Tutorial #5. Deontologism. Discussion Questions

Try to think about these questions in light of "The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" by Immanuel Kant (pp. 525 - 536 On our "Ethical Theory" textbook) .

Another very good reference is the "Deontological Ethics" entry by Larry Alexander & Michael Moore in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

• What should motivate moral action, according to Kant?
• What is the ‘good will’ and how does Kant argue that it alone is good without qualification?
• What is a categorical imperative and is Kant right about the validity and content of the categorical imperative?
• Do you think the good will is something subjective? In what sense?
• Kant writes (Groundwork, in Feinberg&Landau p. 626): “… in a being that has reason and a will, if the proper end of nature were its preservation, its welfare, in a word its happiness then nature would have hit upon a very bad arrangement in selecting the reason of the creature to carry out its purpose. For all the actions that the creature has to perform for this purpose … would be marked out for it far more accurately by instinct”. Do you agree? Does instinct serves happiness better than reason?
• Kant (Groundwork, in Feinberg&Landau p. 627) argues that “the true vocation of reason must be to produce a will that is good in itself”. The premises of the argument are three: (I) “Reason is not sufficiently competent to guide the will with regards to its objects and the satisfaction of all our needs” (II) “Reason is nevertheless given to us as practical faculty, that is, as one that is to influence the will” (III) “Nature has everywhere else gone to work purposively in distributing its capacities”. Assess this argument.
• How do we know that an action is made not only in conformity with duty but also from duty?
• Can love be commanded?
• How does the representation of the law determine the will? Is respect for the law a causal relation?
• “You shall not murder”, or “You shall not lie” are examples of categorical imperatives: That is, they are duties that all rational beings ought to respect (recall Kant’s “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law”). Now, do you think we ought to respect a categorical imperative - no matter what?
• Consider this maxim: “Steal when you are too poor to feed yourself”. Would it pass the universalizability test? Would it be a moral law?
• Does Kant give us a moral theory that we can follow?
• Would the universalizability test solve moral dilemmas? E.g. consider the following. A mental with a gun in her hand ask you where your best friend is because she wants to kill your friend. Should you tell the truth to the mental? Or should you lie in order to protect your friend?
• For Kant the consequences of an action don’t bear on the moral status of the action. Do you agree? Imagine, e.g., a baby-sitter who by acting from duty keeps a baby warm by putting it in the microwave. Do you think that an unintentional bad consequence of an action made from duty don’t bear on the moral status of that action?