Question about deontology

By sammyboiz @ 2024-12-19T19:47 (+5)

According to deontology, sacrificing one life to save another is bad. However, when you do any action (eg drive a car, like social media posts), you cause butterfly effects that will cause many different people to have harm caused to them. In other words, you are knowingly causing harm to people every time you do anything. Would your existence thus be immoral?

henryj @ 2024-12-19T20:09 (+9)

You might like MacAskill and Morgansen's 2021 paper addressing this very question! I'd suggest actually reading the paper, but the tldr is that they agree with you, to a point — they don't conclude that this proves "existence is immoral" but rather that traditional deontological ethics may need significant revision to handle the reality of butterfly effects and indirect harms.

henryj @ 2024-12-19T20:11 (+3)

You might also enjoy https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/absolutism.pdf and the papers it cites (especially the Jackson + Smith one). I'm sure there's more, but this is what I have off the top of my head!