Who do you agree with?

[Brittaneee]

Ok I really should be writing this philosophy paper right now but while I was writing it I got curious as to what other people thought about this so I thought I would ask on here.

So pretty much my question is in terms of morality which philosophical view point do you agree with; Utilitarianism or Kantian deontology? I'm mostly focusing on these two because they pretty much are the 2 largest moral theories and are very opposite of each other.

So crash course if you don't know what each are.

Utilitarianism:

Pretty much the idea that what is morally right will be the decision that will benefit the greater amount of people.

Kantian Deontology:

This is the idea that you should only do an act if it can become a universal law. So pretty much it's like imagining that if everyone else started doing what I'm doing then it would be ok.

Hopefully that makes sense?

[Groovy Jones]

Hehe, the paper is probably already due by now, huh?

This kind of thing is hard to think about. And personaly I love the intellectual act of exploring every facet of a topic to find all the different places to stand and where I stand, but I never do that unless the result will have the ability to affect something in real life.

If your question was "Wouldn't life be better if we got really good at racism again?" I think you'd get a bunch of replies (and I came up with that seven seconds ago but wow that would be an awesome question for a philosophy class to explore). "Utilitariamism vs. Kantian Deontology" is more in the camp of "we spent all that time on it, now what can we do with it?"

How did the paper turn out?

[Eric aka moosemuffin]

I used to be a large supporter of Deontology but in the end I feel it's just emotivism with more rules. Personally if I must I'd choose logical positivism as my preferred secular moral belief system.

[Ronald Weasley]

I disagree.





Kidding. Utilitarianism makes more sense to me. At my speech and Debate meet, I got pwned twice by this core value. Fuck smart people...

[Brittaneee]

Is there ever such a rule that will always make the greater good happy though? Because if there is then your statements right but I don't really think that that ever happens.

[Brittaneee]

I was just asking is there ever a rule that in deontology that you can always follow that will benefit the greater good (thus making it Utilitarianism)? ( Hopefully that clears it up .. my fault first time... I'm tired so what makes sense in my head ... just doesn't make sense)

[Brittaneee]

I think you misunderstand Kant. Kant isn't looking at what will always lead to the most happiness/ benefit for the most amount of people. He's looking for the moral laws that must always be applied no matter what. So for example lying. Even if lying will bring the most happiness to the most people you can't do it because if everyone started lying without second thought you wouldn't be able to trust anyone. So what your saying doesn't make any sense.

[Brittaneee]

Ok then following your logic what would you use to determine is the best for the greater amount. What I may think will benefit the most amount of people might now be what you will think will benefit the greater amount of people.

[Brittaneee]

Ah ok I just read you post before and I figured out what I should have said before soooo ignore what I said before this.

Ok so you said to imagine everyone lying when they thought it would be beneficial to the most people. Ok so if you had to judge it through Kants way of thinking you have to use categorical imperatives which pretty much mean you just look at the action not the result. So the action is lying the result is the benefit to the most people so then that part becomes irrelevant. So then again goes back to I'm lying and if I lie would it be alright for everyone to start lying (no matter why they are doing it) and again the answer is no.

Ok I seriously hope that makes sense.

[ThisisTasha S]

I think, Balance. We all need a little bit of both of these to make everything work. I can hardly think of people that are 1000% Left-winged or 1000% Right-winged etc... Both of those ideas make sense but they also have their faults, Utilitarianism : We all have our own set of morals and they can all be learned, un-learned and changed, so what if, for example, someone decides that their morals are something like good is bad and bad is good or something like that and if they only when on with those ideas then that could cause problems...
Kantian Deontology: I think that you would have to be thinking too big. For instance, if EVERYONE in our world started eating the exact same thing or doing the same things our world would 1 be really boring and 2 the only things that we eat ect.. might run out faster and would be less balanced systems because of that. Also, people living in one part of the world have different needs than other parts.

[Brittaneee]

For Utilitarianism it's not so much deciding on what is always good or bad it's in that moment deciding what's best for the greater good. So for example in general we could say that lying is bad ( I mean we all learn that as kids). But say for example during WW2 you were hiding Jews in your house and a Nazi came and asked if you were hiding any Jews, looking at it you would benefit a greater good by lying to the Nazi and saying No that would if you said yes.

Also these are just moral guidelines not what your eat or what you do for a profession so for Kantian deontology using the same example if a Nazi came to your door then you would have to think that if I lied would it be alright for everyone to always start lying. The idea would be that you would think no since then you would never be able to trust anyone so therefore you shouldn't lie to this guy.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[QuantumTuba]

Or preference utilitarianism or desire utilitarianism. Or negative utilitarianism, for that matter. The variations among utilitarian philosophies are immense.

[Chris]

I'm pretty Kantian myself. Utilitarianism has it's allure, but i just cannot see doing something "wrong" in order to bring about more aggregate "good" is a decent descision. However; When backed into a philosophical corner, utilitarian Chris might jump out and kill someone to save others.