Yesterday in class, when Dr. J asked if we’d all been converted to deontology, I honestly wasn’t quite sure. After studying Kant and Mill for the past two weeks, I’d stumbled rather aimlessly into the indecisive opinion that both of these philosophers offer fairly reasonable, although clearly demanding, paths to being a good person, to living the good life. Sure, they are direct opposites and view morality from totally different perspectives, with Kant judging moral actions solely from the side of motive and duty and Mill sticking just as consistently to judgments based on consequences, but the ideal outcomes of these systems both seem desirable. Kant’s world where people can put aside their own base desires for the sake of duty and where good will and rationality reigns sounds just as beautiful as Mill’s community of individuals working for the greatest happiness for all. To my inexperienced eyes, it seemed that which particular set of moral guidelines you chose to found your decisions on didn’t really matter. Instead, I saw the level of commitment to the guidelines, to reshaping your life and decisions around your chosen principles, as truly the determining factor. By my arbitrary calculations, a person who lived out Kantian principles most of the time would naturally be better than a person who followed Utilitarianism some of the time just as a fully committed Utilitarian would rank higher on this “goodness scale” than a part time Kantian. I thought it was the presence of the principles, not the content that made the difference.
My already weakly supported position was called further into question by this article from the Economist. http://www.economist.com/node/21530078
Apparently, in a study using a variation of the trolley problem we discuss so often in class, the people who chose to act based on utilitarian principles and actively kill one person to save five also tend to display psychopathic tendencies – not exactly the type of people we’d describe as living the good life. In this case at least, it seems to indicate that which values you ascribe to really does matter (an obvious conclusion, I know). If you continue to test utilitarianism with extreme applications of its principles, more and more questionable implications show up. For example, in a world of limited resources, killing off the youngest child of each family could result in greater happiness for the majority at the expense of the one, but could this ever be truly acceptable? In basic decisions these two systems often lead us to the same external actions. In extreme situations, however, nothing could be further from the truth. It is precisely these extreme situations, these moral dilemmas, where the guidance of these principles matters the most. My conclusion, after all this mess, is one against moral relativism. I’m still not sure which of the systems is “better,” but I have a feeling that one or the other is a better path to the good life. And that's one step closer, right?
Stephanie,
ReplyDeleteA lot of us share your dilemma, believe me.
When Dr. J asked that question, I could not give her an answer either, for I was comparing Kant to what little i knew of Utilitarianism. after our class on thursday, I was even more confused then I had been on Tuesday.
This is all to say that I think I have lived a great bulk of my life thinking I could be both a kantian and a Utilitarian, which obviously is not true.
The trolley problem truly is a great way to help solve this dilemma. So in order to help you try answering the next questions and see what you get.
Stage one: you have two people on one side and 5 on the other (age and sex do not matter)
Stage two: you have you mom and dad on one side and 5 other people that you do not know on the other.
Stage three: you have a scientist on the brink if discovering the cure for cancer, and five children on the other side.
Who do you save? you reasoning behind your answer should help figure out which theory fists you best.
I agree with both of your statements, that a utilitarian would save more people in the trolley question and that it would be better to be a complete utilitarian or Kantian than a partial one. In the trolley question the consequence of five people dying is greater than one person dying at your hands, so a true utilitarian would definitely choose to kill that one person instead of five other people. If someone was only a partial utilitarian though then that person would be making many immoral actions based on the beliefs of utilitarianism. If that was the case that person would not be able to picture themselves as a moral person and neither would their fellow utilitarians, because their actions would never fit the mold of their beliefs. The consequence of not following one’s own constitution would be immoral action, thus it’s immoral to be a partial believer in one form of ethics.
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