PHIL 2750 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Demonology, Deontological Ethics

• School: University of Manitoba
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2750
• Professor: Robert J.Leland

Document Summary

They are absoluists about the constraints against doing harm: harming an innocent person is morally forbidden, no mater how horrible the results will be otherwise, no mater how much good could be done. Many other people, ind this absoluist aitude toward the constraint unacceptable. They believe that the constraint against going harm can itself be outweighed, if enough is a stake. Those who reject the absoluist aitude toward the constraint against harming are moderate deontologists. Consequenialists someimes argue that the atempt to accept deontology while rejecing absoluism is incoherent. Someimes, then, both sides insist that the only consistent posiions are either consequenialism or deontological absoluism and that moderate deontology is confused or incoherent. Moderate deontology is thus a genuine alternaive to consequenialism. Since harm doing has a signiicant amount of weight in its own right, it will oten outweigh goodness of results: this yields the constraint against harming.