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  • PROFESSOR: OK, so what I want to do today is to finish up

  • the lecture that we were engaged with last week about

  • utilitarianism and then to move on to what is perhaps the

  • most dead-guy-on-Tuesday lecture of the semester, that

  • is, an explanation of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.

  • So in order to make up for the fact that the second part of

  • the lecture is fairly dry, we'll have a couple of clicker

  • questions in the first part of the lecture.

  • OK, so as you recall from our lecture last class, John

  • Stuart Mill, in the selections from Utilitarianism that we

  • read, says two extraordinarily famous things that serve in

  • some ways as the heart of the utilitarian view.

  • The first thing that he says is that he articulates what's

  • known as the greatest happiness principle.

  • This is a principle that's supposed to tell you what it

  • is for an act to be morally right.

  • And what Mill says is, there's a proportionality between the

  • rightness of the act and something that it produces.

  • In particular, a proportionality between the

  • rightness of the act and the amount of happiness it

  • produces, regardless of how that happiness is distributed.

  • In particular he says "actions are right in proportion as

  • they tend to promote happiness, they're wrong as

  • they tend to promote the reverse of happiness," and the

  • happiness with which we're concerned is not the agent's

  • own happiness but "the happiness of all concerned."

  • The second extraordinarily famous saying that he says in

  • the opening passages of Utilitarianism is that the

  • motive with which an act is performed is irrelevant to the

  • act's moral worth.

  • He says the motive has nothing to do with the

  • morality of the action.

  • "He who saves another creature from drowning does what is

  • morally right, whether his motive be duty or the hope of

  • being paid for it."

  • So we might summarize what these principles say, as

  • saying that the first one tells us that what matters for

  • the morality of an act is the aggregate amount of happiness

  • that it produces.

  • And what we're concerned with here are aggregates, not

  • individuals.

  • We're interested in how much good is done overall, not

  • where those pieces of good might happen to fall.

  • And what the second principle tells us is that what the

  • utilitarian, who is after all a consequentialist, is

  • concerned with are consequences.

  • They're interested in the outcome of the act, not the

  • process by which that outcome was achieved.

  • So the first reading that we did for last class was a

  • selection from Mill's Utilitarianism where he

  • articulated these principles.

  • And it's important to recognize that these get

  • something profoundly right about what we're thinking

  • about, I think, when we try to articulate what lies behind

  • our moral judgment.

  • It does seem right that what we're interested in is what

  • the world is like after a particular action is taken,

  • and to the extent that we're interested in what the world

  • is like, our primary interest is not in how that state of

  • affairs came about, but what that state of affairs is.

  • And our primary concern, if we're taking a moral stance,

  • is not in how much we ourselves have, but rather in

  • how much good there is in the world overall.

  • That said, there have been, since utilitarianism was

  • articulated, a classic set of objections which are raised to

  • the view, some of which we'll talk more about today, and

  • some of which we encountered in the selection from Bernard

  • Williams that we read last class.

  • Now you will all recall that Williams' discussion begins

  • with a story of a gentleman that he calls Jim, who finds

  • himself in a South American village that's run by a rather

  • unsavory cowboy.

  • And some of the citizens of that village have been

  • protesting the unsavory cowboy's leadership.

  • And so what the unsavory cowboy has done is he has

  • rounded up twenty of those villagers, and he's

  • planning--simply to show the others that he's in charge--to

  • kill those twenty villagers.

  • When Jim arrives, Pedro the cowboy tells him that, if Jim

  • is willing to shoot one of the villagers, the other nineteen

  • will be set free.

  • So that's the Jim case.

  • Jim shows up in a town.

  • The sheriff of the town has selected twenty people at

  • random to be shot, but if Jim is willing to kill one of them

  • the other 19 will be set free, so--

  • clickers out--

  • Question: In the Jim case, what is Jim

  • morally obliged to do?

  • Is the moral thing for Jim to do in this case to shoot the

  • one man, thereby liberating the other nineteen, or is the

  • right thing for him to do to refuse to shoot the one,

  • thereby letting all twenty die?

  • OK, so let's see how the numbers came out.

  • So almost 3/4 of you, actually more than 3/4 of you, think

  • that what the morally right thing for Jim to do in this

  • case is to shoot one man, thereby

  • liberating the other nineteen.

  • We'll have a chance next week to talk a lot in about these

  • sorts of questions.

  • Our reading for Thursday is a series of moral dilemmas with

  • this structure.

  • But what I want to ask those 77% of you, who answered

  • "yes," to do now is to think about whether you take what

  • Williams says is the natural utilitarian next step.

  • Williams argues that if you are a committed utilitarian,

  • and you think that the morally right thing for Jim to do is

  • to shoot the one and release the other nineteen, then you

  • ought to feel no moral compunction about doing so.

  • There's a clear right thing to do.

  • The right thing is to kill the one, so

  • it's to save the nineteen.

  • You may feel moral disapprobation--indeed you

  • should feel moral disapprobation--towards Pedro

  • who put Jim in this situation.

  • But you ought to feel no moral disapprobation towards Jim,

  • and even more importantly according to Williams, Jim

  • himself ought to feel no moral compunction.

  • So among the 77% of you who answered that Jim did the

  • right thing in killing the one and saving the nineteen, do

  • you think that in shooting the one man, Jim ought to think of

  • any hesitation that he feels as mere squeamishness,

  • something that ought to be overcome?

  • Or do you think that Jim ought to think of the hesitation

  • that he feels in doing what the utilitarian and in what

  • you yourself said was the right thing, do you think he

  • ought to think of his hesitation as being indicative

  • of something morally relevant?

  • So there's roughly seventy of you who should

  • be answering this.

  • Let's see how the numbers come out.

  • OK, so most of you take on only part of the

  • consequentialist picture here, at least in the way that

  • Williams understands it.

  • Most of you think that, although the right thing for

  • Jim to do in that case is to kill the one to save the

  • nineteen, it's not the case that he ought wholeheartedly

  • to endorse that as the right thing to do.

  • In a minute, I'm going to present to you Williams'

  • analogy to the case of residual racism to try to help

  • you see why someone who really has taken on board the

  • consequentialist outlook thinks that the combination of

  • views which most of you present, where you think the

  • right thing to do is to kill the one to save the nineteen,

  • but you also think the right thing to do is to feel bad

  • about that in some way, have not fully appreciated what the

  • utilitarian stance provides you with as a way of

  • understanding morality.

  • So Williams, as you know, presents us with two cases.

  • The first is the case that I've just given you, the case

  • of Jim and the captive Indians.

  • The second is the case in high '70's fashion of a man who is

  • needing to go back to work because it's difficult to have

  • his wife working outside of the home.

  • I leave that to you as a period piece.

  • But the work which George is provided in Williams' example

  • is work in a bioweapons lab, something to which George

  • feels moral opposition.

  • But if George doesn't take the job in the bioweapons lab a

  • much more gung-ho person, somebody who's likely to

  • advocate the use of bioweapons in all sorts of contexts, will

  • get the job instead.

  • So the two cases that Williams presents us with there have a

  • common structure.

  • And a common structure which we're going to see again and

  • again in moral dilemmas.

  • There's one act that the person can do that leads to a

  • particular outcome, another act that the person can do

  • that leads to a different outcome, where the first act

  • is worse on its surface than the second.

  • So Jim has the possibility of shooting one person, or

  • shooting no people.

  • Those are the choices that Jim faces.

  • If Jim does the first act, shooting one person, then

  • nineteen people will go free; if Jim does the second act,

  • which is not to shoot anybody at all, to refuse Pedro's

  • bargain, then all twenty people will be shot.

  • Likewise, George faces a choice between doing one

  • thing, taking the job in--

  • sorry, George faces the choice between taking the job in the

  • bio lab and not taking the job in the bio lab.

  • If George takes the job in the bio lab, then the gung-ho

  • biological weapons fellow won't [will]

  • get the job, and the outcome will be better [worse].

  • If George doesn't take the job, then the gung-ho

  • biological weapons person won't get the job and the

  • outcome will be better.

  • So, in both cases we have an act killing the one versus

  • killing none, taking the job versus not taking the job,

  • which is worse than another, but the outcomes of those acts

  • are inverted.

  • The consequentialist tells us not to look at the act side of

  • the equation, but to look at the

  • outcome side of the equation.

  • The only things, says the consequentialist, that we need

  • to take into consideration, is how many people are saved or

  • how much bio-weapons research is done.

  • According to the consequentialist, what we do

  • is we look and we see, outcome one is better than outcome

  • two, and then reading back from that, we decide which

  • thing we ought to do.

  • We ought to do act one because it's the thing that produces

  • the better outcome.

  • The deontologist or virtue ethicist says, not so fast.

  • Don't jump straight to the consequence, look also at what

  • it is that is needed to be done by the individual to

  • bring about that consequence.

  • And recognizing that act one is worse than act two, the

  • deontologist or virtue ethicist says, it's at least

  • important to take seriously as a possibility that the right

  • thing to do in this situation is the second act, even if the

  • outcome that it leads to is worse.

  • Now what Williams points out is that if one takes seriously

  • the first of these stances, the one where what we're

  • looking at is the outcome and not the process which gave

  • rise to that outcome, then any hesitation we feel towards

  • bringing about that outcome as the result of that particular

  • act is due to what we might call a certain kind of

  • squeamishness.

  • The utilitarian says, and we started with the quotes from

  • Mill for this reason, that thinking about who does an act

  • is morally irrelevant, just as thinking about who gets the

  • goods is morally irrelevant.

  • What matters, says the greatest happiness principle,

  • is how much aggregate happiness is produced; what

  • matters not, except in so far as it affects the amount of

  • happiness, is who produces that happiness or where that

  • happiness goes.

  • So there is room on the consequentialist picture for

  • second-order thinking about the

  • distributions of happiness.

  • If gross inequities in the amount of happiness across a

  • society produces itself less happiness, then we can take

  • that into consideration in our calculus.

  • If performing a particular kind of act produces in an

  • individual less happiness, we can take that into

  • consideration in our calculus.

  • But ultimately the only things that go into the equation in

  • determining whether an act is morally right is the amount of

  • happiness and not where that happiness is distributed.

  • Now, as Epictetus pointed out, some things are up to us and

  • some things are not up to us.

  • And when Jim arrives in Pedro's village, one of the

  • things that is not up to him is the fact that he faces a

  • forced choice of the structure that Pedro has

  • presented him with.

  • It goes without saying that what Pedro has done is

  • outrageous, but the structure of the situation that Jim

  • confronts is a very simple one.

  • Either Pedro will kill twenty people or Jim will kill one

  • person and the other nineteen will not die.

  • That's what's there for Jim to be deciding on.

  • Nonetheless, 75% of the 75% of you who thought that Jim did

  • the right thing in that situation think that Jim ought

  • to feel some squeamishness about carrying out that act.

  • What Williams points out is that if one takes seriously

  • the consequentialist picture, then perhaps the morally right

  • thing to do is to try to cultivate in oneself moral

  • sentiments that accord with one's moral judgments.

  • If through rational argumentation and reflection

  • you come to realize of yourself that--although you

  • are committed to racial equality, although you are

  • committed to gender equality, although you are committed to

  • equality regardless of gender identification, you're

  • committed to not being ageist, you're committed to not being

  • discriminatory on the basis of physical disability--you

  • might, as a result of having lived in a society largely

  • structured in ways that encode a kind of residual racism and

  • sexism and homophobia, you might find in yourself certain

  • sentiments that lead you instantaneously to respond in

  • ways that run contrary to what your moral commitments tell

  • you you ought to do.

  • In those cases, I take it you think that there's some moral

  • mandate upon you to try to get rid of

  • those instinctive responses.

  • If you're really committed to anti-racism, then you want to

  • the extent possible to have a harmonious soul when engaging

  • in interracial encounters.

  • If your reason tells you that you're committed to

  • anti-racism, you want your spirit and appetite to be in

  • line in that way.

  • So there are instances where morality on reflection tells

  • us that something is right, and the consequence of that

  • for our behavior towards ourselves is that we ought to

  • try to cultivate in ourselves instincts that

  • correspond to that.

  • Williams says the utilitarian should say that in cases like

  • the Jim case, Jim is like the residual racist. He knows what

  • the right thing to do is, but he has a residual tendency to

  • be pulled in the morally wrong direction.

  • If you don't think that it's true that Jim ought to change

  • his attitudes in that case, and you do think that the

  • residual implicit racist ought to try to change her attitude,

  • it would be useful to try to think about what holds those

  • two cases apart.

  • OK, so that's what I want to say in closing about the

  • utilitarianism and it's critics.

  • And we'll return as I said to those issues twice more, once

  • on Thursday when we read Judy Thomson's trolley problem

  • paper and once next Tuesday when we look at some empirical

  • work on that question, which suggests a naturalistic

  • explanation for why it is that Jim feels the

  • hesitation that he does.

  • What I want to do now is to introduce you to the third of

  • all the main moral outlooks that we're going to consider

  • this semester.

  • So last lecture we looked very carefully at consequentialist

  • moral theories in the form of John Stuart Mill, and those

  • are theories which locate the moral value of an act in its

  • consequences.

  • In the first part of the class we spent a lot of time looking

  • at Aristotle's virtue theory, which located the moral worth

  • of an act in the actor.

  • Remember we looked at acts having more worth only if

  • they're done as the result of a sort of

  • constancy of character.

  • What we're going to look at today is the third piece of

  • this story, of a moral view that says the morality

  • attached to an action is not the result of what the actor

  • is like, it's not the result of what the consequences are

  • like, rather it is about the act itself.

  • In particular, we're going to look at the deontological

  • theory of Immanuel Kant.

  • So, Immanuel Kant was an 18th century German philosopher

  • who, like Plato and Aristotle, provided a comprehensive and

  • systematic philosophical theory that to this day is

  • taken seriously as one of the ways one might make sense of

  • the world as a whole.

  • Kant has theories of metaphysics, that is, what

  • kind of stuff there is.

  • He has theories of epistemology, that is, how we

  • know about what kind of stuff there is.

  • He has theories of ethics, what the right thing to do is.

  • And he has theories of aesthetics, that is, what

  • gives things aesthetic value.

  • Famously, Kant articulated his views about the three major

  • domains of philosophy three enormous and dense books: the

  • first, The Critique of Pure Reason, which told you about

  • what the world is like and how we know it to be that way,

  • which he wrote first in 1781 and then revised; the second,

  • The Critique of Practical Reason, which is an account of

  • the nature of morality; and the third, The Critique of

  • Judgment, which is an account of the nature

  • of aesthetic value.

  • But in addition to those dense works Kant also wrote what he

  • took to be more popular presentations of his view.

  • In the case of metaphysics, he wrote a book called The

  • Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics.

  • And in the case of ethics, he wrote something that he calls

  • the Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, which

  • is of course the work from which we read

  • excerpts for today.

  • So I give you this context because I want you to know

  • that, as hard as the reading that we did from Kant was, I

  • chose for you perhaps the easiest part of the easiest

  • book that he wrote.

  • So, what should you take home from Kant if you take home

  • nothing else?

  • If you take home nothing else from our reading of Kant, I

  • want you to take home Kant's idea of the categorical

  • imperative.

  • And my goal in the remainder of lecture today is to bring

  • you, by reading through with you the text of Kant that we

  • had today, to a point where you will be well positioned to

  • understand what Kant means by the categorical imperative.

  • And depending on how the next twenty minutes go, we'll get

  • to that either right at the end of today's lecture or

  • right at the beginning of Thursday's.

  • OK, so Kant's text, the Grounding for the Metaphysics

  • of Morals begins with a very famous passage where Kant

  • says, "nothing can be regarded as good without qualification

  • except the good will." This claim should be familiar to

  • you, O readers of Book II of Plato's The Republic.

  • This is the classic distinction between things

  • that have intrinsic value and things that are merely of

  • instrumental worth.

  • And indeed much in the way that Plato's Socrates does,

  • Kant goes on to enumerate some things which fall into the

  • other category, the category of things that are of mere

  • instrumental utility.

  • Among the things that cannot be regarded as good without

  • qualification, says Kant, are talents of the mind like

  • intelligence and wit, qualities of temperament like

  • courage and perseverance, gifts of fortune like power

  • and riches and honor and health.

  • And he says, taking a direct gibe at Aristotle, and noting

  • as such that he's so doing, neither can the ancient

  • virtues--(oh, my goodness, how do I close that

  • email?)--neither can the ancient virtues of moderation

  • and self control be considered as good in themselves.

  • Why?

  • Because though being intelligent, or brave, or

  • rich, or controlled, will help you to achieve the goals that

  • you have, they don't determine what those goals might be.

  • They magnify your effectiveness as an agent, but

  • they don't determine the valence, the

  • value of your agency.

  • So, says Kant, a witty, persevering, rich, healthy,

  • moderate thief will be an outstanding thief--but that

  • doesn't make his thiefdom good.

  • Each of the virtues that has traditionally been extolled as

  • a virtue, says Kant, gains its value only in so far as the

  • good will is part of it.

  • Now a good will, says Kant, is good not because of what it

  • affects or accomplishes, it's good in itself.

  • When I say that Kant is a critic of consequentialism I

  • am not exaggerating.

  • Kant doesn't think that the outcome of

  • the act is what matters.

  • And in an extraordinarily famous passage, famous in part

  • because of the rather shocking translation which has come

  • down to us of it, Kant says, "the good will would remain

  • good, even if by the niggardly provision of step-motherly

  • nature it wholly lacked the power to accomplish its

  • purpose." By which he means, even if you with your good

  • will were frustrated in all of the goals that you set out to

  • achieve, your actions would still have moral worth.

  • And somewhat more poetically and a bit less vocabulary that

  • is challenging to the modern ear, Kant says, even if it

  • didn't achieve its outcome "it would like a jewel still shine

  • by its own light as something which has

  • full value in itself.

  • Its usefulness or fruitlessness can neither

  • augment nor its value."

  • Now the question is this: How could anybody come

  • to have this view?

  • How could anybody have a view of morality that says, what

  • matters for an act to be moral is not the outcome that it

  • produces, but rather the description under which the

  • act is done?

  • What I want to try to do right now is to put you inside the

  • Kantian picture so that you get a sense of what that

  • worldview looks like.

  • So in the passages that we read for today, Kant makes

  • three particular claims. He says that an action must be

  • done from duty in order to have moral worth.

  • The first notion that I want to try to explicate for you is

  • the Kantian notion of something

  • being done from duty.

  • An action done from duty, says Kant in his second

  • proposition, has its moral worth not in the purpose that

  • is to be attained by it, but in the maxim according to

  • which the action is determined.

  • So the way that an action done from duty has more worth is

  • not by looking to see what outcome you're expecting from

  • it, but rather by looking to see under what

  • characterization did you perform the act.

  • And again, I'll spell out what each of those terms mean.

  • Finally, says Kant, duty, which lies at the heart of

  • deontological moral theory, "duty is the necessity of an

  • action done out of the respect for the law." Kant believes

  • that it is only when you subject your will to a law

  • which you have made for yourself--that is, the moral

  • law whose binding force upon you you have recognized--it is

  • only in that circumstance that you are truly free.

  • So Kant says, "duty is the necessity of an action done

  • out of the respect for the law," and when you perform an

  • action out of respect for the moral law, says Kant, then and

  • only then do you act autonomously.

  • OK, so three, incredibly complicated,

  • subtle claims from Kant.

  • Let's try getting to the bottom of what they mean.

  • So let's start with the first claim, the claim that an act

  • has moral worth only when it is done from duty.

  • So Kant points out that there's three kinds of

  • motivation that we might have in performing an act.

  • We might do an act out of duty, we might do it out of

  • inclination, or we might do it out of self-interest. Only

  • cases of the first kind, in fact only pure cases of the

  • first kind, have moral worth.

  • Actions that are done merely in keeping with, but not from

  • moral duty, have no moral worth according to Kant.

  • So if you obey the law but you do so only out of self

  • interest, your obedience, says Kant, has no moral worth.

  • if you rescue the drowning child from the pond but you do

  • so only because there's a sign on the tree that says, "Rescue

  • Drowning Children: $1 Million Reward," your act

  • has no moral worth.

  • So we can think about what Kant's claim amounts to and

  • how it differs from the other ones that we've been looking

  • at by thinking of the question space in

  • terms of a flow chart.

  • So we're trying to decide whether a particular action

  • has moral worth, and the first thing we want to ask ourselves

  • is: "Does the action accord with duty?

  • If the answer to that is no, that is, if you've done

  • something like lied, or stolen something, or murdered

  • somebody, or allowed something terrible to happen in front of

  • you that you could have easily, at no cost to

  • yourself, prevented, all of the authors that we've read,

  • not surprisingly, say that the act has no moral worth--

  • Oh so, did that just disappear that was supposed to

  • be in red on black?

  • Is it completely invisible from the back?

  • Oh, that's a pity--

  • OK, so what that says in red is no lying and stealing--

  • but it's in red.

  • I can't change it in the middle of the slides, but I'll

  • remind you what those things say.

  • OK--

  • The second question that we ask, having eliminated now

  • from the realm of morally worthy acts those that don't

  • accord with duty, is: What motive the act was done with?

  • So perhaps you act in a morally worthy way out of

  • self-interest without immediate inclinations.

  • So you pay your taxes because if you don't pay your taxes

  • you're going to have to pay more taxes.

  • You obey the speed limit but only because you were afraid

  • you might get caught otherwise.

  • Mill says those acts have moral worth.

  • Kant says no, they don't--

  • And again, that's supposed to be in red but it's now

  • invisible--

  • Suppose that you do an act in such a way that you have an

  • inclination that's in keeping with duty.

  • So Kant thinks you have a duty not to commit suicide, and he

  • considers a case where you fail to commit suicide because

  • you're happy.

  • Kant thinks you need to be loyal to your life partner,

  • but he says that there's no moral worth to remaining loyal

  • to your life partner while you are in love.

  • There's no moral worth, says Kant, to acting kindly towards

  • somebody when you feel sympathy towards them.

  • Because in those cases, though your act is in keeping with

  • what morality demands, it's not done because it is the

  • right thing to do.

  • You are doing it because your inclination happens to line up

  • with what morality demands of you.

  • Now Aristotle, of course, took this situation to be the one

  • in which moral worth is paradigmatically expressed.

  • But Kant thinks in such cases you can not tell that an act

  • was done from the moral law.

  • All you can see is that it was done in keeping with the moral

  • law, it corresponds to what the moral law demands, but we

  • can't see from that that the motive was duty.

  • It's only in the third case, the case where you act from

  • duty without any inclination and without any self-interest,

  • that Kant thinks the moral worth of an

  • action can be seen.

  • If you preserve your life when you feel the inclination to do

  • otherwise, if you act kindly in situations where there's no

  • reward for you and you feel no sympathy, in those cases, says

  • Kant, we can see that the act was done, not merely in

  • keeping with, but from the moral law.

  • This isn't to say that Kant doesn't think a life lived in

  • the way that Aristotle suggested life is lived is a

  • badly [well]

  • lived life.

  • Cases where your inclination happens to line up with duty

  • hopefully keep you out of this box of doing the wrong thing,

  • but they don't allow you to test your character and see of

  • yourself that the motivation that you have for doing the

  • right thing is to conform to what the moral

  • law demands of you.

  • So with that understanding of what it is to act from duty in

  • mind, we're now in a position to make sense of Kant's second

  • claim in our reading for today.

  • Then "an action done from duty has its moral worth not in the

  • purpose that's to be obtained by it, but in the maxim

  • according to which the action is determined." So remember

  • we've learned that an action done from duty is one that you

  • do in conformity with what morality demands, because that

  • is what morality demands.

  • Not because it's in your self interest, not because you were

  • inclined to behave in that way, but because that act is

  • what morality demands of you.

  • But in order to determine whether an act is what

  • morality demands of you, that act needs to be described in a

  • particular way to you.

  • And the way that you describe that act to yourself makes use

  • of what Kant calls a maxim, a subjective principle of

  • volition--that is, a description of something that

  • is about you, the subject, that's says what your desires

  • towards behavior are in that situation.

  • A subjective principle of volition, that is, a

  • description under which the act is done.

  • So it takes the form, perhaps: "In all engagings with all who

  • come into my shop, I will provide them with an honest

  • accounting of how much their transaction is worth,

  • regardless of whether I could be discovered cheating in

  • this." Or: "In all of my encounters with those who are

  • weak and in need of my help, I will provide them with the aid

  • that I can regardless of whether that would be of

  • benefit to me."

  • "Only by considering the motive and not by considering

  • the outcome can the action be expressive of the good will

  • itself." "The good will is the only thing that is good in

  • itself," says Kant, and it's only by looking at the

  • description under which an act is done that we can determine

  • whether the good will was implicated in the right way in

  • the choice to perform that action.

  • Third claim: "Duty is the necessity of an action done

  • out of the respect for the law." So we know that an act

  • has moral worth only if it's done from duty.

  • We know that in order to be done from duty it needs to be

  • done under a certain description.

  • And now we're told what it is that this duty amounts to.

  • In order for an act to be done from duty, says Kant, it must

  • have been done with explicit recognition that what one is

  • doing at that point is respecting the moral law in so

  • far as it articulates what morality demands of you.

  • Not in so far that it articulates ways that you

  • might have a well-ordered, harmonious, happy soul.

  • Not in so far that it articulates ways in which lots

  • of happiness could be spread around to lots of people.

  • Out of respect rather, says Kant, for the fact that it is

  • what morality demands of you.

  • The moral worth of an act, says Kant, does not lie in its

  • effect, for the effect could have come

  • about in multiple ways.

  • I can set out to release a biological gas in a subway

  • that's intended to kill thousands of people, and

  • because I'm not very good at chemistry, the result could be

  • that I produce an enormous amount of joy in those

  • thousands of people.

  • The effect can come about in lots of ways.

  • Kant says Mill would have to say that in releasing that gas

  • I have done something with more worth.

  • Kant says: No--what matters is the description under which

  • the act is done, and in particular that that

  • description be that one have respect for the law itself.

  • So I told you I was going to get you to the point of the

  • categorical imperative, and I am going to end the lecture

  • today by bringing you right up to that point, and then next

  • class we'll talk about it in more detail.

  • So the question is this, right?

  • This is a pressing, exciting question in Kant.

  • All right, I realize that we're in the in-Kant part of

  • things, but this is really exciting.

  • "What sort of law...?", says Kant.

  • He even puts a "but" to get you excited.

  • But, he says--cliffhanger...--

  • "what sort of law can that be, the thought of which must

  • determine the will without reference to any "intent"

  • expected effect, so the will can be called absolutely good

  • without qualification?" It's so exciting!

  • We're finding something that's going to make us genuinely

  • autonomous and free and moral!

  • Well remember: it can't be anything particular, it can't

  • be anything specific about the world or it's outcomes.

  • What can it be?

  • It can be the will's universal conformity of its actions to

  • law as such!

  • That is, what makes the law binding is the fact that it is

  • recognized by all rational agents as binding.

  • In particular, it takes the form of what Kant calls the

  • categorical imperative.

  • And here's the formulation of the categorical imperative

  • that we got in our reading for today: "Never act except in

  • such a way that I can also will that my act maxim should

  • become a universal law." Never do anything that you couldn't

  • will everybody else to do at the same time.

  • And we'll begin next lecture with the example that Kant

  • uses to illustrate this, namely the lying promise, talk

  • a little bit more about various formulations of the

  • categorical imperative, and then move to Judy Thomson's

  • trolley problem paper.

  • [SIDE CONVERSATION]

PROFESSOR: OK, so what I want to do today is to finish up

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