CH. 11 Kant's Revolution

Question 1

Immanuel Kant

Answer 1

IMMANUEL KANT (1724-1804) – Earned the title of the greatest philosopher of the last three hundred years.

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” —Immanuel Kant

• Made exciting discoveries in both science and philosophy.
• Predicted the existence of the planet Uranus,
• In EPISTEMOLOGY (Study and theory of thought), he affected an intellectual revolution.
• He turned the conventional assumptions about knowledge upside down.
  
  • To acquire knowledge, he said, the mind does not conform to reality—rather, reality conforms to the mind.
    
    • Thus he found what he thought was a third path to knowledge between empiricism and rationalism, extracting from each their grains of truth and changing epistemology forever.
• In ethics, he fashioned a powerful answer to anyone who thinks morality must be based on desires, feelings, and other contingencies instead of solid, unvarying reason.
• His greatest work, The Critique of Pure Reason was in 1781. After that came an extraordinary procession of other influential writings.
• Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785), Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793).

Anyone who seeks a full understanding of theories of knowledge and moral philosophy must submit to lessons taught by this modest, small-town genius.

Question 2

The Knowledge Revolution

Answer 2

The Knowledge Revolution:

• KANT was sure that knowledge was possible and that we can know many things about the world, most notably countless propositions in mathematics and science.
  
  • But Hume had raised serious doubts about the possibility of scientific knowledge, and his extreme skepticism shocked Kant into trying to show that Hume was wrong.
  • Recall that Hume had maintained that knowledge of the world comes entirely from experience; we know nothing unless our knowledge can be traced back to perceptions (sense data and internal states). Moreover, he had insisted that we have access only to these inner experiences. We have direct awareness of our own perceptions but not of the world beyond them. This means that the empirical laws and principles of science, which scientists regard as universal and changeless, cannot be known. They cannot be known because they assert more than experience is capable of establishing. This skeptical conclusion, Hume had argued, applies even to the principle at the heart of the scientific enterprise—the law of cause and effect. He had maintained that our experience cannot reveal to us any causal connections, for all we can actually perceive is some events following other events. And even if we could repeatedly observe a particular sequence of cause and effect, we still could not conclude that the sequence will happen the same way in the future. We may drop a baseball from the roof of a house and watch it fall downward, and we may repeat this little experiment a hundred times with the same result. But according to Hume, we have no basis for inferring—and therefore do not know—that exactly the same thing will happen on the hundred-and-first try. So Hume’s view meant that scientists could never legitimately conclude that they had discovered a universal, changeless law of nature. They could not know what they thought they knew.
    
    • This was the conclusion that so exasperated Kant—and that set him on his quest to disprove it.
• To map out the epistemological differences between Hume and Kant, we can apply some terms that Kant himself used.
  
  • A Priori Statements (statements known independent of experience)
  • Posteriori Statements (statements that depend entirely on sense experience).
  • Analytic Statement is a logical truth whose denial results in a contradiction.
    
    • EX: “All brothers are male” is analytic. To deny it—to say that “it is not the case that all brothers are male”—is to say that some males are not males, which is a contradiction.
    • Analytic statements are necessarily true (cannot be false) but trivially so. They are true but tell us nothing about the world.
      
      • The statement about brothers is obviously true but does not tell us whether any brothers exist.
• Synthetic statement – one that is not analytic. It does tell us something about the world and denying it does not yield a contradiction.
  
  • Science specializes in synthetic statements, and so do we in our everyday lives.
    
    • Ex: every event has a cause, the planets orbit around the sun, from nothing comes nothing, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level, and Abraham Lincoln was born in the United States.
      
      • NOTE: Contrary to Kant and most scientists in history, some events on the quantum level (the domain of subatomic particles) have no cause.

Both Hume and Kant agree that we can know analytic statements without appealing to experience (that is, a priori).

• (Remember, Hume refers to such statements as “relations of ideas.”) Through reason alone, we can come to know such analytic a priori propositions as “all brothers are male” and “all bodies are extended.” But Hume also holds that we can know synthetic propositions (those that are informative about the world) only a posteriori (only through experience). And this synthetic a posteriori knowledge (“matters of fact”) is limited: we cannot know what our perceptions cannot detect.
  
  • According to Hume, we are not able to directly observe causality at work, and we cannot infer universal propositions or laws based on limited, local observations. The empiricist path to knowledge, then, is detoured by skepticism.
• Kant, on the other hand, insists that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible. We can indeed know things about the world, and we can know them independently or prior to experience.
  
  • Because this knowledge is a priori, it is both necessarily true and universally applicable, a far cry from Hume’s extensive skepticism. Kant says we can know that every event has a cause (a synthetic truth), and we can acquire this knowledge a priori, through our powers of reason:
    
    • Kant’s epistemology is neither entirely empiricist nor fully rationalist. He departs radically from tradition by finding a third way —one that sees merit and error in both theories of knowledge.
      
      • In line with the empiricists, he holds that all knowledge has its origins in experience, but that doesn’t mean experience alone is the source of all our knowledge.
      • With a nod to the rationalists, he maintains that experience by itself is blind, but that doesn’t mean we can acquire knowledge of the world through reason alone.
• Kant says that Plato took this latter route and, like a dove trying to fly in empty space with no air resistance, found himself trying to reason about reality with no raw material (experience) to reason about:

Critique of Pure Reason:

• There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.
• For how should our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce representations, partly arouse the activity of our understanding to compare these representations, and, by combining or separating them, work up the raw material of the sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which is entitled experience?
  
  • In the order of time, therefore, we have no knowledge antecedent to experience, and with experience all our knowledge begins.
  • But though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience. For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge is made up of what we receive through impressions and of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself.
  • Mathematics gives us a shining example of how far, independently of experience, we can progress in a priori knowledge.…
    
    • Misled by such a proof of the power of reason, the demand for the extension of knowledge recognises no limits. The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

But Kant cannot simply assert that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible and leave it at that. He must show how it’s possible.

• His starting point is the premise that science and mathematics do give us necessary, universal knowledge about the world.
• From there he argues that something must therefore be fundamentally wrong with both empiricism and rationalism because these theories fail to explain how this kind of knowledge is possible.
• In Hume’s empiricism, he says, sense experience can shine no light on the outer world, leaving in profound doubt the existence of external objects, causality, and scientific laws.
  
  • And rationalism promises access to synthetic knowledge while ignoring sense experience, where such knowledge begins.
  • To Kant, only a drastically different approach could demonstrate how synthetic a priori knowledge could be justified.
• Kant thought he had instigated his own revolution by turning the traditional perspective on knowledge upside down.
  
  • For centuries the conventional view was that knowledge is acquired when the mind conforms to objects—that is, when the mind tracks the external world. But Kant proposed the opposite: objects conform to the mind.
  • He argued that sense experience can match reality because the mind stamps a structure and organization on sense experience.
  • Synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, he said, because the mind’s concepts force an (a priori) order onto (synthetic) experience.
    
    • The idea is not that our minds literally create the world, but that our minds organize our experience so we perceive it as recognizable objects.
    • The empiricists see the mind as a passive absorber of sense information, but Kant says the mind is an active shaper of experience into objects that we can know a priori. As he says:

Critique of Pure Reason:

• Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure.
• We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.
  
  • If intuition must conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see how we could know anything of the latter a priori; but if the object (as object of the senses) must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility.

According to Kant, the mind shapes raw experience by organizing it in accordance with certain fundamental concepts, such as time, space, and causality.

• All our experience is sifted and sorted through the mind’s “conceptual processor,” without which we could make no sense of the bewildering flow of sights, sounds, smells, and other perceptions.
• Our raw sense data may consist of a blur of red, for example, but by interpreting this information in light of basic concepts (roundness, space, time, past experience, etc.), our minds perceive a red rose.
  
  • We therefore know the world only as conceptualized sense data, a world that Kant calls PHENOMAENA. What the world is in itself outside our experience Kant calls NOUMENA, a reality forever beyond our ken.
• Research in developmental and cognitive psychology shows that our perceptions are not the result of the mind’s passive recording of sensations.
• Our perceptions are, to a large degree, constructed; they originate with our unfiltered sense experience and then are interpreted by the mind according to our preexisting ideas.
  
  • For example, our experience may consist only of red sensations in dim light, but because we have reason to believe we are looking at a red rose and already have in mind the relevant concepts, we perceive a red rose. We hear only a muffled sound in the next room, but because of our expectations, we perceive the sound as a telephone ring. When we look at a car in the far distance, the image we see is tiny. But because of previous experience and our understanding of how the size of objects stays constant, we perceive the car as having normal dimensions and is actually much larger than we are.
• Kant explains the role of sense experience and concepts in our perception of reality:

​Critique of Pure Reason:

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources of the mind; capacity of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions), power of knowing an object through these representations (spontaneity [in the production] of concepts).

• Through the first an object is given to us, through the second the object is thought in relation to that [given] representation (which is a mere determination of the mind).
• Intuition [raw sense data] and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
  
  • our intuition can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects.
  • The faculty, on the other hand, which enables us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding.
  • To neither of these powers may a preference be given over the other.
  • Without sensibility no object would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
  • It is, therefore, just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is, to bring them under concepts. These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.

Kant tried to show that genuine knowledge is a synthesis of both reason and experience.

• He argued that we can know many things about the world—cause-and-effect relationships, the truths of mathematics, the laws of science—and we can know they are necessarily, universally, and a priori true.
• We can, in other words, take hold of synthetic a priori knowledge.
• We can obtain it because our thinking is framed by fundamental concepts that guarantee our experience will take a predetermined form.
• And we can be sure the truths we discover are universal because all our minds possess the same cognitive structure determined by the same set of innate concepts.
  
  • In short, Kant’s answer to the rationalists, empiricists, and skeptics is that we know the world because we, in effect, constitute it.
  • NOTE – But that is the opposite of objective knowledge Kant talks more about psychology than philosophy. He doesn’t really address whether knowledge can be objectively known. He just talks about how we perceive the world around us, – TJB

Kant’s constructivist theory of knowledge? Or do they just show that much of our sensory input is conceptualized?

Criticism – Some philosophers doubt that everyone uses the same set of basic concepts to make sense of the empirical world. They point to anthropological and psychological research showing that not every culture uses the same set of concepts (the same conceptual scheme) to interpret and organize their experience.

• Other critics have argued that Kant’s theory does not adequately explain our certainty that facts about the world must be consistent with logic and mathematics.

Important – We think that truths of logic and mathematics are true necessarily and universally regardless of the structure of our minds. But Kant wants us to believe that logical and mathematical concepts do depend on the innate structure of our minds. This implies that the structure of our minds could possibly change to make 5 + 12 = 13, or make the statement “all brothers are male” false.

Question 3

Copernicus

Answer 3

COPERNICUS – He greatly simplified both the picture of the heavens and the calculations required to predict the positions of planets—and thus launched what came to be known as the Copernican revolution.

Question 4

Moral Law

Answer 4

MORAL LAW:

• Thinking about right and wrong, judging people as good or bad, wondering what kind of life is worthwhile, debating others about moral issues, accepting or rejecting the moral beliefs of your family or culture, or coming to some general understanding (a moral theory) about the nature of morality itself. When you do these things, you are in the realm of ethics.

ETHICS and MORALITY:

ETHICS – Moral philosophy, is the study of morality using the methods of philosophy.

MORALITY – Consists of our beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or character.

• Morality has to do with our moral judgments, principles, values, and theories.
• Ethics is the careful, philosophical examination of these.
  
  • Ethics applies critical reasoning to questions about what we should do and what is of value, questions that pervade our lives and demand reasonable answers.

Morality is a NORMATIVE ENTERPRISE which means that it provides us with norms, or standards, for judging actions and persons—standards usually in the form of moral principles or theories.

• With moral standards in hand, we decide whether an action is morally right or wrong, whether a person is morally good or bad, and whether we are living a good or bad life.
• The main business of morality is therefore not to describe how things are but to prescribe how things should be.
  
  • Other normative spheres (art and law)
  • Nonmoral norms (aesthetic and legal norms,

MORALITY stands out among other normative spheres because of its distinctive set of PROPERTIES.

• Moral norms have a much stronger hold on us than nonmoral ones do. The former are thought to dominate the latter, possessing a property that philosophers call OVERRIDINGNESS.
  
  • For example, we would think that a moral norm mandating that everyone be treated fairly should override a legal norm (a law) that enjoined one group to discriminate against another.
• Moral norms have IMPARTIALITY: they apply to everyone equally.
  
  • Everyone be considered of equal moral worth and that each person’s interests be given equal weight.
• UNIVERSALITY – apply not just in a single case, but in all cases that are relevantly similar. Logic tells us that we cannot reasonably regard an action performed by one person as morally wrong while believing that the same action performed in an almost identical situation by another person is morally right.
• Morality is REASON BASED.
  
  • ​To do moral reasoning is to try to ensure that our moral judgments are not wrought out of thin air or concocted from prejudice or blind emotion—but are supported by good reasons.
• Ethics—the systematic search for moral understanding—can be successful only through careful reflection and the sifting of reasons for belief. Critical reasoning is the main engine that drives ethical inquiry.

Emotions—what role do they play in ethics?:

• Our feelings are too often the product of our psychological needs, cultural conditioning, and selfish motivations.
• Critical reasoning is the corrective, giving us the power to examine and guide our feelings to achieve a more balanced view.
• Some people believe that conscience, not ethics, is the best guide to plausible moral judgments. At times, it seems to speak to us in an imaginary though authoritative voice, telling us to do or not to do something.
  
  • But conscience is no infallible indicator of moral truth.
  • It is conditioned by our upbringing, cultural background, and other factors, and, like our feelings, it may be the result of irrelevant influences.
    
    • Nevertheless the voice of conscience should not be ignored; it can often alert us to something of moral importance. But we must submit its promptings to critical examination before we can have any confidence in them.
• MORAL LIFE – Is about grappling with a distinctive class of norms, which can include moral principles, rules, theories, and judgments. We apply these norms to two distinct spheres of our moral experience.
• MORAL OBLOGATIONS – Concern our duty, what we are obligated to do. That is, obligations are about conduct, how we ought or ought not behave.
• ACTIONS – We may look to moral principles or rules to guide our actions, or study a moral theory that purports to explain right actions, or make judgments about right or wrong actions.
• MORAL VALUES – Generally concern those things that we judge to be morally good, bad, praiseworthy, or blameworthy.
  
  • Normally we use such words to describe persons (as in “he is a good person” or “she is to blame for hurting them”), their character (“he is virtuous” or “she is honest”), or their motives (“she did wrong but did not mean to”).
  • Note that we also attribute nonmoral value to things. If we say that a book or bicycle or vacation is good, we mean good in a nonmoral sense. Such things in themselves cannot have moral value.
  • Strictly speaking, only actions are morally right or wrong, but persons are morally good or bad (or some degree of goodness or badness).
    
    • With this distinction we can acknowledge a simple fact of the moral life: A good person can do something wrong, and a bad person can do something right.
• Part of ethics and the moral life – Devising and evaluating moral theories. That is, we do moral theorizing.
• MORAL THEORY – Explains not why one event causes another but why an action is right or wrong or why a person or a person’s character is good or bad.
  
  • A moral theory tells us what it is about an action that makes it right or what it is about a person that makes him or her good.
  • Divine command theory of morality – Says that right actions are those commanded or willed by God.
  • UTILITARIANISM – Right actions are those that produce the best balance of happiness over unhappiness for all concerned.
• CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES – Insist that the rightness of actions depends solely on their consequences or results.
  
  • The key question is what or how much good the actions produce, however good is defined.
• DEONTOLOGICAL (or consequentialist) THEORIES – Say that the rightness of actions is determined not solely by their consequences but partly or entirely by their intrinsic nature.
  
  • For some or all actions, rightness depends on the kind of actions they are, not on how much good they produce.
  • A consequentialist theory, then, may say that stealing is wrong because it causes more harm than good. But a deontological theory may contend that stealing is inherently wrong regardless of its consequences, good or bad.
• The most influential consequentialist theory is Utilitarianism – The view that right actions are those that maximize the overall well-being of everyone involved.
  
  • We should do what results in the greatest balance of good over bad, everyone considered.

Do you generally judge the rightness or wrongness of an action by its consequences? By the nature of the action itself? By some other measure of rightness? – NOTE – By its consequences 1st; By its nature 2nd. – TJB

Question 5

Moral Relativism

Answer 5

MORAL RELATIVISM – The view that moral standards are not objective but are relative to what individuals or cultures believe.

• Recall that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are opposed to relativism, including the form known as moral relativism—and so is Kant.
• Moral relativism seems to have as many unpalatable implications as generic relativism.
• Most people accept a view of morality known as MORAL OBJECTIVISM – The idea that at least some moral norms or principles are objectively valid or true for everyone.
  
  • (Moral objectivism, however, is distinct from MORAL ABSOLUTISM – The belief that objective moral principles allow no exceptions or must be applied the same way in all cases and cultures.)
  • Moral objectivism in favor of moral relativism. To them, morality is not an objective fact; it’s a human invention, dependent entirely on what people believe.

Cultural relativism implies that if a culture approves of a pogrom or the ethnic cleansing of millions of people, then the horrendous slaughter is morally right.

INFALIBILITY PROBLEM:

• SUBJECTIVE MORAL RELATIVISM – (Moral relativism that applies to individuals) implies that each person is morally infallible. An action is morally right for someone if he approves of it—if he sincerely believes it to be right. His approval makes the action right, and—if his approval is genuine—he cannot be mistaken.
• Our commonsense moral experience suggests that this relativist account must be mistaken.
• We are morally fallible, and we are rightly suspicious of anyone who claims to be otherwise.
  
  • The same criticism can be launched againstCULTURAL MORAL RELATIVISM.
  • If a culture genuinely approves of an action, then there can be no question about the action’s moral rightness: it is right, and that’s that. But is it at all plausible that cultures cannot be wrong about morality?
  • Throughout history, cultures have approved of ethnic cleansing, slavery, racism, holocausts, massacres, mass rape, torture of innocents, burning of heretics, and much more. Is it reasonable to conclude that the cultures that approved of such deeds could not have been mistaken?
• Moral relativism implies that we cannot legitimately criticize others for immorality. They are all beyond criticism.
• Cultural relativism, for example, says if a culture approves of its actions, then those actions are morally right—and it does not matter one bit whether another culture disapproves of them. Remember, there is no objective moral code to appeal to.
• What this would mean is that if the people of Germany approved of the extermination of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and others during World War II, then the extermination was morally right.
• Moral relativism also seems to rule out the possibility of moral progress. As a society we sometimes compare our past moral beliefs with those of the present and judge our views to be morally better than they used to be.
• We no longer countenance such horrors as massacres of native peoples, slavery, lynching, and racial discrimination, and we think these changes are signs of moral progress.
• But cultural relativism implies that there can be no such thing. To legitimately claim that there has been moral progress, there must be an objective, transcultural standard for comparing cultures of the past and present.
• if there is such a thing as MORAL PROGRESS, then there must be OBJECTIVE MORAL STANDARDS.
• Defenders of moral relativism assert that it promotes tolerance of other societies. The idea is that if the values of one culture are no better or worse than those of another, then there is no basis for hatred or hostility toward any culture anywhere.
• But do tolerance and relativism necessarily go together? If there are intolerant cultures (and there surely are), then since cultures make rightness, intolerance in those cultures is morally right.
• What is the relationship between cultural relativism and intolerance?

Question 6

Kant’s Theory

Answer 6

KANT’S THEORY – Is profoundly opposed to consequentialism.

• Utilitarians insist that the morality of an action depends entirely on its effects—whether it maximizes human wellbeing. No action whatsoever is inherently right or wrong; only its costs and benefits make it so.
• Kant will have none of this:
  
  • He maintains that right actions do not depend on their consequences, the production of happiness, people’s motives, or their desires and feelings. Right actions are those that are right in themselves because they are consistent with universal moral rules derived from reason, and the actions have moral worth only if we do them out of a sense of duty, simply because they are our duty. Our motives are irrelevant. For Kant, the moral law cannot be something contingent, changeable, or relative. The moral law is absolute, unchangeable, and universal; a rock-solid structure built on eternal reason.

Immanuel Kant: Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals:

• The utmost necessity to construct a pure moral philosophy, perfectly cleared of everything which is only empirical,
• Such a philosophy must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty.
• If a law is to have moral force, i.e., to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity.
• With all the other moral laws properly so called; that, therefore, the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances in the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason.
• Any other precept which is founded on principles of mere experience while it may be a practical rule, can never be called a moral law.…

Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a Good Will.

Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, and which, therefore, constitutes what is called character, is not good.

A being who is not adorned with a single feature of a pure and good will, enjoying unbroken prosperity, can never give pleasure to an impartial rational spectator.

• Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition
• Moderation in the affections and passions, self-control, and calm deliberation are not only good in many respects, but even seem to constitute part of the intrinsic worth of the person; but they are far from deserving to be called good without qualification.
• For without the principles of a good will, they may become extremely bad; and the coolness of a villain not only makes him far more dangerous, but also directly makes him more abominable in our eyes than he would have been without it.
• A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition, that is, it is good in itself.

Kant’s system, all our moral duties are expressed in the form of CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES – An imperative is a command to do something; it is categorical if it applies without exception and without regard for particular needs or purposes.

• A categorical imperative says, “Do this—regardless.

HYPOTHETICAL IMPERATIVE – A command to do something if we want to achieve particular aims, as in “if you want good pay, work hard.”

• The moral law, then, rests on absolute directives that do not depend on the contingencies of desire or utility.

Kant says that through reason and reflection we can derive our duties from a single moral principle:

• CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE
  
  • ​He formulates it in different ways, the first one being:
    
    • “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” 7
  • For Kant, our actions have logical implications—they imply general rules or maxims, of conduct:
    
    • ​If you tell a lie for financial gain, you are in effect acting according to a maxim like “it’s okay to lie to someone when doing so benefits you financially.”
    • The question is whether the maxim corresponding to an action is a legitimate moral law. To find out, we must ask if we could consistently will that the maxim become a universal law applicable to everyone—that is, if everyone could consistently act on the maxim and we would be willing to have them do so.
    • If we could do this, then the action described by the maxim is morally permissible; if not, it is prohibited.
      
      • Thus moral laws embody two characteristics thought to be essential to morality itself: universality and impartiality.

CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE Kant’s fundamental moral principle, which he formulates as (1) “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law,” and (2) “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.”

To show us how to apply this formulation of the categorical imperative to a specific situation, Kant uses the example of a lying promise.

• Suppose you need to borrow money from a friend, but you know you could never pay her back. So to get the loan, you decide to lie, falsely promising to repay the money. To find out if such a lying promise is morally permissible, Kant would have you ask if you could consistently will the maxim of your action to become a universal law, to ask, in effect, “What would happen if everyone did this?” The maxim is “whenever you need to borrow money you cannot pay back, make a lying promise to repay.” So what would happen if everyone in need of a loan acted in accordance with this maxim? People would make lying promises to obtain loans, but everyone would also know that such promises were worthless, and the custom of loaning money on promises would disappear.
• So willing the maxim to be a universal law involves a contradiction: If everyone made lying promises, promise making would be no more; you cannot consistently will the maxim to become a universal law.
  
  • Therefore, your duty is clear: making a lying promise to borrow money is morally wrong.

“Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will.”

—Immanuel Kant

Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative:

• He argues that there is an absolute moral prohibition against killing the innocent, lying, committing suicide, and failing to help others when feasible.
• Perhaps the most renowned formulation of the categorical imperative is the principle of respect for persons.
• “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.”8
• People must never be treated as if they were mere instruments for achieving some further end, for people are ends in themselves, possessors of ultimate inherent worth.
• People have ultimate value because they are the ultimate source of value for other things. They bestow value; they do not have it bestowed upon them. So we should treat both ourselves and other persons with the respect that all inherently valuable beings deserve.

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals:

• Now I say: man and generally any rational being exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will,
• All objects of the inclinations have only a conditional worth; for if the inclinations and the wants founded on them did not exist, then their object would be without value.
• The worth of any object which is to be acquired by our action is always conditional.
• Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature’s, have nevertheless, if they are nonrational beings, only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things; rational beings, on the contrary, are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves.
• Objective ends, that is things whose existence is an end in itself: an end moreover for which no other can be substituted.
• If then there is a SUPREME PRACTICAL PRINCIPLE or, in respect of the human will, a CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, it must be one which, being drawn from the conception of that which is necessarily an end for everyone because it is an end in itself, constitutes an OBJECTIVE PRINCIPLE of will, and can therefore serve as a UNIVERSAL PRACTICAL LAW. The foundation of this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself.
• So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.

NOTE – Kant says each person should make their own decisions for their own ? – TJB

According to Kant, the inherent worth of persons derives from their nature as autonomous, rational beings capable of directing their own lives, determining their own ends, and decreeing their own rules by which to live. Thus, the inherent value of persons does not depend in any way on their social status, wealth, talent, race, or culture. Moreover, inherent value is something that all persons possess equally. Each person deserves the same measure of respect as any other.

• Kant explains that we treat people merely as a means instead of an end-in-themselves if we disregard these characteristics of personhood
  
  • —If we thwart people’s freely chosen actions by coercing them, undermine their rational decision-making by lying to them, or discount their equality by discriminating against them.
• Notice that this formulation of the categorical imperative does not actually prohibit treating a person as a means but forbids treating a person simply, or merely, as a means—as nothing but a means.
• Kant recognizes that in daily life we often must use people to achieve our various ends. To buy milk we use the cashier; to find books we use the librarian; to get well we use the doctor.
  
  • But because their actions are freely chosen and we do not undermine their status as persons, we do not use them solely as instruments of our will.
• Kant’s principle of respect for persons captures what seems to most people an essential part of morality itself—the notion that some things must not be done to a person even if they increase the well-being of others. People have certain rights, and these rights cannot be violated merely for the sake of an overall increase in utility.
• Over the principle of respect for persons, Kantians and utilitarians part company.
• Utilitarians reject the concept of rights, or they define rights in terms of utility.
• Kantians take respecting rights to be central to the moral life.

The Nazis ask you if anyone lives there. You can lie and save Anne and her family from death in a concentration camp, or you can tell the truth and doom them. Kant would have you tell the truth no matter what.

Kant’s theory, however, does have its detractors:

• It is not consistent with our considered moral judgments.
• A major cause of the problem, they say, is Kant’s insistence that we have absolute (or “perfect”) duties—obligations that must be honored without exception.
• Thus in Kantian ethics, we have an absolute duty not to lie or to break a promise or to kill the innocent, come what may.
  
  • Imagine that a band of killers wants to murder an innocent man who has taken refuge in your house, and the killers come to your door and ask you point blank if he is in your house. To say no is to lie; to answer truthfully is to guarantee the man’s death. What should you do? In a case like this, says Kant, you must do your duty—you must tell the truth though murder is the result and a lie would save a life.
  • But in this case such devotion to moral absolutes seems completely askew, for saving an innocent life seems far more important morally than blindly obeying a rule.
  • Moral common sense suggests that sometimes the consequences of our actions do matter more than adherence to the letter of the law, even if the law is generally worthy of our respect and obedience.

Question 7

REVIEW NOTES

Answer 7

The Small-Town Genius:

• Revolution in epistemology and charted a major new route in ethics. He is regarded as the greatest philosopher of the last three hundred years.
• Effected an intellectual revolution as dramatic and as influential as any advance in science up to that time.
• He turned the conventional assumptions about knowledge upside down.
• Fashioned a powerful answer to consequentialist moral theories and to anyone who thinks morality must be based on desires, feelings, and other contingencies instead of solid, unvarying reason.

The Knowledge Revolution:

• ANALYTIC STATEMENT – Is a logical truth whose denial results in a contradiction.
• SYNTHETIC STATEMENT – Is one that is not analytic. It does tell us something about the world, and denying it does not yield a contradiction.
• Just as Copernicus revolutionized astronomy by reversing the traditional theory, so Kant brought forth a radically different theory of knowledge by arguing for an analogous reversal. Instead of accepting the conventional view that knowledge is acquired when the mind conforms to objects, he argued that objects conform to the mind.
• Kant argued that sense experience can match reality because the mind stamps a structure and organization on sense experience. Synthetic a priori knowledge is possible because the mind’s concepts force an (a priori) order onto (synthetic) experience.

The Moral Law:

• ETHICS, or moral philosophy, is the study of morality using the methods of philosophy.
• MORALITY consists of our beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or character.
  
  • Morality has to do with our moral judgments, principles, values, and theories;
  • Ethics is the careful, philosophical examination of these.
• CONSEQUENTIALIST THEORY – A moral theory in which the rightness of actions depends solely on their consequences or results.
• DENOTOLOGICAL THEORY – A moral theory in which the rightness of actions is determined not solely by their consequences but partly or entirely by their intrinsic nature.
• UTILITARIANISM – Is the view that right actions are those that maximize the overall well-being of everyone involved.
• MORAL OBJECTIVISM – Is the view that at least some moral norms or principles are objectively valid or true for everyone.
• MORAL RELATIVISM – Says that moral standards are not objective but are relative to what individuals or cultures believe.
  
  • Moral relativism pertaining to individuals is known as SUBJECTIVE RELATIVISM, more precisely stated as the view that right actions are those sanctioned by a person.
  • Moral relativism regarding cultures is called CULTURAL RELATIVISM, the view that right actions are those sanctioned by one’s culture.
  • Both forms of relativism face serious difficulties.
• CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE – Kant’s fundamental moral principle, formulated in two ways: (1) “I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law,” and (2) “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.”
• Kant’s theory says that right actions are those that are right in themselves because they are consistent with universal moral rules derived from reason, and the actions have moral worth only if we do them out of a sense of duty.
• Kant’s central moral tenet is the categorical imperative.
• For Kant, the moral law cannot be something contingent, changeable, or relative. The moral law is absolute, unchangeable, and universal; a rock-solid structure built on eternal reason.