A pretty simple question like this can turn into mayhem once morality or nobility come into question.
And what do you think of Kant’s categorical imperative? Is this a clear solution to the issue? Although I don’t agree with his view on deception, which implies that even lying to deceive an axe murderer on the prowl for a friend of mine is immoral.
Hmmm, the Guest has chosen a user name in German. “Blood From the North?” We have some potential for entertainment here!
(opening thread)
It’s about KANT? To what lengths will you people go to get me to study Philosophy?
Kant addresses the issue at hand, and is a common reference people make when answering, so I’m just throwing it out there.
My name is a band, so it’s not my fault it’s both grammatically incorrect and a bit bizarre for some dweeb on Straight Dope.
I say no. No, no. The end can not justify the means, nor can the means justify the end. The only thing that can justify anything is the actor. All fault, all blame, all praise, is on the person who makes the choice. But the choice can not be disavowed.
Killing a child for world peace may seem like a wonderful deal, but you have still taken the life of an innocent. Not killing a child, and rejecting world peace may leave your hands unblooded, but wars will still wage on.
There are no simple solutions, and nothing exists in a vacuum. One must strive to be moral in all things, and the best choice that can be made is all you can hope for.
Geez, you never played a Paladin in D&D?
Nope. Never have, never will. No matter how many people try to make the case that *this **exceptional **time *it does.
I’d say it depends on two things: the ends, and the means.
I’ve always felt there’s a lot to be said for fiat justicia, ruat coelum - which is pretty much the opposite of “the end justifies the means”.
I leave the answer to this question to market forces.
All morality is, is the average sum of what the populace believes. That will balance out at some point for any given end and means, and be the honest, most provably moral answer for that date, time, and populace.
There’s a difference between ends and means? Every end is really a means, and every means is really an end. So when you torture people for world peace, what you have is torture. The torture isn’t a means, it’s an end. And world peace isn’t an end, it’s a means–what’s the point of world peace unless it is to accomplish other things instead of fighting?
That’s jibberish. People don’t try to bring about world peace for the sake of being able to torture people.
The reason why we have the two words “end” and “means” is because they have separate definitions. Smoking a joint doesn’t change that.
People say this, thinking they’ve found some amazing flaw in Kant’s ethical theory. Obviously, such a dopey “Philosophy for Dummies” caliber thought experiment does no such thing. There is nothing in the Grundlegung that would indicate you couldn’t say something like “I don’t think I should give a prowling axe murderer that information.” No lies, no assistance. I guess Kant remains in the canon another day.
I noticed that msot people posting had no answer of any kind, even a bad one, except Kimmy_Gibbler, and that every other answer thus far is utterly useless. Sage Rat is in the hilarious postiion of having denied morality through complete relativity and then claiming that another poster’s position on morality made him wrong! 
C’mon Sage Rat, maybe they haven’t yet, but your post gives no reason for believing they shouldn’t, or that there would be any practical difference if they did. If ends and means are arbitrary whims of mankind, then they don’t exist except individually and have no reference even to other people, as every individual will ultimately have quite different desires. Sure, perhaps you don’t knwo anyone who desires world peace for torture, but why not? And what in your philosophy could is possibly change if it did?
I wear a Grinning Mask/To hide the Grin beneath
From an essay by Matthew Stapleton of Marshall University that addresses this very issue, better than I could have:
*In Kant’s fictitious scenario, given in an essay entitled On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives, a murderer is pursuing your friend. In order to escape the murderer your friend takes refuge in your house. Yet, the murderer, being very cunning, suspects that he might have gone into your house. Instead of sneaking into the house, as a murderer would probably do, he attempts a more direct approach. He comes to the door, knocks, and asks you if your friend has taken refuge in the house. Let us take note of a couple of factors that play into such an extreme example. First, this person is a murderer and therefore the guiding maxim of his will is evil. The person as far as you know intends to kill your friend. Second, you are placed in the impossible decision of either acting ethically, thus giving away the hide out of your friend, or acting unethically, thus making yourself just as culpable as the murderer.
Kant’s answer to the dilemma is astonishing to many. He says that it is one’s duty
to tell the truth. “To be truthful (honest) in all declarations, therefore, is a sacred and absolutely commanding decree of reason, limited by no expediency” (Ak 8:425). Kant’s defense is two-fold. He claims that there is no way of knowing what the outcome of the lie or telling the truth will be. “After you have honestly answered”, he comments, “the murderer’s question as to whether his intended victim is at home, it may be that he has slipped out so that he does not come in the way of the murderer, and thus that the murder may not be committed. But if you had lied and said he was not at home when he has really gone out without your knowing it, and if the murderer has then met him as he went away and murdered him, you might be justly accused as the cause of his death” (Ak
8:427). Within a situation such as this, there are many variables that are not within one’s domain of control. Both the murderer and the friend are just as free as you. If you are honest the murderer may change his plans to murder your friend, and if you lie your friend might be murdered anyway. Not unlike theoretical reason, practical reason is also limited and the scope of its knowledge is not all encompassing. His second defense for telling the truth in all situations is the same as the reason given in the Groundwork. Although by telling a lie a person may indeed bring about circumstances that benefit a limited group of people, on the whole the lie does an injustice to humanity since it degrades the integrity of telling the truth. It violates the categorical imperative to tell a lie, even to help one’s friend out of a difficult situation.*
Unless there’s something I’m missing, there is a very blatant flaw, unless you choose to actually expand upon your assertion this time instead of taking a little condescending jab at me.
I don’t see why it can’t. I’d say that certainly there are more ends than may be immediately obvious - we can’t just take one example in theory and put it to practice in context - but I don’t believe there are zero times when means will be unjustified.
And beyond that, there’s certainly a difference between ends and means. That doesn’t mean that something can’t be both, or even that the two can be reversed. But a means that is also an end is no less a means, and an end that is also a means is no less an end. It makes the whole thing more complicated, but it doesn’t mean there’s no logical chain of events.
I’m passingly familiar with Kant’s essay, knowing that it treats the subject matter, but I haven’t read it (if I ever did, more on this below) in a long time. I don’t think Kant gave the best answer to the dilemma as he could have. There is nothing in the ethical theory put forth in the Grundlegung that compels us to accept the application that Kant reaches in “On a Supposed Right to Lie.”
I think to describe Kant’s application of his own theory as essential to his ethical theory is erroneous, so I would not call it a “very blatant flaw.” Why Kant chose to insist on disclosure, I do not know. Moreover, I don’t know if he even treated the case of refusal to answer (which is not the same thing as dishonesty). But, while the fact that Kant answered this way seems like it would have great importance, I don’t think it does. Sometimes even good Homer nods, and here, Kant teed up a hypothetical (or one of his contemporaries did) and he flubbed it. You should see this as akin to Newton, say, making an arithmetical error in the Principia; the import of which would not be to say, Newton’s laws are flawed, but rather to note that he succumbed to mistakes of a type we all make from time to time.
Contra Kripke, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Reasons” is not really a famous paper. It is not part of the usual materials used to impart Kant’s teachings. This is why I can’t even recall if I got it in my own coursework in the form of the work itself, an excerpt, or just a synopsis. It is a very minor work that tells us more about Kant’s own powers of imagination than it illuminates his constructivist ethics. And certainly, this thought experiment has never seriously been taken to imperil his theory–not because Kant’s theory doesn’t have its detractors, but rather because of the thought experiment’s ultimately insubstantial character.
Ends and means aren’t morals. And end is a goal, a means is a way to get to that goal.
Morality is “conformity to the rules of right conduct”. But who decides “right”? There is some amount of game theory and whatnot that can show which methodology works in the long run, but if game theory said that killing all homosexuals is the most intelligent method for most of mankind to live happily, that doesn’t make it moral. The only definition of right that has any non-arbitrary meaning is “socially approved, desirable, or influential”.
Define “justifies”. (Maybe Kant does this, but I ain’t gonna read him for a thread.)
When making a choice, both the short and long term consequences and costs must be considered. So, if the cost is killing a child or letting wars rage on, then you have no choice but to choose the lesser of two evils. In that sense, the lesser evil is ‘justified’, in that it is made the best option by the poorness of alternatives.
However, in choosing the lesser option, you have chosen the lesser option. A moral person would expect, nay, demand the natural consequences of the action. If the punshment for killing a child is death, the murder should step up to the block and take his punishment. If we deviate from this, if we allow the end to ‘justify’ the means so much as to divorce them from the normal consequences and remorse associated with them, then people will do any damn thing they want on whatever flimsy pretext they can think of.
I didn’t mean to attack the concept of categorical imperative itself, but Kant made a huge error by oversimplifying the imperative of deception with “Lying is wrong”. The accurate imperative relates to mental reservation, as stated by Benjamin Constant in his debate with Kant: “To tell the truth is thus a duty; but it is only in respect to one who has a right to the truth. But no one has a right to a truth which injures others.”
The theory is solid. Kant’s said some iffy things though, which are hard to dismiss when in the context of formal debate, as with the strange murderer scenario.
That’s not what I said. People want world peace, not for itself, but so that people will be able to live their lives without being killed in wars. And so on. There are no ends. Every end is really a means.
That means every means must be an end in itself. You don’t fight the Nazis to get world peace, you fight the Nazis because fighting the Nazis is good in itself. Every means must justify itself, every end must justify itself. Means never justify the ends, ends never justify the ends, because they are the same thing.
Walk down the street, hug your child, pay your taxes, shoot a Nazi, none of these are ends or means, just actions.
That implies that it’s impossible to set future goals.