvement of our agency in a way so as to bring agent-centered obligations and permissions into play

The second kind of agent-centered deontology is one **focused on actions, not mental states**. Such a view can concede that all human actions must originate with some kind of mental state, often styled a volition or a willing; such a view can even concede that volitions or willings are an intention of a certain kind.

First, *causings* of evils like deaths of innocents are commonly distinguished from *omissions* to prevent such deaths.

Second, *causings* are distinguished from *allowings*. In a narrow sense of the word we will here stipulate, one *allows* a death to occur when: (1) one’s action merely removes a defense the victim otherwise would have had against death; and (2) such removal returns the victim to some morally appropriate baseline (Kamm 1994, 1996; MacMahan 2003). **Thus, mercy-killings, or euthanasia, are outside of our deontological obligations (and thus eligible for justification by good consequences)** so long as one’s act: (1) only removes a defense against death that the agent herself had earlier provided, such as disconnecting medical equipment that is keeping the patient alive when that disconnecting is done by the medical personnel that attached the patient to the equipment originally; and (2) the equipment could justifiably have been hooked up to another patient, where it could do some good, had the doctors known at the time of connection what they know at the time of disconnection.

Third, one is said not to *cause* an evil such as a death when one’s acts merely *enable* (or aid) some other agent to cause such evil (Hart and Honore 1985). Thus, one is not categorically forbidden to drive the terrorists to where they can kill the policeman (if the alternative is death of one’s family), even though one would be categorically forbidden to kill the policeman oneself (even where the alternative is death of one’s family) (Moore 2008). Nor is one categorically forbidden to select which of a group of villagers shall be unjustly executed by another who is pursuing his own purposes (Williams 1973).

Fourth, one is said not to *cause* an evil such as a death when one merely redirects a presently existing threat to many so that it now threatens only one (or a few) (Thomson 1985). **In the time-honored example of the run-away trolley (Trolley), one may turn a trolley so that it runs over one trapped workman so as to save five workmen trapped on the other track, even though it is not permissible for an agent to have initiated the movement of the trolley towards the one to save five** (Foot 1967; Thomson 1985).

Fifth, our agency is said not to be involved in mere *accelerations* of evils about to happen anyway, as opposed to *causing* such evils by doing acts necessary for such evils to occur (G. Williams 1961; Brody 1996). Thus, when a victim is about to fall to his death anyway, dragging a rescuer with him too, the rescuer may cut the rope connecting them. Rescuer is accelerating, but not causing, the death that was about to occur anyway.

All of these last five distinctions have been suggested to be part and parcel of another centuries-old Catholic doctrine, that of the doctrine of doing and allowing (see the entry on [doing vs. allowing harm](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doing-allowing/) ) (Moore 2008; Kamm 1994; Foot 1967; Quinn 1989). According to this doctrine, one may not *cause* death, for that would be a killing, a “doing;” but one may fail to prevent death, allow (in the narrow sense) death to occur, enable another to cause death, redirect a life-threatening item from many to one, or accelerate a death about to happen anyway, if good enough consequences are in the offing. As with the Doctrine of Double Effect, how plausible one finds these applications of the doctrine of doing and allowing will determine how plausible one finds this cause-based view of human agency.

**A third kind of agent-centered deontology can be obtained by simply conjoining the other two agent-centered views (Hurd 1994). This view would be that agency in the relevant sense requires both intending and causing (i.e., acting) (Moore 2008)**. On this view, our agent-relative obligations do not focus on causings or intentions separately; rather, the content of such obligations is focused on *intended causings*. For example, our deontological obligation with respect to human life is neither an obligation not to kill nor an obligation not to intend to kill; rather, **it is an obligation not to *murder*, that is, to kill in execution of an intention to kill**.

### Patient-Centered Deontological Theories

A second group of deontological moral theories can be classified, as *patient*-centered, as distinguished from the *agent*-centered version of deontology just considered. These theories are **rights-based rather than duty-based**.

All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people’s rights. An illustrative version posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one’s consent. More specifically, this version of patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the *using* of another’s body, labor, and talent without the latter’s consent.

The injunction against using arguably accounts for these contrasting reactions. After all, in each example, one life is sacrificed to save five. Yet there appears to be a difference in the means through which the net four lives are saved. In Transplant (and Fat Man), the doomed person is used to benefit the others. They could not be saved in the absence of his body. In Trolley, on the other hand, the doomed victim **is not used**. The workers would be saved whether or not he is present on the second track.

Patient-centered deontologists handle differently other stock examples of the agent-centered deontologist. Take the acceleration cases as an example. When all will die in a lifeboat unless one is killed and eaten; when Siamese twins are conjoined such that both will die unless the organs of one are given to the other via an operation that kills the first; when all of a group of soldiers will die unless the body of one is used to hold down the enemy barbed wire, allowing the rest to save themselves; when a group of villagers will all be shot by a blood-thirsty tyrant unless they select one of their numbers to slake the tyrants lust for death — in all such cases, the causing/accelerating-distinguishing agent-centered deontologists would permit the killing but the usings-focused patient-centered deontologist would not. (For the latter, all killings are merely accelerations of death.)