Deontology
Duty-first ethics: some things are wrong regardless of the totals they produce.
What it commits you to
Deontological ethics is organised around duties and prohibitions rather than outcomes, and its core claim is that there are things no consequence can justify. That claim is what makes it structurally important in AI safety: any system optimising an aggregate is, by construction, incapable of holding such a prohibition, and so needs the constraint imposed from outside it.
Which realms lean on this
Ethics is where the realms argue about what counts: the parties, the pleasures, the duties, the care.
ethics · 9 realms — The Benthamite Foundry, The Care Weft, The Contractual Court, The Kantian Citadel, The Longview Foundry, The Middle Kingdom, The Stoic Ramparts, The Ubuntu Weave, The Virtue Garden.
See also
Categorical imperative
philosophyKant's test of an act's maxim by asking whether it could be a universal law.
Doctrine of double effect
ethicsSome harms are permitted when foreseen but unintended, provided they are not means to the good.
Consequentialism
ethicsJudging actions solely by the outcomes they produce.
Virtue ethics
ethicsJudging moral character and disposition rather than the moral status of single acts.