> Take the following example of theft. Suppose that there are 1,000 aliens, each of which has a stone. They can all steal the stone of their neighbor to decrease their suffering very slightly any number of times. The stone produces very minimal benefits—the primary benefit comes from stealing the stone.
Well, presumably all the aliens are fine with "theft" since it prevents them from being in unimaginable agony. If there's one crazy alien, then the remaining 999 can steal among themselves 10^100 times.
If the Aliens are not fine with theft, then they apparently want to be infinitely tortured. Maybe for them, torture being good is as obvious as the goodness of pleasure is to you. Leave them be.
I don’t think you can call Deontology true or false. There are particular Deontological systems of morality which produce perverse results (e.g. saying never steal under any circumstances, even if your children are starving). But you can absolutely construct a deontological system which allows you to steal!
IMO this is kind of the point of Deontology (as opposed to Utilitarianism). Deontology says you can’t build your morality around maximizing a single variable. Instead, you build a pluralistic system of rules, intuition, etc, to help you navigate moral situations.
There appears to be a typical consequentialist misunderstanding of deontology underlying this argument. Consequentialists recognise that deontology places “awkward obstacles” in then way of their schemes to maximalise utility and consider this akin to inefficiency. Why would you make an “arbitrary” rule? They say, “It may stop us from achieving some greater good.”
But modern deontology is not about arbitrary rules, it is about a community of rational beings (we could easily replace “rational” with “conscious” or even “suffering” and amend Kant’s views in line with contemporary scientific understandings of animal sentience). What this means is that in a kingdom of ends, while there are indeed barriers to actions that may be considered net goods, (e.g. maximising utility), they only occur in special cases, namely in areas where there are beings worthy of moral consideration. And where there is a being worthy of moral consideration, there exists the possibility of discourse (or forms of communication analogous to discourse, such as expressions of pleasure and pain).
Hence, the paradox is solved: the barrier to action is in fact a call to discussion, and rational beings, moral agents, can in a community, agree to accept their marginal suffering in the name of the greater good. Thus, the maximal utility may be achieved, no less so than under a consequentialist regime, but with the added bonus (!) of the safeguards that the concept of duty provides, via the little red flags that go up whenever someone talks about the “objective need” for some suffering in order to achieve some outcome that is better overall.
Deontology does not fail in such a situation, it emerges strengthened, refreshed and ready for further challenges.
(I admit that I have no detailed argument on how to precisely include beings that are worthy of moral consideration but unable to participate directly in rational human discourse in the community of ends, but I am sure that this minor crease can be ironed out with a few tweaks – after all, we are perfectly able to imagine far more rational beings than ourselves, whose arguments we could not follow, and yet do not consider that to invalidate our worthiness as beings of moral consideration – and if we did, well, we would then be able to abandon our dumb suffering friends happily to their fates).
> Take the following example of theft. Suppose that there are 1,000 aliens, each of which has a stone. They can all steal the stone of their neighbor to decrease their suffering very slightly any number of times. The stone produces very minimal benefits—the primary benefit comes from stealing the stone.
Well, presumably all the aliens are fine with "theft" since it prevents them from being in unimaginable agony. If there's one crazy alien, then the remaining 999 can steal among themselves 10^100 times.
If the Aliens are not fine with theft, then they apparently want to be infinitely tortured. Maybe for them, torture being good is as obvious as the goodness of pleasure is to you. Leave them be.
My only objection is to
> Therefore, deontology is false
I don’t think you can call Deontology true or false. There are particular Deontological systems of morality which produce perverse results (e.g. saying never steal under any circumstances, even if your children are starving). But you can absolutely construct a deontological system which allows you to steal!
IMO this is kind of the point of Deontology (as opposed to Utilitarianism). Deontology says you can’t build your morality around maximizing a single variable. Instead, you build a pluralistic system of rules, intuition, etc, to help you navigate moral situations.
There appears to be a typical consequentialist misunderstanding of deontology underlying this argument. Consequentialists recognise that deontology places “awkward obstacles” in then way of their schemes to maximalise utility and consider this akin to inefficiency. Why would you make an “arbitrary” rule? They say, “It may stop us from achieving some greater good.”
But modern deontology is not about arbitrary rules, it is about a community of rational beings (we could easily replace “rational” with “conscious” or even “suffering” and amend Kant’s views in line with contemporary scientific understandings of animal sentience). What this means is that in a kingdom of ends, while there are indeed barriers to actions that may be considered net goods, (e.g. maximising utility), they only occur in special cases, namely in areas where there are beings worthy of moral consideration. And where there is a being worthy of moral consideration, there exists the possibility of discourse (or forms of communication analogous to discourse, such as expressions of pleasure and pain).
Hence, the paradox is solved: the barrier to action is in fact a call to discussion, and rational beings, moral agents, can in a community, agree to accept their marginal suffering in the name of the greater good. Thus, the maximal utility may be achieved, no less so than under a consequentialist regime, but with the added bonus (!) of the safeguards that the concept of duty provides, via the little red flags that go up whenever someone talks about the “objective need” for some suffering in order to achieve some outcome that is better overall.
Deontology does not fail in such a situation, it emerges strengthened, refreshed and ready for further challenges.
(I admit that I have no detailed argument on how to precisely include beings that are worthy of moral consideration but unable to participate directly in rational human discourse in the community of ends, but I am sure that this minor crease can be ironed out with a few tweaks – after all, we are perfectly able to imagine far more rational beings than ourselves, whose arguments we could not follow, and yet do not consider that to invalidate our worthiness as beings of moral consideration – and if we did, well, we would then be able to abandon our dumb suffering friends happily to their fates).