[lit-ideas] Re: It means nothing, absolutely nothing...

  • From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:37:42 +0000 (GMT)



--- On Tue, 21/10/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
 
> Donal's claims I find to betray a confusion between
> Kant's editorializations on
> his moral theory and that moral theory itself. Kant was not
> the most astute
> interpreter of his own moral theory. Vide *The metaphysics
> of virtue* in
> relation to the *Groundwerk* ans the second *Critique*. 

This is as may be - I certainly don't feel competent to dispute it. However, 
the principle of 'universalisability' would not rule out killing killers - not 
if Kant thought that if he killed someone it would be right that he should pay 
with his life. The best argument against the death penalty is, forgiveness and 
not wanting ourselves to be executed aside, surely the possibility of mistake - 
plus the empirical weakness of the argument that the death penalty actually 
works as a deterrent.
 
> Regarding the matter of self-contradiction raised by Donal:
> morally
> impermissible maxims exhibit not a logical contradiction
> but rather a practical
> contradiction. 

This reply is fair enough. It reminds me of a reply Popper sent me to a 
school-boy letter of mine where I criticised the various 'paradoxes' [of 
sovereignty, democracy etc.] he offers in his OSE: saying these were not truly 
logical paradoxes. His reply, acknowledging that of course it is possible for a 
democracy to commit suicide (by voting for a dictator - there are still some 
suicidal tendencies in Germany he added), is that his paradoxes are essentially 
a practical affair. 

But I feel Popper's 'sovereignty paradoxes', though a practical matter, are on 
stronger ground than Kant's or other's idea of moral principles having to be 
universalisable - even though I admit there is an important truth contained 
within this idea: see below.

>Das heisst: the maxim is not universalizable
> in that if
> everybody
> did it then nobody could do it, and an agent who willed
> such a maxim would be
> engaged in illegitimate self-exemption (and could not,
> consequently, legislate
> the maxim as a universal law.) 

This is not entirely clear as an argument.The main practical weakness lies, I 
think, in overlooking the importance and usefulness of 'discretionary justice' 
- in the law, from sentencing to the admissbility of evidence, decisions are 
not derived from "maxim as a universal law" but are effectively made as a form 
of discretionary justice within a framework that imposes some limits on the 
range of the decision. It is questionable whether doing away with this 
flexibility, and its concommitant 'inconsistency', would increase rather than 
decrease 'justice'.

> Donal is correct, however, in his other claim that acting
> differently in
> relevantly similar situations does not constitute a logical
> mistake. It is,
> however, a moral mistake. If anyone can provide
> counter-examples to this claim,
> I'm sure both of us would be eager to hear them. 

When talking of consistency here, we rely on a notion of "relevantly similar 
situations" - but there are no set criteria for this. What might appear to be 
"relevantly similar situations" to one may appear quite distinguishable to 
another. So even if a principle of 'universalisability' is accepted, its 
practical application is bound to be highly problematic. It is perhaps for this 
reason that Popper uses that the formulation - an open-ended one - that the 
correct moral responses depends on the _specific moral problem_. It might be 
added that even on such a formulation we immediately run into the (practical) 
problem of how _specific_ we make our characterisation of moral problems - and 
the answer to this may well vary with the moral problem under consideration 
[the specifics of why someone does not have a valid driving licence may be of 
comparatively little interest compared with the specifics of why someone 
committed a murder]. 
 
> Donal's claim that consistency in action and judgement
> (i.e., maxim formation)
> "may be over-valued" is a very odd claim.

It is not so "very odd". Since consistency depends on treating 
'like-cases-alike', and since deciding when they are sufficiently alike is 
problematic and involves a value-judgment, and since such value-judgments are 
fallible and may ride roughshod over significant _specific_ differences between 
cases that are otherwise alike, it might be suspected that the search for 
consistency is one that can be over-valued and indeed one that distort a proper 
_individuated_ moral response.

It seems to me this whole field is one of dilemmas and conflicting values. 
'Universalisability' contains an important idea, though perhaps not much more 
than a version of 'The Golden Rule', but it is not the be-all and end-all - and 
over-valued it can distort: for the core of morality (if we can speak of a 
'core') must surely lie - not in custom, human nature, fixed moral systems etc. 
- but in human conscience. This, btw, is linked to why we must treat others as 
ends-in-themselves: not because we would wish to be so treated, but because 
they are creatures with at least the potential to act with conscience (and in 
this they are moral beings even if they get it wrong in their acts and 
judgments i.e. I am suggesting that a person who makes a flawed moral decision 
in good conscience may nevertheless have acted morally, from at least the 
first-person POV, even if their decision is to be morally opposed and condemned 
from an 'outside' perspective).

Donal
Moral Fallibilist
Utopia





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