Question about Kantian ethics

[Arjen]

I am going to try to get this topic back ontopic by making these two statements:

1) If indeed the genes are controlled by the brain, the question is merely placed in a different place as rationalism shows. Apparently something is present a priori and knowledge only comes into play a posteriori. This is the basis of Kant's metaphysical 'model'.

2) Emotions are based on thoughts. People laugh or cry depending on their frame of reference. I might be a fan of the Dodgers for instance and cheer when they have scored. At a later time in my life I may have forgot all about the Dodgers and, when seeing them score I have no change in my emotional state. That proves that emotional responses are 'learned behavior'. This again points to Kant's 'model' of metaphysics.

p.s. I do think the medical sidestep is interesting. It just moves the difficulties to another place and does not solve anything. But that might be just my opinion.

[Aedes]

I agree that the medical and biological aspects, while intersting, are besides the point.

As for emotion and thought, clearly babies and toddlers can have happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, affection, love, etc without having capacity for reason or truly organized thoughts about a subject.

There is certainly a mutual and simultaneous influence between emotions and thoughts, but I think that emotions depend a lot less on one's capacity for thought than the opposite.

[iconoclast]

Aedes,

Do you remember how massive and overwhelming emotion was when you were a child?

It's often occured to me that organized thought is a way of dealing with that depth and power of emotion - of chanelling it, though I've not thought much about it beyond that.

How's you and yours?

regards,

iconoclast.

[krazy kaju]

I'll reply to this thread in a series of multiquotes, we'll see how it works out.

Originally Posted by Fairbanks

No dictators allowed. No monopoly allowed.

Government is, by definition, a monopoly over certain aspects of society, most notably over law and order. You can't have a private court with a different system of laws, punishments, etc. competing with the government's courts.

The modern nation state has other monopolies. For examle, the US gov't has a monopoly over the postal service. The Canadian gov't has a monopoly over health insurance and health care. The Canadian gov't also has a monopsomy over agriculture. The UK gov't used to have a monopoly over coal mines.

Individuals do not make up the state. Institutions make up the state and they are constrained both by their charters, written or unwritten, and individual non-understanding of the nature of the state. Institutions can be anything but intelligent and they therefore have no desire and no moral law.

Individuals make up the institutions that make up the state. Again, there really is no such thing as "the state." It is simply a group of individuals who are in a position of power.

Here's a thought experiment: are mobs and gangs subject to moral laws? According to your logic, a mob isn't but a gang is. Whereas a mob could be said to be made up of various "institutions" (i.e. group A deals heroin, group B is the hitman squad), the mob is not bound to moral rules whereas the gang, which is much smaller and clearly made up of individuals, is. The fallacy is that you're ignoring that the institutions that make up the mob are made up of individuals, so the mob is really no different from the gang or the state. All are made up of individuals, and if accept that there is some kind of universal ethical system, then those organizations should follow those rules just as individuals do.

Originally Posted by Fairbanks

I would agree that the state is not a being, but an existing thing. Morals cannot be legislated, so they say, and they are right even if they don't know how. The state can impose ethics on its officials. Even though the terms originally meant about the same--morals and ethics--no more than custom or tradition, ethics has come to take on a legal significance. Moral law should remain as Kant had it, that inner law that guides intelligent decision.

I'm confused. The point I'm making is that the state, since it is made of individuals, is bound to the same moral rules that individuals are bound to. If moral rules are an inner law that guide individuals, shouldn't that also apply to a group of individuals, like the state?

Originally Posted by Fairbanks

Abortion would be a tough problem for ethics class. But, Kant's examples were mainly directed toward personal choice that did not involve outright murder. He might choose a different publisher for his new Critique and never explain why to the new owner.

The point of this thread is to ask "what if" Kant was still around. What does his ethical system say about treating future moral agents?

I think we all agree that most humans (exceptions: unborn, infants, severely retarded, brain dead) are capable of moral deliberation and thus should be treated as ends in Kantian ethics. The key question is whether the unborn and infants should be treated as ends as well since they will be capable of moral deliberation in the future.

Originally Posted by Aedes

What is moral law and what makes someone bound to it?

Well, the assumption of this thread is that there is a universal ethical system that everyone is "bound" to in the sense that all of your actions can be objectively called "right" or "wrong."

[Fairbanks]

Originally Posted by Aedes

Are you sure we're all rational? Reason takes a back seat to emotion when you're grieving, when you're hopeless, and when you're forlorn and lovestruck. And reason takes a back seat to biology when you're overtired, in terrible pain, or when you get a big tumor in your frontal lobe. So while under some ideal conditions we're rational, we certainly don't default to a rational state. Most of us CAN be rational, but then again most of us can also be Olympic calibre athletes under some conditions that few of us experience. So it's hard to accept that reason is some essential, primary quality of ours.

Thus, if "moral law" (still undefined vis a vis this conversation!!!) is beholden to reason, then morality is subject to all the other things that can interfere.

Sure we are all rational. Reasonable is a different matter.

Moral law remains something that must be there even if we can't describe it or define it. When we decide, we get a feeling that we are aligned with the moral law or not, which not an aesthetic feeling but the moral feeling. If we let our inclination to take the last cookie--even though we have already had two and a child in the next room that doesn't know there is a cookie left there has had none--win the decision, we might get away with it and feel like a cad forever after, even though the moral law is not real specific about the cookies and child rule.

[krazy kaju]

Originally Posted by Aedes

Are you sure we're all rational? Reason takes a back seat to emotion when you're grieving, when you're hopeless, and when you're forlorn and lovestruck. And reason takes a back seat to biology when you're overtired, in terrible pain, or when you get a big tumor in your frontal lobe. So while under some ideal conditions we're rational, we certainly don't default to a rational state. Most of us CAN be rational, but then again most of us can also be Olympic calibre athletes under some conditions that few of us experience. So it's hard to accept that reason is some essential, primary quality of ours.

Thus, if "moral law" (still undefined vis a vis this conversation!!!) is beholden to reason, then morality is subject to all the other things that can interfere.

The definition of "rational" can vary greatly. For example, in economics, rationality is simply the ability to learn from your mistakes (rational expectations) and the ability to maximize your own utility.

In ethics, I'd say that "rational" refers to anyone capable of moral deliberation. In that sense, most inorganic materials as well as most organisms could be considered "arational" or "irrational" (depending on how you view it) since they are not capable of moral deliberation.

Originally Posted by boagie

I do not know if this would have much bearing on the case, BUT, recent biology has indicated that the fetus is informed within the womb rearranging or rewriting its genes according to the perceptions of the environment of the parents, more particulary the mother, so intelligence it would seem is difficult to determine just when it starts, just as it was once believed by many that intelligence was the sole property of the mind instead of the whole body, so to this new info should give us doubt about the intelligence of the unborn. The fetus does have apparently experience and knowledge of the mothers body/environment before birth, and accorddingly if its genes are written of the knowledge of the outside physcial world we are on very shaky ground here, to deny intelligence.

The question isn't when intelligence starts, but when you are able of moral deliberation and whether or not the future prospect of you being a moral agent grants you the right to be treated as an "end" now.

[Aedes]

Originally Posted by iconoclast

Do you remember how massive and overwhelming emotion was when you were a child?

Sure. And I experienced it last night with my baby, now 4 months old, who NEVER cries ordinarily -- but last night he was overtired and he would cry hysterically every time we put him down to sleep. Only being in our arms would get him to calm down. I mean he smiles, he laughs, he knows when he's being funny, and at the other end of the spectrum he can be sad, especially when he's tired and not feeling so well. That's no different than the rest of us, right?

It's often occured to me that organized thought is a way of dealing with that depth and power of emotion - of channeling it

I think that's true to some degree, but to be sure I think it's really rationalization (and not thought per se) that serves this channeling role. That's why we have to be very circumspect about reason -- because we can make things seem very reasonable, but only an inch below the surface we find the irrational process spurring it on.

How's you and yours?

Great, thanks for asking! Max slept for 10 hours straight once we got him to sleep. How are you doing? Haven't seen you for a while.

[krazy kaju]

Originally Posted by Aedes

As for emotion and thought, clearly babies and toddlers can have happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, affection, love, etc without having capacity for reason or truly organized thoughts about a subject.

... not to mention dogs, cats, chimpanzees, gorillas, bears, wolves, etc. That's just within the range of what is "visible" emotion. There could be many other emotional organisms, but we just wouldn't be able to tell since they don't make facial expressions, wag their tails, play, growl, meow excessively, etc.

[Fairbanks]

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

I'll reply to this thread in a series of multiquotes, we'll see how it works out.

I will try that format as well

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

Government is, by definition, a monopoly over certain aspects of society, most notably over law and order. You can't have a private court with a different system of laws, punishments, etc. competing with the government's courts.

Here I distinguish betwen the state and the Gov't. The Gov't is merely another institution of the state. Other institutions can indeed compete with Gov't offices. For example, news services, fire dept, militia.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

The modern nation state has other monopolies. For examle, the US gov't has a monopoly over the postal service. The Canadian gov't has a monopoly over health insurance and health care. The Canadian gov't also has a monopsomy over agriculture. The UK gov't used to have a monopoly over coal mines.

Many constitutions are possible. Aristotle collected constitutions as well as botanical specimens. Many species, some he did not have a proper name for.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

Individuals make up the institutions that make up the state. Again, there really is no such thing as "the state." It is simply a group of individuals who are in a position of power.

The state is in need of philosophical work. I believe it has received inadequate competent attention, Aristotle and Hegel notwithstanding.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

Here's a thought experiment: are mobs and gangs subject to moral laws? According to your logic, a mob isn't but a gang is. Whereas a mob could be said to be made up of various "institutions" (i.e. group A deals heroin, group B is the hitman squad), the mob is not bound to moral rules whereas the gang, which is much smaller and clearly made up of individuals, is. The fallacy is that you're ignoring that the institutions that make up the mob are made up of individuals, so the mob is really no different from the gang or the state. All are made up of individuals, and if accept that there is some kind of universal ethical system, then those organizations should follow those rules just as individuals do.

We might look for other kinds of instututions. Not all institutions are made of individuals. Baseball, for example. What is that?

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

I'm confused. The point I'm making is that the state, since it is made of individuals, is bound to the same moral rules that individuals are bound to. If moral rules are an inner law that guide individuals, shouldn't that also apply to a group of individuals, like the state?

Moral law is not defined but surmised and it is not something anybody is bound to. Moral law is whatever it is that allows creation of rules, or proper maxims that promote the highest good.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

The point of this thread is to ask "what if" Kant was still around. What does his ethical system say about treating future moral agents?

Kant left it up to whoever might be interested to extend his system. How Kant might decide would be idle speculation.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

I think we all agree that most humans (exceptions: unborn, infants, severely retarded, brain dead) are capable of moral deliberation and thus should be treated as ends in Kantian ethics. The key question is whether the unborn and infants should be treated as ends as well since they will be capable of moral deliberation in the future.

Not only means, but ends in themselves. We don't even know if the brain dead are thereby bereft of reason, so we are probably not treating them as ends in themselves, so there is a break in the system.

Originally Posted by krazy kaju

Well, the assumption of this thread is that there is a universal ethical system that everyone is "bound" to in the sense that all of your actions can be objectively called "right" or "wrong."

The moral question is whether the act furthers progress toward the highest good.

[iconoclast]

Aedes,

Oh that's great - a son named Max, you must be so proud. Another emotion, but one with a large rational element. I'm realizing more and more that the rational and emotional are not diametrically opposed - but I'd still maintain the epistemological superiority of scientific knowledge.

This is what I meant by chanelling - the concept: pride, being a form and structure of expression of an emotion that in childhood is unstructured, and perhaps so huge for that reason. But it's just a passing thought.

I'm good - all goes as well as it might. I've been giving you a break - but now I'm back, still trying to get people to face what I believe to be the most significant philosophical issue of our age - the very real and increasing probability of human extinction resulting from action in the course of epsitemologically unsound ideas. I'm not having a great deal of sucess, here or elsewhere I'm afraid, but the fault may not be mine:

Tversky and Kahneman have produced evidence that humans suffer cognitive biases which would tend to minimize the perception of this unprecedented event:
Denial is a negative "availability heuristic" shown to occur when an outcome is so upsetting that the very act of thinking about it leads to an increased refusal to believe it might occur. In this case, imagining human extinction probably makes it seem less likely.
In cultures where human extinction is not expected the proposition must overcome the "disconfirmation bias" against heterodox theories.
Another reliable psychological effect relevant here is the "positive outcome bias".
Behavioural finance has strong evidence that recent evidence is given undue significance in risk analysis. Roughly speaking, "100 year storms" tend to occur every twenty years in the stock market as traders become convinced that the current good times will last forever. Doomsayers who hypothesize rare crisis-scenarios are dismissed even when they have statistical evidence behind them. An extreme form of this bias can diminish the subjective probability of the unprecedented. (wikipedia.)

Apart from problems with risk assessment, there's personal mortality over religious ideation, and implied criticism on patriotic and economic lines all acting as obstacles to recognition of this problem. Maybe it's impossible, but I'm obliged to try by knowledge of that which I'm unable to communicate!



iconoclast.