Kantian Deontological Ethics Flashcards
What does Kant mean about the good will?
For Kant the good will is the only that is morally good in itself. it is to act solely out of duty and in reverence to the moral law within.
what is the difference between acting in accordance with duty and acting out of duty
Kant distinguished between acting out of duty and acting in accordance with duty by the motives which the agent have. TO act solely out of duty was to act out of morality alone while to act in accordance to duty was to do the right thing but have other motives in mind.
For instance, consider two shopkeepers. Shopkeeper A gives the right change to his customers because he wants to gain their trust since it results in good business, and shopkeeper B who understands that not ripping off his customers is simply the right thing to do and therefore does it.
The distinction to be made here is that although shop keeper A is doing the right thing, he is merely acting in accordance with duty while having the motive of a successful business and getting rich in mind while shopkeeper B is solely acting out of duty in regards to morality being his motivation. Therefore shopkeeper A is not morally praiseworthy while B is.
explain the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.
Hypothetical imperatives are conditional rules on what one ‘ought’ to do in some certain circumstance. It is based on personal motives that not everyone shares and can be summed up with ‘if you want x you ought to do y’. For instance if you want tea you ought to boil the kettle.
On the other hand, categorical imperatives were unconditional rules that commanded us to do action regardless of the circumstances. They are formalised as ‘Do x’.
Kant believed that moral imperatives were categorical as they told us what to do regardless of the consequences. made us to morally good acts without consideration of our own motives or goals.
what is the first formulation of the categorical imperative (including contradiction in conception and contradiction in will).
The first formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative is to ‘act only on that maxim if you can at the same time will it to become universal law’.
A maxim is a moral rule in which the categorical imperative can help you decided if it can be universalised to become a universal law that everyone including you should follow.
One way in which a maxim cannot be willed to become universal law is if there is a contradiction in conception. This means it would be logically impossible for everyone to carry out the maxim. E.g,, the maxim to always break promises would undermine the very definition of promises.
A contradiction in willing is when the maxim infringes on you ability to act out of duty. While the maxim to ‘never help others’ is conceivable, you can see yourself in a position where you need help to act out of duty.
Any contradiction lead to the maxim not becoming a duty one must follow.
What is the second formulation of the categorical imperative
this is commonly known as the humanity formulation: never treat humanity, whether in you own person or someone else, merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time an end.
This means that we respect each other.Kant believed that everyone should be capable of being a rational being and base their decisions on reason alone. when the humanity formulation is violated the agent’s rationality is undermined. For instance, when someone pays you with fake money, you do not have autonomy in choosing to take the money as you do not know all the details.
This doesn’t stop us form using other means as ends. We are still able to buy something from the shops as long as we pay. In this way you’re reaching your end of getting the thing, and the shopkeeper reaches the end of earning money. Both agents consent to the act.
Notice we have to respect it in ourselves as well as others. That means we can’t have either coercive or voluntary forms of slavery. Coercion is ruled out entirely since that does not respect someone’s rational autonomy. But someone can’t agree to be a slave either, because then they would be failing to respect their own rational autonomy. There are some things, according to Kant, that you can’t rationally and autonomously agree to.
What is the issue of clashing or competing duties
Kant asserts that we have a duty to follow the maxims which we are able to universalise as universal law being they are a categorical imperative, meaning that we must act according to them unconditionally. However, while Kant offers guidance on what duties to prioritise in the case of clashing perfect and imperfect duties, there is no guidance on clashing perfect duties.
Take the example that someone asks me about a topic which I had previously promised not to talk about. I have the perfect duty not to lie and to keep a promise. In this case, Kant offers no guidance and therefore leads the agent to decide. There therefore seems to be a fundamental flaw with the formulation of the categorical imperative if it is asking us to act on competing duties.
Not all universaliable maxims are moral and not all non-universaliable maxims are immoral.
This is an issue that targets the first formulation of the categorical imperative: only act on that maxim if you can at the same time will it to be universal law. Firstly, it seems like we are capable of willing maxims that have no moral value to be a universal law (e.g., you must chew you food 42 times before swallowing). This is an issue as it would mean we have a perfect duty to all act on this maxim despite it having no moral value.
Furthermore, there are also maxims that seem moral but cannot be universalised. This includes relative maxims that involve us comparing ourselves to each other. For instance, the maxim that ‘I will try come in the top 50% in this exam’ cannot be maximised since there is a contradiction in the will as not every agent can come in the top 50%. Therefore it seems like we have a perfect duty not too yet that doesn’t work either. Therefore it seems like the first formulation of the categorical imperative cannot handle all moral maxims to be universalised.
The issue that Kantian ethics ignores the moral value of consequences
Kantian ethics puts all moral value of one’s action in the motive - an action is only good if one is acting solely out of duty and in reverence of the moral law within. However, there are many situations where there the moral value seems to be lying in the consequence.
For instance, in the axeman scenario, Kantian ethics would tell you to tell the axeman the truth because you have a perfect duty not to lie. therefore to not lie would be to act morally. But this requirement seems to be counter intuitive as the consequences of not lying would be the death of your friend. Here it seems like the moral value is lying in the consequences and Kantian ethics tells the agent to completely ignore it.
Despite Kant telling us to only worry about our own sphere of control and to act on our own laws, it seems like scenarios like the axeman will always happen due to someone not following the right thing to do.
the issue that Kant ignores the value of certain motives such as love, friendship, and kindness
Kantian ethics only puts moral worth in the motive of acting solely out of duty and in reverence with the moral law within. But this ignore the many other motives that we have that we seem to regard as morally prasieworthy.
For example, in the scenario of Parent A reading to their kid because they enjoy doing it and Parent B who doesn’t enjoy it but does so out of duty, Kant would say parent A’s actions have no moral worth while parent B’s actions are morally praiseworthy because he acted solely out of duty. Kant believed that reason gave us autonomy while other motives such as emotions were uncontrollable and therefore not chosen freely by us.
This seems to go against our common intuition that these motives do have moral worth. most people would say that Parent A is the better parent and the more moral one. By ignoring this, Kant ignores a fundamental aspect of human nature.
Explain Philippa Foot’s objection that morality is not a system of categorical imperatives.
Foot rejects morality as consisting of categorical imperatives but rather hypothetical ones because they are the ones which give the agent a reason to follow them. If there is no reason then it is not rational to not follow them and Kant’s ethics are built on rationality since it is what gives us autonomy.
Foot rejects possible reasons for it to be a categorical imperative:
- to be rationally consistent - however there are such people which we deem wicked who are rationally consistently doing immoral acts
- we are bound by moral law - this describes some mental force that makes us want to follow imperatives. However this violates Kant’s view on autonomy
- simply out of respect for the moral law - foot says we don’t need to, just like how we don’t need to follow imperatives on etiquette for the sake of convention
Therefore, Foot concludes, morality doesn’t consist in categorical imperatives. We adopt imperatives because of other facts about us: that we love justice, charity or the other virtues. Since we desire these things, we aim to promote them. This is what gives imperatives their reason-giving force: they speak to things that are already part of our motivational character.
Hence, morality is a system of hypothetical imperatives. And this shouldn’t worry us
