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Deontological Ethics

The word deontology derives from the Greek words for duty ( deon ) and science (or study) of ( logos ). In contemporary moral philosophy, deontology is one of those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required, forbidden, or permitted. In other words, deontology falls within the domain of moral theories that guide and assess our choices of what we ought to do (deontic theories), in contrast to those that guide and assess what kind of person we are and should be (aretaic [virtue] theories). And within the domain of moral theories that assess our choices, deontologists—those who subscribe to deontological theories of morality—stand in opposition to consequentialists .

1. Deontology’s Foil: Consequentialism

2.1 agent-centered deontological theories, 2.2 patient-centered deontological theories, 2.3 contractualist deontological theories, 2.4 deontological theories and kant, 3. the advantages of deontological theories, 4. the weaknesses of deontological theories, 5.1 making no concessions to consequentialism: a purely deontological rationality, 5.2 making no concessions to deontology: a purely consequentialist rationality, 6. deontology and uncertainty about outcomes, 7. deontological theories and metaethics, other internet resources, related entries.

Because deontological theories are best understood in contrast to consequentialist ones, a brief look at consequentialism and a survey of the problems with it that motivate its deontological opponents, provides a helpful prelude to taking up deontological theories themselves. Consequentialists hold that choices—acts and/or intentions—are to be morally assessed solely by the states of affairs they bring about. Consequentialists thus must specify initially the states of affairs that are intrinsically valuable—often called, collectively, “the Good.” They then are in a position to assert that whatever choices increase the Good, that is, bring about more of it, are the choices that it is morally right to make and to execute. (The Good in that sense is said to be prior to “the Right.”)

Consequentialists can and do differ widely in terms of specifying the Good. Some consequentialists are monists about the Good. Utilitarians, for example, identify the Good with pleasure, happiness, desire satisfaction, or “welfare” in some other sense. Other consequentialists are pluralists regarding the Good. Some of such pluralists believe that how the Good is distributed among persons (or all sentient beings) is itself partly constitutive of the Good, whereas conventional utilitarians merely add or average each person’s share of the Good to achieve the Good’s maximization.

Moreover, there are some consequentialists who hold that the doing or refraining from doing, of certain kinds of acts are themselves intrinsically valuable states of affairs constitutive of the Good. An example of this is the positing of rights not being violated, or duties being kept, as part of the Good to be maximized—the so-called “utilitarianism of rights” (Nozick 1974).

None of these pluralist positions erase the difference between consequentialism and deontology. 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.

However much consequentialists differ about what the Good consists in, they all agree that the morally right choices are those that increase (either directly or indirectly) the Good. Moreover, consequentialists generally agree that the Good is “agent-neutral” (Parfit 1984; Nagel 1986). That is, valuable states of affairs are states of affairs that all agents have reason to achieve without regard to whether such states of affairs are achieved through the exercise of one’s own agency or not.

Consequentialism is frequently criticized on a number of grounds. Two of these are particularly apt for revealing the temptations motivating the alternative approach to deontic ethics that is deontology. 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. The criticism regarding extreme demandingness runs like this: 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 (Williams 1973).

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.

Consequentialists are of course not bereft of replies to these two criticisms. Some retreat from maximizing the Good to “satisficing”—that is, making the achievement of only a certain level of the Good mandatory (Slote 1984). This move opens up some space for personal projects and relationships, as well as a realm of the morally permissible. It is not clear, however, that satisficing is adequately motivated, except to avoid the problems of maximizing. Nor is it clear that the level of mandatory satisficing can be nonarbitrarily specified, or that satisficing will not require deontological constraints to protect satisficers from maximizers.

Another move is to introduce a positive/negative duty distinction within consequentialism. On this view, our (negative) duty is not to make the world worse by actions having bad consequences; lacking is a corresponding (positive) duty to make the world better by actions having good consequences (Bentham 1789 (1948); Quinton 2007). We thus have a consequentialist duty not to kill the one in Transplant or in Fat Man; and there is no counterbalancing duty to save five that overrides this. Yet as with the satisficing move, it is unclear how a consistent consequentialist can motivate this restriction on all-out optimization of the Good.

Yet another idea popular with consequentialists is to move from consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses acts to consequentialism as a theory that directly assesses rules —or character-trait inculcation—and assesses acts only indirectly by reference to such rules (or character-traits) (Alexander 1985). Its proponents contend that indirect consequentialism can avoid the criticisms of direct (act) consequentialism because it will not legitimate egregious violations of ordinary moral standards—e.g., the killing of the innocent to bring about some better state of affairs—nor will it be overly demanding and thus alienating each of us from our own projects.

The relevance here of these defensive maneuvers by consequentialists is their common attempt to mimic the intuitively plausible aspects of a non-consequentialist, deontological approach to ethics. For as we shall now explore, the strengths of deontological approaches lie: (1) in their categorical prohibition of actions like the killing of innocents, even when good consequences are in the offing; and (2) in their permission to each of us to pursue our own projects free of any constant demand that we shape those projects so as to make everyone else well off.

2. Deontological Theories

Having now briefly taken a look at deontologists’ foil, consequentialist theories of right action, we turn now to examine deontological theories. In contrast to consequentialist theories, deontological theories judge the morality of choices by criteria different from the states of affairs those choices bring about. 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. On such familiar deontological accounts of morality, agents cannot make certain wrongful choices even if by doing so the number of those exact kinds of wrongful choices will be minimized (because other agents will be prevented from engaging in similar wrongful choices). For such deontologists, what makes a choice right is its conformity with a moral norm. Such norms are to be simply obeyed by each moral agent; such norm-keepings are not to be maximized by each agent. 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).

Analogously, deontologists typically supplement non-consequentialist obligations with non-consequentialist permissions (Scheffler 1982). That is, certain actions can be right even though not maximizing of good consequences, for the rightness of such actions consists in their instantiating certain norms (here, of permission and not of obligation). Such actions are permitted, not just in the weak sense that there is no obligation not to do them, but also in the strong sense that one is permitted to do them even though they are productive of less good consequences than their alternatives (Moore 2008). Such strongly permitted actions include actions one is obligated to do, but (importantly) also included are actions one is not obligated to do. It is this last feature of such actions that warrants their separate mention for deontologists.

The most traditional mode of taxonomizing deontological theories is to divide them between agent-centered versus victim-centered (or “patient-centered”) theories (Scheffler 1988; Kamm 2007). Consider first agent-centered deontological theories. According to agent-centered theories, we each have both permissions and obligations that give us agent-relative reasons for action. An agent-relative reason is an objective reason, just as are agent neutral reasons; neither is to be confused with either the relativistic reasons of a relativist meta-ethics, nor with the subjective reasons that form the nerve of psychological explanations of human action (Nagel 1986). 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. Agent-centered theories and the agent-relative reasons on which they are based not only enjoin each of us to do or not to do certain things; they also instruct me to treat my friends, my family, my promisees in certain ways because they are mine , even if by neglecting them I could do more for others’ friends, families, and promisees.

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.

Each agent’s distinctive moral concern with his/her own agency puts some pressure on agent-centered theories to clarify how and when our agency is or is not involved in various situations. 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. There are also agent-centered theories that emphasize both intentions and actions equally in constituting the morally relevant agency of persons.

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. Such intentions mark out what it is we set out to achieve through our actions. 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 (Aquinas Summa Theologica ).

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. (It is, however, true that we must believe we are risking the result to some extent, however minimal, for the result to be what we intend to bring about by our act.) 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.

Deontologists of this stripe are committed to something like the doctrine of double effect, a long-established doctrine of Catholic theology (Woodward 2001). The Doctrine in its most familiar form asserts that we are categorically forbidden to intend evils such as killing the innocent or torturing others, even though doing such acts would minimize the doing of like acts by others (or even ourselves) in the future. By contrast, if we only risk, cause, or predict that our acts will have consequences making them acts of killing or of torture, then we might be able to justify the doing of such acts by the killing/torture-minimizing consequences of such actions. Whether such distinctions are plausible is standardly taken to measure the plausibility of an intention-focused version of the agent-centered version of deontology.

There are other versions of mental-state focused agent relativity that do not focus on intentions (Hurd 1994). Some of these versions focus on predictive belief as much as on intention (at least when the belief is of a high degree of certainty). Other versions focus on intended ends (“motives”) alone. Still others focus on the deliberative processes that precede the formation of intentions, so that even to contemplate the doing of an evil act impermissibly invokes our agency (Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979). But intention-focused versions are the most familiar versions of so-called “inner wickedness” versions of agent-centered deontology.

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 (Moore 1993, Ch. 6). Indeed, such source of human actions in willing is what plausibly connects actions to the agency that is of moral concern on the agent-centered version of deontology. Yet to will the movement of a finger on a trigger is distinct from an intention to kill a person by that finger movement. The act view of agency is thus distinct from the intentions (or other mental state) view of agency.

On this view, our agent-relative obligations and permissions have as their content certain kinds of actions: we are obligated not to kill innocents for example. The killing of an innocent of course requires that there be a death of such innocent, but there is no agency involved in mere events such as deaths. Needed for there to be a killing are two other items. One we remarked on before: the action of the putative agent must have its source in a willing. But the other maker of agency here is more interesting for present purposes: the willing must cause the death of the innocent for an act to be a killing of such innocent. Much (on this view) is loaded into the requirement of causation.

First, causings of evils like deaths of innocents are commonly distinguished from omissions to prevent such deaths. Holding a baby’s head under water until it drowns is a killing; seeing a baby lying face down in a puddle and doing nothing to save it when one could do so easily is a failure to prevent its death. Our categorical obligations are usually negative in content: we are not to kill the baby. We may have an obligation to save it, but this will not be an agent-relative obligation, on the view here considered, unless we have some special relationship to the baby.

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 ) (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.

By requiring both intention and causings to constitute human agency, this third view avoids the seeming overbreadth of our obligations if either intention or action alone marked such agency. Suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to do some action such as kill an innocent –is that obligation breached by a merely negligent killing, so that we deserve the serious blame of having breached such a categorical norm (Hurd 1994)? (Of course, one might be somewhat blameworthy on consequentialist grounds (Hurd 1995), or perhaps not blameworthy at all (Moore and Hurd 2011).) Alternatively, suppose our agent-relative obligation were not to intend to kill—does that mean we could not justify forming such an intention when good consequences would be the result, and when we are sure we cannot act so as to fulfill such intention (Hurd 1994)? If our agent-relative obligation is neither of these alone, but is rather, that we are not to kill in execution of an intention to kill, both such instances of seeming overbreadth in the reach of our obligations, are avoided.

Whichever of these three agent-centered theories one finds most plausible, they each suffer from some common problems. A fundamental worry is the moral unattractiveness of the focus on self that is the nerve of any agent-centered deontology. The importance of each person’s agency to himself/herself has a narcissistic flavor to it that seems unattractive to many. It seemingly justifies each of us keeping our own moral house in order even at the expense of the world becoming much worse. The worry is not that agent-centered deontology is just another form of egoism, according to which the content of one’s duties exclusively concern oneself; even so, the character of agent-relative duties is such that they betoken an emphasis on self that is unattractive in the same way that such emphasis makes egoism unattractive. Secondly, many find the distinctions invited by the Doctrine of Double Effect and the (five versions of the) Doctrine of Doing and Allowing to be either morally unattractive or conceptually incoherent. Such critics find the differences between intending/foreseeing, causing/omitting, causing/allowing, causing/enabling, causing/redirecting, causing/accelerating to be morally insignificant. (On act/omission (Rachels 1975); on doing/allowing (Kagan 1989); on intending/foreseeing (Bennett 1981; Davis 1984).) They urge, for example, that failing to prevent a death one could easily prevent is as blameworthy as causing a death, so that a morality that radically distinguishes the two is implausible. Alternatively, such critics urge on conceptual grounds that no clear distinctions can be drawn in these matters, that foreseeing with certainty is indistinguishable from intending (Bennett 1981), that omitting is one kind of causing (Schaffer 2012), and so forth.

Thirdly, there is the worry about “avoision.” By casting our categorical obligations in such agent-centered terms, one invites a kind of manipulation that is legalistic and Jesuitical, what Leo Katz dubs “avoision” (Katz 1996). Some think, for example, that one can transform a prohibited intention into a permissible predictive belief (and thus escape intention-focused forms of agent-relative duty) by the simple expedient of finding some other end with which to motivate the action in question.

Such criticisms of the agent-centered view of deontology drive most who accept their force away from deontology entirely and to some form of consequentialism. Alternatively, some of such critics are driven to patient-centered deontology, which we discuss immediately below. Yet still other of such critics attempt to articulate yet a fourth form of agent-centered deontology. This might be called the “control theory of agency.” On this view, our agency is invoked whenever our choices could have made a difference. This cuts across the intention/foresight, act/omission, and doing/allowing distinctions, because in all cases we controlled what happened through our choices (Frey 1995). Yet as an account of deontology, this seems worrisomely broad. It disallows consequentialist justifications whenever: we foresee the death of an innocent; we omit to save, where our saving would have made a difference and we knew it; where we remove a life-saving device, knowing the patient will die. If deontological norms are so broad in content as to cover all these foreseeings, omittings, and allowings, then good consequences (such as a net saving of innocent lives) are ineligible to justify them. This makes for a wildly counterintuitive deontology: surely I can, for example, justify not throwing the rope to one (and thus omit to save him) in order to save two others equally in need. This breadth of obligation also makes for a conflict-ridden deontology: by refusing to cabin our categorical obligations by the distinctions of the Doctrine of Double Effect and the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, situations of conflict between our stringent obligations proliferate in a troublesome way (Anscombe 1962).

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; and some versions purport to be quite agent-neutral in the reasons they give moral agents.

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. Such a core right is not to be confused with more discrete rights, such as the right against being killed, or being killed intentionally. It is a right against being used by another for the user’s or others’ benefit. More specifically, this version of patient-centered deontological theories proscribes the using of another’s body, labor, and talent without the latter’s consent. One finds this notion expressed, albeit in different ways, in the work of the so-called Right Libertarians (e.g., Robert Nozick, Eric Mack), but also in the works of the Left-Libertarians as well (e.g., Michael Otsuka, Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne) (Nozick 1974; Mack 2000; Steiner 1994; Vallentyne and Steiner 2000; Vallentyne, Steiner, and Otsuka 2005). On this view, the scope of strong moral duties—those that are the correlatives of others’ rights—is jurisdictionally limited and does not extend to resources for producing the Good that would not exist in the absence of those intruded upon—that is, their bodies, labors, and talents. In addition to the Libertarians, others whose views include this prohibition on using others include Quinn, Kamm, Alexander, Ferzan, Gauthier, and Walen (Quinn 1989; Kamm 1996; Alexander 2016; Alexander and Ferzan 2009, 2012; Gauthier 1986; Walen 2014, 2016).

Just as do agent-centered theories, so too do patient-centered theories (such as that forbidding the using of another) seek to explain common intuitions about such classic hypothetical cases as Trolley and Transplant (or Fat Man) (Thomson 1985). In Trolley, a runaway trolley will kill five workers unless diverted to a siding where it will kill one worker. Most people regard it as permissible and perhaps mandatory to switch the trolley to the siding. By contrast, in Transplant, where a surgeon can kill one healthy patient and transplant his organs to five dying patients, thereby saving their lives, the universal reaction is condemnation. (The same is by-and-large true in Fat Man, where the runaway trolley cannot be switched off the main track but can be stopped before reaching the five workers by pushing a fat man into its path, resulting in his death.)

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.

Notice, too, that this patient-centered libertarian version of deontology handles Trolley, Transplant et al. differently from how they are handled by agent-centered versions. The latter focus on the agent’s mental state or on whether the agent acted or caused the victim’s harm. The patient-centered theory focuses instead on whether the victim’s body, labor, or talents were the means by which the justifying results were produced. So one who realizes that by switching the trolley he can save five trapped workers and place only one in mortal danger—and that the danger to the latter is not the means by which the former will be saved—acts permissibly on the patient-centered view if he switches the trolley even if he does so with the intention of killing the one worker . Switching the trolley is causally sufficient to bring about the consequences that justify the act—the saving of net four workers— and it is so even in the absence of the one worker’s body, labor, or talents . (The five would be saved if the one escaped, was never on the track, or did not exist.) By contrast, on the intent and intended action versions of agent-centered theories, the one who switches the trolley does not act permissibly if he acts with the intention to harm the one worker. (This could be the case, for example, when the one who switches the trolley does so to kill the one whom he hates, only knowing that he will thereby save the other five workmen.) On the patient-centered version, if an act is otherwise morally justifiable by virtue of its balance of good and bad consequences, and the good consequences are achieved without the necessity of using anyone’s body, labor, or talents without that person’s consent as the means by which they are achieved, then it is morally immaterial (to the permissibility of the act but not to the culpability of the actor) whether someone undertakes that act with the intention to achieve its bad consequences. (This is true, of course, only so long as the concept of using does not implicitly refer to the intention of the user) (Alexander 2016). And in assessing the culpability of risky conduct, any good consequences must be discounted, not only by the perceived risk that they will not occur, but also by the perceived risk that they will be brought about by a using; for any such consequences, however good they otherwise are, cannot be considered in determining the permissibility and, derivatively, the culpability of acts (Alexander 2016).

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.)

The restriction of deontological duties to usings of another raises a sticky problem for those patient-centered deontological theories that are based on the core right against using: how can they account for the prima facie wrongs of killing, injuring, and so forth when done not to use others as means, but for some other purpose or for no purpose at all? The answer is that such patient-centered deontological constraints must be supplemented by consequentialist-derived moral norms to give an adequate account of morality. Killing, injuring, and so forth will usually be unjustifiable on a consequentialist calculus, especially if everyone’s interests are given equal regard. It is when killing and injuring are otherwise justifiable that the deontological constraint against using has its normative bite over and against what is already prohibited by consequentialism. (This narrowness of patient-centered deontology makes it counterintuitive to agent-centered deontologists, who regard prohibitions on killing of the innocent, etc., as paradigmatically deontological.)

The patient-centered version of deontology is aptly labeled libertarian in that it is not plausible to conceive of not being aided as being used by the one not aiding. Using is an action, not a failure to act. More generally, it is counterintuitive to many to think that any of us have a right to be aided. For if there were a strong (that is, enforceable or coercible) duty to aid others, such that, for example, A had a duty to aid X , Y , and Z ; and if A could more effectively aid X , Y , and Z by coercing B and C to aid them (as is their duty), then A would have a duty to “use” B and C in this way. For these reasons, any positive duties will not be rights-based ones on the view here considered; they will be consequentially-justified duties that can be trumped by the right not to be coerced to perform them.

Patient-centered deontological theories are often conceived in agent-neutral reason-giving terms. John has a right to the exclusive use of his body, labor, and talents, and such a right gives everyone equal reason to do actions respecting it. But this aspect of patient-centered deontological theories gives rise to a particularly virulent form of the so-called paradox of deontology (Scheffler 1988; Heuer 2011)—that if respecting Mary’s and Susan’s rights is as important morally as is protecting John’s rights, then why isn’t violating John’s rights permissible (or even obligatory) when doing so is necessary to protect Mary’s and Susan’s rights from being violated by others? Patient-centered deontological theories might arguably do better if they abandoned their pretense of being agent-neutral. They could conceive of rights as giving agent-relative reasons to each actor to refrain from doing actions violative of such rights. Take the core right against being used without one’s consent hypothesized earlier. The correlative duty is not to use another without his consent. If such duty is agent-relative, then the rights-based deontologist (no less than the agent-centered deontologist) has the conceptual resources to answer the paradox of deontology. That is, each of us may not use John, even when such using of John would minimize usings of John by others in the future. Such duties are personal to each of us in that we may not justify our violating such a duty now by preventing others’ similar violations in the future. Such personal duties are agent-centered in the sense that the agency of each person is central to the duties of each person, so that your using of another now cannot be traded off against other possible usings at other times by other people.

Patient-centered deontologies are thus arguably better construed to be agent-relative in the reasons they give. Even so construed, such deontologies join agent-centered deontologies in facing the moral (rather than the conceptual) versions of the paradox of deontology. For a critic of either form of deontology might respond to the categorical prohibition about using others as follows: If usings are bad, then are not more usings worse than fewer? And if so, then is it not odd to condemn acts that produce better states of affairs than would occur in their absence? Deontologists of either stripe can just deny that wrong acts on their account of wrongness can be translated into bad states of affairs. Two wrong acts are not “worse” than one. Such wrongs cannot be summed into anything of normative significance. After all, the victim of a rights-violating using may suffer less harm than others might have suffered had his rights not been violated; yet one cannot, without begging the question against deontological constraints, argue that therefore no constraint should block minimizing harm. That is, the deontologist might reject the comparability of states of affairs that involve violations and those that do not. Similarly, the deontologist may reject the comparability of states of affairs that involve more or fewer rights-violations (Brook 2007). The deontologist might attempt to back this assertion by relying upon the separateness of persons. Wrongs are only wrongs to persons. A wrong to Y and a wrong to Z cannot be added to make some greater wrong because there is no person who suffers this greater wrong (cf. Taurek 1977).

This solution to the paradox of deontology, may seem attractive, but it comes at a high cost. In Trolley, for example, where there is neither agency nor using in the relevant senses and thus no bar to switching, one cannot claim that it is better to switch and save the five. For if the deaths of the five cannot be summed, their deaths are not worse than the death of the one worker on the siding. Although there is no deontological bar to switching, neither is the saving of a net four lives a reason to switch. Worse yet, were the trolley heading for the one worker rather than the five, there would be no reason not to switch the trolley, so a net loss of four lives is no reason not to switch the trolley. If the numbers don’t count, they seemingly don’t count either way.

The problem of how to account for the significance of numbers without giving up deontology and adopting consequentialism, and without resurrecting the paradox of deontology, is one that a number of deontologists are now working to solve (e.g., Kamm 1996; Scanlon 2003; Otsuka 2006, Hsieh et al. 2006). Until it is solved, it will remain a huge thorn in the deontologist’s side.

Somewhat orthogonal to the distinction between agent-centered versus patient-centered deontological theories are contractualist deontological theories. Morally wrong acts are, on such accounts, those acts that would be forbidden by principles that people in a suitably described social contract would accept (e.g., Rawls 1971; Gauthier 1986), or that would be forbidden only by principles that such people could not “reasonably reject” (e.g., Scanlon 2003).

In deontology, as elsewhere in ethics, is not entirely clear whether a contractualist account is really normative as opposed to metaethical. If such account is a first order normative account, it is probably best construed as a patient-centered deontology; for the central obligation would be to do onto others only that to which they have consented. But so construed, modern contractualist accounts would share the problems that have long bedeviled historical social contract theories: how plausible is it that the “moral magic” of consent is the first principle of morality? And how much of what is commonly regarded as permissible to do to people can (in any realistic sense of the word) be said to be actually consented to by them, expressly or even implicitly?

In fact modern contractualisms look meta-ethical, and not normative. Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism, for example, which posits at its core those norms of action that we can justify to each other, is best construed as an ontological and epistemological account of moral notions. The same may be said of David Gauthier’s contractualism. Yet so construed, metaethical contractualism as a method for deriving moral norms does not necessarily lead to deontology as a first order ethics. John Harsanyi, for example, argues that parties to the social contract would choose utilitarianism over the principles John Rawls argues would be chosen (Harsanyi 1973). Nor is it clear that meta-ethical contractualism, when it does generate a deontological ethic, favors either an agent centered or a patient centered version of such an ethic.

If any philosopher is regarded as central to deontological moral theories, it is surely Immanuel Kant. Indeed, each of the branches of deontological ethics—the agent-centered, the patient-centered, and the contractualist—can lay claim to being Kantian.

The agent-centered deontologist can cite Kant’s locating the moral quality of acts in the principles or maxims on which the agent acts and not primarily in those acts’ effects on others. For Kant, the only thing unqualifiedly good is a good will (Kant 1785). The patient-centered deontologist can, of course, cite Kant’s injunction against using others as mere means to one’s end (Kant 1785). And the contractualist can cite, as Kant’s contractualist element, Kant’s insistence that the maxims on which one acts be capable of being willed as a universal law—willed by all rational agents (Kant 1785). (See generally the entry on Kant .)

Having canvassed the two main types of deontological theories (together with a contractualist variation of each), it is time to assess deontological morality more generally. On the one hand, deontological morality, in contrast to consequentialism, leaves space for agents to give special concern to their families, friends, and projects. At least that is so if the deontological morality contains no strong duty of general beneficence, or, if it does, it places a cap on that duty’s demands. Deontological morality, therefore, avoids the overly demanding and alienating aspects of consequentialism and accords more with conventional notions of our moral duties.

Likewise, deontological moralities, unlike most views of consequentialism, leave space for the supererogatory. A deontologist can do more that is morally praiseworthy than morality demands. A consequentialist cannot, assuming none of the consequentialists’ defensive maneuvers earlier referenced work. For such a pure or simple consequentialist, if one’s act is not morally demanded, it is morally wrong and forbidden. Whereas for the deontologist, there are acts that are neither morally wrong nor demanded, some—but only some—of which are morally praiseworthy.

As we have seen, deontological theories all possess the strong advantage of being able to account for strong, widely shared moral intuitions about our duties better than can consequentialism. The contrasting reactions to Trolley, Fat Man, Transplant, and other examples earlier given, are illustrative of this.

Finally, deontological theories, unlike consequentialist ones, have the potential for explaining why certain people have moral standing to complain about and hold to account those who breach moral duties. For the moral duties typically thought to be deontological in character—unlike, say, duties regarding the environment—are duties to particular people, not duties to bring about states of affairs that no particular person has an individual right to have realized.

On the other hand, deontological theories have their own weak spots. The most glaring one is the seeming irrationality of our having duties or permissions to make the world morally worse. Deontologists need their own, non-consequentialist model of rationality, one that is a viable alternative to the intuitively plausible, “act-to-produce-the-best-consequences” model of rationality that motivates consequentialist theories. Until this is done, deontology will always be paradoxical. There are several distinct hurdles that the deontologist must overcome.

One hurdle is to confront the apparent fact that careful reflection about the degrees of wrongdoing that are possible under any single moral norm does not make it easy to see deontological morality as consisting of general, canonically-formulated texts (conformity to which could then be said to constitute the distrinct form of practical rationality unique to deontological ethics); rather, such apparently simple texts as, “thou shalt not murder,” look more like mere epistemic aids summarizing a much more nuanced and detailed (and thus less text-like) moral reality (Hurd and Moore forthcoming).

A second hurdle is to find an answer to the inevitable question of authority, assuming that there are such general texts. If it is rational to conform one’s behavior and one’s choices to certain general texts, as deontology claims, it is always in point to demand the reasons making such texts authoritative for one’s decisions. Deferring one’s own best judgment to the judgment enshrined in some text is always prima facie paradoxical (see the entry on authority ) and deontologists like everybody else need to justify such deference. Hopefully they can do so other than by reference to some person-like but omniscient Deity as the supposed source of such texts, because many deontologists cannot accept such theism (Moore 1995). Moreover, even for those with theistic commitments, they may prefer to join Kant’s insistence that ethics proceed from reason alone, even in a theistic world.

The third hurdle exists even if the first two are crossed adequately. This hurdle is to deal with the seeming demand of deontological ethics that on occasion one’s categorical obligations require one to preserve the purity of one’s own moral agency at the cost of having one’s actions make the world be in a morally worse state of affairs—at least, “worse” in the agent-neutral sense of the word used by consequentialists. Patient-centered versions of deontology cannot easily escape this problem, as we have shown. It is not even clear that they have the conceptual resources to make agency important enough to escape this moral paradox. Yet even agent-centered versions face this paradox; having the conceptual resources (of agency and agent-relative reasons) is not the same as making it plausible just how a secular, objective morality can allow each person’s agency to be so uniquely crucial to that person.

Moreover, it is crucial for deontologists to deal with the conflicts that seem to exist between certain duties, and between certain rights. For more information, please see the entry on moral dilemmas . Kant’s bold proclamation that “a conflict of duties is inconceivable” (Kant 1780, p. 25) is the conclusion wanted, but reasons for believing it are difficult to produce. The intending/foreseeing, doing/allowing, causing/aiding, and related distinctions certainly reduce potential conflicts for the agent-centered versions of deontology; whether they can totally eliminate such conflicts is a yet unresolved question.

One well known approach to deal with the possibility of conflict between deontological duties is to reduce the categorical force of such duties to that of only “ prima facie ” duties (Ross 1930, 1939). This idea is that conflict between merely prima facie duties is unproblematic so long as it does not infect what one is categorically obligated to do, which is what overall, concrete duties mandate. Like other softenings of the categorical force of deontological obligation we mention briefly below (threshold deontology, mixed views), the prima facie duty view is in some danger of collapsing into a kind of consequentialism. This depends on whether “ prima facie ” is read epistemically or not, and on (1) whether any good consequences are eligible to justify breach of prima facie duties; (2) whether only such consequences over some threshold can do so; or (3) whether only threatened breach of other deontological duties can do so.

Thirdly, there is the manipulability worry mentioned before with respect to agent-centered versions of deontology. To the extent potential conflict is eliminated by resort to the Doctrine of Double Effect, the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, and so forth (and it is not clear to what extent patient-centered versions rely on these doctrines and distinctions to mitigate potential conflict), then a potential for “avoision” is opened up. Such avoision is the manipulation of means (using omissions, foresight, risk, allowings, aidings, acceleratings, redirectings, etc.) to achieve permissibly what otherwise deontological morality would forbid (see Katz 1996). Avoision is an undesirable feature of any ethical system that allows such strategic manipulation of its doctrines.

Fourth, there is what might be called the paradox of relative stringency. There is an aura of paradox in asserting that all deontological duties are categorical—to be done no matter the consequences—and yet asserting that some of such duties are more stringent than others. A common thought is that “there cannot be degrees of wrongness with intrinsically wrong acts…” (Frey 1995, p. 78, n.3; also Hurka 2019). Yet relative stringency—“degrees of wrongness”—seems forced upon the deontologist by one if not two considerations. First, duties of differential stringency can be weighed against one another if there is conflict between them, so that a conflict-resolving, overall duty becomes possible if duties can be more or less stringent. Second, when we punish for the wrongs consisting in our violation of deontological duties, we (rightly) do not punish all violations equally. The greater the wrong, the greater the punishment deserved; and relative stringency of duty violated (or importance of rights) seems the best way of making sense of greater versus lesser wrongs (Hurd and Moore forthcoming).

Fifth, there are situations—unfortunately not all of them thought experiments—where compliance with deontological norms will bring about disastrous consequences. To take a stock example of much current discussion, suppose that unless A violates the deontological duty not to torture an innocent person ( B ), ten, or a thousand, or a million other innocent people will die because of a hidden nuclear device. If A is forbidden by deontological morality from torturing B , many would regard that as a reductio ad absurdum of deontology.

Deontologists have six possible ways of dealing with such “moral catastrophes” (although only two of these are very plausible). First, they can just bite the bullet and declare that sometimes doing what is morally right will have tragic results but that allowing such tragic results to occur is still the right thing to do. Complying with moral norms will surely be difficult on those occasions, but the moral norms apply nonetheless with full force, overriding all other considerations. We might call this the Kantian response, after Kant’s famous hyperbole: “Better the whole people should perish,” than that injustice be done (Kant 1780, p. 100). One might also call this the absolutist conception of deontology, because such a view maintains that conformity to norms has absolute force and not merely great weight.

This first response to “moral catastrophes,” which is to ignore them, might be further justified by denying that moral catastrophes, such as a million deaths, are really a million times more catastrophic than one death. This is the so-called “aggregation” problem, which we alluded to in section 2.2 in discussing the paradox of deontological constraints. John Taurek famously argued that it is a mistake to assume harms to two persons are twice as bad as a comparable harm to one person. For each of the two suffers only his own harm and not the harm of the other (Taurek 1977). Taurek’s argument can be employed to deny the existence of moral catastrophes and thus the worry about them that deontologists would otherwise have. Robert Nozick also stresses the separateness of persons and therefore urges that there is no entity that suffers double the harm when each of two persons is harmed (Nozick 1974). (Of course, Nozick, perhaps inconsistently, also acknowledges the existence of moral catastrophes.) Most deontologists reject Taurek’s radical conclusion that we need not be morally more obligated to avert harm to the many than to avert harm to the few; but they do accept the notion that harms should not be aggregated. Deontologists’ approaches to the nonaggregation problem when the choice is between saving the many and saving the few are: (1) save the many so as to acknowledge the importance of each of the extra persons; (2) conduct a weighted coin flip; (3) flip a coin; or (4) save anyone you want (a denial of moral catastrophes) (Broome 1998; Doggett 2013; Doucet 2013; Dougherty 2013; Halstead 2016: Henning 2015; Hirose 2007, 2015; Hsieh et al. 2006; Huseby 2011; Kamm 1993; Rasmussen 2012; Saunders 2009; Scanlon 2003; Suikkanen 2004; Timmerman 2004; Wasserman and Strudler 2003).

The second plausible response is for the deontologist to abandon Kantian absolutism for what is usually called “threshold deontology.” A threshold deontologist holds that deontological norms govern up to a point despite adverse consequences; but when the consequences become so dire that they cross the stipulated threshold, consequentialism takes over (Moore 1997, ch. 17). A may not torture B to save the lives of two others, but he may do so to save a thousand lives if the “threshold” is higher than two lives but lower than a thousand.

There are two varieties of threshold deontology that are worth distinguishing. On the simple version, there is some fixed threshold of awfulness beyond which morality’s categorical norms no longer have their overriding force. Such a threshold is fixed in the sense that it does not vary with the stringency of the categorical duty being violated. The alternative is what might be called “sliding scale threshold deontology.” On this version, the threshold varies in proportion to the degree of wrong being done—the wrongness of stepping on a snail has a lower threshold (over which the wrong can be justified) than does the wrong of stepping on a baby.

Threshold deontology (of either stripe) is an attempt to save deontological morality from the charge of fanaticism. It is similar to the “ prima facie duty” version of deontology developed to deal with the problem of conflicting duties, yet threshold deontology is usually interpreted with such a high threshold that it more closely mimics the outcomes reached by a “pure,” absolutist kind of deontology. Threshold deontology faces several theoretical difficulties. Foremost among them is giving a theoretically tenable account of the location of such a threshold, either absolutely or on a sliding scale (Alexander 2000; Ellis 1992; Moore 2019; Arneson 2019; Cole 2019; Alexander 2019). Why is the threshold for torture of the innocent at one thousand lives, say, as opposed to nine hundred or two thousand? Another problem is that whatever the threshold, as the dire consequences approach it, counter-intuitive results appear to follow. For example, it may be permissible, if we are one-life-at-risk short of the threshold, to pull one more person into danger who will then be saved, along with the others at risk, by killing an innocent person (Alexander 2000). Thirdly, there is some uncertainty about how one is to reason after the threshold has been reached: are we to calculate at the margin on straight consequentialist grounds, use an agent-weighted mode of summing, or do something else? A fourth problem is that threshold deontology threatens to collapse into a kind of consequentialism. Indeed, it can be perhaps shown that the sliding scale version of threshold deontology is extensionally equivalent to an agency-weighted form of consequentialism (Sen 1982).

The remaining four strategies for dealing with the problem of dire consequence cases all have the flavor of evasion by the deontologist. Consider first the famous view of Elizabeth Anscombe: such cases (real or imagined) can never present themselves to the consciousness of a truly moral agent because such agent will realize it is immoral to even think about violating moral norms in order to avert disaster (Anscombe 1958; Geach 1969; Nagel 1979). Such rhetorical excesses should be seen for what they are, a peculiar way of stating Kantian absolutism motivated by an impatience with the question.

Another response by deontologists, this one most famously associated with Bernard Williams, shares some of the “don’t think about it” features of the Anscombean response. According to Williams (1973), situations of moral horror are simply “beyond morality,” and even beyond reason. (This view is reminiscent of the ancient view of natural necessity, revived by Sir Francis Bacon, that such cases are beyond human law and can only be judged by the natural law of instinct.) Williams tells us that in such cases we just act. Interestingly, Williams contemplates that such “existentialist” decision-making will result in our doing what we have to do in such cases—for example, we torture the innocent to prevent nuclear holocaust.

Surely this is an unhappy view of the power and reach of human law, morality, or reason. Indeed, Williams (like Bacon and Cicero before him) thinks there is an answer to what should be done, albeit an answer very different than Anscombe’s. But both views share the weakness of thinking that morality and even reason runs out on us when the going gets tough.

Yet another strategy is to divorce completely the moral appraisals of acts from the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of the agents who undertake them, even when those agents are fully cognizant of the moral appraisals. So, for example, if A tortures innocent B to save a thousand others, one can hold that A ’s act is morally wrong but also that A is morally praiseworthy for having done it.

Deontology does have to grapple with how to mesh deontic judgments of wrongness with “hypological” (Zimmerman 2002) judgments of blameworthiness (Alexander 2004). Yet it would be an oddly cohering morality that condemned an act as wrong yet praised the doer of it. Deontic and hypological judgments ought to have more to do with each other than that. Moreover, it is unclear what action-guiding potential such an oddly cohered morality would have: should an agent facing such a choice avoid doing wrong, or should he go for the praise?

The last possible strategy for the deontologist in order to deal with dire consequences, other than by denying their existence, as per Taurek, is to distinguish moral reasons from all-things-considered reasons and to argue that whereas moral reasons dictate obedience to deontological norms even at the cost of catastrophic consequences, all-things-considered reasons dictate otherwise. (This is one reading of Bernard William’s famous discussion of moral luck, where non-moral reasons seemingly can trump moral reasons (Williams 1975, 1981); this is also a strategy some consequentialists (e.g., Portmore 2003) seize as well in order to handle the demandingness and alienation problems endemic to consequentialism.) But like the preceding strategy, this one seems desperate. Why should one even care that moral reasons align with deontology if the important reasons, the all-things-considered reasons that actually govern decisions, align with consequentialism?

5. Deontology’s Relation(s) to Consequentialism Reconsidered

The perceived weaknesses of deontological theories have led some to consider how to eliminate or at least reduce those weaknesses while preserving deontology’s advantages. One way to do this is to embrace both consequentialism and deontology, combining them into some kind of a mixed theory. Given the differing notions of rationality underlying each kind of theory, this is easier said than done. After all, one cannot simply weigh agent-relative reasons against agent-neutral reasons, without stripping the former sorts of reasons of their distinctive character.

A time-honored way of reconciling opposing theories is to allocate them to different jurisdictions. Tom Nagel’s reconciliation of the two theories is a version of this, inasmuch as he allocates the agent-neutral reasons of consequentialism to our “objective” viewpoint, whereas the agent-relative reasons of deontology are seen as part of our inherent subjectivity (Nagel 1986). Yet Nagel’s allocations are non-exclusive; the same situation can be seen from either subjective or objective viewpoints, meaning that it is mysterious how we are to combine them into some overall view.

A less mysterious way of combining deontology with consequentialism is to assign to each a jurisdiction that is exclusive of the other. One possibility here is to regard the agent-neutral reasons of consequentialism as a kind of default rationality/morality in the sense that when an agent-relative permission or obligation applies, it governs, but in the considerable logical space where neither applies, consequentialism holds sway (Moore 2008). Remembering that for the threshold deontologist, consequentialist reasons may still determine right action even in areas governed by agent-relative obligations or permissions, once the level of bad consequences crosses the relevant threshold (Moore 2012).

In contrast to mixed theories, deontologists who seek to keep their deontology pure hope to expand agent-relative reasons to cover all of morality and yet to mimic the advantages of consequentialism. Doing this holds out the promise of denying sense to the otherwise damning question, how could it be moral to make (or allow) the world to be worse (for they deny that there is any states-of-affairs “worseness” in terms of which to frame such a question) (Foot 1985). To make this plausible, one needs to expand the coverage of agent-relative reasons to cover what is now plausibly a matter of consequentialist reasons, such as positive duties to strangers. Moreover, deontologists taking this route need a content to the permissive and obligating norms of deontology that allows them to mimic the outcomes making consequentialism attractive. This requires a picture of morality’s norms that is extremely detailed in content, so that what looks like a consequentialist balance can be generated by a complex series of norms with extremely detailed priority rules and exception clauses (Richardson 1990). Few consequentialists will believe that this is a viable enterprise.

The mirror image of the pure deontologist just described is the indirect or two-level consequentialist. For this view too seeks to appropriate the strengths of both deontology and consequentialism, not by embracing both, but by showing that an appropriately defined version of one can do for both. The indirect consequentialist, of course, seeks to do this from the side of consequentialism alone.

Yet as many have argued (Lyons 1965; Alexander 1985), indirect consequentialism collapses either into: blind and irrational rule-worship (“why follow the rules when not doing so produces better consequences?”); direct consequentialism (“acts in conformity to the rules rather miraculously produce better consequences in the long run”); or nonpublicizability (“ordinary folks should be instructed to follow the rules but should not be told of the ultimate consequentialist basis for doing so, lest they depart from the rules mistakenly believing better consequences will result”). For more information, please see the entry on rule consequentialism . Nor can the indirect consequentialist adequately explain why those who violate the indirect consequentialist’s rules have “wronged” those who might be harmed as a result, that is, why the latter have a personal complaint against the former. (This is true irrespective of whether the rule-violation produces good consequences; but it is especially so when good consequences result from the rule-violation.) The bottom line is that if deontology has intuitive advantages over consequentialism, it is far from obvious whether those advantages can be captured by moving to indirect consequentialism, even if there is a version of indirect consequentialism that could avoid the dire consequences problem that bedevils deontological theories.

Recently, deontologists have begun to ask how an actor should evaluate courses of action in which it is uncertain whether a deontological constraint will be violated. For example, should one detonate dynamite in a mining operation if there is a chance that the explosion will cause the Fat Man to tumble into the path of the trolley that would otherwise kill five? (Assume that were the chance the same that the explosion would instead divert the trolley in Trolley, killing one but saving five, the detonation would be permissible.) Or should one take a drive to observe the scenery if there is a slightly increased chance that, because of the possibility of traffic, doing so will cause one to miss a lunch one had promised to attend? Whether deontological constraints focus on agents’ intentions or beliefs, or whether they focus on agents’ counting positively in their deliberations others’ use as means, how should the uncertainty of outcomes be taken into account by deontologists? This question has been addressed by Aboodi, Borer, and Enoch (2008); Alexander (2016; 2018); Lazar (2015; 2017a, 2017b, 2018); Smith (2014); Tarsney (2018); and Tomlin (2019).

Deontological theories are normative theories. They do not presuppose any particular position on moral ontology or on moral epistemology. Presumably, a deontologist can be a moral realist of either the natural (moral properties are identical to natural properties) or nonnatural (moral properties are not themselves natural properties even if they are nonreductively related to natural properties) variety. Or a deontologist can be an expressivist, a constructivist, a transcendentalist, a conventionalist, or a Divine command theorist regarding the nature of morality. Likewise, a deontologist can claim that we know the content of deontological morality by direct intuition, by Kantian reflection on our normative situation, or by reaching reflective equilibrium between our particular moral judgments and the theories we construct to explain them (theories of intuitions).

Nonetheless, although deontological theories can be agnostic regarding metaethics, some metaethical accounts seem less hospitable than others to deontology. For example, the stock furniture of deontological normative ethics—rights, duties, permissions—fits uneasily in the realist-naturalist’s corner of the metaethical universe. (Which is why many naturalists, if they are moral realists in their meta-ethics, are consequentialists in their ethics.) Nonnatural realism, conventionalism, transcendentalism, and Divine command seem more hospitable metaethical homes for deontology. (For example, the paradox of deontology above discussed may seem more tractable if morality is a matter of personal directives of a Supreme Commander to each of his human subordinates.) If these rough connections hold, then weaknesses with those metaethical accounts most hospitable to deontology will weaken deontology as a normative theory of action. Some deontologists have thus argued that these connections need not hold and that a naturalist-realist meta-ethics can ground a deontological ethics (Moore 2004).

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Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: case study: deontological ethics in nlp.

Abstract: Recent work in natural language processing (NLP) has focused on ethical challenges such as understanding and mitigating bias in data and algorithms; identifying objectionable content like hate speech, stereotypes and offensive language; and building frameworks for better system design and data handling practices. However, there has been little discussion about the ethical foundations that underlie these efforts. In this work, we study one ethical theory, namely deontological ethics, from the perspective of NLP. In particular, we focus on the generalization principle and the respect for autonomy through informed consent. We provide four case studies to demonstrate how these principles can be used with NLP systems. We also recommend directions to avoid the ethical issues in these systems.

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Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to discern the moral course of action.

Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong. Deontology is often associated with philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that ethical actions follow universal moral laws, such as “Don’t lie.  Don’t steal.  Don’t cheat.”

Deontology is simple to apply. It just requires that people follow the rules and do their duty. This approach tends to fit well with our natural intuition about what is or isn’t ethical.

Unlike consequentialism, which judges actions by their results, deontology doesn’t require weighing the costs and benefits of a situation. This avoids subjectivity and uncertainty because you only have to follow set rules.

Despite its strengths, rigidly following deontology can produce results that many people find unacceptable. For example, suppose you’re a software engineer and learn that a nuclear missile is about to launch that might start a war. You can hack the network and cancel the launch, but it’s against your professional code of ethics to break into any software system without permission. And, it’s a form of lying and cheating. Deontology advises not to violate this rule. However, in letting the missile launch, thousands of people will die.

So, following the rules makes deontology easy to apply. But it also means disregarding the possible consequences of our actions when determining what is right and what is wrong.

Related Terms

Consequentialism

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges an action’s moral correctness by its consequences.

Moral Absolutism

Moral Absolutism

Moral Absolutism is a form of deontology that asserts that certain actions are intrinsically right or wrong.

Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy

Moral Philosophy studies what is right and wrong, and related philosophical issues.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes of actions and choices.

Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics is a normative philosophical approach that urges people to live a moral life by cultivating virtuous habits.

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  • v.6(1); Jan-Jun 2016

Utilitarian and deontological ethics in medicine

Jharna mandal.

Department of Microbiology, PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Dinoop Korol Ponnambath

Subhash chandra parija.

Medical ethics is a sensible branch of moral philosophy and deals with conflicts in obligations/duties and their potential outcome. Two strands of thought exist in ethics regarding decision-making: deontological and utilitarian. In deontological approach, outcomes/consequences may not just justify the means to achieve it while in utilitarian approach; outcomes determine the means and greatest benefit expected for the greatest number. In brief, deontology is patient-centered, whereas utilitarianism is society-centered. Although these approaches contradict each other, each of them has their own substantiating advantages and disadvantages in medical practice. Over years, a trend has been observed from deontological practice to utilitarian approach leading to frustration and discontentment. Health care system and practitioners need to balance both these ethical arms to bring congruity in medical practice.

Ethics is a crucial branch in medicine guiding good medical practice. It deals with the moral dilemmas arising due to conflicts in duties/obligations and the faced consequences. They are based on four fundamental principles, i.e., autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Much of the modern medical ethics deals with the moral dilemmas arising in the context of patient's autonomy and the fundamental principles of informed consent and confidentiality. Ethics deals with choices, decisions/actions based on the choice and the duties and obligations of a doctor to the best interest of the patient. Ethical practice is a systematic approach toward the institution of these principles to approach an appropriate decision-making. While these definitions are clear to express, exceptions arise in each of these principles during clinical practice. For example, when a doctor owes a duty to both patient and society, situations of breech in confidentiality may arise. Similarly, the practice of fundamental principles of autonomy and informed consent may be breeched in the care of newborn, mentally handicapped or patients in the permanent vegetative state. In practical ethics, two arms of thoughts exist in decision-making: Utilitarian and deontological. In utilitarian ethics, outcomes justify the means or ways to achieve it, whereas in deontological ethics, duties/obligations are of prime importance (i.e., end/outcomes may not justify the means).

In the utilitarian approach, decisions are chose based on the greatest amount of benefit obtained for the greatest number of individuals. This is also known as the consequentialist approach since the outcomes determine the morality of the intervention. This approach could lead to harm to some individuals while the net outcome is maximum benefit. This approach is usually guided by the calculated benefits or harms for an action or intervention based on evidence. A few examples of utilitarian approach in medical care include setting a target by hospitals for resuscitation of premature newborns (gestational age) or treatment of burns patients (degree of injury) based on the availability of time and resources. There are two variants of utilitarianism: Act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism deals with decisions undertaken for each individual case analyzing the benefits and harms promoting overall better consequences. Every action/decision arrived for each patient is confronted with the measurement of balance of the benefits and harms, without examining the past experience or evidence. This method would lead to enormous wastage of time and energy in decision-making and are prone to bias. In rule utilitarianism, no prediction or calculation of benefits or harms is performed. These decisions are guided by preformed rules based on evidence and hence provide better guidance than act utilitarianism in decision-making. According to rule utilitarianism, morally right decision is an action complying moral codes/rules leading to better consequences.[ 1 ] Although these concepts look appealing patients feels constrained when clinicians make the decisions, affecting the fundamental ethical principles. These ethical issues can be accommodated when dealing with patients who are competent to play a role in decision-making, while posing moral dilemmas in patients who are incompetent, e.g., in patients who are brain-dead (permanent vegetative state), decision-making with regards to withdrawal of life-sustainment/organ donation, etc. In the above scenario, dilemmas can be dealt ethically and legally if the patients had made advance decision directives about their life similar to decisions on wealth.[ 2 , 3 ]

In contrast to the utilitarian concept, deontology is ethics of duty where the morality of an action depends on the nature of the action, i.e., harm is unacceptable irrespective of its consequences. This concept was introduced by a philosopher, Immanuel Kant and hence widely referred as Kantian deontology. The decisions of deontology may be appropriate for an individual but does not necessarily produce a good outcome for the society. The doctor-patient interaction or relationship is by nature, deontological since medical teaching practices inculcate this tradition, and when this deontological practice is breached, the context of medical negligence arises. This tradition drives clinicians to do good to patients, strengthening the doctor-patient bond. The deontological ideologists (doctors and other medical staffs) are usually driven to utilitarian approach by public health professionals, hospital managers, and politicians (utilitarian ideologists). From a utilitarian perspective, health care system resources, energy, money, and time are finite and are to be appropriately accommodated to achieve the best heath care for the society. These are executed with furnished rules and guidelines. While achieving good for the greatest number, few harm (iatrogenic) is acceptable by utilitarian ideologists. For example, few cases of vaccine-induced paralytic polio after oral polio vaccination. From a deontological perspective, utilitarians generalize the guidelines or rules while there may be exceptional cases where the guideline may not apply. Deviation of action from the guidelines contributes to medical negligence to utilitarians. Such conflicts in approach are commonly encountered in the current health care systems. Similarly, the involvement of third party payment systems (health insurance) affects the confidentiality between the doctor-patient relationship.[ 4 ]

Traditional moral analytical studies (Greene's dual process model) revealed that deontological and utilitarian inclinations are mutually exclusive while recent studies utilizing the process dissociation moral analytical approach revealed that an inclination toward an ideology may occur due to the absence of inclination to another. These studies also reported the association of deontological inclinations with empathy, religiosity, and perspective-taking, while moral concern and reduction in the cognitive load being associated with utilitarian inclinations.[ 5 ] In conclusion, both utilitarian and deontological perspectives have their own importance in medical ethics. In the current scenario, we get to see utilitarian perspective countermanding the deontological perspective and hence most ethical and moral dilemmas. A balance between these two perspectives would bring better harmony and justice to medical practice.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.

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6 Kantian Deontology

Joseph Kranak

case study on deontology theory

Relative to most other philosophers, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a late bloomer, publishing his first significant work, The Critique of Pure Reason , in 1781 at age 57. But this didn’t slow him down, as through his 50s, 60s, and 70s, he published numerous large and influential works in many areas of philosophy, including ethics. He published two large works on ethics, The Critique of Practical Reason and The Metaphysics of Morals , but it’s his first short work of ethics, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals that is his most important because it provides a succinct and relatively readable account of his ethics.

Some of the main questions that Kant’s ethics focuses on are questions of right and wrong: What makes an action right or wrong? Which actions are we required by morality to perform? Do consequences matter? Is it ever permissible to do something morally wrong in order to achieve good consequences? Is it important to do actions with good intentions? And what are good intentions? Some of Kant’s answers to some of these questions are complex, but as we will see, he doesn’t think that consequences matter and thus good consequences cannot justify wrong actions. He also thinks that intentions are important to the ethical evaluation of actions.

One of the distinctive features of Kant’s ethics is that it focuses on duties, defined by right and wrong. Right and wrong (which are the primary deontic categories, along with obligatory, optional, supererogatory, and others) are distinct from good and bad (which are value categories) in that they directly prescribe actions: right actions are ones we ought to do (are morally required to do) and wrong actions we ought not to do (are morally forbidden from doing). This style of ethics is referred to as deontology. The name comes from the Greek word deon , meaning duty or obligation. In deontology, the deontic categories are primary, while value determinations are derived from them. As we’ll see, Kant believes all our duties can be derived from the categorical imperative. We’ll first need to explain what Kant means by the phrase “categorical imperative” and then we’ll look at the content of this rule.

First, Kant believes that morality must be rational. He models his morality on science, which seeks to discover universal laws that govern the natural world. Similarly, morality will be a system of universal rules that govern action. In Kant’s view, as we will see, right action is ultimately a rational action. As an ethics of duty, Kant believes that ethics consists of commands about what we ought to do. The word “imperative” in his categorical imperative means a command or order. However, unlike most other commands, which usually come from some authority, these commands come from within, from our own reason. Still, they function the same way: they are commands to do certain actions.

Kant distinguishes two types of imperatives: hypothetical and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is a contingent command. It’s conditional on a person’s wants, needs, or desires and normally comes in the following form: “If you want/need A, then you ought to do B.” For example, the advice, “If you want to do well on a test, then you should study a lot” would be a hypothetical imperative. The command that you study is contingent on your desire to do well on the test. Other examples are, “If you are thirsty, drink water,” or “If you want to be in better shape, you should exercise.” Such commands are more like advice on how to accomplish our goals than moral rules. If you don’t have a particular want, desire, or goal, then a hypothetical imperative doesn’t apply. For example, if you don’t want to be in better shape, then the hypothetical imperative that you should exercise, doesn’t apply to you.

A genuinely moral imperative would not be contingent on wants, desires, or needs, and this is what is meant by a categorical imperative. A categorical imperative, instead of taking an if-then form, is an absolute command, such as, “Do A,” or “You ought to do A.” Examples of categorical imperatives would be “You shouldn’t kill,” “You ought to help those in need,” or “Don’t steal.” It doesn’t matter what your wants or goals are; you should follow a categorical imperative no matter what.

But these aren’t the categorical imperative. Kant believes that there is one categorical imperative that is the most important and that should guide all of our actions. This is the ultimate categorical imperative from which all other moral rules are derived. This categorical imperative can be expressed in several different ways, and Kant presents three formulations of it in The Groundwork .

The First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative

The underlying idea behind the first formulation of the categorical imperative is that moral rules are supposed to be universal laws. If we think of comparable laws, such as scientific laws like the law of gravitational attraction or Newton’s three laws of motion, they are universal and apply to all people equally, no matter who they are or what their needs are. If our moral rules are to be rational, then they should have the same form.

From this idea, Kant derives his first formulation of the categorical imperative, “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” ( Groundwor k 4:421). [1]

First, we must explain this word “maxim.” What Kant means by a maxim is a personal rule or a general principle that underlies a particular action. As rational beings, we don’t just act randomly; we devise certain rules that tell us what to do in different circumstances. A complete maxim will include three pieces: the action, the circumstances under which we do that action, and the purpose behind that action. For example, the maxim explaining why you’re reading this book, if it’s an assigned text, might be, “I will read all books assigned for class because I want to succeed in class.” Different principles could underlie the same action. For example, you might be reading this book simply to help you understand the topic, in which case your principle might be, “When I am confused about a topic, I will read an accessible text to improve my understanding.” The important point is that we are guided by general principles that we give to ourselves, that tell us what we’ll do in certain circumstances.

The first formulation, thus, is a test of whether any particular maxim should be followed or not. We test a maxim by universalizing it, that is, by asking if it would be possible for everyone to live by this maxim. If the maxim can be universalized, meaning that it’s possible that everyone could live by it, then it’s permissible to follow it. If it can’t be universalized, then it is impermissible to follow it. The logic of the universalization test is that any rule you follow should apply to everyone—there’s nothing special about you that allows you to be an exception.

To look at some examples, imagine you need money to pay off some debts. You go to a friend to borrow the money and tell this friend that you will pay him back. You know you won’t be able to pay your friend back, but you promise him nonetheless. You are making a false promise. Is this permissible? To test, we first look at the maxim underlying the action, something like, “If I need something, I’ll make a false promise in order to get what I need.” What would happen if everyone were to make false promises every time they needed something? False promises would be rampant, so rampant that promises would become meaningless; they would just be empty words. For this reason, the maxim can’t be universalized. The maxim included the idea of making a promise, but if, when universalized, promises cease to have any meaning, then we couldn’t really make a promise. Since the maxim can’t be universalized, we shouldn’t follow it, and thus we derive the duty to not make false promises.

We should note that Kant’s universalization test is not asking whether universalizing a maxim would lead to undesirable consequences. Kant is not claiming that making a false promise is wrong because we wouldn’t want to live in a world where no one kept their promises. It’s wrong because it’s not possible to universalize the maxim. It’s not possible because it leads to a contradiction. In this case, the contradiction is in the concept of a promise: that it becomes meaningless when universalized. We can see this with other maxims. If you’re thinking of stealing something, the maxim underlying this action might be something like, “I’ll steal the things I want so I can have what I want.” If everyone were to follow this maxim, then the concept of ownership would cease to have any meaning, and if nothing were owned, then how would it be possible to steal? To steal means to take someone else’s property without permission, and this is where the contradiction comes in. It’s not possible to steal if nothing belongs to anyone. Thus, it’s not possible to universalize this maxim, and we thereby get the duty that we shouldn’t steal. Both of these contradictions are what Kant calls “contradictions in conception.”

Another example Kant gives is of our obligation to help out others. Suppose you could help people but didn’t want to. Your maxim might be, “I will never help out anyone else since everyone should be independent.” If this were universalized, then everyone would be completely independent, with no one asking for, nor offering help. However, we wouldn’t be able to live in a world where no one helps anyone because we’ll inevitably sometimes need others’ help. The contradiction in this case is a practical contradiction, “a contradiction in will,” as Kant calls it. In this case, we would eventually have to break the maxim due to our need for help. Thus, from this, we get the duty that we should sometimes help out others in need.

Problems with the First Formulation

One criticism that Kant faced among his contemporaries was for his stance on lying, since he said that we always have a duty to be truthful to others ( Metaphysics of Mora ls 8:426). His reasoning seems to be that if we were to try to universalize a maxim that permits lying, such as “I will lie whenever it’s convenient to get what I want,” then people would be lying constantly, and it would lead to the concepts of “lie” and “truth” becoming meaningless. Thus, since “lie” would no longer mean anything, it’s impossible to universalize this maxim, and thus we should never lie. His contemporaries thought there must be cases where lying is permissible, and Kant responded in “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy.” In this essay, Kant imagined a situation that would seem to permit lying. Suppose that your friend is being pursued by someone who intends to kill him. Your friend comes to your house and asks to hide. You let him do so, and soon after, the killer is knocking at your door asking, “Is your friend inside?” Should you lie or not?

Kant asserts that you shouldn’t lie, even in these circumstances. Suppose your friend hears the killer knocking at the door and decides to flee out the back without your knowing. You lie and tell the killer that your friend is not here, and the killer leaves. Because of this, your friend and the killer bump into each other, and your friend is killed. Since your lie led to them to bump into each other, you bear some responsibility for the friend’s death. His general point is that consequences are uncertain. Importantly, Kant believes that consequences don’t affect whether an action is right or wrong, and this example highlights why: because consequences are unpredictable. The type of rational approach to ethics that Kant prefers will downplay the importance of consequences due to this unpredictability.

Another problem for the first formulation is that it’s possible to imagine maxims that can’t be universalized but that don’t seem to be immoral. For example, a stamp collector might live by the maxim, “I will buy but not sell stamps in order to expand my collection.” If everyone were to follow this, then the collector wouldn’t be able to buy because no one would be selling. This seems to lead to the implausible conclusion that collecting stamps (or collecting anything) is immoral. Since Kant says that we are to “act only in accordance” with maxims that can be universalized, then any maxim that can’t be universalized is impermissible.

Some who want to defend Kant think that the problem is with how this maxim is phrased. The maxim specifies two actions: buying and not selling. If we split it into two maxims—“I will buy stamps to expand my collection” and “I will not sell stamps to expand my collection”—the problem can be avoided. This does point to a general difficulty with the first formulation, generally referred to as the “problem of relevant descriptions,” which is that there is often more than one way to describe the maxim underlying an action. And when we formulate it some ways (like in this case with the stamp collecting) it leads to a contradiction, whereas formulating it other ways does not.

For Kant, just doing the right thing is not sufficient for making an action have full moral worth. It’s also necessary to act with good will, by which Kant means something like the inclination to do good or what is also known as a good character. He believes that a good will is essential for morality. This is intuitively plausible because it seems that if an otherwise good action is done with bad or selfish intentions, that can rob the action of its moral goodness. If we imagine a man who goes to work at a soup kitchen to help out the poor, that seems like a good action. But if he’s going there just to impress someone who works there, then that’s less virtuous. And if he’s going there to embezzle money from the charity, the action would be morally wrong.

Less intuitive is that Kant thinks the only possible genuine good will is respect for the moral law. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) would later describe Kant’s position as, “a deed must be performed simply and solely out of regard for the known law and for the concept of duty…. It must not be performed from any inclination, any benevolence felt towards others, any tender-hearted sympathy, compassion, or emotion of the heart” ([1818] 1969, 526). That is, when you do something because it is the right thing to do, that alone counts as good will.

case study on deontology theory

Schopenhauer was a critic of Kant’s philosophy, including his ethics, and he objected that Kant’s view of the good will is “directly opposed to the genuine spirit of virtue; not the deed, but the willingness to do it, the love from which it results, and without which it is a dead work, this constitutes its meritorious element” ([1818] 1969, 526). Schopenhauer thought that good people are good because they want to do good actions and they feel love and compassion towards others. If we return to the example of working in the soup kitchen, if the person is showing up to the soup kitchen because he likes helping people or he feels compassion for the people he helps and wants to improve their lot, Schopenhauer would say this is a good person and thus a virtuous action.

Kant defended his position on good will by saying that an action done out of love or out of compassion is not fully autonomous. Autonomy means self-rule, and Kant saw it as a necessary condition for freedom and morality. If an action is not done autonomously, it is not really morally good or bad. Again, if our friend at the soup kitchen is working there because of some implant in his brain by which another person is able to control his every action, then the action is neither autonomous nor morally commendable.

Concerning acting out of love and compassion, Kant believed that when people act due to their emotions, then their emotions are in control, not their rationality. To be truly autonomous, for Kant, an action must be done because of reason. An action done because of emotion is not fully free and not quite fully moral. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy doing good things. It just means that this shouldn’t be the reason underlying the action. According to Kant’s ethics, it’s morally commendable for a person, acting out of good will, to decide that helping at the soup kitchen is the right thing to do, to go there, and then to thoroughly enjoy doing so and feel great compassion for the people helped. The important point is that reason you do an action should be because you have determined that it is the right thing to do.

The Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative

The idea underlying the second formulation is that all humans are intrinsically valuable. As Kant writes, “What has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; what on the other hand is raised above all price and therefore admits of no equivalent has a dignity” ( Groundwork 4.434). What has a price is a thing, but a person has dignity and is thus beyond price and irreplaceable. It follows that a person with dignity deserves respect and shouldn’t be treated as a thing.

Kant expresses this idea in the second formulation of his categorical imperative: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” ( Groundwork 4:429).

That is, we shouldn’t treat people merely as means to ends; we should treat them as ends, including ourselves. To treat someone merely as a means is to not give the person the proper respect—to fail to treat the person with dignity, to treat the person as a thing. It makes sense to use inanimate objects as tools—you can use a hammer as a means to drive in nails without worrying about what the hammer feels about this because it’s a thing. But if you use a person in such a way, it devalues the person. Similarly, if you harm someone, take advantage of someone, or steal from someone, then you treat that person as a thing, as a means to your ends. Conversely, if you treat someone as having unlimited value, if you treat the person with dignity and respect, then you treat the person as an end.

One important thing to add is that Kant says we should never treat people “merely as a means.” The “merely” is there to acknowledge that we can treat people as means, so long as we don’t only treat them as means. It’s not unusual to have to use other people for their skills or knowledge, so it’s necessary to sometimes treat people as means. For example, imagine that your pipes need fixing, and you call a plumber. You’re using the plumber as a means because he is making your end (to fix your pipes) his end, but there is nothing wrong with this if you also treat him as an end—that is, if you are respectful and pay him appropriately. The plumber’s end is to make a living with his plumbing skills. By paying him the agreed-upon amount, you are making his end (earning a living) your end. Thus, in this situation, you both are effectively advancing each others’ ends at the same time and thus treating each other both as ends and means.

One way to think of the idea of treating someone as ends and means is that, when you treat people as ends, you make their ends your ends, and when you treat people as means, you force them to make their ends your ends. To explain, let’s look at an example from the first formulation. Since the first formulation and the second formulation of the categorical imperative are supposed to be saying the same thing, they should come to exactly the same conclusions about what’s right and wrong. Thus, since we discovered earlier that it’s wrong to make a false promise, then the second formulation should also tell us that false promises are wrong. In our example, you made the false promise because you needed to borrow money to pay off debts; thus, your end was to pay off debts, and by lying to your friend, you are forcing him to make your end (paying off debts) his end. If you told your friend that you needed money and might not be able to pay it back, your friend would be able to decide. He might decide to make your end his end (to pay off your debts for you), but by depriving him of that choice, you are treating him as an object. For similar reasons, we can also conclude that any time we deceive someone, we are treating the person as a mere means to our ends.

We can also look at the other example from the first formulation discussed above and see that it leads to the same conclusion. Kant argued that we have an obligation to sometimes help out others in need. To help people out is to make their ends our ends. For example, if you see that someone is poor and hungry, his end at that point might be to get food. If you give him food or money to buy food, you are making it your end to feed him. Since you should treat people as ends, then that means you should sometimes provide people with help.

In addition, the second formulation also includes the idea that we shouldn’t treat ourselves as mere means to ends. In the Groundwork , Kant gives two examples of duties to oneself: we shouldn’t commit suicide, and we should cultivate some of our useful talents. In the Metaphysics of Morals , Kant presents several more, including that you should not pursue greedy avarice, stupefy yourself with excessive food or drink, nor be excessively servile.

On the Morality of Suicide

The question of the morality of suicide was a heated topic of debate in the Western intellectual tradition in Kant’s day. Though we nowadays tend to think of suicide as a mental health issue and thus as a medical concern, it used to be much more often considered a moral concern. Suicide was a punishable crime in England until 1961, and both attempted and successful suicide could lead to serious penalties, with similar laws in many other countries.

The immorality of suicide was espoused by several influential Christian thinkers. Augustine, in his City of God (Book I, ch. 20), declared that the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” included suicide. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae (II-II, Q. 64, A. 5), argued that (1) since our natural inclination is to try to stay alive and extend our life as long as possible, suicide is unnatural and therefore wrong, that (2) since our community benefits from our continued existence, then suicide harms the community, and that (3) since our life is not our own, being a gift from God, then committing suicide is a crime against God. Thus, suicide harms the self, society, and God. Dante in his Inferno (Canto XIII), placed those who had committed suicide in the Second Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, for those who commit violence against the self ([1320] 1995).

Such arguments were influential in Kant’s day. His own arguments in the Groundwork are that (1) since suicide is motivated by self-interestedness (by a desire to end the sorrows a person is experiencing) and since self-interestedness normally impels us to try to improve our life, then suicide is self-contradictory and thus wrong (4:422) and that (2) by committing suicide one is treating oneself merely as a means and not as an end (4:429). Also, in his Metaphysics of Morals , he argues that suicide effectively harms the morality in the world by destroying one’s capacity for morality within oneself (6:423).

There were other authors who disagreed. Much earlier, in Utopia , Thomas More argued that suicide should be permitted in cases when people suffer from unpleasant and incurable diseases ([1516] 2012). Arthur Schopenhauer took the view in On Suicide that suicide, though not a sensible choice in most cases, can’t be considered morally wrong because your life and person are the things that most clearly belong to you ([1851] 2015). Thus, you can dispose of them how you wish. David Hume, in his essay Of Suicide , published posthumously, targeted Aquinas’s arguments that suicide harms self, society, and God: (1) Sometimes suicide doesn’t harm the self, since in some cases, continuing to live is worse than death. (2) Suicide doesn’t harm society because, by depriving society of oneself, one is merely withdrawing benefit, not harming society (and if one is actually a burden on society, then one does society great benefit). And (3) one’s life must be one’s own, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to praise people for risking their life for others ([1777] 1998).

Such a list of duties does raise the question, though, of what it means to treat oneself as a mere means. The idea that we could treat ourselves as a mere means seems somewhat implausible, and if we look at it the way we explained it before (to treat people as a mere means is to force them to make their ends our ends), then it doesn’t make sense. Our ends are our ends and can’t be anything other than our ends.

Perhaps, by treating oneself as a mere means, one is not treating oneself with respect—as a person with dignity and with unlimited value. We can see how this might apply to duties like not being too servile or not being too avaricious. By being excessively servile, you are debasing yourself, making yourself into a thing to be used by someone else. And with excessive greed, you are elevating the value of money over and above your own value.

Another way to think about it is that, by treating oneself as a mere means, one is not giving proper respect to the humanity within oneself. The second formulation specifically forbids treating the humanity in ourselves and in others as a mere means. Concerning our humanity, Kant means mostly our capacity for rational human thought. So, by treating oneself as a mere means, one is not giving proper value to this rational capacity. One can see this in the case of stupefying oneself with excessive drink. Excessive drunkenness and opium use—the two examples Kant specifically mentions in the Metaphysics of Morals —dull one’s thinking, and Kant describes them as turning a person into an animal, though he seems to concede that some level of moderate alcohol consumption or opium use might be permissible (6:427-6:428). Similarly, in the Metaphysics of Morals , his argument against suicide is that, “To annihilate the subject of morality in one’s own person is to root out the existence of morality itself from the world” (6:423). That is, by committing suicide, you destroy some of the morality in the world by destroying your capacity for morality.

Kant on Animal Rights

Kant defines what counts as a person in terms of their capacity for rationality. This means that any being not capable of rationality lacks dignity and thus we don’t have the same moral obligation to not treat them as mere means. One of the significant implications for this is how it affects our duties to nonhuman animals. Kant’s ideas would imply that we can treat such animals however we wish. In terms of animal rights, whether animals have any rights (for example the right not to be mistreated, harmed, or killed), Kant would say that since they are not rational, they have no rights.

Kant does argue that it’s wrong to treat animals cruelly. This duty is derived from a person’s duty to himself. As Kant writes in The Metaphysics of Morals : “With regard to the animate but non-rational part of creation, violent and cruel treatment of animals is far more intimately opposed to a human being’s duty to himself, and he has a duty to refrain from this; for it dulls his shared feelings of their suffering and so weakens and gradually uproots a natural predisposition that is very serviceable to morality in one’s relations with other people” (6:443). That is, he is saying that mistreating animals will dull one’s compassion towards other living beings and thus make one a less virtuous person.

He is clear that “the human being is authorized to kill animals quickly (without pain),” which indicates that killing animals for food, or even hunting them for sport, is permissible, so long as it is done humanely. However, he does partially disapprove of using animals for medical experiments: “agonizing physical experiments for the sake of mere speculation, when the end could be achieved without these, are to be abhorred.” This passage was probably directed at the then-common practice of animal vivisection, but his words would suggest that animal experiments for medical purposes, in cases when the goal is to save human lives, might perhaps be permissible. Though we should emphasize that this duty to not mistreat animals is only because of the harm one might do to oneself by this cruelty to animals: “it is always only a duty of the human being to himself” (6:443).

Problems with the Second Formulation

One of the main problems with the second formulation of the categorical imperative is that it’s somewhat vague. There are clear-cut cases of using people as mere means, such as slaveholders exploiting their slaves, but what about something more ambiguous like an employer underpaying his employees? The employer is advancing the employees’ ends by paying them, but clearly would better promote their ends if wages were raised. But what exactly counts as “underpaying” is unavoidably vague, and the categorical imperative doesn’t give clear guidance.

Another problem is that it doesn’t seem that morality is entirely about not treating people as mere means to ends. The categorical imperative is supposed to be the sole principle of morality. Thus, we should be able to derive all moral duties from it. But it seems like there are actions that are morally wrong but which don’t amount to treating anyone as mere means. For example, the destruction of the natural world through carelessness or negligence seems wrong. If I accidentally start a forest fire by setting off fireworks when there is high fire risk, aren’t I morally culpable? But in what way have I treated a person merely as a means? The forest is not rational and thus is not an object of direct moral consideration. Kant does write, “A propensity to wanton destruction of what is beautiful in inanimate nature is opposed to a human being’s duty to himself” (6:443). But if it’s through neglect, it doesn’t appear to be treating any person merely as means. Similarly, what about our obligation to care for the dead? If my mother wanted to be given a Christian burial and instead I simply left her body out in the woods, that would seem to be quite immoral. But how would we explain that in terms of treating her as a mere means? The body is no longer a person; it lacks humanity, rationality, and thus is a thing, and it’s permissible for us to treat things as means. There are perhaps ways a defender of Kant could explain why these are wrong within a Kantian framework, but it is a potential limitation of the theory.

Kant is only able to derive obligations to not mistreat physical objects and non-rational living things from obligations to oneself and other rational beings. By misusing objects and animals, we habituate ourselves to not giving others the proper respect, which thereby debases our character. But it does seem strange to say that the reason why it’s wrong to damage non-human life is because it’s harmful to oneself.

The Third Formulation of the Categorical Imperative

Kant gives a third formulation of the categorical imperative based on the notion of a kingdom of ends. By kingdom, Kant explains, “I understand a systematic union of various rational beings through common laws” ( Groundwork 4:433). By a kingdom of ends we’re to imagine an interconnected world of rational beings where everyone is treated as an end and treats everyone else as ends and everyone shares the same set of laws.

Kant explains the third formulation as, “act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends” ( Groundwork 4:439).

As mentioned, Kant believes that autonomy is necessary for morality. Kant is here emphasizing that we are each the creators of our own moral rules. We are fully autonomous beings, and if our morals were imposed on us, then that would undermine our autonomy; we would no longer fully decide our actions. To maintain full autonomy, everyone must be the creator of their own moral rules.

However, if everyone is creating their own moral rules, then wouldn’t people disagree on what is right and wrong? Kant doesn’t believe so. He believes that the categorical imperative is the only rational moral rule, and he also believes that we can derive a complete, consistent set of moral duties from the categorical imperative. Thus, every person who is fully following their rationality will agree on what is right and wrong.

Despite many of the criticisms to which Kant’s ethics has been subject, it remains one of the most influential ethical theories in contemporary Western ethics. Many thinkers agree with its emphasis on ethics being fundamentally rational and being justifiable through reason. The first and second formulations of the categorical imperative also do have great intuitive appeal. Despite the abstract way that the first formulation is expressed, its core meaning is that ethical rules should be universal and that if any rule can’t be universalized, it shouldn’t be followed. This appeals to our sense that all people deserve equal moral consideration and we shouldn’t make special exceptions for ourselves or others. And the second formulation speaks to the idea that we are beings with intrinsic value and with dignity, and to use people as if they are objects or tools is deeply immoral. Kant has put these intuitions into a sophisticated and carefully thought out framework that remains, to this day, a very useful way of thinking about difficult moral questions.

Alighieri, Dante. (1320) 1995. The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. London: Everyman’s Library. https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante/divine-comedy/

Aquinas, Thomas. 1920. The Summa Theologiæ , 2nd ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/

Augustine. (426) 1887. The City of God , trans. Marcus Dods. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 1(2), ed. Philip Schaff. Grand Rapids, MI: W. M. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.i.html

Gregor, Mary J., ed. 1996. Practical Philosophy . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Hume, David. (1777) 1998. Of Suicide. In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Posthumous Essays, ed. Richard H. Popkin. Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing Company.

Kant, Immanuel, and Allen W. Wood. 1996. Practical Philosophy . Edited by Mary J. Gregor. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, Immanuel. (1797) 1996. The Metaphysics of Morals . In Practical Philosophy , 353-603.

Kant, Immanuel. (1785) 1996. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy , 37-108.

Kant, Immanuel. (1797) 1996. “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Philanthropy.” In Practical Philosophy , 605-615.

More, Thomas. Utopia . (1516) 2012. In Open Utopia , ed. Stephen Duncombe. Wivenhoe/New York/Port Watson: Minor Compositions. http://theopenutopia.org

Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1818) 1969. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1., trans. E. F. J. Payne. New York, NY: Dover Publications.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. (1851) 2015. On Suicide . In Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays, Vol. 2 , eds. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • There are many different editions and translations of Kant’s works, and it is common practice in the philosophical community to use a standard referencing system that is the same across all of these rather than using page numbers (which differ across the various editions). The standard system, used in this chapter as well, refers to the German Royal Academy of Sciences edition of Kant’s works, Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Most editions of Kant’s texts will have the Academy reference numbers in them to make it easy to find quotes and arguments across editions. ↵

Kantian Deontology Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Kranak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Case Study: Deontological Ethics in NLP

Shrimai Prabhumoye , Brendon Boldt , Ruslan Salakhutdinov , Alan W Black

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[Case Study: Deontological Ethics in NLP](https://aclanthology.org/2021.naacl-main.297) (Prabhumoye et al., NAACL 2021)

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  • Shrimai Prabhumoye, Brendon Boldt, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, and Alan W Black. 2021. Case Study: Deontological Ethics in NLP . In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies , pages 3784–3798, Online. Association for Computational Linguistics.

case study on deontology theory

Occidental Engineering Case Study: Part 5

  • Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
  • Focus Areas
  • More Focus Areas
  • Engineering Ethics
  • Engineering Ethics Cases

Ethical Reasoning

A case study and analysis of an ethical dilemma facing a software engineer.

It is easy enough to accept in theory the duties to help and not to harm others, to keep promises, to treat others fairly and so on. But how do these translate into specific obligations in concrete circumstances? How do they help us choose between competing alternatives? How do we weight our obligations when we cannot satisfy all of them? What tradeoffs can we make?

A number of ethical theories have been formulated to provide a unified understanding and justification of our ethical obligations and to guide their application. We will study several of the most representative systems, because each one offers key insights into the nature and structure of ethics, and each one emphasizes an important dimension of our concrete obligations.

Teleological Ethics and Utilitarianism

Acts are good if they produce good results, bad if they produce bad results. That is the view of teleological theories. An act, or policy in some cases, is evaluated in view of its consequences, that is, its telos or goal. Acts are not good or bad in themselves, but only through the results they produce. This view sees beneficence, doing good, and nonmalfeasance, avoiding harm, as the fundamental ethical principles, subsuming all others. The obligation to fidelity, including keeping promises and telling the truth, is valid only because it brings about good and avoids harm, and binding only insofar as it does so. It is acceptable to lie for a good purpose; indeed one is obliged to do so. The other basic duties, such as justice and gratitude, are regarded in the same way.

In the Occidental case, Deborah's is a good example of a consequentialist position. She argues that the best course of action is to falsify the test data that exposed flaws in the system, even though it means violating an implicit–and probably also a written contractual–obligation to the government. The reason she gives is that no one will be hurt and it will bring benefits to the company and its employees. To tell the truth, on the other hand, would not help anyone in practice, since the system was safe enough as is; and it could cost some people their jobs.

There remain the problems of defining what is good and what is harmful and of comparing different kinds of goods and harms. For example, in Deborah's case, suppose releasing the flawed system would create some small chance of an accident that could lead to the loss of a few lives, but that the probability would be only one in 100,000. Would it be justified to take this chance if it would save two hundred jobs? What about five thousand?

The theory of utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham 8 addresses these problems. Utilitarianism is a teleological theory, in that it evaluates every act in terms of the effects it produces. Moreover it assigns a quantitative value to all effects according to their goodness or badness. Good effects are given a positive value, and the greater the good the higher the value. Similarly bad effects are given a negative value in proportion to their badness. The moral value of an act is proportional to the sum of the values of all its effects on all the people affected. When choosing between alternative actions, one is to choose the one with the greatest positive value, or the least negative one, if none are positive.

Bentham's version of utilitarianism was hedonistic , meaning that he evaluated all consequences in terms of the pleasure or pain that they gave. He identified seven factors that should go into the calculation of the degree of pleasure or pain produced by an act. They were 9 :

  • Certainty or uncertainty
  • Propinquity (closeness) or remoteness
  • Fecundity, meaning its likelihood to lead to more pleasure if it is a pleasure or pain if it is a pain
  • Purity, meaning its likelihood of not being accompanied by pain if it is a pleasure, or pleasure if it is a pain
  • Extent, meaning the number of persons affected.

The way to calculate the goodness of an act, then, was to find all the people affected by the act and all the consequences for each one; to assign a value to each consequence according to how much pleasure or pain it would produce, using factors 1-6 above, with the greatest pleasure giving the largest positive value; and to take the sum over all those affected of the sum of all the consequences for each one. When choosing among alternatives, the one with the largest value was the one that ought to be chosen. Formally, if there are M people affected by an act A and A has N consequences, and if Pl(i,j) is the value of the pleasure produced by consequence j for person i, while Pa(i,j) is the absolute value of the pain produced by consequence j for person i, then the measure of the "goodness" of A is

case study on deontology theory

The pleasure that this system attempts to maximize is not necessarily limited only to physical pleasure. It can mean anything that leads to human happiness. John Stuart Mill, for example, in his classic defense of utilitari¬anism, insisted that the highest human values are those that produce the greatest pleasure and therefore ought to be rated most highly in the utilitarian 10 calculus. These include intellectual and moral sentiments, liberty, and a sense of dignity. Mill quotes approvingly the adage, "Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied," and feels that utilitarianism's way of calculating pleasure can and should be consistent with this. 11

Utilitarianism is attractive, particularly as a guide for government policy, which is what Bentham originally intended. There are a number of reasons for this. First of all, it is consistent with some of our fundamental moral convictions and intuitions. As we noted at the outset, two of the fundamental ethical principles are that we must avoid doing harm to others and seek to do good. When we consider alternative actions or policies, we do tend to evaluate them in terms of their effects. Will they be good for people, or will they harm them? Which does the greatest good or the least harm? These are precisely the issues that utilitarianism looks at. Moreover, in taking into account all the people affected by an action, and treating them all equally, utilitarianism demands altruism, that is, a concern for the welfare of others. In this it is quite different from egoism, with which it is sometimes confused. For if I choose a course of action for utilitarian reasons, that does not mean it is the best for me , but that it is the best for everyone . The interests of every individual are given equal weight, so the system is even-handed in the way it treats different populations and interest groups.

Another advantage of utilitarianism is that it provides a systematic way of balancing competing interests. As we saw earlier, one of the biggest problems in making an ethical judgment is that in order to gain some benefits or satisfy some duties, one must sometimes forego other benefits or violate other duties. This makes the choice especially difficult. Utilitarianism gives a seemingly objective way of finding the "best" alternative under these circumstances. Even more important, it offers a credible justification for those decisions that appear wrong because they violate some basic duty or deny some benefit. For example, if lying will not hurt anyone, short term or long, and will protect people's lives or bring economic benefits, then utilitarianism says go ahead and lie. Even if there would be some harm from lying, it would be the right thing to do as long as the benefits gained outweigh the harm. As another example, tearing down a neighborhood to build a highway, a stadium, a factory, or some other engine of economic growth, would be justified by utilitarian standards as long as the overall economic benefits were greater than the suffering to those displaced. For policymakers and other public figures, it is especially attractive that utilitarianism gives definite answers, arrived at by a scientific methodology, to these vexing moral questions.

Because of its effectiveness as a tool for ethical analysis and judgment, we use a form of utilitarianism all the time for policy and decision-making, both in government and in the private sector. We call it cost/benefit analysis. The measure we use to quantify all goods is money, which is to be expected given our society's fixation on wealth and what it can buy. Thus in many cases when the government faces a major decision that has identifiable effects on peoples' lives, whether it is approving plans for a nuclear power plant, changing the regulations for automobile safety and pollution, or building a levee, a cost/benefit analysis is required. All of the effects of the proposed action are identified, and their impacts on the population are calculated in terms of dollars. This would include economic gains and losses, increased or decreased risk to human lives, and to some extent changes in the quality of life. These numbers are added up, and, if the outcome is positive, the proposed action is seen to be beneficial.

For all its advantages, however, utilitarianism does have a number of problems 12 . Some have to do with its implementation. For example how do we identify all the consequences of an act or policy, and how do we decide which ones are relevant enough to merit consideration?

How much of a horizon do we use? Do we just consider immediate and certain effects, or do we include long term and uncertain ones? Do we just look at the present generation of victims and beneficiaries, or their children and grandchildren as well? Telling a lie may not do any immediate harm, but every lie told makes it easier to tell the next one, and if lying becomes widespread, it seriously undermines the trust necessary to sustain a civilized society. How much does that count for, and how much of that loss is assignable to a single lie? Should the government require very costly measures to prevent global warming, when scientists cannot even agree if there is such a thing, and, if there is, how serious it is and what its impact will be? What level of certainty is required before we have to act?

Another problem is how to reduce all possible goods and harms, all aspects of human happiness and well-being, to numbers on a single scale. This means comparing values that are generally thought to be incomparable. How many jobs is a human life worth? How much growth in the GNP would pay for ten children with cancer? How many hours saved by suburban commuters would compensate for a family forced to live in an abandoned car because affordable housing has been destroyed by a freeway?

It seems arbitrary, indeed offensive, to put a dollar value on a human life or on human suffering. Yet it could be argued that we do it all the time. There are several more or less objective methods that are commonly used. One is to consider the economic contribution of a person. For example, we might calculate that an average person in a certain population earns about $1 million in wages over his or her lifetime. We could then use that as a rough measure of the value of that life. Or we could do a more careful analysis to calculate how much that person would contribute to the economy minus the resources he or she would use up. We could even pro-rate the figure depending on how much of the person's productive period had already passed. In that case many elderly people could be considered liabilities. Another way to evaluate a life is to look at actuarial figures. Insurance companies have standard tables of damage awards: so much for the death of a young adult, so much for the loss of an arm, so much for paralysis of both legs, and so on. These in turn are related to what juries generally award in such cases, which is another good source of data. Finally we can look at peoples' preferences, in the value they put on their own lives. This can be inferred from the kind of risks people are willing to take in return for some economic benefits. One way to get this is to use survey data. People are asked if they would be willing undertake some hazardous activity, say trying a new, untested drug, with a 1% chance of fatal complications, in return, say, for $10,000. If the answer is yes, it would indicate that they value their lives at no more than $1,000,000. The other way to measure preferences is to look at peoples' actual behavior. For example, if someone takes a coal mining job at $45,000 per year, when the only other jobs available pay $15,000, knowing that coal miners on the average have a shorter life expectancy than the rest of the population by fifteen years, then it would seem that the extra fifteen years is worth no more than about $1,000,000 to the person, assuming thirty years in the work force. Or, if people are generally unwilling to spend an extra $500 for air bags in their cars, knowing that having them would reduce their chance of a fatal injury by one in 10,000, we can conclude that they value their lives at no more than $5,000,000. Admittedly, in practice the situation is more complicated than this. Many studies have shown that the type of hazard, the degree of risk, and many other factors influence people's preferences, so the exact price we are willing to put on our lives varies. Nevertheless, experience does support the utilitarian's contention that in practice a human life does have a finite value, and that this value can be estimated, at least to within an order of magnitude. (For middle class Americans, it seems to be a few million dollars.)

However, all these cases involve no more than exposing some lives to danger and order to obtain some good. They do not involve a direct and intended attack on specific human lives. A pure utilitarian would argue that there is no moral difference, since the outcome is the same: some lives will be lost. But for most of us, there is a significant difference between accepting some risk for oneself or others and directly attacking human beings with the intent to kill them. The moral quality of an act is defined relationally, at least in part. The involvement and intent of the agent matter. Accepting foreseeable but unwanted evil as part of the consequences of an act is different from directly willing that evil 13 .

Another problem with the way utilitarianism puts a value on human life and other goods is that it contains significant value judgments. If we use the potential economic contribution of a person or the dollar value insurance companies and juries put on a life, we will end up favoring some groups over others, for example the young over the old, the rich over the poor, and citizens of first world societies over those in the third. For example, a study of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal India showed that Union Carbide spent far less on safety measures in the Bhopal plant than in a similar plant in Institute, West Virginia. 14 Even if the system avoids such discrimination, it can still contain more subtle value judgments, such as the extent to which the society is willing to put peoples' lives at risk in order to achieve economic growth. The problem here is not that there are value judgments; ethics always involves value judgments. The problem is that the value judgments are often hidden; and those who make them are not held accountable. Cost/benefit analyses are generally presented as "objective" and "scientific," free of any biases and value judgments; and they are accepted on those terms. This shields the hidden value judgments from the kind of public criticism and debate necessary to ensure that they represent our highest ethical standards. Any official who said in public that the residents in a poor, rural town are worth less than those in a wealthy suburb would be severely criticized, and rightly so. But that kind of value judgment could easily be embedded in a cost/benefit analysis for locating a power plant or a highway.

There are also deeper objections to the assumptions behind utilitarianism. For, even if we are willing to take some risks to our lives for a price, we still have a sense that there are some things that simply should not be done, no matter how beneficial. For example, suppose there was a shortage of organ donors and many young, productive people with families dependent on them who would die very soon without a transplant. A utilitarian calculus would seem to indicate that it would be good to find a homeless, friendless, unhappy, but healthy derelict and cut him up for spare parts, if it would save several lives. Certainly the immediate gains outweigh the losses. Perhaps a more careful analysis would show that in the long run the negative effects of killing the derelict, a diminished respect for life, for example, would tip the balance the other way. But suppose the case could be arranged so that there were no negative effects except on the poor victim. Then killing him would be justifiable by utilitarian reasoning. Yet there is something objectionable in the willingness to treat him like a used car, valuable but expendable under the right conditions. As another example, it has been argued that many criminals in the United States go free because of all of the procedural protections accorded the accused. We could put more criminals away, and therefore make our society safer and provide more protection for potential victims by relaxing some of these protections, at the cost of allowing an innocent person to be convicted and punished occasionally. Yet we have steadfastly refused, in principle at least, to compromise our protection of the innocent, even if it means a criminal justice system that is less efficient and less effective in dealing with serious crime. Apparently we still believe that there are some things that cannot be sacrificed, even if there is a considerable advantage to doing so.

Another fundamental objection to utilitarianism is that it does nothing to specify how the goods are to be distributed, as long as the action taken achieves the greatest net good. This can lead to policies that are extremely unfair. According to a utilitarian analysis, there is nothing wrong with sacrificing a minority group for the benefit of the majority, as long as the gains to the majority are greater to the loss to the minority. For example, a cost/benefit analysis might show that the best place to build a major power plant to serve the city of Los Angeles is in northeast Arizona, an area that is very sparsely populated, mostly by Native Americans. A few thousand people living near the plant might suffer some increased risk to their health because of pollution, as well as a loss of some of the majestic beauty of their homeland. Some might also suffer from the desecration of what they consider sacred lands. But this would hardly outweigh the substantial economic benefits and enhanced quality of life for millions of residents in the Los Angeles area. The numbers would certainly favor building the plant. Yet this seems unfair, because those being forced to bear the burdens of living near the plant get none of the benefits and would oppose building the plant if they had anything to say about it. The injustice seems even more acute given the long history of oppression of Native Americans by the white majority. There seem to be moral issues here that a purely utilitarian analysis does not account for. Considerations such as these have led the ethicist William Frankena, who advocates a largely teleological ethical system, to acknowledge that such a system is not adequate without some provision that the benefits and burdens of an action must be distributed fairly. 15

Teleological ethics, and utilitarianism in particular, are helpful in making ethical choices. They help clarify the alternatives and their implications and provide guidance in choosing greater good. But in themselves they do not do justice to all ethical demands. It is necessary to introduce other considerations. This we will do in the next section.

Deontological Ethics

Deontological ethics recognizes that there are some things that are wrong in themselves, apart from their effects. Thus when in the Occidental case, Wayne says, "I would be lying.... I can't do that," he is making a deontological argument. In his view, lying is simply wrong; it does not matter whether it bring about good results. In a deontological system, therefore, duty is primary. This is what gives it its name: deon is the Greek word for duty. An ethical action is one that is consistent with the basic duties, such as fidelity, nonmalfeasance, and justice. To violate any of these is unethical.

The best known statement of deontological ethics is due to Immanuel Kant. 16 Kant wanted to get to the foundation of ethics, so he began by asking what is good in itself. He decided that it is a good will, that is, the will choosing out of a sense of duty, not because of some advantage gained. For if the will chooses some object because of an expectation of a good result, then there is nothing particularly moral in that. The good is in the result, not in the choosing. It is the pure response to an inner moral law, without regard for the consequences, that is morally good.

The next question, according to Kant, is, what kind of law is it that can be chosen in itself, without reference to its effects? He concluded it had to be a law that was universal, not tied to any particular circumstances, and derivable by pure logic. This led to his first statement of the so-called categorical imperative: "I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal good." 17 This captures Kant's idea that to be good is to be directed by a universal, inner moral law. While this law appears to be strictly formal and without content, Kant maintained that it formed a basis for judging specific behaviors. For example, one can conclude from the categorical imperative that breaking a promise is wrong. For if it were ethical for me to break a promise, I would have to accept that it was ethical for everyone to do so. But if everyone was free to break promises, promises would have no meaning. Thus inherent in the notion of a promise is the duty to keep it. There are no exceptions to this because the moral law is universal, applying to all reasonable beings.

At the center of Kant's moral universe is the free and rational subject. That subject follows its own moral law, acting for its own purposes, not for the sake of anything outside of itself. Therefore the subject is an end in itself, not the means to any other end. This suggested a second, more practical statement of the categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means." 18 This principle, which we might call the principle of human dignity, has profound implications for the way we treat one another. It means that we cannot sacrifice the interests of any individual or group, even when there is great benefit in doing so. We cannot simply use someone to accomplish some goal of our own, no matter how good that goal is. For example, a manager cannot simply regard her employees as units of production or information processors, to be used in whatever way is necessary to maximize the firm's profits, without regard to their wishes or needs. Nor can customers be treated simply as consumers of goods and services and producers of revenue. All are in some way partners in the enterprise. 19

A third principle, or third statement of the categorical imperative, follows from the recognition that it is the will freely following the moral law that makes the subject good. As Kant wrote, "autonomy of the will is universally bound up with it [morality], or rather is its very foundation." 20 It is this autonomy that gives the rational subjection its goodness and dignity. Therefore respect for the dignity of a rational being also demands respect for its autonomy. We cannot decide what is good for others, even with their best interests at heart. They must be able to exercise their autonomy. This means, for example, that a doctor, no matter how knowledgeable and well-intentioned, cannot simply decide what treatment to give to a competent patient. The patient must participate in the decision and must give full and informed consent to what is decided.

The system of Kantian ethics is highly abstract and formal, and therefore difficult to apply in practice. The categorical imperative, especially in its first form, has little content, so it is not clear what specific duties follow from it, although the fundamental duties listed earlier in this chapter could probably be justified in Kantian terms. The other problem with the Kantian system is that it gives no guidance about what to do when duties conflict. For Kant all duties bind absolutely. To violate any one is wrong, no matter what good might be achieved by it. Thus is one were harboring a fugitive from an unjust oppressor, and it was necessary to lie to protect him, it would still be wrong to lie.

Any deontological system, precisely because it refuses to reduce ethical values to measurable consequences, will have trouble with choices in conflict situations. There are, however, some ways to ameliorate the problem. The distinction, mentioned earlier, between accepting foreseen but unintended consequences of an act and directly willing evil, is helpful. One might, for example, risk harm to innocent civilians in attacking an unjust aggressor, even though to attack the civilians directly would be wrong, no matter how advantageous that strategy might be. The acceptance of an unintended evil byproduct of a good act is valid, however, only if the good done, or evil avoided, by the act outweighs the evil that accompanies it, and there is no alternative that avoids the evil.

Some deontological systems also allow for a prioritizing of duties, so that when these duties conflict one can choose the most important. This is the approach that W. D. Ross takes, for example. 21 The fundamental duties he lists are prima facie duties, meaning that each one is presumed to hold unless there is a more important duty that overrides it. When duties conflict, one is to choose the most important. In some cases the duties can be given an absolute priority. For example, for Ross the preservation of human life is more important than the cultivation of the life of the mind, so you would be obligated to drop your book and run next door to save your neighbor whose house was on fire, assuming you had the necessary knowledge and ability to help him. In most cases, however, one must decide based on the specific context what duty has priority.

Nevertheless, in a deontological system there are still values that are immeasurable. One cannot, for example, trade one human life for another, or even one for five. As Paul Ramsey writes:

Human, embodied, physical, individuated life is the subject of all values and goods we know. The value or good of life itself should be acknowledged as not to be commeasured with all other or higher worths which for that life cannot be if it is not. Moreover, one life is not to be pooled or interchanged with another. Where human lives are concerned, the idea that they compose a net measurable good is a vacuous and a right dangerous notion. 22

This gives little comfort or guidance in conflict situations where one cannot act without violating some fundamental ethical duty. Its value is that it recognizes those situations as tragic, as having no truly acceptable outcome, rather than blithely declaring good the sacrifice of a thousand lives as long as it saves a thousand and one.

In spite of its ambiguities, Kant's ethics suggest three important principles that help balance the everything-for-sale spirit of utilitarianism and other teleological systems. They are:

  • Universalizability. This states that if action X is justified in situation Y, then X is also justified in any situation Z that does not differ from Y in any morally significant way. This principle, which follows from the first statement of Kant's categorical imperative, ensures that moral judgment will be applied fairly, without favoritism or prejudice. There cannot be one set of rules for me or my group and a different set for everyone else. For example in the Occidental case, one way of testing Deborah's judgment that it is acceptable knowingly to deliver software with hidden flaws as long as they will cause no harm would be to ask if she would accept that same attitude from a subcontractor. It is always worth asking, "How would I feel if this were done to me?" 23
  • Human dignity. Human beings must always be treated as ends in themselves, not simply as means. This is just the second form of the categorical imperative. This recognizes the primacy of the human person in ethics, as against economic considerations for instance, which are important only insofar as they serve the interests of the human person. It also provides some protection for the individual and the minority group against domination and manipulation by a powerful majority.
  • Autonomy. Always respect the autonomy of the human subject. This principle, from the third form of the categorical imperative, asserts not only that people must be given responsibility for their own lives, but that all must have an opportunity to participate as free and responsible subjects in the ethical, social and political life of their communities.

There are a number of modes of ethical reasoning that are based on these principles and are therefore at least derivatively Kantian. We will discuss three of them: rights, contracts and justice.

Rights are certain protections people are entitled to simply as human beings. Rights are seen as necessary to safeguard people's interests and autonomy, and thus are rooted in the principles of human dignity and autonomy.

There are a number of rights that are seen as fundamental to human existence. 24 They include:

  • Life. This includes freedom from violence and torture as well as threats to one's life.
  • Freedom. This includes freedom of movement and freedom from arbitrary arrest or imprisonment.
  • Freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This includes the ability to express and advocate one's thoughts and beliefs.
  • Equality. This means equal treatment under the law and protection from organized racial or religious prejudice and hatred.
  • Freedom of Association. This includes the right to participate in the political process.

In addition to these human rights, there are certain economic rights that are recognized, especially in socialist countries, as being necessary to safeguard human dignity. 25 These include:

  • An adequate standard of living.
  • The freedom to organize and belong to trade unions.
  • Social security, including social insurance.
  • Freedom from hunger. .
  • Health care. .
  • Education. .

These are coming to be accepted as important in the first world as well, although it would be inaccurate to say that western governments are ready to commit themselves to ensuring all of these rights for all their citizens.

There are other rights that, while not fundamental like the above rights, are seen as important for safeguarding the fundamental rights. These we call derived rights. Examples are procedural rights, such as the right to a speedy trial, the right to legal counsel, the right to cross-examine witnesses, and so on. Many of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution are of this sort. They are deemed necessary to protect individuals against the abuse of power by a hostile government, and therefore to guard the life, freedom, and dignity of the individual. Private property is also a derived right. It is possible to conceive of a society without private property that is nevertheless humane and free. In fact such societies have existed, at least on a small scale. Although the idea is not popular today, some have suggested that a propertyless society would by its nature be more likely to nurture human freedom and dignity.

However that may be, it is widely accepted, based on human experience, that private property creates a sphere in which people can pursue their personal interests relatively free of outside influence, protect their lives, and provide for their economic needs. Therefore private property is seen as an important part of the rights package in many societies. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that property is not a fundamental human right in the same way that, say, the rights to life and liberty are.

Respect for rights is an important dimension of ethics. Rights guarantee the individual certain personal, economic and social goods that are necessary for a decent human life, and they safeguard individual autonomy against oppressive societies and governments. The original justification for liberal democratic government, with its ideals of limited governmental power and guaranteed freedoms for its citizens, was based on human rights. 26 Moreover rights ensure a certain measure of fairness in that they are meant to protect all human beings, not just those who are economically productive or politically loyal or who belong to the favored religion, race, class or gender. To appreciate the importance of the fundamental human rights, one need only contemplate what life is like in societies that do not respect them.

Nevertheless critics see some dangers in a rights-based ethic. Because rights involve the claims individuals have against society, they can be divisive. They emphasize privileges and protections individuals can demand from society, and not the duties individuals have to contribute to society and to make it work. Understood in this way, rights serve individual interests but not the common good. Those who worry about a "welfare state mentality," in which individuals see themselves as entitled to be taken care of by society without giving anything in return, often attribute it to an excessive emphasis on rights. On the other hand, those who are disturbed by the behavior of some individuals and corporations who pursue their own profit single-mindedly to the detriment of society blame it to an assertion of freedom unbalanced by any sense of social obligation.

Another problem with rights is that they can be so open-ended. It is hard to define where legitimate expectations end and unreasonable ones begin. The temptation is to keep sliding the line further and further out to encompass every possible unpleasantness. Now people are demanding protection against the rude language of second-graders, the freedom to defecate in public, insurance against all job-related stress, and immunity from the consequences of their own reckless activity. 27 All of these claims, if accepted, as they have been in some cases, create further costs for the rest of society. They also insulate the claimants from having to take responsibility for their own actions.

Finally, like the duties in other Kantian systems, rights can conflict with one another, and there is no well-defined procedure for deciding between them. The old adage says, "Your rights end where mine begin," but where do we draw that line? Suppose some parents' religious beliefs compel them to beat their children severely when they misbehave. What takes precedence, their freedom of religion or their children's right to protection from physical harm? What happens when one person's freedom to smoke impinges on another's right to a healthy, smoke-free environment, or when one person's freedom of expression is experienced as racial or sexual harassment by another? Many of the most difficult and hotly contested ethical issues in our society are rooted in rights conflicts. Rights theory itself, because it is based on individual claims, has no reliable way of choosing between them.

Rights language has become the favored mode of ethical reasoning in the developed countries of the west. In fact it is their distinctive contribution, and an important one, to ethical thought and practice. But too much emphasis on rights can lead to excessive individualism and a loss of civility and coherence in society, an acknowledged problem in those societies.

Freedom and Contracts

Another approach, closely related to rights-based ethics, makes human autonomy its supreme value. What is most important in this view is that people be able to do what they choose and choose what they do. They should be free to pursue their own happiness, development and self-fulfillment in whatever way they decide is best. In this libertarian ethic, if people want to take drugs they should be able to do so, no matter what it does to them, as long as they understand the consequences and assent to them, and as long as they do not hurt or inconvenience anyone else. If ten women want to marry the same man, that is fine, provided all agree to the arrangement and no one else is adversely affected. And if a man makes a fully informed and rational decision that his life is not worth living anymore, he ought to be able to end it, although he should be careful not to leave a mess for someone else to clean up.

There are of course limits that even libertarians would recognize in how far people can go in pursuit of their own freedom. For one thing we are all constrained by the limits of the possible. Susan may decide she wants to live to be two hundred years old; but it is not necessarily a moral failure on someone's part if she doesn't make it. Todd may choose to be the next Michael Jordan, but if he is 5'7" with a six inch vertical leap and no shooting eye, neither the Chicago Bulls nor anyone else owes it to him to guarantee that he will achieve his dream.

Another limitation arises when one person's freedom interferes with another's, as noted above. Harry may want to marry Joan, but if she wants nothing to do with him, he has no claim on her or the marriage. Steve and his friends may enjoy partying and playing loud music at 3 AM on Sunday; but his neighbors might want to sleep at that time. Someone's freedom is going to have to be limited.

But noninterference is not enough. A view of human life that has every individual pursuing his or her ends in isolation without reference to anyone else, except perhaps to stay out of their way, is an impoverished one. Cooperation is necessary for the realization even of many individual goals. Therefore a libertarian ethic must somehow account for cooperation and the sacrifices it entails. It does so through the mechanism of contracts. In a contract two or more parties agree to cooperate for their mutual advantage, even though it means surrendering some freedom and other prerogatives. When people agree to go to work for a company, they typically agree to work during certain hours, even though at times they would rather be home or out recreating then, and they agree to do certain tasks that they might not do just for their own edification. The company's owners, for their part, agree to part with some of their wealth, sharing it with employees in the form of wages, which they would rather keep for themselves or invest in the company. Ultimately both sides benefit in spite of the sacrifices. The company needs a reliable workforce in order to function; and the employees can make more money than they could working on their own, with whatever benefits come with that. The contract preserves freedom while allowing the limitations on individual prerogatives that cooperation requires, because the obligations people take on are those they choose themselves.

A libertarian ethic has much to recommend it. It recognizes that the human person is the origin and locus of ethical value by protecting every individual's ability to pursue his or her interests. It reverences and guards human autonomy, which is central to the identity, value and uniqueness of the human person. In particular it guarantees that people will participate in the decisions that affect them. It stands as a bulwark against the oppressive power of government and other large institutions that would otherwise use individuals for alien purposes, rather than allowing them to be themselves and serve themselves. Moreover an ethic of freedom encourages individuality, diversity and creativity. Much of the vitality and flexibility shown by liberal democratic countries can be attributed to their commitment to individual freedom.

An ethic that is strictly libertarian, however, does have its problems. Outside of its commitment to freedom, it has no content. There is no duty except to respect the freedom of others and no recognition that human life has certain fundamental values that cannot be contracted away. Anything at all is acceptable, as long as everyone affected consents to it. The ultimate irony is that someone could sell himself into slavery, no matter how abusive, degrading and oppressive, as long as the decision was made freely.

Another problem is that a libertarian ethic has an atomistic view of society. Society is no more than a collection of individuals pursuing individual goals. People cooperate through contracts, but only insofar as they choose and only when it benefits them individually. Beyond this there is no obligation to serve family, community or state. John Locke and other early theorists of liberal democracy tried to compensate for this by postulating a "social contract" by which all people agreed to live in society because it was mutually beneficial to do so. 28 For to live without society and without a government to keep order would be to live in a "state of nature," in which everyone would responsible for defending his own life and property, and which would therefore be a chaotic, perpetual "state of war." The suggestion was not that our ancestors had on some occasion gathered under a sacred oak and entered into such a contract. Rather it is a theoretical construct meant to convey the idea that it is in our interests to have government, so that if we were given the choice of whether or not to accept the limitations of living in society, we would do it. Thus it reconciles the need to surrender some freedom to government with the conviction that the only obligations we have are those we choose to accept. This is still a very weak account of social obligation, however. It implies that the only demands family or society can make on us are those we accept, which are only those that serve our self-interest.

The other danger of an ethics of freedom is that it only works for those who can understand, choose and promote their own interests. The big question is, who defends the defenseless and who speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. Because the primary responsibility for promoting a person's interests lie with the individual, and because society is seen primarily as facilitating that, those who cannot act autonomously, because of age, race, mental or physical handicap, gender, or economic or social status, tend to be treated as if they had no interests. Thus those who are most vulnerable and on the margins of society are given the least protection and treated the worst. For these people human dignity is not well served.

Justice governs the complex economic, social and political relationships within and between societies and the social structures that sustain them, more than obligations between individuals. Based on the essential worth and dignity of every human being and the principle of universalizability, which says that people should not be treated differently because of morally irrelevant differences, justice demands equal treatment of all human beings. In other words, it requires that the benefits and burdens of society be distributed fairly. Certainly the burdens of society should not fall disproportionately on one group; nor should any group enjoy more of the benefits than it is entitled to. In particular those who are already weakest in society should not be unduly burdened or denied participation in society and a share of its goods. This is a particular concern because those who are already on the margins of society and least able to claim their proper place in it are the most likely to be taken advantage of and denied its benefits. The justice of a society is most clearly shown in how it treats its poor.

Consideration of justice is an important part of ethical reasoning because it forces us to look beyond individual relationships, acts and obligations and to consider broader issues, including institutional and societal issues. In the Occidental case, for example, Deborah and Wayne both fail to consider the fairness of their proposed actions. When the government accepted bids on the project, it was with the understanding that the winner would deliver a working prototype by a certain date. This applied to all of the bidders. In bidding low and then trying to compensate by not putting enough resources into the project to guarantee making the deadline, Occidental tried to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors, who presumably bid higher based on an honest assessment of what it would take to meet the requirements. The punishment Occidental is subject to for failing to make the deadline is meant to ensure fairness in the bidding process, and Occidental's attempt to avoid the deserved penalty is therefore unjust. This is one of the strongest arguments, perhaps the decisive one, against Deborah's position.

There are a number of ways in which the requirement of equal or fair treatment can be understood. One, the weakest, is simply a prohibition of discrimination against any individual or group based on race, religion, ethnic background or other characteristics for which the subjects are not responsible. People should not be deprived of any good, impeded in the pursuit of their own interests, or otherwise put at a disadvantage for arbitrary reasons, those that are beyond their control and have nothing to do with their merit or worth. This discrimination can take many forms, from attacks on people's lives, to denial of equal protection under the law, to denial of religious freedom, to economic and job discrimination, to social ostracism and other forms of demeaning treatment.

Certainly the protection from discrimination is an important part of justice. Any society that failed to provide it would have to be judged unjust. The question is whether it is enough that society not interfere with individuals' rights and freedoms. For even when people are not victimized by direct discrimination, they can be at a disadvantage because of a past history of discrimination to their race, religion or ethnic group or because of randomly occurring and unmerited factors such as intelligence, appearance, health, family background and so on. Even without interference society's goods end up being distributed very unequally. Is there an obligation to do something positive to even it out? If so, in what way, to what extent, and according to what criteria?

Some, such as the contemporary philosopher Robert Nozick, would argue that there is no such obligation. 29 He points out that there is no central distribution system for all of society's benefits. Different goods are controlled by different people and they are transferred by trade or by gifts. To force a change in the existing distribution of goods or to try to control how they are transferred would be to violate the liberty of those who hold them and therefore would itself be unjust. The existing distribution is just as long as it has been reached by legitimate means, without fraud or force or any other interference in the free acquisition and exchange of goods. Thus for Nozick the free market is the best guarantor of justice, and the government should not try to force any particular pattern of distribution in society.

While this view of justice may, in some formal sense at least, uphold the freedom of the individual, it leaves many individuals, through no fault of their own, unable to pursue their own interests or to participate as they would like in the life of society. Moreover it tolerates enormous inequalities in the way people are treated and in the advantages they enjoy and the burdens they have to bear. Some families can be living in abject poverty, crowded into dismal housing, their children starving, with no hope of improving their lot, while others amass enormous wealth, more than they could ever use; and that would be considered acceptable as long as it could be shown that there were no explicit acts aimed at further depriving the poor or blocking their attempts to help themselves. This hardly seems like equal and fair treatment. Nor does it recognize the fundamental duty to help those in need.

This has led many to define justice in such a way that it includes the obligation to narrow the inequities between rich and poor. This has been done in a number of ways. One approach, like Nozick's, does not focus on equality of results, the actual distribution of society's goods, but on equality of opportunity. Unlike Nozick's, however, it recognizes that many are impeded in their ability to participate in the life of society and share in its benefits by factors that, while they may not be the result of discrimination or malfeasance, still are not chosen or deserved by the subjects. This includes inequality in natural gifts, family background, education and so on. This view recognizes that society has the obligation, to the extent that it is able, to help compensate for these inequalities. Thus society would have an obligation to provide compensatory education, job training, health care, day care and so on, so that those who start out deprived will at least have a chance to compete for decent jobs, housing and so on. This definition still tolerates large discrepancies in the actual distribution of goods, but at least it recognizes some form of social obligation to help those most disadvantaged.

Other theories of justice focus on outcomes. They insist that the actual distribution of benefits and burdens in society should conform to certain rules. These usually take the form of "to each according to his/her X," where X could be merit, contribution to society, or need. The first two envision some sort of rewards system, where people are compensated for hard work, character, ability, and what they are able to do for others, but are not allowed to accumulate or hold undeserved wealth. The third leads to a communist society that simply distributes goods as needed to give everyone the same level of benefits regardless of merit. In any case this kind of justice requires strong social control over economic activity, which does diminish individual liberty, as well as the flexibility and creativity of the economic system. Furthermore, to the extent that need rather than merit dictates distribution, there is less individual incentive to contribute, especially in a large and diverse society, which in practice generally leads to less economic output and fewer goods to distribute.

Neither equality of opportunity nor equality of result seems entirely satisfactory. In practice most societies combine the two. They define a certain minimum of essential goods that everyone is entitled to, in income, education, housing, health care, and so on, and recognize that society has an obligation to provide that minimum. Beyond that, they allow great freedom in economic, social and political activity and accept whatever distribution of goods results. This of course is the foundation of the modern democratic socialist state. Philosophically this solution is incoherent and therefore not very satisfying. 30 And it leaves open many practical questions, such as what minimum of goods is acceptable, how society is to provide and pay for this, and so on. But it does seem to provide the foundation for a workable solution.

A contemporary philosophical approach to justice that attempts to reconcile the demands of equality and freedom is found in John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. 31 Rawls begins, like John Locke before him, with the primacy of individual freedom, and derives from it a justification for accepting one's obligations to society. What is right for Rawls is what the reasonable person would choose if fully informed and fully free. Therefore he begins with what he calls "the original position." In this hypothetical construct, a group of people who are to form a society meet to decide by what principles their society is to be governed. To make the choice fair and free of self-interest, each person is assumed to be behind a "veil of ignorance," with no knowledge of his or her natural gifts, class, race, family background, or other naturally occurring advantages or disadvantages. Thus no one will seek to maximize his or her advantages under the system, and everyone will take special care to ensure that the situation of those who are worst off will be tolerable, because they might end up in that position. Rawls argues that a group of people in the original position would decide on the following two principles:

  • "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberty compatible with a similar system of liberty for all."
  • "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged ..., and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."

Rawls also gives rules for prioritizing these principles when they conflict. The first principle, the protection of liberty, is to have priority over the second, and a liberty can be limited only when it strengthens the overall system of liberty. Furthermore equality is to have priority over maximizing the advantages of all in society and equality of opportunity is to have priority over the allowance of inequality for maximum advantage. 32

As can be seen, Rawls seeks to integrate many of the concerns and values advocated by the various theories of justice discussed above. Individual liberty has priority, not only as his conceptual starting point but also in the resulting system of justice, because without it there can be no political justice. However in the distribution of society's goods, especially in its economic life, he insists on equality except where inequality will benefit those who are most needy. This equality encompasses both equality of opportunity and equality in the actual distribution. Thus Rawls allows the free market system because it can produce more goods to be shared, but only when it is structured so that the poor can participate in its benefits.

Rawls's system can be criticized from both sides. Libertarians would be uncomfortable with the attempt to put limits on how society's goods can be distributed. On the other hand, those with a more communitarian view of justice would want to see the obligation to serve the good of the community given a higher priority, rather than being secondary to, and derived from, individual freedom. Nevertheless, Rawls's system is an important achievement, not only as an intellectual tour de force, but also for the practical guidance it gives in how to integrate and balance the various elements of justice.

Virtue Ethics

The systems considered above looked at individual acts, judging them either according to their consequences (utilitarianism and similar systems) or by whether they satisfy certain rules and requirements (deontological systems). Another approach considers not so much the acts themselves as the one who performs them, the agent. Good acts come from a good person, that is, one with the proper character and disposition. This approach, which goes back to the classical Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, seeks to understand ethics in terms of the qualities that make a person good.

In general something is good if it fulfills its purpose in the best possible way. Thus, since the purpose of a book is to inform and entertain, a good book is one that informs and entertains us. The purpose of a saw is to cut wood. Therefore a good saw is one that cuts wood effectively and efficiently. To use one of Aristotle's analogies, the purpose of a physician is to produce health, so a good physician is one that can make patients healthy. This may seem obvious; but it is worth noting that we often overlook it and judge physicians on their salaries, the elegance of their offices, their knowledge, or even their appearances. Sometimes the obvious, common-sense truths are the ones we need most to hear.

In seeking to understand what makes people good in general, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics , asked what the purpose of human life is, and decided it was happiness, since that is what we all seek for its own sake. Furthermore he decided that the happiness that was our ultimate purpose could not come from sensual pleasure, adulation or similar factors, because these depend on external elements over which the subject has little control. Therefore they could not produce lasting happiness. Genuine happiness and fulfillment are intrinsic and come from attaining those qualities that are most pleasing and praiseworthy in a human being. These are what Aristotle called the virtues or "excellences" of the human person, and included such qualities as temperance, courage, generosity, and especially justice and friendship. The good person is the one that possesses these qualities, and good actions are the ones that follow from them.

Virtue ethics provides a valuable complement to the other systems. In focusing on the agent, it looks at the source of ethical behavior and how and why it comes to be. Virtuous people generally do know the right thing to do, and find a way to do it. Furthermore it emphasizes the very important insight that ethical acts have a significance for the one who performs them, not just for those on the receiving end. Finally it provides a more positive and expansive view of human behavior. Rather than concentrating on following the rules or producing the right results, it urges us to live nobly, to reach for what is best and most fully human in us.

The main problem with virtue ethics is that it has limited usefulness in deciding difficult issues or resolving ethical conflicts. Like many of the deontological systems we studied earlier, it has no way of weighing and choosing among competing values, and it does not offer a framework for analyzing complex moral dilemmas. In its purest form, it depends on the moral intuition of those who are virtuous to provide guidance. That can go along way; but finding one's way through the moral mazes encountered when one faces unfamiliar situations like those created by new technology, requires more systematic analysis. For example in the Occidental case, Deborah shows an unselfish concern for her employees, which for Aristotle would be an especially commendable manifestation of friendship. She also has a strong loyalty to her company and considerable fortitude in holding her ground. On the other hand, she falls short on some aspects of justice and seems less than completely honest. Wayne, conversely, is praiseworthy for his honesty and his sense of fairness, but perhaps lacks courage. Applying these categories does give some insight into the character and motivation of the two principals; and it even suggests how each could do better. But it does not help choose between their two positions. Most importantly it does not provide much guidance for someone faced with the same decision, since different virtues lead in different directions. However, it does at least help clarify the choices. For example, if one puts care for those with whom one has a direct relationship first, a position often identified with feminist ethics, then one would tend to side with Deborah. Conversely, if one was committed to more abstract and general values like honesty and justice, a more Kantian position, one would see Wayne as being in the right.

8. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Theory of Morals and Legislation, New York: Hafner Press, 1948. 9. ibid, pp. 29-32. 10. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987. 11. ibid, p. 20. 12. Alasdair MacIntyre, "Utilitarianism and Cost/Benefit Analysis: An Essay on the Relevance of Moral Philosophy to Bureacratic Theory," in Ethics and the Environment, Donald Scherer and Thomas Attig (eds.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1983. 13. For an excellent discussion of the distinction, see Richard A. McCormick, SJ and Paul Ramsey (eds.), Dong Evil to Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Conflict Situations, Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1978. 14. B. I. Castleman and P. Purkavastha, "The Bhopal disaster as a case study in double standards," in The Export of Hazard: Transnational Corporations and Environmental Control Issues, J. Ives (ed.), Boston: Routledge & Kegan, 1985. 15. William Frankena, Ethics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. 16. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1981. 17. ibid, p. 14. 18. ibid, p. 36. 19. William M. Evan and R. Edward Freeman, "A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation: Kantian Capitalism," in Ethical Theory and Business (4th edititon), Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman E. Bowie (eds.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993, pp. 75-84. 20. Kant, op. cit. , p. 48. 21. Ross, op. cit. 22. Paul Ramsey, "Incommensurability and Indeterminancy in Moral Choice," in McCormick and Ramsey, op. cit., p. 95. 23. See Frankena, op. cit. 24. United Nations, "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," 1966. 25. United Nations, "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights," 1966. 26. John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980. 27. George F. Will, "Our Expanding Menu of Rights," Newsweek, Dec. 14, 1992, p. 90. 28. Lock, op. cit. 29. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books, 1974. 30. But see Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality, New York: Basic Books, 1983, for an argument in favor of pluralism in the definition of justice. 31. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. 32. ibid, pp. 302f.

Michael McFarland, S.J., a computer scientist, is the former president of College of the Holy Cross and was a visiting scholar at the Ethics Center.

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Definition of Deontology: Philosophy Theory of Immanuel Kant Case Study

The theory was formulated by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The word comes from the words, “deon” or “duty” therefore, the reasoning behind the word deontology is on the idea that as human beings, we have the duty to do certain things and avoid others (Hugh, 2000, p. 6). This theory does not look at how much good might be realized from a certain action but rather it looks at the actions of the individual.

The principle of this theory of ethics has been adopted in various ways to achieve a common goal. For instance, beneficence principles help or guide one to do what is good. Respect of autonomy principles helps in reaching a consensus and allowing people to make decisions that are important to their lives (Catherine, 2002, p. 5).

Justice principles endeavor to ensure fairness in our actions, while least harm principles help in making choices that are geared at causing least harm to many. Therefore, they help in reaching a common goal.

The theory dictates that individuals need at all time exhibit behaviors or actions that can become a universal rule. Individuals should also act in such a way that they treat humanity both in their own person and in that of another, usually as an end and not as a means (Hugh, 2000, p. 7). Furthermore, morality of individuals is judged based on nature of their actions and will, not on goals attained. This is because we cannot control our future despite of the best efforts we put in.

Therefore, we are usually blamed because of the actions that are within us, our will, but not our achievement. Individuals should always do unto others as they would have them done unto them. The theory emphasizes on respect of persons and should be treated with the respect that they deserve. Therefore, individual human rights should be acknowledged and should not be violated.

In my nursing practice, this theory has been of great importance. I have used the theory as my guideline in respecting the desires of my patients. For instance, I have respected their wish not to disclose their confidential information to third parties.

Virtue theory is an ethics theory which deemphasizes rules, or consequences but it focus on the person that is involved in an act (Catherine, 2002, p. 8). It does not deemphasize on whether the act is right, abiding rules, and good consequences of our actions. The most important thing is whether the individual acting is expressing good character-moral virtues or not. As the person character is the totality of the individual character traits.

Utilitarianism theory is associated with the British philosopher by the name John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), who developed it. The theory holds that individuals’ actions are right if only they promote good to majority. The theory, therefore, agitates for the respect of every person through our actions. The critics of the theory question the extent on how the good of the majority goes.

Another ethical theory is the casuist theory. This theory is used in comparing the present ethical problems with the past examples and outcomes of similar ethical problems that was experienced. This, therefore, helps in the determination of severity of a given situation and helps in creating of best solutions in relation to another person’s experiences.

Does justice require universal access to health care?

For justice to be realized there is need for universal health care. Universal access to healthcare as embodied in the health systems of developed countries is aimed at securing an equal access to the healthcare. There have been various disagreements pertaining to the accessibility of health care (Jim, 2009, para. 23). Some people view health care as social good and like any other commodity that needs to be purchased. The healthcare should be made accessible to its entire people.

In most circumstances, those people that are not able to access good healthcare services do not have the money to pay for their health, while those who have the resources can afford good healthcare services. This inequality has created disparities and contributed to injustices. Heath care should be rolled out in order to be accessible by every person in need. Health care is important in fostering justice to the whole society. Therefore, I do agree that justice requires a universal access to health care.

Catherine, R. (2002 ). Descriptions of ethical theories and principle . Web.

Hugh, L. (2000). The Blackwell guide to ethical theory . New York: John Wiley & Sons ltd, Inc.

Jim, N. (2009). Does justice require universal access to health care? Web.

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