Kantian Ethics

1. Kantian Ethics 1

2. Introduction to Kant • 1724-1804 University of Konigsberg • Copernicus revolution (1770) leads to Critique of Pure Reason • The rational order which the metaphysician looks for in the world is neither something that we discover through experience, nor something that our reason assures us must be there. Instead, it is something which we human beings impose upon the world, in part through the construction of our knowledge. • Human being places in the center of the world

3. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) • The most influential accounts of our moral nature ever; Main Themes • that every human being is an end in himself or herself, not to be used as a mere means by others; • that respect for one's own humanity finds its fullest expression in respect for that of others; • that morality is freedom • evil is a form of enslavement

4. Ought and laws in ethics • Kant divides philosophy into three parts: logic, which applies to all thought; physics, which deals with the way the world is; and ethics, which deals with what we ought to do • Ethics contains the laws of freedom, that is, the laws governing the conduct of free beings. • metaphysics of morals, a body of synthetic a priori judgments concerning what we ought to do • “the search for and establishment of the supreme principle of morality” is the aim of the book.

5. Categorical imperative • the categorical imperative, commands simply that our actions should have the form of moral conduct; that is, that they should be derivable from universal principles.

6. Good • morally good actions have a special kind of value which evince good will • “A good will is not good because of what it affects or accomplishes (exp: a man who saves his endangered enemy), not because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because its volition, that is, it is good in itself” • the good will is the only thing which has a value which is completely independent of its relation to other things, which it therefore has in all circumstances, and which cannot be undercut by external conditions

7. Duty • “true vocation of reason must be to produce a will that is good.” • Nature’s creatures are purposed toward inclinations, but human beings capacity to reason would certainly not serve a purpose of self-preservation or achievement of happiness, which are better served by their natural inclinations. What guides the will in those matters is inclination. • The capacity to reason must serve another purpose, namely, to produce good will, or, in Kant’s own words, to “produce a will that is good in itself .”

8. Action for the sake of duty An action from duty has its moral worth not in the purpose to be attained by it but in the maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon, and therefore does not depend upon the realization of the object of the action but merely upon the principle of volition in accordance with which the action is done without regard for any object of the faculty of desire. Thus, duty is necessity of action from respect for law.

9. Examples • A businessman who refrains from overcharging gullible customers, because this gives him a good reputation. • A person who helps others when they are in need, and, does so for its own sake, For the sake of his duty. • A sympathetic person has no ulterior purpose in helping; but he just enjoys "spreading joy around him.“ • So the moral worth of an action does not lie in its purpose, but rather in the "maxim" on which it is done, that is, the principle on which the agent acts • The reason his action lacks moral worth is that he chooses to help only because he wants to: he allows himself to be guided by his desires in the selection of his ends.

10. Purpose vs. maxim • The point is not that her purpose is "to do her duty." Her purpose is to help, but she chooses helping as her purpose because she thinks that is what she is required to do: she thinks that the needs of others make a claim on her. • When we think that a certain maxim expresses a requirement, or has the form of a law, that thought itself is an incentive to perform the action. Kant calls this incentive "respect for law."

11. Universality of law • All of our actions, whether motivated by inclination or morality, must follow some law • But the moral law must bind universally and necessarily, that is, regardless of ends and circumstances. • Moral law is a law that reflects only the form of law itself, namely that of universality. • “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”

12. Section II • Practical reason and morality • To be rational you ought to respect the law • We act not merely in accordance with the law but also for the sake of the law and respect for that • Subjective maxims should be in compliance with objective laws

13. Subsumption under Universal Law • Categorical imperatives are non-conditional while hypotheticals are toward ends • Necessary Universalizable • So; ACT ONLY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THAT MAXIM THROUGH WHICH YOU CAN AT THE SAME TIME WILL THAT IT BECOME A UNIVERSAL LAW

14. Universalized Maxim A person in financial difficulties is considering "borrowing" money on the strength of a false promise. He needs money, and knows he will get it only if he says to another person, "I promise you I will pay you back next week." Maxim is "I will do Action-A in order to achieve Purpose-R" I will make a false promise in order to get some ready cash.Next we formulate the corresponding "law of nature." It would be: Everyone who needs some ready cash makes a false promise. • So the promising conduct will be vanished out

15. Two sorts of contradictions • Practice-annihilating maxim (perfect) regarding the whole humanity (wide): promise. It leads to an impartial rational action • Will-annihilating maxim regarding the self (narrow): imperfect/narrow: help of others. Prepare us for rational impartial action

16. Why be moral? Moral Motivation: The sense in which the moral law governs our wills is not that it actually moves us, either always or sometimes, but that it moves us insofar as we are rational. • Objective ends share with ALL RATIONAL BEINGS • So the only worthy universalized things is humanity in itself: So 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.

17. Formula of humanity Being of absolute value, human beings should not sacrifice themselves or one another for merely relatively valuable ends. We should develop our rational capacities, and promote one another's chosen ends. Respecting someone as a rational being also means respecting her right to make her own decisions about her own life and actions.

18. Ideal ethical community When we need the cooperation of others, we must also be prepared to give them a voice in the decision about what is to be done. This leads Kant to a vision of an ideal human community, in which people reason together about what to do. Because this is the community of people who regard themselves and one another as ends in themselves, Kant calls it the kingdom of ends.

19. Autonomy and law-giving • We are the autonomous persons and law-giver • But if the end that I choose, or the means by which I choose to pursue it, are inconsistent with the value of humanity, then I cannot legislate it

20. Autonomous vs heteronomous • Motivations to obey a law are two kinds: Kant calls the first sort of motivation heteronomous, because we are bound to the law by something outside of ourselves — God, the state, or nature — that attaches the sanction to the law. The second kind of motivation is autonomous, because we bind ourselves to the law.

21. Nature of moral obligation • Self-constitution: obligation arises from, and so can only be traced to, the human capacity for self-government.

22. There formulations of the Law 1. Forula of Universal Law: to act on a maxim one can will as a universal law 2. Formula of Autonomy: Will as a legislator 3. Formula of humanity

23. Political ideal • Liberal Democracy: The kingdom of ends may be conceived either as a kind of democratic republic, "a systematic union of rational beings through common laws" which the citizens make themselves; or as a system of all good ends, "a whole both of rational beings as ends in themselves and of the ends of his own that each may set himself"

24. Morality and Freedom The moral law just is the law of an autonomous will. Kant c: “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same” A free person is one whose actions are not determined by any external force, not even by his own desires.

25. Freedom of the will • Negative meaning: A free person is one whose actions are not determined by any external force, not even by his own desires. • Positive: Will is a cause of action. Cause is determined by the Law. free will must therefore have its own law or principle, which it gives to itself. It must be an autonomous will. But the moral law just is the law of an autonomous will. Kant concludes that "a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same

26. Impartial Law • If the will is free, then nothing determines any content for that law; all that it has to be is a law • Rationality requires that we act under the idea of freedom, and • freedom is government by the moral law, so rationality requires that we regard ourselves as governed by the moral law.

27. Kant adds interest into his account • Up to now it has shown how we arrive at the consciousness of the moral law, but it has not shown how in such a case we can be motivated by that consciousness. • because we must think of ourselves as members of the world of understanding, we inevitably think of ourselves as free, and so as autonomous.

28. Two dimensional man • Insofar as we are members of the world of sense, our choices and actions, like everything else, fall under the laws of nature. But insofar as we are members of the world of understanding, we are free and so our wills are governed by the moral law.

29. Kingdom of ends • if we act as befits members of the world of understanding, we may claim to be citizens of the real kingdom of ends, the community of rational beings who, through their actions, try to impose a rational order on the natural world of sense.

30. End of Morality • What interests us in morality is the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature.

31. Kantian Business Ethics Elmer L Andersen Chair in Corporate Responsibility at the University of Minnesota Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective and has been translated into Chinese and Japanese Dixons Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at the London Business School Fellow at Harvard's Program in Ethics and the Profession president of the Society for Business Ethics the American Society for Value Inquiry Associate Editor of Business Ethics Quarterly Business Ethics

32. Self-defeating Immoral Business practice • Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you will have them do unto you.” • Problem: immoral and self-interested treatments be open • Business is a Jungle! Cheating domain! • “Cynicism” in business practice?

33. Carr in Harvard Business review quote • That most businessmen are not indifferent to ethics in their private lives, everyone will agree. My point is that in their office lives they cease to be private citizens; they become game players who must be guided by a different set of • The golden rule for all its value as an ideal for society is simply not feasible as a guide for business.

34. Inconsistency of immorality • Contract breaking example: I see that I could will the lie but not a universal law to lie. • “A business manager who accepts Kantian morality would ask, for any decision, whether the principle on which the decision is based passes the test of the categorical imperative. If it does, then the decision would be morally permissible.”

35. Application to Business • Private ownership and stealing: no ill-treatment could justify theft • Hegel’s objection: consider a world without practice of private property • Kant’s answer: There could not be a society without private ownership • Free-Loading is morally wrong and unfair, who fails to contribute her share

36. Capitalism • Capitalism is a system of economic competition, but even competitive activity requires rules regulating competition. As • Adam Smith and all after him have realized, capitalism requires rules protecting property rights, enforcing contracts, and settling disputes; otherwise, business activity would be impossible. As indicated at the outset, some describe the business world as a jungle, but if it truly were a jungle, business itself would not survive.

37. Russia’s stock market case • When the chief engineer at Irkutsk Energo addressed a gathering of 250 Western fund managers last March, This was anything but typical in Russia where enterprises usually withheld even basic information from investors. . . . This winter (1995) a few mavericks proved the value of corporate glasnost. As these companies drew foreign interest, others followed. There can be an advantage to gaining a reputation for honesty when most or many in the industry or business practice are dishonest.

38. Objections to Kantian view • 1. Kant is absolutist. • But, circumstances or the particularity of the situation have to be considered in Kantian Ethics. • 2. Kant is too impartialist. What about Loyalty? • But, “For in the wishing, I may be benevolent to everyone alike, but nevertheless, in the doing, the degree be very different according to the differences in the person loved (of whom one may concern me more than another), without violating the universality of the maxim”

39. Compromising clashed principles Kantian ethics seems to require is a balance between the benevolence extended to family and friends and the benevolence we owe impartially to all human beings. • Partiality can be impartially universalizable: IMPARTIAL INTERESTS

40. Indeterminacy objection • [P]rinciple-based, or principle led, forms of moral judgment are inchoate guides for determining what one ought to do in particular cases. Principles are incomplete statements of generalized moral commitment and therefore provide little practical guidance when agents are confronted with complicated problems in new (possible unforeseen) circumstances • PARTICULARISM

41. Apple case • Whether corporations like Apple should encrypt devices like i-Phones so that law enforcement cannot retrieve information stored there. • “Morality requires that the public be protected” clashes with • “Citizens have a right to privacy” • Wood: Kant is to help us exercise “the power of judgment sharpened by experience” in “distinguishing in what cases the moral laws are applicable.”

42. Barbara Herman: moral salience • Moral Education • “I think of RMS [rules of moral salience] as an interpretation, in rule form, of the respect for persons (as ends-in-themselves) which is the object of the Moral Law. Their function is to guide in the recognition of those areas where the fact that persons are moral persons ought to instruct agents’ deliberations and actions.24

43. Behavioural Experiments • Bazerman Book: Blind Spots, Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It. Claim:“psychological processes that lead even good people to engage in ethically questionable behavior that contradicts their own preferred ethics.” • OK, So we have to help people how to overcome their own deficiencies in other to be able to decide and judge ethically as in political philosophy done.

44. Pragmatic contradiction as well as logical contradiction • Exp: Talent enhancement, to help others: will contradictory if one doesn’t enhance her freedom and talents to decide and judge • Practice contradiction (logical) vs. will contradiction (pragmatic) • Pragmatic: efficacy of decision will become shrieked

45. Management Trust • 1. A manager has a contractual obligation to manage the firm in the best interests of the corporation. 2. A manager can manage the firm in the best interests of the corporation only if she builds trusts among the corporate stakeholders. 3. Therefore, a manager has an obligation to build trust among the corporate stakeholders. • How this obligation can be ethical?

46. Trust and competitive advantages: Bromiley • Increase level of trust reduce transaction cost • Business continuity • Increase non-financial criteria for measuring controls • Lower frequency of evaluation • Lower requirements for detailed process information • “transaction costs in organizations with trust”

47. Teamwork and worker empowerment • Mentor vs policeman type of supervision • If “teamwork” and “empowerment” are not to be empty phrases, the nature of supervision must be of a more mentoring type than a policing type. Greater trust will be a key element in any cost savings that result from eliminating layers of management and the empowerment of employee teams.

48. Trust within and between • 1. US GM: Design team separate from production team. Difference between prototype and manufactured • TOYOTA: Japanese automobile manufacturers did not separate the design function from manufacturing. • 2. sales in some corporations exceeds the ability of the manufacturing process to produce. • Toyota: quality is to be maintained and backlogged orders are to be kept to a minimum • What Bromiley and Cummings: greater cooperation among units within the firm is positively associated with managers trust in each other.

49. Virtual Business and Trust • Charles Handy, “Trust and the Virtual Corporation,” Harvard Business Review, 73 (1995), 44 • Ebay: Virtuality requires trust to make it work. Technology on its own is not enough. • Traditional Bazar: “Hard-core trustworthy" exchange partners are trustworthy, independent of whether or not exchange vulnerabilities exist and independent of whether or not governance mechanisms exist. • It is this hard-core trust that is genuinely ethically based, and it is this kind of trust that is absolutely required if virtual corporations are to survive.

50. Concluding First Chapter • 1. it is important to state that these arguments are not simply consequentialist. • 2. 3M case: If management treated scientists as if they could not be trusted, innovation would be seriously damaged and 3M’s central business strategy would be defeated through a self-inflicted blow. • less trustworthy is to adopt a maxim that is pragmatically (volitionally) inconsistent.