What is [interpersonal] moral legitimacy, and do we need it?
This topic contains 134 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by 
Davis 5 years, 8 months ago.
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Simon I really don’t think you have understood deontological moral systems. Kant never outright said it is okay to break your moral rule. In essence, if you have posited a moral rule, it’s your duty to follow that rule and to not self-justify an exception (especially since we cannot possibly know the outcome of that decision) and that justifications are extremely difficult to work out. He might have lied but he admitted he was breaking his moral rule and that ultimately that would be an arbitrary act which undermined the moral rule. No one ever said that you must abide by that rule without exception, you can do whatever you want, but to be authentic you have to accept that you allowed yourself to do what you expect others not to.
Probably 1) corresponds to “duty”.
Again, you really need to read up more on Kant’s and others’ deontological ethics because duty absolutely does NOT correspond to intention. I know you are trying to jam your own take on Jesus morality into it…but they are two so completely different moral systems and you have used duty in a way that makes little sense. How did you reach that conclusion? In deontological systems your duty is to legitimize your moral rules by not pleading exceptions. In virtue ethics your duty is to virtue. I’ve never heard any meaningful use of duty in your type of moral system.
I One of the strengths of deontological ethics is that it doesn’t fall for the illusion that “exceptions” can be rationally justified. They might be emotionally justified (like when Kant was stuck with a difficult challenge to his theory where you could not win either way) but not logically justified. Other moral systems put 99% of their efforts into a mly futile exercise of justifying exceptions to moral rules, usually informed by their own cultural background than through reliable logic and reason.
Agree, what does a person do when one has conflicting Kantian duties?
You do one of two things. You stay true to your rule. When you follow your rule in a difficult situation it adds legitimacy to the general rule and strengthens it. There is a general misunderstanding that if you break your rule in a difficult situation, then it makes you bad and it entirely implodes that moral rule. This is not the case. However, for most deontological systems, you should be authentic with what you have done, admit that you broke one of your rules and that it is almost futile to try to justify it. You can explain why you wanted to do it, but it is rationally indefensible. That is, if you break your rule in the hope that it will turn out in such and such a way then you must admit you failed to follow your own moral rules and that you put your own self-interests or emotion (or even the self-interests of others) ahead of the moral rule (which you would expect others to uphold when you deal with them).
Once again, you can not break the rule, strengthening the legitimacy and integrity of the moral rule…or you can break that rule and not necessarily be judged as “bad for doing it” especially if you can admit you did so arbitrarily (regardless of the good intention) in the hope that it works out well for most people.
I wouldn’t take Kant’s dilemma here too seriously. It was born from a story about what Kant said when challenged and he was given a question where it was win and lose one way and win and lose the other way. In the end he said he would just keep his mouth shut (or so they say). It’s a cop-out and he admitted it was a cop-out. No human being could ever possibly adhere to their universal moral rules all the time. And he reminded the reader of this throughout his magum opus. Ultimately there is no question of which you should do. The question is can you admit the implications of what you have done (and the futility of rationally justifying it) if you fail to adhere to your own moral rules?
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This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Davis.
I was thinking how does one get there? What is the process?
Hi Brightsky. I understand now what you mean. It obviously depends on the person. First because atheists are an enormous multicultured multi-ideaology group with little in common other than lacking a belief in God. If you randomly picked an atheist from a Chinese Village and an atheist from a European city … they would very likely differ on many moral rules and how they approach decision making.
But if we narrow the field down to humanistic Western democracy atheists. Still…it depends a lot. Some people (often those who have studied philosophy, ethics/morality, theology etc) have taken advantages of the tools they learnt from philosophy. I myself dig deontological ethics and whenever I break a broad general rule I later ask myself why I did it, how it happened, what the consequences are and how comfortable I am with it (of course not for every single time but you get my idea). Others do the same with other moral systems or a mix or who knows. While people may try to incorporate or have a moral system inform their choices, it is very unlikely that the moral system itself can overcome cultural, personal, emotional, self-interested, sociological, psychological forces. Perhaps it gives some people an edge or at least an ability to rationalize decision making and not feel quite so overwhelmed by uncertainty.
But you are probably referring to the people who never put too too much though into their actions, developed their sense of morality over time (we are assuming they are in general nice sympathetic people). How do they make their decisions? It’s a mixture of so many factors it’s impossible to spell out a formula. Factors include:
- Country (and even city)
- Class
- Gender
- Culture
- Education
- Intelligence
- Ability to sympathise
- Propensity to sympathise
- Ability to empathise
- Propensity to empathise
- Frequency of thinking out bad decisions
- How emotional you are
- How you deal with your emotions
- How you internalise your emotions
- Chance
- The advice and influence of others
- Subconscious forces
- Parents and grandparents
- Ability to influence and convince others
- Patience
- Pain tollerance
And the list goes on. Remarkably, despite this long (and very incomplete list) most people when it comes to most of their decisions, don’t to scumbaggy things and are generally empathetic to others when they make it and try to balance self-interest with the interests of others to some degree.
Or you can take my favourite rule from wikipedia:
Don’t be a dick.
I suppose may people hold that principle in their mind often when making a decision. In any case, decision making and philosophy of mind and neuroscience are only beginning to crack the process of how we make decisions. We have barely dipped our feet into the pool. If you are interested in philosophy (or better yet have a chance to take an ethics class or human behavior class) I highly recommend following it. Most especially because it brings up a lot of question per to what extent are our decisions made subconsciously with little conscious effort put into it (it seems from early research that a LOT of our decisions are done behind the scenes) and it also brings into question what role (if any) does free will play. When I look at new philosophy scolarships and research funding…the far majority of it is for research in neuro-philosophy, ethics (especially bio-ethics and business-ethics) and to a lesser degree philosophy of politics and education. Such a great time to be following this!!!
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This reply was modified 5 years, 9 months ago by Davis.
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