Monday, October 02, 2006
Who should Kant include as having moral worth?
One thing that has bothered me a bit about Kant's views is his concept that the reason we have moral value that other animals do not is because we are beings able to rationalize and verbalize these rationalizations, as well as having moral standards and being able to apply (or misapply) them, as well as evaluating and re-evaluating them.
This definition is a bit extensive, but I wanted to cover the bases of what it was that Kant feels gives us moral values. I have a couple of problems with this, all of which seem to be answered with Kant's seemingly cheep way out, from my point of view. A couple of my objections are as follows:
- Should a child that is in the age bracket before being able to speak be considered as morally valuable?
- Should a child that can speak fluently, but is yet unable to rationalize why it should perform certain actions be considered on our level of morally valuable?
- Should an elderly person who has lost some of his or her mental capacity and is 'cenile', or perhaps has a disease such as Alzheimer's, retain his or her moral worth?
- Should someone who has no regard for the welfare of others, a cold and sadistic serial killer, for instance, retain his or her moral worth and be considered rational, even though the person's actions have been consistently irrational based on Kant's logic and said behavior will not foreseeably change?
- Should someone with a mental illness (for intance someone with paranoid schizophrenia) who is incapable of making rational decisions due to a condition and is likely to be a harm to his/herself and others be considered to have our level or moral value?
- Should an zygote be considered to have a moral status even though it isn't yet born? This could be different than a baby having intrinsic moral value.
Kant's easy-way-out that I mentioned earlier is the one which Kelli enlightened us with in class, that being that someone being born into the species of humans, the only species currently able to rationalize, apply, evaluate, and vocalize moral standards, is enough to give one a moral status and rights. I have pointed out several cases that either trouble me as he wishes to leave them, or that might suggest that his idea of being a human is not sufficient for giving one a moral status and rights. It seems as if he simply started with the concept that all human beings have moral rights, these rights that are greater than the rights of any other living species, and worked backwards to find a way to justify this conclusion, rather than starting with saying that beings that can rationalize have a moral status and arriving at a solution, since he includes humans that clearly aren't (or never will be) on even having a basic level of the ability to rationalize.
This definition is a bit extensive, but I wanted to cover the bases of what it was that Kant feels gives us moral values. I have a couple of problems with this, all of which seem to be answered with Kant's seemingly cheep way out, from my point of view. A couple of my objections are as follows:
- Should a child that is in the age bracket before being able to speak be considered as morally valuable?
- Should a child that can speak fluently, but is yet unable to rationalize why it should perform certain actions be considered on our level of morally valuable?
- Should an elderly person who has lost some of his or her mental capacity and is 'cenile', or perhaps has a disease such as Alzheimer's, retain his or her moral worth?
- Should someone who has no regard for the welfare of others, a cold and sadistic serial killer, for instance, retain his or her moral worth and be considered rational, even though the person's actions have been consistently irrational based on Kant's logic and said behavior will not foreseeably change?
- Should someone with a mental illness (for intance someone with paranoid schizophrenia) who is incapable of making rational decisions due to a condition and is likely to be a harm to his/herself and others be considered to have our level or moral value?
- Should an zygote be considered to have a moral status even though it isn't yet born? This could be different than a baby having intrinsic moral value.
Kant's easy-way-out that I mentioned earlier is the one which Kelli enlightened us with in class, that being that someone being born into the species of humans, the only species currently able to rationalize, apply, evaluate, and vocalize moral standards, is enough to give one a moral status and rights. I have pointed out several cases that either trouble me as he wishes to leave them, or that might suggest that his idea of being a human is not sufficient for giving one a moral status and rights. It seems as if he simply started with the concept that all human beings have moral rights, these rights that are greater than the rights of any other living species, and worked backwards to find a way to justify this conclusion, rather than starting with saying that beings that can rationalize have a moral status and arriving at a solution, since he includes humans that clearly aren't (or never will be) on even having a basic level of the ability to rationalize.
# posted by Anonymous @ 4:44 PM 
