The Quick and Dirty Kant

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The Quick and Dirty Kant

• Duty Trumps Desire
• Golden rule in fancy form

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Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804

• Ethics of Duty
• Categorical Imperative
• Reason, not situation
• Motive, not results

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2 questions Kant asked

• What can you know?
• What should you do?

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A few contrasts

• Aristotle
• Teleology purpose, aim, goal
• Happiness, eudaimonia
• What is good
• Empirical foundation what you can observe, study
  the models
• A posteriori (after)

• Kant
• Deontology the study of duty
• What is right
• A priori foundation thinking, reasoning, what
  you can know before observation

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What can we know?

• The mind is not a blank slate, absorbing the
  world as it is.
• More like a grid with categories that sort what
  we experience.
• Trapped in space and time
• So there are some things we cant know.

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What can and cant we know?

• Theoretical knowledge
• Not Metaphysics, the structure of the universe.
• Yes Empirical knowledge science
• Yes Transcendental Knowledge the limits of
  human reason (grid)
• Practical Knowledge
• Ethics a priori (Kant)
• Empirical (Aristotle)

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What is important about humans?

• Freedom, abilities to make choices Agents
• Contrast to animals, who live by instinct alone
• Contrast to perfectly rational beings, who live
  by pure reason, in perfect accord with moral
  principles
• We are between two worlds rational and
  non-rational, able to act by reason, also able to
  be swayed.

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The Fundamental Divide

• Beings with reason
• Ends in themselves
• Human

• Beings without reason
• Can be means
• Buildings, rocks, trees
• Creatures without reason

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Kants foundations of ethics

• Fundamental moral principle of duty found in our
  hearts and in our reason.
• Known by reason alone, not by feeling
• Principle applies to all humans equally
• Not circumstances
• Not according to station in life
• Not relativist
• Moral actions are obligatory what duty requires

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Foundations of ethics

• Kant seems to be saying that we must subordinate
  all personal considerations, self-love, and
  passions to the only goal to which it is worth
  aspiring, namely, to be moral. This has nothing
  to do with feeling and everything to do with
  reason and the idea of another and far worthier
  purpose of ones existence. (Kuehn, p. 282)

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What is the good?

• Aristotle
• Good is a goal we seek
• Happiness (fulfillment, eudaimonia) is the goal
• Ethics tells you where to go (telos) and how to
  get there (virtue).

• Kant
• A Good Will - the only purely good thing
• Not action itself, or the result, but motivation
• Good or moral person not dependent on
  circumstances, but on purity of motivation.

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Purpose of practical reason

• Aristotle To lead us to happiness
• Kant To establish the good will in us

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Duty vs. Happiness

• The concept of duty in its total purity is not
  only incomparably simpler, clearer, and more
  comprehensible and natural for everyones
  practical use than any motive drawn from
  happiness, or mixed with happiness and with
  considerations of happiness (which always require
  a great deal of skill and thought). In the view
  of even the most common human reason, the concept
  of duty is far stronger, more penetrating, and
  more promising than any motives borrowed from the
  self-interested principle of happiness. Kant
  in Kuehn, p. 283

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Is an action moral?Depends on its motivation

• Action in accord with duty
• Honesty is the best policy
• Ethics is good for business

• Action for the sake of duty
• Deep respect for moral law
• Eg Love your neighbor as yourself not like
  them, but acts of kindness from duty, obligation.

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What motivates right action

• Aristotle
• Reason alone cant motivate (important but not
  sufficient)
• Also need desire that which we are pulled toward

• Kant
• Reverence (deep respect), not from the outside,
  but self-produced by reason for moral law duty,
  binding on all

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What is the duty?
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Character is formed by maxims

• Maxim - principle to live by, adopted, either
  from others or from books. Come from public
  discourse question is which we choose to adopt.
  Show us to be rational creatures, who can guide
  our actions by principles.
• Our character (which he thought could not truly
  be formed until age 40) is constructed of the
  maxims we live by.
• Maxims are to be constant in application, but can
  be moral or non-moral. The regulated, steady,
  rational life.

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So which maxims are willed by a good will?
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Two kinds of lawEvery action has a law behind it

• Hypothetical imperative
• If-then
• If you want to get to Nashville, then drive on
  I-40
• If you want to have friends, be kind to them

• Categorical imperative
• Regardless of situation
• Everyone acts by maxims
• Always tell the truth
• Never upset your mother
• Have a good time in life

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Three formulations of the categorical imperative
for moral duty

• Act only according to that maxim by which you can
  at the same time will that it should become a
  universal law.
• Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your
  own person or in that of another, always as an
  end and never as a means only.
• Every rational being must regard himself as
  giving universal law through all the maxims of
  his will.

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Formal tests of actions to see if they are moral
from a good will

• Think of a machine put in maxim, give results
• Can the action be universally willed?
• Conceived of as a universal law
• Willed as a universal law
• On reason, not necessarily on results

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Examples

• Lying
• Suicide
• Self-interest
• Are there exceptions? Yes, but only if they can
  be universally willed

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2nd formulation Means and Ends

• Kants contribution to Human Respect
• Treat people as ends, not as means
• Because they are also free agents, able to make
  choices
• Allow freedom of choice
• Give sufficient information to enable a choice.

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Kants respect has to do with the freedom of the
will

• See in medical issues
• Tuskeegee syphilis studies
• Medical consent forms
• Research standards
• Sexual ethics

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The heritage of Kant

• The admirability of acting from duty
• Evenhandness of morality
• Respect of persons
• Focus on rights and justice
• Rawls (read in economic justice section)
  fairness what policies would we choose, if we
  dont know how it would turn out for us?

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Some critique of Kant
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Other possible objects of respect that Kant does
not consider

• Feelings, emotions
• The dead
• Animals
• Natural world

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What Kant may have missed

• Little nuance of situation, history
• Lacks emphasis on role of consequences
• Doesnt address reality of multiple conflicting
  duties

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And a bit more critique

• Duty can be misconstrued as following orders,
  obeying law, external authority (though thats
  not what Kant meant at all)
• Moral minimalism tells you the minimum
  requirements, not how to make the world a better
  place
• Alienated from feelings bias toward depressed,
  cold action, over motivation from love or feeling