I was just reading up on the naturalistic fallacy and I found something pertinent to our reading of Kant here.
"In using his categorical imperative Kant deduced that experience was necessary for their applications. But experience on its own or the imperative on its own could not possibly identify an act as being moral or immoral. We can have no certain knowledge of morality from them, being incapable of deducing how things ought to be from the fact that they happen to be arranged in a particular manner in experience."
Kant argues that we cannot investigate morality empirically (like how Mill recommends in his discussion of utilitarianism), because experience does not tell us what we should do, it only tells us the way things are.
Kant makes a similar point about the pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The problem is that what we desire cannot tell us what is right, no more than the way things are tell us what we ought to do. To repeat an important point from the previous post on Kant's ethics:
Morality must put constraints on the will to act in a specific fashion (i.e. out of duty in keeping with what is right and in doing so respecting the dutiful behaviour of the community of rational agents who also recognize this fact), whether or not it's what one desires. The fact of our desire cannot determine what we're supposed to do.
Neglecting our duty excepts us from the community of rational agents, the community of human beings. It dehumanizes us because rejecting one's duty is equivalent to endorsing a contradiction (as I said in class and as Kant says in your textbook, when someone does this they say both that it should be a universal law that people, for example keep their promises, but then at the same time, the duty-breaker wants to make an exception of themselves. Universal laws cannot admit exceptions because they would eventually collapse from the pressure. For if everyone were to make an exception of themselves like the duty-breaker then nobody could make promises anymore. Breaking a promise when it benefits you cannot be made a universal law, obviously, because if everyone did it then nobody would trust anyone. This is why as a community of rational beings we agree that everyone ought to keep their promises.
A Problem for Kant: What do we do with the person who has a Jewish family hidden in their cellar and a Nazi stormtrooper asking if she knows their whereabouts. It is a universal maxim that we should not lie, because if everyone were to lie then the activity of telling the truth would be undermined. But exposing a family that could otherwise be saved to Nazi death camps seems like the wrong thing to do in this situation. I like Kant's moral theory, but I don't know how to answer this objection. Any ideas?
"In using his categorical imperative Kant deduced that experience was necessary for their applications. But experience on its own or the imperative on its own could not possibly identify an act as being moral or immoral. We can have no certain knowledge of morality from them, being incapable of deducing how things ought to be from the fact that they happen to be arranged in a particular manner in experience."
Kant argues that we cannot investigate morality empirically (like how Mill recommends in his discussion of utilitarianism), because experience does not tell us what we should do, it only tells us the way things are.
Kant makes a similar point about the pursuit of the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The problem is that what we desire cannot tell us what is right, no more than the way things are tell us what we ought to do. To repeat an important point from the previous post on Kant's ethics:
Morality must put constraints on the will to act in a specific fashion (i.e. out of duty in keeping with what is right and in doing so respecting the dutiful behaviour of the community of rational agents who also recognize this fact), whether or not it's what one desires. The fact of our desire cannot determine what we're supposed to do.
Neglecting our duty excepts us from the community of rational agents, the community of human beings. It dehumanizes us because rejecting one's duty is equivalent to endorsing a contradiction (as I said in class and as Kant says in your textbook, when someone does this they say both that it should be a universal law that people, for example keep their promises, but then at the same time, the duty-breaker wants to make an exception of themselves. Universal laws cannot admit exceptions because they would eventually collapse from the pressure. For if everyone were to make an exception of themselves like the duty-breaker then nobody could make promises anymore. Breaking a promise when it benefits you cannot be made a universal law, obviously, because if everyone did it then nobody would trust anyone. This is why as a community of rational beings we agree that everyone ought to keep their promises.
A Problem for Kant: What do we do with the person who has a Jewish family hidden in their cellar and a Nazi stormtrooper asking if she knows their whereabouts. It is a universal maxim that we should not lie, because if everyone were to lie then the activity of telling the truth would be undermined. But exposing a family that could otherwise be saved to Nazi death camps seems like the wrong thing to do in this situation. I like Kant's moral theory, but I don't know how to answer this objection. Any ideas?
posted by Alden at 10:04 AM
1 Comments:
I posted this somewhere, and received the following comments.
"1. From what I know, while lying is always immoral for Kant, in the situation you described, misleading someone without lying is still acceptable. He puts it in terms of "circumvent[ing]" the actual utterance the Nazi wants to hear... basically dodge the question (Crit. Practical, 426).
The only problem is that if the Nazi asks specifically if the people are specifically in the cellar, and it's a yes or no question... The person might refuse to answer (I'm not sure if Kant would say that's moral or not), but Kant will maintain that the person is not at fault for the Nazi's actions thereafter, of course. Condemning the person is based on a consequentialist argument that the person should have known better, and so forth. And, for another consequentialist argument, lying might do no good anyway, and then the family would die (as would the liar) and the liar would lose his or her dignity.
Or
2. Kant hated the use of "intuitive" counterexamples like the one you describe. If we're allowed to use our pre-theoretical intuitions to refute rationally valid and sound theories, then all that is left of morality is pre-theoretical intuition, which entails cultural relativism.
In short: bite the bullet. Kant won't allow an entire system of morality to crumble just because you think it's icky to tell the truth in one situation.
3. Completely agreed.
Furthermore, Kant may argue that you don't KNOW that lying will save your Jewish friend, hence 'deontology.' "
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