 Elefunsie i'i ddweud y Llyfrgeodraeth O'r Llyfrgeodraeth A'r Llyfrgeodraeth Okay well let's let's get started can you all hear me first we we're going to do a quick bit of revision as usual on last week so last week we did all these things and so we looked at the differences between reason and passion which you're now going to feed back to me What's a reason and what's a passion a wnaeth y bydd arwain i'wWheithio gymud? Y ffrasigau adeiladol Cymru? Sy'n edrych nawr a wnaeth y ffrasigau i gydweithio y ffrasigau yn holl dipeth, neu dyna'n fwrdd y torniol. Mae ffrasigau yn ôl yn gallu ffrasigau i eu ffrasigau ar y ffrasigau. Ac yna'r ffrasigau, ond chydweithiau ar gwaith ac yn ymwyl ond yn gallu ffrasigiau Mae'r rheswn yw ymddangos ymddangos a ydy'r hyn sy'n ddigon. Mae'r ddigon yw'n ddigon, ond mae yna gellai'r ddigon yn ymddangos, mae'n ddigon, mae'n ddigon, yw ddigon, yw ddigon, yw ddigon. Nawr, yn ymwneud am yw ddu? Mae'n ddigon. Ddigon yn ymddangos yn y web arall rheswn. Yn ymddangos hefyd nid yw'n i'r content. y blynyddiad y mae Llywodraeth yn y gwleidio'r blynyddio a'r rhan o ffrif. Mae rhan o blynyddio'r blynydddiad yw'r blynyddiad yw'r blynyddiad, ac mae gmwybod buzzion rhai o'r lentechon negyn ffryd. Mae'r blynyddio ffryd eich ddod o rhan i'n blaen i'r blynyddio.achtailing o'r brynyddio sy'n gallu byddol yn unedig y gallwn y myfynu ar hyn o'r blynyddio. Croeso, any-wreeth ond bwysig yw'r cynno, yn e za'n gwir, a'r yw'r cyvell Draw a'r fydd wedi'i gwir a'r gwir, ac yn yw'r cymbas cwm yw'r Cwm Bwysig o'r Rhwng. Fy hoed pwysig, ond ei ffyrddol yn Rhwng, dwi ffyrddol i'r Rhwng o'r Rhwng, dwi ffyrddol i'r Rhwng o'r Rhwng, dwi ffyrddol i'r Rhwng o'r Rhwng o'r Rhwng o'r Rhwng, dwi ffyrddol i'r Rhwng. can have a belief that isn't justified so your form of reasoning could be irrational, but passions are more pro attitudes towards beliefs. So if I want a drink I probably believe I don't have a drink and what I want is to make true that I do have a drink. Er ffordd yw'r gwrs yn ei môl yn ymddiad a'r lleolion, mae'r gweithio yn ysgolwch y fawr i'r hyn o'r llaw. A mae'n gweithio, ac yn dweud, mae'n gweithio, mae'n fawr i'n gweithio, mae'n gweithio'n gweithio y gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gweithio, mae'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r gweithio, yn ddod, ac yn ddod. o'r llwyffydd, ac wedi bod y gallwn yn gwybod i'r llwyffydd, am dda ni oherwydd o'r cwp i'w llwyffydd. A'r llwyffydd o'r llwyffydd o'r llwyffydd o'r llwyffydd lle mae hwn yn gweithio o gyfweld yma, rwy'n cael ei fod yn y cyfnodau gweld yn eithaf i gydag o'r llwyffydd o'r llwyffydd. Yr ydych chi'n gwneud oherwydd y rheol, y gallai ar y gydag o'r llwyffydd, â'r llwyffydd yn ychydig i'r llwyffydd. Rwy'n cael ei wneud i'r rhan o'r gael i'w fathau'r angen o'r angen. Yn gweithio'r angen a'r angen, mae'n cydweithio'r angen o'r angen i'w ddau'r angen, ma wnaeth ymlaen i ymddangos i gael. Rhan o'r angen, o'r angen, mae'n cydweithio. Huwm oedd yr angen o'r angen i'w ddau'r angen, oherwydd mae'n cydweithio i wneud i'w ddau'r angen o'r angen, oedd hwn o'r ffordd o bwysig, wrth gwrs, o'n bwysig i bwysig yw eitem nhw. Mae ddiwedd o bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig i bwysig, a'r bwysig yw hwn. A wnaeth y llwyddon o'r ddweud o'r ffordd ymgyrchu, ond hynny'n tocyn i'w mewn hwyl o bwysig a'r ffordd. Mae'n bydd eich cyngor a'r ffordd o'r bwysig i ddif orbos ac yn gweithio yn y bwysig o'i ddim yn ymwneud. Felly, rydw i'n gwneud i'r ddigon i'r ddau'r ffynu o'r arostotl ymgyrch. Rydw i'n credu y byddai i'r ddau ymgyrch o'r ddau'r ddau? Rydw i arostotl ymgyrch? Felly, mae'r gweithio ymgyrch? Felly, yw'r gweithio ymgyrch o'r ddau. Rydw i'r gweithio ymgyrch o'r ddau'r ddau'r ddau'r gweithio and he does the right thing for the right reason.... If Aristotle's saying that reason must overcome passion in the production of action before it can be a moral action then it looks as if Aristotle's theory and gws are quite different as he says that reason can never overcome passion in the production of action. So if Aristotle's right to say that moral action is action in which reason overcomes passion Ac yna'n gyffinio, gyd gan y bydd yn oes f proofwn yr iawn, yw i wch sy'n cael ei wneud fawr armwr. Fy 진fa yn y maen nhw'n meddwl am yr amddangosfa â'r rhesfur maen nhw yn mynd y mynd i'r bwysig, gallwch yn gyfaniau sydd wedi ei wneud i'r bwysig y maen nhw yn gweithio? Mae'r amddangosfa ar y fwbodaeth. Mae'n gwybod yma gweithio bod y bynnag pwysig o'r ysgrifent. Dwi oedd yn enwedig, dwi'n gweithio gweithio cyfan yw'r argofod hyn. Yn hyn, yw'r argofod faint mae bysio'r argron o'r argofod yn y mae cyd-nw. Ond byddwch yn neill gyda'r cael i'r iechyd delim yn ffordd i dwylo'r amddangos cyfrannu, ac mae'r gwahodd i'r argofod yn ychydig o'r argofod yn ffraeg yn amlwyd. Diolch archu i'r f易, os aelod a'r argofod, If all we can do is act on our passions, what makes our actions moral, some of them. Because we do like to think that some of our actions are moral. Can anyone tell me what humans' positive views on morality were? It's bad week, isn't it, this week? In them mind, we might get you going in a minute. That's the area of true judge. Good. He talks about true judges, and he talks about stable and general perspectives. First, our passions are little more than pre-moral deliverances of sympathy. So we hear a child crying and we think, oh, this is terrible, a child is crying, and we think that whatever caused its cry was wrong. But as we get older and learn about vaccination and the fact that children need discipline and the fact that sometimes they cry when you take away from them a bit of poison they're about to eat and things like that, you start to learn that actually it's not quite as simple as you might initially have thought and that our pre-moral deliverances of sympathy need to be educated before we can be deemed to be acting morally. So a moral action is an action performed by a true judge, one who has educated his passions and who is adopting a stable and general perspective on the issue. Okay, that was a little bit of revision. Now this week we're going to be learning about Kant, and this is what we're going to look at, I'll leave you to read that. Okay? Right, so let's have a look. A dayontologist believes that the right action is the action that's performed because it's required by the moral law. Okay, now that's a slight advance, isn't it, on Aristotle and Hume? What did Aristotle say the right action was? Action was performed by a virtuous person. That's right, that the right action is the action that would be performed by a virtuous person, which we thought at least initially wasn't very helpful. And then Hume said that the right action would be the action performed by a true judge adopting a stable and general perspective. Again, perhaps not hugely useful. But here we're told that the right action is the action that's performed because it's required by the moral law. Well okay, so long as we know what the moral law is, this is looking perhaps a little bit more helpful. But there are different types of dayontology depending on different accounts of the moral law, of what counts as the moral law. So anyone who believes that morality consists in obeying the Ten Commandments is a dayontologist because they believe that morality is law-governed and that the laws that govern it are the laws of the Ten Commandments. So if you believe that the Ten Commandments are to be obeyed, then you are a dayontologist. You believe that the right action is the action that's required of you by the moral law and that the moral law is encoded in the Ten Commandments. Can anyone think back to week one? Goodness, if you can't remember last week, how are you going to manage this? Okay, think back to week one. We looked at different types of relativist and absolutist, didn't we? What would be the type of absolutist who... Well, actually, any of them would be dayontologists, but what would be the nearest one to a dayontologist to embrace the Ten Commandments, do you think? But surely we need the Ten Commandments to write them up in this? That wasn't one of the absolutists, but do you remember I talked about lower-order absolutism? So do not lie, tell the truth, keep promises, etc. If you're a lower-order absolutist, then you believe that the moral law is encoded in the rules that we follow generally in society. If you're a particularist, of course, you reject any claim that any moral rule is an absolute. Okay, but we'll see that there are dayontologists of other kinds in a minute, but you've got the idea, I think, of what a dayontologist is. The most famous dayontologist is Immanuel Kant. I probably should say arguably there, I wonder if there are, but I think that's a reasonable claim. Immanuel Kant, who lived from 1724 to 1804, Kant believed that in actions that motivated by passion can't be moral for that very reason. He thinks a passion-driven action is by definition not moral, which is where we were getting at before when we were saying, actually, whom's got a bit of a problem, because we generally don't think of an action that's performed to satisfy a desire of our own as a moral action, and yet, Hume believes that every action is performed in order to satisfy a desire of our own. Okay, so Kant disagrees with Hume, but he also rejects Aristotle's view that happiness, or eudaimonia, which, as you know, is only very, with great difficulty, translated as happiness, but Aristotle thinks that happiness is the purpose of our existence, whereas to Kant, what's important is that we're worthy of being happy, and we can be happy without being worthy of being happy, and we can be worthy of being happy without being happy, so the two things are different, and Kant disagrees with Aristotle on that. Kant believes, and this is where we've got to understand that Kant is agreeing with Hume on a lot of things, and in particular, he agrees with Hume on every action except moral action, so Kant is quite happy to accept that usually, in our actions, we are motivated by passion. Usually it's our own desires and the satisfaction of those desires that prompts us to act, but he says moral action cannot be like that. That can't be moral action, and if an action is motivated by passion, then for that very reason it isn't moral. Okay, so he thinks that all our actions are performed for one of two reasons, and the first one is the Humean one. Okay, we perform an action in order to achieve an end that we find desirable. The second one, and this is the one that of course Hume wouldn't recognise, but that is very important to Kant, is that we act to fulfil our obligations under the moral law, and he talks about it as reverence for the law. In Kant's eyes, we acquire virtue when we acquire reverence for the moral law, so we need to learn more about what that is. So acts we've performed to achieve an end we find desirable is motivated by what Kant calls inclination, but Hume would call passion. So if I talk about inclinations, I mean there are differences, but for all intents and purposes for this lecture we can think of those as passions, and for Kant that means they're not moral. Such actions, okay, so an action that's performed out of inclination, in order to achieve an end you want, that could be forbidden by the moral law, it could actually be morally wrong, or it could conform to the moral law. Okay, so it wouldn't necessarily be an immoral action that you would be performing out of inclination, it could be a perfectly moral action, except that in the second case it wouldn't count as moral. It would be moral because it conforms to the moral law, but not moral because it was performed out of an inclination. So didar, didar said that before. So as you can see Kant believes with Aristotle that an action can be virtuous without the agents being virtuous. So an act can conform to moral law, but without being moral, without the agent acting morally in performing that action. So we've looked at what makes an action not moral, not immoral, but not moral. An act can only be a moral action according to the Kant if the agent performs it because he believes it's required of him by moral law. So to perform this sort of action, the agent puts all his inclinations, all his passions to one side. According to Kant, when faced with a requirement, a moral requirement, something you should do out of your duty under the moral law, all your inclinations fall to one side. They should do anyway. They'll still be there. They don't disappear. You don't stop wanting to kill your little brother or something like that. You carry on wanting to kill your little brother, but you see that the moral law says you mustn't and your inclination falls away. It doesn't actually motivate an action. And when an agent puts his inclinations to one side, what he's doing is he's manifesting a good will. And for Kant, this is hugely important. In fact, it's the most important thing. The only thing to Kant that's good in itself is a good will. So the first question was, what about if I have an inclination to obey the law? And the second question was, my inclination tends me to want to perform an action that the moral law requires as well. So there are two motivations, if you like. There's the motivation to obey the law and there's the motivation to satisfy my own inclination. What happens then? What would Kant say about that action? We'll answer both those questions in a minute. So our actions are moral. So going back to the idea of a good will, the only thing that's good in itself, according to Kant, is a good will. And our actions are moral only in so far as our intentions are good. So our intentions must be to obey the law and our act must conform to the moral law. So do you see we're getting back to something very Aristotelian here? Not only must we obey the law because that's what the law says. We must know what the right action. We must do what the law demands of us and we must do it because the law demands it, obviously. Do you see how we're getting to something really quite Aristotelian again? Was that a question I saw? Well, I was going to ask whether he would actually disagree with the second one. Well, he would, if my intention, my intention is consisting a desire and a belief together. And it's the belief that would make it good for Kant. But, well, again, we'll actually see something like this in a minute. So ask the question again if I haven't answered it in a few minutes. So to Kant, the only thing that's intrinsically good, good in itself is a will that acts out of respect for the law. So whereas for Aristotel, there's only one thing that's good in itself, what is it? No, for Hume. No, Hume didn't say anything about the good in itself. But Aristotel believed that eudaimonia was good in itself, didn't he? That's what we're seeking for. But for Kant, it's a good will. If your will is good, if your intentions are good, that's the only thing that's good in itself. And it's that that makes anything else good. So if an action is good, it's because the intention behind it was good. It's got nothing to do with the consequences or anything else. It's to do with whether the intention behind it was good. So think back to week one again. And we looked at an action, must always have three things. Here's the action. It's always going to have consequences, isn't it? And it's always going to have an intention. Because without an intention, it couldn't be an action, could it? We looked at the difference between behaviours that happen to us, like tripping over a rug and behaviours that we choose like pretending to trip over a rug. So if it's an act that's chosen, it's got to have an intention. And Kant locates the goodness, if you like, of an action. Very firmly here, okay? It's got to be in the intention with which the act is performed. So now in support of Kant's claim, so we've seen what Kant's claim is, that the only thing that's good in itself is a goodwill. And that what makes an action good is the intentions with which it's performed. So we've seen that that's Kant's claim. Now let's have a look at the argument for Kant's claim. Well, he gives us examples of actions in which there are two possible reasons, and this is where your question is going to be answered. Two possible reasons for the agent's action. One reason is an inclination, and the other is a belief that the act is required by the moral law. So let's... Okay, I want you to imagine this situation. There's Ian, who's over there, there. And Joan, who isn't here, annoyingly. They're walking down braze-nose lane towards each other. Okay, so they're coming from opposite angles. And at the halfway point, there's that beggar who sits there with her child. And they each give her a pound, okay? So we can assume that the action they perform is identical. That the consequences of that action are identical, which can't quite be true, because the second one gives her another pound that makes two pounds, et cetera. And it's trapped away from that with your permission. You can add another beggar if you really want. Ian gives the beggar a pound because he wants to impress Joan. He wants Joan to think that he's a nice trap. And Joan gives the beggar a pound because she thinks it's the right thing to do. Okay, you see the difference? Have they acted equally morally? No. Okay, does anyone think they've acted equally morally? No, okay. Put your hand up if you think they haven't acted equally morally. Okay, that's very unusual. Why isn't your hand up for one of the other of them? No, no, no, I haven't acted morally. Right, okay. So you agree with everyone else? Everybody thinks that one of them acted morally and the other didn't, or at least they had action. Okay, so who acted morally? Neither. Ah, now, that's interesting. Okay, so you all agree on what the claim is, but for different reasons. Okay, so why do those who think that Joan acted morally but not Ian think that? Can somebody tell me? Ian acted from self-interest, didn't he? He acted with the intention of making Joan think he was a nice trap so he must think he's going to get something. Maybe nothing more than a glow of, ooh, Joan likes me. But obviously this is something he wants and that's why he acted. It's got nothing to do with morality. Joan, on the other hand, acted because she believed it was the right thing to do. So you think that that makes Joan's action right and Ian's action, but it's not wrong, is it? But nor is it a moral action. So it might conform with the moral law, but it isn't a moral action. Okay, those of you who disagree, are you one of them? No, I was just saying that he obviously, even if he was impressing her, he knew it was the right thing to do. If you see what I mean. So you must have known, morally, that that's going to impress her. Otherwise he still wouldn't have done it, would he? Okay, well there's a night, I mean actually Aristotle is very useful for this. Ian knew what the right thing to do was. He did the right thing, but he didn't do it for the right reason, did he? And it looks as if the fact he didn't do it for the right reason strips his action of its moral character. I might have been trying to kill two lords in one stone. No, well that comes back to the question. I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name. Dudley, that comes back to Dudley's question. We'll look at that in a minute. Now you had a different view. Well, Joan is fulfilling her own desires. Ah, because she wants to act in accordance with the moral law. I can't say even if it happens to coincide, that doesn't, because she's fulfilling her own desires. No, he absolutely doesn't say that. What he says is the action is only moral if it's done out of the desire, out of reverence for the moral law, because you believe it's the right thing to do. And Joan believes, notice this isn't a passion, this is a think, this is a belief. She believes it's the right thing to do. Now we might get back in a minute to what you claimed about, but you wouldn't believe you should do the right thing unless you wanted to do the right thing. I'll do that again until we get to that point, because I definitely will address that question. Okay, but would you agree, given that, that Joan was doing the right thing? Well, I don't know what moral law she's looking to. Well, but it doesn't matter, does it? Because if she does it because she believes it's the right thing to do, then she's satisfying Kant's condition for doing the right thing, isn't she? Well, I'm thinking about Tony Blair and the War. Well, I tell you what, can we put your complications on one side for a minute? I hope we'll leave time for questions in which we can deal with things like that, but all we've got is a claim at the moment. We haven't even looked at what the moral law is. What we've looked at is the claim that the only thing that's good in itself is a good will, and that therefore actions are only good if they're performed out of the goodness of a will in other words, if the intention of the person performing them was right. And the intention, to make it right, what the intention has got to be is that the action is in accordance with the moral law. So if we leave aside complications as to what the moral law is, we can say that whereas Joan acted, Kant would say rightly, Ian didn't, because Ian acted out of a passion. Can we accept that? We don't know what the moral law is yet we haven't looked at it. We will look at it in a minute. Okay, we've answered that. So Kant would say this, although Ian's action conforms with the moral law, it isn't a moral action, and that was because it was performed to fulfill an inclination of Ian's desire that Joan should think he's a nice chap rather than out of reverence for the law. And this is a very important point here. Kant is not saying that if we're inclined to perform an action, that action can't be morally right. Okay, so Dudley, this is your question here. So here's an action A. I always leave the black pen in the wrong place. So here's an action A that conforms to the law. And here's an inclination to perform A or a passion to perform A. And here's a belief that A accords with the law. Now Kant is saying that that action will be moral if it's performed for that reason rather than that reason. He doesn't mind at all if you have an inclination to perform the action that is, as a matter of fact, right. On the contrary, that would be a lovely thing to have and that's a very good thing to have. But the difference is that if you've got both of these things here, Dudley, this is addressing your question directly, but it's that that motivated you rather than that, then it's not a moral action. It may conform to the moral law but if you performed it for that reason, it isn't a moral action whereas if you performed it for that reason, it is a moral action. And remember that it's often the case that in any one situation we have lots of reasons for wanting to do something. I can only think of one now that's going to drop me right in it if I give it to you. Yes, very good one. Did you go in to get out of the rain or did you go in to have lunch or did you go in to chat up that nice waitress suit all the last time you were in there, etc. All those motivations could be in there. Well, not the last time, of course. Is Kant suggesting that if A is not part of the moral law, then if you perform something that is part of the moral law for the wrong reason, is that equal to performing something that is not part of the moral law? Well, then you've got to distinguish between the rightness of the agent and the rightness of the action. The action would be wrong, wouldn't it, if it doesn't conform to the law. If A isn't part of the moral law, there is no way you can conform to it, obviously. Sorry, say that again. If A is not part of the moral law, then you can't obviously perform a moral action. Then in performing A you wouldn't be conforming to the moral law, yes. I'm saying that they are equal situations. I don't know what you mean by that. If you perform an action A that does conform to the moral law and you perform it because it conforms to the moral law, then that's you are to be praised and your action is to be praised. But if you perform an action that conforms to the moral law for the wrong reason, then your action is to be praised but you are not. And if you perform an action on something which is not part of the moral law, because you believe it is, so you believe you perform it out of reverence for the moral law but you've got the moral law wrong, then your action is to be praised but your action isn't. Are you with me? There's four answers to that question. You can work them all out for yourself once you see where it's going, yes. Good. Can you not accept that the Ten Commandments are the moral laws? We haven't got on to what the moral law is at the moment. We looked at deontology. I talked about deontology. One form of deontology is the Ten Commandments, correct? We haven't looked at Kant's account of what the moral law is yet. We're just looking at the role played by the moral law in his account of moral action. Lot of people think that Kant is far too harsh, far too... because he's so duty orientated. He says we've got to act out of duty all the time if we act out of inclination. Lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if we act out of inclination, we're wrong. Sorry, we are wrong if we act out of inclination or at least we're wrong if we think we're acting morally. But if we act out of reverence for the law and we perform an action that we are, as a matter of fact, inclined to perform, nothing wrong with that at all. It doesn't make it wrong that you were inclined to perform it. Lots of people think it does, but that's a mistake in reading of Kant. Central to Kant's theory of ethics is a distinction between motivations for action and these he calls maxims. So when you have a motivation to act, you have a maxim, you're following a maxim. And maxims are like little arguments or little pieces of practical reasoning, the conclusions of which are imperatives. And an imperative is a command that rationally binds us to act. That's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? So if you think the different uses of language, so I can use language with interrogative force, so is the door closed, I can use it with a certain atotoric force, closed, what would that be, is the door, no. The door is closed, thank you very much, I'm getting my forces mixed up. Okay, so the door is closed is atotoric, is the door closed is interrogative, closed the door is imperative. Yes, I can see we're all old enough to have done our grammar. Okay, so a maxim is like a piece of practical reasoning that issues in an imperative and that imperative binds us rationally. Let's have a look at one. Okay, so here's a piece of reasoning. I want to get to London by midday. I believe I'll get to London by midday only if I catch the 10am train, therefore I should catch the 10am train. Okay, so you've got a piece of practical reasoning which generates an imperative and if you're a rational person, if you have that desire, that passion, and you have that belief, that reason, then you are rationally bound by that imperative, aren't you? And so when you see that it's 9.30am, and that's going to generate more imperatives because if I've got to catch the 10am train, I've got to leave home by 9.30am, and that's going to generate more passions. I want to leave home by 9.30am, and the minute the clock turns to 9.30am, you see that you're out of that door and that's what it is to be bound by an imperative, bound by reason, by an imperative. So we're rationally bound by this conclusion that we have that desire expressed in the first premise and the belief expressed by the second premise. Any questions about that? Because that's a rather important part of the presentation. Okay, now the imperative we've just looked at is conditional. It's conditional upon our having that particular desire. If we lose that desire, then we're no longer bound by that imperative, are we? So if we go back here, well, I did want to get to London by midday, so somebody says, well, why aren't you leaving? Look, it's quarter to ten, you should be gone, shouldn't you? And if you say, well, I decided I couldn't be bothered by what time I get to London, immediately you've lost that desire and that imperative no longer rationally binds you, does it? It's a loose cog in your motivational forces. So it's conditional upon your having that particular desire. If you lose the desire, you're no longer bound by that imperative. And that's why this imperative is called a hypothetical imperative. It's hypothetical on your having that desire and that belief. Notice if you lose the belief, you would also not be bound by that imperative. Do you see that? So that imperative is conditional upon your having both those things, and it's hypothetical in that if you have that and if you have that, then you're bound by that. But if you lose one of those, the imperative also loses its force. So it's a hypothetical imperative. And here is another piece of reasoning, and this piece of reasoning is absolutely central to Kant's moral philosophy. I recognise it's morally right to keep promises, therefore I should keep promises. Now Kant says that here we're again rationally bound by the conclusion. But the conclusion isn't conditional upon our having any desire. Notice we've got here a belief, a cognition, a cognitive state. I recognise that it's morally right to keep promises. And it entails directly an action, doesn't it, an imperative. Therefore I should keep promises. No desire is needed here, that's what Kant says. Now this is where your question becomes very important. But just before I deal with it, I won't say that imperative, the one we've just looked at, is called a categorical imperative. It's categorical because it's not binding hypothetically on any desire. You don't have to have any desire at all. All your desires, all your incarnations just fall out of the picture. If you believe that it's right to keep promises, then you're going to believe that you should keep promises. You don't need a desire at all according to Kant. So that's a categorical imperative. And it binds us solely in virtue of our capacity for reason. It doesn't bind us by dint of any inclination that we might have. But I bet you're all thinking, or at least you're thinking, hang on, there's a premise missing. Okay, what's the premise? So go back to the categorical imperative. Okay, does anyone think there's a premise missing? I desire to act morally, yeah. Yep, I desire to do the right thing. I desire to act morally, I desire to obey the moral law or something which is, that's exactly your question, wasn't it? Okay, so let's look at what Kant would say to this. Kant would say that if you want to add the premise, I want to do the right thing, you're manifesting your failure to understand the moral concept. Yes, right, actually, get rid of it. Right, no, this is a failure in your moral understanding. What you're implying that you might not want to do the right thing and implying the possibility of not wanting to do the right thing, you demonstrate that you simply haven't understood what the right thing is. So we can look at the development of the moral concept in looking at this. Lot of 10-year-old children, apparently, I'm told, believe that it's right means you must do it or mummy will catch you or you must do it or the teacher will catch you or something like that. They don't have an understanding of right that goes further than that. So in a situation where mummy won't catch them or the teacher won't catch them or something, then there's no reason not to do it. I mean, Hume would talk about, has he gone now? Sorry, I've forgotten your name. Helen's son was here earlier, but I think he has gone. I mean, I suspect we've all, maybe if we remember back that far to ourselves, we can understand having that sort of moral concept. 90% of the population there is. Okay, we may not all be as cynical as Erica, but it is certainly true that there are lots of adults who still have the moral concept that is normal for 10-year-olds to have. But I'm prepared to bet that if I were to leave my purse here, most of you in this room wouldn't pinch it, not because you might be caught, but because you'd think it was the wrong thing to do. So do you see what Kant's saying here? He's saying, actually, if you've really understood the moral concept itself right and wrong, you couldn't not want to act on them, and therefore you can't want to act on them either. It doesn't make sense. It's one of those dual concepts. I mean, you can't have the concept of truth without having the concept of falsehood, can you? You can't have the concept of blue without having the concept of another colour. You've got to have at least one other colour in order to have the concept blue. Right and wrong would be similar concepts. So the thought would be, if you've really got the moral concept, the concept right, as opposed to one of these pre-moral concepts that children have or people who haven't developed morally have, then you couldn't want to do the right thing because that would imply that you could not want to do the right thing and that immediately shows you that you're operating with the wrong concept of morality. So that's Kant's answer to that. So let's have a close look at this because this is the absolute core of Kant's moral philosophy. It's very important to... OK, let's have a look at this. If I say I believe it is right to keep promises, does this entail, as Kant thinks, therefore I should keep promises? In other words, could you believe that without believing that? Could you believe that it's right to keep promises without thereby believing that you should keep promises? OK, put your hand up if you think no. OK, well all of you will have intuitions that would accord with Kant on this. Does anyone think yes that you could believe that without believing that? OK, tell me why. Well no, we're not talking about morality here, we're talking about rationality, well I'm sorry, we are talking about morality, but we're talking more about rationality than morality. The question is could you believe that without believing that? In other words, if you had that in your belief system, could you not have that? You should surely that should be imperative, it should, and it should, it would be I must. Well I should I must. Well it's different between should and must. You're always accusing me of splitting hairs, I'm not going to split this particular hair. We'll put must in there if you like, we can even put ought in there if you like. I don't mind. As long as it's imperative, that's all I care about. And what I'm interested in is could you believe that without believing that? Do you no longer think you can? Well I feel instinctively that you could, but I can't, I can't explain, I can't rationalise. Well, then that won't do. OK. Going back to week one, you could have a chain of argument in there that says but if I keep this promise, I'm going to distress Lucy about the state of her hair too. So I won't. Well no, then you would have lost your belief that it's right to keep promises. Do you see what I mean? We're looking at a particular point in time, T, and at T you believe it's right to keep promises. So we're not talking about the general law, I believe that generally speaking it's right to keep promises. If you like we can say right to keep that promise, if you like, that makes it easier. I should keep that promise. Do you see what I mean? So again, we're not saying here that you could, generally speaking I believe it's right to keep promises, but I don't believe it's right to keep that promise, therefore I don't feel bound to keep that promise. That would be a completely different argument. We're looking at believing it's right to keep that promise at this time and whether you could then not believe I should keep that promise. Nobody's talking about whether you do keep that promise incidentally, do you see that's a completely different thing? Because you might believe that and that and then not do it, but that's a completely different kettle of fish and we know that happens. Could a situation change, which would make it change your mind, depending on the situation you find yourself in? We're not talking about a situation where it's changed, we're talking about the situation in which you believe that and whether in a situation where you do believe that you might not believe that. If somebody says to you, I believe lying's wrong, but that doesn't tell me that I shouldn't lie. Of course I can lie consistently with believing that lying's wrong. Is that consistent? Could you believe that something's wrong and yet believe you have no reason not to do it? This is the core of it. Could you believe that something's wrong? So we're using the moral concept here wrong. Could you believe that something's wrong and yet not feel that you had reason not to do it? It's quite... Does the context have a bearing? Well, the context has a bearing in that. We're talking about as long as you have that belief you must have that belief. The two contexts may be different. You may believe it's right in one context, but not in another. We've just been through that. We're talking only about if you believe that, not one minute you believe that and one minute you don't. The only situation we're talking about is the one in which you do believe that. The question is, doesn't that therefore entail this directly? If you think it does, then your intuitions are going against you in this affair, they're going with Kant, because what Kant says is that there are only two concepts that are intrinsically action-guiding that don't need passions or inclinations to motivate you. Two concepts, and those are the concept of right and the concept of wrong. Where it's important that these are concepts, do you remember we talked about the difference between concepts and percepts and pro attitudes and da, da, da? That action is right. Kant says this is a belief. Do you remember that Hume denied that? Hume said that when we say something's right, do you remember the error theory from last week? So what we do when we say something's right according to Hume is we say that it generates in us feelings of disapprobation or approbation. Sorry, approbation if it's right. So that we're wrong to think that something like this is a belief. Kant's denying that. He's going right back and he's saying no. When we have a belief of that kind, what we're doing is we're picking out something in the world and we're saying of it that it has this property. And in doing that, we're ushering something that has truth or falsehood just like any other belief and that's embedded in a logical space so we can usually give reasons for saying why something's right. Why is lying not right? Well, because if most people didn't tell the truth most of the time, then we would lose our ability to communicate with each other. We would have no reason to exchange information. So Kant is going right back to where our intuitions actually were last week before we looked at Hume because we all would have said that that expresses a belief, not a passion. But Hume convinced us, if you remember last week, that it does express a passion, a pro-attitude of some kind and isn't a belief. But Kant's taking us right back to the claim it is. Going back to your earlier question about keeping your promise, would an immoral person believe it's right to keep your promise but choose not to do it at the same time? Well, we did look at that because you might... You could believe that and therefore believe that, Kant is suggesting. But without doing that, do you see what I mean? You're saying it's the action. Well, I mean, we all know... Think back to Aristotle. You know what the right thing to do is you do the right thing and you do the right thing for the right reason. Well, if you know what the right thing is but you don't do it, then something's gone missing immediately, hasn't it? In this situation, if you believe that and that but you then don't do this, you've given into temptation, haven't you? You've displayed weakness, malevolence perhaps, whatever. But some failure, some moral failure, okay, so according to Kant, there are only two intrinsically action-guiding concepts and by concept he means constituent of a belief, not a passion. And the two action-guiding concepts are right and wrong. And it's only those two concepts. It's only when we see that those properties are instantiated by an action or would be instantiated by an action that we are motivated immediately to act. We may not act, but we're motivated to act and what motivates us is not our own passion, our own desire, but our reverence for the moral law, our recognition that this is our moral duty in this case to do that or not to do this, etc. You're all looking very reverential now, which is absolutely how you should look when talking about Kant, because there's something very moving about this, isn't there? The idea that moral action is completely different from any other sort of action. And note incidentally that there wouldn't be nearly as many moral actions perhaps as you think there are, because a lot of the time we do things out of habit, we do things out of custom, we do things because we obey rules like keep promises, don't tell lies, etc. But only because the rule is just a knee jerk reaction. In Kant you are only acting morally when you actually act because you see that an action is right or you suppress an action because you see it would be wrong. That's the only time you act morally because then and only then there's a lot of reverence for the law. So, to recognise that an action is morally right, according to Kant, is thereby to believe it should be performed. No inclination is needed to move, to motivate an agent whose will is good. I should probably say there no other, no inclination at all is needed to motivate. There might be an inclination there, but if it motivates, it's not a moral action and no inclination is needed. So, for such an agent, his recognition that the act is required by the moral law is all the motivation that he needs. Okay, so now we're getting on to the bit that you've all been looking forward to. What is this moral law? But before we go on to that, did anyone feel last week swayed by Hume and this week is swayed by Kant? Good. Okay, well, how many do you feel that? Because I remember reading Hume and then reading Kant and thinking, blah! It's just like being going in one direction then another. Good, I think it's absolutely proper that you should be driven by the arguments of one philosopher and then by the arguments of another philosopher. I think the reason that I don't... Well, swayed yes, but I just believe that Kant and probably Hume as well didn't understand the engineering of how Hume's work. So... No, because Hume's saying that we've driven by a passion, I think, is a kind of biological fact that I believe in. And therefore, your motivation to act, I'm with Hume. I don't think he may not have understood what we understood now about how, you know, biological being works. But you know, I think that's what I understand, is how we work. I think probably quite a lot of you feel that or certainly felt that last week about Hume, because his theory of mind, his theory of what motivates action of what gets us to move, is really very convincing, isn't it? And it convinces Kant as well for all action except the moral actions. But according to Kant, there are just these two moral concepts and where I need to press you a bit then is here. Because what you're saying is that it would be possible to believe, I believe it is right to keep promises. Therefore, I should keep promises. Now you're saying that is not an entailment, that there absolutely must be a desire in here. I want to do what's right or something like that. I'm saying the reason I believe it's right to keep promises is because I have reasons around why it is right. Yes, but that's more reasoning. That's not introducing a passion, is it? You're now looking at the web of reasons in which any reason is embedded. But I think reasoning is always around the passion. Hang on, no, we're looking for the passion. You must want to add a passion in here in order to get the entailment. Do you see what I mean? What Kant is saying is that that entails that directly, that you cannot believe that without believing that. The only reason you'd deny that is if you think that that can only entail that if you have a desire in there. If you wouldn't deny it, you're not with humour, you're with Kant. Well, I think he's come to the right answer. No, that won't do. What were you going to say? It seems that Kant is suggesting that nearly all our actions are not moral. They might be right, but they're not moral. Because we don't necessarily think about... I'm trying to think in the last week of what action I might have performed that I could class as moral because I thought that I'm doing it for the right reason. And maybe there wouldn't be many of them, or indeed any of them. Yeah, and actually I don't think there's... I think that's probably situation normal, because actually morality only really kicks in, doesn't it, when we're really in a situation... When we think we know what to do when we're on autopilot and the girl at the till gives us too much change and we look at it and we think too much change and we tell her, well, actually, that's possibly quite a good... I mean, why would you do that? I mean, you do that in order to impress her or to impress the people in the queue? Okay, if it's automatic, then it's not because you see that it's required of you by the moral law. That's the last time you really had a real moral dilemma when you had to think out what was right and you had to decide whether to do what you believed to be right. It would have been a situation where seeing something as right motivated you to act on that thing, but possibly your inclination's getting in the way or something like that. If you nevertheless did the right thing and you did it because you believed it was the right thing to do, then you were acting morally. I think it is perfectly reasonable that there should be far fewer moral actions than we actually think there are. But the important thing about moral action is that if Kant is right, there is just two types of belief that are counter examples to Hume. Interestingly, they're the beliefs that would be absolutely central to human existence. They would be central to acting rightly or wrongly to doing the right thing or not, and that would be any belief about something's being right or something's being wrong. The word conscience hasn't been mentioned in the development of conscience in your experience. If I do something which I know I should have done against my conscience, then it becomes uncomfortable for me afterwards in the discomforts. If you don't do it in order to avoid that feeling of discomfort, what have you done? You've acted on an inclination there. If your reason for not doing it is because you're disliked feeling discomfort later, then you're acting on your passions, aren't you? That's not a moral action at all. It may conform to the moral law and we certainly want to encourage you to do things that don't make you uncomfortable, but the fact is you haven't acted morally. You haven't acted immorally either, but... I think most of the time, most of it's me anyway, is because I don't like the uncomfortable feeling of conscience. Right, but do you see the difference? Yeah. Does it matter how conscious our processes are or make these decisions? If you're talking here about whether I think carefully about whether I'm doing the right thing, whether it's a knee-jerk reaction, does it matter? If I follow the moral law, because it's embedded in my... Or if I've decided I'm going to act and therefore I do the right thing, because I've considered it, does that matter? Well, I don't know quite how to answer that from Kant's point of view. Again, I'm not a Kant scholar here. But if you think about Aristotle, that habit was what was important, that you had to go to instill these habits in you, and that would suggest that to him, consciousness of what you were doing wasn't important. But if we're right that actually there are very few actions that are really moral and that in order to be properly moral, it must be a difficult... a conscious decision to act in accordance with the moral law, all your inclinations falling away, then maybe it does need to be a conscious decision. So I don't deny to people who have that as a belief embedded in them, doesn't it? It means they're in varieties. I think it's valuable perhaps. Well, go back to Aristotle again. He thinks that rules run out. If all you are is a rule follower, you're not a moral person at all. You can spend your whole life doing the right thing, but you're actually not a moral agent. You're just a knee-jerk rule follower. You're a computer. You've just said something very scary to me. Oh, yes. If P is a set of all actions which Kant defines as immoral, then presumably all other actions are immoral. No, there are lots of actions that are non-moral. If an action doesn't conform to the moral law, it might be immoral, but it might just be non-moral. It might just not conform to the moral law. But if it's good, it would still be not moral. This is the point of Kant, isn't it? An action can conform to the moral law and in that sense be good and yet not be a moral action of the agents because it wasn't performed out of reverence for the law. So, again, look back to Ian giving the beggar a pound that that action conformed to the moral law, we're supposing, but he didn't perform it for the right reason. So it's not a moral action, but it nevertheless conforms to the moral law. In other words, it's what the moral law was asking of him, but he didn't do it for the right reason. It's not an either-or situation. That's right. Actions can conform to the moral law, they can not conform to the moral law and they can actually be against the moral law, violate the moral law. Any other questions? OK, let's move on a bit. Right, what is this moral law? Well, I've already said that different day ontologists would give different answers to this question. Some might cite the Ten Commandments. Kant is a very difficult case here because sometimes Kant talks as if the Ten Commandments do count for him as the moral law and he gives a lot of examples that actually really make it quite difficult to follow him. Famously, he talks about the idea that you should tell the truth even when the person has asked you where his knife is when the person's madman's got the knife or something. No, hang on, what is it? A madman asks you for his knife and you tell him where the knife is because you've got to tell the truth. OK, so I'm now not claiming that what I'm saying is the only interpretation of Kant. There are other interpretations of Kant according to which Kant had really rather different views but what I am saying is certainly one interpretation. Certainly what Kant said and it leads to one interpretation of Kant which I prefer. OK, so he offers several formulations. He offers six formulations of the moral law of the categorical imperative. In other words, any imperative that binds us entirely in virtue of our capacity for reason. We're going to have a look at two formulations the formula of the universal law and the formula of the end in itself. OK, here's the formula of the universal law. Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will it should be universal law. OK, do you remember what a maxim was? What was a maxim? That's right. It's a rule on which you're currently acting or the reason you're currently acting. So act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should be universal law. The will here is of course your good will. It's what you would will to happen. So when we act intentionally, we act on a maxim and the first formulation of the moral law tells us that our maxims must always be universalisable. What does that mean? Our maxims must be universalisable. It means we should ask of all our possible maxims what if everyone were to act on this? What if everyone was to do this? It's very important that we get this question right because the question is not what if my doing it were to cause everyone else to do it. In other words, if I go around picking the flowers in the park and everyone sees me and they think, if she can pick them, I can pick them. Therefore, I could say to myself, well, I won't cause anyone to do this because I'll do it at the dead of night and nobody will see me. So we're not asking that at all. What we're asking is what if everyone were to act on this maxim? What if everyone were to pick the flowers in the park? Last year, I saw somebody going around picking armfuls of daffodils in the university parks. I blushed to admit I didn't say anything. I was afraid she would hit me, but it's quite extraordinary to see someone doing that. Maybe she was a gardener. Try universalising the following maxims. You're thinking to yourself, I'm making a false promise to James in order to get James to do what I want. I won't get him to do what I want unless I promise him that I'll do what he wants. I have no intention of doing what he wants, but I'm just going to tell him I am. What would happen if we universalised that maxim? You could never trust anybody at all. Why not? How would that work? The idea of making a false promise, you're not actually asking the right question here in. In fact, I'm going to reject your answer for a minute and just say let's go back to universalising. We're asking what if everyone were to do this? I'm sure you could modify very slightly what you said. What if everyone were to make a false promise? Is it communication that would fail? Is it trust in a particular area? The whole institution of promise keep you just fall down, wouldn't it? It would be hopeless. If you could never trust people to make promises, that's why you're absolutely right to pick out the idea of trust. There wouldn't be any point in making a promise. The point in making a promise is that it changes your reasons for acting in a situation, doesn't it? There are big promises like marrying somebody or smaller promises like I'll come to your party. Instantly notice that we can get out of promises if I promise to come to your party but then on the way I've come across someone who's just been run over and I've got to take them to hospital, didar, didar. I know that that's the situation in which breaking my promises is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. But if I think, well actually I promised I'd go to the party but I really don't feel like it, that's not an acceptable reason, is it? So you're putting yourself in the position of the person to whom you make the promise and say, would this be an acceptable situation? But if everyone were to make false promises then promising just wouldn't be an institution, would it? It would just fall down completely. And what would we lose then? What would we lose if we lost the institution of promise keeping? I think it's the base for communication, gentlemen. I'm not sure promise keeping is the best, truth telling is the basis for communication but promise keeping is not quite the basis for communication. We'd certainly lose contracts because contracts are based on promises but what about my promise to come to your party? What does that do? If I broke that promise they'd lose faith in me but if you promised to come to my party and on the basis of that promise I'd go ahead with the party what have I gained by being able to rely on that promise? Predictability motivation. Predictability motivation. I'm now prepared to go ahead. The risk has been mitigated somewhat perhaps by your promise to be present. So we manage our expectations quite a lot by promise keeping and if the institution of promise keeping were to fall down we wouldn't be able to do that. And so if you universalise the maxim on which you would act then I'm going to make a false promise you would see that it's the wrong thing to do, isn't it? It contradicts the moral law. It would lead to a very bad situation. So you can't universalise that maxim. It contradicts what you're trying to do. What about this one? I refuse to help James because I don't feel like helping him. Not in the mood, not going to do it. So universalise it for a minute what happens? People only do what they want to do. People only help others if they actually feel like it. And what would happen in that situation? Including children and babies and elderly people and it would be a pretty distasteful world, wouldn't it? In which people acted on that maxim. So the universalisation of a maxim is quite important. You don't do anything if you're wondering what to do morally unless you can universalise your maxim. What this does, the results would be disastrous. If we try and fail to universalise a maxim, says Kant, it tells us that we shouldn't act on this maxim because if this maxim is reason for us to act and we've all wanted to make false promises we've all wanted to not help because we're not in the mood or whatever. But if it's a reason for us to act then it's also a reason for everyone else to act. We're not different from anyone else. And if it would be disaster if everyone else acted on it and we're saying that our acting on it is acceptable then what we're doing is we're making an exception for ourselves. Kant wants to say, well, on what grounds do we do that? Are desires more important than anyone else's? Are we more important than anyone else? We're not. Once you've stripped away the passions and you've taken a human being back to sheer reason then there's nothing to distinguish any one human being from any other human being. What distinguishes us from each other according to Kant are our inclinations, our desires, our passions. What we want to do, not just in the next ten minutes but with our life and da da da da. If you take us back to our rational nature then we're identical because in reasoning all human beings, indeed all rational animals Kant doesn't rule out the possibility of there being other reasoners are the same because to reason is to look at the rational relations between our beliefs in the way we were looking at before. So if we're identical when it comes to reason and we can see that we would be, we have reason to do this on this particular occasion then so does everyone else have reason to do it and if everyone else doing it would be bad so we don't want anyone else to do it then this is reason for us not to do it as well. So the formula of the universal law tells us that we should act on a maxim only if we can consistently recommend that everyone placed as we are placed should do the same thing. Notice placed as we are placed is actually quite important because there's never a case where the action you're about to perform would be identical if it was performed by someone else. This sounds a bit like do unto others as you would wish to be done by but then I've just put my hand up, I thought well if you were a sadist or a maschist you'd wish to be whipped and then it falls down. Except no, we need to think about that because actually it doesn't fall down because your misunderstanding do unto others and you think it falls down because I've forgotten your name, Phil. If I'm a sadist and I look at Phil and say okay I'd like to be whipped therefore he'd like to be whipped I'm not doing as I would be done by am I because I don't know what he wants what that asks you to do is to put yourself in his position see the world from his point of view ask what would he like to have done to him not put myself in his position and ask what I would like done if I were him. If you see what I mean? Universalising is if you would like it done can you imagine? No, it's absolutely not. This is a very common failure of morality is when I put myself in someone else's position and work out what I would like and then do to them what I would like, whereas what I should be doing is putting myself in their position in the sense of asking what they would like exercising empathy put it literally pretending I am looking at the world through their eyes not pretending that the eyes through which they look are mine. That's the wrong thing entirely. And if you get the wrong handle of the stick of do as you would be done by you're going to be going around acting very selfishly it's a completely different thing. So the universalising to what extent is Kant like do as you would be done by it doesn't quite work like that because Kant's asking us to take everyone back to their reason the kernel in them that is their reason rather than the passions and when we act morally what we're doing is we're saying what would happen if everyone were to do this if everyone were to act on this maxim that I'm planning to act on so I can see why you think there's a similarity there but I don't think it's the same thing. Is it more like the original position that you spoke about in the early weeks if you have to make a Lord so that everybody whatever your position you live by it and everybody In a way it is more like yes absolutely because in the original position of course actually your desires fall out because you don't know what your desires are. I can see why you'd say that again I'd want to look a lot more closely at both of them but I do think that yes your inclinations fall out in the original position because you don't know what your inclinations are but your reason is left the reason that you know I might be him, I might be him, I might be him if I were him, if I were Okay let's look at the next formulation of the end in itself of the categorical imperative so these are different formulations of the moral law of the categorical imperative and this is the formula of the end in itself so act that you use humanity whether in your own person or in the person of another always at the same time as an end never merely a means Okay so if I ask you to pass me a pencil can you do that? Okay I've forgotten your name as well Volker Okay I've just treated Volker as a means to my ends then you'd better have it back I wanted to use him as an example and so I went and asked him to give me his pen and he nicely gave me his pen I used him as a means to my own end but I didn't not treat him as an end in himself because you could have refused you could have said no it's my only pen I'm writing down every pearl that falls from your lips so we use each other as means all the time there's nothing wrong with using other people as means to your own ends what's wrong is if you use them as means to your own ends but not at the same time as ends in themselves so we've always got to respect the autonomy of the other we've always got to respect that they have their own choices to make so if I decide to lie to Dudley in order to get him to do something I want him to do and I know he won't do it unless I tell him that his doing it will bring him this benefit or that benefit or something and I lie to him in order to do that I'm treating him only as a means to my own ends I'm not giving him the option of making a true decision making a proper decision on the basis of this case so what this formula says is that we've got to use humanity and notice whether in our own person I've got to always treat I mustn't allow myself to be used as nothing more than a means to the ends of another I'm morally wrong if I allow myself to be used in that way every bit as much as if I use you in that way so either in your own person or in the person of another always at the same time as an end never solely as a means so I can't believe that every rational being its capacity for autonomy is an end in itself so this capacity for free will autonomy absolutely central to Kant he believes that the good will is the only thing that's good in itself and a will can only be good if it's free no end in itself should ever be treated as nothing more than a means to the ends of others now only human beings are known to be rational but perhaps dolphins, elephants, margins etc are also rational and as far as Kant's concern it doesn't matter it's not what is rational that counts but that it is rational so whatever is rational is bound by the moral law in exactly the same way so if animals are rational they too are bound by the moral law if margins are rational they are also bound by the moral law and we have a duty to treat them as ends in themselves reason and freedom are linked we might not have brought this out before but a being who acts for reasons is a being who must choose between reasons because every time you act there are lots of different reasons for acting aren't there you could do this, you could do that, you could do the other thing and if you've got lots of different reasons for acting then you must choose one of those reasons and so to be rational is to be free similarly a being who chooses his actions there must be a reason for which he chooses them so rationality and freedom go together which is actually why some determinists deny the capacity for reason so there's a group called the eliminativists who think that we're actually not rational we don't have free will, that there's no intentions they actually think there's no minds I think we won't go into that too deeply If we believe that animals aren't rational does that mean that we don't have to behave morally towards them? Kant believes that animals aren't rational and he therefore believes that they don't have rights they don't have the right to be treated as ends in themselves but he doesn't think that that means we don't have duties towards them so the fact that animals don't have rights doesn't mean we don't have duties so no we can't treat animals in any way we like even though they don't have rights as far as Kant is concerned so okay reason and freedom go together To believe oneself to be able to choose freely how to act and we do believe that of ourselves even if we're determinists we have a lot of trouble not believing that we are free to act it's almost certainly to believe that one has the right to choose how to act if I start interfering in your right to choose how to act you'll get quite pissed off with me quite quickly because actually all of us feel that we have the right to choose how to act on pain of inconsistency therefore to see another being as rational is to see them also as having the right to choose how to act so if your right to choose how to act is based in your capacity to choose how to act your capacity for reason then you must also recognise in every other rational being a similar right if your rationality confers on your right how can you withhold that from any other rational being so to believe that rational beings have the right to choose for themselves how to act is inconsistent with treating other rational beings as nothing more than a means to your own end though it is consistent with treating them at the same time as a means do you remember that as I said before you can treat them as a means whenever you like as long as you're also treating them as an end in themselves so the difference between human cant lies in whether moral judgments like this is right and this is wrong express passions informed by a stable and general perspective on the world or beliefs about what is required of us by the moral law and Aristotle believes that the final end of a human being an end without which we can't... sorry an end we can't achieve without virtue as happiness but Kant believes we can attain happiness without fulfilling our obligations under the moral law and even without exercising reason actually Kant's quite funny on this Kant is not often funny but he is funny on this he thinks that actually somebody who's rational and who's always exercising reason is sometimes less likely to be happy than somebody who isn't somebody who just lets their reason flow is more likely to be happy he thinks which Aristotle would but then of course we've got to remember that for Aristotle happiness is such a bad translation etc so can't even suggest that one who doesn't exercise reason I've just said that so for Kant what matters is not whether or not we're happy only that we're worthy to be happy to be properly human for Kant is to be worthy to be happy whether or not we are happy wouldn't it be similar to what Aristotle claimed a lifelong process to be worthy of happiness well actually when you take into account what Aristotle meant by happiness again I think you end up with Kant perhaps not being so very far away I mean I hope you've noticed that actually the more you understand about these philosophers and the theories the less far apart they seem I mean I'm not saying for one minute that you can conflate them all because you can't there are very very specific differences between them and they can't all be right but actually it's very interesting to see on what they agree and on what that tells us about morality Kant thinks we can only be worthy of happiness if we exercise reason and fulfil our obligations under the moral law which is rather similar to Aristotle didadodab done all that okay so I think that's okay who are you tending towards I don't want to just want to tell you something else Kant believes we only have two duties in life one is to create the happiness of others and the other is to create our own moral perfection and he says and this is another time when he's quite funny he says actually most of us go through life doing the opposite trying to create our own happiness and others moral perfection and if you think about it that is so right it really is but it's also quite interesting to look at those two duties as the only duties that the moral law requires of us okay so who are you tending towards put your hands up Aristotle Hume okay Kant oh Kant's winning okay these are the questions yes exactly till next week these are the questions that you might want to have a look at see whether you can answer just to see check on your understanding of this week there's the reading for next week and that's it