Rationality and life

In class while discussing Kant this past week,  we came up on the topic  of abortion. Many of the ideas were that abortion was acceptable because a fetus is not able to think rationally, so it wasn’t human being. But the mother (who would be doing the aborting) was rational enough to make a decision for her unborn baby. I do not feel as though this is a good argument. There are lots of humans in this world who we do not consider to be rational thinkers but killing them would be a felony offence.  Infants and mentally handicap people, for example, are not necessarily rational thinkers.  But it would be illegal to cause harm to either one of these categories of people. Regardless of their rationality they are still human and deserve a chance at life. Fetuses will one day grow to be rational thinkers, but now they are not but in MY opinion they are still human. Since I feel that they are still human it would go against the maxim of one shouldn’t kill humans.  For pro-choice people there are different reasons why they can believe the way they do but the idea of rational thinking should not be put in as one of the main arguments for it.

We also talked about the issue of being a permanent vegetable. Deciding on whether or not to pulling the plug is iffy to me.  On one hand they are basically dead. The only thing keeping them alive is a machine. That’s not living. They are also not rational people and unlike the fetuses they no longer have a chance at becoming a rational being. That is the rational part of my. But the more emotional part of me would have a very hard time pulling the plug. I would still see them as human. That seems like really illogical thinking I know, but I just couldn’t imagine having to pull the plug on anyone one, regardless of how lifeless they may already be.

This is just my opinion on how I feel that rational thinking shouldn’t be one of the main contributors on if someone is human or not. I feel that fetuses and the mentally handicap are just two examples of how this characteristic wouldn’t work on everyone. (ps. I didn’t mean for this to come off as bashing someone else’s beliefs if it came off that way.)

organic development of morals

In class this week we discussed Kant's three propositions on duty.  Most interesting to me was the third proposition regarding reverence for the law.  It states that duty is a necessity to act out of reverence for the law.  Essentially trying to say a rational law is a law that everyone believes to be true, and thus you believe it as well.  Basically the golden rule of treating others the way you want to be treated.  This relates to the supreme law of all morality, otherwise known as categorical imperatives.  One formulation stating, "act in such a way that you can will the maxim of your action as universal law.  In other words, one can determine why an action is rationally good if you think that it is an action that everyone universally "ought" to do.  This is the point where I began to have a problem with Katian philosophy.  Kant says we have to make moral decisions based on reason alone because we do not know the consequences, but I do not think this is possible to make a moral decision based purely on reason.  On top of this I cannot ignore the consequences even if I am not sure what they are going to be.  More importantly I think moral decisions are based on your experiences and the society you are living in, not reason alone.  Different societies overtime have had different moral beliefs based upon the time they were living in and their surroundings.  For example, in many ancient societies such as the Mayans or Aztecs it was customary to offer a human sacrifice.  I do not consider the actions of these people and the killings they committed to be immoral.  These people developed their own belief systems or religion as a result of their experiences on earth, and they constructed their own morals based upon those experiences.  Therefore I think many morals are functions of the time we are living in.  Maybe it may be against the golden rule to kill someone because you yourself do not want to be killed, but why does that make it an immoral action?  In society today I wonder why the idea that killing another person is immoral.  I do think the reasons for killing can sometimes be immoral, but where did the idea originate that killing another human is immoral?  My answer to this would be that we developed this idea that killing another person is immoral because of various religions that developed in society through human experience.

 

Listening to your Conscience

In class this week we discussed the reality of a universal morality--an innate set of laws to guide all of humanity. When first considered, the idea doesn't seem so impractical. After all, there are some things that most about everyone on the planet would agree are just plain wrong: murder, stealing, rape, etc.

But the denial of any kind of moral gray area seems slightly ridiculous to me. In my opinion, very few things in this world are black-and-white; our actions are shaded by our circumstances, our personal belief systems. I don't mean to imply that there is no right or wrong in this world, as proponents of meta-ethical relativism would claim. Rather, I think that even in the realm of moral relativity there is relativity. Morality is a multi-layered, multi-facted tenet of human consciousness--there is a gray area between moral absolutism and complete moral relativism in which I would place the human "conscience."
For the most part, I believe, it is the conscience, the little angel that sits on our shoulder, the Jiminy cricket in our head, from which we should derive our sense of morality. If the little voice in your head is telling you it's wrong, in most cases--it's probably wrong. However, there may be cases when your conscience demands that you do something that would be in violation of the "categorical imperative." While your action in a vaccum  is immoral, you know that it was the "right" thing to do in that situation.
 There are cases when rules that seem universal, like "don't break promises," should in fact be broken. In class we discussed this peculiarity in the example of a broken engagement. Though you may have promised to marry your fiancé, if you realize that you no longer love him or her, and that the two of you will not be happy together or are not right for each other, to go through with the marriage simply for the sake of keeping your promise would be highly immoral and unfair to the both of you. Kant defines "good will" as acting for the sake of duty alone--and though it may seem like your duty to marry your fiance, it is a more important duty to try and ensure the happiness of someone you care about. The sin of breaking your promise and the good will of trying to make your fiance happy are entirely seperate from each other--one does not negate the other.

To me, the whole concept of morality is extremely complicated--the best we can do is try to do good by listening to that little voice in our head (metaphorically of course--if there are actual voices in your head giving you orders you may want to see someone about that).

 

Moral Laws, Categorical Imperative, and Abortion

This week, we spoke about Kant and his formulation of good will. A large portion of the class period was spent trying to differentiate between subjective principle and objective principle, as well as its overall relation to morality. Subjective principle relates to real life and our actions. As humans, therefore imperfect by nature, we are generally unable, unwilling, or both to meet the objective principle, which is morally right. That is, it meets the categorical imperative, and follows the moral law and duty. When our subjective principle is not aligned with the objective principle, we are indeed acting immorally. Although, for the most part, we were able to agree upon this idea, we were not able to make as clear of a distinction with the categorical imperative. We only had time to describe two of the three of the formulations that compose the categorical imperative.  The categorical imperative encompasses all that is implied by the moral law, plus more. According to the categorical imperative, we must not only act upon our duties, but also in a way that involves seeing and acting as a role model. Our actions must be based upon what we ought to do; given the same situation, anyone else should follow what would do the same as you. 

The controversy is encountered when we introduce the idea of a situation in which you have two duties, which are antiparallel. For example, a common controversial topic such as abortion requires one to act upon one of two moral opinions. One natural moral duty is to preserve human life. It also follows the moral law to not commit murder, because if it were rational to commit murder, everyone would kill each other. Therefore, one must distinguish when a fetus can be defined as a human. If we consider consciousness the basis of life, then a fetus is not a human until it is born. However, I believe that a fetus must be considered as a human, because unlike a person in a permanent vegetative state, a fetus has unlimited potential. Getting an abortion simply because two people were irresponsible or lazy is not moral in any sense. Human potential and human life is too great to be manipulated as if it were something trivial. Unless a life is threatened by a pregnancy, abortion violates moral laws. 

The Golden Rule

As the culprit of mentioning the Golden Rule in class, I feel obliged to discuss its major differences with the Categorical Imperative.  “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” vs. Kant’s “Act only on that maxim which you would will as a universal law,” indeed correlate however they have distinct differences.  The major distinction is that the Golden Rule is subjective while the latter is objective.  The Golden Rule allows the viewpoint of the individual to justify what is allowable, a loophole that could cause confusion such as this:

And in a less direct example:

By its subjective nature, the interpretation of “what if I really do not mind something” also allows room for this to ignore moral laws as discussed by Kant.  His objective principal fills in the blanks of the Golden Rule, leaving no room for interpretation error.  He does this by keeping the moral guidelines on the individual basis.  According to Kant, an individual can judge what is right and wrong based on their innate capacity to do so, their lack of ability to break the laws of morality.  This means that making a decision does not need an external resource to decide if something is morally wrong; it can be done by one determining to oneself that it does or does not follow a universal law.  In short, the Golden Rule provides the guideline of interaction with others to justify what is a good act, while the Categorical Imperative says that a good will should define for itself what is universally good, and if the will is indeed good then it shall make good efforts.

The distinction needs to be made whether or not it is possible to follow these two rules.  The Golden Rule is simple:  if one intends to be good, then one only needs to interact with others to determine how to perform good acts.  Since “others” exist, the medium of articulation for good acts exists and the Golden Rule is therefore justified as a means by which to determine how to act.  Kant deduces that as a member of the world of sense that has the ability to recognize oneself as intelligent, an individual holds the laws of understanding as imperative (Kant 67-68).  Thus, Kant determines that the Categorical Imperative is possible based on the guidelines that one is indeed an intelligent being with the autonomy of will (Kant 68).  This means that for the Categorical Imperative to be true one must first define a maxim and a universal law by which it abides, and it must also be true that one is an intelligent being and that freedom does indeed exist and allows free will.  (I looked around for a flowchart that would demonstrate the relationship between all of these but could not find one).  Simply speaking, as discussed by Kant and as we discussed in class, it is possible to derive that all of these are true; however it takes a more involved analysis to discover all of the intricacies of the Categorical Imperative as opposed to the Golden Rule.  And therefore, although the loophole of subjective opinions is left out of Kant’s Imperative, it can be left to discussion whether or not such an objective principle is possible.