Chapter 12 Deontology

Chapter 12 Deontology

For deontology the primary focus for ethical decision making is the rule. The rule to never lie, cheat, or steal is an absolute never to be broken under any circumstances for any reason. Immanuel Kant would argue that to break the rule would be to act contrary to reason; for Confucius to break the rule would be to act out against one's filial relationships and virtue, and for W. D Ross the rule may only be broken in order to uphold the more prima facia rule. Regardless of the deontological school of thought the rule is the guide.

This bring me to some important questions: why do the rules matter? Are we simply rational creatures born to keep rules? Should reason be our primary foundation for ethics, and if so, why? What role does our emotional nature play in ethical decision making? We see examples of rule based thinking in every sphere of life: religion, business, government, family. Here are some examples: If you smoke a cigarette you are going to hell, no shoes, no shirt, no service; pay taxes or go to jail, and bedtime is 8 pm.

Rules for rule sake:

The challenge with rule based thinking in ethics is the rule becomes the focus and not the object, meaning, reason, or value of the rule. The rule becomes supreme and so, the outcome produced, the individuals and communities that are impacted by them become only incidentals. It is then easy to become totalitarian, cruel, and indifferent to anyone and anything that contradicts the rule.

I think we can relate back to Kant's ideal, "act so as to treat people always as ends in themselves, never as mere means". It is in this statement that we can find a corrective for becoming rule totalitarians. The rules are for people not the other way around. Jesus uses this logic when healing on the Sabbath. Jesus is accused of breaking God's command of not working on the Sabbath by healing the sick on the Sabbath. Jesus responds that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. This puts the rule firmly in it's place by framing it in the context of human need and dignity. The person becomes the end not the rule.

This brings me to my next point. Ethics is a relational ideal and I agree in part with Kant that without reason, ethics would cease to be in this world , it is a human endeavor because humans are rational by nature and we utilize reason to communicate. By reason we can rationally conclude good from evil not simply by analytical, abstract conclusions, but how thoughts, words, and actions impact us individually, the people we love, and society in general. I believe that whatever ethical system we utilize, each ethical system is an endeavor to value that which is loved. Example: loving ourselves, loving others, loving nature and other creatures, knowledge, and innocence. The purpose of ethics is to love to the fullest measure. Through love we acknowledge our self-worth, the worth of others, and the goodness of being alive in a world full of beauty and mystery in which all creatures should be valued according to there nature. Ethics is a means to fulfilling the law of law.

Getting emotional:

Reason is foundational but there must be more to ethical decision making than 1 + 1 is 2. Humans are rational but we are also emotional beings. Sympathy, empathy, anger, and joy are fundamental to our psyche. Kant wanted to completely distinguish the rational (or good will) from the emotional in ethical decision making. Kant believed any emotive inclination towards a virtuous act was no longer virtuous, although "praiseworthy" and desirable, the act was only virtuous if done from pure reason or will. This is a problem for me because emotion is infused into our rational processes. When we think we feel, and when we feel we think. We are by nature emotive and rational and to ignore one over the other would be as dangerous as ignoring the physical heart over the brain.

A term being used today is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence (EI) is a person’s ability to (1) be self-aware (to recognize her own emotions when she experiences them), (2) detect emotions in others, and (3) manage emotional cues and information. People who know their own emotions and are good at reading emotion cues—for instance, knowing why they’re angry and how to express themselves without violating norms—are most likely to be effective. (Dessler, 2011). This concept is used in business, but I believe is important to ethical decision making as well. Interesting, we can rationally judge and discover the who, what, and why of our emotional state. Reason should guide emotion. When we act out of emotion without reason we can make bad ethical choices. Have you heard the expression "the path to hell is paved with good intentions"? Also, we can be cruel when we divorce our feelings from reason, we can become rule totalitarians.

Confucius and Ancestors

For Confucius the rules were handed down by our ancestors and the rule was, honor the ancestors by keeping their rules. Not because the rules were what mattered but because we are to love our ancestors. Mo Tzu had seen the impact of rules on the Chinese rule based culture and attempted to use a utilitarian ethical philosophy to counter the negative impact of Confucian philosophy, but without much success. Authoritarian ancestry became a way of those in power through family ancestry to take advantage of the poor and powerless. The poor and powerless were then obligated to accept the injustice because of the Confucian rule based system. This allowed rule totalitarians to take advantage of Confucian ideals for their own benefit. Once again, love is reciprocal, and without reciprocity, we fail to truly love each other, or as Confucius might believe, we fail jen. Confucian ethics is possible if the ancestors rules are embedded in love for their offspring, and only then can the offspring truly love their ancestors.

Why Lie:

Warning: This is my opinion on lying and one I am still working through.

For Kant lying was an absolute unbreakable rule. There was no rational excuse for lying even to save an innocent life. So, according to Kant I must tell a vicious murderer the truth of where my family is hiding so he may or may not kill them. This is one of my biggest issues with Kant. It is at this point that I believe his deontological theory loses its roots, its value, and purpose. The purpose of ethics, in my opinion, is to love and value each human being (Kant would agree). By loving and valuing each other we build and maintain happy, strong and productive relationships and therefore maintain individual and social happiness.

When we lie we break trust between rational trusting individuals and societies. The deontological model for ethics is a powerful tool for decision making but only to the extent that we follow Kant's ideal that the person is the end not the rule. According to Kant when we lie we take control over another person. We dominate them through deceit and ignore their autonomy and thwart their right to honest choices. I would add to that yes we de-value them as individuals but we devalue our relationships too. Therefore lying in and of itself, outside of human interaction is meaningless. Lying is only an evil in as much as it destroys warranted trust. Lying is unethical because it destroys the integrity of healthy relationships and thwarts efforts to grow in love and communication to foster intimacy and friendship. I owe the truth to those I value and love and to those who value and love me.

There is a great proverb I think applies to what I am saying on the negative side of my ideal: "Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls to pigs because they will eat them up and then tear you to pieces". I do not owe what is holy (truth) to evil people when they intend to harm or kill me or my family and neighbor. There is no relational foundation upon which there is trust, friendship, or intimacy to violate with a cold blooded killer. There intent has already demolished my relational responsibility. To give the truth of the whereabouts of my family to a evil person to whom I have no relationship other than their unwarranted violence would be to devalue the trust, intimacy, and friendship I have spent a lifetime building with those to whom it is owed. I will have to violate the fundamental purpose of truth telling: valuing relationships, by divulging the truth to one with whom I have none. By giving what is holy to "dogs" or "pigs" I have capitulated that what I gave was not holy.

Truth is to build love, trust, intimacy, and friendship not to speak for in and of itself. This leads to rule totalitarianism.

　

　

　

　

　

　

Thoughts on love and utilitarianism

Mo Tzu was a Chinese philosopher born the same year of Socrates 470 B.C.E.   According to our textbook, Tzu was a utilitarian and believed that "Love" is what is beneficial.  Love is a virtue espoused by many philosophers but the question is what do we mean by the term love? It appears for Tzu it partially demotes what is beneficial or what is beneficial for the most involved or impacted by a decision.

On page 251 of the textbook the author ask,"Is universal love realistic?".  We have discussed worldviews and how our fundamental preconception of reality impacts the choices we make in life. Since there is no universally accepted world view it seems unlikely at this time that universal love is a possibility.  This does not imply that we should not strive to properly understand what love is, and practice what we understand, but we have to address the realities of differing views and priorities in conceiving of and living in love.

In my opinion our nature should proceed our definition of love.  In other words, human love would be qualitatively different from a dog who loves his master. There are expectations of love within human inter-relationships that do not exist between dogs, pigs, or goats and their offspring and fellow species. Also, We do not expect non-sentient objects, such as, rocks, sand, or stars to love each other or humans.  Our understanding and mutual expectations of love flow from our nature.  The difficulties I have with utilitarians such as Bentham, Mill, and Tzu and their ideas of love and pleasure are the following:

1. The only object with intrinsic value is happiness or pleasure.
2. The value of pleasure precedes human value
3. The right of pleasure for all species can only be recognized by human reason.
4. Mutual love cannot be mandated or expected of other species since we have little to no objective knowledge of if or what non-human sentient beings may understand, experience, or expect in relation to loving or being loved.

First, how can happiness or pleasure be a first principle unless those to to whom pleasure is required are owed this right?  There must be the first principle of the intrinsic value and rights of the being.  Does the being have a value or right worthy of being loved? Although human dignity is important to these philosophers, dignity is only valued in that the ideal may bring the maximum pleasure to most.  Bentham was a naturalist.  The world is a closed system with no transcendental, creational purpose or goal.  So how does Bentham logically enforce that humans are owed pleasure?  Throughout most of human history, nature seems to have ensured the misery of the weak and powerless, and the licentiousness of the powerful.  How does nature or history tell us we have an inherent value that affords humans a right to pleasure?  Personally I think we do, but the utilitarianism of Bentham, Mill, and Tzu give us no logical foundation as to why.  This is a profound weakness within their worldviews.

For Bentham only pleasure had intrinsic value, but how can pleasure have its own value outside of sentient experiences.  Is pleasure a being, a god, or entity with its own intrinsic worth outside human beings, knowledge and experience?  This makes no sense.  Pleasure only has objective moral value to the extent that the beings who experience pleasure have intrinsic value or worth.  Our existence is before our experience.

If all sentient beings have a right and obligation to pleasure, and humans are obligated to recognize this right, how is this ideal to be reciprocated by other sentient beings that may or may not have any knowledge or capacity for knowledge to recognize the utilitarian position? Is not moral duty reciprocal?  How can other sentient beings be held morally accountable to ensure maximum pleasure for all other beings?

Since love among different sentient beings is qualitatively distinct and only humans have the capacity and moral obligation to love, how is this equality?  Equality involves reciprocation of the same or similar conduct and equal moral obligation.  This does not conclude that humans are not morally obligated to love other beings, but only in proportion to their nature.  For instance: A woman is struck and killed by a car and is lying in the street dead, is this an equal tragedy to the dead armadillo laying dead in the street two blocks down the road?  Do we have the same moral obligation to the armadillo as we do to the woman? Now lets say an armadillo comes across the dead woman laying in the street, what is the armadillo's moral obligation? We have no moral expectations of the armadillo, quite frankly because it is an armadillo and not a human being.  So how can there be true moral equality?  There cannot!

Week 13: Stem Cells 101 Dennis M. Sullivan, MD, MA (Ethics) Cedarville University

Human stem cells are the “starter” cells that act as precursors of mature bodily tissues. Such cells have not yet differentiated (become specialized) into their mature forms. All human beings possess such cells. For example, precursors of mature blood cells are the pluripotent stem cells of the bone marrow. These cells are called “pluripotent” (L. “many” + “powers”) because one of these undifferentiated cells can become any of a variety of different blood cells. These include the various white blood cells that protect against bodily infection, platelets that help the blood to clot, and the red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body.

All adult cells once developed from stem cells by the process of cell division, with daughter cells successively becoming more complex than their precursors. However, adult cells that constitute bodily organs have mostly lost the ability to divide. Unlike bone marrow cells, mature cells in the brain, spinal cord, skeletal muscle, heart muscle, and many other organs no longer have any corresponding pluripotent stem cells to repopulate them when they are damaged. Therefore, brain cells (for example) are limited to the number that arose from their original stem cells. Despite some limited exceptions, these are incapable of repair or replacement.

In a stroke, a sudden blockage of the blood supply to a region of the brain destroys brain cells, never to be replaced. Rehabilitation from a stroke involves training other brain centers to take over the function of the damaged region, but there is no natural process that can replace the dead cells. The same problem occurs in the heart, where repeated heart attacks weaken the heart wall. Since heart cells cannot be replaced, there is a limit to how much damage the heart may sustain before permanent disability or death occurs.1-3

What if there were stem cells that could replace damaged brain cells or heart muscle? This could conceivably improve one’s lifespan, or at least the quality of life. The biological possibilities are intriguing. An equally compelling case can be made for the use of stem cells to repair spinal cord injuries, to provide new pancreatic cells in diabetes mellitus, or to cure Parkinson’s disease.

Where would such stem cells come from? One source is from human embryos, composed exclusively of unprogrammed early stem cells, any one of which may become the precursor of adult tissues and organs. Two possible sources for embryonic stem cells are the excess embryos from in-vitro fertilization procedures (often called “frozen embryos” because of the cryogenic process used to preserve them) or embryos derived from human cloning. The ethical dilemma arises from the fact that the harvesting of embryonic stem cells destroys human embryos.

Another source for stem cells is adult tissues such as bone marrow, fat, and even tooth pulp. Numerous studies demonstrate that some adult stem cells are as flexible as embryonic stem cells. Indeed, these ethically non-controversial adult stem cells are currently being used to benefit human patients.4

---

References:

1. Tortora GJ, Derrickson B. Principles of Anatomy and Physiology. Eleventh ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons; 2006.

2. Martini F. Anatomy & physiology. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings; 2005. xx, 845 p., [77] p.

3. Medina J. The Outer Limits of Life. Nashville: Thomas Nelson; 1991. 287 p.

4. For more on adult stem cells, see http://www.stemcellresearch.org/

Week 12: A Critique of The Five Principles

I think the authors 5 basic principles are a valuable guide, but I do not think they solve the problem of synthesizing all ethical systems together.  The problem remains and goes back to what I have stated earlier in this class about world-views, for example:

The principle of Life:

1. There is no empirical evidence that suggest life has value ?

• The author states: “This principle of life is empirically prior to any other because without human life there can be no goodness or badness, justice or injustice, honesty or lack of it.  The problem with the authors argument is that he claims the principle of life is valid because without life there would be no values, but the author is assuming that values have meaning because of life (without proof) and then life has value because of values (without proof); well which is it?  One does not prove the other it only assumes the other. The argument is invalid.  The question remains: what gives human life its value?  There is no synthesizing a worldview that sees life as a cosmic accident and a worldview that thinks an intelligent and purposeful creator made life because they are contradictory propositions and lead to completely opposing views of reality.

The Principle of Goodness over Badness

• The author states that,”Ethicist may differ over what they actually consider to be good and bad or right and wrong, but they all demand that human beings strive for the good and the right”.  The author is correct except for possibly the relativist ethical system, but since this principle is already found in most ethical systems what makes this principle valuable since it cannot tell us what is good or bad?  It has not resolved the conflict.

The Principle of Justice and Fairness

• Since most ethical systems have a concern for justice, again why do we need this as a principle, and if all ethical systems hold to some form of these five principles, what is the point of synthesizing what everyone already agrees on?  I would say that the problem isn’t a synthesizing of terms but the meaning we have behind the terms. Two groups may use the same word but have entirely different conceptions of  its meaning and/or application.  It is in the defining and practice where the ethical differences are exasperated.

The Principle of Truth Telling and Honesty

• I would have to agree with the author because even if we believe in relativism, ethical egoism, or we are completely selfish, we must communicate, and for communication to have any reasonable advantage there must be truthfulness.

The principle of Freedom

1. What if am into psychological, sociological, biological, or theological determinism?  How can a determinist synthesize with an ethical system that supports freedom when they believe there is no such truth to the concept of freedom?  

Thiroux said “First, it is important to clearly delineate several basic assumptions concerning what constitutes a workable set of standards for morality.”  Assumption are not scientific facts by definition, so if the author rejects an ethical system based on a belief in God because he believes there is no evidence to support the belief, why is it acceptable for everyone to “accept” assumptions that cannot be scientifically or in any other way proved true?

How do you synthesize religious moral conviction with Thiroux's secular humanistic view.  By definition, God is an ultimate power and authority, so if a religious person believes that God has told them something is not morally permissible, how can she negotiate with Thiroux's secular humanistic view?  If I concede to Thiroux's secular humanistic view then God is no longer the person's ultimate moral authority and God ceases to be God, unless God has given a person the freedom to "work out their ethical salvation" within the society he has placed them in.  

Module 11: The Right to Die

This is a difficult topic to lecture on.  The title is a bit misleading because we are not addressing the right of people to end their lives for any and all reasons.  I am referring to the terminally ill or mortally wounded who will not recover from disease or injury. What we have is a somewhat difficult set of ideals; one is the person has intrinsic value and two their humanity must be maintained regardless of disease or injury.  We have difficulty because we value human life and the disagreement is not in the value of human life but in how we honor the value of each human life in terminal illness and injury.  Some say to allow someone to die without attempting to save them is devaluing their humanity because of their condition, the other believes we are devaluing their humanity by prolonging the suffering.

In my opinion, each side has a point to be made and depending on the circumstance I might agree with each of them.  Example: Joni has been told she has 6 months to live and only 10 percent chance of survival if she agrees to chemotherapy.  Joni’s mother and father want her to go through chemotherapy because a 10 percent chance of survival is better than none.  Joni’ and her husband do not want her last remaining months to be spent suffering in chemotherapy. Everyone agrees that life is worth fighting for but not everyone agrees when there is no longer a reason to continue the fight.

I do not have a problem with allowing someone to die of natural causes when there is nothing further that can be done to save them. Life is more than breathing and a beating heart, the whole life must be considered when allowing someone to die.  To extend suffering for the sake of breathing and a pumping heart is not to consider the individual but only their temporary bodily function.  To be human is more than how our individual parts function. A person who no longer has the use of their  legs, eyes, or mental sharpness is not less human than anyone else, dignity is not in our functioning but in our being human.

Mercy death is the act of killing another person with their permission to do so,  This is problematic because we are no longer addressing only a persons right to die, but a persons right to allow another human being to kill them. The problem with mercy death is no one has a natural right to ask another person to kill them.  To make that request of another is to potentially harm them psychologically for the rest of their life.  The other issue is that it provides an opportunity for the psychologically disturbed to take advantage of someone who is dying and in pain.  In each circumstance someone is potentially being grossly violated or allowing another person to participate in killing another human being without legal consequences for their actions.  Allowing nurses or doctors the right to kill their patients could attract individuals in the medical field we would not feel comfortable with treating our loved ones.

Mercy killing is the act of taking a terminally ill persons life without their consent.  This is problematic for obvious reasons.  First and foremost it has nothing to do with the right of a patient to die since the individual has not been given a choice over the action.   Second, even if the act was done with good intentions there is plausible doubt as to if the person wanted to have their life ended since no consent was given only assumed; this puts the individual with the good intentions in the moral, social, and legal hot seat.

The heart of the issue with the right to die is to protect individual humanity and to not prolong unnecessary suffering.  We do not want others or ourselves to suffer a slow agonizing death, but at the same time we must think and act carefully about how we handle these emotionally and ethically difficult circumstances.  The truth is that it can be just as unethical to prolong life as it can be to end it.  Because we can keep someone physically alive does not  imply that we should, and because we can end the life of a suffering loved one does not mean that we should.

If Aristotle was correct that excellence of virtue is our end he may have approved of the term ‘Euthanasia” which means “ a good death”, but what a good death is must be well defined.  I would like to define a good death as the following: a good death is where neither the one dying or those near the dying have their humanity , dignity, or moral conscience violated or compromised by another.

Week 9: Determinism

How would you feel going through your whole life, the ups the downs, the good the bad and everything else in between, if you were confronted with the hard cold fact that every choice in thought, word, or deed, you believed you made, was not a choice you made but was the result of some psychological, sociological, psychological, or theological pre-determined cause?  How would it feel to know from here on out, neither you, me or anyone else really existed; that the “I” was an illusion created by organic and chemical reactions to chaotic natural causes or simply robotic creatures programmed by some power that reeks disaster or pleasure for reasons we can never know?

This is what is at stake in the debate over freedom and determinism.  If hard determinism is true nothing matters. If hard determinism is true it does not matter what or who is the cause because we have no control over the cause or the effect and we have no way of knowing if our perception of reality is determined.  Determinism jeopardizes the following:

• Self-Knowledge
• Knowledge of others
• Moral Knowledge
• Scientific knowledge
• Justice
• truth

Determinism destroys our ability to have a coherent theory of knowledge (epistemology) because we can never know if what we are experiencing is true because it has been determined.  The leads to gross relativism.  I can never know the real me because there is no real me, just a biological or even spiritually programmed robot who thinks and acts as he/she has been programmed.  

I can never know others because my perceptions have been determined and since the other person has been determined there is no other person to know.

Moral knowledge is lost because we can only do what we have been determined to do and know what we have been determined to know regardless of the truth.  Without choice moral accountability is impossible, of course, unless we have been programmed to be ridiculous. There would be no moral difference between Jesus and Hitler because neither had any say in who they were.

Science is obsolete.  This is ironic since some have used science to promote determinism.  How can scientists know anything if everything they think they know was caused by some force outside of themselves.  If everything is determined, including scientific reasoning, perceptions, theories, and experiments how do we know they are valid since we have no choice but to come to those conclusions?

The law courts become invalid because people can't be judged for choices they did not make.  If I steal it is because that is what I was programmed to do; if I cheat on my taxes or steal from my boss it is because I am programmed to take from others.  There are no just wars or causes only pre-determined acts of violence.  There is no love only programmed desire.  There is no forgiveness because there is no wrong or immoral choices made because there are no choices only cause and effect.

Determinism negates truth because we can never really know anything.  If determinism is true we can never know if determinism is or isn't a reality because we can only perceive what has been caused to be perceived and we can only discover what has been caused to be discovered.

There are aspects of life that are determined. If we do not eat we will die. We cannot choose our biological parents.  Humans cannot be any other species, such as, a dog or a goat.  However this determinism is related to our nature.  We are limited by our nature and to some degree determined by it.  This is not a hard deterministic position. Example: fire will burn your hand if you put it over the flame of the stove, but that does not mean your hand was determined to be burned.  It is the nature of fire to consume or to burn.

Week 8: Absolutely Relative?

The title of this lecture is a contradiction.  If an individual states there are absolutely no absolutes they have fatally contradicted their own statement because they are making an absolute proposition affirming a universal non-absolutism.  Therefore it is impossible that relativism is true.  So where do we go from here?  The next question is, if there are absolute propositions with exceptions are there moral absolutes?  The problem may be in the way we are defining our terms.  Example: the author of the textbook uses the term kill and shows that there are exceptions to the absolute not to kill; the proposition we should never kill is then defined by the textbook as a “near” absolute.  The problem is the author never defines the term kill.

The problem I have with the term kill is that it is too general.  Does kill refer only to humans or does it include all life, such as, insects, cattle, birds, and fish? There is no doubt that moral absolutes are a reality which I have demonstrated by proving relativism is absolutely false, There are exception to moral “absolutes” because we have been to general when defining our ethical terms.  The first order of business when defining moral absolutes is to be specific about our proposition and terms.  What do we mean by kill? Does kill mean to take any life, a specific type of life?  What is the difference between a convicted mass murderer and a war hero? Each has killed yet one is condemned and the other praised.  This would indicate the term kill is not specific enough to get at the heart of societies desire to punish those who “kill”.

So the problem is that kill may not be the word we are looking for, or we can simply define it in a more specific manner. So we can ask: is it absolutely unethical to extinguish human life for pleasure? The answer is yes. Is it morally acceptable to force another human being to work without pay until they collapse and die because of the color of their skin, religion, nationality, or gender? The answer is no.  It is at this point that if we were to say these acts are acceptable, and these acts have no real meaning within themselves, that the fabric of human relationships and existence dissolve.  There are some things we are not capable of explaining but the reality is fundamental for human life to flourish..

Lying:  Is it ever ok to lie or sometimes necessary to lie?  Yes it is.  Example: Robbers break into your home and demand to know where the rest of your family is, you lie and say they are out of town on a trip when they are hiding under the bed. So what do we mean by lying? The concern over lying is more than just stating something that is false, it is deceiving someone in order to take unfair advantage or avoid a just punishment.  Example: a man lies to his wife about working late so he can go out partying with his new female friend. The intention of the lie is to take advantage of his wife's trust in order to violate it.

Moral propositions require us to avoid being too general concerning the terms we use in our statements. If I ask my wife where my keys are and she tells me “over there”, she has answered my question but has told me nothing helpful about where my keys are. If she tells me the keys are on the counter next to the coffee pot, I will find me keys.  If you want to find moral truth you are going to have to define your terms and if you are engaged in a conversation over moral questions make sure the individual(s) you are speaking with are all defining the terms in the same way. Example: A vegan might use the term killing to include cows, chickens, and fish, but you are thinking of the word kill as in taking only human life.

Absolutes are unavoidable but not always obvious.  We have to think through what it means to be human, why being human matters or if it truly does matter.  If being human has significance then so does our words and actions.  If human existence is pointless and without meaning then so are our words and actions.  Remember the laws of logic and the law of excluded middle?  The law of excluded middle says there is no middle ground and when it comes to the value of human life, our words and action, they ultimately have meaning and value or they ultimately do not.  There is no middle ground.