Second formulation of the categorical imperative
9525531495DeontologyAn ethical theory that claims that actions are right or wrong in themselves, not depending on their consequences. We have moral duties to do things which it is right to do and moral duties not to do things which it is wrong to do.00DeontologyAn ethical theory that claims that actions are right or wrong in themselves, not depending on their consequences. We have moral duties to do things which it is right to do and moral duties not to do things which it is wrong to do.DEONTOLOGY 424815012039600Kant’s deontological ethicsGood will, motive and dutyKant maintains that an action of moral worth must emanate from a good will. In other words, it is the motive or intention that matters and our sole motivation should be to do right for its own sake, to perform our duty - duty for duty’s sake. Good will is the basis for all moral action because it is the only thing that can be considered morally good in itself. All other ‘good’ things, e.g. intelligence, happiness, self-control, are only good in a qualified way. Intelligence can be used to do bad things; and happiness can be obtained in a morally bad way. The good will is morally good because it is based on good intentions, regardless of what it achieves.Kant emphasises that we must not be motivated out of self-interest, or even out of love or sympathy for others, because emotions and inclinations can be variable, love can be selfish and sympathy narrowly focused or dependent on circumstances. Whereas, our duty is something we must do, whether we are inclined or not, it is consistently binding in all situations and cannot be swayed by how we feel. So an action is morally good if the motivation behind it is to do your duty. This is different from simply acting in accordance with our duty. According to Kant, an act which is performed because you want to do it may be the morally right thing to do, but it is not a morally praiseworthy act. An act is only morally good if the motivation behind it was to fulfil your moral duty, regardless of your personal preferences. The question now arises: what is it to do one’s duty? What are the duties that a good will is motivated by? Duties can’t be defined in terms of the consequences of actions, as Kant has claimed that any consequence an action might achieve (e.g. happiness) can also be bad in certain circumstances.Reason According to Kant what makes a good will good is the way it operates: it must operate in accordance with reason. It is man’s rational faculty, his ability to think objectively and apart from his own circumstances or preferences, that distinguishes him from other creatures. Thus, for Kant, the test that will decide which moral duties should be unconditionally obeyed will be found in the use of reason. If reason is universal, the moral duties generated by reason will be universal and applicable to everyone. And, reason will free us from personal bias. Truly to be free, therefore, means acting purely according to the dictates of reason. To act out of a recognition of duty, motivated by the good will, is to exercise our freedom.The categorical imperative24307801333500The categorical imperative is the operation of reason in moral matters. To understand what a categorical imperative is it is useful to contrast with a hypothetical imperative. Hypothetical imperatives tell us what to do provided that we have the relevant desires or feelings.“If you desire to avoid going to prison you ought not to murder anyone.”(Hypothetical)By contrast, for Kant, moral obligations do not depend on our having particular feelings or desires. The form of a moral obligation is not, “If you want so and so, then you ought to do such-and-such”. Instead, moral requirements are categorical, “You ought to do such and such”. The moral rule is not, for example, that you ought to help people if you care for them. Instead, the rule is that you should be helpful to people regardless of your particular wants and desires. We should act from a sense of duty not because of our feelings and desires. Thus, the categorical version of the above example would be:“You ought not to murder.”(Categorical)Kant held that if hypothetical ‘oughts’ are possible because we have desires, categorical ‘oughts’ are possible because we have reason. Categorical ‘oughts’ are binding on us as rational agents simply because they are rational. Kant proposed two different formulations of the categorical imperative.-45720030480000First formulation of the categorical imperative“Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”The most important feature of the categorical imperative is its emphasis on universalisability. In other words, the test that will tell us what moral rules all of us should obey, is whether or not the rule in question can be universalised without contradiction. Our job is to discover whether this rule can be consistently acted upon by all those in similar circumstances. Any rule which, when universalised, becomes contradictory is not a moral rule. Contradictory maximsThere are two different ways in which we could fail to be able to will our maxim to become a universal law. The first is called a ‘contradiction in conception’ and is when we would be willing that everyone acted on a maxim which was somehow self-contradictory. For example, suppose you want to make a promise without any intention of keeping it. If everyone acted on this maxim, making a false promise like this would be impossible. No one would trust my promise, and I can’t make a promise unless someone believes it. So I can’t will the maxim ‘Make promises I don’t intend to keep’ to be universal, because to do so would be self-contradictory. Kant calls this a contradiction in conception. Another example is ‘steal something I want if I can’t afford to it’. If everyone did this the idea of owning things, and thus also of stealing them, would disappear.The second way our maxim can fail is if it involves a ‘contradiction in will’. This is where willing a certain maxim would be contradictory, not because it leads to a logical contradiction, but because it leads to something it would be irrational to want. Kant’s example relates to helping others. It is logically possible to universalise the maxim ‘don’t help others in need’. The world would not be a pleasant place, but this isn’t the point. Kant does not claim that an action is wrong because we wouldn’t like the consequences if everyone did it. His test is whether we could will for our personal maxim to be a universal law, not whether we’d like the results. Kant argues that we cannot will that no one ever help anyone else. This is because it is contradictory to will for something which may stop us from being able to achieve our future goals. It is possible that the only available means to our ends, in some situations, will involve the help of others. We cannot therefore will that this possibility is denied to us. So we cannot will a situation in which no one ever helps anyone else because it involves willing something that you could not rationally want. Second formulation of the categorical imperative368617571183500It is worth repeating that at the heart of Kant’s moral theory stands the belief that human beings are rational beings, and as such they have an inherent value: they are ends in themselves, counting equally one with another. Their value does not therefore consist in how they can be used by others, as means to ends. Their value is intrinsic not instrumental. This view is best expressed in Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”This entails that you can never simply use other people to further your own goals. Rather you ought always to respect other people’s desires and goals. This is because a rational being does not have merely conditional worth, i.e. is not just worthwhile as a means to some other end. Rather they are worthwhile for their own sake, or unconditionally. Positive features of Kantian ethicsKant’s theory takes account of justice and corrects the utilitarian presumption that the punishment of the innocent could be justified in terms of majority benefit. Justice towards the individual is thus safeguarded by the universal, and impartial, character of the categorical imperative. Kant respects each person’s dignity as a rational creature, and thus resists all use of him/her as a mere means to an end, as something to be exploited for the greater happiness of others.Another strength of Kant’s theory is the sharp distinction he makes between duty and desire. It prevents individuals from assuming that what is good for them, what brings them pleasure or benefit, is morally good, something that will be good for everyone.Criticisms of Kant’s theoryProblems with practical application Kant’s theory is sometimes criticised for being empty. This means that his theory only gives a framework showing the structure of moral judgements, without giving any actual help to those faced with making moral decisions. He tells us how to work out our duties rather than give us the duties themselves. -20002541910000Furthermore, once we try to use this framework to rationally discover our moral duties, we run into practical problems.Firstly, if a maxim can be universalised it is not clear whether that automatically makes it moral and means we must carry out the action. For example, “keep promises” can be universalised with consistency and as a result it is clear that it is a moral maxim and that we ought to keep our promises, whereas “tie your left lace first” can be universalised consistently but it is less clear that this is a moral action which ought to be done.538861088900Also, if a maxim cannot be universalised it is not clear whether that automatically makes it immoral and means we must not carry out the action. For example, some actions cannot be universalised consistently, e.g. “kill innocent people”, and as a result it is clear that the action is immoral and ought not to be done. However, with other actions which cannot be universalised consistently, e.g. “let the other person enter the room first”, it is not clear that the action is immoral and therefore ought not to be done, particularly by an individual.Therefore, it is not obvious that maxims which can be universalised consistently are necessarily moral and ought to be done, nor that maxims which cannot be universalised consistently are necessarily immoral and ought not to be done.Clashing / Conflicting dutiesTelling lies or breaking promises is, according to Kant, always wrong, because neither can be consistently universalised. The prohibition against lying and breaking promises is absolute, and as such applies to everyone without exception. However, a problem lies in Kant’s exclusion of exceptions. Can there be no situations in which, say, telling a lie is morally justified? Take, for example, a situation where our duties conflict. If it is always wrong to break a promise and always wrong to tell a lie, what happens when I have to tell a lie to keep a promise? -742950762000Suppose I promise a friend that I will hide him from a murderer, and that the murderer later asks me where my friend is. How am I to reply? If I must tell the truth, I break a promise; and if I keep the promise, I must tell a lie. It is a major weakness of Kant’s theory that it provides no answer to this dilemma.484822581915000Thus, in these examples Kant’s theory leads either to a kind of moral stalemate, in which no moral decision can be made, or to a situation in which I may well regard doing my duty as being equivalent to doing wrong, thus going against our natural intuitions.Response - W D RossBecause of problems like those mentioned above an important amendment has been made to Kant’s ethics by W.D. Ross. Ross argues that Kantian duties should not be taken as absolute duties but as duties which allow exceptions, prima facie duties. A prima facie duty is a non-absolute or conditional duty, a duty which can be overridden by a more compelling duty.The intuitive importance of consequences in moralityOne of the key objections to Kantian ethics is that it places all of the moral worth on the motives of an action. Just as utilitarianism is criticised for placing all of the moral worth of an action on the consequences, so Kant is criticised for placing all of the emphasis on the motive. It seems our moral intuitions want to have it both ways – attach some of the value to the motive and some to the consequences.Consider the example above, of the murderer at the door. What would happen if I had made no promise to hide my friend? In that case, there is no conflict of duty and I am duty bound to tell the murderer the truth. In other words, if I do not here make an exception, my duty obliges me to do something which in all probability, I regard as morally wrong and counter- intuitive.The problem lies in the fact that our fulfilling duty to tell the truth would lead to terrible consequences, and yet for Kant the moral value of the action lies solely in the reason for acting. For Kant it would be wrong to lie because you cannot consistently conceive of a world in which lying whenever you want to is the moral law.The fundamental point here is that telling the truth would have bad consequences, and this is what makes it wrong, not whether you can universalise the maxim underlying the act. On this occasion, the moral value of the act (lying or not) seems to reside in the consequences not the motive.Kant’s larger claim, in essence, is that we all need to focus on our own sphere of control; make sure that I do not lie, deceive, etc., and only act on maxims that I have worked out to be universal laws. If we all did this, then we would end up in a world where we all had freedom and autonomy. However in the example above, I might be busy doing the right thing, but the mad axeman sure isn’t, and this would have disastrous consequences. This focus on my sphere of control seems to miss the bigger, and consequentialist picture. Kantian ethics seem to be more concerned with being rationally consistent in our actions than with whether a friend is killed. It may well be the case that if we all acted rationally consistently, the world would be a better place. However, we do not live in this ideal world, we live in a world with murderers and cheats. Just focusing on my own sphere of action, as if we are all aiming for an ideal world, would seem to have disastrous consequences in the real, non-ideal world in which we live. Because the world is non-ideal, some argue that we have to look at the consequences of our actions, and override the need to be rationally consistent in our willing.The value of certain motives and commitments is ignoredUtilitarianism faced the objection that it makes morality too demanding by requiring us to be impartial between our friends/family and people we don’t know. Kantian deontology doesn’t require this. While we are required to help others, we are not required to be completely impartial or maximise happiness. However, Kant makes the motive of duty the only motive that has moral worth, and says that doing something good for someone else because you want to is morally right, but not morally good.-55245025400000We can object that Kant encourages a cold and calculative approach to ethics by claiming that our desire to do good, and to act out of love for our friends and family is morally irrelevant. In fact, Kant’s claim that emotions are irrelevant, and that the only appropriate motive for a moral action is a sense of duty, seems to be at odds with our intuition that certain emotions have a moral dimension, such as guilt and sympathy. The rational concern for consistency and impartiality is only part of the moral experience: our desire to do good is also an important moral motive. Furthermore, to act out of duty and not out of genuine care for others implies a lack of authenticity in one’s motivation. The example of the father who plays with his son out of a sense of duty, rather than love and joy illustrates the point well.-4095759525Consider another example. Suppose a woman visits a friend in hospital. When the friend thanks her she replies, ‘It was nothing, I was just doing my duty, my motive was simply to do what is morally right’. The friend can legitimately feel upset. Kant seems to say that we have to want to benefit people because it is our duty to so, not because we like them. But surely, if I do something nice for you because I like you, that is a morally good action. Much of the time we do good things because we feel warmly towards the people we benefit. We can object that putting duty above feelings in our motives is somehow inhuman.ResponseKant can respond that he is not trying to stop us from being motivated by our feelings. His point is that, when we are choosing what to do, how we feel should not be as important as what it is morally right to do. Our feelings shouldn’t decide the matter, our motive to do what is morally right should. So for example, it is still morally good to visit your friend in hospital when you want to visit her, as long as this was not the deciding factor. The desire to do our duty should be overriding reason for visiting.Counter-responseHowever this still doesn’t seem right. Our intuition tells us that wanting to, for example, save a family member over a stranger is enough to make it morally right. We don’t need to have an overriding sense that we are fulfilling our moral duty to put our family above strangers when making moral decisions.Moreover, we may doubt whether it is even possible for us to set aside our self-interest and the concerns and desires that make us individuals, and to think of ourselves, as Kant wants us to, as purely rational autonomous beings engaged in universal law-making. The impartial position that Kant wishes us to adopt may be possible for factual considerations, but not for practical, moral deliberations. In contrast, Bernard Williams maintains that practical deliberation is essentially personal. He argues that Kant is wrong and that we cannot adopt an impersonal perspective (the perspective of the categorical imperative), because by doing so we lose our place in the world, our interests and any sense of self. ................
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