Rachels, Ch. 9: Are There Absolute Moral Rules?
Harry Truman and Elizabeth Anscombe on absolute moral rules
- Truman: Dropping an atom bomb on Japanese cities--though it killed
innocent men, women and children--was justified because it saved lives.
- "He slept like a baby" after the decision!
- Anscombe on absolute moral rules:
- Killing innocents as a means to ends
is murder (wrong)
- "If you had to chose between boiling one baby and letting some
frightful disaster befall one thousand people (or a million if a
thousand is not enough), what would you do?"
- And if you chose to boil the baby, should you "sleep like a
baby?"
- Prohibition on killing innocents is one inviolable rule (and there are many others)
- Do not be tempted by hope of consequences.
- Anscombe's view (and Kant's below) is a form of Non-Consequentialism
- Some things may not be done no matter what (the consequences)
- In contrast, consequentialists say any moral rule may be broken if circumstances demand it
- Non-consequentialism: Right acts are determined by factors other than the
consequences
- By motives, by doing what the good person does (virtue ethics), by
considerations of justice, fairness, and equality, by respecting rights, by treating people as they
deserve, by treating people as ends and not means only, by following
moral rules that are universalizable
- Immanuel Kant
- Morality consists in following (absolute) rules (independent of
consequences)
- For Kant, reason requires this
- Hypothetical and categorical imperatives
- An imperative tells you what you should do
- Hypothetical imperatives tells you that you should do this if you want
something else
- E.g., If you to go to law school, then you should take the
entrance exam
- Categorical imperative: Tells you what you should do regardless of
what you want; independent of any desires; do such and such period
- Unlike hypothetical imperatives, which you can get out of by
not having the desire they depend on
- Categorical imperatives require certain action whatever your
desires
- For Kant, morality involves categorical imperatives
- These are justified by reasons: binding on all rational agents simply
because they are rational
- 1st formulation of the "categorical imperative"
- "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time
will that it should become universal law"
- If the rule by which you act is one that you would be willing to have
everyone follow all the time, then your act is permissible; otherwise
not.
- Kant's examples
- Making a false promise to repay a loan knowing that one can't repay
- Can one universalize this? (No: you would not be willing to
accept others making false promises to you)
- Not giving to charity:
- Can one universalize this? (No: if one was in desperate need
one would not want others to be indifferent to one's needs)
- For Kant, right acts are ones that follow rules that are universalizable
- Universalizable means
- Not self-defeating
- Reversible
- Consistently applied
- Rules must not be self-defeating
- If it is not possible that the rule of one's action could be universally followed (they are self-defeating), then one is taking unfair advantage of others
- Examples
- Butting in line is self defeating if universalized
- False promise to repay loan is self-defeating if universalized
- Rules must be reversible
- Can't make exceptions to moral rules just for oneself
- If you think it is right to do something to someone else, then you must
think it would be right for them to do it to you (in similar
circumstances)
- Examples
- If I think it is right to drink all your beer without asking you,
then I must also think it right that you drink all my beer w/o
asking me
- Charity: If it is right for me as a rich person to not give to a
poor person, then I must think it right that if I was a poor
person it would be right for rich people to give me nothing as well
- Problem of which rule to try to universalize
- Kant thought there was an absolute prohibition on lying because one
could not universalize lying (for doing so would be self-defeating-no
one would believe lies if there was universal law permitting lying)
- But perhaps one can universalize "lying to save an innocent person's
life"
- Kant's argument from unexpected consequences and responsibility for the
bad consequences of one's lies
- The case of the inquiring murderer: A friend tells you he is going
home to hide from a murderer. The murder comes and asks you if
your friend is at home. Should you lie or tell the truth?
- Kant says tell the truth
- For you can't know whether or not your friend is really at home
- Avoid the known evil (lying) and let the consequences
come as they may
- And if he is not at home and you lied and the murder found him
outside his home, you'd be responsible (in part) for his death
- Rachels response:
- We often can know what the consequences of our acts will be
- Kant ignores that one is also responsible for the consequences
of telling the truth as well as the consequences of lying
- Argument against absolute moral rules: Cases of conflict in absolute moral
rules
- Sometimes moral rules conflict with each other and if they are
absolute (exceptionless) we end up with a contradiction; one of them must
have an exception (not be absolute)
- Dutch captains smuggling Jewish refugees to England were asked by
Nazi patrol boats where they were going and who was aboard
- Two rules
- Wrong to lie
- Wrong to facilitate the murder of innocent people
- A theory of morality that prohibits both absolutely is incoherent.
- What Rachels sees as the lasting contribution of Kant to morality
- Violating morality is not only immoral but irrational
- Morality and rationality are tied
- Moral judgments must be backed by good reasons (Rachels account of morality)
- Good reasons are one's consistently applied
- One can't think something is a good reason in one case and then deny
it is a good reason in another case (that is relevantly similar)
- Examples:
- If the reason it is okay for me to have sex outside of marriage is
because I love the other person
- Consistency then requires me to say that gay sex outside
of marriage is okay too if the gay couple love each other
- Reasons can't be accepted sometimes and not other times; they can't
apply to others but not to me
- Kant's mistake was to think that consistency implied absolute
(exceptionless) moral rules
- But it does not
- All consistency requires is that if we advocate violating a rule in one
case for a particular reasons (lie to save an innocent person), then we
must be willing to accept that reason for violating the rules in other
similar cases