Sunday, September 4, 2011

More Philisophical Findings/ Critique of Kant

Yah, there's still some mroe notes I've got on the subject...

1) First Formulation: Universal Law

-It's an intrinsically good act if the world can act the way you do.
-Maxim: Statement of proposed action X
-Immoral to Promise returning something borrowed with no intention of returning it
-Universally no one would believe Promises.
-Immoral to Lie to someone because if everyone on the planet lied -no one would believe anyone =chaos.

If Kant's theory was applied to the concept of Universal Law, it would be found that:

A) Almost every act would be called immoral because people often act out of self-interest on some level.

B) It would therefore decrease the level of interest in people to achieve morality

C) It would also be little acts that are "good", because they are not "moral". For example, the Good Samaritan should be viewed as a moral good because it would be immoral to never act out of sympathy because Everyone needs aid sometimes. The phrase "Do unto others as they would do unto you" would be unusable by Kant's standards because it is "self-interest" for someone to be nice to others so they will be nice back.

D) Kant contradicts himself by ignoring the "help someone out so someone can help you out  when you need it" line of reasoning. Logically if you Universalized a society that was indifferent to sympathy and only acted out of duty you would wind up with a Stoic, compassionateless, unsympathetic society. Duty would be an end in itself and the people being helped would not be taken into consideration, other than they were a means to an end -the end being "a good moral act done out of duty".

2) Second Formulation: Humanity is an end in itself

People are not a means to an end, they are an end in themselves. They have intrinsic worth.

3) Third Formulation: The Autonomy of the Will

The Kingdom of Ends Formula. We all belong to humanity. Who is responsible for the moral fabric of humanity? Humans. It's up to us what kind of world we reside in. We make it. We reap what we sow. When morality is left up to other people to decide and we blindly follow what others call our "duty" our moral responsibility to humans is taken from our hands and placed in those of other authorities. Bad things can then happen: Slavery, the holocaust...
And people can then claim it was not "their responsibility", but someone else's responsibility.


5 comments:

  1. The last paragraph here confuses me.

    You state that humans decide the moral fabric.

    Then you state the humans should not let "other people" decide morality.

    But aren't "other people" humans as well?

    If humanity is the decider all of morality, then slavery and the holocaust were not wrong, because humanity did that too.

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  2. I was going off of my notes -which were a little scattered. Should have split the paragraph. Point 1: We as humans are responsible for maintainging and defining morality through reason, compassion, and experience. Point 2: We should also be aware that sometimes society makes bad calls and abuses can occur that are deemed "moral" at the time. It is therefore not only the reposnibility of the majority of a people to decide what morality is, but also for individuals to stand up for what they know is good and right -even if others disagree. It's only through unbias judgement and hearing multiple views and taking all elements of the Truth into consideration that we can reach a higher level of understanding of "what is moral".

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  3. I see.

    Well, no society in the history of mankind has been able to decide unto themselves what "morality" is. It has always involved divinity of some kind.

    (atheist societies were always sub-cultures of theist societies, and benefited from that)

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  4. Yes. Ths was pre-assumed. Humans come from God and therefore anything deemed "human" wisdom or Truth comes from its source.

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  5. Alright, well, I didn't see this pre-assumption.


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