Practical Ethics

Enrique

For the sake of some idle discussion, I'd be interested in getting an analysis of the following framework for understanding morality. This seems to me a valid common sense starting point, combining the genealogical with the rational, but how much of human behavior does it realistically stand the chance of informing?

Questions of ethics reduce to judgements about human behavior. Fundamentally, we must decide if an action is likely to garner a desired outcome; when habitualization of an act or procedure is revealed to more likely result in the attainment of what we aim for, that activity is preferred and typically becomes an inveteracy. When habits have implications for our wider social group, they become a matter of appropriateness in relationship to the collective, which is the origin of interpreting behavior as having ethical import, constrained not just by functional consequences for ourselves but also the impact on those around us.

A vast spectrum exists between, on one side, high functionality with minimal social ramifications, and on the other, high social appeal with minimum functional necessity. Constructing a makeshift shelter while stranded in the woods is vital to survival, and has little social meaning besides sustaining ourselves until rescued so as to resume a community role as well as reunite with family and friends, almost non-causal in these circumstances. Waving goodbye has no practicality beyond the casual social meaning it conveys, and completely dispensing with it would lack serious repercussions, but we like it so much that it is a near universal symbol of affection. Chatting with strangers potentially has the positive effect of increasing social health in the community, but can also sometimes prompt negative feedback or in rare cases attract unwanted attention that might even get us attacked, so its ethical significance is ambiguous, left to informal, personal preference. Parking close to an intersection could be favorable in situations where it is the only spot available, but reduces commuter visibility in such a way that safety is jeopardized, so everyone is expected to learn the public regulations that sanction law enforcement to cite or even tow offending vehicles. But often the actual danger is almost negligible, such as in remote residential areas, so police do not trouble with punishing an occasional violation despite the law, for there are much more important issues to surveil than parking behavior in someone's out of the way cul-de-sac for instance, unless the residents call in a complaint. Human ethical standards, codes, systems of rules and associated behaviors essentially arise from our effort to balance assessed consequences for ourselves with communal consequences, which often involves a measure of complexity.

tim wood

Fundamentally, we must decide if an action is likely to garner a desired outcome; — Enrique

No. You omit Kant, reason, deontology (duty, obligation), good will.

Enrique

↪tim wood

Kant claims pure practical reasoning about causal circumstance is involved with moral decision-making. He is arguing that these rational conclusions can be promoted by a mechanism of personalization, the categorical imperative, independent of politicized agreement. I'm not leaving Kant out, I'm presuming him as a partial facet of behavioral generalization's nature. Kantian thinking decides based on applicability to outcome no less than the consequentialist, but is only concerned with formulating universal principles, the foundation of ethics, not assessing the further issue of civic and psychological mechanisms that can enable those principles to be introduced and maintained in the real world of corruptional, inclement or dilemma situations. Kantian idealism produces universals constraining selfishness, short-sightedness and exploitation in an essentially consequentialist existence. His theory is not being excluded.

tim wood

Kantian thinking decides based on applicability to outcome no less than the consequentialist, — Enrique

Here we differ. I read Kant as emphatically on the side of intent, the what goes in, and not at all on the side of what comes out, the consequence. And his as determined by, a function of, reason. I myself add that it seems to me that also on Kant's side is the idea of what you can control, or have some say over, v. what you cannot control or have no say over. In determining one's own action on the basis of Kantian best reason, a person is arguably doing the best he or she can. And there is in this no pretense of either anticipating fate or ignoring it, but rather taking it head on, perhaps hoping for the best, but not betting on it in lieu of the better of reason.

Maybe another way: the Kantian restricts himself to what he knows, as best he can, the consequentialist/utilitarian to what she hopes. I take the former to be the more responsible.

IvoryBlackBishop

I'm not an expert on Kant, but I believe even he distinguished between wrongs or actions in personal or civil life, and actions from or on behalf of one's state.

(E.x. He held the state, and state-sponsored "violence" or "aggression" such as criminal law and warfare to be legitimate, or necessary ills at very least, and not the same as "murder" in the context of a person illegally killing another person with malicious intent, even if the physical "action" of taking another person's biological life was the same in that regard).

For that matter, those who bastadize Kant or "deontological" ethics to promote strict "non-aggression" (e.x. some libertarian 'anarchists') are pretty easily debunked, given that physically, even speaking in a public place, for example, creates sound waves which "aggress" upon another person's ear-drums without their "consent" (which by the same vein of logic wouldn't be any different than blasting a megaphone in a person's ear to the point that they pop an eardrum).

Much as how using "fighting words", including on the internet is a form or act of aggression, and technically not even a "right" or protected "speech" to begin with, whether online or offline, regards of how strictly, in practice anyone would seek to enforce inanity like that in or on the media or social media.

IvoryBlackBishop

As far as the premise of the OP, I don't think that in general, "practicality" and morals or ethics are completely abstracted or "at odds" with one another to begin with.

As far as the philosophy of the law goes, for example, the specific moral sentiments and cultural "fads" may vary somewhat from era to era, and in some cases the original intellectual (or anti-intellectual) reason for a or some specific "law" may have been forgotten or deemed "silly", much as there are 10s of 1000s of minor laws which likely even a veteran legal scholar has no "perfect" mathematical accountability of or for.

However the overarching moral philosophy of the law is fairly straightforward and based upon the principles of the golden rule (e.x. respect for people, their families, their personal properties, their rights as citizens, and so on and so forth).

Enrique

I read Kant as emphatically on the side of intent, the what goes in, and not at all on the side of what comes out, the consequence. — tim wood

Saying no one should lie because the categorical imperative implies so might be missing the point. But if pressed for a simple example, I think Kantian idealism could be amenable to claiming that because it is possible to will not telling lies that damage someone's well-being as at least hypothetically a universal law, it is a valid ethical ideal. This is because its outcome if adopted by everyone would be to make human society universally better, not only because it makes sense in my own mind or in the context of how I feel. The categorical imperative is a way to personally validate behaviors that can possibly have universally positive consequences independent of a politicized process. It is basically reinforcement of universal common sense about social cause and effect in a way that integrates with Kant's general theories of reason. It presupposes that everyone would come to similar conclusions about real world practice in a vast assortment of cases, whether or not the decisions are publicly communicated.

Am I misinterpreting what Kant means by "universal"?

tim wood

This is because its outcome if adopted by everyone would be to make human society universally better, — Enrique

We differ, here, and I go so far as to say that I'm right and you're wrong. Actually, never mind me. But what's wrong? I think it correct to say that Kant worked hard to stay within that which reason could tell him. For one thing, reason cannot predict the future.

The categorical imperative (CI), Kant's general term for thinking that has certain characteristics, has several dimensions, logic/reason, ethical/moral, and finally, ultimately theological. Like this, in paraphrase:
1) You should be willing for your rule for your action to be adopted by anyone. But if you suppose it's right for you to lie, that implies it's right for anyone to lie, and if it's right for everyone to lie, then truth is out the window (in the medieval sense of what goes out the window!).
2) Never use a person as a means, but only as an end. Added to the reasoning of #1 is the notion that using a person denies their personhood, and implicitly to deny another's is to deny all and to deny your own.
3) Act as if you were a legislating member of a kingdom of ends. From #s1,2, "The intuitive idea behind this formulation is that our fundamental moral obligation is to act only on principles which could earn acceptance by a community of fully rational agents each of whom have an equal share in legislating these principles for their community." This last from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#KinEndFor Section 8.

Nothing here is about utilitarian consequence. Everything here is about prior conformance with an ethical system of reason. Is the Kantian estopped thereby from having consequentialist concerns? Not at all. A Kantian engineer will build a good bridge for the consequences of it. But that will be conditioned by his CI that says he ought to build a good bridge because if he did not, then at the very least he must suspect every other bridge.

Sense?

Practical Ethics

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