Deontological Theories

 Deontological theories (derived from the Greek word for duty, deon) base morality on certain duties, or obligations, and claim that certain actions are intrinsically right or wrong, that is, right or wrong in themselves, regardless of the consequences that may follow from those actions.  What makes a choice or an action right is its conformity with a moral norm.  Thus, an agent has a duty to act in accordance with a moral norm, irrespective of the (potentially beneficial) effects of acting otherwise.

We might say that parents, for example, have an obligation to take care of their children.  On a deontological view, parents must fulfill this obligation, even if breaking the obligation were to result, for the parents, in some great benefit (increased financial savings, for example).

The deontological view holds that some actions cannot be justified by their consequences. In short, for the deontologist, the ends do not justify the means.

A theory that suggests actions are good or bad according to a clear set of rules.  Actions that obey these rules are ethical, while actions that do not, are not.

•      What are duties?

–     Hugo Grotius ( 1583-1635) and Samuel Pufendorf ( 1632-1694)

•      Duties towards God

•      Towards one’s self

•      Duty towards others.

•      Family, friends, general social obligations etc

–     W.D ROSS DUTIES ( 1817-1971)

•      Fidelity

•      Gratitude

•      Justice

•      Beneficence

•      Self improvement and Non- maleficence.

 

 

How does deontology differ from virtue ethics

•      Act Guidance vs. Character guidance

•      Deontology and consequentialism provide act guidance, that is, they tell us what sorts of actions we should take rather then what sort of people we ought to become (Character Guidance)

CONSEQUENTIALISM THEORIES	DEONTOLOGICAL THEORIES
Hold that an action’s rightness or wrongness depends on the consequence it causes (e.g happiness, pain,etc.)	Hold that an action’s rightness or wrongness depends on its conformity to a certain moral norm,regardless of the consequence, I.e. “Right vs. Good”

Types of Deontological Theories

1. Agent - centered: morality is intensely personal

2. Patient - centered: rights based

3. Contractarian: contract/promise based

4. Divine command: command of God

5. Kant’s duty-based ethics

 

Agent-centered deontology

Theories focused on the duties of the moral agent (the person acting. Rather than the rights of the person being acted upon (patient-centered theories).

Agent centered theories can be further divided into those that focus on the mental state of the agent and those that focus on the nature of the agent's actions.

Agent-centered theories: mental states

An action is wrong or right because of the intentions that motivated it . Catholic doctrine of double effect: We are categorically forbidden for intending to cause evils (such as killing the innocent), even in order to prevent other evils, However, it is acceptable to cause evils unintentionally, even if we foresee them as effects of our actions.

Doctrine of double effect: Example

“ A doctor who believed that abortion was wrong, even in order to save the mother’s life might nevertheless consistently believe that it would be permissible to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman with cancer. In carrying out the hysterectomy, the doctor would aim to save the women’s life while merely foreseeing the death of the Fetus. Performing an abortion, by contrast, would involve intending to kill the fetus as a means to saving the mother.”

Agent-centered theories: actions

•      We are categorically forbidden to cause evils (such as killing innocents) directly, but are permitted to allow, enable, or accelerate them under some circumstances.

•      The focus here is the exact way in which our actions bring about consequences, rather than just the consequences themselves

•      Similar to doctrine of doing vs. allowing

Agent-centered religious ethics

According to Old Testaments law it is wrong to work on the Sabbath because God say so.

If I am an atheist who doesn’t work on the Sabbath because my employer gives me the day off, then my behavior is not really morally right because I’m not acting for the right reason.

Patient Centered Theories

Patient Centered Theories(PCT)  that deal with rights.  It is common among libertarians and in American politics (due to the influence of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson) . An action is wrong if it violates a person’s rights. E.g. the right to “life , liberty and property/the pursuit of happiness” or “against being used only as a means for producing good consequences without one’s consent”

The Trolley Thought Experiment

1: An out of control trolley is heading towards a forked track. On one side of the fork, five people are trapped and will be killed by the trolley unless a switch is flipped, in which case the trolley will be diverted to the other side of the fork where only one person will be killed. Should you flip the switch?

2: there is no switch and the only way to stop the trolley from killing five people is to push a fat man in front of the trolley. Should you push the fat man

    Deontological Answers

1: No; because flipping the switch causes a death while doing nothing merely allows people to die. Yes; because flipping the switch would save the five whether the one were there or not. The death of the one is foreseen, but not intended; the one is not being used to save the five.

2: No; because pushing the fat man uses his body and life (without his consent) for the sake of other people. No; because pushing the fat man is an intentional killing

Learnings from Deontology

Allows us to prioiritize our own lives, family and firiends. Consequentilism’s agent-neutrality can be demanding and alienating

Provides intuitive solutions to the trolley and “fat man” thought experiments

Preserves the concept of supererogatory actions(actions that go above and beyond the call of duty)

 

 A familiar example: “the golden rule”

•      Also known as the ethic of reciprocity, this famous cross-cultural maxim states: “do to others as you want them to do to you.”

•      May seem like a useful maxim at first, but it has serous limitations.

•      Depends on the mental state of the moral agent rather than the person being acted upon.

Negative and Positive Rights Theories:

•       The negative rights theory asserts that an action is right if it protects the individual from harm or unwarranted interference from other people or the government while exercising his right.

•      Suppose an individual has the right to use, sell or dispose of his personal car then the other persons have the correlative duty to not to prevent him from doing whatever he want to do with his car.

•      The positive rights theory posits that an action is right if it provides or tends to provide an individual with anything that he needs to exist.

•      Suppose an individual has the right to adequate health care services to survive this means other agents, perhaps the government has the correlative duty to provide him with the necessary health care services.

Social Contract Theories: 

•      The social contract theories posit that people contract with each other to abide by the moral and political obligations towards the society in which they live.

•       This theory is based on the notion that if there is no order and law in the society, then people will have unlimited freedoms, i.e. the right to all things and will resort to all misdeeds such as rape, murder, plunder, etc.

•      Thus, there will be an endless “war of all against all” and in order to overcome such situation people enter into an agreement with each other to give up some of their freedoms and accept the obligation to respect and safeguard the rights of the others.

•      Thus, an individual gains the civil rights that constitute the social benefits that he is entitled to the extent he fulfills his due obligations towards the society.

Social Contract Theory (or “contractarianism”), says that, in order to figure out what ethical rules to follow, we ought to imagine what rules rational beingswould agree to in an “ideal” decision-making context.

  

Social Justice Theories: 

The social justice theories state that the action will be considered right if it confirms the fairness in the distributive, retributive and compensatory dimensions of cost and rewards. The distributive dimension means the perceived fairness in the distribution of social benefits and burden among the group members.

The retributive dimension considers the punishment proportionate to the extent of crime while the compensatory dimension is the way people are compensated in relation to the injuries inflicted upon them.

For example, if the second-hand smoke hurts the passive or non-smokers at work, there should be a fair distribution of health risk burden and the proportionate punishment should be imposed on the party responsible for it. Also, the affected parties shall be compensated to the extent they have suffered the injuries.

Rawl’s Theory of Justice

John Rawls, a Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and the author of A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971) and also Political Liberalism (Columbia, 1996).

These excerpts from A Theory of Justice provide a skeletal account of Rawls's project of using social contract theory to generate principles of justice for assigning basic rights and duties and determining the division of social benefits in a society. Rawls argues that the two principles that would be reached through an agreement in an original position of fairness and equality are 1) each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others and 2) social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage; and b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

Rawls’s most discussed work is his theory of a just liberal society, called justice as fairness. Rawls first set out justice as fairness in systematic detail in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. Rawls continued to rework justice as fairness throughout his life, restating the theory in Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of Peoples (1999), and Justice as Fairness (2001).

We cannot imagine of a well ordered society whose core concept is not justice. Justice binds all men and institutions of society. John Rawls has viewed justice in the background of society and for this reason he says that the main concern of the subject matter of justice is social structure which is the core of the society. That is justice deals with the basic social structure. The social institutions are very important in the sense that they take the responsibility of distributing the fundamental rights and duties efficiently.

It is also the important task of the social institutions to allocate judiciously the privileges and advantages for the people of society. Constitution, social, political and economic arrangements are included into these social institutions. Thus justice may conveniently be regarded as a social principle which determines the ways and procedure of distributing the rights and duties for the members of society. He further calls justice a social scheme on the basis of which rights, duties, opportunities and condition are allotted. Thus justice is both a principle and a scheme

Justice may duly be regarded as a “proper balance between competing claims (emphasis added)”. This point of Rawls reminds us of Rousseau’s general will which is the outcome of deliberations held at open general meeting and participated by all citizens. Rawls’ theory of justice consists of “certain distributive principles for the basic structure of society”. In the light of this analysis John Rawls defines justice in the following words. “The concept of justice I take to be defined by the role of its principles in assuming rights and duties in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role”. Justice is, thus, an interpretation of principles that are suggested for the distribution of rights and duties and at the same time division of social advantages among all the members of body politic.

The main theme of Rawls’ theory of justice is it is interpreted as fairness. The dictionary meaning of fairness is appropriateness or just: In Rawls’ conception that arrangement can be called just or appropriate which does not create any scope of partiality or inappropriate. The principles for the distribution of rights, duties and advantages will be applied in such manner as will give no controversy.

 

Divine Command Theory

There are ethical theories that make reference to or depend upon the existence of adeity.  Divine Command theory is not used anywhere in the world by the major organized religions.  It is mistaken for the foundation of the moral theory of Judaism and Christianity and Islam but it is not so.   The Divine Command theory has too many problems with it to be used by large organized religions.  It is used by small cults and by those who are uneducated about what their own religion holds.

 

Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by God's commands and that for a person to be moral he is to follow God's commands.

Good actions commanded by God

An act is wrong, if it violates the 10 commandments given by God. In the Christian view To act morally a person see the act is right (ie.., it is commanded by God) and must do the act because they see it is right. For Kant, “REASON” not GOD , the source of moral law

We act morally and to this be the case, we must be free. God and life after death, are cardinal assumptions & otherwise morality would make no sense.

 The specific content of these divine commands varies according to the particular religion and the particular views of the individual divine command theorist, but all versions of the theory hold in common the claim that morality and moral obligations ultimately depend on God

Divine Command Theory has been and continues to be highly controversial. It has been criticized by numerous philosophers, including Plato, Kai Nielsen, and J. L. Mackie. The theory also has many defenders, both classic and contemporary, such as Thomas Aquinas, Robert Adams, and Philip Quinn. The question of the possible connections between religion and ethics is of interest to moral philosophers as well as philosophers of religion, but it also leads us to consider the role of religion in society as well as the nature of moral deliberation. Given this, the arguments offered for and against Divine Command Theory have both theoretical and practical importance.

Advantages of the Divine Command Theory

Being moral does not guarantee happiness, so we must believe in a God who will reward the morally righteous with happiness. Kant does not employ the concept of moral faith as an argument for Divine Command Theory, but a contemporary advocate could argue along Kantian lines that these advantages do accrue to this view of morality.

Another possible advantage of Divine Command Theory is that it provides an objective metaphysical foundation for morality

It is rational to sacrifice my own well-being for the well-being of my children, my friends, and even complete strangers, because God approves of and even commands such acts of self-sacrifice.

Augustine (see Kent, 2001) develops a view along these lines. Augustine begins with the notion that ethics is the pursuit of the supreme good, which provides the happiness that all humans seek. He then claims that the way to obtain this happiness is to love the right objects, that is, those that are worthy of our love, in the right way. In order to do this, we must love God, and then we will be able to love our friends, physical objects, and everything else in the right way and in the right amount.

Disadvantage

If the motive for being moral on Divine Command Theory is to merely avoid punishment and perhaps gain eternal bliss, then this is less than idealas an account of moral motivation, because it is a mark of moral immaturity. So according to DIVINE COMMAND THEORY

• rape can be good
• child molesting can be good
• lies can be good
• theft can be good
• slaughter of thousands of innocent people can be good

All that matters is that the "god" commands it.

Judaism and Christianity and Islam support NATURAL LAW THEORY and not DIVINE COMMAND.