Friday, January 27, 2006

Kant do it


Kant was a great philosopher who believed in the power of reason. He applied reason to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of art, maths and ethics. He is reknowned for his incredible theory of morality.

Kant believes that we can only have morality based on reason because morality based on experience is inconsistent and based on desires. He presses that we should "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

By this, he meant that we could discover what was morally good and bad by taking an action, repeating it over and over again, and then observing the repercussions. For example, take the action of lying. If everyone was to lie all the time in society, no-one would ever trust anyone, and society would not function well at all. So, Kant says that a lie is an offence to mankind generally because it errodes the contract of truthfulness in society. On the other hand, telling the truth must be morally good because if everyone told the truth, then everything could be believed, and this makes things MUCH easier. Therefore, according to Kant, "truthfullness...is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage accruing to himself or another".

Every theory in philosophy has a problem, and the problem with this one is this. Suppose that a murderer was after your mother, and he appears at your door one day with a large, shiny kitchen knife. He asks you if your mother is home. You have read Kant's Ethics of duty and remember that truth telling is morally good. So you tell the murderer that your mother is in...

Is this right? Kant would have led the murderer to his mother! But there are other things to consider. What if Kant did decides to lie about the whereabouts of his mother: "She's out right now, come back later". Meanwhile, his mother escapes out the back window and runs into the robber outside. We can guess what happens after the this. So maybe Kant should have told the murderer the truth, because then his mother would have known that he would, and then crept outside the window.

Kant's view sides with deontic moral philosophy, rather than Consequentialist. Consequentialist theories dictate that we should act in ways that will produce the best consequences. So, a Consequentialist would not lead the murderer to his or her mother, because this would probably lead to an undesired result.

However, Consequentialist theories have problems of their own. Suppose that there is a small community of foreigners living within a certain society, and the general population strongly desires for this small community to withdraw itself. The foreigners do not really mind leaving (but they don't really want to) and so their leaving will produce more happiness in the vast majority than unhappiness in the minority. Is it therefore moral to have them removed? This is counter-intuitive, and perhaps for deontic reasons.

It seems that our idea of morality lies somewhere between the extremes of deontic logic and consequentialist theory.


Further Reading:
  • Kant, Immanuel, 1994, "The Categorical Imperative" and "On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives", reprinted in P. Singer (ed.)Ethics, pp. 274 - 281

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Consequences

Consequentialism is one of the more favoured theories of morality. It says that in any situation, the right action is the one that will produce the best consequences. What is the best consequence, you might ask. Well, we also need a theory of value. Namely, we choose something that we value, such as happiness, and then we go on to act in a way which will produce the most happiness. This, the Consequentialist says, is what morality is all about.

But consider the following situation:

"Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of inhabitants who, after recents acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting. However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest's privilege of killing one the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occassion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occassion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all. Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got holg of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?”[1]

What would you do? If Jim was a Consequentialist, he would kill. But imagine if, after murdering the Indian, Pedro turned around and said: "Ahaha! Jokes on you! I was only kidding about the special occassion; we'll proceed to execute the rest". Jim could not have anticipated this, and yet he thought that he was acting morally. Another problem for Consequentialist Jim is that he would kill his own mother, if she were that Indian.


[1] Smart, J.J.C., 1973, Utilitarianism: for and against, Cambridge University Press, pp. 98 - 99

Monday, January 23, 2006

Liar liar

The Liar Paradox was discovered by the ancient Greeks, and concerned them to a great extent. It concerned them because it seemed to be unsolvable. It seemed to offend the very nature of the world and reason itself. It goes like this...

One day, a traveller comes across a man who is sitting by the road. The man by the road cautions the traveller: "Don't believe a word from the first person that talks to you today - they are lying!" The traveller throws his head back in astonishment.
"But you're the first person to talk to me today!"
The traveller continues on his journey and ponders the strange exclamation made by the man. He thinks: "If he is lying, then he is telling the truth. But if he is telling the truth, then he is lying".

Hence, the paradox. So, which is it?!

The Ring of Gyges

Plato once wrote a short dialogue called "The Ring of Gyges". It featured two characters called Glaucon and Socrates (Socrates was Plato's teacher but Plato often used him as a character in his dialogues) who demonstrate why there is no reason to have such a high respect for what we call justice. Glaucon is the instrument for voicing this opinion, and he does this by first offering a theory on the nature of the origin of justice:

"They say that to do wrong is naturally good, to be wronged is bad, but the suffering of injury so far exceeds in badness the good of inflicting it that when men have done wrong to each other and suffered it, and have had a taste of both, those who are unable to avoid the latter and practise the former decide that it is profitable to come to an agreementwith each other neither to inflict injury nor to suffer it. As a result they begin to make laws and covenants, and the law's command they call lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and essence of justice; it stands between the best and the worst, the best being able to do wrong without paying the penalty and the worst to be wronged without the power of revenge"

In simple words, he thinks that justice comes from the laws that we create so that we can avoid being harmed. These laws are only created because we would rather give up our ability to wrong others, than be wronged by others.
So, if you possessed a magical ring - the ring of Gyges - that makes you invisible when you put it on, would it be foolish to keep abiding by the law? Glaucon suggests that we shall be able to make a correct judgement about it only if we consider the most just man, and the most unjust man.

For the most just man: we must take away his reputation, for a reputation for justice would bring him honour and rewards, and it would not be clear whether he is being just for the sake of justice, or for sake of the benefits he will recieve from being just. Though he does no wrong, he must have the greatest reputation for wrongdoing so that he may be tested for justice by not weakening under ill repute and its consequences.

For the most unjust man: someone who is caught must be considered a poor performer, for the extreme of injustice is to have a reputation for justice, and our perfectly unjust man must be granted perfection in injustice...

Glaucon concludes: "and let them be judged as to which of the two is happier."

By comparing the most just man and the most unjust man, we can see that there is no reason why the laws should be obeyed for their own sake. However, it makes sense for the owner of the ring to keep obeying the laws if doing wrong would leave them with unwanted feelings such as guilt. Another way that we could argue against Glaucon is to reject the nature of the origin of justice. It suggests that we are selfish beings who are prepared to do wrong to others if it will benefit ourselves. For a further discussion of this, see Are we really that selfish?.

If you are interested in reading Plato's dialogue, see The Myth of Gyges.