Deontological Argument

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A deontologist is someone

who believes that there are certain types of acts that are wrong in themselves

and that we have a duty not to do those types of acts. Someone who follows

either Kantian ethics or Natural Moral law would be a deontologist. The word

‘deontology’ comes from the Greek deon,

meaning duty. Deontologists contrast with teleologists, or consequentialists,

who judge the goodness of an action by looking at the consequences that the

action brings about. Utilitarians and situation ethicists are teleologists. C.

Fried has described deontology as follows:

‘The goodness of the

ultimate consequences does not guarantee the rightness of the actions which

produced them. The two realms are not only distinct for the deontologist, but

the right is prior to the good.’

Nancy-Ann Davis points out

that deontological statements have three qualities to them:

1. They are negatively formulated. In other

words, they are written in the form ‘do not’ e.g. ‘do not lie’ rather than the

positive version which would be ‘always tell the truth.’ This means that

anything that lies outside the boundary of the prohibition e.g. holding back

information instead of lying, is permitted.

2. They are narrowly framed and bounded i.e. they refer

to very specific actions e.g. do not lie.

3. They are narrowly directed i.e. they are

directed at the agent’s actions, rather than at the consequences of that

action. For example, we only violate the deontological prohibition against

harming another if we intentionally

harm another. The prohibition is not violated if harm is an unintended

consequence of our action e.g. if we open cages of lions to set them free from

the cruelty of a circus and they then go on a killing spree.

This third quality

distinguishes between acts and omissions. For the deontologist, it is

wrong to act if that action breaks a rule. However, if you fail to act and the

consequence of failing to act does harm, you have not done anything wrong. This

is called an omission. James Rachels argues that there is no meaningful

distinction between acts and omissions: he argues that if you fail to act

knowing that your action will lead to bad consequences, morally, this is as bad

as acting. He gives the example of Smith, who stands to inherit a lot of money

if his six year-old cousin dies. One evening, the child is having a bath and

Smith drowns him. Compare this with Jones, who similarly stands to gain from

his cousin’s death. He goes up to the bathroom to drown the boy, but as he gets

there, the boy slips and hits his head and falls under the water and drowns.

Jones could have acted to save him. For the deontologist, Jones has done

nothing wrong and Rachels criticises this.

The deontologist believes

in a

priori moral statements. In other words, the deontologist would use

something like reason, or religious revelation to decide upon their moral

principles before finding themselves in a situation that requires moral

decision making. As Nancy-Ann Davis writes:

‘To act rightly, agents

must first of all refrain from acts that can be said and known to be, before

the fact, wrong.’

So what are these ‘before

the fact wrongs’? Thomas Nagel suggests the following:

‘Common moral intuition

recognizes several types of deontological reasons – limits on what one may do

to people or how one may treat them. There are special obligations created by

promises and agreements; the restrictions against lying and betrayal; the

prohibitions against violating various individual rights, rights not to be

killed, injured, imprisoned, threatened, tortured, coerced, robbed; the

restrictions against imposing certain sacrifices on someone simply as a means

to an end; and perhaps the special claim of immediacy, which makes distress at

a distance so different from distress in the same room. There may also be a deontological

requirement of fairness, of even-handedness or equality in one’s treatment of

people.’

How do deontologists arrive

at these truths? Some may appeal to common moral intuitions: the ‘it’s just

wrong’ argument. Others may appeal to a religious tradition. The Bible sets

down a long list of moral rules revealed by God: the 613 mitzvot or commandments, many of which are to be found in the books

of Deuteronomy or Leviticus. There are others who appeal to reason. Immanuel

Kant devised a deontological ethic based purely on the use of reason to discern

actions that we have a duty to perform and devised the Categorical Imperative

to enable us to decide what our duties are. Those who follow the Natural Law

tradition devised by Cicero and Aquinas argue that there are moral facts which

we must use our reason to discover and that it is our duty to act in accordance

with those moral facts.

Alongside having a priori moral truths, deontologists

are not allowed to consider the consequences of their actions, even if the

consequences of a particular action bring about more harm than the act itself.

‘By the deontologist’s

lights, it is not the badness of the consequences of a particular lie, or of

lying in general that makes it wrong to lie; rather, lies are wrong because of

the sorts of things they are, and are thus wrong even when they produce foreseeably

good consequences.’

Deontological ethics is not

impartial. Consequentialist ethics, when faced with the dilemma of killing one

person to save the lives of five, must weigh each of the people equally and

would conclude that it is good to kill the one person. Deontology however,

because it tells us that we have a duty not to kill, gives more value to the

life of the one person against the lives of the five that would die as a result

of our action (such as in the famous example of Jim and the Indians from

Bernard Williams.)

Also, the deontologist

tells us that our own avoidance of wrongdoing is more important than

intervening to stop others from doing wrong. Again, Davis writes:

‘…the preservation of our

own virtue outweighs not only the preservation of others’ lives, it also

outweighs the preservation of others’ virtue. We may not save a life with a lie

even when the lie would prevent the loss of life by deceiving an evil agent who

credibly intends to kill several innocent victims.’

Deontologists also believe

in something that Thomas Nagel calls ‘the traditional principle of double effect.’ He defines it as

follows:

‘…to violate deontological

constraints, one must maltreat someone else intentionally. The maltreatment

must be something that one does or chooses, either as an end or as a means,

rather than something one’s actions merely cause or fail to prevent but that

one does not aim at.’

A good example of this is

the case of Gianna Beretta Molla. In April 1962, she was pregnant with her

fourth child. However, she developed a cancer in her uterus. The only way to

save the life of the Gianna, would have been to remove the uterus containing

the foetus; thus performing an unintended abortion. Under double-effect, this

would have been permitted.

One of the great strengths

of deontology, is that it seems to fit in with an intuition that we all have,

that certain things are just wrong and that we must not do them. Louis Pojman

gives the example of torturing innocent children; we just know that this is

wrong. A society that is based upon such deontological rules would be able to

absolutely outlaw certain immoral actions.

Also, deontologists avoid

the problem of trying to predict the consequences of their actions.

Utilitarians for example have to decide what the consequences of all their actions are and whether or not

they increase the amount of pleasure in the world. This is the no-rest

objection i.e. that utilitarians are always having to consider how much

pleasure their actions promote. The deontologist has no such problem: so long

as their actions do not violate a prohibition, they can do what they like. Davis

has called this having ‘moral breathing room.’

However, deontological

ethics does have some very serious drawbacks. One of the principal weaknesses,

is that of conflicting moral duties. If one finds oneself in a situation where

two or more moral duties come into conflict, how does one decide between the

two? One solution is the so called ‘ethic of prima facie duties’ devised by Jonathan Dancy, which is very

similar to Bernard Hoose’s Proportionalism.

He suggests that in situations where two duties come into conflict, we simply

decide which duty is the more pressing and follow that one.

The other criticism of

deontology, is that it reduces morality to the simple avoidance of bad actions,

rather than making an effort to develop a moral character like Virtue Ethics.

Surely, it is better for somebody to choose to perform a good action, rather

than act to avoid certain things they believe to be bad? Nancy Davis writes:

‘…we are members of a moral

community, not just discrete rational wills or guardians of our own virtue, and

we care about other individuals in that community, as well as about the

community itself. And the proper expression of that concern is not just the

credo of non-interference that gets reflected in the minimal deontological

notion of respect, and the narrow deontological constraints that are taken to

express or follow from it (for example, not lying, not cheating, or otherwise

impeding people from getting on with their own lives), but one that involves,

and requires, people’s active interest in promoting others’ well-being.’