Ethics: Kant and the categorical imperative.

[UndercoverElephant]

Offshoot from another thread.

Posted by Geoff:

Very simple. Imagine that whatever you do, everybody else did the same thing in the same situation. If the result is a world you would not want to live in, or worse - a world which could not exist because it would be illogical - then you should not act in this way.

There is nothing scientific about this question. It is purely philosophical. But it is not irrelevant, and it refers to something very real - human moral decisions. Few things are more important than this.

Wikipedia on Kant's ethics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_Imperative

DJ, in response...

Posted by DarkJaguar:

Also, what an odd sense of morality. Consequences of action are irrelevent? At least that's what the wikipedia article seems to be saying. Sorry, I can't go with that. Consequences seem to be all that MATTERS when it comes to an action, at least the most probable consequence as one who is deciding can judge it. It's not okay to steal because if one says "it is okay to steal" and universalizes it, then property can't exist and the statement is meaningless". Interesting, except it seems a nonsequiter, as well as making only two options when there are more. What about just CHANGING the statement to "propery does not exist"? Universalized THAT still makes sense. Stealing won't exist, but a lot of people would disagree with the person that does it and might stop him. Maybe consequences are important? It is "never okay to lie" because you can't universalize it? Fine, I'll remember that next time you are being hunted down by someone wanting to kill you and they demand your location from me. Still think consequences are irrelevent? Philosophy is all well and good until reality steps in and forces you to make a choice that doesn't always have a "perfectly logically formed solution that is applicable in all situations in perpetuity througout the universe".

Ethics is hard. But I'm with Kant. D.J. is defending utilitatirianism - the belief that consequences are more important than intentions. I believe that intentions are more important than consequences, in terms of morality.

 

[JamesDillon]

The categorical imperative is difficult to apply because it leaves the definition of the relevant "situation" entirely to the subjective judgment of the moral agent, who obviously has an interest in finding a moral justification for his actions. Consider the following situation:

A picks up a gun, points it at B, and pulls the trigger.

Most of us would say that this act could be moral or immoral depending on the context. Who decides which contextual facts are morally relevant? Is it relevant that B was attacking A? What about the fact that the event occurred on a Tuesday? Kant leaves the identification of the relevant facts to the agent himself, making it easy to craft a "universal" maxim that nevertheless achieves any self-interested result that A might want, to say nothing of the fact that application of the categorical imperative might justify actions that most of us would find morally abhorrent (e.g., a white supremacist might quite sincerely be able to will as a universal maxim that any white person may lynch any black person whenever he can get away with it.)

 

[lifegazer]

If the Individual actually exists and has actual power to affect change, then intent must supercede consequence. Thereby, the individual is able to consider it's own intent and change 'it' before affecting any change. Hence, consequence is subserviant to intent.
The reverse cannot be true unless the individual has no power to reconsider intent, in which case 'intent' has no relevance... and hence, the question is now meaningless - there is no debate to be had pertaining to which is more important. There are only consequences to... consequences.
There can be no 'intent' where there is no free-will. Can consequences be more important than free-will??

 

[Dr Adequate]

Ethics is hard. But I'm with Kant. D.J. is defending utilitatirianism - the belief that consequences are more important than intentions. I believe that intentions are more important than consequences, in terms of morality.

Of course, this might be a false dichotomy.

What if the best possible intention is in fact to wish to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number?

This relates to JamesDillon's crucial question about Kant: which contextual facts are morally relevant? Perhaps utilities are the only morally relevant facts --- at least, I see nothing in Kant's dictum to rule out this possibility.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

It is inevitable. No matter what I may say, I will always be called "DJ" at some point, and it'll stick. I like it.

Why is it that intent supercedes consequence just because of "free will"? Not sure I follow.

I'll say this, it supercedes only in so far as one's intent must be for a certain consequence to occur based on the existing information they have and what can reasonably be expected to occur if they did said action. Consequence is hardly irrelevent there though.

I don't care if lying "takes away the concept that the one you are lying to is a free agent capable of judging the situation" or whatever because if they have made it apparent they have no intention of being logical and every intention of killing the Jews in my attic, I really don't care if lying is insulting to their intelligence any more. How do I KNOW they would go through with it or that my information is accurate, or that any lie I could come up with might lead to some worse situation? Yeesh, where'd your empiricism suddenly vanish to? I don't know with absolute truth that what I am saying isn't false. Should I be called dishonest because I know for a fact that I don't know for an absolute fact the thing I'm stating? I suppose one might say all we ever do is lie, but I wouldn't. If I have every reason to believe those Jews are still in the attic (for example, one of them is slowly eating from a bag of chips in a noisy fasion, much to everyone else's horror, it's odd that the more slowly you try to do certain noisy things, the noisier they become, which reminds me of this time that, anyway I digress) then that's good enough to make a decision on, even if it involves lying. If I don't need absolute knowledge to say a truth, I shouldn't need it to tell a lie. I would just need reasonable knowledge to reach a statement (or it's anti-statement in the case of a lie).

Eh, it all seems a little silly anyway. Morality just doesn't seem like an "absolute" sort of thing. Let's say the world is the sort of thing that exists outside of me and will continue to exist if my conciousness should cease to exist (and all my observations about other people dying who all seem to have conciousness themselves suggests this very thing). What's the most logical course of action for a frickin' rock? Well, it doesn't have the ability to reason at all. It just does what it does. What's the most logical course of action for a person? Right now. What should "a person" do? Most likely, it depends on the context. Shoot this person shoot another person? Depends on the context. Is pacifism the only way to go? What if by refusing to kill that person, every other person on the planet will die? Like, I dunno, some ridiculous implausible James Bond scenario (I dunno, you philosopher types like taking a method of morality designed to operate under normal conditions and testing them in situations that the person using them will never encounter to prove some weird point). Still the best way to go? What purpose could it serve anyone? Who could appreciate the logical perfection of such a decision if there are no minds left to comprehend it anyway? The rocks won't care. Finally, if people really do have a logical imperitive to do all this, why do a lot of people NOT do it? The physics all seem to perfectly allow people to do illogical things all the time, and they do, so maybe there is no perfect logical imperitive built into the universe.

I dunno, it seems to me that you would have to have a frickin' GOAL no matter what your system of morality is and I've yet to see any goal that isn't just presumed to exist. What about people who don't have any desire to be logical (ignoring whether or not these are the perfect logical choices in being moral)? Does this system apply to them?

 

[JamesDillon]

I dunno, it seems to me that you would have to have a frickin' GOAL no matter what your system of morality is and I've yet to see any goal that isn't just presumed to exist. What about people who don't have any desire to be logical (ignoring whether or not these are the perfect logical choices in being moral)? Does this system apply to them?

In Kant's view, yes, because the distinction between the categorial imperative and a hypothetical imperative is that the former retains its imperative force regardless of the agent's intent or desires. But the idea that the categorical imperative can be derived from pure logic without reference to any concept of the good strikes me as absurd.

Philippa Foot wrote an interesting article, the title of which I can't currently recall, arguing that although morality is a system of hypothetical imperatives, our very humanity compels us to accept the goals to which the hypothetical imperatives of morality attach; in other words, although moral premises are, strictly speaking, contingent, they are for all practical purposes categorical because their pursuit relates to the sort of neo-Aristotelian concept of the good life that she argues we all share.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

I have no idea what that means...

 

[lifegazer]

Why is it that intent supercedes consequence just because of "free will"? Not sure I follow.

Because the individual cannot have 'intent' unless it possesses free-will. All decisions & actions are consequences of previous decisions/actions unless an individual has the ability to affect unpredictable effects via ponderable 'intent'.
Consequently, an individual with the ability to ponder what it wants to do prior to affecting change, is more important than the changes that it can affect.

Also, if an individual has no ability to affect change via free-willed intent, then the question is mute. If there's no such thing as intent, then there's no debate to be had - all events must always be consequences (as irrational as that is).

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Finally, if people really do have a logical imperitive to do all this, why do a lot of people NOT do it?

Because they are irrational beings, according to Kant. It is irrational to be immoral.

I dunno, it seems to me that you would have to have a frickin' GOAL no matter what your system of morality is and I've yet to see any goal that isn't just presumed to exist.

There is no goal for Kants "maxim". It is a meta-ethical principle that you can apply in any situation. It doesn't depend on anything else - it is self-contained. No outside God or scripture. Not dependent on any of your goals. This is really important for Kant. He wants to seperate your decisions about morality from your private goals.

What about people who don't have any desire to be logical (ignoring whether or not these are the perfect logical choices in being moral)? Does this system apply to them?

No. For Kant, morality is only possible for rational beings.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Philippa Foot wrote an interesting article, the title of which I can't currently recall, arguing that although morality is a system of hypothetical imperatives, our very humanity compels us to accept the goals to which the hypothetical imperatives of morality attach; in other words, although moral premises are, strictly speaking, contingent, they are for all practical purposes categorical because their pursuit relates to the sort of neo-Aristotelian concept of the good life that she argues we all share.

Are you saying that you cannot follow the categorical imperative without reference to "the good life"? Why? I don't see why they are connected.

It is illogical to make a lying promise under the C.I. This is because if you willed a world where everybody made lying promises then there would be no such thing as a "promise" any more. You can only make lying promises in a world where other people stick to their promises. How is this connected to aristotle's "good life"? Aristotle's ethics permit all sorts of things, including slavery.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

It is illogical to make a lying promise under the C.I. This is because if you willed a world where everybody made lying promises then there would be no such thing as a "promise" any more. You can only make lying promises in a world where other people stick to their promises. How is this connected to aristotle's "good life"? Aristotle's ethics permit all sorts of things, including slavery.

Actually it's perfectly logical, as long as you frame your will as "It is my will that all people make lying promises, when they are in this exact situation that I am in, or one that is morally equivalent".

It's trivial to come up with situations where making a lying promise serves to bring about a much better outcome than not doing so.

 

[rocketdodger]

Ethics is hard. But I'm with Kant. D.J. is defending utilitatirianism - the belief that consequences are more important than intentions. I believe that intentions are more important than consequences, in terms of morality.

Do you mean utilitarianism? If so, is that the accepted definition?

And furthermore, I am with Dr. Adequate -- there is nothing in the C.I. (at least, the first formulation) that precludes one from believing that consequences are more important than intentions.

 

[JamesDillon]

Are you saying that you cannot follow the categorical imperative without reference to "the good life"? Why? I don't see why they are connected.

No, I'm saying that 1) I think Kant's argument that the principles of morality can be derived from pure reason without reference to some hypothetical or contingent conception of the good is, to say the least, implausible, and 2) Then discussing an alternative model proposed by Phillipa Foot (the article is titled "Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives," first printed in The Philosophical Review, Vol 81, No. 3 (1972)), which rejected Kant's categorial imperative, but viewed morality as a system of (in Kantian terms) hypothetical imperatives that are, for all practical purposes, categorical, because they advance the conception of the good life that all rational human beings share.

It is illogical to make a lying promise under the C.I. This is because if you willed a world where everybody made lying promises then there would be no such thing as a "promise" any more.

Why should I care about that? Why does reason or logic demand that I should act only in accordance with maxims that I could will to be universal? That's a normative argument, and despite its superficial appeal, the fact that it leads to absurd results in some circumstances suggests that it isn't a very helpful one.

How is this connected to aristotle's "good life"? Aristotle's ethics permit all sorts of things, including slavery.

I think that Foot's conception of the good life was somewhat different than Aristotle's, but was nevertheless Aristotelian in the sense that she believed that all human beings share (or rationally should share) a set of interests to which the generally recognized principles of morality are connected, such that while the moral imperatives under the system she proposed were strictly hypothetical, they were for practical purposes categorical because they applied to all human beings qua human beings. Of course this view rests ultimately on a normative judgment, but despite Kant's view of practical reason, it seems quite implausible to me that a system of morality could be derived without reference to some normative conception of the good.

(I also add that I don't necessarily subscribe to Foot's view, but only mentioned it as an interesting and more plausible alternative that preserves the essence of the Kantian scheme).

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Do you mean utilitarianism? If so, is that the accepted definition?

No, but it captures the essential difference.

And furthermore, I am with Dr. Adequate -- there is nothing in the C.I. (at least, the first formulation) that precludes one from believing that consequences are more important than intentions.

It has been designed so that consequences do not have to matter. It does not preclude you from claiming that consequences matter, but according to Kant it is not the consequences which make the action moral or immoral. Only intentions can make something moral or immoral, regardless of consequences.

 

[rocketdodger]

It has been designed so that consequences do not have to matter. It does not preclude you from claiming that consequences matter, but according to Kant it is not the consequences which make the action moral or immoral. Only intentions can make something moral or immoral, regardless of consequences.

Oh, I see what you mean. I agree with you then, it is the intentions that matter.

I thought you were saying that following the C.I. would imply that one thinks intentions are what matters. I was saying that one could think consequences are what matters, and still follow the C.I., although of course it would be their intentions that matter even though they didn't realize it.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh, I see what you mean. I agree with you then, it is the intentions that matter.

I thought you were saying that following the C.I. would imply that one thinks intentions are what matters. I was saying that one could think consequences are what matters, and still follow the C.I., although of course it would be their intentions that matter even though they didn't realize it.

Consequences still matter under the C.I., because they are part of what you evaluate when you ask yourself "What would happen if this were to become a universal law?". But there is no attempt to define which consequences matter or in what ways - you have to decide that for yourself. Kant's C.I. is really meta-ethics.

 

[JamesDillon]

Actually it's perfectly logical, as long as you frame your will as "It is my will that all people make lying promises, when they are in this exact situation that I am in, or one that is morally equivalent".

Which gets back to my earlier point, that the categorical imperative is too subjective to provide any meaningful guidance in making moral decisions; it's always possible to craft the maxim in a way that you could will it to be universal.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Which gets back to my earlier point, that the categorical imperative is too subjective to provide any meaningful guidance in making moral decisions; it's always possible to craft the maxim in a way that you could will it to be universal.

Yeah, but what can you replace it with? I like Kant's ethics because I can't do any better. Utilitarianism doesn't work either.

 

[JamesDillon]

Yeah, but what can you replace it with? I like Kant's ethics because I can't do any better. Utilitarianism doesn't work either.

I think the problem is that ethicists insist on assuming that the principles of morality can be reduced to a single, internally consistent meta-ethical system; i.e., that ethics is like physics, in that there is an objective reality somewhere "out there" against which our theories can be measured. I lost interest in moral philosophy when I came to realize that all of it is really just about trying to rationalize our moral intuitions into a single system of general principles. Who's to say that such a system exists? I find it much more likely that moral intuitions are simply ad hoc proscriptions that have evolved over time for the sake of facilitating social cooperation, and that it is therefore unsurprising that, carried to their logical conclusion, some of these principles are inconsistent with each other. So what? There needn't be anything more mysterious or complicated about it than that. Murder isn't wrong because blah blah, categorial imperative, greatest good for the greatest number, treating individuals as ends in themselves, etc etc.-- murder is wrong because we collectively subscribe to a convention, for pragmatic reasons, holding that murder is wrong. For that reason I like to avoid dragging "moral" concerns into discussions about social policy; I've found that doing so inevitably tends to confuse the issues, and never adds clarity.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

That about sums it up for me. I can't understand why some people insist that "morality just HAS to be an absolute logical construct, it just HAS to!". Every single maxim I've seen is arbitrary. Why is "universally applying the same decision to everyone at once" the way I should make my moral decisions? I'm not asking "what should Bob do in this situation?", I'm asking "what should I do in this situation?". There are logically consistant, though very convoluted, moral systems some people have come up with that don't require universalism.

How can that BE? You seem to have knowledge of programming. You can easily design exception after exception into a program without resulting in a system fault. In other words, the program is hardly universally the same rule applied to the same situation, but it is still logically consistant. The only issue is such a program is very convoluted. For an example, see "video game design".

We do a lot of stuff, and it can be broken down logically only in terms of physics as far as I can tell. The mere fact that we are capable of thinking "irrationally" says that on a physics level, it is perfectly logical.

Also, you seem to be saying "it has it's problems, but I can't think of anything better so I'll go with it". I'm not sure that's a logical way to work with it. I don't say "he must have killed him. Sure, there's certain logical problems with it but there are more of them with other suspects and I apparently have to pick someone, there's an arbitrary deadline".