Deontological Ethics

Exam: take home exam all week to do it.

CHATGPT answers questions and evaluates if the answer is right.

You can check the wrong box as long as you explain it correctly

Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.

Humanity: free choice to make choices that moral or not moral

act for reasons that anyone can act for in your position.

You’re not intending to use people as means to get something and treat them as ends

Kantian ethics respects persons, by contrast with Utilitarianism, which does not

To determine the morality of an act we look at its maxim, not at its consequences such as how much happiness or misery it produces

Maxim = “the principle on which one sees oneself as acting”

• have a goal and think of that action as achieveing that goal

form: I will do this [action] in order to achieve that [end].

1. Avoid Using Persons as Mere Means

   To use someone as a mere means is to involve them in a schem of action to which they oculd not in principle consent.

   NOTE: can you people as means, just not as mere means

   Two main ways people cannot possibly consent to your maxim of action…

   Deception - making a promise with the intention of braeking it

   Coercion - rich or powerful person threatens a debtor with bankruptcy unless he or she joins in some scheme

1. Treat Persons as Ends in Themselves

   Ends - a persons goal or desires

   Dont decide their ends based on your desires, gather information about their ends from them and help them achieve them.

   • as long as their ends are moral

Justice and Beneficence

So,

There is a distinction between the requirments of justice and of beneficence in Kantian ethics. Justice requires that we act on no maxims that use others as mere means. Beneficence requries that we act on some maxims that foster others’ ends, though it is a matter for judgment and dicscretion which of their ends we foster.

Intetnions and Results

arg: Kantian theory can assess only the intentions of acts, but good intentions often may result in bad outcomes

resp: in general, good intentions lead to good outcomes because

Utilitarianism and Respect for Life

Objections: Knowledge, strenuousness, and rights.

To the objections mills answer is to just follow the rules.