Washington and Lee University, Spring 2002
Philosophy 101: Problems of Philosophy
Ben Eggleston—EgglestonB@wlu.edu
Class notes: normative ethics
The following notes correspond
roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the
board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we
actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own
observations and records of what goes on in class.
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-
EMP, chapter 6: “Ethical Egoism”
- section 6.1: “Is There a Duty to Contribute to
Famine Relief?”
- Ethical egoism says that each person ought to
maximally advance his or her own self-interest.
- This theory is related to psychological egoism,
but different in a crucial way.
- The phenomenon to which it refers—that of an
individual maximally advancing his or her own self-interest—is
the same phenomenon to which psychological egoism refers.
- But it refers to it in an entirely different
way. Whereas psychological egoism is a descriptive theory
(claiming that people do behave in a certain way) ethical
egoism is a prescriptive theory (claiming that people ought
[morally] to behave in a certain way). One can be an ethical
egoist without being a psychological egoist, and vice versa.
- Some things to notice about ethical egoism:
- It does not just say that, from the moral
point of view, one’s own welfare counts as well as that
others. Rather, it says that, from the moral point of view, only
one’s own welfare counts, and others’ does not, when
one is making a moral decision about how to act.
- Ethical egoism does not forbid one to help
others, or require one to harm others. It just says that
whatever moral reason you have to help others, or not harm them,
must ultimately stem from the way in which so treating them
helps you.
- Ethical egoism does not say that one ought
always to do what is most pleasurable, or enjoyable. It
acknowledges that one’s own self-interest may occasionally
require pain or sacrifice.
- section 6.2: “Three Arguments in Favor of Ethical
Egoism”
- first argument
- The first argument is based on the claim that
“looking out for others” is self-defeating: that is, when we
try to help others, it’s usually worse, overall (i.e., for all
of us), than if we pursue our own interests.
- The problem with this argument is that it
contradicts the core idea of ethical egoism, by resting
ultimately on a principle of benevolence rather than genuine
egoism. That is, it endorses ethical egoism only as a strategy
for pursuing some other value—apparently overall
well-being; it does not endorse ethical egoism as the
fundamental principle of morality.
- second argument
- The second argument involves the observation
that a purely altruistic approach to ethics would be overly
demanding, by treating each person as a means, or resource, for
other people, and thus fails to respect the integrity and
independence of the individual human life.
- The problem with this argument is that there
are other approaches to ethics that are, in a sense,
“between” ethical egoism and pure altruism. For example, our
ordinary, “common sense” approach to morality rejects
ethical egoism without being as demanding as a purely altruistic
approach would be.
- third argument
- The third argument is that ethical egoism
provides the best explanation, and unifying principle, for the
various moral duties that we think we have, such as the duty to
tell the truth and keep our promises.
- One problem with this argument is that ethical
egoism does not explain all of the moral obligations we think we
have. It does not example, for example, why we one not to break
a promise when it would be to one’s advantage to do so. A
second, and deeper, problem with this argument is that it
suggests that the only, or most fundamental, reason one has to
treat other people well is that it would be beneficial to
oneself to do so. This clashes with our intuitive conviction
that even when treating others well is to our advantage, there
are deeper, non-self-interested reasons, for treating them in
that way.
- section 6.3: “Three Arguments against Ethical
Egoism”
- first argument
- One argument against the theory is that the
theory does not provide a way to adjudicate conflicts of
interest. For example, if my interest is opposed to yours, then
ethical egoism—by telling each of us to maximally pursue his
or her own interest—does specify some compromise that we ought
(morally) to agree to; it just tells each of us to do his or her
best, and then whatever happens, happens. And yet many people
think that a moral theory ought to resolve our conflict in some
principled way. The thought here is not that a moral theory will
provide a resolution to our conflict that each of us will be
perfectly happy with (indeed any compromise is likely to be
non-ideal for each of us, by requiring some sacrifice of
interest); the thought is just that a good moral theory will
have something more to say about a conflict of interest we have
have than just telling us, in effect, to fight it out for
ourselves.
- In reply to this complaint, the ethical egoist
might say that this hope that many people have, for a morality
that will settle conflicts of interest in some other way than
saying “fight it out for yourselves,” is a misguided one:
that the best account of morality (ethical egoism) just will not
serve this function that many people (misguidedly) think
morality ought to serve. Whether this reply succeeds depends,
ultimately, on one’s view of how important this function (of
providing principled resolutions of conflicts) is to the role
that morality is supposed to play.
- second argument
- Another argument against ethical egoism is
related to the first, in that it also involves ethical
egoism’s refusal to offer a compromise in cases of conflicts
of persons’ interests. But this argument differs from the
first in that the complaint of this second argument is not just
that ethical egoism refuses to adjudicate cases of conflict, but
that ethical egoism actually has contradictory implications. The
claim is that in telling me to maximally advance my interests,
the theory is also implicitly telling you not to stand in the
way of my advancing my interests; and this latter injunction
conflicts with what the theory also tells you, namely, that you
ought to maximally advance your interests (which, we have
supposed, conflict with mine).
- This argument requires the assumption that
when ethical egoism tells me to maximally advance my interests,
it is also telling you not to interfere with that. But this does
not follow from ethical egoism. What ethical egoism tells you to
do depends entirely on your interests (just as what it tells me
to do depends entirely on my interests). It simply tells you to
maximally advance your interests, regardless of how that may
affect my interests. The theory may counsel conflicting courses
of action, but it does not tell any one of us that doing
something (such as maximally advancing one’s own interests) is
both right and wrong.
- third argument
- The previous two objections to ethical egoism
are, in a sense, structural rather than substantive:
that is, they are concerned not so much with the content of the
theory, but with the way in which its structure prevents it from
playing the role that many people think a moral theory should
play (the role of providing logically consistent, principled
resolutions of conflicts of interest). A third objection,
though, is substantive: concerned with the content of the
theory.
- This objection is very simple. It begins with
the
observation, or (if we regard it as at all controversial) the
claim, that there is no morally relevant difference between
oneself and others, generally. Then it moves to the inference
that, because of this, one is not entitled to
give special treatment to oneself in making moral decisions any
more than one is entitled to give special treatment to members
of one’s race or one’s sex. So, if this is true, then what
ethical egoism allows—indeed, requires—each person to
do (i.e., give absolute priority to oneself) is just flat-out
immoral.
- an exercise in articulating values (adapted from work by
J.K.)
- Imagine that you’re on a large ship, and it’s
rapidly sinking. Reachable by lifeboat is a decent-sized island (where
there is a small population of humans, along with some moose and some
beautiful songbirds, and where some annoying pigeons used to live, but
do not any more), but there is just one lifeboat left, and enough time
for only one trip from the ship to the island. You have the following
bundles of items that need to be saved; and although each of them takes
the same amount of space in the lifeboat as the others, you don’t know
exactly how many, total, will fit. How do you prioritize them, if you
are choosing morally (as opposed to, say, egoistically)?
- an intelligent, healthy, morally virtuous human,
whom we’ll call Mary Ann (after Mary Ann, from Gilligan’s
Island, or after Mary Ann Evans, as George Eliot was also known)
- an intelligent, healthy, relatively immoral human,
whom we’ll call Mr. Wickham (after the Jane Austen character)
- a severely mentally disabled, but kind-hearted,
human, whom we’ll call M
- a human in a coma that everyone believes is
irreversible, whom we’ll call C
- yourself
- your collection of rare jewels
- a golden retriever with a permanently lame leg
- a healthy moose
- ten chickens
- a breeding pair of the beautiful songbirds that
also already live on the island
- a breeding pair of the annoying pigeons that used
to inhabit the island, but don’t anymore
- two breeding pairs of rapidly breeding wild
rabbits that, on the island, would have lots of food and no
predators
- questions to ask in regard to rankings
- Are all of the humans above all of the non-humans?
- In ranking the humans, what factors matter? Mental
capacity? Virtue?
- Does sentience—the ability to experience
pleasure and pain—matter? Is the comatose human below any sentient
non-human animals (such as the rabbits)?
- Is the chickens’ ranking influenced by the uses
they might have for humans?
- Is the chickens’ ranking influenced by the fact
that there are ten of them (versus, say, one dog)?
- Are the birds’ rankings influenced by whether
they’re already plentiful on the island or not? How about the
moose’s ranking?
- EMP, chapter 7: “The Utilitarian Approach”
- section 7.1: “The Revolution in Ethics”
- According to utilitarianism, in any given
circumstance, the right act is the one that produces the most
welfare, for all creatures capable of faring well or badly, from now
onwards into the indefinite future.
- So, utilitarians deny that the source of morality
is to be found in
- divine commands
- other general rules (such as the ten
commandments would be if they were not said to be God’s
commands)
- natural law
- It is useful to think of utilitarianism as being a
conjunction of (I owe this “factoring” of utilitarianism to G.S.)
- consequentialism: The rightness and wrongness
of acts depends entirely on their consequences.
- welfarism: What makes consequences good is
that people and other animals capable of faring well or badly
are faring well: their welfare is raised or enhanced. Welfare is
perhaps most often understood in terms of happiness, but there
are other
interpretations as well.
- universalism: The welfare of everyone capable
of having welfare (capable of faring well or badly) counts, and
counts equally.
- aggregation: The way in which everyone’s
welfare counts is by being lumped together into one total.
- maximization: Once it’s (conceptually)
lumped together into one total, welfare is to be made as large
as possible: this is what right acts do.
- section 7.2: “First Example: Euthanasia”
- It is part of the Christian tradition, and widely
believed, that intentionally killing an innocent person is
unequivocally wrong.
- The utilitarian approach, though, involves
weighing the costs and benefits of the specific act of euthanasia
being contemplated and then doing it if, and only if, doing it has a
greater balance of benefits versus costs than not doing it.
- In a typical case, the benefits of euthanasia
involve the end of suffering for the person being euthanized.
- The costs involve less time that person has
alive (if being alive is any benefit to them at all), less time
for others to enjoy or benefit from that person being alive, and
a possible lessening of the respect for life that we have in
society.
- So utilitarians will approve of some acts of
euthanasia and disapprove of others, depending on the intensity
of the person’s suffering, how badly others want them to
remain alive, the effects on other people’s respect for life,
and any other consequences having to do with sentient
creatures’ welfare.
- It is an interesting puzzle for those who believe
that God both (1) is benevolent and (2) disapproves of euthanasia to
explain what sort of good God wishes us if it includes suffering
that could be relieved by euthanasia. The resulting explanation
would be an interesting challenge to, or non-standard interpretation
of, utilitarianism's “welfarism”
component.
- On social issues generally, utilitarians tend to
be fairly liberal. This is because they tend to think that if some
act (such as sex, or watching pornography, or doing drugs) doesn’t
substantially affect other people besides the ones directly
involved, the the way to maximize overall welfare (conceived of as
overall happiness) is to let people do what they want, since people
tend to want to do those things that make them happy.
- section 7.3: “Second Example: Nonhuman Animals”
- It is part of the Christian tradition, and widely
believed, that animals have no moral standing: the only moral
reasons for not harming animals stem from the moral standing of
humans. They are believed not to have moral standing because they
are not rational (in the way that humans are), because they cannot
speak (in the way that humans can), and/or simply because they are
not human.
- Utilitarians, however, deny that these factors are
relevant to moral standing. On the utilitarian view, something gets
moral standing just by being able to suffer (or, put not so
drearily, by being able to be happy).
- This does not mean, of course, that nonhuman
animals are to be treated just like humans. Since the differences
among humans and nonhuman animals result in differences in
capacities or susceptibilities to experience enjoyment or suffering,
and since enjoyment or suffering is ultimately what matters
(according to utilitarians), many differences in treatment are
acceptable. For example, it is not the case that we ought to provide
education to cats, as we ought to provide it to humans, because (as
far as we know) cats cannot benefit from education in the way that
humans can. And we need not provide food and shelter to bears,
because they (unlike humans) seem to do all right in the wild.
- Utilitarianism does imply, however, that there are
some radical changes that must be made in contemporary western
practices. For example, we must reduce the amount of suffering
involved in animal experimentation and (on a much larger scale)
factory farming.
- EMP, chapter 8: “The Debate over Utilitarianism”
- section 8.1: “The Resilience of the Theory” (no
notes here)
- section 8.2: “Is Happiness the Only Thing That
Matters?”
- Recall that, according to utilitarianism,
- in order to figure out what’s right, you
have to know what makes states of affairs good or bad (this,
recall, is consequentialism); and
- what makes states of affairs good or bad is
the welfare they contain (this, recall, is welfarism)
- Most utilitarians also believe that a person’s
welfare is determined by how happy he or she is, over the course of
his or her whole life. This view is known as hedonism. Hedonism,
then, is a specific version or interpretation of welfarism. Note
that, as understood here, hedonism is not the view that “base”
pleasure is all that matters, or that only short-term consequences
matter. Hedonism as understood here encompasses all sorts of things
that make people feel good, and takes the long term as well as the
short term into account.
- One challenge to hedonism is conveyed in the
example of the injured piano player who, because of her injury,
becomes unhappy. According to hedonism, what’s bad about this
situation is that the woman is unhappy. If she were not made unhappy
by her injury, then the situation would not be bad; the injury
itself, until it raises or lowers someone’s welfare (= happiness),
is morally neutral. One might challenge hedonism by saying that the
injury itself is bad, and that the woman’s reaction of unhappiness
is simply an appropriate response to this already-bad situation.
- A similar challenge to hedonism is conveyed in the
example of the person whose “friend” constantly ridicules him
behind his back. If the person never finds out about this, and has
his happiness impaired by his “friend’s” betrayal in no other
way, then hedonism implies that the person is just as well off—is
faring just as well—as if the other person were loyal and
respectful. One might challenge hedonism by maintaining that one is
harmed by being ridiculed to others, even if it never comes back and
affects one’s own state of mind.
- The idea underlying these challenges to hedonism
can be put like this: Is how a person feels—the “felt quality”
of his or her experience, or how his or life feels “from the
inside”—all that ultimately matters, as far as his or her
well-being is concerned? Or, on the contrary, can a person’s
well-being be affected by things that never have any upshot for the
felt quality of his or her experience? A thought experiment to
explore these questions: Nozick’s experience machine.
- In response to these challenges to hedonism, some
utilitarians stand by it, as the best version or interpretation of
welfarism. Others, finding the challenges to hedonism too serious to
tolerate, adopt different accounts of welfare (such as
objective-list accounts and preference-satisfaction accounts). We
will not worry about these other views.
- section 8.3: “Are Consequences All that Matter?”
- The previous section dealt with challenges to
utilitarianism’s welfarist component—or, to be more
precise, with challenges to most utilitarians’ hedonistic
interpretation of welfarism. This section deals with challenges to
utilitarianism’s consequentialist component. Note that
these challenges are logically independent of the previous ones: a
person could accept welfarism and even hedonism while rejecting
consequentialism, or accept consequentialism while rejecting
welfarism or hedonism (or both).
- Rachels discusses three objections to
consequentialism.
- One has to do with justice. The example
of the person who must bear false witness in order to bring
about the best possible results shows that a consequentialist
theory may, on occasion, require a person to behave in a way
that will bring about serious injustice.
- A second objection has to do with rights.
Consequentialist theories permit people to violate others’
rights, as long as their so doing has benefits that outweigh the
costs to the person whose rights are violated (and the costs to
anyone else harmed by the rights violation, of course, if anyone
else is harmed).
- A third objection has to do with what called backward-looking
reasons. If you promise something to someone and then would
rather not keep your promise, then consequentialism says you
don’t have to keep it, as long as the inconvenience to you of
keeping it is greater than the inconvenience the other person
will suffer if you don’t keep it. Of course, in estimating the
inconvenience of the other person, you have to take into account
the fact that if you don’t keep your promise, then they may
well be very disappointed, because you promised,
but once you’ve taken the promise into account in terms of
benefits and harms to the persons involved, the promise has no
further moral weight (in a consequentialist scheme). The fact
that you promised is a backward-looking reason, and
consequentialist theories—being concerned, of course, with
consequences—are exclusively forward-looking.
- Rachels also discusses two other objections to
utilitarianism that are not objections to consequentialist theories
generally, but only some of them (such as utilitarianism).
- One objection is that utilitarianism is too
demanding. By requiring us always to maximize overall welfare,
it implies that we are acting wrongly whenever we spend time or
money on ourselves or other people close to us instead of on the
most needy people that could benefit from our time and money
(since they presumably stand to gain more from our time and
money than other, better-off, people).
- A second objection to utilitarianism is that
it does not allow us to have and act on strong personal
relationships such as the ones that most people think are
extremely important, because of its requirement of strict
impartiality. It implies that one ought not to benefit one’s
spouse or child if one can, with the same cost, benefit others,
even stranger, even just a little bit more.
- Some cases to consider:
- the deathbed promise: $2 million to the
Yankees, as promised, or to famine relief?
- the trolley problem: cause one death in order
to avert five?
- the transplant problem: as before, cause one
death in order to avert five?
- section 8.4: “The Defense of Utilitarianism”
- One reply to the foregoing objections is to claim
that the cases in which utilitarianism would require injustice,
rights violations, or promise breaking are exceedingly rare,
precisely because justice, respecting rights, and keeping promises
are so important to human well-being. This reply claims, in effect,
that although it is possible, in principle, for cases such as those
described to arise, things are different in practice: in practice
injustice, rights violations, and promise breaking tend to lower
overall well-being. Therefore, utilitarianism tends to forbid such
behavior and ultimately supports
these common-sense moral commitments rather than undermining them.
This reply, however, is not very successful, since there can still
arise at least some cases in which utilitarianism conflicts
with our common-sense moral intuitions; and no excuse for
utilitarianism’s giving the “wrong answer” in these cases has
been provided.
- Another reply to the foregoing objections is to
propose a modified form of utilitarianism known as rule
utilitarianism. Whereas standard utilitarianism (also
known as act utilitarianism) says that the right thing to do is
whatever has the best consequences, in terms of overall welfare,
rule utilitarianism says that the right thing to do is whatever
would be required by the rules whose general acceptance would have
the best consequences, in terms of overall welfare. To see how a
rule utilitarian would respond to one of the objections above—the
one having to do with promises, for example—we have to see whether
a rule requiring the keeping of promises would, if generally
accepted, do more harm that good. If it would (as seems likely),
then promise-keeping is always required, even in those cases in
which better consequences would result from the breaking of a
promise. The upside of this reply, from the point of view of
utilitarianism, is that it answers the foregoing objections pretty
well; the downside is that it is really a new theory, with a
different content from that of standard utilitarianism.
- A third reply is to stand by act utilitarianism
(in contrast to the second reply’s retreat to rule utilitarianism)
and, instead of trying to downplay the conflict between what act
utilitarianism requires and what we think, intuitively, morality
requires (as the first reply does), argue that the conflicts between
the implications of act utilitarianism and “common-sense
morality” show not (1) that something is wrong with act
utilitarianism, but (2) that something is wrong with “common-sense
morality.” On this view, our intuitive understanding of what
morality requires may be in need of substantial revision, and we can
see just what kind of revision it may be in need of by checking it
against act utilitarianism.
- EMP, chapter 9: “Are There Absolute Moral
Rules?”
- section 9.1: “Kant and the Categorical Imperative”
- Kant observed, more explicitly than most
theorists, that morality consists of imperatives, or commands, of a
certain kind. This kind of imperative can be introduced by way of a
distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives.
- Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives such
as “If you want to be healthy then you should eat more
vegetables” and “If you want to get to the movies on time
you ought to leave now.” Imperatives such as these do not bind
absolutely; that is, it’s not the case that you ought to eat
more vegetables, period—it’s only the case that you
ought to do so if you have an objective (getting healthier) that
would be furthered by eating more vegetables. As a result, these
imperatives are considered hypothetical imperatives: they are
binding on you only on the hypothesis that you aim at the
objective they serve.
- Categorical imperatives, in contrast, bind
absolutely. If I tell you that you ought not to kill innocent
people without their consent, then I mean it categorically: that
is, without exception, or regardless of whether or not your
objectives will be advanced by your compliance. Note, then, that
whether an imperative is hypothetical or categorical is, in a
sense, a function of how it’s meant. If someone tells you to
do something, but then backs off upon finding out that you
don’t have objectives that would be advanced by doing that
thing, then the imperative is hypothetical. If the person tells
you to do something, and tells you you have to do it even if it
doesn’t serve any of your objectives, then it’s categorical.
- The point of distinguishing hypothetical and
categorical imperatives is to set up the observation that morality
consists of categorical, not hypothetical, imperatives. That is, you
can’t escape your duty to be moral, your duty to comply with the
commands of morality (whatever those commands of morality turn out
to be), by pointing out that you don’t have objectives that would
be served by your compliance. Rather, you have to comply,
regardless of your objectives. Now this claim—that morality
consists of categorical, not hypothetical, imperatives—is not a
distinctively Kantian claim; on the contrary, Kant is just
articulating an intuition about morality that just about everyone
has about the inescapability of moral commands (again, whatever
those commands turn out to be).
- The fact that morality consists of categorical
imperatives poses a bit of a puzzle regarding how any moral command
can be justified. For it’s fairly clear how hypothetical
imperatives can be justified: their justification derives from the
fact that the person being commanded aims at some objective; and if
he doesn’t like the command, he is free to escape it by disavowing
the objective. So the justification of hypothetical imperatives
doesn’t seem all that problematic. But how can categorical
imperatives be justified? How can someone legitimately tell you that
you have to do something, regardless of your objectives? So,
since moral commands are categorical imperatives, how can moral
commands be justified?
- Kant, then, saw moral philosophy as essentially
the search for some valid categorical imperative(s): that is,
one or more commands that you would (rationally) have to comply
with, regardless of your particular objectives. Of course, others
before him had made their own proposals (though they didn’t
necessarily conceive of them as categorical imperatives);
utilitarians, for example, had said that one must always do whatever
will have the best consequences, in terms of overall well-being. But
Kant rejected this and other moral principles that had been
proposed, and proposed the following: “Act only according to that
maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a
universal law.” Because Kant was so attentive to the categorical
character of moral imperatives, this statement is known as “the
categorical imperative” (even though other moral theorists propose
their imperatives as equally categorical).
- The categorical imperative as stated above is a
translation from Kant’s German expression. As a result, and
possibly as a result of Kant’s own writing style in German, the
grammar of the English statement is oddly awkward. Here’s (in my
view) a more ordinary-sounding (if slightly more wordy) rendering:
“In any given situation, act only according to a maxim that you
could, while acting on it, consistently also will to be a maxim that
everyone would feel free to act on.”
- The meaning of the categorical imperative can be
brought out by considering the steps that one would take to apply it
in a particular situation:
- Figure out the maxim on which you would be
acting. That is, figure out the rule or principle that you would
be acting on. Some examples of maxims (for various
circumstances) are “Eat when you’re hungry” or “make a
false promise when it will help you get out of a jam” or
“Hire the most qualified person for the job.” Your maxim
could even be the utilitarian rule of “Do what will maximize
overall welfare.”
- Imagine that everyone felt free to act on the
maxim on which you’re thinking about acting.
- If the imagined outcome (when everyone feels
free to act on this maxim) is acceptable to you—something you
can will—then your act is o.k., morally. If not, then it’s
immoral.
- Notice, then, the following structural difference
between utilitarianism and Kantianism. To act in accordance with
utilitarian morality, you look at all your options, and then choose
the best one (where ‘best’ is understood in a certain way). To
act in accordance with Kantian morality, you don’t have to survey
all your options and then choose one that is somehow defined as the
best; you just look at your options one by one—and you can go in
any order you want—and all you have to do is find one that
complies with the categorical imperative: that is, find one that
passes the above multi-step test.
- section 9.2: “Absolute Rules and the Duty Not to
Lie”
- Kant interpreted the categorical imperative to
imply that there were certain more specific absolute rules, such as
a rule against lying. To see how one might have thought this,
consider the maxim “Lie whenever it suits your purposes.” Now
imagine what it would be like if everyone felt free to act on this
maxim. In such a world people would not trust other people, which of
course would be a bad thing; and to compound the problem, the lack
of trust among people would mean that the maxim itself had become
useless: for the only way for a lie to succeed is for people to
trust the person telling it. As a result, one cannot regard, as
acceptable, everyone’s feeling free to act on this maxim, and so
it is immoral for anyone to act on it.
- But whether the categorical imperative really does
imply blanket prohibitions on things like lying is a disputed
question. (The fact that Kant said it did does not settle the
question; the fact that he made up the categorical imperative does
not mean that he gets to decide what it implies and what it does
not. It’s up to each person, reasoning logically, to draw their
own inferences—as sincerely as they can, of course—from the
categorical imperative.) To see why, consider a maxim not as
permissive as “Lie whenever it suits your purposes,” but a
stricter one, such as “Lie whenever doing so would save someone’s life and have no effect on
others, except possibly for inconveniencing a would-be murderer.”
(One might think to formulate such a maxim in the special
circumstances of the inquiring-murderer case that Rachels
describes.) Would the world be such a bad place if everyone felt
free to act on this maxim? It licenses lying in such rare
circumstances that its universal adoption would not seem to result
in the same problems that would result from the universal adoption
of the more-permissive maxim considered earlier. So there is reason
to doubt that the categorical imperative has the sweeping
implications that Kant thought it did.
- The
foregoing considerations bring out the following problems with
Kant’s moral theory :
- The
categorical imperative seems to give conflicting verdicts in
regard to the same act, depending on how it’s described (i.e.,
what someone says is its maxim). (This is probably the biggest
problem with the categorical imperative.)
- Kant
seems to have been mistaken in claiming that the categorical
imperative prohibits lying in all circumstances, or that it
implies any such general rules.
- If
Kant were right in claiming that the categorical imperative prohibits
lying in all circumstances, then the categorical imperative
would seem, to many people, to be overly strict.
- The
way in which the categorical imperative is used to evaluate each
of an agent’s options one by one (instead of choosing the
“best” of the options, as utilitarianism and egoism do)
raises the possibility of each of an agent’s options failing
the test of the categorical imperative—which would seem to be
a defect in the categorical imperative. (For more on this, see
the notes that go with section 9.3, below.)
- Kant himself considered the problem of the
inquiring-murderer case, and he tried to justify his absolute
prohibition on lying with a second argument, having to do with the
bad consequences that might result from lying. Although Rachels
spends some time on this argument, it is such a peripheral part of
Kant’s approach to morality that we do not need to worry about it.
- section 9.3: “Conflicts between Rules”
- We saw above that the inquiring-murderer case
shows that a moral theory including absolute rules (such as an
absolute rule against lying) has, for that reason, some
counter-intuitive implications. Another reason for doubting the
plausibility of a moral theory including absolute rules arises from
the possibility of conflicts between rules.
- To see what problem might arise from the
possibility of conflicts between rules, note that if a moral theory
prescribes more than one absolute rule, then it will be possible, at
least in principle, for a case to arise in which the agent cannot
avoid violating at least one of them. (Since the rules are absolute,
neither will yield to, or be overruled by, the other.) Such a case
would be one in which, regardless of what the agent chose to do, the
moral theory in question would imply that the agent is acting
immorally. And this seems implausible: it seems that a moral theory
must say, in any given case, that there is something that the agent
could do that would be a (or the) moral thing to do.
- To better understand this phenomenon of conflicts
between rules, note that it arises from the “structural”
difference between utilitarianism and Kantianism noted earlier. The
former says that the right act, in any given circumstance, is the
one that has the best consequences (in terms of overall welfare). So
no case can arise in which it doesn’t select some act (maybe more
than one, if there’s a tie) as right. But Kantianism doesn’t
select an act as right by surveying all the options and selecting
the “best” one as the right one; instead, it looks at them one
by one, and judges each one independently of the others. As a
result, it’s possible for every one of them to fail the Kantian
test, and thus for an agent to have no morally permissible
thing to do in a particular circumstance.
- section 9.4: “Another Look at Kant’s Basic Idea”
- A basic idea at the core of Kant’s theory is
that of impartiality: the idea that one must treat everyone equally,
and not give oneself special permissions, when it comes to how one
acts (that is, permissions that one would not willingly extend to
others). This is implicit in the thought that one should act only on
those maxims that one would be willing for everyone to act on.
- As we saw when we considered the idea of
impartiality in chapter 1, an idea at the core of the idea of
impartiality is that of acting for reasons: if my hunger is a good
reason for me to steal your lunch, then your hunger is an equally
good reason for you to steal my lunch. In this way, impartiality
can, in effect, be derived from the very idea of acting for good
reasons. One way of regarding Kant’s theory, then, is as an
impressive, but ultimately problematic (largely because of Kant’s
insistence on deriving absolute rules from the categorical
imperative), attempt to derive an entire moral theory from the
simple idea of acting for reasons.
- EMP, chapter 10: “Kant and Respect for Persons”
- section 10.1: “The Idea of ‘Human Dignity’ ”
- The categorical imperative presented above—the
statement about acting only on maxims that it would be o.k. for
everyone to act on—is the fundamental principle of Kant’s moral
theory. But Kant thought that the very same principle could be
expressed in an entirely different form of words, as follows: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your
own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a
means only.” This is, according to Kant, another formulation of
the categorical imperative.
- It is important to understand what is meant by
saying that this is another formulation of the categorical
imperative. What is meant is that the two principles (the two
formulations) have exactly the same meaning: that is, if one
person accepted the first formulation as the fundamental
principle of morality, and the second person accepted the second
formulation as the fundamental principle of morality, then
(assuming each understood his or her principle correctly) each
would have the very same conception of morality: there would be
no disagreement between the two persons in regard to what acts
are morally permitted, what acts are immoral, and so on.
- We saw earlier that it is not up to Kant to
say what the specific implications of the categorical imperative
(in its first formulation) are in regard to questions such as
lying: rather, it’s a matter of reasoning, and logic, to
ascertain what the implications of that principle are.
Similarly, here, it’s not the case that the two formulations
of the categorical imperative are equivalent just because
Kant said they are; rather, it’s a matter of reasoning and
logic (and analyzing the meaning of the two formulations) to
ascertain whether they’re equivalent. Kant might have been
wrong in saying that they’re equivalent (the jury is still
out, I think, among Kant scholars), just as he might have been
wrong (indeed, probably was wrong) in saying that the first
formulation prohibits lying in all possible circumstances.
- So what is the meaning of this second formulation
of the categorical imperative—the one having to do with treating
humanity always as an end and never as a means—and why might it be
thought true? That is, if we put aside its supposed equivalence to
the first formulation, and try to apply it to moral issues directly,
what are its implications, and why should we regard it as (morally)
binding?
- Basically, the idea is that we must always
treat humans (others obviously, but also ourselves) with
respect, and as beings whose objectives are worth pursuing just
because they are humans’ objectives: that is, what humans
aim at, and their interests and welfare generally, are worth
promoting, and nothing else is. So, you ought not to injure
people, or lie to them, or manipulate them, because then you
would be interfering with the achievement of their objectives,
or with their well-being; indeed you are very likely treating
them as an instrument, or tool, for your own
objectives.
- Why did Kant think that treating humans as
ends was so important? Because humans, he thought, are the only
beings that have rationality: the ability to value things and
make decisions accordingly. Inanimate objects, of course, cannot
do either of these things, and lesser animals may engage in
apparently purposeful conduct (such as dog digging for a bone it
buried); but only humans, Kant thought, exhibit genuine
rationality. As a result, they (and only they) must always be
treated as ends, and never as means only.
- Understanding the reasoning behind this
formulation of the categorical imperative helps to clarify its
meaning. Because of its basis in Kant’s treasuring of
humans’ rationality, it may be understood as saying that you
must always respect, and never interfere with or subvert,
others’ rationality. So, to repeat an example that
Rachels gives: you must not lie to other people in order to get
some money from them, because then you are subverting their
rationality: you are preventing them from reasoning well about
the situation (your need for money) by giving them false
information. But if you tell them your reason for asking, then
you are respecting their rationality, because you are giving
them the information they need in order to make a (rational)
decision on their own. (This also shows, by the way, that
treating others as ends and never as means only does not rule
out asking others for help; it just rules out manipulating or
coercing others into helping you.)
- section 10.2: “Retributivism and Utility in the
Theory of Punishment”
- The emphasis that Kant put on the rationality and
“dignity” of humans, and what it means to treat someone as an
end, can be seen in Kant’s attitude towards punishment. But before
getting into this topic (which is the topic for the rest of the
chapter), it is important to note that Kant’s moral theory is not
especially preoccupied with punishment, and should not be thought of
as primarily a theory of punishment. The reason for considering
punishment at such length here is that in doing so, we can come to a
better understanding of what Kant thought, and how he dissented from
the utilitarian view, on the subjects of
-
the moral importance of individuals’
well-being
-
what it means to treat someone with respect
- Kant endorsed retributivism: the idea that those
who have engaged in wrongdoing deserve to be treated badly in
return.
- The retributivist approach to punishment can be
understood by considering a rival view, that of the utilitarians. Here
are the essential ideas of utilitarians’ attitude towards
punishment:
- All harm to persons, including punishment, is
inherently evil.
- Although this does not mean that punishment is
always immoral, it does mean that punishment is permissible only
when its benefits outweigh its costs. While its costs include
the pain to whomever it is inflicted on (as well as the costs of
administering the penal system), its benefits may include the
following:
- making innocent people safer by getting
dangerous people off the street
- deterring would-be wrongdoers
- rehabilitating wrongdoers
- If it were possible to “punish” and
rehabilitate criminals nearly painlessly (such as with a very
brief and pleasant, but nonetheless very effective
rehabilitation program) so that they could be quickly caught and
released, and would be law abiding thereafter, then that would
be great: the displeasure and inconvenience that people
experience when we punish them is inherently bad, and must be
avoided unless they are necessary to secure even greater
benefits.
- section 10.3: “Kant’s Retributivism”
- Kant believed several things about punishment that
conflict with the utilitarian approach:
- Rehabilitation typically involves treating
people as means, since it involves molding them into the kind of
people that we would like for them to be, instead of helping
them to become the people they might autonomously decide that
they would like to be. There may be the occasional
rehabilitative program that adequately respects individuals’
rationality, by helping them choose their objectives freely; but
in general, rehabilitation is manipulation.
- Punishment should be inflicted simply because
someone has done something wrong, and not for any further
reason, or for anyone’s good.
- The degree or intensity of the punishment
should be proportional to the seriousness of the offense, not
determined by the question of how much punishment will do the
most good, in terms of benefits versus costs.
- An interesting consequence of this retributivist
view is that a wrongdoer ought to be punished even if he will never
be able to harm anyone again. (Recall the example of the murderer
being left on the island.)
- We just saw that, according to Kant, only the
guilty may be punished. This is a very normal thing for someone to
think, but Kant’s reasons for thinking this are worth noting.
- According to Kant, not punishing a wrongdoer
would involve refusing to recognize that person as a rational
agent who freely chose to do what he did. It would be, instead,
to regard the person as having been incapable of choosing to do
wrong or not. And it is disrespectful to treat someone as if it
were not up to him to act in that way or not. In contrast,
holding someone accountable is a way of showing respect.
- Kant also thought that punishing wrongdoers
was a way of showing respect for them by treating the maxim that
seemed to underlie their wrongdoing as a rule that was
appropriate not only for them to act according to, but also for
us to use in deciding how to treat them. It’s almost as if
we’re saying to them, “O.k., you think that harming someone
just for your own convenience is a good way to behave? Then
we’ll that that to you.”
- Recall the purpose of this long digression into
Kant’s retributivism: to better understand what Kant thought, and how
he disagreed with utilitarians, on the subjects of
-
the moral importance of individuals’ well-being
-
what it means to treat someone with respect
- EMP, chapter 11: “The Idea of a Social
Contract”
- section 11.1: “Hobbes’s Argument”
- Thomas Hobbes, the first major social-contract
theorist, proposed to understand morality by imagining what
humans’ interactions would be like in what is called the state of
nature: that is, circumstances in which there is no society, with
its laws and morality, to constrain humans’ behavior;
circumstances in which people interact simply with a view to
advancing their own interests, heedless of legal and moral
constraints. To understand what interactions in these circumstances
would be like, we have to consider several factors:
- equality of need: we all need essentially the
same things, and need them essentially in the same degree
- scarcity: the things we need aren’t very
plentiful
- equality of power: we are all roughly equally
powerful; none can dominate his or her fellows
- limited altruism: people aren’t very
concerned for others (beyond a narrow circle of concern)
- Such circumstances, Hobbes claimed, would be a
“constant state of war, of one with all.” Human life would be
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Some people think,
though, that Hobbes had an overly pessimistic view of human
psychology: that people in the state of nature wouldn’t behave as
badly as Hobbes claimed they would.)
- To escape these circumstances, Hobbes claimed, the
only rational thing for people to do is to form a social contract: a
contract, to which each person is a party, establishing a government
and laws, all for their common benefit.
- Hobbes had a moral theory that closely paralleled
this political theory. For Hobbes, not just government, but also
morality, was to have (1) its purpose explained, and (2) its content
determined, by the idea of a social contract. On this approach to
morality, morality is not a matter of doing God’s will or
following abstract rules; rather, it has the following very
pragmatic content: it just consists of those rules that rational
people would accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that
others follow those rules as well.
- section 11.2: “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”
- Hobbes formulates morality in terms of a social
contract by analogy with the political necessity of a social
contract. But there is another (albeit related) motivation for a
social-contractarian approach to morality: a puzzle known as the
prisoner’s dilemma.
- prisoner’s dilemma game
- The specific story that gives this concept its
name is explained by Rachels, and in many other books and articles.
But the puzzle is not just about criminals trying to minimize their
jail time. It is characterized by the following features, which
occur quite commonly. (Note that these features are not exactly the
ones that Rachels states on p. 150. But these are not in conflict
with what Rachels says; they differ only in emphasis, drawing
attention to things that Rachels leaves implicit.)
- Many people face a certain decision, which
each person has to make independently, and each person has two
options—a self-interested option and an altruistic option.
- Regardless of what others do, each person is
better off choosing the self-interested option than choosing the
altruistic option.
- Each person is better off if everyone chooses
the altruistic option (even including himself or herself) than
if everyone chooses the self-interested option. That is,
everyone’s pursuit of his or own self-interest results in
everyone’s interest being thwarted.
- Here are some real-life situations in which these
features occur (real-life “prisoner’s dilemmas,” some from D.P.):
- commuting: Each gets to and from work faster
by driving than by taking the bus; but each would get to and
from work faster if all (even including himself) took the bus
rather than driving.
- polluting: Each benefits more from not buying
a pollution-control device for her car than from the decrease on
overall pollution that would result; but each would benefit more
if all (even including herself) buy such a device than if all
don’t.
- fighting: Each soldier in a group will be
safer if he turns and runs instead of standing and shooting; but
each would be safer if all (even including himself) stand and
fight than if all turn and run.
- fishing: Each will make more money if he
catches as much as he can instead of observing limits; but each
would make more money if all (even including himself) observe
limits than if all catch as much as they can (reducing the fish
population below its minimum sustainable level).
- studying for a test that will be graded on a
pre-set curve: Students can study a lot or a little. If everyone
studies a lot (trying to beat his or her peers), then
everyone’s extra efforts will cancel each other out and
everyone will get the same grades as it they had studied only a
little, and everyone will have done lots of extra work. It would
be better for all (same grades, no work) if all don’t study at
all. (This example assumes, of course, that they’re studying
solely for the sake of the grade.)
- Here is how the prisoner’s dilemma leads to the
social-contract conception of morality. To some extent, we all get
along just fine if everyone pursues his or her own interests. But to
a considerable extent—especially in (real or, more often,
metaphorical) prisoner’s dilemma situations—the unfettered
pursuit of self-interest is worse, in terms of everyone’s
self-interest, than the observance of certain limits. The point of
morality is to set these limits (so say contractarians); thus,
morality consists of those rules that rational individuals would
agree to abide by (assuming others do as well), for their mutual
benefit. In effect, the prisoner’s dilemma represents a problem
for which morality—as contractarians conceive of it—provides a
solution.
- section 11.3: “Some Advantages of the
Social-Contract Theory of Morals”
- It provides a fairly straightforward and
unmysterious account of what the rules of morality are: the rules of
morality are just those rules that are necessary for peaceful and
cooperative living. If a rule does not contribute to this, it is not
really part of morality.
- It provides a pretty clear account of why one
ought to be moral: one ought to be moral because the rules of
morality are to everyone’s benefit, which means they are to
one’s own benefit as well as others’.
- It is not overly demanding: it implies that your
obligation to follow the rules ceases once others stop following
them (and you’d be a sucker to continue to follow them), or once
following them becomes more costly to you than being “outside”
of morality altogether would be.
- It seems to propose a happy compromise between
objectivist approaches to morality (which leave one wondering where
the objective content of morality really comes from) and
subjectivist approaches to morality (which leave one wondering
whether there isn’t something deeper in morality than just each
person’s feelings and preferences).
- section 11.4: “The Problem of Civil Disobedience”
- It is often thought that what justifies civil
disobedience (when it is justified) is that it is the last resort
for achieving some beneficial reform: although unlawful activity is
itself bad, the ends justify the means. This is essentially a
utilitarian justification.
- Social-contract theory provides a different
justification, which many people find preferable. It says that civil
disobedience is justified (when it is justified) by the fact that
those engaged in it are not bound by society’s “contract”
because they are denied their fair share of the benefits that the
“contract” and society are supposed to provide. Only when they
receive those benefits are they then also bound by the laws that
make them possible.
- section 11.5: “Difficulties for the Theory”
- The theory is often associated with the historical
idea of a social contract, which (even in the case of, say, the
U.S., with its constitutional convention) is largely or completely a
fiction. But this objection is not very serious, since the theory
can be reformulated in terms of the idea of an implicit
contract—one to which people are bound just by participating in
society, regardless of whether they’ve ever actually signed or
otherwise explicitly consented to anything.
- The theory implies that we have no obligation
towards beings with whom we have no need to cooperate, or
possibility of cooperating, such as animals and mentally and
physically disabled humans. This limitation on who matters, morally,
is viewed by many to be a counter-intuitive and objectionable
feature of the contractarian approach.
- acknowledgements:
- J.K. = Jason Kawall
- A.O. = Derek Parfit
- G.S. = Geoffrey Scarre