People tend to see consequentialism and deontology as immaculate categories, I do not. I think deontology often fills a gap where there are consequences but they hard to track. (there’s another way I think they overlap and we’re fussing with elsewhere) In a situation where an employer - the rich guy who will pay me to kill a random person - my going along with this has consquences, I would argue, that are not present when I work for a contruction company that takes significant steps to protect workers and the employers dislike it when a worker dies. Let’s say on average each employer leads to a single death per decade. The consequences for the dead person are very similar, the consequences for society, even the family of the dead person are different. In the first scenerio as the killer, I have contributed to the ends of a sociopathic entity. In the second, if I am an employee, I have not. People know that the employers in the second took steps to protect their workers, and they will likely, at least make noises they are disappointed by the death. In this assasination this is not present. How do we track these effects? that is very hard. I think to pretend they are nothing, is confused and in error. Attitudes and intentions have effects. To the extent they are known they do things like increase trust and community feeling or reduce them. (plus any effects of 'aiding the intentions and plans of people who intend to kill as opposed to people who do not do all they can to prevent all deaths. These are two very different types of people and they will interact with people differently and they will feel different to people. Now, I do know that these are not immaculate categories either. Indifference can be to such a degree - certainly some mine owners over a hundred years ago - where it is very similar to intent to kill. But there is still a real spectrum and the ends are quite different and have all sorts of different aftereffects)
I think on a gut leve we know this set of effects that are hard to track and, fallibly of course, create deontological rules where we sense their will be consequences that are hard to track.
Further - what are the effects of saying that the effects are different? What are the effects of my taking a stand and saying here I would not take the money (let alone the effects of not doing it)?
The more that people value intent, the more this creates a culture with specific effects. Perhaps it reduces the number of people who are comfortable with their sociopathy. Perhaps it will actually reduce sociopathy since people will grow up where other people look to intent, judge it, react to it. And not just at consequences. The hirer of assassins does not hire assassins and then this option has no effects on their interactoins with humans in general. It is a kind of full permission to not feel guilty of denying the existence of another. This implies permission in all sorts of other ways. The taint is removed from them.
I do nto think it is the same with the employer who tries to eliminate all possible danger - an impossible task.
So the very act of having the public opinion that one will not kill for money, that there is a difference between an employer who wants me to kill a random person for money and another employer who does not prevent all deaths, leads to attitudes, disapprovals, guilts, social pressures
that all have effects.
Effects that are hard to track, but again, I think it is silly to pretend they are not there and
to a consequentialist - who often conflates this with being simply a realist - those should still exist, even if it is hard to measure them. I think that is a lot of the role deontology has played and I think it is also something that should make consequentialists concerned about stripping away deontology. The frontal lobe’s hubris is just that…hubris.
Every time I get in my car and drive I am risking my life and those of others. But I do not go out to kill. God, I hope I run someone over. The driver who decides he will try to kill one person, while remaining within the law. IOW not braking as fast as he might when someone jaywalks. That’s very different from the person who does get into a traffic accident where there is a death.
If we as a society conflate those two people, we are conflating two people who WILL very differently relate to others during their lifetimes.
And if we tell people those acts are the same, we are telling people that intending to kill is the same as not trying to eliminate all possible ways one might accidently kill. Which would eliminate driving, voting and not voting, buying pretty much any product - given that producing these entails risks, etc.
And further if we tell people those acts are the same, we are depathologizing sociopathy. And this will have all sorts of effects.
The social human world is not a lab and not very Newtonian - as far as tracking effects. Stuff slides and subtly shifts. This slip into the depths and reappear later. Things seep into the next generation. In the mind it can seem like we can contain variables and vectors, dominoes and billiard balls- ‘those are the effects’- but in the world…