Timeline for What would Kant do when two categorical imperatives conflict? Could he ever justify lying?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 27, 2015 at 23:21 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Dec 28, 2015 at 7:07 | |||||
| Jul 21, 2014 at 10:45 | comment | added | Falco | I think no one can really solve the dilemma - because in reality you are never 100% what will be the outcome of your actions... If killing someone has a 51% chance of preventing the dead of two others, should you do it? In the end you will have no moral guideline and everything is just guesswork and possibly lying to yourself. - So if you say everything regarding the outcome is guesswork the only absolute thing left is our untainted direct action, this is the only thing we can control and should be perfect ;-) | |
| Jun 11, 2011 at 5:35 | comment | added | Cody Gray | @Cerberus: Those are far from the only two who found his moral philosophy to be quite lacking. As I observed, though the scenario you describe did not appear to present a strong dilemma to Kant himself, it is certainly one to the vast majority of us who take a less hard-line approach. Under a strictly deontological framework, there is indeed no room for a consideration of expected consequences. But schools of thought like virtue ethics and even David Cummiskey's neo-Kantianism, which attempts to combine elements of consequentialism with Kant's thought in his book Kantian Consequentialism. | |
| Jun 11, 2011 at 2:30 | vote | accept | Cerberus | ||
| Jun 11, 2011 at 2:30 | comment | added | Cerberus | Thanks! It seems you and Mfg agree with Chad. You get the tick because you explained the problems and possible Kantian replies most completely. (My personal conclusion must be that Kant's potential answer would be poor. That consequences should not matter at all is simplistic; for how can it be determined whether an intention is evil if we disregard what results the agent expects? That categorical imperatives are suspended in certain societies would seem too complicating and arbitrary for a "universal" rule. But that must be why Constant and Schopenhauer found his moral philosophy lacking.) | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 20:37 | comment | added | dimo414 | Excellently put, and very informative. Thank you. | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 13:20 | history | answered | Cody Gray | CC BY-SA 3.0 |