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?

[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.

[Tasha NS]

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.

[Nick? No, couldn't be...]

Which kind of utilitarianism, Act or Rule?

[QuantumTuba]

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

[Chris (Ningmaster)]

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.

[danman]

Well , the key difference is that an utilitarian like myself will not even understand how an action with desirable results can be wrong in the first place :D

[danman]

Ad Brittanee :

First, looking at results of your action etc. is an action by itself so it still is valid. Granted that Kant did not think of it that way, but then, he did not think of other faults in the theory either, So my argument is still valid.

But the cardinal fault of the theory is , in any case, at its design. I already quoted Ayn Rand on this issue

Firstly there is no categorical imperative. Kant likes to liken it to a mathematical truth. But even the mathematical truth and logic itself is a hypothetical imperative in this form : if you will follow the laws of logic, you will arrive to a true conclusion from true premises.

Kant's rule however does not guarantee any result, in fact, it is easy to see, as you stated that acting morally might be worse than acting immorally. Therefore the only reason behind such imperative is that if you follow it kantians will be happy ^_^ which is imho a very poor basis for a set of morals.

Secondly the concept of duty and sacrifice he emphasises is abhorrent. Firstly, we look at sacrifice - it basically is renouncing something more valuable for something less valuable. This alone shows that such act is well... stupid.
To get me right, let me freely quote A.R: If a woman does not buy new shoes and buys food for her child instead it is not sacrifice, unless she values new shoes more than wellbeing of her child
From this follows that this concept of morality is not only wrong as i showed before, it is HARMFUL, because it groups genuinely evil acts with good and neutral ones, and teaches that being good has no reward, it is not even a reward in itself, it is just a duty that serves no purpose.
This kind of a rule then creates within people's minds the idea that if one wants to live a good life one must be immoral, from this spans both selfhate. and also then causes people to fail to distinguish between truly evil and good acts on the evil side - Again to quote Rand (if a man fullfills the duty to supports himself because he enjoys living , to kant he is no more moral whether he supports himself by honest work or by taking fruits of others' labor)

[thepoliticpoet]

I'm not really sure that by quoting Ayn Rand blindly with little actual application to the discussion at hand that you are really gaining yourself any credence here. Rand was a wonderful writer but a horrifying philosopher. Where does Brittaneee mention sacrifice? And yes, Kant does, but the ideals of sacrifice aren't the basis of every (or really any) kind of Kantian deontology, which is what Brittaneee was asking about.

Why do you (and/or Ayn Rand) feel it necessary to classify sacrifice as losing something more valuable than what you gain? That is a pretty terrible definition--yes it makes it clear that to sacrifice anything at all ever would merely be a stupid decision. In any rational definition of sacrifice, it is about giving up what is personally dear to you (usually something material, physical or some earthly pleasure) in the efforts of achieving something for the greater good--e.g. for God or to further the ends of humanity, etc, and that thing you are sacrificing for will ultimately be of greater value than what you sacrificed. Yes, Kant would argue that you should not recieve some "over-balancing good" as that would not truly be sacrifice--but what he is talking about there is not that you cannot achieve anything more valuable through sacrifice than the thing you sacrificed, but that you shouldn't be getting some kind of material gain. For example, giving away $1,000,000 would be a sacrifice--but not if you got a very nice house for it. Of course that's not sacrifice. I'm pretty sure you would agree. But that doesn't imply that every kind of sacrifice would be bad--for example, a utilitarian would agree that sacrificing yourself in order to save millions of others would be good.

You and Ayn Rand seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Kant. Kant would have never, ever have equated supporting oneself "by taking fruits others' labor" and supporting oneself "by honest work." The idea that he would have is completely ludicrous. One of the central tenets of Kant's philosophy is not treating other rational agents as merely means to an end. By profiting off of the labors of others and not doing your own work, you are treating those others (presumably people and rational agents themselves) as a means to your own ends (supporting yourself, wealth, comfortable living, whatever). For Kant that is a huge no no, even more basic than the universalization of maxims. Are there problems with Kant's philosophy? Yes. But I do not think there is anything provably wrong with every kind of Kantian Deontology. And it certainly doesn't "collapse" to utilitarianism. Even if it did, I don't think it would "invalidate" the theory.

As I understand it, the reason that Kant began on his path towards Deontology and not utilitarianism or any kind of consequence based system of morality, was because he recognized that we are limited as rational agents, and we actually have no way of being able to predict what the results of our actions are going to be. I'm sure all of us here on the ning have been in situations where we acted in a certain way, expecting the results to be very positive, only to find that the consequences were pretty terrible. We can act in the way that we THINK will lead to the greatest good all we want, but that in no way means that the greatest good will result. Recognizing this, Kant believed that we had to come up with some other system to govern our actions, some set of rules that applied in any circumstance regardless of consequences. I think that's admirable.

[Decepticon]

The usefulness of Kantian Deontology depends on how many modifiers you're willing to put into your 'universal law'.

For instance--you see someone being raped, you ask yourself, "Would it be ok if everyone beat the shit out of people? No? Then I can't beat the shit out of that rapist to save that girl." Well then it's terrible.

If, however, you ask yourself, "Would it be ok if everyone beat the shit out of people who are raping other people?" Well then the answer is yes, and Kantian Deontology is A-OK.

Same goes for the earlier example of lying to nazis. "Is it ok to lie? No. Can't lie to the Nazi, have to turn in the Jews." That's terrible. "Is it ok to lie to nazis in order to save a life? Yes. I may lie to the Nazi and save these Jews."

However, the more modifiers you use the more you're leaning toward consequentialist thinking, and further from deontology, much less Kantian.

[Emily]

personally i believe in utilitarianism but i just want to ask what about a mix of both? like beginning of utilitarianism that could eventually become a Kantian Deontology?