Ursinus Intro Ethics Blog - Section A

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There were a few situations brought up in class today regarding Kant and his Formula of Universal I'd like to address. One is a situation where Kant would argue that it is better not to lie to the murderer trying to get in your door rather than save a life, but surely this is fixable with a few emendations to Kant's model. I might argue, for instance, that human life (that "rational machinery") is far more valuable, than the immorality of telling a lie – what Dr. Sorenson provided as the "Kantian" claim rather than Kant's specific stance – but this does not satisfy the more mundane situations.

One such situation brought up about whether we should lie about a person's looks when they are fishing for compliments (or if you just want to make them feel good about themselves) seems easily defended from Kant's point of view. It might make your mother feel good in the short term to tell her she doesn't look old when she asks, but perhaps afterward she looks at herself in the mirror and decides that that was a lie. Surely more harm than good was done here? To take a more complicated case, Frank brought up the question of an alcoholic deceived by her bartender to help prevent her from hurting others and herself. In this case, Kant would still say that the actions of the bartender were wrong, because even if the bartender kept the woman off the streets for a night, ultimately it is possible that weaning her alcohol intake will only make her feel that she has not had enough. Perhaps if she kept drinking she would have sunk so low that she realized she had to stop and quit altogether. This is pure conjecture, obviously, but it is not easy to determine that deception is the better part of valor in any case. Kant would argue to take the high road. In the case where the danger was immediate, as a bartender, he or she can always cut the drinker off, call the police if it looks that they are going to endanger others (by driving home, for instance) as an alternative for lying.

Kant’s argument for the formula for universal law makes sense throughout most of his argument. He gives valid points for how people make decisions and through rationality and I agree with how every human can pick his or her own standards for what decisions are “good” choices. What I can’t agree with is Kant’s statement that a person should “act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” This idea states that the rules that a person creates for themselves must also be applied universally to all humans. I don’t see the logical reasoning behind this assumption that proves it must be true. If all humans are autonomous and can therefore create their own standards and rules, how does that lead to the conclusion that any rule created must also become a universal law? The only way that I can see this as being true is if it follows somehow from everyone always acting rationally, therefore if everyone acted rationally, one person’s rules could then become universal laws. But in presenting the idea that everyone acts rationally in the same way if they are in the same circumstances, it says that there are a set of actions that all humans should follow for every possible situation. If this is the case, humans are then not autonomous and can not create their own set of rules, which Kant initially states in his argument. I think that Kant’s logic here is somewhat circular in that proving his point that all humans would act the same way if acting rational in the same circumstances takes away from his initial premise that humans are autonomous beings with reason and their own rationality.

Today's class discussion focused around whether or not lying was right or wrong, or if white lies were permissible to tell. Last night while flipping though the channels I stopped at "Everybody Loves Raymond". Raymond’s wife was about to throw away a baseball his father had given to him as a kid which was signed by Mickey Mantel. However, it turns out that when Raymond showed his father the baseball, he told Raymond that it really wasn't signed by Mantel. His father only told him that because he knew of Raymond’s love for the baseball player and did not want to disappoint him. I found it ironic that TV show plots are even based around little white lies that are told everyday. In Raymond’s case, he went on to become a successful sports writer in response to receiving the baseball from his dad and his admiration of Mantel.

As a believer in Kant’s theory over Consequentialism, I can not agree with him on the position he takes that lying is always forbidden. There are certain situations where telling a white lie in which would benefit someone else, is in my case permissible. As a parent, it is understood that there are certain things that children are to young to understand. In Raymond’s case his father’s white lie played a role in his later success. When my dog died I was only 4 years old and my parents told me Ebony was on vacation, it wasn’t until my grandfather died a few years later that I began to understand the concept of death. In my opinion it is up to the parent to decide what is acceptable to tell a white lie about and what isn’t. I don’t think that by parents simply holding back information from their children until they are older is by any way going to hurt their development as adults. We all grew up believing in Santa Clause or the tooth fairy, and for better or worse those tiny white lies have not harmed us.

I think that Kant's moral principles are much more believable and applicable than those of utilitarianism. Honestly, I don't believe that every morally obligatory action is that which brings about the most happiness. What makes one person happy does not make another person happy, so really, what sort of underlying fundamental theory can utilitarianism be? Since happiness is not the same for everyone at once, why not just subscribe to relativism, write off morality entirely, and be done with it?

However, Kant's philosophy relies on the fact that everyone is equal, and as equals all rational beings should be subject to the same morality. In the real world, we know that not everyone DOES in fact subject themselves to the same moral code as everyone else, but Kant says we SHOULD. I think this concept is closer to the actual idea of morality than just trying to bring about the most happiness. Not that happiness is not desirable, but no one is happy all the time. Besides, not every morally correct action will bring about the MOST happiness, and utilitarianism is all about the maximization of happiness. Sometimes the RIGHT thing to do is not always the thing that will make everyone happy, and this brings us full circle to the argument in class today about lying. You can draw your own conclusions about whether you'd rather lie if it's going to make people happy or tell the truth even if it hurts, but I agree with Kant in this whole-heartedly.