Many of Mill's critics feel that utilitarianism is an impractical way of
approaching moral dilemmas because it requires agents to base their actions
upon the consequences. Kant is especially opposed to this philosophy, arguing
that it is impossible to know the outcome of our action because we can never
predict the future with utmost certainty. In his example of the ax murderer, he
believes telling the truth is the right choice because even if you lied you
could not truly know if you will save your friends life or not. However, to
many people it seems illogical that allowing a murder to ax your friend to
death is the moral choice - and that is the crux of the matter. Humans are
logical beings. We constantly perform cost-benefit analysis on our daily
actions, so wouldn't it be natural to also use this reasoning when deciding the
morality of actions? If we apply logic to our moral compass, it may not point
us due North, but it will get us to where we need to go. Consider the classic
trolley problem. A trolley is hurtling towards five innocent people and
you are on a bridge under which it will pass. You can stop it by dropping a
heavy weight in front of it. The very fat man next to you is the one who tied
these people to the trolley tracks. Now, if you were a Kantian, you would do
nothing, since you could not actually know if killing the fat man would save
the five. But if we apply logic and our past experiences to the situation, we
can deduce that the trolley will indeed stop and the five innocents will be saved.
This conclusion is not guaranteed of course, but it is sure enough to
base a moral decision upon it. If at anytime a moral agent feels
that their logical processes are not sturdy enough, they will not
proceed. In this way, the "impracticality" criticism is resolved.
I agree with you that the fact that Kant's philosophy does not take into account the consequences/rewards of moral actions seems to be a big problem with his viewpoint. I believe that Kant, more than most other philosophers, devised a philosophy that wouldn't work in our world, rather only in his perfect universe. As you mentioned in your example, humans have moral compasses that we are lead by uncontrollably, we would always have our conscience nagging at us if we tried to live using Kant's method. I find it hard to imagine a scenario like the axe murderer or the train, where a logical and reasonable person does not attempt to help save the lives of others, as we weigh consequences whether or not Kant says we should. I like that you brought cost-benefit into ethical behavior, as that idea follows more in tune with Kant's foil, Mill, and Utilitarian Calculus.
ReplyDeleteI don't exactly think that Kant's philosophy is only applicable to a perfect world. Kant's philosophy on morality seems to be a product of deductive reasoning while Utilitarianism seems to be a product of inductive reasoning. I think the reason why Kant's example is so appalling is because humans, for the most part, use inductive reasoning in their everyday lives. Other than math, there are very few things in our world that follow deductive logic. Even those things that seem intrinsically true (like laws of gravity) are inductive in the way we perceive them. As Kant states, his goal is to define universal laws of morality that are deductive, or necessarily true. Since Utilitarianism is a consequentialist view, I think it's safe to say that it follows inductive logic, where the outcomes are probably true (but never really 100%). Like with the axe murderer scene, it's probably likely that if you tell the truth your friend will die, and for us that seems the best way to judge the moral actions of someone who lies (because if they lie it's probably true your friend will live). But Kant, as we know, would say that the act of lying is wrong regardless of the circumstances, but I believe that Mill would agree with Kant, however, Mill also says that because we live in a world where everyone is not morally just, there are some that will make sacrifices for the happiness of others. He says that is ok as long as the world is the way it is. To sum up, Mill would say that the person that lies to the murderer does a morally just thing overall, but had to sacrifice some of their happiness (or whatever) to achieve that.
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