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About duty-based ethics
Duty-based or Deontological ethics
Deontological (duty-based) ethics are concerned with what people do, not with the consequences of their actions.
Do the right thing. Do it because it's the right thing to do. Don't do wrong things. Avoid them because they are wrong.
Under this form of ethics you can't justify an action by showing that it produced good consequences, which is why it's sometimes called 'non- Consequentialist'.
The word 'deontological' comes from the Greek word deon , which means 'duty'.
Duty-based ethics are usually what people are talking about when they refer to 'the principle of the thing'.
Duty-based ethics teaches that some acts are right or wrong because of the sorts of things they are, and people have a duty to act accordingly, regardless of the good or bad consequences that may be produced.
Some kinds of action are wrong or right in themselves, regardless of the consequences.
Deontologists live in a universe of moral rules, such as:
It is wrong to kill innocent people It is wrong to steal It is wrong to tell lies It is right to keep promises
Someone who follows Duty-based ethics should do the right thing, even if that produces more harm (or less good) than doing the wrong thing:
People have a duty to do the right thing, even if it produces a bad result.
So, for example, the philosopher Kant thought that it would be wrong to tell a lie in order to save a friend from a murderer.
If we compare Deontologists with Consequentialists we can see that Consequentialists begin by considering what things are good, and
Duty-based ethics
Deontological (duty-based) ethics are concerned with what people do, not with the consequences of their actions.
identify 'right' actions as the ones that produce the maximum of those good things.
Deontologists appear to do it the other way around; they first consider what actions are 'right' and proceed from there. (Actually this is what they do in practice, but it isn't really the starting point of deontological thinking.)
So a person is doing something good if they are doing a morally right action.
Good and bad points
Good points of duty-based ethics
emphasises the value of every human being Duty-based ethical systems tend to focus on giving equal respect to all human beings. This provides a basis for human rights - it forces due regard to be given to the interests of a single person even when those are at odds with the interests of a larger group.
says some acts are always wrong Kantian duty-based ethics says that some things should never be done, no matter what good consequences they produce. This seems to reflect the way some human beings think. Rossian duty-based ethics modified this to allow various duties to be balanced, which, it could be argued, is an even better fit to the way we think.
provides 'certainty' Consequentialist ethical theories bring a degree of uncertainty to ethical decision-making, in that no-one can be certain about what consequences will result from a particular action, because the future is unpredictable. Duty-based ethics don't suffer from this problem because they are concerned with the action itself - if an action is a right action, then a person should do it, if it's a wrong action they shouldn't do it - and providing there is a clear set of moral rules to follow then a person faced with a moral choice should be able to take decisions with reasonable certainty. Of course things aren't that clear cut. Sometimes consequentialist theories can provide a fair degree of certainty, if the consequences are easily predictable. Furthermore, rule-based consequentialism provides people with a set of rules that enable them to take moral decisions based on the sort of act they are contemplating.
deals with intentions and motives Consequentialist theories don't pay direct attention to whether an act is carried out with good or bad intentions; most people think these are highly relevant to moral judgements. Duty-based ethics can include intention in at least 2 ways...
extended not only to all rational human beings but to any other rational beings who might exist - for example, God, angels, and intelligent extraterrestrials. Samuel J. Kerstein, Kant's Search for the Supreme Principle of Morality, 2002
Kant taught (rather optimistically) that every rational human being could work this out for themselves and so did not need to depend on God or their community or anything else to discover what was right and what was wrong. Nor did they need to look at the consequences of an act, or who was doing the action.
Although he expressed himself in a philosophical and quite difficult way, Kant believed that he was putting forward something that would help people deal with the moral dilemmas of everyday life, and provide all of us with a useful guide to acting rightly.
What is good?
Although Kantian ethics are usually spoken of in terms of duty and doing the right thing, Kant himself thought that what was good was an essential part of ethics.
Kant asked if there was anything that everybody could rationally agree was always good. The only thing that he thought satisfied this test was a good will:
It is impossible to conceive anything in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without limitation, save only a good will. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
All Kant means is that a good will alone must be good in whatever context it may be found.
It is not good in one context and bad in another. It is not good as a means to one end and bad as a means to another. It is not good if somebody happens to want it and bad if he doesn't. Its goodness is not conditioned by its relation to a context or to an end or to a desire. H J Paton, The Categorical Imperative, 1948 (layout by BBC)
Other things that we might think of as good are not always good, as it's possible to imagine a context in which they might seem to be morally undesirable.
Kant then pondered what this meant for human conduct. He concluded that only an action done for 'a good will' was a right action, regardless of the consequences.
But what sort of action would this be? Kant taught that an action could only count as the action of a good will if it satisfied the test of the Categorical Imperative.
Immanuel Kant ©
Kant's Categorical Imperative
The Categorical Imperative
Kant's version of duty-based ethics was based on something that he called 'the categorical imperative' which he intended to be the basis of all other rules (a 'categorical imperative' is a rule that is true in all circumstances.)
The categorical imperative comes in two versions which each emphasise different aspects of the categorical imperative. Kant is clear that each of these versions is merely a different way of expressing the same rule; they are not different rules.
Moral rules must be universalisable
The first one emphasises the need for moral rules to be universalisable.
Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law.
To put this more simply:
Always act in such a way that you would be willing for it to become a general law that everyone else should do the same in the same situation.
This means at least two things:
if you aren't willing for the ethical rule you claim to be following to be applied equally to everyone - including you - then that rule is not a valid moral rule. I can't claim that something is a valid moral rule and make an exception to it for myself and my family and friends.
So, for example, if I wonder whether I should break a promise, I can test whether this is right by asking myself whether I would want there to be a universal rule that says 'it's OK to break promises'.
Since I don't want there to be a rule that lets people break promises they make to me , I can conclude that it would be wrong for me to break the promise I have made.
if the ethical rule you claim to be following cannot logically be made a universal rule, then it is not a valid moral rule.
Kant thought that the only good reason for doing the right thing was because of duty - if you had some other reason (perhaps you didn't commit murder because you were too scared, not because it was your duty not to) then that you would not have acted in a morally good way.
But having another reason as well as duty doesn't stop an action from being right, so long as duty was the ‘operational reason’ for our action.
If we do something because we know it's our duty, and if duty is the key element in our decision to act, then we have acted rightly, even if we wanted to do the act or were too scared not to do it, or whatever.
Rossian duty-based ethics
Rossian duty-based ethics
Kantian ethics seems pretty uncompromising and not really suited to the untidiness of many moral choices that people have to make.
The 20th Century philosopher W. D. Ross [Sir David Ross] (1877-1971) suggested that it would be helpful to look at two kinds of duty:
Prima facie duties Actual duties
Prima facie duties
are self-evident and obvious duties ( prima facie is a Latin expression meaning 'on first appearances' or 'by first instance') can be known to be correct if a person thinks about them and understands them:
when we have reached sufficient mental maturity and have given sufficient attention to the proposition it is evident without any need of proof, or of evidence beyond itself W D Ross, The Right and the Good, 1930
should be promoted, "all things considered" can be outweighed by other prima facie duties.
Actual duties
This is the duty people are left with after they have weighed up all the conflicting prima facie duties that apply in a particular case:
the ground of the actual rightness of the act is that, of all acts possible in the circumstances, it is that whose prima facie rightness in the respects in which it is prima facie right most outweighs its prima facie
wrongness in any respects in which it is prima facie wrong. W D Ross, The Right and The Good, 1930
Ross listed seven prima facie duties:
Fidelity Reparation Gratitude Justice Beneficence Self-improvement Non-maleficence (avoiding actions that do harm)
Calling these 'duties' may be a bit misleading, as they are not so much duties as "features that give us genuine (not merely apparent) moral reason to do certain actions".
Ross later described prima facie duties as "responsibilities to ourselves and to others" and he went on to say that "what we should do (our duty proper [our actual duty]) is determined by the balance of these responsibilities."
Problems with the Rossian approach
Ross's idea still leaves some problems:
How can we tell which prima facie duties are involved in a particular case? How can we compare and rank them in order to arrive at a balance which will guide us as to our actual duty?
Ross thought that people could solve those problems by relying on their intuitions.
