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simon
04-21-2005, 07:05 PM
Does anyone understand the Categorical Imperative?

It's something like this: act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it becomes a universal law.

Then there are examples to try and prove the point, like that you can't will killing yourself to be a maxim because that cannot be true for everyone else so it can't be a natural law and therefore would be a contradiction for it to be a universal law. Does that make sense? Does anybody know anything about Kant's Good will and the categorical imperative? I find it really confusing.

Erna
04-22-2005, 03:53 AM
The Categorical Imperative you're giving is Kant's first.
As far as I know, it means that the only 'good' you can do, is the thing that would be good in every situation. So you can want to bribe someone, but don't want everybody to do that. So it's not 'universal good'.

Kant also has a second Categorical Imperative:
"Act so that you threat humanity, whether in your own person of that of another, always as an end and never as a means only."
This means that persons are intrisically valuable in themselves, they are not to be manipulated.

I hope this helps you a little.

mono
04-22-2005, 03:12 PM
Unlike, but not necessarily opposing, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill's thoughts on utilitarianism, like Erna well explained, the 'deontological' ethics of Immanuel Kant focus themselves primarily on the intention of an action, rather than aiming for the end 'good,' as in utilitarianism. Kant, besides in his ethics, in Critique of Pure Reason writes of subjective realities based on each person's consciousness; in the same case, each person's ideas of morals/ethics seem equally subjective, pursuing some certain instrinsic 'good.' If one has a specific intention of performing a good action, no matter the outcome, the individual carrying out the action still performs well.
In a philosophical ethics college course I once took, we had many debates of various situations that applied to everyday life. For example: if you saw a woman being robbed of her purse, full of money, and you decided to help her by either calling the police or directly attempting to prevent the criminal from burglary, would you necessarily perform that favor as an intrinsically subjective 'good' action, to carry out a good deed for the woman, or would you expect a reward, making it somewhat less intrinsically 'good'?

Bandini
04-22-2005, 05:05 PM
Yeah I studied Kant at University, and my girlfriend has just done a module. I always remember the 'mad axeman' argument against Kant- i.e. If you say that one must never lie and an axeman comes in to the room and asks if your friend is under th etable, then you must say "Yes"! But I remember my girlfriend proposing a good counter argument - she's lying half asleep in the other room - hang on!

Bandini
04-22-2005, 05:08 PM
She just woke up and gave me the cutest zonked out smile - she's gorgeous, but not awake enough to discuss moral philosophy!

simon
04-22-2005, 08:45 PM
Thanks guys, I'm about to head off to a final exam on it in 20minutes. This is the lull time between studying and test taking where your really ansy and the coffee you had for last minute knowledge gain seems to be making your legs, not to mention your stomach jump a mile a minute, or a kilometer a minute for some of us.

I think I know it enough to be tested on it, but we'll find out shortly. The part that I thought was really interseting was how he divided his examples into perfect and imperfect categories. And the examples of neglecting your goals and not helping others were to show that you could not will these to be universal maxims or moral conduct, but that they were arguable. So some people do think that there is no need to help other people in need, like those that believe in ethical egoism, only for the preservation of the self and that by acting for yourself or if you ever have to for others it is soemhow benefical to you first and foremost.

Alright, washroom, and break!

Bandini
04-23-2005, 05:34 AM
Yeah - I remember reading Ayn Rand - nasty, nasty person. Although I do believe you nedd to make yourself happy, before you can make others happy. Good luck!

mono
04-23-2005, 06:41 PM
Good luck, simon! Kant, as opposed to other philosophers, seems somewhat more difficult, especially for a pressuring exam. Tell us how it goes. :)

simon
04-24-2005, 12:42 PM
Well I think I may have passed. There were four essays, fill in the blank, and t or f and it took me two hours, so it could have been worse. I did get to write one essay on kant, it asked me to use the first cateporical imperative and the third categorical imperative to explain why kant would say that it's not good for a shopkeeper to charge people extra when they are inexperinced customers. And I think it would be beucase they would not be acting out of duty beucase they ahd a goal in mind, something to accomplish. And they would also be using the customer as a mere means and you should never treat someone as a mere means, only as an end.

Bandini
04-24-2005, 01:10 PM
Cloze exercises and True or False?? Is this a Philosophy module at University level? The McDonadization of Education has really taken hold there hasn't it?

mono
04-24-2005, 08:37 PM
Cloze exercises and True or False?? Is this a Philosophy module at University level? The McDonadization of Education has really taken hold there hasn't it?
Eh, it could seem worse. In a similar sounding philosophy course on ethics at a community college, our exams consisted of several multiple choice questions and one choice of three relatively long in-class essays.
Needless to say, the multiple choice seemed abnormally easy, and usually the opposite with the essays.

simon
04-25-2005, 01:35 PM
Actually I am better at writing essays than taking mutliple choice or t or f tests. These t or f were actaully quite hard beucae they had multiple parts and all seemed t have a trick in them. They were paragraph statements with various differnt theories and ideas in them attributed to certain people and then it says t or f. And it's hard to know where the statements could have "gone false" as it were. And there were only 10 of them so it really didn't take up that much of the exam, mostly essay, and that was certainly fine by me.
Bandini: what about logic in philosophy that is testable with multiple choice and t or f, I think it just depends on the course and how the question is constructed. Just beucase an answer if povided for you doesn't mean that you don't have to still do all the work to get to that answer on you rown as well.

Bandini
04-25-2005, 05:03 PM
I see your point about the T and F. But I do hate all that 'rationalisation' stuff. Has anybody read any George Ritzer?

Bandini
04-25-2005, 05:26 PM
Hey, why is this in 'religious texts'?

simon
04-26-2005, 03:41 PM
When I posted it I was just in this section and didn't really think about where I was putting it.

I have not heard of George Ritzer, can you enlighten me as to his beliefs?