deontology essay

Paras

14

criticism 1: clashing / competing duties

A primary criticism is the issue of clashing or competing duties. Take the example by Sartre, a young man is motivated during wartime to join the resistance. His motives are good as they are to protect the lives of others from tyranny and injustice and his actions fulfil the categorical imperative. However, his mother has already lost three sons in the fighting already and begs him not to join, but to stay at home with her instead. In addition, she needs help caring for their smallholding and will potentially starve or be attacked by soldiers if he leaves. Kant believes duties are absolute and should be permitted with no exceptions, however in these instances, if the man fulfils one of his duties, he must neglect the other. Therefore, whatever he does appears to be immoral.

criticism 2: consequences

A second criticism is that consequences of actions determine their moral value. Most of our everyday reasoning is of the means-end sort as we consider consequences in everything we do. However, Kant believes that the act itself is right or wrong and is morally praiseworthy despite its consequences and that rational beings should be able to reason, a priori, to the view of acting only according to the categorical imperative. However, utilitarian's object to this by saying that Kant is confused about moral value. For example, if it is my duty not to murder, then there must be something bad about murder but we can only find this out from the consequences. Therefore, what makes a will good is that it wills good ends.

criticism 3 : Foot

A third and final criticism is morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical imperatives which is by Philippa Foot. She disagrees with Kant's' claim that moral categoricals are rationally binding on individuals 'just because' without reference to character, motives or ends. She therefore argues that all moral statements are hypothetical, and not categorical and these are not rational as it does make sense as it depends on each circumstance. She gives two examples to explain this. Firstly, she explains the criticism using an analogy of etiquette, 'an invitation in the third person should be answered in the third person, where the rule does not fail to apply to someone who has his good reasons for ignoring this piece of nonsense, or who simply does not care about what, from the point of view of etiquette, she should do'. This therefore demonstrates that imperatives can only be hypothetical and not categorical as it is entirely dependent on what the personal aims of the person are. As the grammar of moral statements is the same as those rules of etiquette, and if etiquette is hypothetical on achieving some end, then so are moral statements. In addition, if I am not motivated by social approbrium then moral commands have no binding force over me. She further says uses the example of not allowing women into a smoking club just because it is not a suitable place for women to be. In this case, it is not a categorical imperative again as it is only hypothetical as it is not rational. Therefore, because there is nothing irrational in acting in ways we can want others to act and it is therefore completely dependent on the individual's personal aims. Furthermore, it is perfectly rational for me to want something for myself that I do not want for everyone and thus not everything is universalisable.

opening

Deontology is a normative ethical theory which states that a moral act is good in and of itself, irrespective of teleological claims about its consequences. Deontology is a normative ethical theory which states that a moral act is good in and of itself, irrespective of teleological claims about its consequences. Deontological ethical theories claim we have moral duties to follow certain rules and that these rules are what determine whether a person's actions are morally right or wrong. Kant's deontological ethics argues that we have a duty as rational agents to follow the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative says to only act according to maxims (rules) that can be applied universally. Kant describes several ways to determine whether a particular maxim passes the categorical imperative: If a maxim leads to a contradiction in conception, then we have a perfect duty not to follow it, and if a maxim leads to a contradiction in will, we have an imperfect duty not to follow it. Kant further claims that acting for the sake of these duties - the good will - is the only thing that is good without qualification. In this essay I will reject Kant's deontological ethics on two grounds: Firstly, because the categorical imperative can justify two contradictory courses of action and so does not provide clear guidance for actions, and secondly, because there are other valuable motivations for action besides the good will.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Deontology is a flawed account of moral reasoning due to Phillipa Foot's response that morality is a system of hypothetical imperatives.

Foot's recognition of 2 responses

Foot recognises two objections to her view. The first is, if she is right, then what does 'acting out of duty' amount to?' If moral judgements are not categorical, it seems that doing what is right 'because it is right' no longer gives us a reason to act. Foot's response is that Kant is mistaken in thinking that the motive of duty is the only morally good motive. We can genuinely care about others' good quite apart from thoughts of duty and can still act morally based on a desire to do the right thing. This looks like moral action on the basis of the hypothetical imperative for example you are helping because you want to help and a virtuous person may act well because they are dedicated to moral ends and not someone who acts morally as they 'feel inclined'. The second response is 'doesn't Foot's view undermine morality? And if so, how can we then censure amoralists?' She responds that amoralists could accept that the moral 'ought' is non-hypothetical but still not think it gives them a reason to live by moral rules. Amoralists take themselves to have no reason to be moral and they may be mistaken and spoil their lives. But indeed, moral ought has no magical force to compel anyone to be moral for its own sake and they may be cruel, unpleasant, even foolish but they are not irrational.

intro

I will show that deontology is not correct because the objection that morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical imperatives cannot be satisfactorily answered. Although it can defend itself against the objection of clashing or competing duties and the criticism that consequences determine the value of moral actions, it cannot defend itself against the objection that morality is a system of hypothetical, rather than categorical imperatives

eval

In evaluation, this criticism is extremely strong and is utterly insuperable to Deontology, as Kant may be right in linguistic terms to distinguish moral commands as categorical, however, Kant also says that categorical imperatives have a 'special dignity' that no other imperatives have, which Foot says that one cannot prove. The words "should" and "ought" in themselves do not give us reasons to act, it is more our desire to conform that causes us to follow these rules. As these examples of should statements do not give us reason to act in themselves and have no binding force, then why should moral commands give us reason to act in themselves and be a binding force?. Therefore, we only act because we want to conform to society's moral rules, meaning that we never do anything for the sake of morality, we always have ulterior motives. Therefore, clearly Foot's objection overcomes Deontology.

Foot's response to Kant

In response to Kant, Foot would claim It doesn't destroy morality because it doesn't mean that people won't do good things anymore. There are reasons apart from duty that make people do the right thing as people generally have a desire to help others, If someone is immoral then their life will be worse because of it - this doesn't mean that there should be an absolute moral law

response

In response to this, a deontologist would say that we can claim that there is a hierarchy of duties, and that some actions are more important than others. For example, it is more important to act on the maxim of saving a life rather than it is to act on the maxim of truth telling. However, an objection to this is that given telling lies is a contradiction in conception this seems rather irrational as it would be in fact very difficult to distinguish these in a hierarchy. Another response to the criticism can be the distinction made by Kant between perfect and imperfect duties. Perfect duties are those which we must always follow, and which admit of no exceptions, these include do not lie and do not murder and to contradict them would provide a contradiction in conception. Imperfect duties are those which we can choose to follow in many different ways and which we are not always obliged to follow or to follow in a specific way. These include using our talents, to protect ourselves from harm, and to help others. Therefore, these can help us prioritise our actions for example we can use this to help decide what to do as we can play to our strengths. However, most duties are not absolute, for instance there is a duty not to lie but it may be permissible to lie in order to save someone's life. Less important duties can 'give way' to more important ones and in cases of conflict, one will give way and no longer be a duty in that situation.

response

Kant's response to this criticism is that Moral commands can be derived through reason. Through reason (reflecting on experience), we can discover a priori moral laws. Unless we accept these moral laws, we cannot clearly understand our experience of the world. These moral laws are independent of our opinion of the world and are therefore known through rational thought (a priori). This is essentially disagreeing with Philippa Foot, as he thinks that categorical commands have a special value (whereas she doesn't). Deontologists also object to Foot by claiming that this view of morality as hypothetical is destructive to morality. If we only do moral actions for our own good, this defeats the point of morality in the first place. Additionally, Some people don't care about the suffering of others, however surely, they 'ought' to - therefore this is an absolute moral law and goes against Foot's hypothetical system of morality.

response

Kant's response to this is that there are no ends that are good without qualification, even happiness, so this can thus not be the right analysis of the good will. Furthermore, we can claim that Kant is too deterministic in his conception of moral good. For instance, in the axe murderer example, Kant discusses how a deontologist would have to do the intuitively wrong thing in some circumstances as it seems obvious that one should lie to save a life. However, telling the truth is a perfect duty because to lie would be irrational as it is a contradiction in conception. Therefore, we must tell the truth in which this case would mean allowing the axe murderer to kill his victim when this could have easily been prevented. Kant justifies this because if we do lie, then we are responsible for the axe murderer's actions far more than if we were to act morally responsible. If we do indeed lie, this may actually be a burden as it could do more harm than good, furthermore this brings up the problem of uncertain consequences. Consequences are uncertain and can never be predicted with complete accuracy, and rather to 'take bets' on uncertain outcomes in spur of the moment cases, the moral praise can just lie in the intention

eval

Overall, this criticism can be overcome as it does not prove much of an issue for deontology and cannot undermine the entire moral theory. It seems intuitively obvious to claim that the issue of clashing and competing duties would not pose a major issue to a moral agent as the answer to moral conflict must be evaluated and judged by the individual moral agent, using the development of his own judgement. Beyond education, Kant leaves the task of deciding practical priorities to the good judgement of moral agents. Furthermore, through the process of experience and intuition, one builds up a collection of moral principles throughout their life. These principles are called "prima facie" duties and include ideas such as beneficence (the obligation to promote the welfare of others), non malevolence, justice, and honesty. These duties can be considered binding, however when one does not deal with duty in the abstract and considers their circumstances, it is clear they can be overridden by more pressing duties. Therefore, a rational moral agent can use their judgement to infer which duties allow for exceptions. Although this solution does undermine Kant's view of perfect duties and contradicts Kant's categorical and absolute theory, this solution does prove that Clashing and Competing duties is not the objection which overcomes Deontology, or the objection that ultimately disproves Deontology

eval

Overall, we ought to do what is better and in order to fulfil acting out of duty, we need to look to the consequences so we can determine what the right thing to do is. Any rational person would disregard the idea of perfect duties and absolute rules in order to prevent a negative consequence, for example in the axe murderer example, one would value protecting human life above their "duty" to tell the truth. Although one's intent will always be to gauge possible consequences and act accordingly, this criticism does threaten the strength of Deontological ethics, it cannot be seen as one which totally overcomes Deontology as it presents us with an unfair moral dichotomy. There are many more options than just lie or tell the truth. For example, we could try talk the would-be murderer out of his actions or we could try attack the axe murderer ourselves and many other permissible options. Moreover, if rationality was only about means-end reasoning, then morality becomes hypothetical which treats morality as another desire or purpose that we either have or don't have. But in fact, means-end reasoning can be widely used and can be universalizable. Therefore, although this criticism is stronger than clashing and competing duties, it does not completely overcome Deontological ethics as Kant could still argue that consequences are never certain and by changing the course of the future, we gain responsibility for whatever outcome occurs.