Chapter 8

1. Ethics: Discovering
Right and Wrong
Louis P. Pojman and James Fieser
8th edition

2. Chapter Eight: Kant and
Deontological Theories
 Revisit the millionaire’s dying request to donate $5
million to the Yankees and your temptation to donate it
to a charity instead.
 The utilitarian would donate to the charity, which
advances the greatest good for the greatest number.
 The deontological answer is to fulfill the dying request
because truth telling and promise keeping are right even
when they may cause harm and lying and promise breaking
are wrong even when they have good consequences.
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3. Deontological Theories
 Deontological theories say it is not the consequences
that determine the rightness or wrongness of an act but
certain features in the act itself or in the rule of which
the act is a token or example.
 The end never justifies the means.
 Acting unjustly is wrong even if it will maximize
expected utility.
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4. Kant’s Influences
 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) developed his moral theory
against the backdrop of the seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century debate between rationalism and
empiricism.
 He was also influenced by the natural law intuitionist
theories that dominated moral philosophy.
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5. Rationalism
 Pure reason could tell us how the world is, independent
of experience.
 Experience opens our minds to metaphysical ideas, such
as God’s existence, but they are innate ideas.
 Rationalists include René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza,
Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff.
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6. Empiricism
 Empiricists denied that we have any innate ideas and
argued that all knowledge comes from experience.
 Our minds are a tabula rasa, an empty slate, upon
which experience writes her lessons.
 Empiricists include John Locke, David Hume, Francis
Hutchinson, and Adam Smith.
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7. Rationalism and Empiricism
 Debate about moral knowledge:
 Rationalists—Our knowledge of moral principles is a type
of metaphysical knowledge, implanted in us by God, and
discoverable by reason.
 Empiricists—Morality is founded entirely on the
contingencies of human nature and based on desire.
 Kant—Morality is not contingent, but necessary, and it is
grounded in our rational will, not desires.
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8. Act- and Rule-Intuitionism
 Act-intuitionism—Each act is a unique ethical occasion.
 Decide what is right or wrong by consulting your
conscience or intuitions or by making a choice apart from
any rules.
 Rule-intuitionism—Acts are correlated with rules.
 Decide what is right or wrong by consulting moral rules
received through intuition.
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9. The Categorical Imperative(1 of 2)
 Actions are only morally valuable if done by a good will.
 Moral duties command categorically.
 The categorical imperative is a command to perform
actions that are necessary in themselves, without
reference to other ends.
 It contrasts with hypothetical imperatives, which
command actions not for their own sake, but for some
other good.
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10. The Categorical Imperative(2 of 2)
 The categorical imperative procedure:
 Consider the underlying maxim of our proposed action.
 Consider whether the maxim could be universalized to
apply to everyone.
 Accept the successfully universalized maxim or reject the
unsuccessful maxim.
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11. Three Formulations of the
Categorical Imperative
1. The principle of the law of nature:
 Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to
become a universal law of nature.
2. The principle of ends:
 So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or
in that of any other, in every case as an end and never as
merely a means.
3. The principle of autonomy:
 So act that your will can regard itself at the same time as
making universal law through its maxims.
All these formulations are tied together by the theme universalizability.
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12. The Principle of the Law of
Nature: Four Examples
 The heart of this formulation is a “contradiction.”
 Four examples that fail the universalizability criterion
 Making a lying promise
 Committing suicide
 Neglecting one’s talent
 Refraining from helping others
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13. Counterexamples to the
Principle of the Law of Nature
 Counterexample 1: Mandating trivial actions
 Counterexample 2: Endorsing cheating
 Counterexample 3: Prohibiting permissible actions
 Counterexample 4: Mandating genocide
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14. The Principle of Ends
 Each person has dignity and worth, so he or she must
never be exploited or manipulated.
 Problems with this principle:
 Kant sets a high value on rationality.
 People should be treated in exact proportion to their
ability to reason.
 It doesn’t tell us what to do in situations where two or
more moral duties conflict.
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15. The Principle of Autonomy
 We do not need an external authority to determine the
nature of the moral law.
 The opposite of autonomy is heteronomy.
 Milgram’s experiments illustrate problems with this
principle:
 The average citizen acts less autonomously than we might
expect.
 Did these experiments violate people’s autonomy by
deceiving them?
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16. The Problem of
Exceptionless Rules
 Kant’s categorical imperative yields unqualified
absolutes.
 It generates universal and exceptionless rules.
 It is your duty to obey commands, not to reason about the
likely consequences.
 This absolutism seems counterintuitive.
 We may write qualifications to the universal principles, but
this is infinite and time consuming.
 We can follow Ross’s prima facie duty approach.
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17. Ross and Prima Facie Duties
(1 of 2)
 Three components of Ross’s theory:
 His notion of “moral intuition”
 Our intuitive duties constitute a plural set that cannot be
unified under a single overarching principle.
 Seven duties: Promise keeping, fidelity, gratitude for favors,
beneficence, justice, self-improvement, and nonmaleficence
 Our intuitive duties are not absolute.
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18. Ross and Prima Facie Duties
(2 of 2)
 Prima facie duties:
 Prima facie is Latin for “at first glance.”
 The moral duties are tentatively binding on us until two
duties conflict.
 Then, the weaker one disappears and the stronger one
becomes an actual duty.
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19. Kant and the Prima Facie
Solution
 Many moral philosophers adopted Ross’s prima facie
component to resolve dilemmas.
 It can transform Kant’s absolutism into a modest
objectivist system.
 To resolve the conflict between two competing
principles, Ross used moral intuitions, while Kant would
use reason and possibly his principle of ends.
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20. Conclusion:
A Reconciliation Project
 Utilitarianism catches the spirit of morality’s purpose,
but undercuts justice.
 Deontological systems emphasize the importance of
rules and justice, but become rigid or lose focus on
morality’s purposes.
 William Frankena’s “mixed deontological ethics”
reconciles these two types of theories.
 The principle of beneficence
 The principle of justice
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