Thursday, September 22, 2011

The Moral Grey Area: Does it Exist?

"Concepts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." -Kant

Dr. J quoted this in class in an attempt to better explain how to understand Kant's philosophies. The way American's interpret justice caused some confusion and opposition to The Categorical Imperative in class on Wednesday due to how stringent it seems to be: 1) Act in a way that one can will his or her maxim as a universal law, 2) Act in such a way towards humanity only as an end in itself and 3) act in accordance with the maxims giving universal laws for a possible kingdom of ends. Unsurprisingly, the first aspect to the categorical imperative was most contested in the class. Typically morality and ethics is seen in a sort of grey area; meaning there is much interpretation to be done whether one ought to do something or not. However as we learned, ought caries with it universality. It is impossible to both believe morality is specific to a situation (the person in question's background, the other people's actions involved, etc.) and to also have a universality.

The key to understanding Kant is where interpretation comes into play, and this is exactly where American’s legal system is very in line with Kantian ethics. America’s justice system is comprised mostly of a set of laws, which one is obligated to follow if he or she chooses to live in America. There is no interpretation of these laws: one either follows them by not stealing, murdering and the like or they do not follow them by committing these society-harming acts. There is no grey area here: it is black and white. The consequences are only involved when it comes to interpreting to what extend someone broke the law. The application of moral laws requires judgment, but the attempt is to be as close to the universal moral laws as possible.

The question(s) that arise personally for me are why we seem to have the societal norms of looking to morality as a grey area. We’ve stated multiple times the reason ethical dilemmas arise is because one must choose what he views to be the lesser of two evils. Does portraying ethics in a way that makes it seem relative to the situation make people feel more comfortable than if they were to think they were doing wrong? If someone has an ingrained sense of universal laws—which seems likely if he wants society to all be subject to these rules—then perhaps the interpretation is needed for mental well being.

4 comments:

  1. To build from something you mentioned, I think that we understand that moral dilemmas involve two wrong choices, not two right choices. An individual dealing with a moral dilemma has no ideal option. Qualifying morality as a grey area rather than a list of black and white might be truer to our experience of moral decision making.

    We can all identify (I think, anyway) with making a choice in a morally sticky situation, whether it be the small example of lying to a girlfriend about the way she looks in those pants to spare her feelings or the big, class favorite example of killing someone in self-defense. Maybe it's not so much that we don't recognize that lying is wrong but that we sympathize with the girl or guy who doesn't want to hurt another person's feelings because we have also been there. Could our qualification of morality as a grey area come from our experiences with moral dilemmas?

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  2. I think that we have trouble deciding what is moral and immoral because we understand that life is not simple. Everyone makes questionable decisions at times but what is important is the will, not the consequences. I think that Sarah is right when she says that our perception of morality comes from our experiences with moral dilemmas. We understand how difficult it is to always do the right thing and therefore we have sympathy when someone does something that is not completely just. Life cannot be black and white because life is not that simple. If someone has good intentions when making a choice and they are not unjustly infringing on someone else's freedom then they have not done anything that deserves punishment.

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  3. "Does portraying ethics in a way that makes it seem relative to the situation make people feel more comfortable than if they were to think they were doing wrong?"

    I think this is exactly on-point. I'm going to greatly generalize and say that most people are raised with a black-and-white template for morality ("lying is bad," not "lying is usually bad, except when..."), so that becomes ingrained in them. As time goes by, though, they're inevitably confronted with situations in which they feel like the better decision goes against these ingrained moral laws. The more of these experiences they have, the more they're going to see morality as a gray area, so that they can avoid having to consider themselves as immoral.

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  4. I think our qualification could come from our experiences, we've learned over time that if we perceive a situation in a certain way, we will feel overall better about it. However doesn't your question sort of go along with my point? Moral dilemmas are difficult, which is exactly why people need to have a coping mechanism. In this instance, the coping mechanism I have thought about is justifying a wrong by interpreting it as a right, even when one probably knows it is still a wrong.

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