(May 14, 2014 at 8:06 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I think Sam Harris made a good point, however, that when you pull the mask of "deontological ethics" off Kant's Categorical Imperatives, you actually have the face of consequantialism. Otherwise, on what basis do we have for determining that the maxim of a Universal Law matters one way or another at all?
Harris is just flatly wrong. Kant's deontological moral theory isn't consequentialistic at all. The basis for the Categorical Imperative mattering is in terms of it providing a consistent ethical axiom. The futility of that question is like asking a consequentialist (like myself) "why should the consequences of an action matter ethically?" It's a moral axiom, but it is not one that forms the basis of any strictly deontological moral theory.
Quote:Especially take my example of suicide. If I thought life was so meaningless that I wanted to kill myself, why would I value that everyone else lived? Who can make the moral judgement that the world is better off with humans? Sure, to us, but maybe not the suicidal mind. What makes the maxim that "Do that which you would will become a universal law" apply to all instances of lying rather than a more narrowly defined definition that excludes instances where every sane person would want the universal law to allow for some degree of deception. As one critic is said to have put it, "if you're getting pursued by an ax murderer, don't go to Kant's house!"
But again, Kant has this covered. If everyone committed suicide, then there wouldn't be anyone left to commit suicide, which vitiates any morality since it eliminates all moral agents. It's a sort of reductio ad absurdum of objections like that.
The world is "better off" because morality is actually possible in a world with moral agents, making it "better" by definition.
Yes but for Kant, the mere fact that we would want for there to be an exception to the rule is not enough for it to override the CI. After all, we want to do all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean we should allow ourselves to.
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-George Carlin
