The following is a letter that I submitted to the Richmond Times Dispatch on April 16, 2007, in response to the column re-printed underneath. It was published as "Correspondent of the Day" on May 3. In his column “Brain Damage: Science Proves That I'm Right and You're Insane, My Friend”, A. Barton Hinkle lumps together “Catholic theologians, Ayn Rand's objectivist hordes, and admirers of Immanuel Kant” as those who take a “deontological” approach to ethics. He is mistaken. A deontological theory of ethics is duty-centered, and duty was a cornerstone of Kant’s beliefs. His influence has been seen in most dictatorships - from Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany to modern Venezuela. Kant wrote that it is “necessary to deny reason in order to make room for faith,” and in oppressive societies, there is always a duty to have faith in the god of the state. However, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism has a very different basis (which apparently, according to Hinkle, is embraced by “hordes”, in contrast to Kant’s “admirers”). Ayn Rand advocated a morality based on reason as Man’s only tool of knowledge and his basic means of survival, with Man’s life as the standard of value. In her words: “To live is his basic act of choice.” Therefore, Man’s only ethical “duty” is to use the facts of reality both to determine right from wrong and to make the choices that he feels will best guide his life, based on what he values (with government’s role to be the protector of individual rights from force). This is in sharp contrast to both deontologism and utilitarianism, neither of which embrace the rights of the individual. Morality presupposes a choice. Duty leaves no room to choose. ************************************************************************************************** People in politics sometimes have a sneaking suspicion the other side must be nuts. And why shouldn't they? How else do you explain the fact that demonstrably intelligent people can be so horribly wrong? Now and then some psycholo- gist or academic or a pundit on deadline will even issue a pronouncement "proving" that conservatives are paranoid, or that critics of the current administration have BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome), or that people in the NRA or the ACLU were not hugged enough as children. This is very handy, since it obviates the requirement to engage the opponent in reasoned argument. You don't argue with nut jobs. Thus it was delightful to read recently of a study in Nature about people who take a utilitarian ap- proach to ethics. According to the study, participants were far more likely to resolve moral dilemmas through a calculating, cost-benefit analysis if a part of their brain -- the ventromedial prefrontal cortex -- had been damaged. The news will gladden the hearts of Catholic theologians, Ayn Rand's objectivist hordes, and admirers of Immanuel Kant -- anyone, indeed, who takes a deontological rather than a utilitarian approach to ethics. Those are big words to express a basic difference. Utilitarians believe the ends justify the means. Deontologists don't. To put it another way, utilitarians say the right thing to do and the good thing to do are pretty much the same. Deontological ethics says sometimes morality requires doing what is right, even though the results will be bad, because ethical behavior depends on duty to moral rules -- not the consequences of our actions. Fiat justitia ruat caelum -- "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall" -- is the motto of your typical, garden-variety deontologist. HERE IS AN absurd hypothetical to help illustrate the difference. Let's say a nuclear bomb is set to go off in Manhattan in five minutes, and you're stuck in a Los Angeles elevator with a butcher knife and a 3-year-old girl who just accidentally swallowed the deactivation code. Everyone knows it's wrong to kill innocent children. On the other hand, if you don't slice little Caitlin open right away, 1 million people will die. From a strictly deontological standpoint, your moral duty is clear. Bye-bye, New York! Utilitarians would do a quick cost-benefit analysis -- one life vs. 1 million -- and rip Caitlin in two. But by the same logic (deliberately killing children is okay if other people benefit) utilitarianism also can justify sacrificing one randomly chosen girl in order to harvest her organs and save the lives of five other people who need transplants. For that matter, utilitarianism can justify raping and murdering young girls on film, if it makes enough demented perverts happy. Depending on how you calculate the costs and benefits, some forms of utilitarianism can justify all manner of things we find intuitively abhorrent, from eugenics to slavery. The goal of "the greatest good for the greatest number" doesn't leave a whole lot of room for moral absolutes such as individual rights. (It also tends to gloss over the important question of who gets to decide.) For a more real-world example, consider Virginia's recent debate over a restaurant smoking ban. The utilitarian answer is pretty clear: Ban smoking, and more people will be better off in the long run. The deontological approach first asks questions such as: Does a restaurant owner have the right to set the rules for his own property? Do customers who patronize his establishment implicitly signify their consent to his set of rules? What gives non-customers the right to impose their preferences on the owner? HERE'S THE CATCH: The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is associated with strong emotions. While the study in Nature indicates, as its authors write, that "neuroscience may be able to test different philosophies for compatibility with human nature," it also shows that our normal ethical views are colored by "the social-emotional responses that we've inherited from our primate ancestors." In other words, they are less than entirely rational -- and, therefore, the deontological belief that (for example) adultery is sinful because God says so may be simply a way to dress up our naked emotional reaction against cheating in more respectable theological robes. Then again, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, the taboo against adultery might be perfectly rational because eons of experience have taught us that such activity leads to great social disruption. In short: It's bad for the tribe -- whereas fidelity produces the greatest good for the greatest number. Could it be that some of our strongest deontological rules are shorthand for long-standing, internalized utilitarian calculation? Now there's a crazy idea.