Freedum Vs Freedom: What's the Difference and Why Should We Care? USA! USA! Edition

Introduction
Freedom. No single word is found more often on the lips of the American politician. It is 'Murika's rallying cry. But what does it mean? And, once we've settled on a meaning, what sorts of actions does that value commit us to? 

As everyone knows, 99% of philosophy consists in asking, "Ah, ha! But what do you mean by X?" That's pretty much all philosophers do. All day. We argue about what words mean. 

Of course, I'm being facetious. Nevertheless, at least part of philosophy is getting clear on the meanings of terms. Meanings do matter, after all--for both practical and theoretical concerns. Suppose you're debating with someone over whether happiness is the meaning of life. If you think happiness is a psychologically pleasant state then you'll formulate your argument one way. On the other hand, if you think, as Aristotle did, that happiness is a way of living--i.e.., living virtuously--then you will formulate different arguments. 

It's also possible for two people to agree that happiness is the meaning of life but disagree about what 'happiness' means. Unless they first clarify their terms, they'll end of talking past each other without any advance in the dialectic. In a political context, they'll likely advocate different policies and fail to understand why they disagree. 

A: "This policy will promote the general happiness (meaning pleasure)"
B: "No, it won't because it undermines virtue!
A: "Huh? What has virtue got to do with happiness?

In a way, I think this is what's going in with respect to 'freedom'.  In America there are two meanings to the term. I'll call the first 'freedum' and the second 'freedom'. People agree that freedom is important but are talking past each other. [Note: There are actually more meanings for freedom, but I'm going to focus on only two of them].

Freedum
Very simply, freedum is the combination of the absence of coercion combined with capacity to act according to your immediate desires. This is 'Murika's definition of freedom. In my more cynical moods, I call it the freedum to be an idiot. 

Ain't no gubmint gonna tell me what to do. If I want to walk around nekit in my front yard and shit on my lawn--it's my property and I'll do what I want. If I want to drive a diesel monster truck to and from work, despite the fact that I'm unnecessarily polluting the air, ain't no gubmint gonna tell me not to. I gots freedum. 

Freedum is the type of freedom an animal in the wild has. A desire pops up and no one is there to tell that animal that it can't act on that desire if it so chooses--no matter the content of the desire. 

Before dismissing freedum as somehow beneath a thinking creature, freedum does have value. Very few of us would want to live in a world where we were restricted from acting according to our desires. There are many important political freedoms that fit with what I've called freedum: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to marry whomever you please, etc...

The main point, (to be expanded in the next section) is that at the level of the individual merely acting on whatever fancy enters one's pointy head is an impoverished view of freedom.

I've been overly disparaging of freedum to make a point. It isn't the only kind of freedom worth having, and, I will suggest, there is a more valuable kind of freedom which should sometimes eclipse freedum. 

Freedom
The absence of coercion is one thing but is doin' whatever the f*ck I want all there is to freedom? Perhaps, if you're a 13 year-old. 

Kant
Kant and subsequent philosophers noted that merely acting according to our desires isn't genuine freedom (to be fair, the idea starts with Socrates and Plato). In broad terms, freedom is acting according to reason. Let me explain:

You don't choose to have the particular desires and preferences that you have. For example, when you get a craving for ice cream, you didn't choose to have that desire. You just have the craving. Acting on your various occurrent desires requires no deliberation. You just act on whichever is strongest. On the other hand, freedom is rationally deliberating on your current set of desires (for current and future ends) and figuring out what the rational/best thing to do/pursue would be, then acting in accordance with what reason tells you to do. 

Similarly, we don't choose our preferences. You don't choose to like the foods, activities, people, books, etc.. that you do. For example, no one says "I think today I'm going to like studying philosophy" or "I'm going to like carpentry". You just do. 

Freedum would be simply taking these preferences and desires at face value. So long as no external force prevented you from pursuing and fulfilling them, you have freedum. But Kant's point is that genuine freedom takes more than this. As rational creatures we can take our sets of desires and preferences and submit them to rational scrutiny. We can rationally deliberate over whether they are good desires and preferences to have and whether it would be good to act on those desires and preferences. Freedom is freeing ourselves from our unreflective brute inclinations and instead carefully considering what we ought to do.

Freedom is not simply accepting my brute desire to eat a whole pizza to myself--cuz ain't nobody gonna tell me what to do. Freedom is rationally deliberating about whether it would be good for me to eat that whole pizza, concluding that it isn't, then acting in accordance with this conclusion. 

To drive the point home, if freedom were merely a matter of acting on our desires in the absence of coercion, we'd have to say the heroine addict is just as free as the person who carefully plans out and lives a successful and purposeful life.  Thinking this way confuses freedum for freedom and it turns freedom into a mockery of a travesty of a sham. 

Another way of thinking of freedom is self-legislation. I rationally deliberate upon a set of principles and values according to which I live my life. When a desire arises that clashes with my rationally arrived at principles and values (as will happen frequently), I accord my action with my principles and values--not the haphazard desire. 

For example, perhaps one of my values is to become a great philosophy teacher. To do this I know that in the evenings I have to spend time planning my lectures. However, sometimes in the evening I instead have an overwhelming desire to watch a movie. I am free when I live in accordance with my rationally conceived values and principles. And so, if I refuse to indulge the desire I am free. 

Conversely, I might think, "YOLO!!!". If I acquiesce to my occurrent desire, I give up on my own rules and values. I'm not in control of my life anymore--there are no principles guiding my actions. Like Otis, I just act on whatever fancy happens to enter my head in that moment. But I'm not free when I do whatever the f*ck I want. In such a case I only possess freedum. 

We can think of this notion of freedom not only at the individual but also at the political level. Political freedom can also be understood as self-legislation. We govern ourselves as a society according to the rules, principles, and values that we collectively rationally agree to. Of course, there will be disagreement within a society over exactly what those rules will be. Figuring out what to do in cases of disagreement is the heart and soul of contemporary political philosophy. I won't go into it in this post--I only want to suggest how Kant's idea of freedom extends to the political realm. (For an overview of how political philosophers approach the problem of political freedom, self-legislation, and disagreement see this post.)

Hegel and Marx
Hegel and Marx build on Kant but kick it up a notch in terms of explaining why you aren't free when you merely act on your desires. The best way to understand is by way of my version of an analogy which I loosely borrow from Peter Singer (Singer's original analogy concerns deodorant products).

Economist think an economy is good to the degree that people's actual preferences are satisfied. But the philosopher asks two further question: (a) why do people in that economy have the particular preferences that they do? and (b) are these good preferences to have? 

Take for example the massive popularity of fast food in the US of A. An economist will say that an economy is good in so far as people's preferences for fast food are being met.  The philosopher asks: (a) why do people in the US of A desire fast food so much? and (b) are these preferences for fast food good? Let's examine each in turn.

A little reflection provides several answers to (a) at various levels of analysis. The first point to consider is that the desire for fast food didn't arise spontaneously. It is the result of carefully crafted marketing campaigns to generate the desires. This insight counts as a strike against the idea that someone is free when they act according to their desire for fast food.  The desire came from without, not from within and an action is free only in so far it is the product of conscious deliberation. There's a lot more to the story which I discuss below.

The short version of the story is that our desires and preferences are the product of complex environmental factors external to us. Since their origin is external, accepting and acting upon them isn't commensurate with authentic freedom. Freedom, as should be clear by now, is acting on desires and preferences generated and reflected upon internally.  

Hegel's point (more fully developed in Marx) is that our political preferences--our values and principles that we think ought to order our society--are just like our preferences for fast food. They are the product of our particular place in history and its institutions, attitudes, and practices.

Marx emphasized that our values and preferences don't just shape our institutions and practices (namely capitalism) but our institutions and practices also serve to reinforce the prevailing values and preferences. To understand, we can return to the fast food analogy. 

People have the preference and desire for fast food because not just because of clever marketing but because of our existing practices and the very structure of our institutions. The practice of eating fast food reenforces the preference and serves to generate the desire. The structure of our cities, neighborhoods, and food production systems also serve to generate and reinforce our desire for fast food. 

When you're hungry and out of the house, what's the quickest easiest meal? Fast food restaurants are on every corner. It's much easier to find and pull into a drive thru than to find a quick affordable healthy option. And so, the very structure of our world (in some neighborhoods more than others) pushes us toward fast food. When it's all around us, the desire seems endogenous when in fact it isn't.

We can take further steps back in our analysis and ask why it is that we don't have time for sit down meals. This is also a contingent fact about how are world is currently structured. But it also pushes us toward the practice of eating fast food, desiring fast food, and further creates demand for fast food restaurants which in turn reinforces those material structures in our world. 

We can play this game all day but the point remains the same. Many values, desires, and preferences that we might think come from within, in fact don't. The structure of our world, our institutions, and our practices all serve to generate and reinforce values which fold back on themselves to reinforce the existing structures and practices that were their genesis. Freedom is about acting on internally generated (and deliberated upon) preferences, values, and desires. We are frequently mistaken about the origins of many of our desires; thus, we are also mistaken about the nature of our choices and actions with respect to freedom.

Once we've applied our critique of our values, practices, desires, etc... we must do the real philosophical work. We need to figure out what values and desires we would rationally will that are independent of being externally generated. Returning to the analogy, What would I rationally want to eat--devoid of external forces generating my various gustatory desires? 

More generally, what are the authentic unpolluted rational desires for human beings? For Kant there are universal rational answers to this question since reason is universal and we all (to varying degrees) possess rationality. If we all go to the same well, we all drink the same water. There are universal right answers for what humans should desire. (It's not clear in Kant's philosophy how specific those desires would be). 

Hegel's insight is that we never make choices completely divorced from an implicit value system. Just as we can never perfectly escape our own subjective point of view, we can't escape our point in history and all its implicit accompanying beliefs, values, practices, and attitudes. Nevertheless, through critical analysis we can come to understand the source and origins of our existing institutions, practices, and values and apply rational deliberation to them and the desires they generate.

To continue with the analogy, Kant might have us ban all the fast food restaurants along all the forces that created them. We couldn't rationally want to eat fast food, and so away with it! Hegel would tell us that since we can never exist apart from a value-laden environment we should do the best with the one we currently inhabit:  take the existing fast food restaurants and improve through application of rational deliberation. Fast food restaurants are both good and bad: They offer food that is quick, affordable, and convenient. Unfortunately, the food itself isn't good for us. So, let's tinker with the menu but preserve what's good. Marx might agree with Hegel regarding the menu change, but you best believe he'd also insist labor practices be changed too! 

Let's now apply this framework to life choices. Consider the fact that many students want to be business majors. Why? At the level of freedum, they may just have the brute desire. But a Hegalian analysis gives us much more to consider. We ask, why do they have that brute desire in the first place? If we look around at the structure of our society (capitalism) and the values it inculcates (money, power), the answer is apparent. In a capitalist society, status, power, and success are all tightly bound to how much money one has. Without money, you're in for a rough life.

In one sense, we can say these students are rationally choosing and are thus making choices consistent with freedom. They recognize that in order to be successful in the US of A you need money. Thus, if they had competing desires to go into social work or fine arts, we might say they are rational in choosing to study bidniz. 

But the Hegelian point cuts deeper. It asks how we came to value money so highly in the first place which in turn leads students to have the desire to pursue business degrees. What are the structures, institutions, practices, and attitudes that shape and maintain our value systems which in turn shape our desires? Since we didn't choose the conditions out of which our values arose, there is a sense in which we are not free when we accept them uncritically and the desires they generate--even when they are rational to pursue within a particular historical context.

It can be rational to desire money in a capitalist system and so in a sense you're free when you order your life in pursuit of it. On the other hand, in so far as you don't reflect on the social and historical origins of your deeply held desires and values you are not free. You mistakenly assume that values in your world are eternal and objective. They are the right ones. You fail to see that they are a contingency of your location in history. In so far as you don't see the contingency of your core values and desires, and don't subject them to critical analysis and rational scrutiny, your choices are not consistent with freedom. Otherwise stated, for your choices to be truly free in the Hegelian sense, you have to recognize that your values and desires are the product of your society, your location in history, and a function of various institutions, structures, practices, and attitudes. Only after you've done this intellectual work can a choice be considered to be free.

Conclusion
The next time someone rants about Freedom!!!1!1!!!! USA #1!!!!1!1!! or a politician makes proclamations about freedom, take a moment to reflect on whether they're primarily concerned with freedum or freedom. It's true that the gubbamint can constrain your freedum and that's something we should avoid. But if you reflect a little you might find that restricting your own freedum is sometimes consistent with freedom. And freedom, it seems to me, is frequently to be preferred to freedum. Especially when it comes to living in large groups...

Kantian Ethics: A Summary

Introduction and Context
Kant is considered to be one of the most important philosophers ever...EVER!  Therefore, everything he says it true.  The end.  Well, not quite.   Lets avoid appeals to authority and look at the arguments ourselves, shall we? 

As I mentioned in earlier posts the difference between the 3 main ethical theories (virtue, deontology, consequentialism) is a matter of emphasis.  While virtue ethics answers the question "what should I do" by emphasizing what a virtuous person would do (i.e., emphasizing things about the agent),  deontologists replies "you should do what ever you have a moral duty to do" (i.e., emphasizing properties of the action).  In a moment I'll explain how we figure out what our duties are but for now, know that Kantian ethics has to do with moral duty.   This why it is often referred to as deontology (Latin deon means "which is binding" or "duty").  

Ok, so the obvious question is "what's my duty?".  The short answer is that for any given situation you should figure out what principle (maxim) you are acting on and decide if you would want everyone to act on that principle.  As Kant says:

act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

So, in plain English, what does this mean?  It's like this y'all.  Suppose you want to know if you should keep a promise.  Last week you borrowed $50.00 from a friend and you promised to pay it back this week.  Well, your favorite DJ is in town this week and tickets are $50.00.  Not only that but you're going to need a new outfit.  Who the hell wears the same outfit two weeks in a row, right?  Am I right? And of course you're going to need money for X.  The music is never as good when you're sober.  

Anyway, enough about my your weekend.  What should you do about the promise you made?  Lets see what happens when we apply Kant's rule (referred to as the categorical imperative or CI).  First, figure out what maxim (i.e., principle) you're acting on.  Maybe something like "if your want to borrow money but know you won't be able to pay it back, promise that you will anyway."  If it became a universal law that everyone who made such a promise in similar circumstance broke it, then promises wouldn't be possible.   Whenever you promised a friend that you'd pay them back, they'd know that nobody in your situation ever keeps promises, and so they'd have no reason to believe you.  By universalizing your behavior you'd eliminate the very possibility of there being promises.  In short, by universalizing your behavor a sort of logical contradiction is caused.  

Main Points
1.  The moral quality of an action is solely determined by the intentions behind it, not by its consequences.  Consequences, shmonsiquences...what I the nature of your intent?
Issue:  Is this true?  Can you think of counter-examples? 

2.  The appropriate moral action for any situation can be known by any rational agent; that is to say, reason gives us access to moral truth.  
Issue:  What is the necessary assumption about the relationship between reason and morality?  Is it true?  Can you think of counter-examples? 

3.  The only thing in the whole world that is good without qualification is a good will.  
     (a)  For example, the virtues such as courage, power, wealth, and honor may be good but they can all serve evil ends if the agent doesn't have a good will.  A good will, on the other hand, is always good in itself, not because of any consequences that may follow from it. 
     (b)  A well-intentioned action way end up not having the intended consequence, but this doesn't negate the fact that the will was morally good.  For example, I might give money to a homeless person with the intent of helping them.  However, they take the money, buy drugs and OD.  Assuming there was no way for me to reasonable anticipate the outcome, my act was still good because it was well-intentioned.  The unfortunate consequences are outside my control and so that they turned out bad does nothing to diminish the moral goodness of my act.  It's not that consequences don't matter at all, however, they don't matter when we evaluate the moral worth of an act.  For this, we only consider the intent of the act. 
Issue:  Is the only intrinsically good thing a good will?  Can you think of counter-examples?  Is it true that we should take into account the consequences of an action in evaluating its moral worth? 

4.  The only appropriate motivation for a moral act is duty.  
     (a)  For example, suppose you want to impress someone you have a crush on.  You're walking down the street with this person and you see an old lady who needs help crossing the street.  Even though it's out of your way, you help the old lady.  However, the real reason you help her, (i.e., your intent) is not because you feel a sense of duty to help those who require help but because you want to impress your friend and show what a swell guy/gal you are.  For Kant, your act is not moral even though it had a good consequence.  
     (b)  The example that Kant gives is of a shopkeeper who doesn't overcharge his customers.  However, he doesn't overcharge because he acknowledges a duty to only charge what is fair and to not deceive people, rather he doesn't overcharge because he knows, in the long run, it will hurt his business as people find out.  This is acting out of prudence rather than duty.  So, for Kant, the shopkeepers actions have no moral worth.  It is merely a happy coincidence that duty and enlightened self-interest align. 
     (c)  Some people are naturally disposed to helping others out of compassion.  But we cannot call actions moral that arise out of someone's inherent disposition.  It's just dumb luck that their particular inclinations line up with duty.  They did not exercise their will in choosing to do the right thing.  Morality demands exercising the will to act according to duty.  Their inclinations could have been otherwise.  However, someone who doesn't feel compassion for others, yet acts out of duty to help them, is acting morally.   
     (d)  Recall in (2), that moral action is accessible to any rational agent.  So, if moral action depended on having the good fortune of being born or having the right upbringing to act morally, then moral action wouldn't be possible for everyone.  Contrast this with Aristotle who said pretty much the opposite--people learn to be virtuous by establishing the right habits.  But if you don't have the right dispositions or upbringing to establish those habits as a child/youth then as an adult won't have the ability to be virtuous/moral.  It's too late to form the right habits. 
Issue:  Does an action that arises from compassion devoid of moral worth because it wasn't arrived at rationally?

5.  You can know whether an action is moral by identifying and evaluating the underlying principle (i.e., "maxim") according to which it was done.  Two people can act in exactly the same way in the same situation, but only one will be acting morally.  To distinguish the two, we need to look at the maxim according to which each acted.
     (a)  For example, your girlfriend/boyfriend asks you "where were you last night?".  You tell the truth that you were poppin' bottles in VIP at Hakkasan with your ex.   Now, we need to ask what maxim you were acting on when you decided to tell the truth.  Suppose you accidentally posted a time-stamped instagram on facebook right around the time that you texted you bf/gf that your were at home working on your philosophy paper.   You told the truth because you were acting on the maxim "always tell the truth except if you think you can get away with it."  However, suppose in a parallel universe, your Kantian twin tells the truth because he/she is acting on the maxim "always tell the truth *period*."
Which one is acting morally?  According to Kant, it would be your twin.  But why?...(see: (6))

6.  The Categorical Imperative (CI) and how to distinguish between moral and non-moral maxims.  As you might have guessed, the way to figure out which maxim is the moral one (i.e., duty), you run it through the Categorical Imperative-o-Matic.  Lets look at the example in 5 (a) to figure out which of the two maxims is moral.  Remember, figuring it out isn't a matter considering particular consequences, but of what is rational.  Basically what you need to do of each maxim is to ask whether we could wish it to be a universal law.  That is, could we wish that every person past, present, and future, would act according to that maxim.        
     (a)  Lets look at the first maxim:  "Always tell the truth unless you can get away with it."  Now, what would happen if we universalized this maxim?  This would mean that anytime someone was in a situation where they thought they could get away with a lie, they'd tell a lie.  But if everyone did this, then lying in such a situation would be logically impossible:  if it is a universal law that people do this then anytime we ask someone to tell the truth in a situation where they could get away with a lie, we already know that they will lie!  Because we already know that in this situation people will lie (because it's a universal law), then the lie doesn't work.  Lying requires that people think you will tell the truth!          
     (b)  1st criteria for identifying whether a maxim can be universalized:  Because universalizing this maxim results in a logical contradiction/negates itself, reason tells us it is not part of the moral law and we should not do it.  In short, any maxim that results, through universalization in a contradiction/self-negation is evidence for the us rejecting that maxim as moral.  Maxims that are the opposite of the ones that lead to contradiction are called perfect duties.  E.g., lying leads to contradiction, therefore you have a moral duty to act on the maxim "always tell the truth."
     (c)  Lets consider the second maxim: "Always tell the truth."  If I universalize this law, that is, suppose that every person, past, present, and future always tells the truth then no contradiction ever results.  For this reason this second maxim is a moral law, and we are duty-bound to abide by it.
     (d)  Now, what about a situation where you have mucho dinero and you see a homeless person asks for some help.  You decide not to help them.  Lets figure out what your maxim of action is and run it through the categorical imperative to see if your action is moral.  Maxim:  "don't help people even if you can."  Well, if I make this a natural law, no obvious contradiction emerges.  So is it morally permissible not to help people?  Kant says it's not just logical contradictions that tell us if a maxim is moral, it's if we could "will that it become a universal/natural law."  So consider that your current good fortune is a contingent matter. It could easily be otherwise and you might be in a position requiring compassion and assistance.  If this were the case, would you wish that is were a universal law that nobody helps those in need?  You couldn't rationally wish this.  And since we need to consider universalization not from our contingent circumstances but from all possible circumstances we might be in, we could not rationally will that the maxim "don't help people in need even though you can" be universal.
     (e)  Second criteria for deciding if we should act on a maxim : If we eliminate the contingent facts about our situation, could be rationally will our maxim into universal law?  Moral maxims discovered through this method are called imperfect duties.

7.  Categorical Imperative Vs Hypothetical Imperatives.  
     (a)  Lets start with hypothetical imperatives.  These are conditional statements of the form "if you want X then do Y."  They usually have to do with goals or desires.  So, if I want to be wealthy, I should become a philosophy rock star.   If I want to be famous, I should get a reality TV show.  If I want to be wealthy and famous, I should be a philosophy rock star with a reality TV show (watch out Kardashians!).  What all hypothetical imperatives have in common is that they are contingent.  They are contingent on some end or goal (it could be moral or not).  If the goal or end changes, then what I should do also changes.
     (b)  Categorical Imperatives are, well, categorical.  Categorical means that it is absolute.  It does not change in relation to my goals or circumstances.  An imperative is a command.  So, a (the) categorical imperative is an absolute command that applies to all people across all circumstances.   In terms of application, whenever we find ourselves in a moral situation, whatever maxim the categorical imperative spits out is what anyone in that situation or relevantly similar situations is obligated to do; they have an moral duty to do it (or refrain from doing it).  There cannot be special exceptions.
     (c)  Kant's classic example:  Recall the example of the $50.00 your friend lent you and you promised to pay back.  You consider acting on the maxim "keep your promises unless it's going to inconvenience me."  Now we have to run this through the CI and see if we can universalize it without giving rise to a contradiction/self-negation.  Ask, could I will it that it were a universal law that everyone breaks their promises when it's inconvenient for them.  Well, if this did become a universal law, then the practice of promises would be undermined.  Consider how much stock you'd put in someone's promise to pay you back the next time you lent them money.  The promise would be essentially meaningless because we'd know ahead of time (because it is a universal law) that people will break their promises if keeping them causes personal inconvenience.  The conclusion is that since the very practice of promise-keeping would be negated by this universalization, the maxim is not part of the moral law, and therefore, we should not act in accordance with it. 

8.  The second formulation of CI:  Kant give a second formulation of the CI, which, if you run maxims through it, should yield that same outcome as the first version:  Always act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.
     (a)  What does this mean and how does it fit with Kant's ethics?  For Kant rationality and autonomy are closely tied.  Moral action is only possible if people have freedom of will; that is, if you automatically, without exercising any volition, always acted according to duty you could not act morally.   Moral behavior requires the exercise of choice--i.e., choosing to act according to duty. Because freedom of will is the source of moral behavior, interfering with it would prevent an agent's ability to act morally.  Since the first formulation would prohibit us from preventing people from acting morally, it follows that infringing on people freedom is is morally prohibited.  
     (b)  We cannot interfere with rational agents (i.e., treat them as means to some end that isn't their own) because it would prevent them from exercising their own will freely.  For this reason we cannot treat people merely as means, but must treat them as ends in themselves.
     (c)  The qualification "merely" is important.  Sometimes, my action might treat someone as a means to furthering my own ends, but this is OK so long as I do it in such a way that also treats the other as an end in themselves (autonomous agent).   That is, I must seek consent (so they can freely choose to help me further my end) and/or my action has to also further a goal of the other agent.

10.  Kant vs Aristotle:  
(a)  For Kant emotions play no relevant role in morality.  Aristotle, on the other hand, thinks that part of cultivating virtue (moral behavior) is learning to feel the appropriate emotions for a given circumstance.  There is an appropriate amount of shame, compassion, anger, sadness, etc...for any given situation.  Learning to feel these emotions in their appropriate amount is part of being moral.  It is a necessary component.  Aristotle also says the appropriate mean of emotion for a particular situation will vary from person to person based on their character and their position.  In the face of violence, we expect a soldier to feel more courage than we do for a baker.
(b)  Kant thinks moral prescriptions are universal, categorical, and exceptionless while Aristotle advocates flexibility. Aristotle says "for among statements about conduct those which are general apply more widely, but those which are particular are more true, since our conduct has to do with individual cases, and our statements must harmonize with the facts in these cases."
Issue:  Who's right? 

Common Criticism
1.  Reason is content-free and so the theory doesn't provide any content.  Suppose you want to know whether we should build a park or a shopping mall.  The park will have some benefits and provide disproportionate benefits to some people.  The same can be said of the mall.  Because Kant's ethics is value-free, it doesn't seem to offer us any way of making choices between competing values--and presumably, ethics is all about values!  

Reader Comment:
I think I would rephrase that 1st "common criticism" of CI being content free to say it probably isn't a comprehensive decisive test for every action you could possibly do. As your "ball park v shopping mall" suggests, there are quite a lot of situations where CI doesn't give an obvious sign that you have an obligation to commit or refrain from doing something. I think Phillipa Foot (Foot some year, some page) suggests that this limited applicability of CI means it's a side-constraint on our actions that might well be silent on a lot of our possible actions which are then decided on say, either our inclinations or on pragmatic, consequentialist grounds. On this reading, actions done on these latter grounds are not strictly speaking moral, but are just different, and not necessarily inferior(?), kind of acts.
From Jay Carlson, famous American philosopher

2.  Does the fact that a maxim yields a logical contradiction really mean it's immoral? Without much effort we can come up with ethical dilemma where both maxims of action don't yield contradictions.  How do we choose between the two if we can't appeal to consequences? 

3.  The CI seems to allow some acts that we consider to be immoral.  There no logical contradiction in willing that "always use the most efficient means of medical research, regardless of animal welfare."

4.  Regarding promise keeping, you could have the maxim "break your promises as long as you can get away with it and no one else knows that this is your policy".  This would not yield any logical contradiction/self-negation of promise keeping.  If everyone acted according to this maxim, this would not harm the practice of promise-keeping.

There's a possible reply which is that I would not will that people do the same to me; that is break promises whenever they can get away with it. 

5.  It seems odd to say that a compassionate disposition has no bearing on morality.  We often conceive as the capacity for compassion as very closely tied to morality.  For Kant a key issue with compassion is not that it's bad or anything but that it clouds the judgment of whether the agent's actions are moral are not (i.e., from duty vs disposition).

More Issues:  
What reason do we have to suppose that reason and morality necessarily align? 
If we say they don't, then by what method can we arrive a moral truth (objective or subjective)? 
How do we know how to ask the right questions?  At what level of particularity do we consider the situation? 
If consequences don't matter, how do we choose between two actions which are both moral? 

Can I Reason My Way To Moral Principles? Or Do I Need Some Other Kind of Knowledge?

Preamble  (Warning: I haven't proof read this entry yet)

    For those of you who haven't been following or have forgotten what I've written about Kant here are some technical terms that will allow you to understand what I've written here.  This is a section of my paper that I'm working on.  For some reason when I write an essay that I need to turn in, I get writer's block, but if I write on the same topic in my blog, it comes out more easily. So that said, any feedback is welcome, it'll probably help me improve my paper.

Back to the technical stuff.  I think all you need to know is that the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) is the law that says what ever action I'm thinking about doing, if I want to know if it's morally correct or not, I test whether it passes this test: "I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law".  

Should We and Can We Exclude All Empirical Facts from Our Moral Reasoning?

     Kant says we should exclude empirical considerations if we are to come up with a purely rational system of ethics.  The thought is we cannot learn anything about what is morally right by appealing to what people actually do.  There are 4 main problems with trying to come up with moral principles by referencing empirical facts:  First, convention doesn't tell us what is right, it only tells us what convention is.  Think of slavery, it was convention at one point in time but few people would argue now that is was right.  If moral philosophers had appealed to convention at that time they would have concluded that it was morally right.  Second, observing individual actions tells us nothing about the motives for the action--perhaps the motive for the action was self-interest; these are unknowable to the observer, and given humans' capacity for motivated reasoning, probably also unknowable to the agent.  Given these facts it would be impossible to abstract any general principle of action by observing behaviour.  There is a third kind of empirical moral reasoning Kant wants to exclude, this is moral judgment by appeal to examples.  Every example (think of a fable or religious story) that we hold up as "good" action has to be good because of some principle; so it follows, we would do better to discover the principles that allow us to call certain behaviours "good"--a behaviour can't be good just because we say it is.  The fourth type of empirical consideration we should ignore are facts particular to the conditions of humanity.  The reasoning is that because all moral principles will be rational principles the laws that are derived from reason must apply to all rational creatures.  Moral principles would lose their status as absolute if we said that certain ethical laws only apply to humans but not to some other rational being.

     That we should derive our moral principles from reason is prima facia appealing, but before we throw our lot in with Kant and divorce empirical facts from our moral reasoning there are two issues we should explore.  The first is whether--with the possible of exception of social norms--it is even possible to eliminate empirical content; and second, if it is desirable. 

     Is it possible to have an ethical system that excludes empirical considerations?  To answer this question there are two species of empirical fact I think we should explore: internal and external.  By internal I mean facts about human psychology, and by external I mean facts about the world.  Although Kant makes not direct reference to human psychology I think he considered it a part of the "contingent conditions of humanity" (p. 408).  We also might be able to infer that there is something particular to humans, in respect to their capacity to reason because in several places Kant refers to "human reason" in the context of it being something different than that of a purely rational being (p. 404, 408).  

     If we accept that there are psychological traits that are particular to humans and these traits distinguish us from "purely rational beings" it seems that we would do well to discover how these  psychological traits influence our reasoning.  Consider the analogy of a computer.  If we want a write an algorithm for a computer we need to know something about its operating system.  We need to know what kinds of operations a certain operating system does well and does poorly; if we don't take these things into account and assume that whatever the computer spits out is correct, we might have some problems.  It seems that the same goes for humans.  We have a law--the FUL--which we want the rational part of the mind to apply to maxims of action.  But to assume that whatever the rational mind spits out is correct is to overlook how things can go wrong.  Psychology has discovered many ways which we can corrupt our reasoning process: confirmation bias, wishful thinking, confusing cause for effect, motivated reasoning, and so on.  If we fail to take into account how our reasoning can go awry, we are likely to come up with incorrect answers and have no way of knowing they are so.  In a way there's a sort of chicken and egg problem here; we can't have much confidence in our reasoning unless we understand how it can go wrong but we require reasoning to discover how our reasoning can go wrong.  let me explain...

     The scientific method is a good example of how our psychological shortcomings are taken into account so we have a better chance of reasoning to the correct conclusion.  The use of double-blind, placebo controlled, replicated studies helps to control for our cognitive biases.  The more we know about human biases, the better we can control for them in our reasoning.  In science, we learned about our cognitive biases in conjunction with doing scientific research; the approach was not binary.  I think the same holistic approach will yield comparable benefits in moral reasoning.  The more we become aware of our cognitive biases and blind spots, the more effectively we can correct for it in our reasoning.  So, given our human proclivity for motivated reasoning, amongst other cognitive shortcomings which Kant repeatedly points out, it does not seem possible that we could have much faith in the correctness of our reasoning without at least a minimal understanding of these phenomena.  On this view, an ethics devoid of all empirical considerations might work in purely rational beings without any of our disadvantages, but as humans we require some empirical knowledge of our psychology before we can put any stock in our "rational" conclusions.

External Empirical Facts (I.e., Facts about the World)

     Kant wants to deny that empirical conditions can substantially influence the outcome of applying FUL—its prescriptions will hold in all contingencies. But it seems that there may be some cases where facts about the external world influence the acceptance of rejection of a maxim by the FUL.

      Suppose there is a plant called the Aleeval plant which for whatever reason cannot be grown commercially, is necessary for the maintaining our global climate in equilibrium, and whose roots are the most delicious food in the world. When human population levels were such that even a steady diet of the root for every man woman and child would have no measurable impact on the plant's population, the decision of whether to eat the Aleeval root did not enter the moral real. Put otherwise, if I asked “should I eat Aleeval root to my heart's content?” the action would have been universalizable. But the empirical facts about the world have changed, and now if everyone eats the root, all life on our planet will die; if I ask “should I eat Aleeval root to my heart's content?” the FUL will reveal the action is not universalizable. Eating the Aleeval root has entered the moral realm. So it seems, contrary to what Kant says, the FUL will not always yield objective answers, some will be contingent upon empirical facts about the world.

     There is a reply open to Kant, which is we are applying the wrong maxim to the FUL. As it is now our test maxim is “is it permissible to eat unlimited Aleeval root?”, and given this maxim, changes in the world will yield different outcomes. However, perhaps the correct maxim is “should I consume resources at unsustainable rates (i.e., beyond replacement rates)?” If this is our maxim then empirical facts can vary and this will determine whether the maxim comes into effect, as with any ethical situation, but its standing as a universal moral principle will remain constant. In the context of our example this means if I apply the more general maxim then human and the Aleeval population can perpetually rise and fall and my actions , so long as I follow the general maxim, will always be appropriate. This reply works well but Kant says that the FUL will output the correct answer to any subjective maxim. So, strictly speaking, the generalization reply is not open to him. 

OK, that's enough for now.  I'll talk about if we should exclude empirical facts from our moral reasoning later...gotta submit my rough draft which was due 4.5 hours ago....

    

 

Do I Have to Do What I Know Is Right? (Part 2)

Preamble

     Lets do a quick and dirty summary of where we are so far in Kant's argument regarding obligations to act morally when we know what the correct moral action is.  When we left off Kant had made the case that some things are ends in themselves; in ordinary language we say that some things have intrinsic value.  An example might be "love".   We don't seek love as a means to some other end, but we seek love because it has a value in itself.  In Kant-speak, it is an end in itself.  Another thing that is an end in itself is a human.  Because a human has intrinsic value they are an end in themselves and thus ought not to be treated as a means to another's end.  In other words, every person has their own private ends and it is morally wrong for another to interfere with their ends by using them as a means to some end that is not their own.  If we want to oversimplify we can simply say, it is wrong to use people as a means to your ends.

Argument from Badassery?

     But why should we accept that I cannot use other people as means to my ends?  What if I'm just that much more of a badass?  Or maybe I'm really sneaky and am good at tricking people into doing my bidding (at an auction)?  Here comes the tricky part! Who needs the rational part! (Kant) I doooooooooooooo!  The reason why we ought to respect others as ends in themselves is because this is exactly what every rational person would want for themselves.  Suppose I decide that since I'm such a badass that I'm going to treat all the gehly men as means to my end of being king of the wooooooooooooooooorld!  If I am acting rationally then I must admit that my actions should be a law: whoever is the baddest badass can treat others as means.  The problem is if another badass comes along who is an even bigger badass than me..I now become a means to his ends.  This makes me saaaaad.  "But I don't want to pursue your means", I might lament, "I want to pursue mine!" 

Argument from Mutually Assured Freedom

     So you see, a rational creature can only guarantee his/her long-term ability to freely pursue their own ends if they advocate that others have the freedom (USA! USA! USA!) to pursue their own.  In fact, I might even want to ensure that the freedom (USA! USA! USA!) of others is protected to ensure my own is also protected.  Because every rational creature will want to ensure their ability to be treated as ends in themselves, it becomes a universal maxim, on practical grounds, that persons should be treated as ends in themselves and never as means to an end.  It is interesting that we not only derive our freedom from this idea but it is also the "supreme limiting condition of every [person's] freedom of action".  Kant formulates the law this way:

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.

2nd Formulation of the CI

     Its important to note that this law of ends, when we apply it to determining a moral action (should) yield exactly the same law as the Categorical Imperative (Principle of Universalization); thus this "ends" law is referred to as "the second formulation of the Categorical Imperative".   Lets apply it to the now familiar money lending situation and see what results.

    Recall that for this situation you are in need of a loan and the only way you know you can secure the loan is to promise that you'll pay it back in x amount of time.  The thing is you know that you'll never be able to pay the loan back.  If we employ the 2nd formulation of CI, is it moral for you to make a "lying promise"?  Your ends are to obtain the money for whatever reason.  But the lender has ends too and he is an end in himself (he's got his own plans/hopes/dreams).  If you make a lying promise you are using him as a means to your ends which the lender does not share.  The man whom you are using for your own means certainly would not agree to lending you money if he had full information of your intentions.  Again, you are using him as a means to an end which he does not share and to which he does not consent.  So in this simple example we see that the second formulation of the CI produces the same conclusions that we'd find if we'd used the 1st formulation.

Yay!

Kant, Libertarians, and The Bible, Oh, My!

KANT...Kant...kant...

     There are several philosophers that are notoriously difficult to interpret--one of the guys that falls squarely in that category is Immauel Kant.  His name strikes fear into philosophy students around the woooooorld.   Being the glutton for punishment that I am I decided to take the Kant seminar that is being offered at U of H.  Truth be told, I don't think anyone can call themselves a philosopher without having engaged in a few wrestling matches with Kant...so lets make wrestle!  

     Kant is best known for his ground breaking work in ethics and epistemology.  Within the realm of epistemology his "Critique of Pure Reason" attempted to reconcile rationalism with empiricism.  In "The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals" he most famously revealed the "categorical imperative" (more on that later).  Anyhow, the seminar I'm taking is focused on Kantian ethics and so I'm going to try to break it down to y'all in an attempt to understand it myself...

Overview of Ethics

     Ethics is essentially the study of the rules or principles (or both) by which we should govern our actions.  We can roughly divide these rules or principles into those concerning actions that only affect myself and actions that will affect others.  Another way to state it would be to ask, what are my responsibilities/duties to myself? and (as a member of a group/community/city/country) what are my responsibilities/duties to others?  Of course if you are a Libertarian the answer to the second question is simple--"none".

     Continuing with our categorization we generally contrast Kant's ethics with what is called consequentialist ethics.  Not surprisingly, consequentialist ethics is the position that the moral goodness of an action is determined by its...consequences.  The most famous brand of consequentialist ethics is Utililitarianism, which is the idea that given a choice between different courses of action we should choose the one that leads to the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people.   Sounds reasonable enough, right? Kant disagrees.  He argues that the moral good of an action is not measured by its consequences but by the intention of the actor. 

     Lets pause for a second and look at some examples to see these principles at work.  It's pretty simple to construct examples that support both cases so lets consider some examples where the answer is not so clear.  Here's an example that questions utilitarianism:  suppose you're really angry at your friend and while he's sleeping you fill a pillowcase full of bars of soap then beat the crap out of him (bad intention).  At the hospital he meets the love of his life with whom he collaborates in a research project and cures cancer.  If you hadn't beat the crap out of your friend none of these good things would have ever happened.  Can we still say that just because the consequences of your action your action was morally good?  Most people would have a problem agreeing with this position; most would say that the ill intent is a relevant factor in evaluating the morality of the action. 

     Lets look at a counter example of Kant's ethics:  Suppose you, by pure luck, happen to be part of the one. true. religion (add reverb).  In order to save the rest of the world from eternal damnation you travel to the far corners of the earth (the earth is a 6000-year-old square).  Unbeknownst to you, you carry an airborn infectious disease to which these other people have no immunity...and they all die horrible, painful deaths (they die the death).  Sadly, they died the death before you could learn their language well enough to teach them the one true religion (you only managed to learn their word for rabbit: gavagai and you're not even sure if that's what it means).  Can we say your action was good even though you just wiped out entire peoples?  Should we not factor in the consequences of your actions? To your credit your good intentions did help pave a certain road...(Full disclosure: I stole that line from Mark Crislip).

     I know that there are probably better examples out there to illustrate the point, but hopefully I've made it apparent that if you dogmatically cling to one position or the other you will quickly find yourself in a difficult position.

So...What did Kant Say and Why? And What this Categorical Imperative All About?

The Groundwork of a Metaphysic of Morals Ch. 1

Arg. 1:  Argument for the Unconditionality of a Good Will.   

      Kant begins with the reasonable assertion that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good intention.  (Can you have a bad good intention? Me thinks not).  There can be other goods like some consequences but consequences are conditional, that is to say depending upon circumstances, the same consequence can be good or bad.  A good intention can never be bad even if something goes awry.  Even if, despite someone's good intentions, we all go to hell in a handbasket, we can still refer back to the intention and say, "but he meant well!"  The essential point is that the goodness of an intention is preserved regardless of how things play out.

Arg. 2:  The Function of Reason in Action

     1a.  Every organ has a function.  1b.  Every organ is well suited to its function 2.  The function of the mind (Reason) is to govern action.  3.  A well adapted mind (Reason) functions to create a will that is good in itself.  

     Assessment: An obvious objection to this is that we could argue the mind is best adapted for survival not for moral good.  Kant might reply that this is the role of instinct.  What separates us from animals in the faculty of Reason (he capitalizes it) and it should be employed to elevate our behaviour over that base animals otherwise, what's the point of possessing it?

Arg 3:  A Morally Praiseworthy Act is on Done out of Duty

     Basically we can act out of 3 basic impulses, self interest, inclination, and duty.  An act out of self interest isn't morally praiseworthy...well, this one's obvious--again, unless you're a Libertarian.  Acts that fall under this category include "doing the right thing" because of threat of punishment, it will advance your interest in some way, or because it'll make you look good.  The second category is "inclination".  Acts that fall under this category include acts out of sympathy or generosity.  You are acting because you have an emotional inclination toward an action.  It requires little effort and to act in such a way is part of your character.  This does not imply your action is not praiseworthy, it simply isn't morallymorally praiseworthy because it is above self interest and inclination.  It is done simply because it is the morally correct thing to do--regardless of consequences to you or how you feel about it.  To rephrase the issue, we should not act in order to achieve some consequence but we should act because it is simply the right thing to do. praiseworthy.  Finally, an act out of duty is considered

     It think there's something to what Kant is saying here, especially if we assume that the measure of morality is contained in the intention of an act.  Of course if we consider consequences it gets more complicated as my earlier examples suggested.  There is also the matter of agreeing on what one's duties are.  Consider fundamentalist Christians.  They think it's their duty to "save" homosexicles.  Kant could argue that some do it to derive a result, thus it is not duty.  But I think a case could be make that at least some just think it's the right thing to do, that is to say, their duty.  

     Kant's also going to have some problems if we don't agree on how we weigh obligations to ourselves versus obligations to others (not to mention competing mutually exclusive obligations to others).  If "duty" compels me to act in a way that will ruin my life the hypothetical action my not be advisable.  What if a duty is to "always save a drowning child".  As luck would have it I see a child drowning in the river.  I realize that I can save the child but I will be washed over a waterfall and dashed upon the laser-firing rocks below.  I also know I'll survive but will be a paraplegic after the fall.  Does my duty to myself outweigh the duty to the drowning child?  How about if I knew that I'd only be paralyzed from the waist down?  And is it even moral to knowingly mess up our own lives even if it's in an attempt to act out of duty? Kant doesn't say that we should never consider our own happiness, only that our obligation to duty should take precedence.  In fact, he says, we have an indirect moral duty to seek our own happiness.

     In defense of Kant, his project in "Groundwork" isn't to provide a comprehensive guide to applied ethics, rather to provide a...groundwork to how we should judge/measure the morality of an act. 

  

Arg. 3:  The Categorical Imperative, and Why Kant is Jesus

     The Categorical Imperative is the first formulation of the ethical law for which Kant is famous. This is basically the negative formulation of "the golden rule".  Here it is.  Brace yourself.  "I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law".  The basic idea is that whenever you are faced with an ethical dilemma you should ask yourself the following, "would I want it to be a universal rule that everyone who encounters my similar circumstances should act the same?"  

     Here's an example:  Suppose you're late for an appointment and if you don't call with some excuse you'll have to wait another week to reschedule...so you make up a little white lie and you get slotted in when you arrive.  Here's the problem, you wrote on facebook that whatever you do should be a universal maxim.  Word gets out that you have decreed this behaviour ok, and you get over 10 000 "likes" and many encouraging comments.  But now every customer of yours (who are on your facebook page) is coming late to appointments and telling white lies to not get rescheduled.  And your brother's customers are doing it to him.  Apoo's co-worker at Qwiki mart is doing the same.  Now that everyone knows it's ok to tell a white lie if you're late, everyone's doing it and it's reeking havoc on everyone's schedule.

     Anyway, I kind of like the categorical imperative at a guiding principle.  There can be some problems with it if the rule gets too specific, for example, "Nobody should rob banks unless they were born in Scotland, raised in Vancouver, live in Houston, and study philosophy." 

A Couple of Interesting Facts About the Golden Rule.

      Ok, lets just get this part out of the way first:  JESUS DID NOT INVENT IT!!!  Ok, moving on.  It is hypothesized that the first person to call it "The Golden Rule" (positive formulation) was Confucius who also wrote what he called "The Silver Rule"(negative formulation).  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, before SBJ said it, it was in the Torah in Leviticus 19:18 "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk.  Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD." (That God! He can't just leave it at "Love your neighbour...." you gotta throw in the "I am your LORD"...Is someone feeling neglected?)  

     So obviously, the Golden Rule originated in the Hebrew bible because nobody else in that area came up with that idea...oh wait...in Egypt, in the story of "The Eloquent Peasant" from 2040 BCE-1650 BCE there's this, ""Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you."  But the Jews were never in Egypt...oh..wait.  Ok, but not back then....oh...wait...From a papyrus found in Egypt dated 664 BCE- 323 BCE, "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."  Ancient Greece anyone?  "Do not to your neighbor what you would take ill from him." Pittacus 640 BCE- 568 BCE.  As for Buddhism, the list is too long.

     Anyway, seems like I'm straying off topic.  Oh my lord! It's 4 in the AM! No wonder my mind is wandering...good night!