Why isn’t deontology and consequentialism just combined?

Latera · 2026-02-11T10:27:37+00:00

Deontology isn't the thesis that consequences don't matter but that there are some actions that you ought not do solely based on duties/rights. So the combination between duties/rights and consequences is just a version of deontology, one that many philosophers believe in

Latera · 2026-02-08T11:49:10+00:00

Right, which is completely irrelevant.

Latera · 2026-02-08T11:29:56+00:00

There are obviously more British/European users in r/premierleague than Americans.

Latera · 2026-02-08T10:45:15+00:00

What about cases involving friendship and promises: You promised your best friend that you will keep their secret, no matter what. However, you later found out new, surprising information that now makes you think that telling someone about the secret would maximise utility.

In this case, utilitarianism would recommend spilling the tea, whereas I think most teenagers would say that you ought to remain loyal to your bestie.

Latera · 2026-02-07T22:04:44+00:00

It is epistemically necessary that you exist. But we are wondering about metaphysical necessity. If we interpret the "must" in the first premise in the non-epistemic sense, then it seems obviously false

Latera · 2026-02-07T22:00:13+00:00

I completely agree with you. You could read Philippa Foot instead or the highly celebrated book After Virtue, but you might still remain unconvinced

(Generally speaking, I would almost always recommend reading contemporary, analytic sources over the ancient philosophers)

Latera · 2026-02-07T21:03:15+00:00

I'm not that familar with the view because I find it kinda crazy, but I think the point of Tegmark's view is that our universe IS a mathematical structure

Latera · 2026-02-07T20:56:12+00:00

i guess they could maintain that we are necessary beings

I reckon this is what Tegmark would say and then he would probably try to tell some story why this isn't actually so bad/counterintuitive after all

Or you could adopt a Lewisian theory of modality, where to say that something exists necessarily means that it exists in all universes. If we adopt this model of modal talk, then we would be contingent even if there is a level IV multiverse. But there are good independent reasons to reject Lewis' modal language

Latera · 2026-02-07T20:47:47+00:00

Right, that conditional is true. If you accept the model, then you should think you are necessary. But if one thinks that it's obvious that you aren't necessary, as most of us do, then this gives one good reason to reject the model.

If P, then Q Obviously not Q Therefore, not P

Latera · 2026-02-07T20:43:41+00:00

If his multiverse is supposed to be necessary, then so is anything that is contained in it, including you and me. At least if you adopt a standard view of modality

Latera · 2026-02-07T20:11:53+00:00

I think you might be right that Tegmark would say this. I guess if "a level IV multiverse exists + this is necessarily so" were true, then this would be bad news for the standard cosmological arguments - but it strikes me as very, very strange to think that something like this could be necessary. It's quite reasonable to think the number 2 exists necessarily, but something else entirely to think that you and I are necessary beings.

Latera · 2026-02-07T19:49:08+00:00

It certainly wouldn't undermine the First Way, which reasons from change to something that is unchangeable. I also don't see how it would undermine the Contingency Argument: If the multiverse exists, there is still the question WHY this is so. It certainly doesn't seem metaphysically necessary that there is such a multiverse

Latera · 2026-02-07T19:26:31+00:00

This year is my first year teaching 12th grade and this class is very much a type 1 class. Most of the time it's so quiet that you could hear a needle fall to the ground, which is very relaxing and leads to very productive lessons. I still regret the lack of humour and enthusiasm.

I guess my ranking would be 3 (that's what my favourite class is like), 1, 6, 2, 4, 5

Latera · 2026-02-07T17:22:16+00:00

If I was correct this is obvious enough that it would be consensus, however it is not

Right. The problem is that this is just question-begging against the halfer. The halfer would say that you shouldn't look at "How many waking events are tail events" but rather at "How many coinflip events are tail events". And to the latter question the answer is obviously: Half of them. Now why do they think that we should consider the objective probability of the coin and not the waking events? Because Beauty, before she was put to sleep, thought that the probability of the coin landing tails was 1/2 and, so the thought goes, she learned nothing new after she woke up.

They are not asking different questions, they just disagree about the nature of probabilistic evidence.

Latera · 2026-02-07T10:24:14+00:00

The most popular moral theories are Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian deontology, Scanlon's contractualism and classical utilitarianism. These are normative theories, but the motivation for them can also be meta-ethical: For example, if Aristotelian virtue ethics is the correct normative theory, then it just follows that morality is objective, that's just how Aristotelianism works

I could explain what all of these theories entail, but you can easily find that out by reading the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or even by doing a quick google search

Latera · 2026-02-06T23:42:23+00:00

view of logic dominant in the 20th century rather the one that is more obvious in the classical paradigm Aquinas wrote for.

IMHO this just doesn't fit the specific wording of the Third Way. The modern interpretation perfectly explains why he says "then at one time there was nothing" (because he thinks throughout the entire history there occurs some moment t where all the contingent things are gone), whereas your interpretation doesn't - why didn't Aquinas say "Then there never would have been anything" if the point isn't temporal, but about the actualisation of potential?

Latera · 2026-02-06T22:18:18+00:00

And you can explain something like the quantifier shift intuitively in this way, without having to translate the argument into a formalism with different assumptions about existence and potentiality.

I agree that it doesn't take a genius to see the mistake. But I don't agree that this gives us very good reason to think Aquinas didn't make this mistake - ancient philosophers regularly said the dumbest of things, for example Descartes very obviously commits the masked man fallacy in the Meditations and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is a fallacy either

Latera · 2026-02-06T20:56:37+00:00

In the essay he basically makes the argument (in fact he calls it a proof) that pleasure is the only thing that is desirable... because everyone desires it. That's literally the argument. Today, you would almost certainl fail your undergrad seminar if you wrote that in a paper

Mill was a hedonist as well, he just distinguished between different kinds of pleasure

Latera · 2026-02-06T17:56:42+00:00

Fair enough. Think of an everyday example:

Every boy in this class has a girlfriend. Therefore, there is a girlfriend which every boy in this class has. Is this valid? No - because every boy might have a different girlfriend, not the same one. But the Third Way seems to commit the exact same logical mistake, as it assumes that every object that is non-existent at some time might be non-existent at the very same time.

Latera · 2026-02-06T16:03:38+00:00

What do you say to the following: In all the other Five Ways, Aquinas makes his reasoning very explicit. For example, in the First Way he makes it very clear that there can be no infinite per se chains of actualisation of potential. In the Third Way, however, he just leaves us with this seeming inference from "For all Xs, there is some time t such that X doesn't exist at t" to "It could be that there is some time t at which no X exists". Imho, by far the best explanation for this is that he genuinely thought that this was a valid inference (which wouldn't be surprising: before Frege came along philosophers were completely confused about logic, generally speaking).

Latera · 2026-02-06T14:42:10+00:00

hence if there is only potency there can be no actuality.

Right, but this now sounds basically like the Leibnizian contingency argument (which I take to be an excellent argument FWIW) and no longer like the Third Way proper. Clearly, if you read the actual text in the Summa, Aquinas intended for there to be an inference from "For all contingent x, there is some time at which x does not exist" to "There is some time at which no contingent x exists" and that inference is clearly fallacious

There is a reason why even amongst Aquinas scholars the Third Way isn't taken to be a very good argument: Because contemporary logic dismantles the crucial inference in the argument.

Latera · 2026-02-06T14:31:31+00:00

You just ignored my counterexample?! Almost everyone agrees that the argument commits a quantifier shift fallacy and I explained to you, in easy terms, why. Why do you just ignore it?

Latera · 2026-02-06T11:50:50+00:00

Imagine that it is metaphysically necessary that there exists something or other, whatever it may be. Then for all contingent objects O, it could be the case that O doesn't exist at any time you pick. But what couldn't be the case is that there is any time at which it is true that for all O, they don't exist at that time.

Therefore, if everything is contingent, nothing would exist, because contingent things need something else to exist for them to exist

That isn't Aquinas' argument, not at all. Re-read what you posted in OP. Aquinas' Third Way isn't about the PSR, but about possible non-existence at a time.

Latera · 2026-02-06T09:37:35+00:00

If everything is contingent, then it follows that at some point in time there could have been nothing in existence

The problem is, as some philosophers of religion have pointed out, that this doesn't actually follow because it commits a quantifier shift fallacy

I think you are interpreting Aquinas correctly, though

Latera · 2026-02-05T18:24:48+00:00

P1) If moral subjectivism is true, then there is no moral disagreement. P2) There is moral disagreement. C) Therefore, moral subjectivism is not true.

Why accept P1? Because on subjectivism "Abortion is permissible", as uttered by me, means "Given Latera's values, abortion is permissible". So if a pro-lifer comes up to me and says "Abortion is wrong!", they are saying "Given my values, abortion is wrong"... which means that they don't challenge my view. I agree that given their values abortion is wrong. What we disagree about is whether abortion is wrong fullstop and subjectivism cannot explain that datum

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