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? 

Mill's Utilitarianism Part 1: John Stuart Mill's Argument for Qualitative Hedonism

Updayt:
Hey er'body...I'm baaack!  Before we get down to biniz and talk about Mill an' stuff here's a brief updayt.  First, my sincerest apologies to the throngs of my adoring fans that had to go the whole summer without reading a new post, but I needed a break.  Also, I was studying for the state and national realtor's license exam (which I successfully passed) as well as doing my usual pants off dance off to make mo' money.  The three elements combined to form the perfect trifecta of excuses to not write.

Anyhow, I'm very pleased to announce that I'm only 3 1/2 months away (or 3 term papers and a couple of midterms--as I measure it) from gradulating from koledg with an MA.  This semester I'll be taking the following courses/seminars:  Classics in the history of ethics (modern history); philosophy of special sciences (i.e., of biology, psychology, neurology); and philosophy of punishment and retribution.

After the first week of classes I get the feeling that this semester is going to be a lot of work.  The first two classes require a ton of reading (even more than usual).  I'm not really a fan of courses with a ton of reading because usually--since it's often hard enough just to get through it once--I never really get to read it as carefully as I'd like.  I get more out of courses where you do close readings of less material but really get to know it... but I digress...

Lets get down to biniz


Mill's Utilitarianism

Favorite Quote:
(vs the idea that humans can't have "happy" lives--Mill disagrees and explains what he means by "happy" life.)
"If by happiness be meant a continuity of highly pleasurable excitement, it is evident enough this is impossible [...] Philosophers that teach that happiness is the end of life were fully aware of [this].  The happiness which [utilitarians] meant was not a life of rapture, but moments of such, in an existence made up of few and transitory pains, many and various pleasures, with a foundation of the whole not to expect more from life than it is capable of bestowing.  A life thus composed, to those who have been fortunate enough to obtain it, has always appeared worthy of the name of happiness."

Overview of Classical Utilitarianism

Ok, lets take a general view of utilitarianism.  (Unless otherwise specified, by 'utilitarianism' I mean classical utilitarianism).  In the most general/crude terms, utilitarianism is the view that an action is morally right or good to the degree that it produces the maximum amount of happiness for the maximum amount of people.   The assumption is that things/actions are good or bad based on their consequences, and happiness as an end is good.

Of course, this talk of happiness/utility doesn't mean much unless we define our terms.  What do we mean by happiness?  Happiness means pleasure and absence of pain; unhappiness is pain and absence of pleasure.

So, if counting blades of grass makes people happy, then is an action 'right' or 'good' if allows the maximum number of people to count blades of grass?  Some early utilitarians like Bentham didn't discriminate between sources of pleasure.  But this runs into objections pretty quickly.  If heroin makes me happy, then is it good? Are drug dealers' actions good?  At this point, utilitarians are going to have to refine their view.  And that's exactly what Mill tried to do.

In the broadest terms, Mill introduced "qualitative hedonism" (as opposed to quantitative).  That is, not all sources of happiness are on par.  Some happiness-producing activities/things are better than others.  The problem of course is how to measure sources/types of happiness against each other.  Who's to say that the pleasure someone derives from eating cheezeburgers is less than the pleasure another derives from listening to opera or solving a math problem.  How do we even begin to compare these disparate things? And how do we do it in a non-question-begging way? That is, how do we do a comparison in which the judgments are impartial--by which all the things I think are best don't just happen to be, after my own careful analysis, the ones that really are best?

It's an interesting problem.  Think about it for a moment... Can we discriminate between types of pleasure?  How?

Well, this overview is turning into more than an overview so lets move on and get into some to the "especifics".

Mill vs Standard Criticisms

Vs The Ranking of Pleasures Problem/Objection:
The critics accuse utilitarians of having the "ethics of swine", for if consequent happiness is all it takes to make something right or good, then what's to stop us from enacting policies that allow maximum wallowing in our animal pleasures in the name of goodness?  Mill's brand of utilitarianism includes the premise that not all pleasures are equal, but how do we determine that "higher" (intellectual) pleasures have more intrinsic goodness than "lower" (sensual) pleasures?

Mills solution to this problem is summarized by the phrase "better to be a human being dissatisfied than a swine satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied".   (I've always loved this line...I still remember it from my very first intro philosophy class.)

Ok, admittedly we can still ax, how do we know this to be true?  Well, ax yourself (ouch!), given the choice would you rather be a happy swine rolling in the mud or would you rather be a disgruntled human?  I hope you answered the latter--and didn't sustain any serious injuries while axing yourself.

So, if you're not completely convinced, here's the argument:  if the fool or the pig disagree with our assessment, it's because they haven't experience both positions.  That is, someone who has experienced both types of pleasure, both intellectual and sensual, will agree that the pleasure or happiness experienced from the former is of higher quality.  The judgment can only be made by someone who has experienced both.

Someone might reply that, "but sometimes even the most intelligent people succumb to the lower pleasures when they could be reading the latest translation of classical Russian literature."  Surely, they know that reading Russian lit. is the higher pleasure.  One response to this is that, despite the slip up, the cultured person still knows that the intellectual pleasure is of higher quality.

Besides, I don't think Mill's talking about one-off acts here.  He's talking about general ways of living and how to determine what types of policies and actions we should institute--about the activities that should be promoted on a society-wide level.  So, an individual who has experienced and is capable of an intellectual life is not going to chose a life purely indulgent in the sensual pleasures  and will recognize the greater good (happiness) in the former.

I have to say I find this argument compelling--(if we don't try to get too fine grained about it).  Of course this is purely anecdotal so it doesn't really count as empirical evidence in favour of Mill, but in my life I basically had the same choice--and the decision was easy...even if it took me a while!

Another way to look at how to determine what kinds of pleasure are best is from the flip side--that of pain.  How do we know which of two things causes more pain?  The judgment can only be made by those who have experienced both.  Likewise, in determining what types of pleasure are greatest, the judgment can only be made by someone who has experienced both--"or if they differ, that of the majority among them...".

There are a couple of problems with this argument that I'll table for now cuz I want to keep moving...but the quick and dirty problem with Mill's proposal is that if "pleasure" is the thing that makes actions good, then there must be something other than pleasure upon which he makes the distinction between higher and lower quality pleasures.  

Pleasure is pleasure, just like squareness is squareness or hardness is hardness.  To distinguish between 2 square objects one has to be more or less square than the other.  Which implies that the difference lies in quantity, not quality. A poor quality square is such because its corners are perhaps rounded.  It has less squareness than its higher quality counterpart.  Ok, so maybe it's not the best analogy, but I hope you get it.  If not, I'll be more specific next post...

Vs Virtue as the Source of Moral Goodness
Another objection to utilitarianism is that what makes an action (or person) good is virtue rather than consequent happiness.  Suppose some noble person voluntarily sacrifices his own happiness for that of others.  Clearly, this virtuous act is good.   But why is it good?  Is it mere self-sacrifice what makes it good?  

Mill's reply is that we regard this instance of self-sacrifice as good because its consequence was greater happiness.  What would we think of self-sacrifice that didn't result in greater happiness for others?  That is, the end of the action was not happiness (broadly speaking)?  This action would be regarded as silly.  So, it is the fact that happiness is produced as a consequence of the act that the action is good.

Again, we needn't only appeal to examples using happiness or pleasure to illustrate the point.  We can imagine a case where a hero sacrifices himself or his own absence of suffering so that others may be free of suffering.  If his action didn't result in a diminution of pain or suffering for others it would be difficult to see why it is 'good'.

Mill asks, "Would [the sacrifice] be made if the hero or martyr did not believe that it would earn for others immunity from similar sacrifices?  Would it be made if he thought that his renunciation of happiness for himself would produce no fruit for any of his fellow creatures, but to make their lot like his and place them also in the condition of persons who have renounced happiness?"

Utilitarians aren't saying that self-sacrifice isn't a good thing, only that it is not intrinsically good.  What makes it good is its consequences.

Of course, the Kantian will reply that even if the agents action produced no tangible increase in the happiness of others but he had intended for there to be an increase, then this action would be good.  Mills reply is that this confuses the rule of action with the motive.  The motive doesn't tell you whether the action was good--it tells you about the character of the agent.  The goodness of the action is measured by its consequences.

Alright, that enough for right now...I'll have more soon.

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....