Immanuel Kant ( 1724-1804 )

1. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) • Defends a deontological approach to morality. • Everyone must admit that if a law is to be morally valid…then it must carry with it absolute necessity. The ground of obligation…must be sought apriori in the concepts of pure reason.

2. Kantian Ethics • Morality is a sacred duty, not a means to happiness. (A good will is more important than a good life.) Reason can discern the moral law. The will chooses which actions to perform. Inclination reflects how one feels about one’s options. When reason (not inclination) directs the will, one does one’s duty.

3. Acting from inclination or acting from duty. An action has moral worth if and only if it is done from the motive of duty. The prudent shopkeeper acts honestly because it is good policy. Such acts have no moral worth. Nor do the kind acts of helpful people. The cold, uncaring person who helps others because duty commands it, has moral worth. Hypothetical imperative, if you want x, do j. Conditional. Categorical imperative: Unconditional commands. Do X! (Whether you like it or not.) The motive of duty.

4. The Categorical Imperative • Act only on a maxim which you could (at that time) will to become a universal law. • Act as if the maxim of your action would instantly become a general law of nature. Maxim: I do action x in circumstances C to obtain end E. 1. Find the maxim; 2. Universalize; 3. Imagine the universalized maxim as a natural law; 4. Ask “Is this a possible law of nature?” 5. Ask “Can one will this to be a law of nature?” CI 3: Act so as to treat humanity (yourself and others) always as an end, never merely as a means.

5. Determining one’s duty • Suicide: A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. • Deceit: Another finds himself forced by necessity to borrow money. He knows that he will not be able to repay it, but sees also that nothing will be lent to him unless he promises stoutly to repay it in a definite time. • Talent: A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. • Charity: A fourth, who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: 'What concern is it of mine?

6. Kant’s Basic Idea • If you accept any considerations as reasons in one case, you must accept them as reasons in other cases. • Doesn’t require absolutism: If we violate a rule, we must do so for reasons we would be willing to allow anyone to accept in similar circumstances.

7. John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) • Mill objected to Kant’s reliance on reason to discover moral law. Such a method makes it too easy to mistake support of the status quo for genuine moral discovery. Instead, moral views should conform to an external, empirical standard.

8. Mill’s Utilitarianism • Greatest Happiness Principle: Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to promote the reverse of happiness. Happiness is pleasure and freedom from pain. Unhappiness is pain and the privation of pleasure. Pleasure and freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends.

9. An invitation to indulgence? • A beasts pleasures do not satisfy a human being’s conception of happiness. Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. • It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognise the fact, that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while, in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.

10. Pleasure is not just a matter of quantity. Higher quality pleasures (like using one’s mind, creativity, doing good deeds, having friends) are more desirable and make life more worth living than mere bodily sensations. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides. Ways to Measure Pleasure: Quantity and Quality.

11. The Aim of Utilitarianism • An existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments, both in point of quantity and quality. Morality consists in the rules which, if followed, would secure this end for all sentient beings.

12. Utilitarianism and Justice • A standard objection to utilitarianism alleges that the theory will require the use of unjust means whenever doing so is likely to produce a greater balance of pleasure. This would permit a policy of punishing the innocent to avert a riot, to deter wrongdoers, etc. • Utilitarians may respond by pointing out that, in fact, no society which falsely accuses innocent citizens will promote a greater balance of pleasure in the long run. The greater good can only be attained in a society that upholds basic principles of justice (e.g.. the guilty are punished and the innocent acquitted).

13. Verificationism: An empirical hypothesis is significant (legitimate) only if some possible sense experience is relevant for determining its truth or falsity. Utilitarianism claims actions are good if they produce pleasure or reduce pain. We cannot agree that to call an action right is to say...it would cause...the greatest balance of pleasure...because it is not self-contradictory to say it is....wrong to perform the action that would...cause the greatest happiness. Ayer’s Critique of Utilitarianism