Justice with Michael Sandel

Episode Six

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The spirited classroom debate doesn’t have to end when class is over. Share your thoughts with other viewers from around the world. Join the ongoing discussion or start your own. Ask a question or respond to ours:

1. What is moral character? Is it what you tend to do, or is it your beliefs and your attitudes?r?

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Comments (142)

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:28 am

Since we usually do not know what anyone (including ourselves) really thinks or believes, we can only judge actions rather than motives.
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(mannacio) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 3:30 pm

We may not ever know motives for sure but when a person acts against their own self interest to the benefit of others we may infer what the motives are. For example, if a soldier throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades, the motive speaks for itself. If a rich person gives to charity there may be ambiguity about the motive especially when the gift is not a substantial sacrifice.

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 1, November 2009, 10:53 am

That's Kant's whole argument for creating a moral system that depends on judgments that could be made a priori (or prior to experiences, actions, etc) he says that since we have no knowlege of our intentions, we can never know if there has actually been a single "good" act committed in history, however, we still have the ability to know whats right or wrong (ex. murder) because we have our reason to guide us through our moral rationality, therefore we don't need to rely on the outcome of actions to make moral judgments

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 20, November 2009, 3:46 pm

Yes, but by judging actions we simply detect if they are right or wrong. But to do that we needn't to use the new term 'moral action'.
Unlike this, Kant says about additional character of the process itself. Not to use it for external judgement about some action but possibly to esteem it by the actor itself. Kant's principle helps him, who make a decision, to determine, whether he acts morally or not.

(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 5, January 2010, 9:53 am

Why do you think we can not know for what reason we do something? Not knowing all motives and determinations due to socialization or anything else doesn´t mean that we can not know reasons for a certain act. Take Kants example of the businessman. Wouldn ´t you say that there is a difference between a businessmen who doesn´t betray his customers because he doesn´t want to loose any of them and a businessman who doesn´t betray them for the sake of duty. It is possible to distinguish between aforementioned different reasons e.g. when you saw an old woman loosing her wallet. Couldn´t you distinguish between a moral and and another reason to give it back to her?
By the way there was just one part of Sandels explanation I didin´t like: The two different determinations of will. I think that autonomos doesn´t mean a modus of determination of the will but its opposite. To act autonomsly is the only way not to be determinant (if you undesrtand "determination" as an act which is forced by necessity)

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:33 am

Morality is relative (and contextual). What's "moral" for one person or society may not be for another. The best we can do is to live according to our own morals - without expecting anyone else to.
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(mannacio) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:01 pm

To say morality is relative is the most dangerous assertion anyone can make. Contextual, perhaps. Helping a terminally ill person to die rather than live in agony may fit into what you would call contextual.

But relative? I don't think so. Kant's idea of a moral test that universalizes an action to determine its morality is reflected in almost every religion on earth. In Luke 6:27-31 Jesus says "do onto others as you would have them do unto you". From the Hindu Mahabharata "do naught to others which if done to thee would cause pain". From the Talmud: "what is hateful to you do not to your fellow man". The Buddhists are taught "hurt mot others with that which pains yourself" in the Udana Varga. From the Baha'i Book of Certitude we have "he should not wish for others that which he does not wish for himself". Do we see a pattern here?

Moral relativism is the basis on which those who pollute the earth and poison others, slowly, use to justify the utilitarianism of the pesticides they say make food cheaper and more available (as though there were no other way) or the coal slurry they produce which, though toxic, reduces the cost of electricity and makes it "affordable".

We ignore all the moral common ground of all these religions and of Kant's philosophy at our peril.

(keddaw) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 7:55 am

Wow, mannacio, how can you so blatantly assert morality is objective, then quote from various religions.

The fact that these religions have been around for millenia and have not made great strides towards what western secular democracies have agreed as morality (or towards what I would consider a moral worldview) and, in fact, disagree about what is moral is the best evidence you could wish for to show that morality is subjective.

You try to go towards a 'golden rule' that they all contain - well how about the Christian punishment for worshipping a false idol? The Abrahimic view that you should unthinkingly murder your children if so commanded by God? Remind me again what happened to the good samaritan? Should a woman ever be allowed to speak in Church, not according to Paul - how moral is that?

Moving away from religion though, people in the US think the death penalty is moral (even for mentally ill people in some states) whereas Europe regards it as barbaric. Two similar culture with diametrically opposed views on whether something is moral. Is pornography immoral? Some people say absolutely and some people say absolutely not.

There is no objective way to say who is right on a moral issue, there is no test, no apparatus, not even a thought experiment to show relative morals so we are left to judge on our own what is and is not a moral act. That is the definition of subjective.

(Jelle NL) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 9:14 am

Mannacio - Perhaps the contrast subjective vs. objective could be replaced by ‘intersubjective’, i.e. the result of debate and consensus. A religious worldview can provide an absolute foundation for one’s morals, but only on a private level. As soon as one enters the public square of a pluralistic society it is of no use (and counter-productive) to claim for oneself some kind of absolute or exclusive knowledge. Besides, can a religious person ever be sure that her interpretation of the holy text is correct or the only true one? - “How can feeble reason encompass the Qur’an - Or the spider snare a phoenix in his web?” - I think there is nothing wrong with ‘moral relativism’; on the contrary: in a free debate it is a prerequisite for reaching moral consensus.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 1:51 pm

I think This is the most important comment on this forum. Of course morality is relative; it is as relative as we are.
With the dangers of taking or making morality absolute we already had some big problems in the past, and we still have big problems concerning this in the present.

On the other hand it depends on how you see this relativity of morality, and how you take your responsability to think of a way to make this relativity of morality praticable. If not taken serious this kind of thinking can be as dangerous as the other.
To see that the writer of the comment takes a concept like contextuality into account shows that he might be on the right track.

Btw: I disagree with Kant that ethical thinking is for the most part derrived from the motives of people. As seems superficially true, when you think deeper about it, there are more essential things which estimate ethical values of certain actions. Things like: the actions itself, the contextuality of the actions(or circumstances, which is not exactly the same thing btw), and the intentions which lie behind the actions. To be able to define for yourself whether a certain action is ethicaly acceptable or not, you can not deny the extistence of these things.
It is too bad Kant can not reply to this post, but unless he takes these essential things into account within his writings I realy can't assume he is correct on his conclusions.
(apart from this his style of writing is not easy to follow as you can see as most people today have big problems understanding him)

So, the question is: "morality is relative", and if this is true: how can you make this practicable in your day to day life?

(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 12:45 pm

In reaction to Keddaw's reply I think it is quite true that organized religion has gone off the tracks in many ways. Ways that the founders would not have approved of. Taking the moral elements that all religions have in common is, I think, the kind of test you deny exists. It distills from those disparate cultures something all men have agreed on when thinking about moral law (as opposed to acting on it).

You cite the death penalty as an example of disagreement but then refer to popular sentiment. Popular sentiment has nothing whatever to do with what is moral. Popular sentiment in Germany resulted in the extermination of 6 million Jews. The fact is that, apart from fanatics, most religions still are against the death penalty. Why is there popular sentiment supporting it? The rationalizations include the utilitarian argument that it reduces the crime rate for the most heinous acts. There is also, at times, the argument that the death penalty eliminates the possibility of release or escape and recidivism. Of course the real reason is that the alligator brain, the part of ourselves that reacts on instinct, demands retribution and revenge. I admit that I am personally not immune to this and there are times when giving society as a whole its "pound of flesh" may be necessary for social order. But that doesn't make it moral.

If you think there is nothing "not even a thought experiment" to determine what is moral you have just denied (perhaps without knowing it) that this course has any relevance whatsoever. Professor Sandel has used thought experiments as a technique throughout the course from lecture one on. His clear purpose was to show that consensus can usually be found when an example, with which the class has no personal involvement, is used.

Kant's categorical imperative based on autonomous decisions (not those of the alligator brain) has entirely the same aim.

If you want scientific proof, at the level of physics, for ethical questions you'll never get it. But if every life decision had to be based on proof to this level of certainty then there could be no social order. Genocide might be just fine. After all we are "cleansing" the population of inferior peoples. Is that where you wish to end up?

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 8:22 pm

Way to go Mannacio.

(keddaw) said:

Tuesday 27, October 2009, 12:58 pm

@mannacio

I am not denying the existence of morality that's absurd. This course is an important course as it gets people to challenge their preconceived ideas about morality, justice etc. and also introduces them to what some of the great thinkers say about it.

I apologise if this is not true, but it appears that you are unwilling to accept any challenge to absolute morality and running to religion is the worst possible way to go.

The reason I chose the death penalty was to get away from religion. The example I had in mind was the showing of women's hair. Some religions have that as an affront to god, a clearly immoral act. I would argue that, on something so mild, it should be relatively easy to prove if it was moral or immoral. You can't. All you can do is either go to an old book (argument from authority) or try using utility or freedom of choice or some other argument that while effective enough for most people doesn't actually prove anything.

My idea of a thought experiment is an easy one: Person A kills a puppy; Person B saves a person from drowning.
Now PROVE which act is more moral. We all (almost all) know which act is more moral, but it is impossible to actually prove it as there is no absolute standard for morality sans religion, and even there there is no agreement!

However, if we can go beyond looking for answers in authority then it opens us up to the arguments of the great thinkers. We form our own moral compass based on some of their ideas, then apply that to situations in ways that we could not have done without this course. If you cannot see that value in this course then I'd suggest divinity might have been a better course to take.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 2:42 pm

Then you didnt got Kants theory, for him it shouldnt be a thousand morals because that makes that a society gets fragmented, and thats not the point, once that i decided to be part of a society i admit one moral, one principle wich implies act as legislator of the kingdom of ends.

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 30, October 2009, 10:54 am

Is that not another way of saying "anything goes"? Including murder and rape.

(Tmack1015) said:

Tuesday 19, January 2010, 6:07 pm

mannacio

The existence of this course I think should be proof that morals are relative.

Mannacio writes to Keddaw "Ways that the founders would not have approved of. Taking the moral elements that all religions have in common is, I think, the kind of test you deny exists.

It is true that you can point to one common moral throughout the religions, we do not deny this.However it is also true that I or Keddaw could point out tens, if not hundreds of disagreements between religions what one thinks is moral another will not. Just because all religions agree on something does not make it objective as mannacio wants to assert, all it says is its relative to everyone

Mannacio wrote "Moral relativism is the basis on which those who pollute the earth and poison others, slowly, use to justify the utilitarianism of the pesticides they say make food cheaper and more available (as though there were no other way) or the coal slurry they produce which, though toxic, reduces the cost of electricity and makes it "affordable"."

This not at all what moral relativism.It took my awhile but I found your stray man argument. Moral relativism is: that the morals you hold are related to your surroundings and upbringing.

(Tmack1015) said:

Tuesday 19, January 2010, 7:20 pm

Mannacio if you still kick it around on this thread I am wondering with your comment "Popular sentiment has nothing whatever to do with what is moral" If you think this statement is true, I am wonder how do you decide what is moral for yourself?Does your god tell you,your parents or the holy book you adhere to?The statement above clearly says society does not for you

Mannacio "To say morality is relative is the most dangerous assertion anyone can make."

Just because something is dangerous makes it no less true(as Richard Dawkins puts it "just because something makes you happy, doesn't make it true."Morality is relative" is not an assertion it's a fact.If you asked Hitler if what he was doing was right, he would have told you "yes" with a "definitely" followed behind it. What he was doing to the world he viewed was moral to himself.

The very first 10mins of this course i believe is laid out to teach you that morality is relative. The two situations laid out in the first episode:
Situation 1. The railroad car your in is going to hit 5 people, but you could steer and only hit one person. Result 1:The majority of the class puts there hand up and say the would steer and kill the one.
Situation 2: The railroad car your watching from afar is going to hit 5 people, but there's a fat man on the bridge you could push him and save the 5 people but kill one
Result 2: The majority of the class puts there hand up and say the would let the 5 people die.

The situation's are fundamental the same, but not everyone views it that way. In both situation's there is only one choice for you to make: to kill one to save five.However you get different answers in the situation's. The fact that you get different answers shows morals are relative

I would let 5 people die in both situation's, but that is only because I can see there is no fundamental difference between the two and I am a Libertarian.

People will say will the worker was on the tracks, but ultimately he was never in harms way until you made a choice, the same as the fat man. Your murdering both the single worker on the track and the fat man. People just want to view the first situation as an accident and not murder however it was your conscience decision the killed the lone worker by steering. It was not your conscience decision for the brake's to stop working that is the accident part.

(Tmack1015) said:

Tuesday 19, January 2010, 8:04 pm

After reading this tiny thread again I don't know why I commented Keddaw explains it perfectly. By the way Thomas Jefferson was a very moral person of his time and even he had slaves!

(jaredkant) said:

Thursday 17, June 2010, 1:02 pm

I would agree with the detractors who state that relative morality is dangerous, but more so would I agree with those who say that the subjective morality argument in and of itself must be contextualized. Kant established that there were certain things that you simply could not do, because they violated the dignity of a rational, thinking person.

Proponents of the relative morality argument ignore this aspect of Kant's reasoning, because it shows that subjectivity is indeed finite. Rape is wrong, according to Kant, not because our subjective societal moral code says that it is, but because it violates another person's sense of dignity, and shows a profound disrespect for the victim as a rational creature. In this sense, Kant offers an almost algorithmic reasoning behind our ban on capital offense, one that transcends law.

Any argument against this reasoning must be mounted against Kant's belief that all people deserve respect and dignity, or else it fails to address the basis of his assertion.

-jk

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:37 am

Hmmm. Is homosexuality heteromous?
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(mannacio) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:17 pm

Perhaps it is. I suppose one could remain chaste. But, then, heterosexuality would also be heteronomous if the motive was pleasure rather than survival of the species. It's doubtful that many people perform the sex act with this as their motivation. The point is man is still, also, an animal and subject to the biological needs and desires of other animals. So, from Darwin's perspective, there must be a biological urge to procreate to make it likely that the species will survive. But from a moral perspective we reject something other animals would do. We do not allow the strongest man to come into our house and take our wife for his own as gorillas would.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 28, June 2010, 4:35 pm

Actually, there is a large "cuckolding" fetish around the idea of a large man coming and taking your wife for his own. It makes some men feel aroused or even good. It could flow from a biological imperative. It makes me nauseous to think about it while very similar structures (mmf or mfm or fmf) with different intent do not.
Also, evidence shows a significant portion of women go find the gorilla secretly, have the child and then let their spouse raise it. The odds of procreation are higher in sex with the gorilla than with the normal spouse too indicating the women (and/or the gorilla men) are biologically more able to procreate in these circumstances because of their "intent!"

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:39 am

Having character is not the same as being a character.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:44 am

MORAL fiber helps us "do our duty" in more places than just the bathroom.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 5:52 am

The "winner" of a Spelling Bee is usually someone who correctly spells a word that others do not. What's the "moral" thing for judges to do upon being told that the "winning" word was misspelled? Usually another round of spelling for all spellers remaining prior to the final word misspelled.

If the misspelling is admitted and reported after the contest is over, is there a "winner"? Does anyone else "deserve" to be? What's "moral"?
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(Jelle NL) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 8:25 am

Is the phrase ‘moral character’ not a pleonasm? Is not your moral, your character - your practical identity (the way you use to behave, the things you tend to do)? Nazi’s also had morals and good intentions - the creation of a certain kind of utopia. It does not matter whether or not their reasoning was identical to the ‘Pure Practical Reason’ Kant had in mind. What counts is the result. Motive can mitigate our verdict, and make the bad result less bad (murder vs. manslaughter). But it can not make a bad result, good.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 12:55 pm

No. Your moral is a conformation of your character based on what your principles of right or wrong.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 10:38 am

What the... I swear I saw spiderman at 25:42...

It's not Halloween yet is it?
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 1:01 pm

He's there, alright!

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 1:07 pm

On YouTube it looks like all 12 class sessions are already filmed/taped/edited. They are just being released one per week (and could have been recorded a year or more ago for all we know).

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 12:37 pm

I wondered if anyone else saw that, too. I've heard of experiments where your attention is directed towards one thing in a video (the lecture) while they insert something completely irrelevant (Spidey) and later ask whether you noticed it or not. It is an experiment to gauge the reliability of eye-witness testimony. I wondered if perhaps that was taking place here. The tape delay is probably the best explanation, though.

In any case, I always considered Spidey a fairly moral character. I guess not, as it seems he is boning up on Kant at Harvard.

(Aaar) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 5:33 pm

I was hoping Spidey would have a question or opinion--to see if Dr. Sandel would point at him and ask: "and what's your name?"

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 12:38 pm

I saw that too! I had to take a double take, TWICE! I laughed out loud!

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 4, November 2009, 11:11 pm

To tell you the truth that's why I love these lectures over the audio lectures you can find else where. In one of the lectures I noticed a guy sleeping, on another lecture, when Professor Sandel mentioned the preserved corpse of one the mentioned philosophers, a girl in the background had a hilarious grimace. And now to top it all it off spider man is sitting the audience.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 11:34 am

and for those who believe that morality came from a higher supreme being...watch this lecture.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 11:36 am

To Jelle,

I see nazism as more utilitarian. Nazis had the intent of killing and torturing jews but justified it by saying that in the end there would be a german utopia. I think if a german soldier looked at the moral worth of the jew and also his own duty as a human being then, according to Kant's reasoning, the German soldier wouldn't be able to go through with his horrible act.
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(Jelle NL) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 1:40 pm

Yes, you are right, the nazi should have upheld the Kantian principle of respect for humanity. But we do not condemn him for what went on inside his skull (intentions), but for what he did with his hands (consequences).
I support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights because of the (expected) practical consequences, not because of its source or foundation.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 1:33 pm

Immanual Kant was a famous vegetarian. I can see how he practiced what he preached. A man who does not want to hurt a fly, is someone that does so, not because the fly will retaliate. This demonstrates the superior morality of vegans, in that we must give dignity to those who we find useful. And there is no way to dignify an animal in captivity. Animals must be allowed to live their existance within their own natural environment.

It is no surprize that other great philosophers were vegetarian too.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 12:53 pm

Have you met many flies that give laws to themselves? I think in Kant's view if you are giving dignity to something you find useful which isn't traditionally capable of having the characteristic of dignity, you are simply trying to justify your use (or impart superiority of your non-use).

On the other hand, I think you raise a good point. I read just yesterday about a series of experiments on capuchin monkeys. They were taught to use currency to exchange for goods. One of the basic ideas in Economics is the law of demand, which says that as price of a thing increases, the quantity demanded of that thing decreases. This is a product of our ability to reason that since my money is limited, I might be better off consuming less of that more expensive things than I once was. The intriguing thing is that the capuchins responded to price increases (more 'coins' for jello than previously was required, for example) just as one would expect a person to - according to the law of demand. Does this compel us to believe that the monkeys were capable of reasoning in a way indistinguishable from a human? Does this then confer some dignity to those monkeys? Is their capability still somewhat less than that of a full human, and therefore deserving of some, but less dignity? What about a person of diminished capacity?

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 25, November 2009, 5:34 pm

I think you don't need to meet many flies that give laws to themselves. I think, you should just know by heart or you can reason with Kant, that torture, of whatever and for whatever, it is not good. To me some animals seem to live normal or ok (many of the steaks), some definitely don't (most of the chicken and many pigs, too). Btw, our knowledge about the "intelligence" of apes is still growing like hell.

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 2:38 pm

At 25:09, is that spiderman?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 18, January 2010, 7:17 pm

its immanuel kant

(BB) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:36 pm

Does Kant's categorical imperative help us (i.e. tell what’s the right thing to do) in the dilemmata from the 1st lesson (deciding whether to overrun one instead of five people when we drive a car, deciding whether to push and kill the fat person to save five other lives)?

I’m afraid Kant is not too helpful here. Or is he?
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(mannacio) said:

Thursday 22, October 2009, 4:44 pm

As we reach this point in the series of lectures it should be much clearer that understanding morality or justice, and actually practicing it, are two very different things. If we agree with Kant's universality principle and "Golden rule", a religious equivalent that existed for centuries before, then it must inform our actions. This is much easier said than done. The very foundation of Free Market Capitalism is to get as much for yourself as possible regardless of its impact on others. And while we have a government of laws to try to prevent some of the most egregious excesses by setting minimum wage standards, establishing pollution controls, and establishing child labor laws, we find the companies circumvent even these restraints by setting up shop in impoverished rd world countries that have no such laws. Remarkably, every additional effort we make to level the playing field with government intervention is labeled as "Socialism" and somehow considered anti-democratic. The fact that social mobility, as measured by movement between income brackets, is among lowest in the United States does not seem to alter this perception that greed is good. It is this mindset that must be changed if these discussions on justice are to become more than a theoretical exercise.
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(Jelle NL) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 9:26 am

And maybe 'this mindset (of greed)' is changed a little by these discussions on justice. (I am learning a lot).

(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 1:46 pm

I agree that there are excesses in capitalism, and they can be intolerable. However, let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Even if "[t]he very foundation of Free Market Capitalism is to get as much for yourself as possible regardless of its impact on others," this says nothing about what the actual impact is, and whether that impact is right or wrong. In many cases seeking out what is best for you under FM Capitalism actually makes others better off at the same time. If you choose to buy Sprite instead of Pespi, you make Sprite better off by having patronized their business, and at the same time you signal Pepsi that today their efforts to get your business were a waste of their time and money. This is a feature of the free market.

On the other hand, government has a role to play where markets fail - see 'tragedy of the commons.' However, their actions don't necessarily make everyone better off. Minimum wage creates unemployment. By setting a minimum 'price' for employment above the true market price, a shortage is created - because there are more people willing to supply their labor at the artificially high price, but fewer consumers of that labor (employers) willing to pay the price. So, some people are better off (the lucky or early birds who get minimum wage jobs) at the expense of others (those willing to work for minimum wage but for which no such jobs exist).

It isn't the case that those jobs don't exist because they have been filled through exporting the jobs to the 'third world'. It is the case that if those jobs were 'brought home' and the business were made to pay the minimum wage, the business would not be profitable. I don't mean profitable as in the greedy CEO wouldn't be able to take the company jet to Switzerland in order to check his account balances, I mean they wouldn't sell enough goods or services to be able to pay their employees.

Following a lecture series such as this might say that we aren't content to take the word of what people say about Justice or Morality at face value, rather we want to investigate it for ourselves. I think this speaks highly of all of us. By the same token, don't let the media, politicians, or friends tell you about economics. Impose a law upon yourself to investigate it academically!

(TylerKubik) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 10:37 pm

The point to be made is that government effort to "level the playing field" is not just insofar as it does not work, and is not practical. Although I think Kant here would argue that the action has moral worth since the motive here is to help the poor and improve their socioeconomic status, the consequences of the action matter and cannot be ignored, which in this case is the opposite of the desired effect. Things like minimum wage standards, in particular, do not result in that end, and therefore must be recognized as unreasonable in attempting to accomplish this 'moral' goal. It cannot be just if it will not work. Most people will fail to see that government setting a minimum wage and making other regulations are not helpful in that goal, and believe that it is a good thing.

(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 1:41 pm

Some of the responses to my example of "minimum wage" as a legitimate and effective government intervention are surprising. (I notice no one railed about child labor laws although outsourcing has resulted in 13 year old girls making sneakers at poverty wages in 3rd world countries.)

First, let's be clear jobs do go overseas do to avoidance of minimum wage laws. That's how customer call centers end up in India. Should we bring them back by paying even lower than poverty wages or should we tax those companies that outsource to the extent of the difference? Minimum wage laws have existed since 1940 and were effective, economically, prior to globalization. To be more specific, look at the growth of U.S. business from 1940-1980 and find any economist who will suggest that minimum wage had an adverse affect on this prosperity.

Is it true that maximum consumption cannot be achieved with a minimum wage. Perhaps. But is maximum consumption or wealth the goal we should aim for. Clearly not, the "tragedy of the commons" was mentioned as just one example of why not. And, recently, a study was done to see in which nation people were the "most happy". Denmark, with it's high taxes and wealth redistribution came out on top. Their culture, it seems, does not favor greed. People can be happy with less than five mansions. We used to believe in this too. Though Eisenhower was never called a "Socialist" those in very high income brackets were in a marginal tax rate of over 70%. Has anyone considered that this reduces the greed of CEOs and makes excesses less likely while allowing the government to help those who are truly in need (not of their own volition).

I think the argument that intent doesn't matter, that greed may actually help other people is misguided. Yes, competition is good at reducing waste and assuring that what is produced is what people need and want. This is the plus side of Capitalism without the Free Market label. As soon as you allow unbridled competition there is cheating to create monopolies, to fix prices, to fix wages, to bust unions so there is no bargaining power, to pollute the earth because it makes products cheaper, to create unregulated derivatives that line the pockets of the few at the expense of the entire economy, to create boards of directors that pay CEOs whatever they want, to provide incentive bonuses for employees of companies that are losing money, to pretend to invest peoples money while pocketing it. Now who was it that was saying greed is good?

(TylerKubik) said:

Tuesday 27, October 2009, 9:29 am

You asked if it was maximum consumption OR wealth that should be aimed for. To say this means you do not know where wealth comes from. As I've said before in a previous question, wealth comes from increases in production, or being able to produce more with the same or less labor.
And the means of increasing production is by businesses investing in capital, things like machinery etc that increase worker output. If worker output increases, it creates more goods available, and when more goods are available the cost goes down on goods, which benefits every one.
To heavily tax things like corporate profits and such, while the cause is noble, to benefit the disadvantaged in society, this humanitarianism is misplaced, because all these profits that are taxed away could be reinvested into capital expenditures, increasing worker efficiency, creating more goods, at a lower price, making money more valuable in the process, and benefiting poor people in a much greater way, as they can now actually afford to buy the things they need.
Minimum wages and any type of price controls, inflationary policy, taxation; all of that hinders the growth of wealth. So the point is it's not optimum consumption that's necessarily the issue, it's optimum production, because that is what creates wealth and to think there is any separation between the two is just plain wrong.
I won't even go into labor unions.

(Rothbard) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 5:49 am

In light of Mannacio's challenge let me give a free market defence of child labour in India.

Firstly, as a Libertarian I do not defend slavery, so the argument applies only to child labour without the threat of violence. i.e. A free choice by the child.

If a child makes the choice to work in a sneaker factory this is because in their view it is the best choice they have available.

The alternatives might be to starve to death, to scavenge food from municipal rubbish tips or child prostitution.

The child might well prefer working long hours in the sneaker factory to these alternatives.

By imposing child labour laws in the third world, where they are "needed" we condemn children to lives which they themselves consider worse than the ones we save them from.

Of course it would be better for them if they had better choices, but in that case there would be no need for child labour laws as nobody would want to work as a child labourer.

The laws only operate when they force children into worse choices than they would make for themselves.

Forced labour is a different issue which cannot be defended and I accept that in many cases child labour is forced.

My point is that there is nothing wrong per se with child labour (without coercion), but child labour laws can only ever cause suffering.

(Rothbard) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 8:19 am

The foundation of free market capitalism is to render the greatest possible value to others in voluntary exchanges.

The minimum wage is a great example of preventing the free market from rendering help to the poor.

If a job was offered at below the minimum wage and somebody wants to take it, that means that they value it more highly than their next best choice.

By forbidding it you deprive them of that choice, forcing them to adopt the less desirable outcome they had rejected for themselves.

Of course some will argue that they will simply get the same job at the higher wage, they are wrong.

If the economic value of that job in the market is two dollars an hour and the minimum wage is six dollars then the employer will simply change the job specification by adding more complicated tasks until the new job has a market value of six dollars.

He will employ a different worker whose skills are worth six dollars an hour.

If somebody has skills with a market value less than the minimum wage, the law prevents them from getting a job and condemns them to a worse position than they themselves would choose.

Capitalism helps everybody despite its origins in self interest while socialism hurts everybody despite its origins in altruism!

(strategistk) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 10:50 am

I guess it's hard to argue against Kant, because his reasons are fundamentally correct. There could be other correct reasons different from Kant's, but they don't necessarily prove Kant's reasons wrong.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 2:08 pm

I fundamentally disagree with Kant. Too bad he doesn't live anymore so I could challenge him.
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 23, October 2009, 4:20 pm

I am confused. What if you helped a terminally ill person to die if he/she asked me to. Doesn't that help devalue human life as an end in itself and secondly, if you did the Kantian test on this action by asking if this action would be a good general principle, the answer might be no because this practice might upset many. On the other hand it would seem to be the right thing to do and if it is done without self interest it makes it Kantean again. Contradicting, isn't it?
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(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 1:57 pm

I think we need to go further than simply valuing all human life equally including those who are brain dead or in a permanent vegetative state. Kant could not have foreseen this world.

People will be upset for a variety of reasons. Some legitimate, some not. If euthanasia is misused to allow a clinically depressed person to die, because he wants to die, and is in mental pain. I would find that they have cause to be upset. But if it is used solely for terminally ill people in unendurable physical pain then I think "quality of life" is an issue that should be observed, not just life for its own sake. People who dislike this are those who want clear cut rules and see their world challenged when those rules are changed. But the world has changed. None of these situations could have existed in Kant's day.

This is where I would say morality can be contextual but not relative.

(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 24, October 2009, 10:50 am

Here's my question(s): I am in a boat and a rich man falls overboard; I jump in to save him for no other reason than that I expect he will reward me for my trouble--clearly I didn't do anything morally wrong, but were my actions morally right?

Does it matter if I succeed or not--if so, how much does it matter?

Would my actions be any more or less morally right if I jumped in with the intent to save the man because I believe it is the duty of every human being to act that way if presented with that situation? If I jumped in with this dutiful intention, would it matter if I succeeded or failed? How much would it matter?

I'm reading a bit about this now and trying to keep an open mind, but I know I have problems with the extreme consequentialist position of someone like John Stuart Mill.

In Utilitarianism, Mill says: "He who saves a fellow creature from drowning does what is morally right, whether his motive be duty or the hope of being paid for his trouble."

The moral goodness of this act for someone like Mill is based in its consequence, saving a life. If he fails to save the life though, it's not necessarily morally valuable--regardless of his intent, the consequences of the action were not "good."

I can't accept Mill's position because I think moral intent and not just consequence of actions is important to us in making moral evaluations about our own and other people’s actions. If, for example, a friend tries to help me from a good intent and fails--or actually ends up harming me--I don't think that the friend is somehow immoral, but rather ineffective, which is something else entirely.

So I think intent clearly matters, but I also think, for lack of a better word "moral competence" matters too (I think there is a concept in Buddhism like this, "skillfull means").

I don't think we necessarily admire the person who consistently wants to help for the right reasons but also consistently bungles the job. I think to be "good" maybe we have to strive for both a pure intent but also have an obligation to develop the skills and talents necessary to actually be able to effectively provide help to others--in the example above that would mean, say, knowing how to swim.

Kant, who thinks that the only true good is a good will and is thus on the other extreme from Mill, says something interesting about this. He maintains that "ought" implies "can." I’m told that this is usually interpreted as referring to logical consistency--a moral agent can, without contradiction, will that the maxim by which he acts be a universal way of acting for all rational beings.

But we could read this "can" (instead or also) as the "capacity to do something." We ought to do what we are capable of doing but are excused from doing what we simply don't have the capacity to do--this reading would excuse the person who cannot swim from the moral obligation to jump in and swim after a drowning person (which they can't do), but not from the obligation to get help (which they can do).

I have to admit I got psyched by listening to the first part of this episode and jumped right in; sorry if some of this was already addressed in the lecture--I’m going to go back now and listen to the rest and then read the previous comments . . .

--Tom Dodson
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(Xerex) said:

Saturday 24, October 2009, 11:26 am

Tom,

You make it very clear that consequentialism described by Mill and the metaphysics of Kant are both inadequate to help you to get a clear vision about moral thinking. It seems as if they are just part of the whole story.
Although both ways of thinking have some very valid points within them.

Maybe it is time that there must stand up a new philosopher that is able to tell you a different story that covers all, or at least more. Maybe with a whole new approach.

Some key concepts in this new approach should be:

Action, incentive, intention, context, freedom, justice, moral value.

So, this would be going right back to the basics of moral thinking, which probably wouldn't be a bad thing.

AC

(Jelle NL) said:

Saturday 24, October 2009, 1:13 pm

Tom - If we ever come in a situation that you can rescue me, please do so. I promise you not to ask for your intentions; that is something between you and your Creator (or you and your Pure Practical Reason).

(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 3:00 pm

Very good questions. Now let me change your hypothetical a bit to help clarify a possible way out of this conundrum. Suppose a little girl is kidnapped by a sexual predator. Several people know who it is but wait until the family offers a ,000 reward before they come forward. Could anyone call this moral? Now suppose the reward is offered at the same time as the report of the girls disappearance. If the reason the person chose to turn in the offender was the ,000 it is no more moral just because of the timing is it? In fact, the type of person we might admire is someone who - after getting the reward - gives it to charity.

I think this is in line with the conclusion you reached, as well.

(DanielAyer) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 1:18 am

I see a major flaw in Kant's reasoning here. Morality is described as the conclusion that all rational actors would come to using their reason. However, this is an appeal to external forces which seems to negate the appeal to autonomy. While the categorical imperative might seem to solve this dilemma, it seems to only exacerbate it.
Should everyone do "X," has the problem that everyone is ill defined. Should all shopkeepers short change children? Should all citizens, or all people period? Would I be moral in shortchanging a child who had previously stolen from me if this was a way of re-balancing the situation? Should everyone short change thieves when they can to recoup the cost of the stolen goods? The situation changes when the details change unless we choose to be slaves to the rubric of abstraction presented by Kant. "Should all Kings be Kings," seems to hold to the categorical imperative while "Should all people be Kings," does not.
The shop keeper acted morally in that to an observer the actions were in keeping with accepted behavior. In the end Kant's argument is indefensible in that it is never possible to know the intents of others. We therefore can never judge whether actions other than our own are moral or immoral. Kant's arguments seem to provide us with nothing more than an argument to paint a veneer to hide behind.
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(mannacio) said:

Tuesday 27, October 2009, 1:41 am

I'm sorry but I think the flaw in these examples is not in Kant's reasoning but yours. You imply the universalizing a situation in which one person has been wronged (by being stolen from) is rectified when the injured party steals the same amount back. This isn't justice it's revenge and equivalent to mob rule. It makes the injured party the judge, jury and executioner. It assumes the injured party is certain of who actually committed the crime against him. You should watch a movie entitled "Fury" with Spencer Tracy as an example of just how poor justice can be when mob rule prevails.

The situation may change the answer to ethical dilemmas if all the options are bad. Or when our understanding of what it means to be alive is changed by science.

But "slaves to the rubric of abstraction" I think is going a bit far. No one suggests people shouldn't think for themselves. But before arguing that Kant doesn't know what he's talking about perhaps a little more thought should be put into such a statement and the examples.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 8:20 am

Daniel your points are well made. It is unfortunate that Mannacio does not see the folly in trying to answer questions of principle by attacking the specific example and appealing to the wisdom of Hollywood !

(DanielAyer) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 1:52 am

It occurred to me that Kant appears to have some self consistency problems with his host of arguments. How can one simultaneously be autonomous and moral? It seems impossible by Kant's logic.
I proffer my own definition of moral. A moral person is one who has a defensible set of logically consistent arguments to support their morality.
Assume that I claim that I believe an act to be moral because my rabbi has told me so. I believe she has some authority to proclaim things moral and immoral, and this is sufficient for me. I have made a defensible claim to morality. However, in order to counter this claim someone merely has to show that this particular rabbi is not what would be considered moral. Perhaps they were a murderer in the past, or perhaps someone witnessed them murder this very day. I have still acted morally since I was acting from a set of self consistent, though now countered, arguments.

By this definition we can incorporate the very thing which Kant points to as the source of our dignity, and from it draw out a source for morality. Though obviously this means there can be no universal morality.
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(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 9:31 pm

I think you misunderstand what Kant means by "autonomous". My understanding is that he only means unswayed by personal desires, emotions, envy, greed and the like. He does not mean uninformed, poorly educated, or gullible. It is certainly his intent that morality be based on a logically consistent set of arguments. His own! You can argue with the merits of his logic but a categorical imperative is what Kant defines it to be not what you define it to be.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 10:28 pm

so you're saying if someone else tells you to rob a bank that it is morally correct to do so because you thought they were trustworthy?

Wow. Do you think that argument will hold up in court? I don't.

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 7:33 am

DanielAyer,

To a certain extent I agree with you when you speak out your definition, but unfortunately it lacks depth.

The fact that soemone has to have a set of logically consistent arguments to support his/her morality doesnt say anything about the moral standards of that person himself other than that the arguments have to be logical and defensible.

Kant speaks of "good" and "bad"; implying "good morals and bad morals".
Although the concepts of "good" and "bad" are being used so easily, it is hard to realy define them; what is good for one can be bad for the other. They are very relative concepts.
But at least Kant made an effort to give a direction to the system of morals he proposes.

Just saying that a moral person must have a defensible set of arguments to support his/her morality doesnt say anything about the direction of morals.

There are people in this world today with valid defensible sets of logical arguments to support their morality who are doing the worst things you can imagine. Even Hitler had a defensible set of arguments to support his morals.

So, to give a definition of moral you have to dig a bit deeper, I'm afraid.

AC
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(DanielAyer) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 1:04 pm

AC,
If we are to accept Kant's theory that dignity stems from rationality, then why cannot morality also? You can be a moral person, even in Kant's estimation, and still do bad things. For instance I may see it as my duty to educate anyone who comes into my class room. However, the argument can be made, and is indeed made, that to educate those who have a duty to fulfill a certain roll in society is cruel. Those educators may see their duty as to ensure that others also fulfill their own duty. Why educate a woman if she is only to make children and clean house? While I, raised in the U.S.A. would argue against this point, if someone were to deny education to women simply "because it was the right thing to do" would Kant call that person moral? Some consider it immoral to provide such an education simply because it would make a woman's life harder. Best to simply guide her through life without worrying her with an education. While I would argue against that point, would someone who denies an education to women simply "because it is the right thing to do" be moral in Kant's estimation? If we are both acting based on our conception of duty, but doing diametrically opposing actions, can we both be moral?
This is at the heart of the problem when discussing such questions. "Good" and "bad" are so subjective that they almost lose all meaning. Especially when we are discussing morality across cultures. By routing morality in rationality we are drawing forth a very powerful tool for establishing moral bases. Can you make the argument for or against your principles? Can we dissuade you with our own arguments? If we cannot, and if you cannot, then perhaps we must re-evaluate these sets of principles.
Living in the U.S. I find that too many people base their beliefs on faulty, shaky, and misappropriated arguments. We are a culture, it seems, of "being right" more than "being correct." We like to be agreed with, but rarely are asked to defend our positions because we aggregate into peer groups based on those positions, or we see it as uncouth to discuss such personal things.
In a democracy shouldn't our morals be discussed openly, argued, and defended?

(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 5:07 pm

Since so many of us commenting on this episode find the concepts of "good" and "evil" dangerously subject, I think it's worth noting that Kant's goal in the Groundwork is to escape precisely subjective (or at least particular) definitions of "good" and "evil" and exchange them for one that could be considered universal. That is why his categorical ethics is so rigorous in the first place, to exclude the particular.

I also think that he also has a concern for consistency in moral action, which I think is related. If a moral system is going to be considered universal in the way Kant wants it needs to not only apply to all persons but be applicable to all cases. This is why, I think, Kant rejects inclination as a guide to action.

I think there are many of us would agree with the statement that compassion and fellow-feeling should guide moral action and further that there is something that just seems more humane and inspiring than the checking our action against the categorical imperative. So why does Kant so unequivocally exclude sentiment and emotion from the determination of whether an action is moral? I suspect that he is suspicious of the ability to rely on sentiment or inclination for a truly consistent, rather than simply a situational (or "hypothetical") moral code. I may act in ways that many would agree are "good" our of a feeling of compassion.

Let's say I'm guided by fellow-feeling to give money to people begging that I pass every morning. But what if one morning I'm in a particularly nasty mood--it happens to the best of us, right? I doubt I'll be all that inclined to act charitably on that particular morning. Not so with Kant's rigorous, rational morality. Good mood, bad mood, the categorical imperative provides the same rock-solid foundation for consistent moral action. So despite its problems and almost inhuman rigor, I can see why Kantians would continue to subscribe to an undiluted form of it.

One other thing I'd like to point out is that it is extremely easy when challenging a particular thinker's conception of "good" and "evil" to slide not only into paralyzing relativism, but to actually commit the fallacy of "begging the question"--for example, setting up a definition of one's own for the good and then testing whether Kant's definition of the good conforms to this as a test of the validity of Kant's point of view. The obvious problem with this is that the question of what "the good" actually is is precisely what is being discussed and questioned; it won't do, then, to present one's own proposed definition or answer as the standard by which the question will be decided.
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(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 9:48 pm

Excellent points. I have only one addition in reply to the Dan Ayers question that if dignity stems from rationality why not morality. Consider some of the highly educated and literate men of the Third Reich like Joesph Goebbels. First, would we be inclined to call him rational. Probably so. The Nazi's were ruthlessly efficient. But the ends to which they used their rationality was not in support of any categorical imperatives. Rather, it was to further their self serving view (heteronoumous, I might add) that the world should be a Nazi state run by white Aryans. That doesn't do very well if you universalize it. Likewise, cultural norms cannot be a guide to morality. So talking about what we do here in the U.S. versus other parts of the world is irrelevant. We once had slavery here. We once deprived women of the right to vote. We still pay women less than men for the same work. We cannot hold up our practices, or those of any other nation, and suggest they are a proxy for morality.

(Unregistered) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 10:34 pm

In a democracy shouldn't our morals be discussed openly, argued, and defended?

Gee, Dan, isn't that what we're doing?

(Xerex) said:

Sunday 25, October 2009, 9:16 pm

Instead of "good" and "bad" I would rather like to speak about "contructive" and "destructive" in moral terms.
So, the title of this series would then be:

"What's the most contructive thing to do?"

And furthermore: I question very much whether rationality should be the sole base of morality. We are more than just rational beings, and especialy with morality in which for instance feelings can play a very important role.
On top of that rationality doesn't always give sound solutions. For instance: Someone can rationaly reason to kill other people (as unfortunately still is practise in the world today}, on the other hand someone can ratianaly reason not to kill other people.

AC

(BTW: I am having very much problems posting on this forum because the code you have to fill in often isnt recognized. Do other people have this problem too?)
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(DanielAyer) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 12:19 am

AC,
In your example are you saying that it is either OK or not OK to kill someone period? Could there be instances when it is acceptable to kill someone, and others when it is not? I have a hard time thinking of any simple blanket morality. It seems that we must consider the details before deciding such things.

(Jelle NL) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 3:36 am

AC - The words 'good' and 'bad' are relative concepts and therefore hard to define (as you point out). But I do not see how the words 'constructive' and 'destructive' solve this problem.

(Gervain) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 12:17 am

Moral character is creating wise habits, which requires a lifetime of thought and action to accomplish. Essentially a moral character dies having improved the quality of life for one person or many people. I consider Dostoevsky's Underground Man to be a challenging example.
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(Xerex) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 6:09 am

Gervain,

That is a very nice way of putting it, very interesting. But still some questions left though:

Why should that character do that? (improving the quality of life for one or many people}
What do you mean with "quality of life"?

AC

(Xerex) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 2:32 am

DanielAyer,

Using the terms "OK" or "not OK" is just the same as using the terms "good" and "bad". I prefer to use the words "constructive" and "destructive" in morality or ethics.

To answer your question about the "killing example". Yes, as strange as it may sound, I can think of situations when it is acceptable to kill other people.

To make this more clear I can give you three examples of killing of people in three succesive posts here on this forum. Then you can comment and say whether you find the killing acceptable or not.
After that I can post my comments on these examples and by that show you my way of thinking.

Do you want me to proceed with the examples?

AC
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(DanielAyer) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 8:43 pm

AC,
Go for it. I'm sorry for taking so long to respond. If only there were a way to get an email update when someone responded to your post. I look forward to reading what you have to say. Though I genuinely think that there are times when killing is acceptable.

(Xerex) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 6:13 pm

DanielAyer,

I missed your response. I saw it today. I would have given you three examples:

1. A MD performing euthanasia on a terminally ill suffering patient.
2. The bombing of Nagasaki.
3. A murder out of lust.

1 and 2 I find acceptable (althoug a lot of people were killed at Nagasaki). The 3rd I resent morally.

You can see how I reason morally by reading my answers to Moraccio and Jelle.

AC

(Xerex) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 5:31 am

Jelle,

I will explain why "constructive" and "destructive" are better terms to use in matters of morality and ethics when I give my comments on the three "killing examples" I will provide for DanielAyer. So, please be a bit more patient and keep an eye on this forum.

AC
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 10:39 am

Thanks for the response Xerex.

Let our reference to 'quality of life' be sincerity for the construction or destruction (as you wrote on October 25th) of relationships with one or many beings.

If 'that Character' is in general accord with one or many, then cause (the why) is self-evident and quality of life is constructive.

If Character is in general discord with one or many (e.g. Underground Man), then cause (the why) is self-evident and quality of life is destructive.

Of course Character may be ignorant or aware in either case, which is why wonder is the key to wisdom and sincerity is the basis of quality of life.

(Xerex) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 1:45 pm

To answer Jelle cause DanielAyer takes to long to answer.

I have written a short excerpt about how I see constructiveness and destructiveness in relation with moral thinking and ethics. Just to make things more clear. This is my personal point of view or approach, so I wouldn’t mind if other people see it differently. At least it helps me to think more clear sometimes about complicated dilemma’s.
As stated here it is very simplified and compact written. OK, here we go:

A motive is a thinking process which leads to a corresponding action. The combination of a corresponding motive and an action I will define here as an “act”. Various actions can have the same motive in common, as various motives can correspond to the same action. In certain situations not acting can be seen as doing an act. Acts can be realized in corresponding, successive sequences.

Intentions are thinking processes which do not or do not directly lead to actions. Intentions of a person can say something about this persons future acts under certain circumstances. Under these circumstances those intentions become motives which lead to corresponding actions. So, intentions say something about possible future motives. Communicating about intentions, e.g. in writing like for instance signing a contract, can be seen as an action.

Actions, motives, acts, act-sequences and intentions seem all to have an intrinsic ethical or moral value. People tend to give this moral value subconsciously, and sometimes consciously, based on an impression of lot of different factors (e.g. context, own religion, culture, etc). And furthermore, on basis of this moral value people tend to make a hierarchy of these concepts.

So, for instance there is hierarchy of actions. This implies we value some actions more than the other, e.g.: we find the action “stealing” not so bad as the action” committing a murder”. Or another example: we find the action “giving money to the poor” of more ethical value than “stealing money from the poor”.

These hierarchies seem to correlate well with the concepts constructive and destructive.
To explain this, it is best to say something about the hierarchy of acts, i.e. the combination of corresponding acts and motives:

There are three acts within everyone of us which are the most constructive; they can be seen as “inherent acts”. They are almost of equal ethical value. These three acts (you can name them “fundamental acts”) are:

1. To exist (continuation of the individual),
2. To procreate (continuation of the species) ,
3. To be healthy (not to suffer)

Most other motives, actions, intentions and act-sequences that we have seem to sprout from these three fundamental (or mother) acts.
The more these other motives, actions, intentions and act-sequences are distant from the corresponding mother motive or fundamental act the less constructive and the more destructive they seem to be.

We can now categorize the acts we have:

On top are the three fundamental acts.
Directly under the fundamental acts are seated the “generally constructive acts” and under that are the “generally destructive acts”, the former have higher moral or ethical value than the latter. The more lower in the hierarchy the more destructive a generally constructive act is. The higher a generally destructive act is, the more constructive.

Example of high hierarchic generally constructive acts: to eat, to drink, to sleep, to be creative, to be free,
Examples of low hierarchic generally constructive motives: to eat foie grass, to fly for lunch from London to Paris to buy a trendy fur coat, to earn a lot of money out of greed or fear.
Examples of hierarchic high generally destructive acts: To steal something of low value in a shop, to harass someone physically.
Examples of low hierarchic generally destructive acts: to commit a murder, to rape a child, to torture someone.

Hierarchies of acts are very personal (the above given examples are my personal examples, you can make your own if you like). They have a tendency to be dynamic and to change all the time during our life time.

The following statement I see as the basics of morals:

A person is said to act unethical when that person performs an act which has as the consequence that one or more other persons can’t perform higher hierarchic acts. This is also referred to as to disrespect the other person or to do injustice to that other person.

Some examples:

Because you want pleasure (hierarchic low generally constructive motive or act) you kill someone (fundamental act of “to exist” can’t be performed).

Because you want to earn more money than you already have (hierarchic low generally constructive motive or act), you let people work hard under awful, unhealthy circumstances (fundamental act “to be healthy” is jeopardized}.

Well, this is the basic idea very much simplified, I hope you get my drift.
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(mannacio) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 7:04 pm

While I applaud your attempt to create a hierarchy of values which would seem to parallel Maslow's hierarchy of needs it is not quite complete or sufficient. For example if by "To exist" we mean mere existence in any state of health (which is 3rd on your list) then taking a person off life support (even though brain dead) would be immoral. Taking away the feeding tube of a person wih a living will that says they don't want to be kept artificially alive would also be immoral. I may be misreading your intent but this is how I interpret it. In any event I see this hierarchy as unnecessary except when it comes to the issue of punishment in the judicial system or if you believe there is a God that keeps a score card. Otherwise, how bad or how good an action is has no relevance except in circumstances where one is pitted against the other - as in choosing the lesser of two evils (Sophie's Choice).

(Jelle NL) said:

Monday 26, October 2009, 3:29 pm

@ Xerex - Thank you for the explanation. If I understand you correctly, your constructive vs. destructive concept is (above all) an instrument for analyzing one’s own morality, by making a personal hierarchie of intentions, motives and acts.
This do-it-yourself aspect is attractive, although in the end we have to come to some kind of consensus.
Your statement on the basics of morals seems to resemble Mill’s: You are free to pursue your own happiness, as long as you do not interfere with the freedom of others to pursue their happiness.
It is also good to see that your 'fundamental acts' are also part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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(Xerex) said:

Tuesday 27, October 2009, 4:36 am

Jelle,

You are right, I use this constructive-destructive-hierarchy model for myself as an instrument. But on the other hand it can also be used to help other people to make more clear for themselves why they are acting in certain ways under certain circumstances.

These hierarchies of intentions, actions, motives, acts and act-sequences are nothing other than “the conscience” (in you language: “het geweten”). This instrument can bring people more close to, more aware of their conscience, and as such can be very meaningful.

I don’t think we are making this hierarchy consciously. It seems that people almost automatically make these hierarchies by means of unconscious thinking processes in the brain. It seems we do this all the time as we seem to adjust these hierarchies according to the information we get from our surroundings; information like we get from our parents, friends, school, news paper and other media, etc.. It seems that this is a constant dynamic process.

This instrument can also be used in order to get consensus with other people, but sometimes you can also agree to disagree. By which I don’t think you are entitled to force your own hierarchies upon others. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an example of such a consensus.

About your remark about mr. Mill: I think striving for happiness as your main goal in life in this constructive-destructive-hierarchy model leads to a general striving to low hierarchic constructive acts, sometimes even lower (which means general destructive acts). As this easily leads to situations where higher motives of others are not respected I don’t agree with mr. Mills model. I find mr. Mill’s model even dangerous as in the world today where everything is so complex and connected (globalized) it is very easy to cause harm to other people or disrespect them when striving for your happiness.
Thanks for your reply

AC
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(Xerex) said:

Tuesday 27, October 2009, 5:19 am

Mannacio,

You misread, or maybe I was not clear enough. There is no significant difference in ethical value of the fundamental motives or acts. The number in front of these fundamental motives in my post don’t reflect their hierarchic place.

About Maslow’s hierarchy or pyramid: Maslow sees humans predominantly as creatures with needs. While I don’t disagree with that, I think humans are more than creatures with only needs.
I think humans are motivated creatures who perform more or less constructive or destructive acts in this world. The concept of “motivation” is much broader than the concept “need”.
Furthermore, Maslow doesn’t make the link to ethics or morals as clear and as explicit as is being done in this constructive-destructive-hierarchy model.

I disagree with you that this constructive-destructive-hierarchy model can only be used in judicial systems. For this see my reply to Jelle.
Thanks for your reply,

AC

(Jelle NL) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 4:10 am

@ Keddaw to Mannacio (27 0ct) - The point is not that one’s moral compass has secular vs. religious or, authoritarian vs. anti-authorian roots, I think. The differences are not always clear-cut. Most important is the recognition that one’s moral compass is highly contingent, the result of time and chance (the time, country and family you were born into, the books you read, the people you met, ... etc). That awareness might drive you to improve your ‘navigational skills’ and might make it easier to reach consensus on what are the right things to do.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 8:42 am

I like Kant because the consequences of his reasoning conform almost perfectly to my inclinations. But it seems that much of the edifice of his philosophy rests on the unproven assertion that there is a difference between inclination and duty.
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Tuesday 15, December 2009, 6:52 am

I am of the opinion that Kant does not insist in all cases that the difference between inclination and duty can be easily discerned. I believe that Kant suggests that many actions will satisfy both considerations. My interpretation is that if we always act in accordance with duty independent of our inclinations, then our actions can be attributed with moral worth.

(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 9:07 am

peter hindrup:
I have only just come to this forum, it is far from my skills and as it is the 6th episode it may well be that these points have bee addressed previously.

The assumption that all humans are rational beings, is I believe questionable.

Every individual has a certain dignity that demands our respect.
I know of no nation, no community that demonstrates this claim.

One has a duty to preserve oneself — a duty to whom?

Suicide is the equivalent of murder?
Have you ever seen anybody riddled with cancer, dying?
Suicide then is upholding the dignity of humanity.

Do those of us who do treat people decently do so because of reason, or is it a result of rational imagination?

In my view it is rational imagination, or perhaps empathy.
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(Xerex) said:

Wednesday 28, October 2009, 7:53 pm

peter hindrup.

Is it not to yourself and your loved ones you owe a certain duty?

Don't understand what you mean with rational imagination.

AC
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 29, October 2009, 8:35 am

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
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(rogernovotny) said:

Sunday 1, November 2009, 9:57 am

The best discussion thread so far.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 1, November 2009, 1:33 pm

Xerex, Jelle, Keddaw and Mannacio:

I'd like to invite you to a private discussion group on postmodernism (Foucault, Lyotard, etc). You can't access it at present, except by invitation. You may look at the sample of comments (over 1400) by visiting the following site: http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/bye-bye-miss-american-pie-part2/

It is a focused discussion, so far between three participants, but I would like to enlarge on the group. We've still got a long way to go, and new and fresh minds are always welcome.

In case you'd be interested to join, please email me and I will answer whatever questions you might have.

Roger Nowosielski

rogernowosielski@yahoo.com (email)
http://takeitorleaveit.typepad.com/its_my_take/ (website)

The comments thread:
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/bye-bye-miss-american-pie-part2/
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 3, November 2009, 3:57 pm

Kant's shopkeeper illustration reminds me of the story of the store owned by two partners. After a customer paid for a purchase with a twenty dollar bill and then left to go shipping at the store next door one partner discovered that a second twenty dollar bill had been attached to the bill used to pay for the purchase. He then faced a moral dilemma.

Should he tell his partner about the second bill?
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 3, November 2009, 3:59 pm

Kant's shopkeeper illustration reminds me of the story of the store owned by two partners. After a customer paid for a purchase with a twenty dollar bill and then left to go shopping at the store next door one partner discovered that a second twenty dollar bill had been attached to the bill used to pay for the purchase. He then faced a moral dilemma.

Should he tell his partner about the second bill?
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(Unregistered) said:

Friday 6, November 2009, 9:51 am

Isn't the fundamental problem with Kant's scheme that while all humens share the capacity to reason, reasoning skill is not equally distributed, and therefore all people would not necessarily agree on the same moral maxim(s) even if each person ignored personal needs/desires/inclinations/circumstances? In that case there could be no categorical imperative.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 11, November 2009, 3:38 pm

Jerry McGahan: I am white and live on an Indian reservation. I've believed in a moral relativism when it comes to cultures, that one culture should not enforce its mores on another. Then a few years back I found myself signing a petition protesting the stoning to death of an adulteress in Nigeria. My action was paltry, but it reversed my ideas on cultural relativism.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 17, November 2009, 9:19 pm

Regarding moral relativism: It is in fact possible to refute moral relativism simply on the basis of reason. As in physics, mathematics, what have you, there is an underlying truth that likewise applies to morality - namely, that something cannot be one thing and yet not that one thing at the same time and in the same respect. For instance, I cannot at the same time and in the same respect be both a human being and not a human being. Similarly, the number (or measure, or quantity) 5 cannot be the number 2 at the same time and in the same respect. Likewise, something (an act for instance) cannot be both moral and immoral at the same time and in the same respect.

Now, this is not to say that we do not have cultural, institutional, or dogmatic norms that may govern our tolerance of something to a greater or lesser extent than may be the case in another context, country, or environment. It simply means that regardless of how person A perceives an act and how person B perceives that same act, perception (or even cultural inclination) has absolutely no bearing on whether or not that act is in fact moral. In other words, something cannot be both right and wrong at the same time and in the same respect... even if it occurs on opposite sides of the planet. Lying (in the general sense) cannot be both right and wrong at the same time and in the same respect. I will grant, however, that context may lead us to view "lying" in a more nuanced manner. However, it would be incorrect to take the viewpoint of "what she thinks is right is right, and what I think is right is right, and we are both right." Wrong. If you and I are at odds on the same principle, then one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

This is not to say that a given individual's beliefs are without worth - that would be a slam against that individual's dignity. Rather, this simply indicates that we our beliefs are removed from the reality of an act's moral worth. This is very similar scientific theory in that regard. Simply because a particular theory is generally accepted does in itself provide for the veracity of that theory. Geo-centrism was widely accepted in its time in western civilization, but that did not change the fact that it was still false. Or even certain aspects of Newton's Laws, which, though they lead us in the right direction, came to be known as false with the advancement of the theory of relativity. Just as theory is merely a reflection of fact, an individual's or culture's regard for a particular act has absolutely no impact on the moral worth of that act.

I've often wondered why so many are so eager to embrace moral relativism. Perhaps they have been turned off by the extremist views of zealots and turn to a softer approach to morality - one that if nothing else, allows them to regard themselves as tolerant. Perhaps they use it as a crutch to avoid the challenges and self-doubt that come with deeper investigation. Or perhaps they simply want to be "nice." Either way, there are many who take it to a point so extreme that morality ceases to carry any weight whatsoever, and the moral worth of an act has been reduced to the point of irrelevance because it is relies on the belief that everything is arbitrary. And frankly, this thought is rather disturbing.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 18, January 2010, 1:49 pm

Morality is in so far relative in that it refers to duality. Good and evil are relative meanings, which are changing in accordance with one's way of thinking and behaving. Such meanings arise due to a duality within our identity, the tension between conscience and egotism, i.e. our cravings, desires and needs. Conscience perceives or intuitively senses possibilities for ethical action with the underlying motivation to do what is right, whereas egotism vitalizes the perception based on self-interest. In my view, this tension generates meanings, which we either perceive as being good or bad. However, the relativity of these meanings doesn't mean that there cannot be an ultimate foundation of goodness. Values as love, dignity, courage, integrity point to an absolute reality; however, we give meanings to these values in our own ways. Therefore, in my view, relativism can exist within absolute or transcend goodness, i.e. goodness beyond meanings of good and evil. Values, such as love, can be both discovered as truth and interpreted with understanding, where meanings are generated through a question and an answer.

(Kimig) said:

Sunday 22, November 2009, 5:48 pm

I think that what Kant teaches about moral reasoning is a good standard to check your motives by. Just like with Christianity you can obey the Lord's teachings because you love HIM or you can obey them out of religious duty or obligation (maybe someone is watching), or you can obey them because you fear before the Lord and or a combination of some or all of them. Then there are still others who will not obey them at all. But the reasons prove the motive. It is best to serve the Lord out of love for then it will NEVER Be in vain!

I love Kant's "Law of Humanity as an end" because we are rational beings worthy of dignity, reverence and respect. "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time, as an end." or in laymen terms "never having to say your sorry!" Good Stuff!
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 26, November 2009, 10:58 pm

Jerry McGahan here again. I'm white, and I've lived and raised a family for nearly the last forty years on the rez. I still hold with cultural relativism (apart from the Nigerian stoning) because our family's life has been enriched by living alongside another culture. By virtue of history, of personality, of general inclination, I could not do well in this native society. I have native friends who don't do well in the white society and avoid it. There are many differences but some of it can be generalized by saying the Indians (as they like to call themselves here) are far more laid back, less goal oriented, more family directed, and alert to spirits of the land and animals here. I raised an adopted native child, as have several other white families who are friends here. It's clear that children are often like their parents and not simply by nurture. There are powerful forces of nature at work. Intuitively, I know it's wrong for me to judge aspects of their culture that do not work for me, just as I know my native friends watch me indulge in white pursuits that mystify them in a way. They shrug and watch on without judgment. In this way, I saw myself as a relativist, until this matter of stoning the Nigerian adulteress came up and tipped over my neat regime of thought. Nothing is cut and dried in this realm. That's my reading.
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(Daniel) said:

Friday 4, December 2009, 12:09 pm

To maintain moral worth, it is my duty to live because it is the right thing to do. Here's an example of "the right thing to do" and utilitarianism at the same time: I'm in a combat zone leading my patrol when we are ambushed by a machinegun nest. We are all pinned down, some in the patrol are wounded already. The only way for the patrol to continue is to get rid of the machinegun nest. I don't want to die, I am the patrol leader, I can't order one of my men to go to his death and attack the nest, so I do it knowing I'll probably die in the process because I also have a moral duty to my men. When two moral duties come into conflict, what does Kant have to say? Isn't the fact that I sacrificed myself to save the majority also utilitarian? Please reply.
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 19, December 2009, 6:19 pm

I think the military is an exception. Their "duty" as in "duty, honor, country" has its own definition. It is not universal. Even a draft is not universal. So the Kantian test to make universal the duty to run headlong into a machinegun nest to fulfill a military mission is not met.

(Kryssa) said:

Sunday 6, December 2009, 1:29 pm

It does not have immediate moral worth if one defines moral worth as that which results from a selfless act. However, it has implied moral worth, if I may, since one can conclude with some confidence that the child, not having been cheated, returned home having had a positive experience with another human being.
The shopkeeper not need have any decency whatsoever and may act from a place of vile intention; but, the child need not be affected by this as long as his interaction is perceived by him to have been positive in nature.
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Sunday 13, December 2009, 8:41 am

What is the currency in which moral worth is valued? If a proposed action is compliant with duty independent of the reason for its performance, it would seem that it would be a matter of inverse moral worth to withhold this action. In this context, would not any action compliant with duty be assigned some measure of moral worth? As a practical matter, what difference can be discerned as a consequence of an action performed complient with duty that may have any arbitrary measure of moral worth attributed to it contigent upon the intent of the agent performing it.
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(Mike2010) said:

Monday 28, December 2009, 11:21 am

The paradox of Autonomy vs Duty

One of the things that really bother me about Kant is the paradox of acting according to one’s own free will - out of duty (the necessity to act out of reverence for the moral law set by the categorical imperative).

If we accept that we have a duty, an obligation, something externally imposed upon us, we cannot say that it is out of our free will that we act this way. Duty then is just a form of inclination, a desire to be moral. And even though Kant says that it’s ok to do good just to be a moral person, it would be unwise to presume that this duty comes from some “pure free will” of our own, which is ... what, inspired by God? We are all products of our society (in combination with our DNA), so where would this pure reason come from, other than the outside world and the desire to live in a society which maximizes the welfare of its people, i.e. maximizes utility?

The categorical imperative then, at the very least, is inspired by utilitarianism, and as such cannot claim a moral high ground. What do you guys think?
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(Amarsir) said:

Thursday 31, December 2009, 5:15 pm

I agree Mike2010. My problem with Kant is that he isn't proving his categorical imperative. He's simply presenting it. And then by definition granting it a pass.

This comes about when asking the basic question "why be moral?" Kant can't answer that. The reasons that come to mind (because it feels good or because it leads to a sustainable society) are invalid. All Kant can say is "be moral as the end, not the means." But that's circular logic, being moral because it's moral. Thus I find Kant's framework internally consistent, but unsupported.
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(Mykel) said:

Friday 1, January 2010, 5:17 pm

It seems to me that Kant would hate America as it is today with our culture of incentive's for every kind of accomplishment. Monetary loss and gain basically governing our every action.
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(Mykel) said:

Friday 1, January 2010, 6:07 pm

Like religion or not Do onto others as you would have them do unto you pretty much transcends religion. Still waiting on you guys to catch up to me. I would like to say that I have never read any of these books but have had thoughts and internal debates about questions very similar to the ones being talked about in the last few episodes.
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Saturday 2, January 2010, 9:49 pm

I believe it is generally recognized that Kant advocated a radiacally objective foundation for moral behavior. Although I do find resonance with his basis for action resting on the resolution of inclination and duty, I did not find his examples to be particularly compelling evidence for his position. As a practical matter, I believe that for the most part, our actions are driven largely by habitual behavior. When we find ourselves in an unfamiliar situation such that habit will not serve, then I believe in most cases of this sort, our immediate contingency response is to consider first a course of action judged to be most obvious and convenient to us. If this first considered action should be in violation of our internally imposed sense of justice, then an internal iterative process activates and in most cases will settle upon an alternative response that will serve to reasonably balance our sense of both utility and justice. I would assert that there will very likely be many situations where the action chosen by one individual versus another will differ and in cases such as these, all choices may very well be morally defensible. As with many problems, it may not be possible within the time allowed to settle upon the absolutely best solution, but it should be possible to settle upon a solution from a set of those considered to be acceptable. And of course, any solutions that we might consider will be contingent upon our nature and life experiences.
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(Kybernes) said:

Tuesday 5, January 2010, 10:08 am

I think you ingnored an important differnece: The differnce between motivation and reasons. It may be that you can find different motivations, feeling and attitudes for every action. But that should not lead to a simplifying psychologism that denies reasons at all. If it rains and I take an unbrella with me than the fact that it rains is a (and even very good) reason to do so. Of course you could think about different subconscious or conscious motivations to do so (e.g. due to your socialization you think that it is embarassing to go to work wet) but this doesn´t change anything for the (rational) reason to take the umbrella with you. For the question of morality it is of course more complicated but once you ask your self the moral question in a certain situation you ask more than if a certain action is comfortable for you or not.

(Rothbard) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 10:16 am

"As to Kant’s version of morality, it was appropriate to the kind of zombies that would inhabit that kind of [Kantian] universe: it consisted of total, abject selflessness. An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual; a benefit destroys the moral value of an action. (Thus, if one has no desire to be evil, one cannot be good; if one has, one can.)

Those who accept any part of Kant’s philosophy—metaphysical, epistemological or moral—deserve it."

- Ayn Rand
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 12:54 pm

Allthough you only posted a quote, which is always quite dissapointing, i ´ll try to give you (and Miss Rand) an answer: The mistake most people make when they read and interpret Kant is always the same. They forget a distiction that Kant was fully aware of, which is the distiction between consideration of empirical facts and analytical examination. Kants groundwork isn´t about a description how people are or should be but what it means when we speak about a moral act. Therefore you can argue that there is no such thing as moral and people just act in a certain way if there are any advantages for them.
Kant also knew - and also wrote it in his groundwork- that "how this hypothesis itself is possible can never be
discerned by any human reason. On the hypothesis, however, that the
will of an intelligence is free, its autonomy, as the essential formal
condition of its determination, is a necessary consequence."
Nonetheless most people don´t act like it is described above by Rand there are still acts like those. Let´s take for example what Janusz Korczak did(a polish-jewish pedagogue, more infos check wiki). During holocaust he decided to follow the children of his orphanage to Treblinka. How would somebody judge who believes that humans are solely rational egoists (as Rand does). Was Korczak an idiot; not able to see, that the most important motivation a man can have is to save his own life? The problem of rational egoism in general is this: Even if we are most of the time acting in our pure self-interest, there are still acts when we don´t. Another mistake is it to refuse Kants philosophy by mentioning empirical facts. That method just proofs that you don´t get the differnce between an anlytical and an empirical approach. There are possibilities to criticise Kant but solely to point at empirical facts isn´t more than a category mistake.
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(Kybernes) said:

Wednesday 6, January 2010, 12:56 pm

Sorry didn´t log in.
Allthough you only posted a quote, which is always quite dissapointing, i ´ll try to give you (and Miss Rand) an answer: The mistake most people make when they read and interpret Kant is always the same. They forget a distiction that Kant was fully aware of, which is the distiction between consideration of empirical facts and analytical examination. Kants groundwork isn´t about a description how people are or should be but what it means when we speak about a moral act. Therefore you can argue that there is no such thing as moral and people just act in a certain way if there are any advantages for them.
Kant also knew - and also wrote it in his groundwork- that "how this hypothesis itself is possible can never be
discerned by any human reason. On the hypothesis, however, that the
will of an intelligence is free, its autonomy, as the essential formal
condition of its determination, is a necessary consequence."
Nonetheless most people don´t act like it is described above by Rand there are still acts like those. Let´s take for example what Janusz Korczak did(a polish-jewish pedagogue, more infos check wiki). During holocaust he decided to follow the children of his orphanage to Treblinka. How would somebody judge who believes that humans are solely rational egoists (as Rand does). Was Korczak an idiot; not able to see, that the most important motivation a man can have is to save his own life? The problem of rational egoism in general is this: Even if we are most of the time acting in our pure self-interest, there are still acts when we don´t. Another mistake is it to refuse Kants philosophy by mentioning empirical facts. That method just proofs that you don´t get the differnce between an anlytical and an empirical approach. There are possibilities to criticise Kant but solely to point at empirical facts isn´t more than a category mistake.

(Rothbard) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 6:13 am

Ayn Rand doesn't assert that humans are solely rational egoists. She asserts that it is morally right for a man must be a rational egoist.

Clearly Korczak was not a rational egoist and by Rand's judgement his actions were not moral.

(Rothbard) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 7:39 am

I have a number of problems with Kant's views. I am not sure if these are valid arguments against or just failures to understand what is, at least to me, a very abstruse philosophical position.

1.The philosophies covered previously, utilitarianism and libertarianism treat all actions as being moral (good/desirable) or immoral(bad/undesirable) and although they use different criteria to ascertain if an action is moral or not, they provide clear guidance for action.

Kant seems to disassociate morality from good/desirable actions and bad/undesirable actions, ignoring consequences altogether elevating motives to the highest pinnacle:

Doing good deeds out of compassion “however right and amiable it may be” lacks moral worth.

Telling the truth only out of a sense of duty has moral worth, even if the consequences are horrific.

So it is possible to have good deeds that lack moral worth and bad deeds that have moral worth.

It is not possible to assess if any action carried out by anyone (other than ourself) has moral worth, because we can never know if the action, however good, was driven purely by self interested hypothetical imperatives.

If we are looking for a political philosophy to guide society, what can Kantian morality offer?

2.Kant’s definition of morality leads to decisions that seems to be at odds with our intuition about what we mean by morality, perhaps even leading to decisions that most would consider evil?

It would be immoral in Kantian terms to freely donate a kidney to save the life of a child. To do so would be to use yourself as a means to save another life and violate the categorical imperative of using humans as ends and not solely as means. (Following the same logic that Kant uses to make suicide immoral).

It would be moral in Kantian terms to tell the truth about where your child was hiding if asked by a murdering pedophile who wanted to rape and torture them, as long as you did so out of a sense of duty to telling the truth.

3. Kant’s two definitions of the categorical imperative are said to be simply different statements of the same single concept, but it appears to be possible to come up with maxims that fit the first definition and contradict the second.

The first says:
“Act only on the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”

The second says:
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time an end”

My chosen first maxim could be utilitarianism:
"Always act towards others in a way that maximizes the utility of society."

Or Libertarianism:
"Always act towards other as if they had an inalienable property right in themselves."

I can see no reason why these cannot be applied as universal laws without any logical inconsistencies arising.

We may not like all of the resulting outcomes, but how are they any worse than the outcome of telling the pedophile where to find a child in the Kantian example above?

If we take the libertarian maxim, then this would allow a person to give a kidney, their property, to a child, but this is using your own humanity as a means and not an end contrary to the second version.

If we take the utilitarian maxim, then we can feed the Christians to the lions, as long as the utility is high enough, but this is using humanity as a means and not an end contrary to the second version.

4.Kant seems to assert that we will all agree on the same moral law as an inevitable consequence of being rational beings and participants in “pure practical reason”.

However this is demonstrably false as many do not agree with Kant, presumably Bentham, Mill, Nozick, etc, are all rational beings, is the argument that since they have different moral laws, they must not be participants in pure practical reason?

This seems a very weak argument akin to, if you don’t agree with me then by definition you are stupid!
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(jaredkant) said:

Thursday 17, June 2010, 1:07 pm

The example that you call Kantian is a strange one. You neglect the objection that even though his motive may be true to a principle, it is not true to, and indeed is a grave trespass over the dignity of a rational and thinking person.

jk

(Kybernes) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 3:10 pm

First of all i have to say that you mad some good points. Nonetheless I´ll try to defend Kant even if I have to conced that I don´t know if my english language skills are adequate to that challenge.
I think you should consider one point I already mentioned: the differnece between an analytical and an empirical approach. The introduction to Kants groundwork makes that clear:
"Isn’t it utterly necessary to construct a pure moral
philosophy that is completely freed from everything
that may be only empirical and thus belong to anthropology?
That there must be such a philosophy is self-evident from
the common idea of duty and moral laws. Everyone must
admit •that if a law is to hold morally (i.e. as a basis for
someone’s being obliged to do something), it must imply
absolute necessity;"
The Idea is to find certain rules, or rather a method that is comparable to mathematics in its clarity, that allows it to set moral norms which are universally valid. You could ask "Why should I, why shouldnt´t I rather avail myself of my broad knowledge of obvious human characteristics and behaviour?" If you think that would be a path to follow much easier than to follow Kant you may be right but that shouldn´t be our first interst. So lets consider some reason for Kants self-imposed path: First of all it is simply a good idea to search for methods which are universally valid (logic or mathematics may be the only sciences were this promise can be hold but the ideal remains attractive for other catgory groups). As an example let us take the mentioned inalienable property. Is there any possibilty to proof or at least to find an argument that doesn´t refer to an arbitrarly idea of the state of nature. Is property really a principle of human nature or isn´t it- as a student in Sandels course mentioned - rather the idea on an english nobleman trying to legitimate to take away the natural ressources from indigenes? Even if Locke isn´t right about the state of nature (adn for me it is still incomprehensible how he could fall behind Hobbes and think of the state of nature as a historical fact) we still can learn a lot about the question how a society or a state should be built up. But due to the analytical question, "What does it mean to say an act was moral?", he doesn´t tell us that much. And to be fair you should consider that the groundwork isn´t part of Kants political work.
But let´s get back to the main question: The reason, why many of the philosphical answers are so weak in comparsion to Kant is that they lead either to relativism (exponent A), chauvinism (exponant B) or psychologism (exponant C).
A would explain that moral values and norms are merely a question of cultural heritage and tradition. Any moral norm in any differnt culture has the same right since there are no universally value arguments. This could lead to total relativism or even an end of serious philosophy at all (lets all become ethnologists)
B explains an indigene in the djungle (or a visitor from outerspace) that if he doesn´t know acertain good - e.g. property or any comparable good that is arbitraly declared as the most important - than he is simply wrong an idiot or not able to talk about moral at all.
C would explain that all what we describe as ethics, moral etc. is merely the effect of pyschological disorientation, or socialisation or - for the neurobiologist- a certain part of our brain that causes certain effects.
The great attraction of Kants work is that it (in allmost all instances) based on rational arguments. But this attribute becomes problematical in the lying example. It is hard to give an answer to Constant criticism. I don´t kow if "challengning the murderer" or "refusing the murderer" (see "categorical imperative on wiki for those) are convincing answers. Since I don´t know a better answer to myself I would say that Kants answer to Constant is the price he had to pay for logical consistency and clarity. But I´ll think about it again and hope i´ll find a better answer
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Thursday 7, January 2010, 4:51 pm

Kant places great weight upon the intent of the moral agent in determining the moral worth of an action to the exclusion of any consequences of the action, favorable or otherwise. This suggests that moral worth is derived from properties of the moral agent and has nothing to do with the action itself beyond its singular manifestation of the properties from which it has been spawned. It would be expected that exemplary moral behavior would be routinely expected of a moral agent with highly evolved internalized moral standards, standards developed over time as a consequence of his/her nature and life experiences, in particular, standards that are the underlying properties from which morally admirable behavior is manifested. This notion belongs at least in part to the realm of empericism, a realm that should be exploited to mitigate some of the extremism found in a pure Kantian position.
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(Kybernes) said:

Saturday 9, January 2010, 8:29 am

Sorry but thats just not what Kant said. For Kant, morality is not an effect of socialization or any empiristic influences. A lot of criticism and defense on Kant is based on a misunderstanding of his (analytical approach). To point empirical facts (as "If somebodey would act morally than he also would be...") can never be an answer to an analytical approach. The problem that most people see in Kants analytical derivation of morality is the question how this morality can be undestood practical. But Kant was aware of this problem (even if he conceded that he couldn´t give a proper answer:

"How can pure reason, all by itself without any outside
help from other action-drivers, be practical? How
can the mere principle of the universal validity of its
maxims as laws. . . .create, unaided, an action-driver
and produce an interest that would be called ‘purely
moral’? In short: How can pure reason be practical?
All human reason is wholly incompetent to explain this, and
it is a waste of trouble and labour to try."
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 9, January 2010, 4:17 pm

I completely agree with you that Kant's analytical approach leaves no room for empericism (Hume) which I believe it was his objective from the start to completely discredit. From a practical perspective, when confronted with a morally ambiguous conundrum, how might a moral agent best respond? As you (and Kant) have indicated, an analytic approach as currently formulated by Kant cannot unconditionally stand by itself -- other considerations often must apply, considerations such as ability, empathy, sympathy, consequences, context, urgency, etc. I am inclined to support the position that "because a man is what he is, he will do what he does" -- what goes into the core essence of a man includes his nature and life experiences, experiences that could certainly include the works of Kant, Hume, Mills, Hobbes, Locke, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and even Bentham. Unless you are prepared to accept a position that Kant has a complete solution for defining morality, then allowances must be made for modifications of his position.
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Saturday 9, January 2010, 4:20 pm

Apparently I was not logged in.

(Kybernes) said:

Sunday 10, January 2010, 9:05 am

I agree with most things yiu said but I´d like to add another important distinction. The distinction between two battery of questions that have been mixed up by the most people in this forum albeit the distinction is critical for the evaluation of different philosophical approaches.
1. What does it mean to act moral?/What is morality?/What distinuishes a moral act from othe acts? (definitional/analytical problem)
2. Why should one act morally? Why should I act morally? (problem of motivation)
Kants groundwork is probably one of the best (certainly it is the most influential) answer to the first question? Problems with Kant always starts when people think it is a good idea to criticize Kant based on the problem of motivation without ever being concerned with the definitional question. For those people utilitarism, consequentalism and other isms are so attractive because it seems (and must of them really do that in parts) that they give profund answers to the question of motivation. The problem is that those approaches loose the term of morality at all. By explaining every moral act by a certain non-genuine moral motivation the destroy any possibilty to dinstinguish between moral and other kind of acts. At last the term morality looses all categorical sharpness. Probably it is true that a practical conversion of Kants writings needs further explanation and non-analytical consideration. On the other hand it is important to see, that the aforementioned "-isms" implicate the risk to loose morality at all. A good way to challenge for example the approach of rational egoisms is as follows: "You told me that all my moral acts have been at last motivated by my own interests. But why have they been moral. What does "morality" mean? If it is just the fullfillment of self-interest the term gets obsolete.
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(BitBucketBob) said:

Sunday 10, January 2010, 1:17 pm

I would offer the following definition of morality: Morality is the acquired values and beliefs held by a moral agent that are expressed as actions contingent upon circumstance, actions that must be constrained by abilities possessed by the moral agent.

Good morality would generally be expected to produce good consequences, whereas bad morality would be expected to often produce bad consequences.
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(Rothbard) said:

Wednesday 13, January 2010, 4:04 am

I think Kybernes makes some good points about people misunderstanding or misapplying Kant.

However, my original point 3 is an attack on the logical consistency of Kant's own statements of his categorical imperative.

My point 4 is an attack on the analytical justification of the categorical imperative. My contention is that his reasoning can be used to justify any consistent moral view.

e.g.

Rothbard's Categorical Imperative is to treat people as though they had a property right in themselves and their just physical property.

I can justify this in the same way as Kant justifies his version.

This comes about because if rational people choose through pure reason a moral law to live by, that is the one that they will come up with !

The whole analytical edifice is built on sand.
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 18, January 2010, 2:50 pm

It is interesting that Kant bases his theory on "man" or humanity. This seems limiting. It seems like Kant's theory could run into problems with something like the Tragedy of the Commons. Here, one could imagine that each individual was acting for the universal good of humanity, but such actions would destroy that very humanity. I think Kant's theory would be stronger if it were extended even more broadly. For example, "act in such a way that you always treat the entire world and all its creatures and objects as an end.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 24, January 2010, 4:05 am

And then we would all starve as eating anything would treat it as an end !

(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 21, January 2010, 9:43 pm

why is there a spiderman in the audience? is it to test if the viewer is paying attention? perhaps we are part of a greater experiment...
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 23, January 2010, 4:01 pm

I doubt the premise of the argument. If we are life forms that have emerged over millions of years through natural selection and not because a god created us in its image, then we are part of this planet's natural history and as such will find it extremely difficult to rise above the hisotricalprocess that has defined us. Since we are part of life - that is, part of the process of replication and adaptation - then our sense of morality will not be limited to our species alone. Does it apply to the gorilla or the bat?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 24, January 2010, 4:57 pm

Earlier discussions have challenged the students and their belief systems and conflicting interests. I'm having difficulties with this segment on Kant. First, if I heard correctly, Michael Sandel opines that Kant reaches the apex of moral thought. Man reaches that apex through autonomously acts, not in his own self-interest, to satisfy a moral end.

That suggests objective and unified agreement over what is "right(eous). Given that this is a political discourse let us bring it into the here and now: Is the person eminently moral if s/he autonomously, and against self interest, kills (absent clear, present and imminent danger to another) a doctor who as part of his/her practice occasionally aborts a fetus? Would the act be less or equally moral if there was an imminent danger?

Since Kant predates modern psychiatry (Shakespeare notwithstanding) how might one differentiate certain autonomous acts from pathological behavior in following internal voices?
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(RMax304823) said:

Friday 29, January 2010, 6:30 pm

Just a few points.

One is that Kant proposes that we act autonomously, not heteronymously -- that we should act according to the rules we give ourselves. How do you do that? If I become a devotee of Kant and act according to his categorical imperatives, I'm being influenced by a source outside myself. It's a paradox. It's like ordering someone to "be spontaneous." If he is spontaneous, he's following your order.

And can we really know our own motives? It's nice that the winner of the Spelling Bee confessed the truth and returned his trophy, but might he not, at some level of awareness, reckoned that being a "hero" instead of just a "spelling bee winner" might increase his own celebrity?

We should all act honorably towards others because we share with them the capacity for reason. It's our duty to do so. But it's still not clear to me why I should respect others and follow the path of good moral action when I'm surrounded by blood-thirsty enemies who are about to hang me just because they want to follow a hypothetical imperative and get rid of my irritating moral influence over them.

I'm sure I've got this all wrong because Kant was such a superior thinker. Also very punctual. The shopkeepers of Konigsberg used to set their clocks according to the time he passed their establishments on the way to work in the mornings. I tried to read him once but couldn't get past the first few pages because my eyeballs coagulated and my synapses fused.
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(TheITSystem) said:

Thursday 4, February 2010, 10:00 pm

I saw Spiderman at 1:54. I thought I saw Batman too, but that is just because I'm watching in my underwear. Very THX of you. I'm also starting to get a few ideas of the camera man's (or woman's) taste in women. Either way we should party together.

Do I win a full ride to Harvard now?
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(lightwayvez) said:

Monday 8, February 2010, 2:27 am

I guess what I gleened from this episode is the expense of the hall and the fumes at the dry cleaners picking up that three piece suit. Sandels sports a confident gait when considering the topic of duty and altruism of international demur.

Quintessence of freedom, the will and or duty to be or not to be environmentally kind to earth and or humanity.

And so the means to an end is defined by the speaker.
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 9, February 2010, 11:18 am

How is it possible to make an absolute free choice? Even when we decide to do the right just because it's right, where does that desire to comes from? It must come from some irrational part of us. So, I think that reason, in the end, is always based on an irrational component, ergo, something you haven't decide - at least not in rational terms as we know them - ergo, we are not entirely free. Since we star to reason, we can be free reasoning, but we haven't rationally decide to start reasoning, so we are partially free in terms of being rational. I think C G Jung was on to something when he said that reasoning is clearly not the best tool to get to know the truth.

G. Pedersen
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(Unregistered) said:

Tuesday 16, February 2010, 3:59 pm

in order to commit suicide, you lose your humanity in reason, so how can you really say that suicide and murder are the same?
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(Unregistered) said:

Monday 22, February 2010, 10:26 am

I never understood why Kant is so revered by many. He is too objective. Additionally, his "duty before inclination" stance was flawed. What if doing your duty is to commit evil? Now we have a paradox...
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 18, March 2010, 12:44 pm

anybody else notice spiderman in the audience? right in the center.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 21, March 2010, 12:19 pm

Kybernes draws the distinction (correctly, in my view) between the definitional question (what does it mean to be good?) and the motivational question (why should I be good?). Where I depart from Kybernes is that he believes the definitional question should come first. I believe that one can only give a meaningful answer to the question of "what is good behavior?" if one knows why we should be good. Form follows function. You cannot decide what kind of bridge to build over the river until you know whether the bridge is for foot traffic or large vehicles. Sure, you can draw up a complex, internally consistent, and aesthetically pleasing design for your bridge. If it is a matter of indifference to you whether the bridge is going to collapse in the real world, you can draw up all kinds of spiffy little designs. But who cares? They are useless, except as an intellectual exercise. By divorcing morality from consequences, Kant makes morality inconsequential.

Once morality has a purpose, however, one can test the axioms of any given moral code against that purpose. (Yes, I know, very William James of me.) Utilitarianism, for example, offers the yardstick of enlightened self-interest. I can know that democratic societies are better than communist societies by observing that people in communist societies consider themselves much worse off than people in democratic societies. There is no a priori reason why this must be so. In fact, one can make the case that communism sounds pretty good as a purely analytical theory. The proof that communism is not good (under a utilitarian analysis) is that nobody was trying to climb over the Berlin Wall going east. I have no analytical proof that democracy is superior, and neither does Kant, of course. In the words of some nameless but great New England philosopher, "It jes’ so happens."

Similarly, if your reason for being good is that you believe in a morally superior God, and wish to devote your will to carrying out His moral commands (or, on a more immediate level, if you are just afraid of being sent to Hell), you will find your morality in the study of scripture.

Or, perhaps, your reason to be good is to avoid feelings of guilt and shame, or because you take pride in feeling yourself to be a good person, or because you follow promptings of altruism or compassion from within. If so, you will have a basis to judge whether your actions are good. Even a dog feels shame when he knows has been bad (hence the expression "hangdog look"). It does not matter to the dog that he has no Kantian analytical theory to justify his emotions. He still knows that peeing on the carpet is bad, and feels ashamed.

I find it ironic that Kybernes dismisses these empirically-based criteria for morality as subjective and therefore "relative" and "obsolete." As with my bridge-building analogy, a morality which subjects itself to the test of real-world consequences is anything but subjective. If the bridge falls down, it was not built properly. To the contrary, it is the purely analytical approach of the categorical thinkers that is completely subjective. Their morality is whatever they say it is. There is no way to disprove it. There are no criteria against which it can be tested. Just because I assert that something is ALWAYS (categorically) true, does not make my statement "objective." It is still just my unsupported assertion.
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(hillhopper) said:

Wednesday 12, May 2010, 9:43 am

1. What is moral character? Is it what you tend to do, or is it your beliefs and your attitudes?r? This implies a mind-body problem determined by the effects of choices. Logically, it is a circular argument stating that 'tendency to do' and 'beliefs and attitudes' are products of each other. Moral character rests more on the congruence of behavior-as-acting with behavior-as-abstracting when judged from a second or third or more point of view. From the New Testament is the following quote as an example:

"12:34 O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good

things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

12:35 A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth

good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth

evil things.

12:36 But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak,

they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

12:37 For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou

shalt be condemned."

Thus, even 2000 years ago, the problem of moral trust was defined as consistency in action and word.

So, does that mean that all liars are untrustworthy? Does it mean that all that are always truthful cannot err?

Immoral acts are usually judged according to law, yet the law itself is not consistent in defining acts of a questionable nature.

How then can anyone be justified? By moral restraint? this is Kant's argument and it fails because the conclusion of moral justification is already implied in a premise, creating a circular argument which says that moral character is the act, belief, and attitude of a moral set which defines the term, "moral character".

This does not invalidate the necessity of discriminating behaviors in terms of moral or immoral, but does require the setting of one against the other as they are qualitatively opposite.

The other problem with moral judgment is the fallacy of black and white thinking, which seems as much a pitfall as the circular argument.

The third problem with moral judgment is the vicious oscillation of act, vengeance, and revenge.
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(evatemporal) said:

Wednesday 16, June 2010, 10:39 pm

For the last question I do not agree with Sandel in the answer he provided, and this is because in my reading of Kant using other human beings as ends is always wrong thus objectionable,and it is intrinsically incompatible with our respect for practical reason. In the case mentioned by Patric it does not really have to be read as using myself or owner of the shop as means, for it is always possible possible for me to imagine the alternative scenario in which I am performing these everyday chores for the sake of fulfilling my duties, say, being a good student or being alive so that i can continue to be the good student.

Second, insofar as the daily coping is concerned, I personally doubt if Kant has anything to say about situation as such, given his preoccupation with finding out the a priori laws for nature and morality, which is by definition transcending the contigent day-to-day experience. Besides, it is really questionable if my daily coping with the world should be considered as conscious behavior motivated by this and that intention or scheme in the mind. (For thinkers like Heidegger it does not have to be so, since we can viwe these mundane dealing as not the realization of clear intention rather than practice based on our familarity with the world.) In any case i find answer for these everyday living problem quite difficult to answer within Kant's arguemnt in the groundwork.
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(Bai Liping) said:

Saturday 24, July 2010, 1:11 am

About the spelling bee boy Andrew, I do not think Kant would consider his action moral. Had him knew fully well what it means to win the national spelling be, would he still made the same choice? I do not think so.
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(Unregistered) said:

Saturday 28, August 2010, 12:07 pm

Kant’s moral philosophy deprives self-interest of any and all honor. This rejection of self-interest is a rejection of all human values and goals because to pursue one’s self interest means to pursue values and goals. For Kant, morality must bind a person independently of any specific desires, ends, or inclinations he may have; that an act is moral only if no benefit of any kind is derived from it. Thus a benefit destroys the moral value of an action.

To Kant an action is moral only if a person has no desire to perform it but performs it out of a sense of duty and receives no benefit from it of any kind. Kant holds that the pursuit of a person’s own happiness or interest is of no moral worth whatsoever. According to Kant, a person is amoral when he acts to attain his values.

Thus, to Kant, if a person wants to be honest he deserves nor moral credit. However, an individual who does not have a natural desire to help others or to be honest but nevertheless does so from duty does display moral worth.

Thus, if one has no desire to be evil, one cannot be good; if one has a desire to be evil, one can be good.

Kant’s morality of duty restricts the importance an individual’s experiences and thought and teaches that morality depends on adherence to a priori truths and on ignoring the real world. Kant is attacking both the efficacy of a man’s mind and objective reality at a metaphysical level.
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 6, December 2009, 1:21 pm

If everybody in the world lived the American lifestyle, and ate meat like Americans, it would be unsustainable and destructive for all life, including human life. Hence, by Kant's categorical imperative, Americans are acting unethically by not doing enough to change their lifestyles and stop eating meat.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 28, October 2010, 12:35 pm

So the obvious solution is for American's to knock off all that evil? Evidentially your morality trumps that of all Americans. Morality in and of its self is not the problem, it is the legislation of one morality over another where the line is crossed. In a society eager to feel benevolent, it is no wonder that we have so many laws at odds with the very freedom we profess to cherish. Today governments offer little more than the wholesale adoption, of the morality of the day, by politicians, for the feel good mob with the message "lend me your support and I will legislate our way".

Society sees, what their value system demands, in their candidate of choice. The mob looks to words, forsaking actions of candidates that potentially reveal the morality or values being brought to the political arena and lecture condescendingly, those who point out the disconnect.

Utilitarianism is the obvious solution being espoused and it will be until your rights and morality are infringed upon by a more popular position.
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 21, January 2010, 9:41 pm

why is there a spiderman in the audience? is it to test if the viewer is paying attention? perhaps we are part of a greater experiment...
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 10, February 2010, 12:21 pm

With respect to the motives of the man who throw himself over the grenade. I think the point is not to get know his motives, but whether he knew his own motives when he did it. The rest is irrelevant. And of course we would never know but If he did it "morally" he didn't do it expecting us to appreciate his motives if did out of duty.
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 3, March 2010, 9:48 am

WHY is Spider Man sitting in the audience!????

WATCH from 3:30 - 3:40 and you will see him near the right side of the screen..

What is THAT all about?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 18, July 2010, 10:07 pm

Um, why is Spiderman in this class?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 18, July 2010, 10:44 pm

Spiderman sitting in the audience is a perfect example of Kant's principal principle: he follows his own sense of duty, not society's approval or disapproval. Perhaps he seeks to soak up all the rational ideas put forth in the lecture hall in order to give his ideals a greater moral imperative. I think for myself, therefore I am. His sitting there all costumed is societally outrageous but he follows sense of individualism unencumbered by mores, just what he thinks is morally correct.His sitting there that way has moral value because his action pays no mind to what is legally offensive or societally-approved. Spiderman is filled with moral ambiguity, after all. Does he not attempt to save as many human beings as possible because of external factors? He wants to please his grandparents, win the girl, defeat his chief competitor and triumph over Evil not necessarily for its own sake. And let's remember that his having been bitten by a spider to begin this whole process removes his own free will and with it the human dignity which Kant requires in the first place
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 3, March 2010, 9:48 am

WHY is Spider Man sitting in the audience!????

WATCH from 3:30 - 3:40 and you will see him near the right side of the screen..

What is THAT all about?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 18, July 2010, 10:07 pm

Um, why is Spiderman in this class?
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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 18, July 2010, 10:44 pm

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(Unregistered) said:

Sunday 18, July 2010, 4:24 am

i dont think... just cuz one person is looking at the profit worth of the act of being honest.... he shud be said he isnt acting morally... i think his action is right and just ... and moral... since he is following the principal... even though he has the aspect of goodness in his mind for doing. it....and that goodness is unavoidable...

whether u talk abt islam or christianity or any book given on laws and ways of living... man is asked to come to good... and those who follow the path dont follow for any other reason but to reach good... cuz they know good will do them good...a nd evil will do them harm... so deep down its in humans basic instinct to save themselves...

thus we act morally when we try to save ourselves... whetehr here or anywhere... wats not moral is when we try to save ourselves taking away from others whats their legal rights...

thats the only thing immoral..as far as i am concerned and going against the laws which he/she has agreed to follow...

for example...

i may not have the visa.... for a country... but its stted int he countrys law that no man who doesnt ahev the visa can come inside...

now i dont agree to this law... i say its god earth who are u to stop me... and i go try to break in... doing all i can...

now...as per me tehre is nothing wrong morally... why cuz i dont take ur law and agree to it...

as for u.... u made this law based on what... who gave u the right to make such divisions and claim a land as ur own...may be are the one who is acting immorally keeping from me my right...
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(Unregistered) said:

Wednesday 28, July 2010, 1:27 am

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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 30, September 2010, 4:30 pm

yess. yess i do belive that is true.. i need a job.! help
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 30, September 2010, 4:38 pm

HELLLLLOOOO
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(Unregistered) said:

Thursday 30, September 2010, 4:43 pm

yes.. justice is a B word... i do aqree
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