Kant's Categorical Imperatives

[MindForgedManacle]

My question regards Immanuel Kant's "Categorical Imperatives." I haven't gotten around to reading Kant though he's definitely on my list of future endeavors, so my knowledge of him is limited to other's commentaries and a few Google searches. A few days ago I got into an unproductive argument with an apparently devout follower of Kant whose position it was, like Kant's, that if a murderer were to arrive at your doorstep seeking to slaughter your friend, whom you were harboring, it would be your duty NOT to lie to the murderer, even if the consequence was that your friend would end up getting massacred. I found this, well let's just say, INSANE! I didn't believe at first that that couldn't have actually been what Kant meant. But it appears that it was indeed an early objection to his moral philosophy and Kant never really came to see the problem with it. I'm coming to the issue from the position of, well let's call it "urbane consequentialism." What are your views on Kant in this example? From what I've read of Kant's contributions to the notions of "unalienable" "human rights" and "equality," I think he was on the right track in many ways...but failed to allow that every rule has an exception or two, even imperatives. The example of the murderer must be one of them. It must also be asked, how does a Kantian establish what is a "Categorical Imperative"? What about in the case of suicide?

Well, your objection to Kant that, in the axe murderer example, it ignores the consequences of telling the truth, we must get something clear. Kant held to and was defending a deontological ethical system. Deontology isn't about consequences, but about fulfilling duties. For Kant and his moral system, it was a non sequitur to say that telling the axe maniac the truth ignores the consequences misses what Kant believes defeats such objections: That you cannot be held accountable for the choices others make. Your obligation is to be moral, which in this moral framework means telling the truth.

As for how he establishes what is categorically imperative, think about the term "universilization". Basically, Kant's argument was (if I recall correctly) that they were things that you would want everyone in all comparable situations that doesn't reduce to absurdity. Or as Kant put it, "Do that which you would will become a universal law."

So for example, why shouldn't we steal things? Well, if everyone always stole things at all times, then the very concept of ownership no longer makes any sense, and thus "stealing" is a concept that no longer makes sense, because it's no longer even possible since no one owns anything.

So basically, if a morally-relevant action is something you would want everyone to do, it's a categorical imperative.

The categorical imperative briefly seems like a good idea until you realize, as you said, that every rule has exceptions.

I think that for Kant, that's the reason the world is fallen, because we aren't consistent with our morality. Of course, that makes his ethics largely useless as a useful moral system to apply in the real world.

Essentially, it is a categorical imperative if you can reasonably state that all people should follow it at all times. If you think about it, there shouldn't ever be any problems with having to make an exception to a categorical imperative because they are by definition without exception...and hence non-existent. I'm not sure I understand what you're asking about suicide, but if we could hardly want everyone to kill themselves, so that would be against the categorical imperative.

And if everyone killed themselves, there would no longer be any possibility of morality and no one could kill themselves any longer. xD

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I categorically deny categorical imperatives.

Ethical and moral behavior is, of necessity, somewhat fluid. Taking life is generally wrong, but we're all relieved when the STG take down a man who has killed two of his eight year old hostages and threatens to kill the rest.

In his extolling of categorical imperatives, Kant seems to have missed a few points, primarily the Greater Good. While we cannot possibly foresee all consequences to a given action, it would be morally repugnant to us to allow the hostage taker mentioned above to kill the remaining 20 children in his power, on the grounds that some of them might grow up to be thoroughly evil people. Without being omniscient, the best we can possibly do is to perform the greatest good for the greatest number.

Boru

This misses that Kant was not a consequentialist, nor did he think one can be held responsible for the freely chosen actions of another rational agent. And the epistemic problem with being unable to see the real consequences of our actions is what further makes Kant see consequentialism and the "Greater Good" as a non-starter. But I like consequentialism, so I needn't say more. xD