If you would not want the rule to be universalised, you should not be completing the action. For example, if you were to lie, you are condoning lying universally so there will be no truth told by anyone, causing disruptions and disagreements. This is an absolutist stance because there are no exceptions to the rule. The Principle of humanity as an end not as a means is the second imperative. The action a person completes should not use another human to achieve a goal, this is because humans have intrinsic value and we have the innate ability to be rational and
The difference is that utilitarianism states that no matter what a person should never stray from the moral that will bring the greatest good. Kant justifies that under certain circumstances one could stray from the moral as long as the truths are logically consistent and universalizable. Utilitarianism is broken down into two categories; act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. The act utilitarian believes that one cannot establish rules in advance to cover all situations, actions and people because they are all different. The rule utilitarian believes that there are enough human motives and situations to justify setting up rules that apply to all humans and situations.
Assess Kant's ethics of duty and freedom as a response to all previous ethical theories. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy, has been celebrated for his great contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Kant especially celebrates the originality and uniqueness of his ethical theory through his general criticism of previous ethical theories and has always been regarded as a profound impact on more or less all the philosophical movements that went behind him. Significantly, Kant’s philosophy is anchored in his conviction that the value of man is inbuilt in his ability to reason and his criticisms of utilitarianism have become well-known in the history of philosophy. An analysis of Kant’s ethics of duty and freedom as a response to all previous ethical theories proves the characteristics of the Kantian ethics and the most significant contrast to utilitarianism, according to Kant, is the ethics of duty in which normative judgments are made on the basis of the character of the action rather than its consequences.
Self Interest or Privilege Superson approaches the moral skeptic in a way in which helps us to better understand the skeptic’s view but at the same time, by developing a better understanding of the moral skeptic, she is better fit to defeat it. The moral skeptic is aware of morality, yet lacks any interest in abiding by it, rather acting in self-interest. The traditional model of the skeptic dichotomizes morality with self-interest, because it is assumed that the skeptic endorses expected utility and the motives he believes is rational to have (ones that are most in conflict with morality). Rational actions go hand in hand with self-interested actions, and this is identified with promoting the satisfaction of any of one’s desires or preferences but moral ones, or with maximizing one’s expected utility. According to Superson, in order for self-interest to successfully defeat the skeptic it must defeat both action and disposition skepticism, which is where it lacks.
Once that which can be deemed certain is distinguished from that which is questionable, one can carefully derive the truth. Truth cannot come from that which is false, so it is essential to determine the validity of each principle in order to gather pure and certain knowledge. One of Descartes’s chief principles in his system of reasoning is that one must disregard all prior knowledge and precepts in order to discover the ultimate truth. He sees these preconceived notions as false until otherwise can be proven undoubtedly true. Descartes says, “never to accept anything as true that I did not plainly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid hasty judgment and prejudice; and to include nothing more in my judgments than what presented itself in my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to call it
. There is heated debate about what Hume intends by each of these theses and how he argues for them. He articulates and defends them within the broader context of his metaethics and his ethic of virtue and vice. 3 Kant's theory was that what guided us was 'rationality'. As free beings we were obligated to do what was 'reasonable', a free person has to act rationally - has to act without inconsistency.
The existence of synthetic a-priori judgments is absolutely crucial to Kant’s argument in the Critique of Pure Reason. Not only is their existence essential to his argument but also their specific manifestation within Kant’s wider framework is. Analytic a-posteriori would undermine Kant’s Transcendental Analytic as the only possible explanation for the emergence of consciousness. Steven Palmquist was one thinker to have challenged Kant’s rejection of the possibility of analytic a-posteriori judgments. It remains to be seen that a line of papers systematically and slowly explore consistent type of analytic posteriori, generating a consistent reciprocal theory to Kant’s.
In “Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals” by Immanuel Kant, a general framework is laid out for this idea that the discussion of metaphysics in philosophy has been led astray; that even the common man has a better understanding than most philosophers. Kant reasoned that the morality of an action lies solely in the cause and not in the effect; that is, in order to call an action morally good or bad, one must first analyze the motives for carrying out said action, making sure the action itself is from duty and not just coinciding with it. He also gave the groundwork for understanding how to determine if an action is morally good or bad by use of what he calls the “categorical imperative”, where you take a principle in a given situation (such as lying) and imagine a world where every person lied all the time. That would raise a contradiction and paradox in itself, because in order for lies to exist, there must be the existence of truth; this contradiction, Kant claims, is the reason why it cannot, under any circumstances, be morally permissible. However, the
Comparison between deontological and utilitarian ethics Deontological ethics Deontology is a normative theory attributed to Immanuel Kant, which focuses on the concept of the duty. It is concerned on fulfilling what is believed to be a moral duty without considering its impact to other people. It takes the stand that the duty defines the right actions regardless of the consequences. The hold of deontological ethics is that doing right is what conform the moral laws. According to Kant, right actions are not done by following inclinations, impulses or obeying the principle of greatest happiness but are done simply and purely from the sense of duty.
c) “Categorical Imperative: Those actions are right that conform to principles one can consistently will to be principles for everyone, and those actions wrong that are based on maxims that a rational creature could not will that all persons should follow” Kant says that an act is only right or moral if it is right for everyone. If an act is based on a generalized rule that a rational person could not will for all people to do than it is wrong. 3. What is the conclusion? The categorical imperative helps us decide what is right and wrong, and because we all acknowledge our ability to reason, this is the only thing that can