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| Kant, Social Contract Theory | |
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posted by Glenn
on Monday May 05, @07:34AM from the Notes dept. |
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Below are the notes from the last few lectures. I'll update these tomorrow after the last lecture.
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Thought Experiment: Rescue Missions I & II
Rescue Mission I: you save 5 drowning people and let 1 die. Rescue Mission II:you have to kill 1 to save 5. • What is the right course of action in each case? Questions: What does your answer tell us about your moral intuitions concerning: utilitarianism, negative responsibility, and Kant’s emphasis about respect for persons, the difference between killing and letting die? Thought Experiment: Runaway Trolley Scenario: A trolley is speeding away on track A and is headed toward five people. You, the operator, could pull a switch to divert the trolley to track B. BUT….one person stands on other track B. What do you do? Questions: What does your answer tell us about your moral intuitions concerning: utilitarianism, negative responsibility, and Kant’s emphasis about respect for persons, the difference between killing and letting die? The Idea of Human Dignity • Kant held that his categorical imperative: CI v.1: Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. had an equivalent formulation: CI v.2: Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means. • As Rachels notes (p.131) this implies, first, that since human beings have goals and values, it is they that give mere objects or things (including animals) value. • Second, humans have an intrinsic worth because they are rational agents. Since humans are rational and can know the moral law and consciously act according to it - or have a “good will” - they are not mere “things” but good “beyond all price”. (Rachels, p.132) • Bundled up in this moral principle are notions concerning: respecting the autonomy of others; never using people as means; respecting the rationality of others. • In sum, Kant placed the value of human dignity above all other things. Retribution and Utility in Punishment • One way of trying to sort all of these ideas out is by looking at the issue of capital punishment. • The reasons a Utilitarian and the reasons a Kantian might give for or against capital punishment exposes some clear contrasts in approach. The utilitarian generally holds a rehabilitative view of punishment. It is allowable if it (1) comforts victims, (2) protects society, (3) deters other potential criminals, and (4) helps rehabilitate criminals. Bentham stated that: “If it ought at all to be admitted, it ought to be admitted in as far as it promises to exclude some greater evil.” (p.134) • This view of punishment contrasts starkly with the retributive view of punishment which regards punishment as a kind of payback. Which Raises The Question… Do you think capital punishment is morally justified? Utilitarianism & Capital Punishment So a utilitarian would argue that capital punishment is justified if the act of executing a criminal does the following: 1. Comforts victims 2. Protects society 3. Deters other potential criminals 4. Helps rehabilitate criminals (5. Promotes utility in some other way) • These all require empirical investigation. If it turns out that capital punishment fails to attain these goals, then it would be unjustified, given the negative consequences, from a utilitarian point of view. Kant’s Retributivism • Rachels notes that Kant despised the “serpent-windings of Utilitarianism”. • If we “imprison the criminal in order to secure the well-being of society, we are merely using him for the benefit of others” which violates the second formulation of the categorical imperative. (p.136) • For Kant, punishment should be retributive as well as proportional to the crime. This leads straight to capital punishment for cases of murder. (See the quotes on p.137) • Some people look upon capital punishment as a form of vengeance or violent revenge. • But for Kant, capital punishment was a way of respecting the criminal as a person. Recall that for Kant your desires cannot be the motivation for your ethical actions. • Is it for vengeance that you support capital punishment? • For Kant, only rational persons, unlike animals or insane people, can be responsible for their actions. • And if someone (say) murders someone else, the murderers action, if made into a rule, would require that he or she be treated in the same way! Rachels: “If he treats others badly, and we treat him badly, we are complying with his own decision.” (p.139) Kant: “His own evil deed draws the punishment upon himself.” (p.139) Closing Questions • It has been found that at least 39 innocent people have been executed in the United States in the last 100 years. • For those of you who support the death penalty, ask yourself these two questions. 1. Am I willing to allow innocent people to be killed by the state in order to maintain capital punishment? 2. Would you still be willing to accept those 39 deaths if those individuals wrongly executed were all people that you knew and loved, such as your family and friends? Social Contract Theory The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them. And reason suggests convenient articles of peace, upon which men may be drawn to agreements. These articles ….are called laws of natures. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), from Leviathan (1651) • Hobbes held that morality is not founded on God, or the concepts of reason, or custom, or moral facts like “pain is bad” and “pleasure is good”. • Instead, he regarded ethics as a kind of by-product of the fact that society needs rules to survive and people need to follow those rules if they are to flourish. • To get into the spirit of this theory, imagine what would happen tomorrow if the government, police, courts, etc. all disappeared… • Hobbes called such anarchy in the “state of nature”. • He famously said life for a human being in a state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (p.142) • For Hobbes, what produces such grim prospects in the state of nature are four facts about human life and nature. 1. We all have equality of need. 2. There is scarcity of resources. 3. Humans are basically equal in power. 4. Humans have only limited altruism. • Given these facts about human life and nature, Hobbes held that we must find a way to cooperate, else we will suffer or die. • To escape the state of nature we form social contracts. • Thus morality is basically founded on such contracts or rules. Morality consists in the set of rules, governing behavior, that rational people will accept, on the condition that others accept them as well. (p.145) |
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