Ethics, Morals, and the Law: Where do you draw the line at what to develop? | Hacker News Reader

Ethics, Morals, and the Law: Where do you draw the line at what to develop?

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I enjoyed the post until we hit Kant. This "imperative": "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." is the kind of idea that makes it "rational" to go out and kill all the Jews as the Nazi's so aptly demonstrated. They felt that the elimination of Jews should become a universal law. Note that this is a very different idea than: act only as you would want others to act towards you. It is rather: act only in a way that you think all others should act. A very different story, and a complete void as to the defining of "should".

Kant was not only confusing to himself and others, but his ideas were "dangerous" to the extent that ideas can be when used to justify actions.

This is a misapplication of the categorical imperative. Of course, I suspect that you knew that; it's only a naive viewpoint that would cause someone to miss that.

The correct "universal law" to use in this case, would be "Eliminating people who you find problematic." It would take a truly insane person to actually want this as a universal law. Tying the rule to any specific group of people makes it not universal.

Of course, if someone only understands "philosophy-lite," it becomes an easy thing to mix up.

You say "the correct 'universal law' to use...". I think this shows very well why Kant's imperative is so useless. It simply replaces judgement on the original question with judgement on the right way to generalise it.

Well, there are a pretty easy set of rules for this: You cannot generalize something to be universal, while still maintaining any of the specifications therein.

I do agree that it's useless in practice, though -- it is philosophy, after all. Philosophy has never had concrete practical applications. It's only interesting as a curiosity.

It's a lot more useful than eg. "Don't be evil". No, it does not free you from having to use your judgment. But no philosophy or religion will do that for you.

Nothing frees us from judgement of course. But science is about giving us tools to make better judgements. I don't see how Kant's imperative does that.

I'm thinking of a person or a small group of persons who are trying to do that right now.

I believe the Nazis actually used "Eliminating animals which you find problematic" as they redefined person to exclude those of Jewish origin. So, again, Kant is quite useful in justifying just about anything.

"So, again, Kant is quite useful in justifying just about anything."

I don't see how you could conclude that. Your argument is that if the Nazis believed that they were doing the right thing, they'd believe that Kant would think they were doing the right thing, too. So you're only correct if you take their beliefs at face value, in which case I don't understand why you're complaining.

The reason I conclude that is because Kant's theory seems to ultimately rest on someone/something defining what should be done, and therefore, it is completely subjective. If I am incorrect in thinking this, please enlighten me with quotes from Kant proving otherwise.

"The reason I conclude that is because Kant's theory seems to ultimately rest on someone/something defining what should be done, and therefore, it is completely subjective."

Well, yes. That is the idea. Basically, he's trying to suggest that our moral systems be universal -- that we not consider something moral unless it's moral regardless of who does the considering.

This is the crux of the problem with Kant's morality - who is the someone/something setting the standard for what is moral? And how does that someone/something not act in a subjective way when deciding?

It really is a scary idea, because it just begs for the "someone" to step forward and tell us all what to do.

> This is the crux of the problem with Kant's morality - who is the someone/something setting the standard for what is moral?

You are.

Yes, so if I decide that it should be a universal maxim (whatever I want), I'm acting morally according to Kant? And if you want to answer this, please explain each key Kantian concept used, and you may find that you end up ultimately no where.

You have an excellent point, but I do wish you could have avoided triggering Godwin's law. Perhaps you could edit it into a more everyday situation?

I never heard about Godwin's law before, but was amused to find this on the wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_lawhttp://en.wikipedia...

The categorical imperative is probably the single most famous idea in moral philosophy. It would have had some obstacles in reaching that status if it gave the wrong answer on things like genocide.

I think the way you're supposed to interpret it is asking if a universal law which permits arbitrarily murdering people sounds reasonable or not.

Interesting. Fame = correctness? And yes, as far as I know, it gives the wrong answer on genocide.

Could you show how this "maxim" in conjunction with others by Kant would prevent someone using them to justify genocide?

I think the imperative could be reformulated to state "act only according to that maxim for which the conjunction of universal viewpoints does not result in a logical contradiction", where the Nazis obviously mistook disjunction for conjunction.

Um, you then have a problem with "universal viewpoint". What is it, who defines it, etc.

> act only as you would want others to act towards you

So if I'm a masochist I should be sadistic to other people? Any ethical rule can be misused if you leave out common sense.

"So if I'm a masochist I should be sadistic to other people?"

Only if you want to be set on fire by arsonists.

Exactly - I'm no fan of that maxim either, but it is definitely better than Kant's version in the sense that at least the doer will have the same potentially done to them.

Well, that is exactly the point of the Kant maxim also.

How do Kant's rules imply the need for common sense?

Yeah Kant isn't the end of that discussion. And you hit the ball out of the park with your example. As you can see, I qualified it with a variant on the golden rule. I also pointed out the goal of both maxims was creating the most utilitarian value. I would argue that those bad guys -- you know the ones with the cool uniforms with leather boots and the strange salute who worshiped that guy with the mustache -- were way off base. You can argue that killing the Jews should be a universal law, but you can't argue that one bunch of people trying to kill an entire other bunch of people for subjective reasons is a good thing for society at large or is something that should be repeated.

My personal ethics would prevent me from developing surveillance tools, anything which is mostly military in nature, or any kind of video game which requires a heavy investment of time.

What games do you consider to _require_ a heavy investment of time? A Korean who was obsessed with Starcraft died after playing too long. Do you believe Blizzard is somehow responsible?

I'm mostly thinking about the type of online role playing games which people throw their lives away on, but I would consider Starcraft to be a borderline case.

I do believe in general that people are responsible for the consequences they create even if they could not have possibly predicted them. I certainly don't think that Blizzard should be punished for the death of that man. I would only hope that when they heard the news that as individuals they stopped and spent a couple of quiet minutes asking themselves if what they are doing contributes to improving human society or not.

Have you considered the alternative that for many people, online games like World of Warcraft are truly better than real life?

If WoW is better than real life for so many people maybe that's because there are some severe and imminent problems to solve in this world. The last thing we need right now is for everybody to be drugged out on video games.

Starcraft requires years of dedication.

How many must die playing Starcraft waiting for Starcraft 2 to come out?

:) (I personally played something like 2000 games of it)

I think I could do surveillance, but I would have a problem combining that with data mining.

I know some guys who are doing work for Homeland Security. They don't talk much about what they do. I think "preventing another terrorist attack" sounds better than "snooping into everybody's life" -- although I'm not sure in practice there is a difference.

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