By Observation Deck * Other Observation Desk Posts
As unbelievable as it sounds, I have survived my first semester of 1L year of law school – although barely. Even more unbelievably, I have returned to complete my tri-partide epic about Kant.
As promised, this part is supposed to be about applying Kant’s categorical imperative – but this may be a harder task even than understanding its philosophical underpinnings.
Let’s start with one hypothetical and go from there. I was riding home from work on the subway (some of you may know it as the “metro,” the “tube,” or even the “iron-bellied subterranean beast”) when some old lady gave me a really hard time about not giving up my seat to her. I have nothing against old ladies and the truth was that I didn’t see her. This got me thinking about whether Kant’s categorical imperative required me to give up my seat to this old lady. What immediately occurred to me was how complex an application of the categorical imperative would be in something as simple and mundane as this.
Let’s just start with the first formulation – that we should act “only according to that maxim whereby we can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Seems straightforward, doesn’t it? Not so fast. It seems that we may get conflicting answers depending on how we defined this “maxim.” For example, if I defined the maxim as “we should always yield our seat to someone older than us,” this would seem to require that I give up my seat to the old lady. But could I “universalize” this maxim? What if I were handicapped and there was a fully healthy, non-elderly person who just so happens to be older than me? Would I be required by my maxim to yield my seat to him? Doesn’t this seem a little intuitively strange – to require a handicapped person to yield his seat to a healthy person who happens to be older?
What about if I changed the maxim a little, say something like this – “we should always yield our seat to someone who is weaker than us.” This seems to work – I would be required to yield my seat to the old lady but not if I were handicapped or otherwise weaker than her. But there is still a problem -- what if we tried universalizing this maxim as Kant asks us to do? Wouldn’t everyone on the train be required to give their seat to someone who is weaker than them? So let’s say, I followed the maxim and gave the seat to the old lady, wouldn’t she also have the duty to look for someone else who may be even weaker than she were. If she found such a person and gave him/her her (I would use "that seat" to avoid the her her repetition) seat, wouldn’t that third person be required to look for a person even weaker than him/her? Wouldn’t this sort of degenerate into absurdity if everyone were required to look for a person weaker than them to give their seat to every time they wanted to sit down on the subway? It appears that universalizing this maxim leads to absurd results, something that would, under Kant, make the maxim void as a “universal law” for us to follow.
What about the second formulation – the requirement for us to only act in such a way that we “treat humanity, whether in our own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end? Let’s use the same seat-yielding example as above. At first, there doesn’t seem to be any problems. In yielding the seat, I am clearly acting in such as way that treats the old lady as an end in herself and not as a means to an end. Or am I?
Whenever we act, there may be a whole host of reasons, many of which we may not even recognize as reasons, that motivates us. In the example above, I might have acted to yield my seat because I felt guilty when she started asking for the seat. I might have acted because I didn’t want to get disproving stares from other passengers. I might have acted because I wanted to impress the cute girl sitting next to me. Or there may even be some motivation for yielding my seat that I myself am not aware of. If any of these ulterior reasons motivated me to yield my seat, wouldn’t I be using the old lady as a means to an end – to assuage my own guilt, avoid disapproval from other passengers, impress the cute girl, or some other end I desire that has nothing to do with the old lady or the yielding of the seat in themselves. This example isn’t specific to this situation either – nearly every decision I make can be motivated by any number of reasons. Therefore, applying Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative seems to ask us to consider our own thoughts and conform our decisions about when and how to act according to essentially subjective judgments. Yet this goes against the foundational principle of Kant’s categorical imperative – that morality – whether a particular action is justified – is inherently objective and not subjective. Hmmmmm…
That only leaves us with the third formulation. The problem is, I don’t think anyone understands what Kant means when he says that we should “act as if we were through our maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” I think what Kant is trying to say is that we should try to universalize the action in question and see if this would lead to irrational, impossible, or self-contradicting results. Going once again back to our seating-yielding, I’ve already mentioned above one possible reason why universalizing the maxim may lead to absurd results. Looking at this problem, one might conclude that universalizing the maxim may be impossible and therefore that the maxim is therefore void under the third formulation.
Alternatively, however, one might also conclude that the practical concerns are not actually fatal – for example, we could still imagine a hypothetical system through which it would be very easy to figure out exactly who is weaker than whom and who should yield their seat to whom. Under such a hypothetical system, universalizing the maxim would not lead to impossible results and the maxim would thereby serve as a fine moral law for people to follow. This reveals another difficulty with applying Kant’s categorical imperative to real world decisions – people often differ on what they consider to be “impossible,” “irrational,” “self-contradicting,” or even what are “means” and what are “ends.” Kant’s moral philosophy fundamentally presupposes some singular objective benchmark at which all human beings can arrive through rational thought. The flaw with this assumption is that objective rational thought is often still dependent on subjective concepts or definitions – sure we may all rationally agree that the earth is “round,” but we may differ on what the definition of “round” is.
At the end of the day, I don’t really know how I feel about Kant’s categorical imperative. Part of me has been and will probably always be fascinated by its clarity, its simplicity, and its search for a unifying theory. But part of me also questions its inflexible obsession with absoluteness -- isn’t moral flexibility sometimes useful when circumstances change or arise to which we need to recalibrate our moral beliefs? I guess that’s the hallmark of a good philosophical theory – the fact that it never ceases to provoke more questions, push more boundaries, and demand more of the people that study it.
Oh, and I did not give up my seat to the old lady in the end, because I wanted to universalize this lesson – though duty may be sublime, a sense of entitlement is most definitely not.
Showing posts with label Wordsmith: Observation Deck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wordsmith: Observation Deck. Show all posts
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sunday, June 14, 2009
You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part II of III
By Observation Deck * Other Observation Desk Posts
For You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part I, please go here.
When we last left our hero – Kant – he was stuck…
A murderer had asked him for the whereabouts of his next innocent victim. Kant knew that if he told the murderer where the victim was hiding, the victim would certainly be killed and he – Kant – would in effect be sending this victim to her death. But at the same time, if he did not tell the murder the victim’s hiding place, he would be lying.
Kant, as we know, draws his superpowers from the categorical imperative and the categorical imperative states BOTH that we should not murder AND that we should not lie.
Faced with this cosmic conundrum, what is our intrepid hero to do? Find out in this episode of You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part II…
Captain Obvious argues: Not telling the murderer where the victim is hiding is not technically lying – it is merely withholding information (namely the whereabouts of the victim). There is a distinction between the two and therefore, Kant is saved from the challenge to his categorical imperative.
But Kant isn’t out of the woods – like in so many times in the past, Captain Obvious is half baked. The difference between lying and withholding information is only semantics (no matter how much Bill Clinton would like you to believe otherwise) and Kant would make no distinction between their moral content. In addition, the categorical imperative against lying would, when rigorously applied, also extend to a prohibition against the withholding of information.
Just then, Plausible Man shows up. He argues that telling the murderer where the victim is hiding does not amount to murder (in legal parlance this would be considered “accessory to murder” rather than murder itself) and therefore, the categorical imperative actually allows Kant to tell the murderer where the victim is hiding.
Close Plausible Man, but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades. This still doesn’t get Kant out of his jam because it is once again a technicality and not a substantive argument. We can easily tweak our hypothetical so that the result of Kant telling the truth would be the active killing of another.
For example, we could imagine a scenario in which a person with a terrible heart condition asks Kant to tell her the truth about his family who was just killed in a car crash. The truth would cause her such emotional stress that she would certainly die from the news. This scenario would make Kant the “proximate cause” of another’s death and remove Plausible Man’s technicality argument.
No, the only person who can save Kant is himself; but does the categorical imperative give him enough power to get out of this jam? Interestingly, the scenario presented above – a murderer asking for the whereabouts of his next victim (aka “the inquiring murderer hypothetical”) – was actually posed to Kant by Swiss philosopher Benjamin Constant while Kant was still alive (albeit a 73-year-old curmudgeon). As you can imagine, it was a major philosophical challenge – as close as you’re ever going to get to a modern-day throw down between two 18th Century European philosophers.
To defend his moral philosophy against Constant’s attack, Kant actually wrote an essay called On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives in which he actually argues that the categorical imperative requires us to tell the hypothetical murderer the whereabouts of his next victim.
But this seems to run counter to everything our intuitions tell us – most people would probably rationally argue that, in the hypothetical of the inquiring murderer, the moral obligation is for us to NOT tell the truth. I guess a Kant defender would say that our intuitions are wrong and that the categorical imperative sometimes forces us to make moral decisions that run counter to our intuitions. But this seems like a cop out.
So how do we reconcile Kant’s moral framework with our intuitive belief that we ought to not tell the murderer the truth?
I believe the way to do this is to go back to Kant’s own writings in the Groundwork and look at what he says about the difference between perfect duties and imperfect duties.
According to the Groundwork, Kant defines perfect duties as those actions that, when evaluated according to the First Maxim, produce inherent contradictions. In other words, these are actions that cause inherent contradictions when they are rationally applied as universal laws.
For example, the murder is a perfect duty. If we ever tried to apply murder as a universal law, it would lead to an inherent contradiction. Murder presupposes life – namely that there are humans alive to murder and to be murdered. Yet if murder were applied as a universal law, then everyone would be dead and there would be nobody left to murder or to be murdered. It would be inherently contradictory to apply murder as a universal law because we cannot rationally conceive of a world where murder is universally allowed. Because we cannot rationally apply murder as a universal law, it is not permissible under the First Maxim.
Imperfect duties, on the other hand, are actions that, when evaluated according to the First Maxim, DO NOT produce inherent contradictions. Put it another way, these are actions that DO NOT cause inherent contradictions when they are rationally applied as universal laws.
Lying is an imperfect duty. If we tried to apply lying as a universal law, it would NOT lead to an inherent contradiction. Lying DOES NOT presuppose truth-telling – if everybody lied, one could still lie and not produce an untenable position. In fact, we can rationally conceive of a world where lying is universally allowed – it would be a world where everyone lied to everyone else.
But we might ask – if lying is an imperfect duty, then why should we not lie? The answer is – although we can rationally conceive of a world where lying is universally allowed, no one would rationally want to live in such a world. Despite the fact that universalizing lying is not inherently contradictory, lying still cannot be rationally applied as a universal law and therefore is still not permissible under the First Maxim.
The difference between perfect and imperfect duties is very, very subtle. Both of these duties are not permissible under the First Maxim because they cannot be rationally applied as universal laws. The difference is how we arrive at the conclusion that they cannot be rationally applied as universal laws.
In the case of a perfect duty (such as murder), we cannot even rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed because it would produce an inherent contradiction. And because we cannot even rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed, we cannot rationally apply it as a universal law. In the case of imperfect duties (such as lying), we CAN rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed. But because we would not rationally want to live in a world where such actions were universally allowed, we still cannot rationally apply it as a universal law.
The distance between perfect and imperfect duties may be very small, but there might just be enough space there for Kant to squeeze through to get of his predicament. Let us suppose that perfect duties take precedence over imperfect duties. Since the prohibition against murder is a perfect duty and the prohibition against lying is an imperfect duty, Kant would be allowed to lie in order to avoid committing murder.
Unfortunately, Kant is silent about all of this. His discussion of perfect and imperfect duties in the Groundwork does not cover whether one type of duty can supersede the other so there is no way of knowing if the exhaustive (and probably also exhausting) explanation above would actually sit well with Kant.
I would think that Kant would probably hesitate to endorse such an explanation, even if it succeeds in getting him out of the inquiring murderer hypothetical. Kant’s whole purpose in conceiving of the categorical imperative is to construct an absolute rather than framework for morality (such as the utilitarians). To then bring in the possibility – even the possibility – of certain duties trumping others would create a slippery slope which threatens to destroy the absolutist moral framework that Kant has so carefully constructed.
Constant’s inquiring murderer hypothetical is a real poison pill that presents a potentially lethal problem for Kant’s moral philosophy. The explanation that Kant gives in On a Supposed Right – that the categorical imperative requires us to tell the murderer the whereabouts of his victim – doesn’t seem to agree with our intuitive understanding of morality. I have tried to present a way of reconciling Kant’s moral framework with our intuitive morality – by separating murder and lying into perfect and imperfect duties, respectively. But even this leads to potential problems in that it fundamentally relies on a prioritization of perfect vis-à-vis imperfect duties that could plant a relativist seed that could threaten to take down Kant’s entire absolutist moral framework.
A sticky wicket to be sure, but we all knew that nothing about Kant was ever going to be easy or clear.
Alright, I am exhausted by all this heavy philosophical lifting. In the next installment, I will redirect attention to a simpler matter – applying Kant’s moral philosophy in the real world. This will probably be a feat somewhat akin to trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
Stay tuned.
For You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part I, please go here.
When we last left our hero – Kant – he was stuck…
A murderer had asked him for the whereabouts of his next innocent victim. Kant knew that if he told the murderer where the victim was hiding, the victim would certainly be killed and he – Kant – would in effect be sending this victim to her death. But at the same time, if he did not tell the murder the victim’s hiding place, he would be lying.
Kant, as we know, draws his superpowers from the categorical imperative and the categorical imperative states BOTH that we should not murder AND that we should not lie.
Faced with this cosmic conundrum, what is our intrepid hero to do? Find out in this episode of You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part II…
Just when Kant finds himself trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place – murder and lying – Kant’s super friend Captain Obvious arrives.
Captain Obvious argues: Not telling the murderer where the victim is hiding is not technically lying – it is merely withholding information (namely the whereabouts of the victim). There is a distinction between the two and therefore, Kant is saved from the challenge to his categorical imperative.
But Kant isn’t out of the woods – like in so many times in the past, Captain Obvious is half baked. The difference between lying and withholding information is only semantics (no matter how much Bill Clinton would like you to believe otherwise) and Kant would make no distinction between their moral content. In addition, the categorical imperative against lying would, when rigorously applied, also extend to a prohibition against the withholding of information.
Just then, Plausible Man shows up. He argues that telling the murderer where the victim is hiding does not amount to murder (in legal parlance this would be considered “accessory to murder” rather than murder itself) and therefore, the categorical imperative actually allows Kant to tell the murderer where the victim is hiding.
Close Plausible Man, but this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades. This still doesn’t get Kant out of his jam because it is once again a technicality and not a substantive argument. We can easily tweak our hypothetical so that the result of Kant telling the truth would be the active killing of another.
For example, we could imagine a scenario in which a person with a terrible heart condition asks Kant to tell her the truth about his family who was just killed in a car crash. The truth would cause her such emotional stress that she would certainly die from the news. This scenario would make Kant the “proximate cause” of another’s death and remove Plausible Man’s technicality argument.
No, the only person who can save Kant is himself; but does the categorical imperative give him enough power to get out of this jam? Interestingly, the scenario presented above – a murderer asking for the whereabouts of his next victim (aka “the inquiring murderer hypothetical”) – was actually posed to Kant by Swiss philosopher Benjamin Constant while Kant was still alive (albeit a 73-year-old curmudgeon). As you can imagine, it was a major philosophical challenge – as close as you’re ever going to get to a modern-day throw down between two 18th Century European philosophers.
To defend his moral philosophy against Constant’s attack, Kant actually wrote an essay called On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives in which he actually argues that the categorical imperative requires us to tell the hypothetical murderer the whereabouts of his next victim.
But this seems to run counter to everything our intuitions tell us – most people would probably rationally argue that, in the hypothetical of the inquiring murderer, the moral obligation is for us to NOT tell the truth. I guess a Kant defender would say that our intuitions are wrong and that the categorical imperative sometimes forces us to make moral decisions that run counter to our intuitions. But this seems like a cop out.
So how do we reconcile Kant’s moral framework with our intuitive belief that we ought to not tell the murderer the truth?
I believe the way to do this is to go back to Kant’s own writings in the Groundwork and look at what he says about the difference between perfect duties and imperfect duties.
According to the Groundwork, Kant defines perfect duties as those actions that, when evaluated according to the First Maxim, produce inherent contradictions. In other words, these are actions that cause inherent contradictions when they are rationally applied as universal laws.
For example, the murder is a perfect duty. If we ever tried to apply murder as a universal law, it would lead to an inherent contradiction. Murder presupposes life – namely that there are humans alive to murder and to be murdered. Yet if murder were applied as a universal law, then everyone would be dead and there would be nobody left to murder or to be murdered. It would be inherently contradictory to apply murder as a universal law because we cannot rationally conceive of a world where murder is universally allowed. Because we cannot rationally apply murder as a universal law, it is not permissible under the First Maxim.
Imperfect duties, on the other hand, are actions that, when evaluated according to the First Maxim, DO NOT produce inherent contradictions. Put it another way, these are actions that DO NOT cause inherent contradictions when they are rationally applied as universal laws.
Lying is an imperfect duty. If we tried to apply lying as a universal law, it would NOT lead to an inherent contradiction. Lying DOES NOT presuppose truth-telling – if everybody lied, one could still lie and not produce an untenable position. In fact, we can rationally conceive of a world where lying is universally allowed – it would be a world where everyone lied to everyone else.
But we might ask – if lying is an imperfect duty, then why should we not lie? The answer is – although we can rationally conceive of a world where lying is universally allowed, no one would rationally want to live in such a world. Despite the fact that universalizing lying is not inherently contradictory, lying still cannot be rationally applied as a universal law and therefore is still not permissible under the First Maxim.
The difference between perfect and imperfect duties is very, very subtle. Both of these duties are not permissible under the First Maxim because they cannot be rationally applied as universal laws. The difference is how we arrive at the conclusion that they cannot be rationally applied as universal laws.
In the case of a perfect duty (such as murder), we cannot even rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed because it would produce an inherent contradiction. And because we cannot even rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed, we cannot rationally apply it as a universal law. In the case of imperfect duties (such as lying), we CAN rationally conceive of a world where such an action were universally allowed. But because we would not rationally want to live in a world where such actions were universally allowed, we still cannot rationally apply it as a universal law.
The distance between perfect and imperfect duties may be very small, but there might just be enough space there for Kant to squeeze through to get of his predicament. Let us suppose that perfect duties take precedence over imperfect duties. Since the prohibition against murder is a perfect duty and the prohibition against lying is an imperfect duty, Kant would be allowed to lie in order to avoid committing murder.
Unfortunately, Kant is silent about all of this. His discussion of perfect and imperfect duties in the Groundwork does not cover whether one type of duty can supersede the other so there is no way of knowing if the exhaustive (and probably also exhausting) explanation above would actually sit well with Kant.
I would think that Kant would probably hesitate to endorse such an explanation, even if it succeeds in getting him out of the inquiring murderer hypothetical. Kant’s whole purpose in conceiving of the categorical imperative is to construct an absolute rather than framework for morality (such as the utilitarians). To then bring in the possibility – even the possibility – of certain duties trumping others would create a slippery slope which threatens to destroy the absolutist moral framework that Kant has so carefully constructed.
Constant’s inquiring murderer hypothetical is a real poison pill that presents a potentially lethal problem for Kant’s moral philosophy. The explanation that Kant gives in On a Supposed Right – that the categorical imperative requires us to tell the murderer the whereabouts of his victim – doesn’t seem to agree with our intuitive understanding of morality. I have tried to present a way of reconciling Kant’s moral framework with our intuitive morality – by separating murder and lying into perfect and imperfect duties, respectively. But even this leads to potential problems in that it fundamentally relies on a prioritization of perfect vis-à-vis imperfect duties that could plant a relativist seed that could threaten to take down Kant’s entire absolutist moral framework.
A sticky wicket to be sure, but we all knew that nothing about Kant was ever going to be easy or clear.
Alright, I am exhausted by all this heavy philosophical lifting. In the next installment, I will redirect attention to a simpler matter – applying Kant’s moral philosophy in the real world. This will probably be a feat somewhat akin to trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.
Stay tuned.
Monday, March 2, 2009
You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part I of III
By Observation Deck * Other Observation Desk Posts
Caveat emptor: the topic for the post below takes a while to flush out; so accordingly, this post will be the first of a series. If you are not interested in philosophy, feel free to read the other good commentators on this blog.
Josh Lyman: That’s Immanuel Kant. Every year a million freshman philosophy students read that sentence…
Donna Moss: And change their major?
- “Red Mass,” The West Wing
Of all the philosophers I read in college, I think the most enigmatic and the most rewarding would probably have to be Immanuel Kant. I found his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals to be particularly interesting and got almost immediately hooked on his ideas about morality being a categorical imperative. (To read more detail about the Categorical Imperative try here and here.)
If you don’t feel like reading either of these treatises, I don’t blame you. So at the risk of sounding like Teddy Tomba, I’ll very quickly summarize the salient details:
Kant’s moral philosophy is based on the belief that morality is completely detached from beliefs, facts, environments, causes, cost-benefit analyses, utility, and any other inherently conditional or subjective factors. For Kant, true moral action is entirely independent of consequences – the action is moral not because it is the means to a good end, it is good because it IS the end. Morality is that which is required by a free will – a will that is truly free from all external considerations and chooses of its own accord. Therefore, moral action is what the free will demands – it is a duty, an obligation, a commandment – that which Kant called the categorical imperative.
Are you ready to change your major yet? No?
So what is a categorical imperative? Kant is glad you asked.
He defines the categorical imperative as a series of three maxims (all of them are just different ways of saying the same thing):
Maxim 1: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Translation: Moral actions must be applicable universally for all person in all situations without leading to internal contradictions or rational inconsistencies.
Maxim 2: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.
Translation: Moral actions must always treat other human beings as ends in themselves and never as a means to an end.
Maxim 3: Act as if you were always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.
Translation: Although seemingly obtuse, I think this is also the most interesting of the three maxims. I believe what Kant is doing with this third maxim is actually closing a potential loophole – what if two people can rationally disagree on whether a particular course of action is moral or not? This would clearly create a huge problem for Kant because it would turn morality into something subjective, something dependent on something else – namely the intuitive belief system of an individual. Since Kant’s whole point is that morality is objective and independent of anything else, this is a major loophole he needs to plug. He does so (and beautifully, in my opinion) by formulating the third maxim to define moral actions as only those that people cannot truly rationally disagree on.
Are you still with me? Are you drooling on the keyboard because you’ve fallen asleep from boredom?
Still here eh? Perhaps whatever you are procrastinating doing is even more horrific than Kant (something pretty Kafka-esque I bet).
Alright, how about some examples? Kant gives a few in Groundwork, including the following two: lying and murder.
Using Kant’s logic, both of these would be immoral. Both cannot be rationally universalized.
If everybody lied, no one would believe anyone else. Would any person ever rational will such an outcome? Clearly not. Lying, therefore, violates the first maxim and is immoral.
Now, let’s look at murder. If everyone murdered, then everyone would kill everyone else. Once again, would any person ever rational will such an outcome? Clearly not. Murder, therefore, violates the first maxim and is immoral.
So far so good. Kant 1, Haters 0.
But not so fast; the haters are not done. What if, they ask, a murderer asks you for the whereabouts for his/her next victim? Is it morally justified to lie to him/her to save the victim (knowing that if you told the murderer, the victim would undoubtedly be dead)?
A real dilemma and one that I’ll tackle in the next episode…You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part II.
Caveat emptor: the topic for the post below takes a while to flush out; so accordingly, this post will be the first of a series. If you are not interested in philosophy, feel free to read the other good commentators on this blog.
Josh Lyman: That’s Immanuel Kant. Every year a million freshman philosophy students read that sentence…
Donna Moss: And change their major?
- “Red Mass,” The West Wing
Of all the philosophers I read in college, I think the most enigmatic and the most rewarding would probably have to be Immanuel Kant. I found his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals to be particularly interesting and got almost immediately hooked on his ideas about morality being a categorical imperative. (To read more detail about the Categorical Imperative try here and here.)
If you don’t feel like reading either of these treatises, I don’t blame you. So at the risk of sounding like Teddy Tomba, I’ll very quickly summarize the salient details:
Kant’s moral philosophy is based on the belief that morality is completely detached from beliefs, facts, environments, causes, cost-benefit analyses, utility, and any other inherently conditional or subjective factors. For Kant, true moral action is entirely independent of consequences – the action is moral not because it is the means to a good end, it is good because it IS the end. Morality is that which is required by a free will – a will that is truly free from all external considerations and chooses of its own accord. Therefore, moral action is what the free will demands – it is a duty, an obligation, a commandment – that which Kant called the categorical imperative.
Are you ready to change your major yet? No?
So what is a categorical imperative? Kant is glad you asked.
He defines the categorical imperative as a series of three maxims (all of them are just different ways of saying the same thing):
Maxim 1: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Translation: Moral actions must be applicable universally for all person in all situations without leading to internal contradictions or rational inconsistencies.
Maxim 2: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.
Translation: Moral actions must always treat other human beings as ends in themselves and never as a means to an end.
Maxim 3: Act as if you were always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.
Translation: Although seemingly obtuse, I think this is also the most interesting of the three maxims. I believe what Kant is doing with this third maxim is actually closing a potential loophole – what if two people can rationally disagree on whether a particular course of action is moral or not? This would clearly create a huge problem for Kant because it would turn morality into something subjective, something dependent on something else – namely the intuitive belief system of an individual. Since Kant’s whole point is that morality is objective and independent of anything else, this is a major loophole he needs to plug. He does so (and beautifully, in my opinion) by formulating the third maxim to define moral actions as only those that people cannot truly rationally disagree on.
Are you still with me? Are you drooling on the keyboard because you’ve fallen asleep from boredom?
Still here eh? Perhaps whatever you are procrastinating doing is even more horrific than Kant (something pretty Kafka-esque I bet).
Alright, how about some examples? Kant gives a few in Groundwork, including the following two: lying and murder.
Using Kant’s logic, both of these would be immoral. Both cannot be rationally universalized.
If everybody lied, no one would believe anyone else. Would any person ever rational will such an outcome? Clearly not. Lying, therefore, violates the first maxim and is immoral.
Now, let’s look at murder. If everyone murdered, then everyone would kill everyone else. Once again, would any person ever rational will such an outcome? Clearly not. Murder, therefore, violates the first maxim and is immoral.
So far so good. Kant 1, Haters 0.
But not so fast; the haters are not done. What if, they ask, a murderer asks you for the whereabouts for his/her next victim? Is it morally justified to lie to him/her to save the victim (knowing that if you told the murderer, the victim would undoubtedly be dead)?
A real dilemma and one that I’ll tackle in the next episode…You Kant Do That on a Blog, Part II.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Contributor Bio: Observation Deck
The man known to the world simply as Observation Deck died today at the age of 26. His life is most notable for its complete lack of distinction. Friends and acquaintances remember Deck as an eccentric hermit whose ramblings lacked all semblance of coherence or purpose. Deck’s penchant for drollery finally found its calling in an online weblog enigmatically titled "Around the Couch."
Deck started his life in the Orient where he grew to love his eventual adopted country through the prism that was Growing Pains and Full House, two of the only forms of pop culture that were deemed acceptable by the censors in the motherland.
Arriving in the United States in the ninth year of his life, Deck was shocked and awed by the fact that San Francisco wasn’t always sunny and Long Island wasn’t always cloudy.
After diligent study and what could only be described as complete “bullsh-tery,” Deck enrolled in a prep school in New York City on a scholarship and proceeded to matriculate at college in Connecticut.
Following college, Deck was inspired to pursue public service and embarked on a journey to the nation’s capitol where he quickly realized why the early residents of Maryland and Virginia were so quick to cede this particular wedge of land.
Deck’s long and rather circuitous path finally brought him to his beloved blog in the latter part of his 26th year on earth. He could be found writing tracks on the desirability of puffins and treatises on the much maligned infield fly rule. But just when he had given what he thought was his last full measure of devotion to his blog, Deck’s life was cut short in a freak gasoline fight accident.
Deck is survived by his blogmates: Fidel, Boomer Jr., Mike Corey, CL, Standard, Josh Cain, je, ned, and LeKeith.
Deck started his life in the Orient where he grew to love his eventual adopted country through the prism that was Growing Pains and Full House, two of the only forms of pop culture that were deemed acceptable by the censors in the motherland.
Arriving in the United States in the ninth year of his life, Deck was shocked and awed by the fact that San Francisco wasn’t always sunny and Long Island wasn’t always cloudy.
After diligent study and what could only be described as complete “bullsh-tery,” Deck enrolled in a prep school in New York City on a scholarship and proceeded to matriculate at college in Connecticut.
Following college, Deck was inspired to pursue public service and embarked on a journey to the nation’s capitol where he quickly realized why the early residents of Maryland and Virginia were so quick to cede this particular wedge of land.
Deck’s long and rather circuitous path finally brought him to his beloved blog in the latter part of his 26th year on earth. He could be found writing tracks on the desirability of puffins and treatises on the much maligned infield fly rule. But just when he had given what he thought was his last full measure of devotion to his blog, Deck’s life was cut short in a freak gasoline fight accident.
Deck is survived by his blogmates: Fidel, Boomer Jr., Mike Corey, CL, Standard, Josh Cain, je, ned, and LeKeith.
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