The Difference between the Ethical Principles of Deontological and Teleological Thinkers

The basic difference between deontological thinking or ethics and teleological thinking or ethics is whether the code of ethics that's being discussed is based on rules and principles of some kind, which would make it deontological, or whether the ethics are based on the outcomes of the decision, which would make it teleological. It's not that the two ways of thinking disagree on what's good or what's bad, but people who think deontologically and people who think teleologically decide whether things are good or bad in a different way.

To try and give an example of the difference, suppose there's some person who needs to make some sort of ethical decision. There are of course many decisions that have to be made all the time where the right decision is not always clear, and there may not be a one right decision at all. Different people can disagree on ethical questions, even after debating it. But, if the person makes their decision based on some sort of rule or principle, they're a deontological thinker.

What exactly their rules or principles are doesn't matter. It could be religious rules, personal rules, military rules, legal rules, or anything else, as long as the person is making their ethical decisions based on some sort of fixed principles. This person believes that they are doing the right thing as long as they make their choice consistently with what the rules say.

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If we had a different person making the same decision, though, and they were instead trying to decide what to do not based upon some sort of rule but based upon what they thought the consequences of their actions might be, then those ethics would be teleological. We can say that teleological thinkers believe "the end justifies the means" is a fair way of thinking as a way of summarizing teleological thinking. It's okay to do things that might someone seems wrong, as long as the outcome is the good one. For example, it might be okay to steal food if the food is for feeding a child. Stealing is generally wrong, but the outcome could mean that it's good, and someone who believed that would be thinking teleologically.

This illustrates that teleological thinking is more flexible than deontological thinking. Teleological thinking allows people to make decisions based on whatever the precise circumstances of the situation are. It's impossible to write a set of rules that covers all situations, so allowing some flexibility in making decisions might be a good thing.

That makes our laws somewhere between a teleological system and a deontological system. Laws are a bunch of hard rules that give punishments for different acts. It doesn't matter that the laws might not cover every possible circumstance, it or might not be perfect, but people are judged in accordance with the rules. But, there's a lot of flexibility associated with many of the rules. Judges are allowed to take the circumstances of the situation into account in deciding sentences. So, the laws or the rules decide whether someone is guilty or not - deontological - but the judge decides how guilty someone is once they are guilty, and that flexibility is teleological.

So far, it sounds like teleological ethics are somehow better than deontological ethics. But that isn't something that can be said firmly. We have codes of rules, or laws, or religious commandments, and many other types of deontological rules, and society generally seems to think having some of these things is good. It might not be practical to run a society on strictly teleological grounds. One big problem is that everyone might not judge the good outcomes equally. What if the person stealing food to feed their child is only taking the most expensive things from Waitrose? Some people might judge that outcome is not good enough to justify the stealing - the child could be fed with much less stealing somewhere else, but some might think any stealing is justified in the situation.

Some deontological thinkers also believe that many people might not be well-educated enough or intelligent enough to carefully consider the possible outcomes of their actions.

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