Do You Trust People Who Watch Jersey Shore? Kant and the Principle of Autonomy

The Principle of Autonomy

     One of my favorite aspects of Kant's moral philosophy is the principle of autonomy; however, as with any prima facia appealing idea there are usually problems lurking below the shiny surface.  I think I wrote about the principle of autonomy (PA) in an earlier post but for my own good I'm going to do a quick overview before I look at what I think might be problems.

    

Overview

     The principle of autonomy is the idea we are both the subject and legislator of the moral law.  To hold this lofty position anytime we act in a moral context, to determine how we should act we must do two things: (1) ax ourselves, "would I want the principle upon which I am acting to be a universal law of action?", that is to say, would it be a good thing if er'body did what I am about to do; and (2) we must treat er'body as an autonomous entity with its own ends (goals) which have equal value to our own.  Of course there are some constraints on what ends people can pursue (they are controlled by (1)) but the point is I can't treat people as means to my own ends, unless I give them full information about my ends and they consent to the terms and conditions of helping me achieve my end.

     So what does this all have to do with autonomy?  Well, according to Kant if people consider their actions in accordance with (1) and (2) they will be acting out of reason and it is only when you act out of reason that you are free.  A major assumption that Kant makes is that if we all ax ourselves (1) and (2) before we act er'body will always get the same answer.  Because we all get the same answer it means that we have discovered a moral maxim to which er'body will agree to submit and so you too must submit to it.  We are all both legislators and subjects of the laws that arise out of the application of reason to (1) and (2). 

     Example:  Suppose I want to borrow money but I know I won't be able to pay it back.  To determine if I should do this I first apply (1).  Hmm...would it be a happy world if er'body did what I was going to do?  Well, no.  First of all the guy you borrowed the $ from won't be jiggy with it and will prolly not lend any cheese to the next guy.  After enough people stop paying back loans, people will stop lending $...sound familiar?  So, (1) tells us we shouldn't do it because the financial system will collapse if do and nobody elx will be able to borrow money after us...including us.  So, not that it's really necessary at this point, but we also run our action though (2).  This time we discover that we can't do it because we are treating the lender as a means to an end that he doesn't share if he had full information.  I am tricking him into achieving my ends by lying about my intent to repay and I am frustrating his own ends of trying to make a living by lending $.  So, running our action through both (1) and (2) give us the same answer but for different reasons.  

     So what about the part where we are both subject and legislator?  Well, I'm the legislator in that I wrote the law that I ought not to trick the lender into lending me $.  It came from me! me! me! and I'm the subject because I have to follow whatever verdict gets spit out of the (1) and (2) formulations. 

Concerns with The PA

     Ironically, my main concern with the PA is the same thing that I like about it; that morality is something that can be grasped through internal rational reflection rather than something that is imposed on us as a set of alien rules.  So, what's not to like about empowering every person to reflect on their moral decisions?

     There are several huge assumptions that Kant is making in his system: (A) that everybody has an equal capacity to reason; (B) that reason is universal--that is, it functions the same in everyone's pointy head; (C) that (1) and (2) are the correct principles upon which to apply our reason and by extension found morality; (D) that (1) and (2) will never lead to mutually exclusive results; (E) that (1) and (2) can always give us a clear answer.  There are probably more problems, but I'll stop there and, because I'm feeling so gracious (and I don't feel like writing a 20 page entry) I'm going to grant Kant (C), (D), and (E).

     Let's get out our lasers, let set our tasers and point them at Kant's idea that the faculty of reason is universal.  You know what, I'm feeling even more generous than I thought.  I'm even going to grant him that er'body has the potential to reason equally and that it functions the same for er'body.  I think there still is a problem.  

     Even if I grant Kant all these assumptions, I'm still not convinced we'll all derive the same moral maxims because the ability to reason requires development.  As it is with any other capacity, even as basic as walking and drinking out of a cup,--or perhaps a better analogy--language, just because we have a capacity for something does not mean that er'body develops it or that they develop it equally or at equal rates.  I see no reason why this shouldn't also apply to the capacity to reason: anybody who has taught math or logic can attest to this.

    Here's the prolum: call me an elitist, but I just don't trust a lot of people's reason to be up to the task of determining right and wrong for themselves, much less as the "head of the Kingdom of Ends".  Now of course I could do it; but the Jersey Shore-watching masses...heck no! (I kid! I kid!...mmm....maybe not...)  And this illuminates another related problem; er'body thinks they're an expert on moral matters.       

     Think about it.  How often do you meet someone who says, "Oh! I have no idea what's wrong or right, I just ask my friends who study philosophy what to do because they know way more about this sort of stuff than I do".  No.  You never hear that.  Er'body thinks they're a world expert and contrary to what Kant would expect, there are differences of opinions, and most people are more than happy to let you know what those opinions are (ahem, I'm allowed to do it but they aren't).  Kant could reply, well they're getting different answers because they aren't applying (1) and (2), and I suppose he'd be right.  But I'm still not convinced that er'body would come up with the same answers if they did apply (1) and (2) because just as people learn and exercise reason at different rates and abilities in learning maph, I suspect the same is true in learning moral reasoning.

     I guess Kant could also give a complex reply that (1) and (2) commit us to a society in which people are provided with the means to develop their moral reasoning.  In a way he actually does...it can be interpreted as built into (1).  How does that work?  Well, (1) commits us to actions that we want to universalize and it seems rational that we would want to universalize the principle that "people should be provided with the means to develop their rational capacities" (i.e., free/subsidized public education). 

     I guess the moral of the story is garbage in garbage out.  If you start out with a group of people with under-developed reasoning abilities you get crappy legislation but if you start out with philosophers you get nothin' but gold!

     Anyhow, that's enough writing for one night.  I actually did this 'cuz I'm trying to develop a term paper topic and wanted to see if this would be fruitful.  I'm not sure it was sufficiently so.  I have a few more ideas which I'll try tomorrow.

G'nite y'all!
    
    

I Like Money, Wanna Hang Out? Kantian Ethics: Acting From Reason vs For Reasons

Preamble I loves me my preambles...

     First a few autobiographical notes: today I wrote my first midterm in 11 years.  I don't recall being so stressed about exams in undergrad but for some reason I was really worried about this one; maybe it's just a novelty effect and after a few more exams my reaction will settle down--I hope it will anyway.  I think part of my nervousness came from the fact that the way the exam was set up was a little unfair--that's my opinion anyway.

     Friday afternoon we were given the ELEVEN possible essay questions of which we were told the professor would pick 3.  It was explicit that it wasn't going to be a situation where he give 6 options and you chose 3 from the six--nope--there would just be three on the exam and those are the ones you are expected to answer.  I know undergrad was over a decade ago for me but I don't remember any professor doing anything like that especially with just the weekend to study. 

     Basically we had 3 days to learn enough content to write 11 essays from memory.  I think that's a bit excessive.  Anyhow, I stayed up Monday studying until 4:30am, took a nap 'til 8 am, got up, drank lots o' coffee and returned to studying.  When I got to class at 11:30am everyone looked like they were prisoners on the way to their execution.  A couple of people were saying that they expected to fail and would probably end up dropping the course. 

    The professor walks in and says, "I've decided to make things a little easier for you".  I've given you all eleven questions and I want you to pick either 2 about Descartes and 1 about Spinoza or vice versa".  Huge collective sigh of relief.  Anyhow, after my heart stopped pounding so hard from all the caffeine and adrenaline I took a few deep breaths and threw up Descartes and Spinoza all over the page.  In the end I did alright (I think).  Despite all the panic some good has come out of this...if anyone ever asks me about Scholastic, Cartesian or Spinozian metaphysics they'll get more information than they could ever want (and probably more than they did want).

Why Do We Study Kant?

      Ok, enough with the jibber-jabber lets ask an important question: Why bother studying Kant? Or any moral and ethical philosophy for that matter?  Doesn't it seem a little strange that people would commit so much time to studying something when all the true answers are right there in the bible?  The obvious question is, if philosophers are so curious about what is right and wrong and how to act, why they don't they just consult the bible where God has spelled everything out in black and white for everyone to read?  
     The answer is simple.  We do it just for fun.  We like to look at what some of the of the greatest human minds have dedicated their lifetimes to thinking about and point out the ways in which it does not measure up to the clear, unambiguous, logically consistent, intuitively correct divine teachings of sweet sweet baby Jesus and his fah-jah.  So, without further ado, lets entertain ourselves with Kants wacky ideas of morality arising out of our capacity to reason and freewill....

Still Trying to Figure out What We Can Know About Morality From the Concept of Freedom

Review

     We left off with Kant's hilarious notion that morality is somehow connected to our ability to chose our own course of action (rather than following the perfect 600 or so rules in the bible).  Remember that Kant wants to show that it is a priori true that morality arises out of the concept of a good will; that is to say, that the one concept is contained in the other just as the concept of "unmarried man" is contained in the concept of "bachelor".   In his last attempt he had to go outside of the concept of the will and appeal to the additional concept of positive freedom in order to derive the concept of morality; but Kant doesn't want to have to appeal to anything beyond the conceptual boundaries of the will for his proof.  As a further note, recall that for Kant morality is the (hilarious) idea that the motive upon which you act can be willed as a universal law.

Freedom Must Be Presupposed as a Property of the Will of All Rational Beings

      In the previous entry I made we learned that in order to get the concept of morality out of the concept of a good will we need to presuppose the concept of freedom.  We know that if we have freedom, then we can say we have morality; so in order to make the step from a good will to morality we will need to show that the concept of a good will entails the concept of freedom, which in turn entails morality.  In technical terms it looks like Kant is trying to construct what is called a hypothetical syllogism--i.e.,  if A then B, if B then C, so if A then C. 

     The other silly idea that Kant has is that morality is universal.  Why is morality universal?  First, it's because of Kant's assumption that the faculty of reason works the same universally (dubious...).  Second is that because morality only applies to beings that are rational--it wouldn't make much sense to apply morality to irrational beings like spiders and mice--and since morality is derived from freedom, we need to prove that freedom is a property of rational beings.  Also if morality isn't universal it is less meaningful.  
     In terms of proving that morality is universal we cannot prove it is such by appealing to particular examples; for example I can't prove the universality of morality by saying, "I'm a rational being, I know I have freewill, so morality applies to me, therefore morality applies to all rational beings".  In a particular instance, the fact that you are rational might be a wacky quality particular to you.  You can't prove a general law deductively (a priori) by generalizing from empirical facts; doing so would be inductive reasoning and its conclusions don't have the same logical force as do deductive arguments.  So again, to show that moral law is universal we need to show that freewill is a necessary  property of being a rational being.

     The first step in Kant's proof that rational creatures have the property of freedom starts with a naked assertion that so long a rational creature has the idea that he is free in his actions then (somehow) this means that he is actually free.  Lets take a step outside of philosophy for a second and go back to the real world.  For the average Joe, even the above average Joe, the fact that Kant should even have to prove that humans have freewill is just kind of loco; of course we're free! look I'm going to decide to type an '8'...and now a '+'....look at me exercising my freewill!  Woohoo!  I don't feel like there's anyone in a control tower making me type '8' and '+'...but there are many philosopher (and indeed some modern neuroscience) that argue our freedom is an illusion; we think we are free but actually there is measurable neurological activity in the body for a movement before we have "consciously" decided to make the movement.  All that aside, my point is that in the normal world, what Kant is asserting isn't very loco, but in the philosophy world it's odd that he just asserts it without backing it up with an argument.

     The next step is to say that every rational being (who by definition also has a will) can only act according to the idea that he can choose his course of action (amongst alternatives).  Again, this doesn't sound too loco but it is important.  What Kant is getting at is that when we (as rational agents) choose a course of action from amongst alternatives, the selection of the course of action comes from within us, not from some external cause.  If our action is directed by some external cause then our decision to act one way rather than another cannot be attributed to reason.  Ahh!  This is a critical move, because Kant wants to make two crucial distinctions here: action from reason (as a faculty) and action for reasons--i.e., actions from inclination--where inclination is not free action but action from reason is.

     When you act because of inclination--for instance, an action out of instinct, character predisposition, etc..--then you are no longer acting as a free agent.  Your actions arise out of something other than your will (which arises out of reason); that is, they aren't rational.  You are being caused to act by factors outside of your reason when you act out of fear, or anger, or addiction, or even selfish desires.  As a rational being in order to be free we have to act out of our own (rational) principles, and since all external reasons for action (i.e., I want ice cream, so I go get the ice cream) are, well...external to us, if we act on them we are not acting from reason rather for reasons.

    To summarize this idea, if I am to consider myself as having freedom when I act, the principles according to which I act must come from within me, that is from my will.  If I act on external reason or act out of inclination, that is, I direct my action toward some external goal, then the cause of my action does not come from within, i.e., from the will, so I am not in these cases acting freely.

     This distinction is a little bit tough to grasp so lets look at some examples.  But before I give my examples I'll just explain how I think about the distinction.  In the case of acting from external causes (for reasons) in these types of actions if you asked yourself "why did you do that?" the answer would be "I did x because I wanted x or wanted to achieve x".  In actions that arise from reason, if you ask yourself "why did you do that?" the answer would be something like "I did x because that's what one ought to do". 

      Simple examples: Case 1.  You see a 100.00 on the ground and no one around so you pick it up.  This was not a free action because if you ask "why did you pick it up?" the answer will be something like, "I picked up the money because I like money...wanna hang out?" So you acted because of something external to you.

     Simple Case 2: You see someone drop 100.00 on the ground and you pick it up and give it to them.  This was a free action (*as I will present it) because if you ask "why did you return the 100.00?" the answer will be "I returned the 100.00 because that's what one ought to do".  Notice there is no external end to which your action is directed; it is a restatement of a principle of action.
    Edit:  Ok, after sleeping on it I want to revise my first example.  I don't think Kant would think you are aren't free in that case because it's not a situation to which we apply moral principles.  I think the following set of examples better illustrate what Kant's trying to say (what I think he means, anyway)
     Case 3: You're in a hurry to get to work and see an old lady that's struggling to cross the street.  She reminds you of your own wonderful grandmother; because of this you feel both compassion and nostalgia.  You stop and help her cross the street.  If you ask yourself why you helped her, your answer is, "because she reminded me of my grandmother and I felt compassion for her".  Basically you acted out of a feeling of compassion.  For Kant this is an external reason so you are not acting from your (internal) will, and this not acting in a moral way; you are acting for a reason (because you feel compassion, have memories of your grandmother), not from reason.  To further illustrate why this is, lets look at case 4.
    Case 4:  Same situation...old lady....reminds you of your grandmother...late for work...etc...This time when you ask yourself why you helped her across the street the answer is "because you ought to assist the elderly".  In this case your action arose out of a principle that is in no way related to how you feel about the situation.  Here you acted from your internal will because you acted on a rational principle (which are internally generated), that is, you acted from reason, not for a reason.

     So it seems that Kant is saying that since humans are not purely rational (we also have emotional inclinations and irrational preferences) we can sometimes act from our will (internal) and sometime act for external reasons (both external to our to our rational will and external goals).  When we act from the will we are acting from reason, so we are acting as free agents;  when we act for reasons we are not acting as rational agents so we are not free agents.  For now, to conclude lets just say that Kant has shown that so long as we are acting from reason we can say we are free.  I'm not sure I agree with his conclusion but I'll get into that later.

I'll proof read this later my eyes are closing and my mind is pulp...

G'nite....

What Can We Know About Morality from the Concept of Freedom?

Is Morality Self-Evident?

Preamble

     Up until now we have just taken it on faith that Kant is right in that the supreme principle of morality is the Categorical Imperative (CI) in its various incarnations (i.e., formulation of universalization, of natural law, and of humanity as an end).  Now Kant begins his argument for why the CI is the only fundamental moral law.  For Kant it is not enough to give evidence for the CI, he wants to give a logical proof.  In philo-speak, Kant wants an a priori proof of the CI rather than a synthetic proof; that is to say he wants to prove the CI without any appeal to the experiential world; he wants to show that we can come to know the CI simply through rational/logical reflection of concepts.

     An obvious question is, why is Kant so hung up on avoiding appeal to experience?  The general answer is that if we appeal to external reasons to support moral thinking then if those reasons change, so will our moral laws.  For example, suppose after cooking you dinner your friend asks you how the meal was.  In fact, it was terrible but you know telling him this would break his precious heart, so you lie; that is, you lie for the reason that you don't want to hurt your friend's feelings.  

     A few weeks later the same friend announces they will be a contestant on a cooking show and would like your feedback on a dish they will enter in the competition.  He serves you the same dish they served you the previous week; this time you tell your friend that the dish isn't so good for the reason that you want to help them win the competition.  This also seems like a perfectly normal thing to do but the problem is we are left no clear guide to determining the "correct" moral action in situations where people ask for your opinion.  

     Every time our reasons to act change, so do our actions; and reasons are contingent upon our (often) ephemeral desires.  How can morality be so fickle and still have any worth and meaning?  And besides in both situations there are multiple, sometimes contradictory reasons according to which we could have acted.  Maybe in the first dinner I could have told him the truth based on the reason that I think my friend wants to improve his cooking and can't do so without honest criticism.  Of course one could reply that the rule according to which we are acting is "do whatever is going to produce the most happiness for the most people"; and this might be true, but this maxim comes with a boat load of its own problems and discussing them will take us far afield from the task at hand, so I leave it for now.  The essential point is that, for Kant, if we appeal to circumstantial reasons for choosing our behaviour, then what is moral is at the mercy of our circumstances. 

The Concept of Freedom as an Explanation for Autonomy of the Will

     Lets get a couple of definitions out of the way:  The first is 'will'; by will Kant means the ability to cause yourself to act (provided you are a rational being!); for example when you get up in the morning you are acting on your will to wake up.  Freedom is the property of the will that allows you to act independently of external causes.  If we were merely subject to external causes we'd be no different than a ball of tumble weed getting blown around.  Within philosophy the notion of free will is by no means a settled matter; but Kant assumes it nonetheless because it is required for morality.  For example, if we didn't have freewill (our actions were nothing but the total effects of external causes) how could be be culpable for our actions?  It is an entirely reasonable position that morality only makes sense if we have freewill; but the degree to which we have it, if at all, is still an open debate.  The essential point is that in our actions we are (to varying degrees) free from the influence of external causes--through our will and the fact that our will is freewill,.  The technical term for this type of freedom is negative freedom--that is, freedom from external causes.

     Kant is not satisfied with this feeble notion of freedom and argues for a more robust positive freedom as well.  Positive freedom is not just freedom from external causes but the ability to be the cause our own actions (i.e., act on our will).  But although our freedom (USA! USA! USA!) somehow grants us exemption status to external causes (i.e., natural laws which apply to objects) it does not mean our freedom is "lawless".  Along with causation (i.e., we can cause our own actions) comes the notion of laws according to which causation must conform.  For if our freedom of action were lawless our actions would be random, and that is to be no more free than to be subject to external causes; rather our freedom must be a force that conforms with "a special kind" of immutable laws.  

     I'm a little skeptical of this claim.  It seems pretty ad hoc; I mean, isn't it convenient that there are special kinds of immutable laws to which our will ought(?) to conform?  How does Kant know? Is he Jesus?  And doesn't it seem strange that, although we are (as far as we can tell) comprised of only matter, yet we are somehow exempt from the laws of nature (causal chains) when it comes to determining our own action?  These are some problems but are tangential to the issue so lets move on...

     So, given that the special causal power that rational beings have (freewill) conforms to some special kinds of laws Kant defines freedom of will as autonomy.  "What else can freedom of will be but autonomy--that is, the property which will has of being law to itself?" What he means here is that freedom is the ability to act on the laws that you make.  This idea can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around but it is a powerful one: every time you act, you act according to some principle; so every action is, in a sense, an instance of you writing a law.  

     For example, The other day I inadvertently dropped my phone.  A person who saw me drop it ran after me to give it to me.  In doing this action they wrote a law of the will which might be: "if someone inadvertently drops their phone, return it to them".  As I mentioned before, this is an idea I really like, and sometime I like to go through my day thinking (before I act) that what I do will become a law--try it! It's fun!

     Next Kant takes, as he will later admit, a logical jump; he goes from the plausibly defensible "what ever action I do becomes a law" to "I should only act in a way such that whatever I do will be a good universal law".   And the joy does not stop there; if we do make this step we can see that "a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same."  I think what he means is that a will that is free will always act in such a way that its actions make universalizable law and a (rational) will will always follow the "special laws" governing the will (which magically turn out to line up exactly with the CI--i.e., the universalizable laws).  It all sounds a bit too good to be true...

     Remember, the whole passage started with the intent of trying to extract, a priori, purely from concepts the principle of morality.  Kant says if we analyze the concept of freedom of the will (aka. autonomy) we can, without reference to the empirical matters, deduce the principle of morality (CI); that is to say, the notion of the CI in contained in the notion of freewill.  But not so fast.  First of all, this whole thing only works if we suppose freedom of the will.  And second, even if we suppose freewill and from freewill deduce the notion of morality, this does nothing to guarantee we can discover the content of morality--i.e., "a good will is one whose maxim can always have as its content itself considered as a universal law"--there is no reason why the content of morality might not be different; what if if it is, "act only in such a way that will maximize happiness for the greatest number of people?"  Simply analyzing the concept of freewill doesn't give us any indication either way...

     Recap: We started by saying that rational beings have free will in a negative sense (I can cause myself to act), then we said we also have positive free will (I can do the things I freely chose to do and I am not subject to external causes on how I act) and since positive freewill causes things to happen, it must be subject to some "special" causal laws (i.e., other than the laws of objects).  Because I have the ability to chose what I want (negative freedom) there is such a thing a morality; morality arises out of the fact that I can chose between "good" and "bad" things/courses of actions; i.e., the concept of morality can be known from rational reflection of the concept of negative freedom.  Regarding what can be known from the concept of positive freedom, we can know that there are (moral) laws that govern the will (because anything with causal power must act according to laws); however, even Kant admits that we cannot know what these laws are purely by examining the concept of positive freedom; we can only know that they exist, thus we need to look elsewhere for an a priori grounding of the CI...

     

The Moral Law, God, and Helping Little Old Ladies Across the Street

 Intro    

     "I don't do that because I have morals".  Whenever I hear that I want to reply, "Yeah? So do I; and my morality tells me that it is good to strangle people who say stupid things".  My evidence is purely anecdotal but it seems every time I here this it's from a theist.  

     Speaking of theists and morality, Kant was a theist and he had a lot (of important things) to say about morality.  So much so that his moral ideas are considered to be if not the most important ever, or at least the most important since Aristotle...depending on who you ask.  Of the things Kant thought about morality, he made it explicit that acting morally is independent of there being a supreme being and/or external god-given law.  Lets take a look see at his argument:

Morality Precludes God: A Kantian Perspective

   Suppose for a moment that the one true god (Zoroaster, of course) actually exists.  To ensure that the sea monkeys that he made (us) act the way he wants us to he writes a law book that is surprisingly clear and concise, and without contradictions.  Because Zoroaster is sooooo perfect, powerful, and wise he writes the book so that no interpretation is required; it is as plain as day what the laws are.  The question we ask now is, if we followed this book perfectly would we be behaving morally?

     For Kant we would not.  Our actions would be in harmony with what is moral, but that is not what makes an action moral or what makes a person a moral agent.  For Kant "morality lies in the relation of actions to the autonomy of the will--that is to a possible making of universal law by means of its maxims".  Lets unpack that.

     A big part of Kant's moral philosophy comes from what he calls "the principle of autonomy".  The basic idea is (1) morality only applies to rational agents; for example, animals don't participate in morality (with the possible exception of some primates); (2) morality requires not only being a subject of the law but also a creator of the law.  The first premise is pretty self explanatory so lets move to the second.  

     Recall Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative, "act only on that maxim which can at the same time be willed as a universal law"; basically he means if you don't think that the principle that you're basing your action on can be made permissible for everyone, then you shouldn't do it.  What's important to extract from this principle is that as a moral agent you are not simply following moral laws, but every time you act (in a moral context) you are making laws.  This means that every time you encounter a situation with moral implications you have to determine your course of action as if whatever you do becomes a moral law for everyone.

     The other half of the principle of autonomy is that you are also subject to the law, but you are subject to the law that you created.  Because we play this dual role of creator and subject of the law we maintain dignity and will have reverence for the law. 

     Conversely, if law is derived from without, we are mere subjects; we can only follow the law out of obligation; there is no dignity it following laws imposed from without.  This not to say that sometimes externally imposed laws and internal laws don't overlap.  Suppose I read in Zoroaster's (holy) book that I should always help little old ladies across the street.  I see a little old lady and because I am a good Zoroastrian I help her across the street.  Now it just so happens that if I had exercised my autonomy and reflected on what would be a good universal law in regards to little old ladies at crosswalks, I would have acted in exactly the same way.   

     Here we have a situation where I act because of an external law but by coincidence this action is exactly the same as what I would have done if I had applied the Universalization Principle.  For Kant actions derived through external laws are morally permissible (if they just happen to line up with what the universalization principle would have dictated) but don't have any moral content.  They have no moral content because they were done out of obligation; we can't call the action "good" in any moral sense.  Kant reserves moral approbation for actions that came about autonomously because in these cases the agent is not just acting on laws but also making the laws that they act on; they are engaging their faculty or reason.

Conclusion

    Lets relate everything back to the original topic of why Kant says that morality cannot come from a god or any external laws.  The first obvious reason is that if it comes from without, then we are not acting from the correct motives; we are acting out of obligation or fear of sanction, not out of a desire to do the right thing.  Think of it this way: it's the difference between doing something because you are supposed to do it and doing it because it is the right thing.  The difference is subtle but important.  To see why check out Plato's Euthyphro argument.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

     The second reason for which moral actions can't come from referring to a god or a book is that in these cases we are merely subjects of the law.  Moral action requires autonomy; morality is just deciding whether to follow some arbitrary law; and that requires we be both creator and subjects of our own laws (if we are to have any dignity as rational creatures).

Thoughts

     I find this whole principle of autonomy very appealing--in theory.  It has a lot of good things going for it but those same things, given different assumptions about humanity, can also work against it.  I like the idea that when considering action, morality involves both rational refection on what is universalizable and our subjecting ourselves to that law.  It's very democratic, which is a strength but also a weakness.  
     As an Enlightenment writer Kant believed that all humans are all equal in our capacity to reason; not only that but if we apply our faculty of reason we will all come up with the same answers!  He had quite an optimistic view of his fellow human and, though no fault of his own, a poor understanding of the weakness of human psychology (i.e., motivated reasoning, etc..) or at least our (in)ability to overcome it.  

     That Kant was overly optimistic of humanity is one reading but I think another way to read him is as though he is conducting a huge thought experiment.  In several passages he makes it quite apparent that he is well aware of difficulties present in disinterested reasoning.  In fact, in some passages he says that, because it is difficult to ever know whether we have truly reasoned in a disinterested way--let alone the interests involved in another's reasonings--it is possible that there has never been even a single true moral act.  Be that as it may, Kant is not interested in what people actually do; he is concerned with contemplating how things ought to be; how we should aspire to make moral decisions.

     Democratic ideas are always appealing; especially in areas where everyone thinks their ideas are just as good as anyone else's.  But I'm not convinced that everyone has the same capacity to reason generally, and specifically not in the moral realm.  For the sake of argument lets grant that everyone has an equal capacity for moral reasoning; it doesn't follow that we'll all derive the same conclusions and/or that people are even capable reasoning in a disinterested way.  Also, what about people who spend their life times studying morality?  I.e., the professors in the top schools, the people with the Ph.Ds.  Why should the opinion of Joe Shmo--who hasn't even read a single article on morality and let alone explain one of the 3 main approaches to ethics--be given equal weight as Peter Singer's, an ethicist who has dedicated his life to the study of morality?  For Kant the answer is that they'll both come up with the same answer.  I think even the greatest defender of the Enlightenment would be skeptical of this claim (actually they wouldn't because that's one of its founding principles, but just sayin'...).

    At the end of the day we're sort of forced to chose between two imperfect positions (actually more, but I consider two so I can wrap this up...).  We can give up our autonomy and hope that there's someone really smart that worked things out for us and codified it into rules we can easily understand and follow; or we can hope that our fellow citizens take moral matters seriously enough to give them the disinterested consideration they require...and come up with maxims similar to our own.  I think people should consult philosophers....

Kant Says Libertarians Suck

     Hi everyone, once again thank you for visiting my humble blog.  Knowing that a handful of people read this is very helpful in inspiring me to write.  Before I continue and discuss Kant I'd like to share with you an experience I had.  Obviously, I have a natural affinity to philosophy generally but sometimes I encounter ideas that are so powerful that they permanently change how I think.  There are only a handful of philosophers that have had this effect on me in any profound way: Rousseau, Hume, and Aristotle.  It's hard to explain without sounding cheezy but the impact is so strong when it happens that I think it is indistinguishable from what a theist would call a religious experience. 

     
Reading Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is giving me this experience almost every night I read it.  I'll probably regret saying this but last night I was so moved by what I read I was almost in tears!  Crazy isn't it?  How can philosophy have that much of an emotional impact?  I don't know.  I have no explanation...therefore god.  Now I go through the day waiting for the moment that I get to read more Kant.  There must be something wrong with me!  Anyway, lets talk about Kant, shall we?

Ends in Themselves:  Alternative Formulation of the Universal Law

     I can't remember exactly were I left off last time I wrote about Kant but lets pick up with his idea of "ends in themselves".  The basic idea is this: there are some things that have intrinsic value; that is, they are not pursued as a means to some other end but are pursued for their own sake.  Consider money:  Do we pursue money just to have it? (usually not)  Money is pursued because it is a means to some other end; maybe something material like food, shelter, an ipad2, or for a feeling of security.  Money has no intrinsic value; we seek it because it allows us to obtain other ends.  On the other hand consider "happiness":  Do we pursue happiness as a means to some other end?  Probably not.  Happiness is desirable in itself; it has intrinsic value.  As Kant would say, it is an end in itself.

     
So far so good.  Next Kant tells us that people are also ends in themselves; that is, they have value in themselves and there is value in their own aspirations (i.e., ends).   Because people are ends in themselves we can never use them as means to an end to which they don't consent.  This is a common argument against slavery, for instance; people are being forcibly prevented from pursuing their own ends and are being used as a means to someone else's end. 

     
In our modern ethical framework this idea is fairly standard (thanks to Kant).  But Kant takes his argument one step further and says that if we are going to have a supreme practical principle of morality then it must be one that is directed at an end (i.e., something with intrinsic value) common to every person.   What could possibly meet this requirement?  For Kant, the only end with intrinsic value that can be held in common for all is that of humanity.  From this idea he derives another formulation of the Universal Law: 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. 

     
I think it's important that he includes humanity as an end it itself as a consideration in our actions rather than simply treating individuals as ends in themselves.  This is what I really love about the formulation.  Consider what morality would look like if we didn't have the stipulation about treating humanity as a common end in itself:  in this case all moral laws are negative; that is, they are restrictions on interfering with the lives others (without consent).  For instance, most of the laws will take the form, of "do not restrict people from accumulating wealth; do not force people into labour; do not steal others' property, do not harm others, and so on. 

     
Now consider the implications of having the additional consideration of harmonizing with humanity as an end in itself--not simply avoiding conflict with it.  Now we can include social obligations.  For instance because charity is in harmony with humanity as an end in itself it now becomes a moral duty.  We can even argue that (and many have) most of what are now considered basic human rights arises from this notion of harmony with humanity as an end in itself (i.e., humanity has intrinsic value). 

Kant and Libertarianism

     I'm interested to know how Libertarians would respond to this Kantian idea (well, I know what they think, but I'm wondering what arguments they can provide).  Libertarians prefer Kant-lite.  They just don't want anybody interfering with their rights (usually to accumulate and hold onto property and wealth); they don't want any responsibilities except to themselves (reminds me of some kids in kindergarten).  This is why they are so opposed to taxation; because by taking their money someone is interfering with them as ends in themselves; but a Kantian, I think, would feel a moral duty to give some of their wealth to causes that improve humanity.  A Libertarian reply is that, "ok, we'll give to charity, if/when we feel like it but government isn't the best mechanism for these sorts of things". 

Maybe they're right, but I'm having difficulty envisioning a less dysfunctional alternative. 

     
Libertarians like to argue that charity should be voluntary and thus should not be a moral duty and especially not a legal duty (via taxation).  I'm sympathetic to Kant, that we do have moral duty to help those in need, especially when we are in a position to; this duty is in harmony with advancing humanity as an ultimate end.  But I guess you could argue that your personal desires and rights are more important than those of all of humanity...Ah! The compassion!  I think it would be a very interesting study to see how much the average self-identified Libertarian actually gives to charity (both as a percentage of income and actual value) compared to other self-identified groups.  If someone knows of such a study, let me know. 

     
In defense of the Libertarians I suppose at the end of the day it is a naked assertion that humanity has intrinsic value but it's a pretty harsh moral landscape if we don't adopt this position.  Also--logic alert! this is not an argument!--suppose we assert the opposite is true:  try saying out loud, "humanity has no value"...go ahead! do it!  I'll wait.  Doesn't that just strike you as wrong?  Not that emotional responses mean anything but when I say it, it doesn't sit well with me; it makes me feel like I would if I farted really loud really during a a moment of silence at a funeral service.  

As an aside, in experimental ethical philosophy this phenomena is known as the "Yuck" factor.  It applies to situations where we can't point to what it is about an act that makes it wrong yet it incites some sort of feeling of moral revulsion in us.  And if I were a theist I'd end with...and therefore, god exists.

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!

Do I Have to Do What I Know Is Right? (Part 1)

Intro Ramble: The Purpose of Philosophy in Morality

     It's funny how things work sometimes.  After making my last post--"What Philosophy Is and Isn't"--I encountered the following passage in Kant regarding the role of philosophy (in ethics, anyway):

    

It is here that she [i.e., philosophy] has to show her purity as the authoress of her own laws--not

as the mouthpiece of laws whispered to her by some implanted sense [i.e., intuition] or by who      knows what tutelary nature [divine inspiration], all of which laws together, though they may          always be better than nothing, can never furnish us with principles dictated by reason.

     Now it is quite obvious that everything happens for a reason and god made Kant insert this passage back in the Enlightenment so that one day I would read it at just the right time.  There are no coincidences people!  Ok, all metaphysics aside, lets take a quick lookie-loo at what this passage is talking about.  Hopefully my use of the handy dandy parentheses have already made the meaning clear.  Basically, Kant wants to show that morality stems from reason, and reason alone.  Morality cannot come from some person claiming to have intuition about what is right.  If this were the case we'd quickly descend into a moral relativism of the worst kind.  Nor can morality come from someone claiming divine inspiration.  If this were the case we would have no rational reason to follow the laws, we'd only follow them out of fear of sanction.  Moral laws must come from reason because the fact that they come from reason gives them authority.

     Think about it for a second.  Suppose you are not sure how you should act in a particular situation.  Your faculty of reason--that is, rationality--tells you to act one way but you have inclinations toward a different course of action.  Suppose you choose to act on your inclinations: does it make any sense to say you acted in a morally correct way because "it felt right" even though you have a perfectly rational reason to act the other way?  Basically you are admitting that, in this case, acting irrationally is the moral thing to do.  This is a very tough case to make!

     Now if we take your method as a general principle for er'body to make moral decisions willy nilly (this is a technical term) based on how they feel, we're going to get into some trouble.  Now decisions are based on feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings but feelings aren't consistent but ephemeral; no universal laws could ever be derived from this method.  This method of making moral decisions and rules cannot work...nope.  (But I just feel it in my bones, I know I'm right!...I have a really good sense for these things!) Shut up.  (No, but my psychic told me I have a gift!  I'm speeeeeeeeeeecial!)

      I can't help it.  I have to share what Kant says about what happens when we appeal to intuition and such, it's way too good not to share:

     [...]for human reason in its weariness is fain to rest upon this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which lead it to embrace a cloud in mistake of Juno) to foist into the place of morality some misbegotten mongrel patched up from limbs of very varied ancestry and looking like anything you please, only not like virtue, to him who has once beheld her in her true shape.

Oh! Snap! Wicka! Wicka! Wicka! Wut?  I'd give my left testicle to write half as well as that! (Ok, you could argue his sentences are a little long...)

The Relationship Between Duty, Morality, and Reason

     So, up until now Kant has focused on showing that we can determine the universal principle of morality by asking whether a particular action we will is universalizable.  Whatever passes this test qualifies as a universal moral maxim according to which we ought to act.  Now that we know what we ought to do, the next question is, it is a necessary law for all rational beings to act on what we ought to do?  In other words if we know what the morally correct action is, are we, as rational agents, obligated to act on it?

      Before we answer this problem it might be helpful to quickly review, by example, how we can determine the moral law.  Suppose I'm in a tough financial situation and I want to borrow some money.  I know that I'm not going to be able to repay the money, but the only way I'm going to get a loan is if I say (falsely) that I will repay the loan.  How do I determine if this is morally permissible? Well, we run our maxim (not the magazine!) through the universalization test (AKA the Categorical Imperative).  I ask, what would happen if I willed my behaviour to be a universal law for all?  If I make it a universal rule that everybody who needs to borrow money can lie about repaying the money what will happen?

     What will happen is that people who lend money will cease to lend money based on promises to repay.  The notion of a promise will have no meaning.  People making promises in this situation will receive only laughter in response to their request.  For people to lend money there has to be a norm (standard behaviour) or truth telling in the culture.  If you universalized your particular behaviour, no one would be able to borrow money with just a promise to repay.  Your behaviour is not universalizable and so we must universalize the opposite maxim, that people who borrow money must keep their promises to repay.

The Will...Vas is Das?

     Ok, so now we know what the moral thing to do is.  As rational creatures, do we have to do it?  Kant says yes, and here's his argument:  First we begin with a definition of will.  A will is the power/faculty by which we self-determine our actions according to notions of laws.  In plain English I think this means the will is my motivation for action; however it should be viewed as distinct from inclinations, instinct, and physiological urges.  The will is somehow above all that, not to say it can't sometimes be inline with those other elements that bring about appetite-driven behaviour.  The key notion it seems is that through the will we can "self-will" behaviour and overcome instincts, character, etc....  For example, take someone who really wants to eat ice cream.  Their inclination is to eat it, but they are not captive to this impulse; they can exercise their will to not eat the ice cream.

     Our will is always directed at some end.  Our will is not necessarily good, it can be directed at both good and bad actions.  However, when the end at which our will is directed comes about through reason, it must be equally valid for all rational things, viz, it has equal moral merit.  Hold on a second!  Couldn't we argue that I could use my reason to direct my will toward nefarious ends?  Would these wicked ends have equal validity too?  Kant would say that any nefarious ends did not come about through reason, but inclination and/or self-interest.  Of course we can use our reason to achieve evil ends but reason cannot choose evil ends.  Reason operates according to the categorical imperative, and evil ends are not universalizable.

      Where are we so far?  We know that the will gives us the power of self-determination; the will is always directed at some end; and when the will is directed at an end which came about through reason, that end is equally valid for all rational beings.  This last point is central to Kant's ethics.  We must give equal weight to the rational ends of any rational creature.  Simply put, er'body on this planet has an equal right to pursue their personal ends so long as they are universalizable.  As we have seen, an end is not universalizable if it prevents others from pursuing their ends.

     To illustrate lets quickly revisit the money borrowing scenario.  If you lie and say that you will pay the money back but don't and then will this norm to be universalized, nobody else will be able to borrow money (because lenders no longer take people at their word).  Your action has interfered with other people whose end might require they borrow money based on a promise, but now they can't.  Why do you have to be so selfish? Sheesh! Now look what you've done!

     Of course some actions won't have an effect either way on interfering with other people attaining their ends.  In cases such as these all we can say is that they are not the subject matter of morality.  So, if you're struggling to determine whether you should watch Jersey Shore or Big Brother, this has no bearing on somebody else attaining their ends;  you can do whatever you want--Kant doesn't care.   The moral content of these actions is as vacuous as the intellectual content of the shows I mentioned.

  

Humans as Ends in Themselves

     The next step in Kants argument is to (pretty much) assert that if we suppose there is an entity whose existence has intrinsic absolute value then from this entity, which is an end in itself we can derive determinate laws.  This is a little tricky so let me restate it.  Take for example "compassion".  Compassion has value in itself.  We don't display compassion as means to an end; we don't seek to be compassionate to achieve any further goal.  Compassion is an end in itself.  Because it is an end itself it has value "built into" it.

     From the idea of something having intrinsic value (i.e., it is an end in itself) Kant argues that it can be the ground of a possible categorical imperative--something like, "we should endeavor to be compassionate".  We don't endeavor to be compassionate to fulfill some other end, we simply ought to pursue being compassionate because it is a (good) end in itself.

     Humans are also ends in themselves.  They have intrinsic value.  They ought not be used for arbitrary means to achieving someone else's ends (without consent).  Anytime my actions affect another person I have to consider them as ends in themselves.  This doesn't mean that another person can never help another attain some goal, only that the helper has to have full information and grant consent to helping.  I can't use power to force people to do things that I want (my ends) because I am not treating them as ends in themselves but as means to my ends.   A significant part of our modern ethical ideas comes from this Kantian notion of treating all people equally as ends in themselves.

Up to hear we've talked about the relationship between morality and reason.  We still haven't finished talking about how Kant moves from saying morality springs from reason to it is our duty to do what reason dictates.  This seems as good a place as any to take a break.  I'll address the other part tomorrow.  It's 4am and I should get some rest.  Stop using me as a means to your end of philosophical knowledge!  Oh, wait.  Knowledge is a good in itself and I have a duty to make it available...

Good night!

Is it Always Immoral to Commit Suicide?

This is a short reflection I wrote for my Kant Seminar:    

 

     Kant argues that making false promises and committing suicide are both contrary to the Categorical Imperative because they are non-universalizable. To demonstrate both acts are immoral he employs to both acts an argument strategy which I will call the Argument from Unintelligibility. Essentially the argument is that when universalization leads to the unintelligibility of a concept, the maxim that produced the unintelligibility cannot be universalized. The argument seems to work better in regards to false promises than on the prohibition of suicide. First, I will examine his arguments against false promises and suicide; then I will examine its weaknesses when applied to suicide.

To demonstrate that we should not act on a maxim that permits false promises Kant presents the Argument from Unintelligibility. The main argument is:

1. The utility and intelligibility of false promises rely on the existence of true promises.
2. If the notion of a false promise is rendered unintelligible, it cannot achieve the end for which it is intended (to deceive/extricate oneself from an obligation).
3. If we universalize the maxim that it is permissible to make false promises in order to extricate oneself from and uncomfortable situation/obligation then the notion of a false promise will be rendered unintelligible.
4. Therefore universalizing this maxim will create a world in which our maxim prevents us from the achieving the very end we seek to accomplish by means of a false promise.

The basic idea is that by universalizing the norm of false promises we end up with a contradiction: a promise to comply with a future obligation only has weight in a society were it is the norm to uphold promises. If the norm is that people to do not uphold promises, then a promise is devoid of its common sense meaning. A false promise only functions in a society where there is a norm to uphold promises. So, if we universalize the norm of not upholding promises, promises become meaningless.

In 397-8 Kant makes the assertion that we have a moral duty to preserve our own lives. Later, in 422 he offers an argument that resembles the Argument from Unintelligibility to support his assertion. To set up the argument Kant asks us to suppose there is a person who's life is full of so much misfortune and misery that out of self-love they decide it is best to end their life. Is this person duty bound to continue living? In order to answer this we need to see if we can universalized the maxim “from self-love I make it my principle to shorten my life if its continuance threatens more evil than it promises pleasure”.

In universalizing this principle Kant recapitulates something similar to the Argument from Unintelligibility with the addition of a requirement that this principle of self-love should also be a principle of nature.

1. The function of self-love is to keep us living.
2. If we universalized the principle of “self-love allows suicide” then self-love would not keep us living.
3. If self-love did not keep up living then this would contradict (1).
4. The laws of nature cannot lead to contradictions.
5. Therefore, we cannot commit suicide out of self-love because it cannot be universalized.
6. Therefore, committing suicide out of self-love is not inline with the categorical imperative.

The main problem with applying the Argument from Unintelligibility to a prohibition on suicide is the assumption that the function of self-love is to “stimulate the furtherance of life”. It is not clear that (1) is true. It is equally plausible to say that the function of self-love commits us to a life of dignity. In this interpretation we can envision situations where there is no prospect of a life of dignity thus self-love might serve to compel us to end our life. Consider someone who has been in a horrible accident and as a consequence is completely paralyzed, cannot live apart from on life support, has difficulty communicating, is in and out of consciousness, and is in constant pain. It is difficult to see how this might be considered a life of dignity. Self-love, interpreted as a life of dignity might compel us to say that this person's duty is to end their life, or at the very least, it is an option for them.

Kant's possible reply could be that such a conception of the function of self-love is not actually self-love. This is not a particularly strong reply because in some sense it becomes a semantic argument. The key problem for Kant is that he has not demonstrated that a concept of self-love cannot preclude the notion of life with dignity.

Is It Ever OK To Lie?

Kant on Lying

Preamble

     Recall that in Kant's moral philosophy acting morally is a matter of acting out of duty to the moral law.  Let's break that down.  First, the moral law (AKA the Categorical Imperative) as I'm sure you all recall is "I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law".  In everyday language we would say that I should only act in a way that the principle according to which I acted could be willed as a universal law for er'body.  Second, we encounter the concept of duty.  As Kant conceives it, an action out of duty is one that is devoid of considerations of personal interest (will I gain from this?) and inclination (is my action guided by an emotion such as  sympathy?).  An action out of duty also doesn't take into consideration desired outcomes; action out of duty is action that is only concerned with abiding by what is morally correct--regardless of circumstance.  If your intentions are good then you will act out of duty to the moral law, and thus your action is morally praiseworthy.  The only consideration we make when judging the moral worth of an action if its intent was good (i.e. in line with the Categorical Imperative).

The Categorical Imperative (CI) and Not Keeping Promises

     The next step in Kant's project is to go from a general principle of action--the CI--and try to derive particular rules of action.  One of the examples he uses as a derivation is a prohibition on making promises you don't intend to keep.  The intent of this section is two-fold:  The first is to give an example of a particular moral law, and second it to demonstrate why and how we should make moral decisions.  Lets see how it works:

     Suppose you're at someone's party...a friend of a friend.  You're not particularly fond of this person because they won't cater to your Bieber Fever and like a lot of people they are oblivious to your dislike of them.  Er'body's been sippin' on juice and gin and feeling quite jovial.  After listening to this person go off on some tangent that smacks of Dualism they say, "my dear, you absolutely must bring your girlfriend/boyfriend over for dinner some time, my husband Laurence is a smashing good cook. Is that all right, what?"  Now aside from the fact that they used a grammatical form that irks you and speak with a really annoying British accent, you really have no desire to go over for dinner.  Social convention might dictate that you agree to the dinner date even though you have not intention of actually going. Is it ok to make a promise without the intention of keeping it?  Do you really want to kill this person's buzz?

     Kant distinguishes two ways to consider the dilemma: prudence and duty.  The first is to consider whether it is prudent to make a false promise.  To do this we have to consider if my making the false promise might in the end cause for you a more uncomfortable situation.  Maybe a few months later you bump into the hostess and she demands to know why you haven't kept the dinner plans, and proceeds to "put it on blast" on facebook that you are a false promiser!

     So maybe you have calculate that the outcome of making a false promise might put you in a more uncomfortable situation that the one you're already in.  Based on this calculation you decide it is more prudent to act on the maxim that "one should not make a promise unless one intends to keep it".   The problem with this conclusion is that you have based your action and maxim on fear of consequences--not on what is moral.  You are only declining the invite because in your calculations the consequences of not making a promise that you won't keep now are less severe than the consequences in the future of not keeping the promise.  Essentially your decision is based on the outcome that is most convenient to you:  If in the future you were in a similar situation but predicted that making the false promise would extricate you from the inconvenience of the situation and lead to fewer inconveniences then you would choose to make the false promise.  If this is the case your maxim is actually: whenever telling a false promise will get me out of a pickle I should do so.
     The other point that Kant is trying to elucidate here is that reasoning in such a way depends upon a shaky prediction about future outcomes.  There are thousands of ways we can go wrong in predicting what might happen.

     In the case of acting out of duty you suppose there is a moral law:  you should not make promises you don't intend to keep.  In this case when you act counter the law it is never good because the goodness of your action isn't attached to the (potential) outcomes but to your acting for the sake your duty (to follow the law).

     Lets return to the first case where we chose our action based on outcome.  What happens if we apply the CI to cases where it is more prudent to make a false promise?  That is to say, what happens when we universalize this behaviour...what result do we get?  We get a law that says, "er'body can make promises they don't intend to keep if it will get them out of a pickle".   The problem that arises when we universalize the maxim is that now I have eliminated the possibility of promises. 

     Wicka! Wicka! Rewind!  Basically, if er'body in the house gettin' tipsy knows that when people are asked to make a promise, they will not keep it if they think they can get out of it with less inconvenience than keeping it.  Now, anytime someone promises to do something, the promisee will assume the promiser isn't going to do it.  This renders useless the concept of a promise and leads to a world where no one keeps promises and no one  believes anyone who makes a promise.  Did I just explain that 3 different ways?  I must be getting sleepy.  Accordion to Kant this demonstrates that we should base our behavioural decisions on what is consistent with the CI, not what is prudent.  
     His other point is that prudential reasoning depends on us knowing future events.  Because not er'body is sweet baby jesus this is not going to be possible.  The consequences of our actions are not discernible or if they are it is only in a very limited sense. 

Counter Example

     It all sounds good and dandy until we consider a counter example.  Because I'm fading in and out of consciousness I will confine myself to the one that is most commonly brought up.  Suppose you live in Nazi Germany and are harbouring Jews (with horns).  The gestapo knocks on your door and says "eef ve ask you ver is ze jew, do you promees to tell?".  According to Kant's rules we can't consider consequences of our actions when we act out of duty to the moral law.  To act morally is to act according to the moral law regardless of circumstances.  We are obligated to follow the particular maxim of not making false promises.  Kant might reply that although you have turned the Jews (with the horns) over to the Gestapo you didn't harm them (assuming the Jews meet their most likely fate).  You are not morally responsible for what the Gestapo does to them--that moral judgment is on the Gestapo agents.

     The natural response to this situation is to say that Kant's system leads us to a position that is morally repugnant for most people.  Maybe we need to consider more than just adherence to the CI and intentions in calculating the morality of an action.  Maybe we need to consider the circumstances under which we make our decisions.  Or maybe we need to calculate the moral worth of an action based on the amount of pain and suffering it avoids or on the amount of happiness it produces.  All of these solutions have their own problems which I won't go into.

     Anyway, can you think of a way out for Kant without giving up the CI and his idea that moral actions arise out of the intent of an action not its consequences?

By the By, is it wrong to tell people that a blog entry with be the greatest thing they'll ever read and then it isn't?  But what if it's to get them to learn philosophy?