MentisWave Is Wrong About Consequentialism

This video is a response to one of @MentisWave 's videos. Specifically one in which he tried to attack consequentialism, in favor of a more Human Rights based approach to ethics. The issue which I point out in the video, is that in trying to debunk consequentialist thinking, he himself ends up making a fundamentally consequentialist argument in favor of his position--making it more of a Rule-Utilitarian view instead of a purely deontological Human Rights view.

#mentiswave #utilitarianism #moralphilosophy #ethics

[namidawhamida]

Excellent critique! I hope he sees this because this is a common problem I’ve seen with critiques of consequentialism.

[spadesofalife]

Interesting video, Mentis did mention that everybody is consequentialist to some degree and that it is not necessarily bad near the end of his video.

[JohnDoe-sqnv]

Good criticism. But I believe that you can continue the analysis deeper than this. Because you need deontology to interpret consequences, otherwise you can't tell whether or not a consequence is good or bad, they are just consequences. You can't reason yourself to principles just as you can't reason about consequences without a solid foundation. And I believe that we do find said solid foundation in innate knowledge. I believe that we already have innate knowledge about morality, and therefore we can reason about good and bad principles and verify said principles against concrete consequences. Therefore morality comes from "god" (not god in the religious or spiritual sense, but in the sense of what is more complex than us and therefore beyond our comprehension, and also what/where we come from) and is built into our very essence. We don't need neither reason, nor experiments, nor religion to tell right from wrong, but have formed all three from our own innate understanding of right and wrong.

In a way then debating about the source of morality is the same as trying to understand "god". Trying and failing as we can do nothing else.

At least that's what I think.