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Pure Kant. Life affirming wherever you see it. People doing something right because it's the right thing to do.

Never in anticipation of reward or even acknowledgement.

Never because someone might see you (virtue signalling)

Nor because it makes you feel good inside. (vanity)

Not even if God had commanded you. (must come from free will)

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Kant's categorical imperative is a circlular argument from religion - bad things are bad because they're bad, good things are good because they're good. He advocated for telling a murderer where their intended victim is, because lying is categorically wrong [1]. Deontology can only be justified by religion; utilitarianism (ethics come from the outcome) is the better option.

Also Kant positioning himself as a moral philosopher is pretty ironic because he was insanely racist.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

> One of the first major challenges to Kant's reasoning came from the French philosopher Benjamin Constant, who asserted that since truth telling must be universal, according to Kant's theories, one must (if asked) tell a known murderer the location of his prey. This challenge occurred while Kant was still alive, and his response was the essay On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives (sometimes translated On a Supposed Right to Lie because of Philanthropic Concerns). In this reply, Kant agreed with Constant's inference, that from Kant's own premises one must infer a moral duty not to lie to a murderer.

> utilitarianism (ethics come from the outcome) is the better option

Utilitarianism is just as subject to countering every argument for it with "yeah, but why?"

It boils down to the is-ought problem. If you remove the objective will of god, what is left is the subjective will of individual human beings. I struggle to see how utilitarianism would follow from the latter.

> Also Kant positioning himself as a moral philosopher is pretty ironic because he was insanely racist.

What in the world does that have to do with being a moral philosopher?

> Utilitarianism is just as subject to countering every argument for it with "yeah, but why?"

I'm not sure what you mean by this, sorry.

> It boils down to the is-ought problem. If you remove the objective will of god, what is left is the subjective will of individual human beings. I struggle to see how utilitarianism would follow from the latter.

Well, utilitarianism would suggest that good derives from pleasure and bad derives from suffering. Thus, a good action is one that increases pleasure or reduces suffering. Pleasure and suffering are subjective, so the idea is that the ideal is to fulfil people's preferences. The will of god, on the other hand, is not objective either - different religions have different interpretations, many religions don't have a will of god, and atheists don't believe any of them anyway.

> What in the world does that have to do with being a moral philosopher?

Racism is broadly considered immoral. I just find it a funny irony, not a critical takedown of Kant's moral philosophy.

> I'm not sure what you mean by this, sorry.

Let me show you.

> Well, utilitarianism would suggest that good derives from pleasure and bad derives from suffering.

Why does good derive from pleasure?

Because pleasure is the word we use to describe positive feelings, ie feelings that people intrinsically want. Suffering is its inverse, something people intrinsically don't want. A utilitarian identifies the good with giving people what they want. You can define 'good' in other ways if you don't agree that giving people what they want is good, but then I think you'd have to justify a superior definition.

I realise what you mean now though; just asking "yeah but why" can be used to constantly question anything because it assumes that axioms can be questioned - any model must be grounded in axioms that cannot themselves be justified within that model. We could get into social constructivism if you really want, but that's an area in which I'm quite well-versed; "yeah but why"-ability is not a sign of weakness of a model.

The point of utilitarianism is to align the model of morality with things that people want.

But why is it good when people get what they want?

after realising where you are going with this I addressed your tactic in an edit to the comment above.

My point is that the only real argument for or against utilitarianism is whether you think it sounds correct. "I want the world to be like this" is where the whys ultimately end. If the killer argument against Kant was his reliance on God, this is not much of an upgrade.

The actual place where the 'whys' end is the axiomatic foundations of the model. The axioms for the categorical imperative are self-referential in the abstract (universal rules are good because they are good), whereas the axioms for utilitarianism are rooted in maximising subjective human experience. One is fundamentally materialist, the other idealist. You are right in that you can't argue on those grounds because the two sides value different things, in the same way that religious versus material justifications for actions cannot be reconciled. That does not mean that they have equal merit.

That these axioms are just statements held as true, with no actual motivation why. Because of that, it's really hard to argue in favor of one system of ethics over the other on any more solid ground than "this sounds true", or appealing to the consequences if it was true.

"True" even starts to lose meaning in this context as these statements don't correspond to anything in the external world, they are entirely fabricated from ideas. They can be self-consistent, others can share the ideas, but that's about as good as things get.

OK so now we're drifting from ethics into epistemology, ontology and the value of constructed models - as I said before, that's my bread and butter. You're arguing for a relativistic, practically nihilistic interpretation of models where it's all made up anyway so no one model can be better than another. I take an anti-realist position, that there's nothing about morality that is intrinsic to reality, but that we invent our models to guide our actions towards outcomes we desire. The outcome of the categorical imperative is rigid adherence to rules that have no bearing with reality, the outcome of utilitarianism is preference fulfilment for as many people as possible. These goals are not equal in value unless you think that twiddling your thumbs and solving world hunger are goals of equal value, in which case I'd say nihilism is an anti-philosophy primarily held by edgy teenagers and does nothing for anybody except provide an ego defence against criticism, like ironic detachment. I wouldn't recommend pursuing it as a guiding principle.

> utilitarianism (ethics come from the outcome) is the better option.

Glad you cleared that up. Some philosopher types had been struggling with it for a few centuries.

Not a problem, I'm here all night. Hit me up if you need the ontological question of substance answering too: it's materialism.

For real though, what are you supposed to do with a moral system that requires you to adhere to rules regardless of outcome? Where the founder literally said you should aid a murderer because lying is wrong? That's so stupid. You can only derive such a system from religious belief where the rules are a manifestation of a higher power, as Kant did.

> what are you supposed to do with a moral system that requires you to adhere to rules regardless of outcome?

Study it. Explore its edges. Knock it down. Rebuild it. See how it works where your other "models" don't. Incorporate it. Synthesise it.

Philosophy does not give answers for the confused, and it doesn't provide comfort for the anxious. For those go to mathematics and religion.

I can feel you are a keen student of philosophy, and would do nothing to discourage that. On the contrary, the spirit is admirable. But you are not a Jedi yet. :)

It is a common error for engineers approaching philosophy to pick up pieces and treat them as tools, like physics models, and to look for the "right" one for a "job". I urge you to play with them as toys a little more.

I am glad to see we've sparked a cool discussion.

I believe there are two routes you can go with philosophy: you can simply explore ideas within the fields you're interested in, or you can use it to guide your actions. Different fields are more or less practically applicable; ethics is somewhat useful, where something like Descartian radical doubt is a purely theoretical exercise. I do enjoy playing around with some ideas, but my primary interest is getting use-value (you could say utility, even!) out of them. Mill used utility to guide his actions and was, for his era, a very progressive and humanist individual. My interests skew towards practical ideas in ethics, epistemology and ontology, philosophy of science, sociology & political theory etc. Just wanting to play with and consider ideas is valid, but it's not the only use of philosophy.

> but my primary interest is getting use-value (you could say utility, even!)

That will come.

I am trying to think of an example/metaphor of the Gestalt way that philosophy (and the pursuit of the other learning you mention) obliquely and surprisingly pops into your life as a massive benefit.

Never, personally though, have I been seized by a "bare idea" and then gone off and applied it to some utility (except maybe as a short-lived cognitive behavioural experiment on myself).

Perhaps it's similar to how playing musical scales, painting bowls of fruit, or playing chess, one day makes you a decent performer, painter or strategist.

> Just wanting to play with and consider ideas is valid

At another extreme, only wanting to play, without even the end of self-improvement in mind would be, as Nietzsche put it - an idle museum of ideas for loafers in the garden of knowledge. Definitely not a good use of time unless your only aim is to stave off nihilism for one more day. So a middle path to tread...

respects

You don't need to explain the benefit of a general philosophical education, friend - I have a few areas that I've learned about because I think they approach truth, while not being directly applicable. My ontological perspective is made up of a mix of Deleuze, Whitehead, Zen and cybernetics, for instance - it sits in the background guiding my perspective while not being 'a tool' as such. Agreed on the middle path; an education in the liberal arts can contribute to general development and actualisation.

Every ethicical framework has issues at the edges. Whether they be based in categorical imperatives or utilitarianism.

> utilitarianism (ethics come from the outcome) is the better option.

Is murder ethical then, if the murderer uses the victim's organs to save the lives of 10 other people?

You always have to watch out for the edge cases lest you get cut.

At the end of the day, all ethics is rooted in selfishness. The weighing of what we want to happen to us, what we want to do to others and what we don't want to happen to us. There is no universal or natural or absolute ethical framework. It's just a human invention born out of human selfishness.

>Is murder ethical then, if the murderer uses the victim's organs to save the lives of 10 other people?

Even better, just kill everyone for a greener earth.

The natural conclusion of negative utilitarianism is the intentional extinguishing of all life

I like specks of dust and torture.

I disagree that selfishness is the root of ethics; I think the root of ethics is the desire for a higher good, for the world to be a better place for the people living in it, which is fundamentally altruistic.

I agree that moral frameworks are more of a guideline than a ruleset because no one model is going to be both simple and map onto messy reality. Ie, like all models, they're reductive but can still be useful. My point was that deontology is just an appeal to rigid consistency, where at least utilitarianism takes context into account, leading to better flexibility to match up with reality.

refusing to share without feigning ignorance doesn't seem like a lie to me. there's not much value in applying the problem to a simple choice between being an accomplice and being a liar--nor is there in dismissing egalitarian ideas from an eighteenth century european philosopher over some other ideas that were widely misunderstood as appropriate at the time

Yea now I remember it's Plato... Alex (beacon)'s objection to universalised deontology came, I think, from a dialogue - I can't remember or seem to find online it now, but it's probably in Republic 2? where Socrates, Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus are getting pissed and talking about weapons and the scenario comes up "Would you give a knife back to someone who is really angry and saying they'll kill someone - or would you lie and say you lost it" or similar. And one of them says "It wouldn't be dishonourable (a real lie) to pretend in that circumstance" - as you say "feigning ignorance doesn't seem like a lie to me". So even though a Kantian lens 2000 years later, lies have a little leeway for being "economical with the truth" under difficult conditions. Kant doesn't chisel it in stone, he says make it unversalisable, in which case the firmware update just makes the new universalisable "Never tell lies unless a murderer urgently wants his knife back".

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