St.

Paul University Philippines

Tuguegarao City, Cagayan 3500

GEC106- LESSON 6

Deontological Ethics

Prepared by: WILFREDO DJ P. MARTIN IV, MPA

wmartin@spup.edu.ph
(0917) 130 6265
Deontological Ethics
There are strict rules and duties that everyone must
adhere to in a functioning society. Being ethical is
simply identifying and obeying those duties and
following those rules.

IMMANUEL KANT
1724-1804
What does it actually
mean?
https://slidesgo.com/

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, you must be able to:

a. Explain the difference between consequentialist and non-
consequentialist approaches to Ethics
b. Describe the Deontological approaches to Ethics
c. Explain the difference between hypothetical and categorical
imperatives
d. Describe two formulations of the categorical imperative
e. Apply Kantian reasoning to a variety of cases in the real world
f. Defend your own thesis with regard to the value of deontological
ethics
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Tuskegee Syphilis study

https://slidesgo.com/
https://slidesgo.com/

The Tuskegee
Syphilis Study
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis
in the Negro Male was a study conducted
between 1932 and 1972 by the United
States Public Health Service (PHS) and
the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly
400 African Americans with syphilis.

The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated,
though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable.
The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100
died as a result.
https://slidesgo.com/

The Tuskegee
Syphilis Study
The men were initially told that the
experiment was only going to last six
months, but it was extended to 40 years.
After funding for treatment was lost, the
study was continued without informing the
men that they would never be treated.
None of the infected men were treated
with penicillin; despite the fact that—
by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment
for syphilis. The study continued, until 1972. By then, 28 patients had died directly
from syphilis, 100 died from complications related to syphilis, 40 of the patients' wives
were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.
What does it actually
mean?
HYPOTHETICAL
IMPERATIVES
HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES
most of the time, whether or not we ought to
do something isn’t really a moral choice –
instead, it’s just contingent on our desires.
HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVES
But hypothetical imperatives are about
prudence, rather than morality.
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CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
Formulation 1: “Act only according to that maxim which
you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law without contradiction.”

• Maxim - a rule or principle of action

• Universal law- something that must always be
done in similar situations
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CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
Formulation 2: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether
in your own person or in that of another, always and
end, and never as a mere means”

• Mere means- to use it only for your own benefit,

with no thought to the interests or benefit of the
thing you’re using
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“We’re not mere objects that exist to be used by

others. We’re our own ends. We’re rational and
autnomous. We have the ability to set our own
goals, and work toward them.
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“Unlike other things in the world, we’re self-

governed. We’re able to set our own ends, to make
our own free decisions based on our rational
wills.”
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“This imbues us with an absolute moral worth,

which means that we shouldn’t be manipulated, or
manipulate other autonomous agents for our own
benefit”
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We should do our duty for no other reason

than because it’s the right thing to do.
❑ Obeying the rules for self-interest, because it will lead to
better consequences or even because it makes us happy is
not, for deontologists, an ethical reason for acting. We should
be motivated by our respect for the moral law itself.
❑ Deontologists require us to follow universal rules we give to
ourselves. These rules must be in accordance with reason –
in particular, they must be logically consistent and not give
rise to contradictions.
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The appeal to Deontology are not in line

with the inconsistent.
❑ By applying ethical duties to all people in all situations the
theory is readily applied to most practical situations. By focusing
on a person’s intentions, it also places ethics entirely within our
control – we can’t always control or predict the outcomes of
our actions, but we are in complete control of our
intentions.
 What can be the
negative aspect of
Deontological Ethics?
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1. Deontology can be Paradoxical in nature

❑One hurdle is to confront the apparent fact that careful
reflection about the degrees of wrongdoing that are possible
under any single moral norm does not make it easy to see
deontological morality as consisting of general,
canonically-formulated texts, rather, such apparently simple
texts as, “thou shalt not murder,” look more like mere
epistemic aids summarizing a much more nuanced and
detailed moral reality.
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1. Deontology can be Paradoxical in nature

❑PARADOX OF RELATIVE STRINGENCY:
❑There is an aura of paradox in asserting that
all deontological duties are categorical—to be
done no matter the consequences—and yet
asserting that some of such duties are more
stringent than others.
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1. Deontology can be Paradoxical in nature

❑Example:

-If lying is an absolute moral wrong, how are going to

deal with officious lies, as suggested by Thomas
Aquinas?
-If killing is an absolute moral wrong, what about the
cases of self-defense?
-What would I do if I know it is wrong to hack, but my
hacking skills is needed to stop a nuclear launch that
will end up killing millions of people?
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2. Authority from which duty is required is

difficult to be determined
❑ A second hurdle is to find an answer to the inevitable question of
authority, assuming that there are such general texts. If it is rational to
conform one’s behavior and one’s choices to certain general texts, as
deontology claims, it is always in point to demand the reasons making
such texts authoritative for one’s decisions.
❑ Hopefully they can do so other than by reference to some person-like
but omniscient Deity as the supposed source of such texts, because
many deontologists cannot accept such theism (Moore 1995).
❑ Moreover, even for those with theistic commitments, they may prefer to
join Kant’s insistence that ethics proceed from reason alone, even in a
theistic world.
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2. Authority from which duty is required is

difficult to be determined
❑Example:

-If it is my duty to do good things because someone

said so, who is responsible for imposing these duties?
If it is by a god, which one? If not, then who said it?
-What authority or power is being possessed by
whoever or whatever said that it is a duty to be good?
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3. An obligation is viewed differently by each

individual, whether they are rational or not
❑The third hurdle exists even if the first two are crossed
adequately. This hurdle is to deal with the seeming demand of
deontological ethics that on occasion one’s categorical
obligations require one to preserve the purity of one’s own moral
agency at the cost of having one’s actions make the world be in a
morally worse state of affairs—at least, “worse” in the agent-
neutral sense of the word used by consequentialists.
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3. An obligation is viewed differently by each

individual, whether they are rational or not
❑PRINCIPLE OF AVOISION
❑Avoision is the manipulation of means (using
omissions, foresight, risk, allowings, aidings,
acceleratings, redirectings, etc.) to achieve
permissibly what otherwise deontological morality
would forbid
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3. An obligation is viewed differently by each

individual, whether they are rational or not
❑Example:

-If it is my duty to do good things because someone

said so, why are others still not doing good things?
-If man by nature, is a rational animal, wouldn’t he be
good already in the first place?
-Why do I have to be the good one when others are
benefitting from being bad?
The Doctrine of
PRIMA FACIE
Duties
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One well known approach to deal with the

possibility of conflict between deontological
duties is to reduce the categorical force of such
duties to that of only “prima facie” duties (Ross
1930, 1939). This idea is that conflict between
merely prima facie duties is unproblematic so
long as it does not infect what one is categorically
obligated to do, which is what overall, concrete
duties mandate.
https://slidesgo.com/

Like other softenings of the categorical

force of deontological obligation we
mention briefly below (threshold
deontology, mixed views), the prima
facie duty view is in some danger of
collapsing into a kind of
consequentialism.
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In short, no matter what type of good or

bad thing you do, there will always be
consequences to the act. The
consequences that of which are important
to be determined whether the agent must
act within the realm of “goodness” or
“badness” regardless of his intentions.
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MORAL CATASTROPHES
Sometimes doing what is morally right
will have tragic results but that allowing
such tragic results to occur is still the
right thing to do. Complying with moral
norms will surely be difficult on those
occasions, but the moral norms apply
nonetheless with full force, overriding all
other considerations.
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“Better the whole people should perish, than

that injustice be done”
 Fiat Justicia
Ruat Caelum
“Let justice be
done, though
the heavens
may fall”
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MORAL CATASTROPHES
But despite the essence of having moral
catastrophes, we ought to still do
moral things that will ultimately bring
about happiness. The absolute moral
criteria that we always chase is not
bound only within our duty, but our
desire to be happy and contented with
what we are doing.
 Morality is not the doctrine of how
we may make ourselves happy, but
how we may make ourselves worthy
of happiness.

IMMANUEL KANT
1724-1804
https://slidesgo.com/

Want to know watch where I got some of the

slides? Here are my Online Sources:
 St. Paul University Philippines
Tuguegarao City, Cagayan 3500

Presentation made by:

Wilfredo DJ P. Martin IV
wmartin@spup.edu.ph

@djdidge
@didgimone

@Didge Martin

@Didge Martin(Wilfredo DJ IV)

0917 130 6265