Couldn't you say that if you are obligated to do something, but then you can't do it, you're obligation changes accordingly? That should solve the paradox. For example, with the car thing, you would be obligated not to return the card because you can't, but instead to make up for it in a different way.
You gave the example of crashing the car and then you being unable to return it, but my intuition tells me that the law is about the reverse case: If it is you who is too damaged to perform the returning of the car - say you broke your ankle attempting a skateboard trick so you can't drive, then you don't need to return it as long as you cannot find a method to perform the return.
Let’s say I’m obligated to return my friend’s car on Tuesday and it is now Wednesday, and I haven’t returned the car. Would it be paradoxical that I’m obligated to return the car on Tuesday yet I can’t because Tuesday has already past? I would say that no, I broke my promise and acted unethically by not returning the car Tuesday and thus making it impossible for me to fulfill my obligation. Just like when you fulfill your obligation it goes away, so too does it go away when you have irredeemably failed at your obligation. I don’t see how this is paradoxical
it is axiomatic that if p -+ q, then p -> (q v r), where 'r' can be any value whatsoever. So could we say that that every obligation has a disjunctive sanction attached to it, and the.Law's job is to keep 'r' within reason?
I don't know, this doesn't seem paradoxical to me. If you can't return the car, then you're not obligated to. Perhaps you now have new, less predictable, and less appealing obligations, but the obligation to return the car no longer holds. It's as simple as that.
The "can" here seems to be the same as permissible. "Ought implies can. Anything that you should do, you must be able to [do]." I wouldn't be allowed to return your car unless it was permissible to do so. Since I must be able to return your car, it must be permissible for me to do so. Doesn't cause any issues in this reading of "can." Or is the "can" here taking a different approach to it. Not only is it permissible, but it is equivalent to saying that you always have the capacity and the means to perform the action? You ought to do something, it is permissible, and you have no choice but to do it, and the means to do so are always "magically" there.
+archer111000 The question then is does that make Kant's Law too weak? It seems that if something being obligatory means that it must be permissible, then it seems that you could have obligations like creating world peace, which are permissible (in the deontic logic sense), but unobtainable and it is jsut these types of problems that the original law is attempting to prevent.
I think that if we take a more contractarian approach, and expand on Kant’s law by saying that if something unforeseen happens what you ought to do is to give or do something of equal value, and if you’re not able to give something of equal value, what you ought to do then is do for or give the other party something that best approaches the value of the act or object. In the case of the car, since your friend allowed you to borrow his car on the condition that you return it after a certain period of time or a specific purpose, then you ought to return it according to the agreed terms. Since the car is now crashed, you cannot return the car to your friend, so ideally, you would pay for the car’s reparation fees and if it will take a longer period of time than the one agreed on, get him a vehicle similar to the one he owned until his car is fixed and you can return it. If you cannot even do that, then you ought to pay as much of the fee as you can and try to give him a vehicle.
David Lewis in his paper, "The Paradoxes of Time Travel" deals with a similar issue, albeit related to time travel in an eternalist world and talks about the Grandfather paradox. His reasoning to respond to that paradox can, perhaps, be used here as well. The word 'can' as one might realize is not a clear-cut, unequivocal one. But if we finally decide which meaning to go with (probably, in this case: the ability to do something), we may not necessarily lead to the paradox. Your ability to return the car is compossible with certain facts- doing so being obligatory and your promise to your friend or whatever. Your ability to return the car is not compossible with other facts- the breaking of the car and lack of money on your part. What do you think about this?
Now someone skeptical may not agree that this is the resolution of the paradox as such. At least, in Lewis' case, I think he suggests that there are some cases that could be logically impossible. But I'm not sure if this reasoning solves the paradox of Kant's law.
+Paresh Hatte I agree that the paradox hinges on how we interpret "can". My question would be whether new interpretations of "can" are strict enough for the law to still be meaningful. But that may be a way out of the paradox.
That corollary is exactly the problem. If it is not the case that it is possible to do some q, you have no money to pay someone back, then you are no longer obligated to pay them back.
+CosmoShidan I would represent is as something like (∀A)(∀p)(∀q)(((pϵA)>In(p))&Si(q))>~(A⊢q). Or, in other words, for all sets of propositions A, and all propositions p and q, if p being a member of A implies that p is morally indifferent and q is morally significant, then it is not the case that q is derivable from A. Here's the video on significant and indifferent if you are curious: ruclips.net/video/z3YuqNxAYAs/видео.html
The issue is that an obligation like "you must return the car" is too simple for the real world. A more realistic obligation would be "you must return the car if you still have it and you must take the same care to avoid losing the car that I would take, and if you do lose the car then..." etc.
+Ansatz66 It does seem that obligations are quite complicated, but it seems that this will force you to adopt some kind of moral particularism to arrive at these obligations. It seems to me that it would be difficult to maintain a Kantian view of ethics and state that your long complicated obligation come directly from a single categorical imperative.
Carneades.org I've never understood how any ethics come from Kant's categorical imperative. Even after we learn how to properly apply the categorical imperative, we are still left with the question of why the categorical imperative should be a foundation for ethics. Consequentialism seems far better to me. Everyone understands the benefit of good consequences.
+Ansatz66 To be honest, I find that the Categorical Imperative makes whole lot more sense since it's all about trying to build a set of ten commandments that puts one's moral action in its place. The problem with consequential ethics is that, it can justify horrible acts for the wrong reasons. For example, in the doctrine of double effect, the situation in which the soldier must bombard a munitions factory to shorten the war (a good consequence), yet in the process may hit a children's hospital, orphanage and elementary school in a nearby village (a bad consequence). This is quite paradoxical insofar as it involves killing innocents to achieve a goal.
CosmoShidan "It's all about trying to build a set of ten commandments that puts one's moral action in its place." There's no use in building commandments if you don't also give people are reason to believe in their morality. You can't refer back to your own commandments to justify themselves, so you need some deeper moral principle to refer to. If you reject consequentialism, then what else can you use to justify the commandments? "For example, in the doctrine of double effect..." Consequentialism is not about what may happen. It's about what actually does happen. If you bomb the wrong target and kill innocent people then you acted wrongly, no matter what you intended. Goodness is making the best things happen, and a careless person is poorly equipped to do good. Suppose that the munitions factory is directly beside the hospital so that one cannot be bombed without hitting the other. Does consequentialism tell you to drop the bomb, or not? There's no paradox. Consequentialism tells you to do what will give you the best results. You just have to compare what will happen if the war ends sooner versus what will happen if the orphans are saved. We haven't said how bad the war is going to get and how many lives it will ruin. Look at the outcomes of the two options and pick the one that is best. If the two outcomes are too close to equal to judge, then your choice does not matter.
Ansatz66 "There's no use in building commandments if you don't also give people are reason to believe in their morality. You can't refer back to your own commandments to justify themselves, so you need some deeper moral principle to refer to. If you reject consequentialism, then what else can you use to justify the commandments?" The Categorical Imperative is far more than building your own set of commandments than I'm letting on. What is also needed to justify the commandments is that they have to follow Aristotle's Law of Non-contradiction, according to Hegel, and what must not be in contradiction within the commandments is human values. The values being life, autonomy and happiness. What is in contradiction with these values you may ask? It's coercion, intimidation or duress that is in conflict with the three values. To elaborate, you cannot kill someone, thereby robbing them of their lives, or else it is going against someone's right to live. Not to mention no one person would desire to be murdered. You can't flick pain on another human beings' health, for one's own pleasure, for no one person desires to be harmed, and wished to be healthy. Hence the conception of happiness. Now autonomy is to be able to have the ability to make decisions in the absence of one forcing their will upon your own. And since no one wants to see their ability to make choices uncoerced it is impermissible to infringe on another's autonomy. Further, the individual must realize that they have these intrinsic values and to be able to conceptualize them through reason. And they must also realize that others have these same values and not infringe upon these values through empathy. Ergo, the Categorical Imperative is the foundation for human rights and values, and is one of the reasons why it is the foundation for ethics. "Consequentialism is not about what may happen. It's about what actually does happen. If you bomb the wrong target and kill innocent people then you acted wrongly, no matter what you intended. Goodness is making the best things happen, and a careless person is poorly equipped to do good." Consequentialism is only about maximizing the best outcomes for the majority of a specific group of people, however, it does intend to alienate the minority or individual. To illustrate this, John Rawls' Original Position through the Veil of Ignorance and the Difference Principle and the Moral Point of View is about maximizing the benefits for the least well-off peoples of the working classes, but, it doesn't include the disabled. So while the healthy working class peoples get all the benefits, the disabled members of the working class are alienated and left out in the cold. BTW, the thing about the bombing, you will still hit the military target, but there is always the chance that civilians will be killed no matter the consequences. Plus, in consequentilism, it does not matter whether or not the civilians are killed, because all that matters is the outcomes alone as consequentialism does not hold human rights in high regard. "Suppose that the munitions factory is directly beside the hospital so that one cannot be bombed without hitting the other. Does consequentialism tell you to drop the bomb, or not?" It most certainly will, because once again, all that matters is the best outcomes. This fails insofar as this is a matter of human rights by going through with the bombing run at the risk of civilian lives. Hence the paradox. "Consequentialism tells you to do what will give you the best results. You just have to compare what will happen if the war ends sooner versus what will happen if the orphans are saved. We haven't said how bad the war is going to get and how many lives it will ruin. Look at the outcomes of the two options and pick the one that is best. If the two outcomes are too close to equal to judge, then your choice does not matter." But if ONLY the best results matter, then you do not have much of an ethical theory. If you do not recognize that there are other values, beyond the one value of your system, that renders the theory into making it too flexible. Plus it can either oversimplify the definition of right and wrong or change the definition to defend misconduct. In this case, consequentiailism has only one value to stand on, and that well-being or happiness.
We could frame it in a way where it is impossible to repay. You promised to care for my child while I was away, and bring her back safe. She wandered into the street while you were not looking and was killed by a car. You have an obligation to bring my child back to me, but you cannot fulfill that obligation (no amount of money could bring the child back).
Id still agree with the law. Once the child is dead, your no longer obligated to bring back the child. You failed at your initial obligation (keeping safe), and likely will incur a new obligation as a result of failing the first. But once the child is dead, it cannot be returned and thus id agree there is no longer an obligation to return the child after its dead. Id say new obligations would emerge as imposed by society or whatever but return the child is not longer an obligation imo.
Couldn't you say that if you are obligated to do something, but then you can't do it, you're obligation changes accordingly? That should solve the paradox.
For example, with the car thing, you would be obligated not to return the card because you can't, but instead to make up for it in a different way.
+DJK5364 Sure. A more nuanced version of Kant's Law could probably get around the problem.
You gave the example of crashing the car and then you being unable to return it, but my intuition tells me that the law is about the reverse case:
If it is you who is too damaged to perform the returning of the car - say you broke your ankle attempting a skateboard trick so you can't drive, then you don't need to return it as long as you cannot find a method to perform the return.
Let’s say I’m obligated to return my friend’s car on Tuesday and it is now Wednesday, and I haven’t returned the car. Would it be paradoxical that I’m obligated to return the car on Tuesday yet I can’t because Tuesday has already past? I would say that no, I broke my promise and acted unethically by not returning the car Tuesday and thus making it impossible for me to fulfill my obligation. Just like when you fulfill your obligation it goes away, so too does it go away when you have irredeemably failed at your obligation. I don’t see how this is paradoxical
it is axiomatic that if p -+ q, then p -> (q v r), where 'r' can be any value whatsoever. So could we say that that every obligation has a disjunctive sanction attached to it, and the.Law's job is to keep 'r' within reason?
Can´t thank you enough for this video, helped me a lot in my paper. Thank very much.
No problem. Thanks for watching!
I don't know, this doesn't seem paradoxical to me. If you can't return the car, then you're not obligated to. Perhaps you now have new, less predictable, and less appealing obligations, but the obligation to return the car no longer holds. It's as simple as that.
The "can" here seems to be the same as permissible.
"Ought implies can. Anything that you should do, you must be able to [do]."
I wouldn't be allowed to return your car unless it was permissible to do so. Since I must be able to return your car, it must be permissible for me to do so. Doesn't cause any issues in this reading of "can."
Or is the "can" here taking a different approach to it. Not only is it permissible, but it is equivalent to saying that you always have the capacity and the means to perform the action? You ought to do something, it is permissible, and you have no choice but to do it, and the means to do so are always "magically" there.
+archer111000 The question then is does that make Kant's Law too weak? It seems that if something being obligatory means that it must be permissible, then it seems that you could have obligations like creating world peace, which are permissible (in the deontic logic sense), but unobtainable and it is jsut these types of problems that the original law is attempting to prevent.
@@CarneadesOfCyrene Kant's law is proscriptive, not prescriptive. It is meant to avoid evil, not to compel us to do good deeds.
I think that if we take a more contractarian approach, and expand on Kant’s law by saying that if something unforeseen happens what you ought to do is to give or do something of equal value, and if you’re not able to give something of equal value, what you ought to do then is do for or give the other party something that best approaches the value of the act or object. In the case of the car, since your friend allowed you to borrow his car on the condition that you return it after a certain period of time or a specific purpose, then you ought to return it according to the agreed terms. Since the car is now crashed, you cannot return the car to your friend, so ideally, you would pay for the car’s reparation fees and if it will take a longer period of time than the one agreed on, get him a vehicle similar to the one he owned until his car is fixed and you can return it. If you cannot even do that, then you ought to pay as much of the fee as you can and try to give him a vehicle.
David Lewis in his paper, "The Paradoxes of Time Travel" deals with a similar issue, albeit related to time travel in an eternalist world and talks about the Grandfather paradox. His reasoning to respond to that paradox can, perhaps, be used here as well.
The word 'can' as one might realize is not a clear-cut, unequivocal one. But if we finally decide which meaning to go with (probably, in this case: the ability to do something), we may not necessarily lead to the paradox.
Your ability to return the car is compossible with certain facts- doing so being obligatory and your promise to your friend or whatever. Your ability to return the car is not compossible with other facts- the breaking of the car and lack of money on your part.
What do you think about this?
Now someone skeptical may not agree that this is the resolution of the paradox as such. At least, in Lewis' case, I think he suggests that there are some cases that could be logically impossible. But I'm not sure if this reasoning solves the paradox of Kant's law.
+Paresh Hatte I agree that the paradox hinges on how we interpret "can". My question would be whether new interpretations of "can" are strict enough for the law to still be meaningful. But that may be a way out of the paradox.
Instead of considering possibility as logical possibility, just use MT which says that ~q > ~OB(p)
That corollary is exactly the problem. If it is not the case that it is possible to do some q, you have no money to pay someone back, then you are no longer obligated to pay them back.
Carneades.org But then there is no problem.
That symbol: OB (p) > |- p
It's beautiful!
Hey Carnades, what does the is/ought gap look like in symbolic logic?
+CosmoShidan
I would represent is as something like (∀A)(∀p)(∀q)(((pϵA)>In(p))&Si(q))>~(A⊢q). Or, in other words, for all sets of propositions A, and all propositions p and q, if p being a member of A implies that p is morally indifferent and q is morally significant, then it is not the case that q is derivable from A. Here's the video on significant and indifferent if you are curious: ruclips.net/video/z3YuqNxAYAs/видео.html
Carneades.org Whoa, that is just gorgeous!
The issue is that an obligation like "you must return the car" is too simple for the real world. A more realistic obligation would be "you must return the car if you still have it and you must take the same care to avoid losing the car that I would take, and if you do lose the car then..." etc.
+Ansatz66 It does seem that obligations are quite complicated, but it seems that this will force you to adopt some kind of moral particularism to arrive at these obligations. It seems to me that it would be difficult to maintain a Kantian view of ethics and state that your long complicated obligation come directly from a single categorical imperative.
Carneades.org
I've never understood how any ethics come from Kant's categorical imperative. Even after we learn how to properly apply the categorical imperative, we are still left with the question of why the categorical imperative should be a foundation for ethics.
Consequentialism seems far better to me. Everyone understands the benefit of good consequences.
+Ansatz66
To be honest, I find that the Categorical Imperative makes whole lot more sense since it's all about trying to build a set of ten commandments that puts one's moral action in its place.
The problem with consequential ethics is that, it can justify horrible acts for the wrong reasons. For example, in the doctrine of double effect, the situation in which the soldier must bombard a munitions factory to shorten the war (a good consequence), yet in the process may hit a children's hospital, orphanage and elementary school in a nearby village (a bad consequence). This is quite paradoxical insofar as it involves killing innocents to achieve a goal.
CosmoShidan "It's all about trying to build a set of ten commandments that puts one's moral action in its place."
There's no use in building commandments if you don't also give people are reason to believe in their morality. You can't refer back to your own commandments to justify themselves, so you need some deeper moral principle to refer to. If you reject consequentialism, then what else can you use to justify the commandments?
"For example, in the doctrine of double effect..."
Consequentialism is not about what may happen. It's about what actually does happen. If you bomb the wrong target and kill innocent people then you acted wrongly, no matter what you intended. Goodness is making the best things happen, and a careless person is poorly equipped to do good.
Suppose that the munitions factory is directly beside the hospital so that one cannot be bombed without hitting the other. Does consequentialism tell you to drop the bomb, or not? There's no paradox. Consequentialism tells you to do what will give you the best results. You just have to compare what will happen if the war ends sooner versus what will happen if the orphans are saved. We haven't said how bad the war is going to get and how many lives it will ruin. Look at the outcomes of the two options and pick the one that is best. If the two outcomes are too close to equal to judge, then your choice does not matter.
Ansatz66 "There's no use in building commandments if you don't also give people are reason to believe in their morality. You can't refer back to your own commandments to justify themselves, so you need some deeper moral principle to refer to. If you reject consequentialism, then what else can you use to justify the commandments?"
The Categorical Imperative is far more than building your own set of commandments than I'm letting on. What is also needed to justify the commandments is that they have to follow Aristotle's Law of Non-contradiction, according to Hegel, and what must not be in contradiction within the commandments is human values. The values being life, autonomy and happiness. What is in contradiction with these values you may ask? It's coercion, intimidation or duress that is in conflict with the three values.
To elaborate, you cannot kill someone, thereby robbing them of their lives, or else it is going against someone's right to live. Not to mention no one person would desire to be murdered. You can't flick pain on another human beings' health, for one's own pleasure, for no one person desires to be harmed, and wished to be healthy. Hence the conception of happiness. Now autonomy is to be able to have the ability to make decisions in the absence of one forcing their will upon your own. And since no one wants to see their ability to make choices uncoerced it is impermissible to infringe on another's autonomy.
Further, the individual must realize that they have these intrinsic values and to be able to conceptualize them through reason. And they must also realize that others have these same values and not infringe upon these values through empathy.
Ergo, the Categorical Imperative is the foundation for human rights and values, and is one of the reasons why it is the foundation for ethics.
"Consequentialism is not about what may happen. It's about what actually does happen. If you bomb the wrong target and kill innocent people then you acted wrongly, no matter what you intended. Goodness is making the best things happen, and a careless person is poorly equipped to do good."
Consequentialism is only about maximizing the best outcomes for the majority of a specific group of people, however, it does intend to alienate the minority or individual. To illustrate this, John Rawls' Original Position through the Veil of Ignorance and the Difference Principle and the Moral Point of View is about maximizing the benefits for the least well-off peoples of the working classes, but, it doesn't include the disabled. So while the healthy working class peoples get all the benefits, the disabled members of the working class are alienated and left out in the cold.
BTW, the thing about the bombing, you will still hit the military target, but there is always the chance that civilians will be killed no matter the consequences. Plus, in consequentilism, it does not matter whether or not the civilians are killed, because all that matters is the outcomes alone as consequentialism does not hold human rights in high regard.
"Suppose that the munitions factory is directly beside the hospital so that one cannot be bombed without hitting the other. Does consequentialism tell you to drop the bomb, or not?"
It most certainly will, because once again, all that matters is the best outcomes. This fails insofar as this is a matter of human rights by going through with the bombing run at the risk of civilian lives. Hence the paradox.
"Consequentialism tells you to do what will give you the best results. You just have to compare what will happen if the war ends sooner versus what will happen if the orphans are saved. We haven't said how bad the war is going to get and how many lives it will ruin. Look at the outcomes of the two options and pick the one that is best. If the two outcomes are too close to equal to judge, then your choice does not matter."
But if ONLY the best results matter, then you do not have much of an ethical theory. If you do not recognize that there are other values, beyond the one value of your system, that renders the theory into making it too flexible. Plus it can either oversimplify the definition of right and wrong or change the definition to defend misconduct. In this case, consequentiailism has only one value to stand on, and that well-being or happiness.
Way too surface level to say this is paradoxical. The essence of the obligation never changes, giving money of equal value would fulfil obligation.
We could frame it in a way where it is impossible to repay. You promised to care for my child while I was away, and bring her back safe. She wandered into the street while you were not looking and was killed by a car. You have an obligation to bring my child back to me, but you cannot fulfill that obligation (no amount of money could bring the child back).
Id still agree with the law. Once the child is dead, your no longer obligated to bring back the child. You failed at your initial obligation (keeping safe), and likely will incur a new obligation as a result of failing the first. But once the child is dead, it cannot be returned and thus id agree there is no longer an obligation to return the child after its dead. Id say new obligations would emerge as imposed by society or whatever but return the child is not longer an obligation imo.