What sort of ethics do you subscribe to?

[ciphergoth]

Does the right thing to do depend only on the consequences, or are some acts inherently right or wrong no matter what likely consequences follow?

From Wikipedia:

Deontological ethics or deontology (Greek: δέον (deon) meaning 'obligation' or 'duty') is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions.

Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action.

Virtue theory is a branch of moral philosophy that emphasizes character, rather than rules or consequences, as the key element of ethical thinking.

Which of these best describes your position?

[Poll #1225625]

Comments

[hamsterine.livejournal.com]

For me, it wouldn't make sense to say that something was wrong even if there were no negative consequences. However, it is a practical impossibility to be aware of every consequence that will stem from an action in the short and long term (How long a term should we consider, after all? And how could we possibly know what the course of historty would have been if a certain thing had not happened?) Therefore, it is often useful to generalise that something is inherantly wrong because it has the tendancy to create highly negative consequences.