Kant and the Logic of Morality
There are some people, such as my professor, who do not believe that intuition is useful for philosophy. I am not completely sure what he believes about it, but I do believe that one cannot avoid the use of some sort of intuition in morality. If I have to use it, then I might as well use it right. So why shouldn't philosophers deal with intuition? As I understand it, the only way to avoid this line of reasoning is to adopt the belief that intuition can be avoided. Now one may not be able to completely avoid it, but perhaps a certain area - such as ethics - can be done without it. If this is possible then one is left with the idea facts and logical reasoning are sufficient to know what the right thing to do is. Kant tried to do this and failed.
Kant believed that some act was morally permissible only if it could be successfully universalized. We start off with a maxim. I do something in order to achieve some result. For example, I lie about my identity because I wish to deceive someone. One takes this maxim and pretends that everyone does it. So everyone lies about their identity in order to deceive someone. Now we ask whether or not I could succeed with my action if everyone was doing it. Well, if everyone lied about their identity, then no one would believe anyone's claim about their own identity. So I would not succeed (in such a world) in my aim. Therefore, lying about my identity is immoral.
Now this procedure does get the right answer quite a bit of the time. The problem come from the fact that no limit is placed on how general a maxim is allowed to be. Consider this new maxim: I become a philosophy professor in order to fulfill a desire of mine. Can such a maxim be universalized? Imagine a world in which everyone is a philosophy professor. This would not work - we need to eat after all. So according to Kant, it is immoral to be a philosophy professor. Since this can be extended to absolutely every vocation, it is immoral to have any vocation at all! This is absurd.* Without some kind of restriction of what maxims are appropriate, this procedure does not determine what is right or wrong.
Kant could say (but I am not sure whether he does or not), that the maxim has to be as general as possible. Here is the most generally possible statement: I act because I choose to. On Kant's criteria, this is morally permissible. Nonetheless, not every kind of act is morally permissible - we all know this. So at the most general level, Kant's method fails to give unconditional permission to do something. So Kant cannot be as general as possible with his maxims.
When one looks at the philosophy professor example, one believes that it is perfectly permissible to be a philosophy professor, all other things being equal. However, it is not permissible to be in an immoral vocation such as the drug dealer or assassin. So Kant's moral view would have to say that being an assassin was wrong, but being a philosopher is not. If we use his method without restricting this maxims, this does not happen. If we do restrict his maxims in some particular fashion, then Kant has a different problem.
Kant wishes to say that one only needs the facts and reason to arrive at moral prohibitions. However, the facts do not determine how to restrict the maxims. They only determine whether a universalized maxim is successful. So reason must do so if Kant's method is to succeed. But it is far from clear how one would do this. Kant already has reason supporting the method of universalization. He claims that the usage of morality in our speech shows that all moral claims have that property. In other words, universalization is a part of moral judgments just by being moral judgments. Unless he were to make a similar - and quite implausible - claim about a particular restriction of maxims, then Kant's method fails to give us moral claims.
There is a lesson in all of this. First, one should start with what was right about what Kant said. Surely there is something to the universal character of morality. It is supposed to apply everywhere and to everyone under every possible circumstance. However, it is quite doubtful that one can get moral claims without starting with some kind of moral principles, beliefs or characters. Kant's attempt to show otherwise only illustrates this.
* This illustration and its point were taken from a lecture with the above mentioned philosophy professor.
Kant believed that some act was morally permissible only if it could be successfully universalized. We start off with a maxim. I do something in order to achieve some result. For example, I lie about my identity because I wish to deceive someone. One takes this maxim and pretends that everyone does it. So everyone lies about their identity in order to deceive someone. Now we ask whether or not I could succeed with my action if everyone was doing it. Well, if everyone lied about their identity, then no one would believe anyone's claim about their own identity. So I would not succeed (in such a world) in my aim. Therefore, lying about my identity is immoral.
Now this procedure does get the right answer quite a bit of the time. The problem come from the fact that no limit is placed on how general a maxim is allowed to be. Consider this new maxim: I become a philosophy professor in order to fulfill a desire of mine. Can such a maxim be universalized? Imagine a world in which everyone is a philosophy professor. This would not work - we need to eat after all. So according to Kant, it is immoral to be a philosophy professor. Since this can be extended to absolutely every vocation, it is immoral to have any vocation at all! This is absurd.* Without some kind of restriction of what maxims are appropriate, this procedure does not determine what is right or wrong.
Kant could say (but I am not sure whether he does or not), that the maxim has to be as general as possible. Here is the most generally possible statement: I act because I choose to. On Kant's criteria, this is morally permissible. Nonetheless, not every kind of act is morally permissible - we all know this. So at the most general level, Kant's method fails to give unconditional permission to do something. So Kant cannot be as general as possible with his maxims.
When one looks at the philosophy professor example, one believes that it is perfectly permissible to be a philosophy professor, all other things being equal. However, it is not permissible to be in an immoral vocation such as the drug dealer or assassin. So Kant's moral view would have to say that being an assassin was wrong, but being a philosopher is not. If we use his method without restricting this maxims, this does not happen. If we do restrict his maxims in some particular fashion, then Kant has a different problem.
Kant wishes to say that one only needs the facts and reason to arrive at moral prohibitions. However, the facts do not determine how to restrict the maxims. They only determine whether a universalized maxim is successful. So reason must do so if Kant's method is to succeed. But it is far from clear how one would do this. Kant already has reason supporting the method of universalization. He claims that the usage of morality in our speech shows that all moral claims have that property. In other words, universalization is a part of moral judgments just by being moral judgments. Unless he were to make a similar - and quite implausible - claim about a particular restriction of maxims, then Kant's method fails to give us moral claims.
There is a lesson in all of this. First, one should start with what was right about what Kant said. Surely there is something to the universal character of morality. It is supposed to apply everywhere and to everyone under every possible circumstance. However, it is quite doubtful that one can get moral claims without starting with some kind of moral principles, beliefs or characters. Kant's attempt to show otherwise only illustrates this.
* This illustration and its point were taken from a lecture with the above mentioned philosophy professor.
Labels: epistemology, ethics
posted by Matthew at 10:08 AM
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