Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 07: "A LESSON IN LYING"
Immanuel Kant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqzW0eHzDSQ
Understanding
Kant’s “Groundwork” requires that we answer 3 questions:
1) How can duty and autonomy go
together? What’s the great dignity in answering to duty? It
would seem that these 2 ideas are opposed – duty and autonomy; what’s Kant’s
answer to that?
Answer:
You only do something good and moral if you act out of duty (to the moral law within) and not out of interests (i.e.,
causes) brought on outside yourself.
It is not
insofar as I am subject to the law that I have dignity, but rather insofar as,
with regard to that very same law, I am the author. And I am subordinated to
that law on those grounds. So, I willed
that law. This equals how acting according to duty and acting “freely”
(autonomously) are one and the same.
2) How
many moral laws are there? What’s to guarantee that my conscience will be
the same as your conscience?
Answer:
The moral law transcends all differences between human subjects, thus equals
One moral Law – when I choose, I do not choose for my “self.” It is pure Reason
that decides my will = same Reason for all.
Answer:
We need to make a distinction between two
standpoints (two “worlds”) from which we can make sense of our experience.
As an object of experience I belong
to the sensible world, my actions are determined by nature (laws of cause and
effect); but as a subject of
experience I inhabit an intelligible world, here, being independent of the laws
of nature, I am capable of autonomy – capable of acting according to a law I
give myself.
If I were wholly an empirical being, as the
utilitarians assume, only subject to the deliverances of my senses – to pain,
pleasure, hunger and thirst and appetite – if that’s all that there were to
humanity, we wouldn’t be capable of freedom. Because in that case,
every exercise of will would be conditioned by the desire for some object. All
choice would be, thus, heteronymous choice, governed by the pursuit of some
external end.
“When we think of
ourselves as free, we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members
and recognize the autonomy of the will.”
So: How
are Categorical Imperatives possible? Only because the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible
world.
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Kant
admits that we aren’t only intelligent beings that inhabit an intelligible
world, the realm of freedom. If we did, all of our actions would invariably
accord with the autonomy of the will. BUT because we inhabit simultaneously the
two standpoints, the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity, there is
always POTENTIALLY a gap between what we do, and what we ought to do (between IS and OUGHT).
Another
way of putting this point, how Kant concludes the “Groundwork”: Morality is not
empirical. Whatever you see in the world, whatever you discover through
science, cannot decide moral questions. Morality stands at a certain distance
from the (empirical) world. And that’s why no science can deliver moral truth.
Now I want
to test Kant’s theory with the hardest possible case, a case that he raises –
the case of the murderer at the door. Kant says that lying is wrong – is at
odds with the categorical imperative.
Benjamin Constant:
What if a murderer came to your door looking for your friend, who was hiding in
your house, and asked you if your friend is in your house? It would be crazy in
this instance to tell the truth! The murderer doesn’t deserve the truth.
Kant’s reply:
It’s wrong to lie, even here, because once you start taking consequences into
account to carve out exceptions to the categorical imperative, you’ve given up
the whole moral framework – you’ve become a Consequentialist.
Is there a way that you could avoid telling a lie,
without selling out your friend?
Clever evasion? For Kant there is a difference
between an outright lie, and a misleading truth. Why is that, even though they
both might have the same consequences? --> Remember, Kant doesn’t base morality
on consequences; he bases it on formal adherence to the moral law.
White lies? A lie that we think of as justified
by the consequences. Now, Kant could not endorse a white lie, but perhaps he
could endorse a misleading truth. --> like when you let someone think you
like their gift, when you really don’t… Or… what about Bill Clinton &
Monica Lewinski???
For Kant, would there be some kind of moral
distinction between a lie and a an evasion – a “true,” but misleading statement?
Sandel: A misleading truth pays a certain homage to duty which justifies even
the work of evasion. There is some kind of respect for the moral law in the
misleading evasion… because Clinton could have told an outright lie, but he
didn’t. Thus, in his carefully couched, but true, evasion there is a kind of
homage to the moral law that is not present in an outright lie. And that is part of the motive.
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PART
TWO: A DEAL IS A DEAL (JOHN RAWLS)
Kant says
that just
laws arise
from a certain sort of social contract; but
this contract is of an exceptional nature. What makes it exceptional is that
it’s not
an actual
contract that happens when people come together (in a
Constitutional Convention) and try to decide what the Constitution should be.
Rather, the contract
that generates justice is an “idea of Reason.” The laws created in such a Convention wouldn’t
necessarily represent what is just or right, but would simply represent the
differences of bargaining power (the special interests – the fact that some
might know more than others about law or politics…).
“A
contract that generates principles of right is merely an idea of reason,
but it has undoubted practical
reality, because it can oblige every legislator to frame his laws in such a way that they
could have been produced by the united will of the whole nation.”
So, Kant is a “contractarian,” but he doesn’t trace the origin or rightness of law to any actual social contract.
Sandel: This gives rise to the
question: “What is the moral force of a hypothetical contract – a contract
that never happened?”
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INSERT FROM ME
What is the Original
Contract for Kant? --> an IDEA OF REASON!
ME:
NOTE: THIS CONTRACT IS NOT HYPOTHETICAL!!!
IT
HAS PRACTICAL REALITY
AND IS FOLLOWED OUT OF A SENSE OF DUTY!!!
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What is the test for legitimacy (of the Original Contract)? The hypothetical consent test.
Although
hypothetical consent is not
capable of creating political obligation, it has the power to test the legitimacy of political arrangements.
What principles pass
Kant’s hypothetical consent
test?
These are the terms of the original agreement:
(1) the freedom of each member of
society as a human being;
(2) the equality of each member
with every other member as a subject of the state.
(3) the independence of each
member of the community as a citizen.
ANALOGY
Categorical Imperative? An Idea of Reason - whereby one subjugates one’s maxim to universal ends.
“Act only on that (subjective) maxim whereby
you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” IT IS NOT AN ACTUAL LAW, BUT
HAS PRACTICAL REALITY IN THE WORLD.
What is the test for a maxim (principle)?
Mill’s criticism: If I
universalize the maxim, and find that the whole practice of promise-keeping
would be destroyed if universalized, then I must be appealing somehow to
consequences.
Defense: this is the test to see whether the maxim
corresponds with the categorical imperative, but it isn’t exactly the reason.
The reason you should universalize, to test your maxim, is to see whether you
are privileging your particular needs and desires over everybody else’s.
Turn to John Rawls
That’s
the question we take up today - by turning to the modern philosopher John Rawls – who worked out (in his
book “A Theory of Justice”) an account of a hypothetical agreement as the basis
for justice. His theory of justice – in broad outline – is parallel to Kant’s
in two important respects:
1) Critical of utilitarianism
“Each person possesses an inviolability founded
on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override… The
rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the
calculus of social interests.” (Rawls)
2)
The
idea that principles of social justice can be founded on a hypothetical
contract – NOT AN ACTUAL ONE.
Rawls
works this out in great detail by means of a device he refers to as a “Veil
of Ignorance.” The way to arrive at the basic rights that we
must respect (the basic framework of rights and duties) is to imagine that we
were gathered together, trying to choose the principles to govern our
collective lives, without knowing certain important particular facts about
ourselves = veil of ignorance…To
avoid a cacophony and conflict of various interest and desires, Rawls claims
that we must imagine that we are gathered in an original position of equality.
And what assures the equality is the veil
of ignorance.
Imagine
that we are all behind a veil of ignorance which temporarily abstracts from or
brackets, hides from us, who in particular we are: our race, our class, our
place in society, our strengths, our weaknesses, whether healthy or
unhealthy... Then, and only then, according to Rawls, would principles we would
agree to be principles of justice. That’s how the hypothetical contract works.
What is the moral force of this form of hypothetical agreement?
In order to understand this, we have to look at the moral force of actual contracts.
Two questions involved
here:
1)
How do actual
contracts (hypothetical agreements) bind or obligate me?
So, then, what
is the moral force of actual contracts – to the extent that they bind
us?
They operate to bind us in two ways:
a)
Mutual
benefit --> RECIPROCITY (benefit-based)
Example (commercial
agreement): I promise to pay you $100 dollars for lobsters, and then I don’t
pay. You say I´m obligated to pay because we had a deal – you benefitted from and ate all those
lobsters. à Argument
hangs off on the fact that I benefitted from your labor.
b) Consent-based --> points to idea of AUTONOMY
(Kantian?)
Example: I change
my mind two minutes after we’ve made the agreement / contract – before you’ve
done any work.
2)
How do hypothetical
contracts justify the terms they produce?
In answer to the second question: THEY DON’T!!! At least, not on their own. Actual contracts are not self-sufficient
moral instruments. Of any actual contract or agreement it can always be asked, “Is it fair what they agreed to?”
The fact of the agreement, never guarantees the
fairness of the agreement. And we know this by looking at our own Constitution
Convention – which produced a Constitution that allowed slavery to persist.
AN
ACTUAL CONTRACT/AGREEMENT IS NOT SUFFICIENT TO GUARANTEE THE FAIRNESS OF THE
TERMS.
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Sandel’s Conjecture about the Moral Limits of actual
contracts:
A contract (agreement or
an act of consent) is not only not
sufficient, but it is also not even
a necessary condition of there being
an obligation. The idea here is, even if there is an element of reciprocity
or exchange, then a receipt of benefits, there can be an obligation – even
without an act of consent.
Example: 18th
century philosopher David Hume: When he was young wrote a book against Locke’s idea of a social contract.
He said it was a philosophical fiction –
one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly be
imagined. Many years later, when he was 62 years old, Hume had an
experience that put to the test his rejection of consent as the basis of
obligation. He had a house in Edinbourough that he rented to a friend A, who
sublet to someone else B. B hired a contractor to do some work on the house who
sent the bill to Hume. Hume refused to
pay on the grounds that he hadn’t consented - he hadn’t hired the painter
and hadn’t requested the service. The case went to court and the painter said
he had done the work according to contract – the painting was necessary. Hume
didn’t like the argument, but he lost the case and had to pay. So, Hume didn’t like the theory that there
could be an obligation to repay a benefit, without consent. But the defense
failed, and he had to pay.
Another example of the
distinction between the consent-based aspect of obligations and the
benefit-based aspect and how they sometimes run together:
Personal experience:
driving across the country with some friends and find themselves in the
middle-of-nowhere (in Hammond, Indiana). Stop at a rest stop and when got back
in car it wouldn’t start. None of them knew much about cars, and didn’t know
what to do. Found a mechanic who offered to help for $50/hour. He started
looking around steering column and said no problem there; he’d have to look
under the hood. Sandel said, “Wait a minute! I didn’t consent to anything.” The
mechanic replied angrily, “Do you mean to say that if I’d have fixed your car
while looking under the steering column, that you wouldn’t have paid me?!”
Sandel replied, “That’s a different question.” I didn’t go into the distinction between consent-based and benefit-based
obligations. But I think he had the
impression that if he had fixed the car while poking around, that I would have
owed him the $50 bucks, I shared that intuition. I would have. But he inferred from this – and this was
the reasoning that lay behind his anger – that
implicitly we had an agreement. But that it
seems to me is a mistake – it fails to make a distinction between these two
different aspects of contract arguments. Yes, I agree, I would have owed him
$50 if he had repaired my car while poking around at that time. Not because
we had made any agreement. We hadn’t. But
simply because if he had fixed my car, he would have inferred on me a benefit
for which I would have owed him – in the name of reciprocity
and fairness. And so, here’s another
example of the distinction between these two different
kinds/aspects of arguments about the morality of contracts.
Challenge: Any
benefit can be subjectively defined, i.e., what if you didn’t want done what
the person “fixed”? I.e. don’t like color house is painted… Have to define the “benefit” before the
person does it. Consent is a necessary condition of
there being any obligation. [???] Because otherwise, how can we have a
fair evaluation of benefits?
Other example: Marriage. After 20 years of faithfulness, on my part,
discover that every year on our trip across the country my spouse has been
seeing a man with a van on the Indiana toll road. Wouldn’t I have two different reasons for moral outrage? One: We had an agreement and she broke her promise
– referring to the fact of her consent. Two: Having nothing to do with the
contract-as-such, I have been faithful for 20 years, surely I deserve better
than this (referring to element of reciprocity). Each reason has an independent moral force.
Suppose we had just
married, and the betrayal occurred on the way to our honeymoon. After the
contract has been made – but before there is any history of performance on my
part – uh-hmmm, performance of the contract, I mean. I would still be able to
say, “But you promised!” That would isolate the pure element of consent, where there was no benefit-…, you know
what I mean…
Here’s the main idea: Actual contracts have their moral force in virtue
of two distinguishable ideals: autonomy and reciprocity. But, in real life, every actual
contract may fail to realize the ideals that give contracts their moral force,
in the first place. The ideal of autonomy might not be realized because of a
difference in the bargaining power of the parties; the ideal of reciprocity may
not be realized because there may be a difference in knowledge between the two
parties – they may misidentify what really counts as having equivalent
value.
Now, suppose you were to imagine a contract where the ideals of reciprocity were not subject
to contingency, but were guaranteed to be realized, what kind of contract would
that have to be? Imagine a contract among parties who were equal in
power and knowledge, who were identically situated, that is the idea behind Rawls’ claim
that the way to think about justice is from the standpoint of a hypothetical
contract, behind a veil of ignorance, that creates a condition of equality by
ruling out (or enabling us to forget for the moment) the differences in power
and knowledge that could even in principle, lead to unfair results. This is
why for Kant and
for Rawls a hypothetical contract among equals is the only way to think about
principles of justice. What
will those principles be? …