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Centre Of Bioethical Research & Analysis (COBRA)

DEONTOLOGY

Deontology focuses on types of action, declaring some to be forbidden, others obligatory. The right action, according to deontology, is the one that conforms to moral rules. In contrast to consequentialism, deontology denies that the right action is always the one that produces the best consequences.

Advantages

Deontology seems to fit well with ’common sense’ morality, in that:

(i) it rules out certain types of action as morally forbidden, whatever the consequences:

(ii) our duties include special obligations to our families and friends ( agent relative constraints); 

(iii) it categorises a wide range of actions as morally permissible, so that we are neither obliged to do them nor forbidden to do them.

Problems

(i) Conflicts of duty.

The problem of conflicts of duty arises because deontological duties are regarded as absolute. One deontological response to this objection is to attempt to narrow the scope of deontological rules so that they come into conflict less often. A way of doing this is to restrict the rules to actions rather than omissions, but the acts/omissions doctrine that lies behind this move is very hard to justify.

Another attempt to restrict the scope of deontological rules is by the use of the doctrine of double effect, which claims that we act wrongly only if we aim at, or intend, a bad outcome (either as an end or as a means to an end), but that we do not act wrongly if the bad outcome is ’merely foreseen’ but not intended. However, this supposes a sharp distinction between intended outcomes and foreseen but unintended outcomes, which is very hard to draw.

Another way of dealing with conflicts of duties is to drop the claim that deontological rules are absolute. W.D.Ross regards them as prima facie duties – ie, features of actions that tend to make them right or wrong. Whether they actually make an act right or wrong will depend on the other prima facie duties present in the action.

- How do we decide how to weigh up different prima facie duties in each individual case?

- There is not a rule for doing this – we do it by exercising judgement.

(ii) Lack of Rationale. 

If deontology appeals to the moral requirement of respecting persons, why should we not have more respect?  For example, it is not clear that we respect people more by not killing them than we do by failing to save their lives. It is difficult to explain why there is a rule against harming people but not one against failing to help them, or why there is a rule against lying to people and not one against failing to tell the truth.

Further Reading

Beachamp, T., & Childress, J., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, OUP, 1994.

Davis, N., ’Contemporary Deontology’, in Singer, P. (ed), A Companion to Ethics, Blackwell, 1991.

Gillon, R., Philosophical Medical Ethics, John Wiley & Sons, 1986. 

Links

The PHG foundation have created a very short, but interesting, description of what deontology is, and the "end justifies the means" attitude that underpins it, here. They also outline the main differentiations between deontology and consequentialism when they are applied to the field of bioethics, found here. 

    

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