Moral motivation comes from the desire to be able to justify myself to others on grounds they could not reasonably reject, which he does not assume is in the SMS of every agent. What We Owe to Each Other. Scanlon's Contractualist Principle. Who is the skeptic that he is influenced by? Is he correct that utilitarianism rests on this sort of qualified skepticism?
Step 1 is the step from stage 1 to:. Step 2 is the step from stage 2 to:. Harsanyi takes both steps; Rawls objects to step 2 ; Scanlon objects to step 1. Harsanyi argues that in an impartial choice situations , rationally self-interested agents would choose to maximize average expected utility.
Why does Scanlon not accept the formula for maximizing average expected utility? The example of the winners and the losers: The distribution problem. Rawls claims that his two principles of justice would be chosen by rationally disinterested agents in the original position behind the veil of ignorance.
Why does Scanlon not employ an original position construction? Scanlon replaces the Harsanyi -Rawls impartial point of view with an intersubjective point of view. Kant's Examples Four Illustrations 1. Morality as an End or Goal What is Nozick's idea of a "utilitarianism of rights" ? Agent-Relative Reasons Translate the following into an agent-relative reason: "Don't violate other people's rights.
Terminology 1. Gauthier's three-fold distinction: the prudent person the "moral" prudent but trustworthy [Gauthier should have said: prudent but "trustworthy" person the truly moral [without quotes] trustworthy [without quotes] and fair [without quotes] person. Scanlon's Contractualism What is philosophical explanation of morality? Scanlon's Contractualist Principle "An act is wrong if its performance under the circumstances would be disallowed by any system of rules for the general regulation of behaviour which no one could reasonably reject as the basis for informed, unforced general agreement" Cooperates C.
Defects D. I Cooperate C. Essays Essays FlashCards. Browse Essays. Sign in. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Show More. Read More. Words: - Pages: 4. Kant On Abortion Abortion is stopping a beating heart, which is considered murder and murder is never a moral action.
Words: - Pages: 5. My Baseline Ethics By Immanuel Kant Kant 's ethics is a bit different from the others and a little complicated because it presents ethics in a formal way where the most important thing a person has to do before making an action is to ask what should I do? Words: - Pages: Differences Between Sympathy, Subjective Desire There are however, actions that a moral agent is expected to do regardless of their desires.
Words: - Pages: 6. Act Utilitarianism This gives us a way to figure out moral actions and to make moral reasoning. Absolutism: The Controversial Topic Of Abortion A very large part of the population believes that it is ethically wrong to take a human life no matter what.
Words: - Pages: 8. Related Topics. Ready To Get Started? A human will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty.
A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty because such a will does not have natural inclinations and so necessarily fulfills moral requirements without feeling constrained to do so. Kant confirms this by comparing motivation by duty with other sorts of motives, in particular, with motives of self-interest, self-preservation, sympathy and happiness.
He argues that a dutiful action from any of these motives, however praiseworthy it may be, does not express a good will. Only then would the action have moral worth. Many object that we do not think better of actions done for the sake of duty than actions performed out of emotional concern or sympathy for others, especially those things we do for friends and family. What is crucial in actions that express a good will is that in conforming to duty a perfectly virtuous person always would, and so ideally we should, recognize and be moved by the thought that our conformity is morally obligatory.
The motivational structure of the agent should be arranged so that she always treats considerations of duty as sufficient reasons for conforming to those requirements. In other words, we should have a firm commitment not to perform an action if it is morally forbidden and to perform an action if it is morally required.
Having a good will, in this sense, is compatible with having feelings and emotions of various kinds, and even with aiming to cultivate some of them in order to counteract desires and inclinations that tempt us to immorality. Suppose for the sake of argument we agree with Kant. We now need to know what distinguishes the principle that lays down our duties from these other motivating principles, and so makes motivation by it the source of unqualified value.
According to Kant, what is singular about motivation by duty is that it consists of bare respect for the moral law. What naturally comes to mind is this: Duties are rules or laws of some sort combined with some sort of felt constraint or incentive on our choices, whether from external coercion by others or from our own powers of reason.
For instance, the bylaws of a club lay down duties for its officers and enforce them with sanctions. City and state laws establish the duties of citizens and enforce them with coercive legal power. Thinking we are duty bound is simply respecting, as such, certain laws pertaining to us. Respect for such laws could hardly be thought valuable. For another, our motive in conforming our actions to civic and other laws is rarely unconditional respect. We also have an eye toward doing our part in maintaining civil or social order, toward punishments or loss of standing and reputation in violating such laws, and other outcomes of lawful behavior.
Indeed, we respect these laws to the degree, but only to the degree, that they do not violate values, laws or principles we hold more dear. Yet Kant thinks that, in acting from duty, we are not at all motivated by a prospective outcome or some other extrinsic feature of our conduct except insofar as these are requirements of duty itself. We are motivated by the mere conformity of our will to law as such. Human persons inevitably have respect for the moral law even though we are not always moved by it and even though we do not always comply with the moral standards that we nonetheless recognize as authoritative.
The force of moral requirements as reasons is that we cannot ignore them no matter how circumstances might conspire against any other consideration. Basic moral requirements retain their reason-giving force under any circumstance, they have universal validity.
So, whatever else may be said of basic moral requirements, their content is universal. Only a universal law could be the content of a requirement that has the reason-giving force of morality.
This is the principle which motivates a good will, and which Kant holds to be the fundamental principle of all of morality. Kant holds that the fundamental principle of our moral duties is a categorical imperative. It is an imperative because it is a command addressed to agents who could follow it but might not e.
Take the cannoli. It is categorical in virtue of applying to us unconditionally, or simply because we possesses rational wills, without reference to any ends that we might or might not have. It does not, in other words, apply to us on the condition that we have antecedently adopted some goal for ourselves. A hypothetical imperative is a command that also applies to us in virtue of our having a rational will, but not simply in virtue of this.
It requires us to exercise our wills in a certain way given we have antecedently willed an end. A hypothetical imperative is thus a command in a conditional form.
For Kant, willing an end involves more than desiring; it requires actively choosing or committing to the end rather than merely finding oneself with a passive desire for it. Further, there is nothing irrational in failing to will means to what one desires. The condition under which a hypothetical imperative applies to us, then, is that we will some end. Now, for the most part, the ends we will we might not have willed, and some ends that we do not will we might nevertheless have willed.
But there is at least conceptual room for the idea of a natural or inclination-based end that we must will. The distinction between ends that we might or might not will and those, if any, we necessarily will as the kinds of natural beings we are, is the basis for his distinction between two kinds of hypothetical imperatives.
If the end is one that we might or might not will — that is, it is a merely possible end — the imperative is problematic.
Almost all non-moral, rational imperatives are problematic, since there are virtually no ends that we necessarily will as human beings. As it turns out, the only non-moral end that we will, as a matter of natural necessity, is our own happiness. Any imperative that applied to us because we will our own happiness would thus be an assertoric imperative. Rationality, Kant thinks, can issue no imperative if the end is indeterminate, and happiness is an indeterminate end.
Since Kant presents moral and prudential rational requirements as first and foremost demands on our wills rather than on external acts, moral and prudential evaluation is first and foremost an evaluation of the will our actions express. Likewise, while actions, feelings or desires may be the focus of other moral views, for Kant practical irrationality, both moral and prudential, focuses mainly on our willing.
That is, do such imperatives tell us to take the necessary means to our ends or give up our ends wide scope or do they simply tell us that, if we have an end, then take the necessary means to it.
Hence, morality and other rational requirements are, for the most part, demands that apply to the maxims that we act on. Since this is a principle stating only what some agent wills, it is subjective. A principle that governs any rational will is an objective principle of volition, which Kant refers to as a practical law.
For anything to count as human willing, it must be based on a maxim to pursue some end through some means. Hence, in employing a maxim, any human willing already embodies the form of means-end reasoning that calls for evaluation in terms of hypothetical imperatives. To that extent at least, then, anything dignified as human willing is subject to rational requirements.
Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents, and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances. Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this law of nature.
If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world.
If you could, then your action is morally permissible. If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible. Hence, one is forbidden to act on the maxim of committing suicide to avoid unhappiness. By contrast, the maxim of refusing to assist others in pursuit of their projects passes the contradiction in conception test, but fails the contradiction in the will test at the fourth step. Hence, we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent aid and assist others.
Kant held that ordinary moral thought recognized moral duties toward ourselves as well as toward others. Hence, together with the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, Kant recognized four categories of duties: perfect duties toward ourselves, perfect duties toward others, imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others. Kant uses four examples in the Groundwork , one of each kind of duty, to demonstrate that every kind of duty can be derived from the CI, and hence to bolster his case that the CI is indeed the fundamental principle of morality.
We will briefly sketch one way of doing so for the perfect duty to others to refrain from lying promises and the imperfect duty to ourselves to develop talents. The maxim of lying whenever it gets you what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when doing so gets them what they want.
My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money. And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. It is a world containing my promise and a world in which there can be no promises. Hence, it is inconceivable that I could sincerely act on my maxim in a world in which my maxim is a universal law of nature.
Since it is inconceivable that these two things could exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money. By contrast with the maxim of the lying promise, we can easily conceive of adopting a maxim of refusing to develop any of our talents in a world in which that maxim is a universal law of nature.
It would undoubtedly be a world more primitive than our own, but pursuing such a policy is still conceivable in it. However, it is not, Kant argues, possible to rationally will this maxim in such a world. Hence, although I can conceive of a talentless world, I cannot rationally will that it come about, given that I already will, insofar as I am rational, that I develop all of my own.
Yet, given limitations on our time, energy and interest, it is difficult to see how full rationality requires us to aim to fully develop literally all of our talents. Further, all that is required to show that I cannot will a talentless world is that, insofar as I am rational, I necessarily will that some talents in me be developed, not the dubious claim that I rationally will that they all be developed.
Moreover, suppose rationality did require me to aim at developing all of my talents. Then, there seems to be no need to go further in the CI procedure to show that refusing to develop talents is immoral. Given that, insofar as we are rational, we must will to develop capacities, it is by this very fact irrational not to do so. However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality.
Failure to conform to instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not always immoral. This is a claim he uses not only to distinguish assertoric from problematic imperatives, but also to argue for the imperfect duty of helping others G He also appears to rely on this claim in each of his examples.
Each maxim he is testing appears to have happiness as its aim. One explanation for this is that, since each person necessarily wills her own happiness, maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral evaluation.
Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving normal human happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of theirs at some time.
For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself, and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and developed traditions of their preparation.
Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and available means to any ends that they will. And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any of their natural talents.
We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving ourselves over to pleasure rather than self-development.
Since we will the necessary and available means to our ends, we are rationally committed to willing that everyone sometime develop his or her talents. So since we cannot will as a universal law of nature that no one ever develop any talents — given that it is inconsistent with what we now see that we rationally will — we are forbidden from adopting the maxim of refusing to develop any of our own.
This formulation states that we should never act in such a way that we treat humanity, whether in ourselves or in others, as a means only but always as an end in itself. Intuitively, there seems something wrong with treating human beings as mere instruments with no value beyond this. But this very intuitiveness can also invite misunderstandings. First, the Humanity Formula does not rule out using people as means to our ends.
Clearly this would be an absurd demand, since we apparently do this all the time in morally appropriate ways.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine any life that is recognizably human without the use of others in pursuit of our goals. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the chairs we sit on and the computers we type at are gotten only by way of talents and abilities that have been developed through the exercise of the wills of many people. What the Humanity Formula rules out is engaging in this pervasive use of humanity in such a way that we treat it as a mere means to our ends.
Thus, the difference between a horse and a taxi driver is not that we may use one but not the other as a means of transportation. Thus, supposing that the taxi driver has freely exercised his rational capacities in pursuing his line of work, we make permissible use of these capacities as a means only if we behave in a way that he could, when exercising his rational capacities, consent to — for instance, by paying an agreed on price. Third, the idea of an end has three senses for Kant, two positive senses and a negative sense.
An end in the first positive sense is a thing we will to produce or bring about in the world. For instance, if losing weight is my end, then losing weight is something I aim to bring about. An end in this sense guides my actions in that once I will to produce something, I then deliberate about and aim to pursue means of producing it if I am rational.
Once I have adopted an end in this sense, it dictates that I do something: I should act in ways that will bring about the end or instead choose to abandon my goal. An end in the negative sense lays down a law for me as well, and so guides action, but in a different way. Korsgaard offers self-preservation as an example of an end in a negative sense: We do not try to produce our self-preservation. Rather, the end of self-preservation prevents us from engaging in certain kinds of activities, for instance, picking fights with mobsters, and so on.
That is, as an end, it is something I do not act against in pursuing my positive ends, rather than something I produce. Humanity is in the first instance an end in this negative sense: It is something that limits what I may do in pursuit of my other ends, similar to the way that my end of self-preservation limits what I may do in pursuit of other ends.
Insofar as it limits my actions, it is a source of perfect duties. Now many of our ends are subjective in that they are not ends that every rational being must have.
Humanity is an objective end, because it is an end that every rational being must have. Hence, my own humanity as well as the humanity of others limit what I am morally permitted to do when I pursue my other, non-mandatory, ends. The humanity in myself and others is also a positive end, though not in the first positive sense above, as something to be produced by my actions.
Rather, it is something to realize, cultivate or further by my actions. Becoming a philosopher, pianist or novelist might be my end in this sense. When my end is becoming a pianist, my actions do not, or at least not simply, produce something, being a pianist, but constitute or realize the activity of being a pianist. Insofar as the humanity in ourselves must be treated as an end in itself in this second positive sense, it must be cultivated, developed or fully actualized. And insofar as humanity is a positive end in others, I must attempt to further their ends as well.
In so doing, I further the humanity in others, by helping further the projects and ends that they have willingly adopted for themselves. Proper regard for something with absolute value or worth requires respect for it.
But this can invite misunderstandings. When I respect you in this way, I am positively appraising you in light of some achievement or virtue you possess relative to some standard of success. If this were the sort of respect Kant is counseling then clearly it may vary from person to person and is surely not what treating something as an end-in-itself requires.
For instance, it does not seem to prevent me from regarding rationality as an achievement and respecting one person as a rational agent in this sense, but not another. And Kant is not telling us to ignore differences, to pretend that we are blind to them on mindless egalitarian grounds. In such cases of respecting you because of who or what you are, I am giving the proper regard to a certain fact about you, your being a Dean for instance.
This sort of respect, unlike appraisal respect, is not a matter of degree based on your having measured up to some standard of assessment. We are to respect human beings simply because they are persons and this requires a certain sort of regard.
We are not called on to respect them insofar as they have met some standard of evaluation appropriate to persons. And, crucially for Kant, persons cannot lose their humanity by their misdeeds — even the most vicious persons, Kant thought, deserve basic respect as persons with humanity.
Although Kant does not state this as an imperative, as he does in the other formulations, it is easy enough to put it in that form: Act so that through your maxims you could be a legislator of universal laws. This sounds very similar to the first formulation.
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