▶︎ 0:00 Now we move on to our third philosopher and second ethicist, Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant worked earlier than Mill, but we're moving backwards in time. And it's peculiar, but the reason I'm doing this is because I find that Kant is a better critic of Mill than Mill is a critic of Kant. So we're going to see how Kant raised objections to Mill, to utilitarian-type theories. And we will start seeing the large-scale Socratic dialogue take place, where Kant raises objections to Mill, and then gives us a theory which he thinks solves those problems and is superior to utilitarianism for those reasons.
▶︎ 0:52 Kant is absolutely one of the very greatest philosophers of all time. He touched every branch of philosophy, and every branch he really revolutionized. And ethics is one of those branches. He is one of the great ethicists, and his ethics is very, very influential, and many, many people study it and it plays a role in bioethics, in hospital boards of ethics, as well as in philosophy studies.
▶︎ 1:25 And we're going to start looking at what Kant is for by looking at what he's against. Kant is notoriously difficult. He's a terrible writer, and his thoughts are complicated and difficult. So it's a little hard to get into him. We're going to need a lot of preparation before we even get to his thought. We have to put out a lot of pieces on the table before we can start putting them together. So we're going to begin by looking at what he's against to understand what he is for.
▶︎ 2:04 And the first idea that we're going to look at is relativism. Kant is very much against any kind of relativism. He thinks that relativism isn't just bad ethics, it's not ethics. If you have a relativistic ethics, then you don't even have an ethics at all. And he thinks that most ethics is relativistic, whether it wants to be or not. And he thinks that you yourself don't want a relativistic ethics.
▶︎ 2:33 A lot of people today think this way. They think that what's good for one society is good for them, what's good for us is good for us, and we shouldn't judge them, they shouldn't judge us. That would be a relativistic perspective, that what is good and right is relative to a particular society, a particular period in time, a particular culture, and that we really shouldn't be judging other cultures. Kant not only disagrees with this, he thinks that you disagree with this. He thinks, and in a good Socratic way, that if you examine the implications of this view, if you examine the ideas that it entails, you will find those so objectionable that you will agree with him that we cannot be relativists in ethics.
▶︎ 3:22 As we saw from the Euthyphro, that if piety is pious because the gods love it, then it is relative. It's relative to what the gods love. Whatever it is that the gods love, that then becomes pious. If what's good and bad is determined by a society, then goodness or badness is entirely relative to the laws that society passes or the cultural norms of that society.
▶︎ 3:55 There is no, for the relativist, there is no objective fact beyond that by which an ethical theory can be wrong. Just like in Tristan da Cunha, there's no right or wrong answer as to which side of the road to drive on. It could be the left, it could be the right, it doesn't matter. There's no correctness here. There's no objective fact. There's merely the subjective decision about which it is. Once it's decided, then there can be a right or wrong, though of course that can change at any moment.
▶︎ 4:28 Now, we are relativists about many things. We tend to be relativists about fashion. What one period likes in clothing, another period's not gonna like, and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to say right and wrong, who's correct and who's incorrect. We tend to be relativists about table manners, and what one culture thinks is polite, another thinks is impolite. But we tend not to be relativists about something like math.
▶︎ 4:55 Two plus two equals four, no matter what a culture believes. We can't get together and vote on the math revocation bill and make two plus two equal five, and then have that be true. No matter what we believe, no matter what we decide, no matter what we all come together and agree on, two plus two simply equals four. And there is a right and there's a wrong answer here, because it is objective. It's not subjective.
▶︎ 5:24 And this would be on the side of the gods loving piety because it's pious. We believe that two plus two equals four because it does. Because four simply is the right answer. There is an answer outside of us. It is objective, and we simply recognize that.
▶︎ 5:42 And so for things like math, we tend to be absolutists. That's the opposite of a relativist. Instead of answers being relative to cultures or gods' loves or what have you, these are absolute answers that were always the same for everyone at all times. These are objective answers. And Kant's claim to begin with is that ethics is and must be absolute. And that you believe this too.
▶︎ 6:20 You see, some of the properties that we're talking about here, for relativism, there is no objective answer. There is no fact of the matter beyond what we decide. And we can decide differently.
▶︎ 6:36 That makes it contingent. Meaning the answer, what it is, can be different. Even if we all agree on what it is, we could have decided a different way. The Queen decided that the traffic will drive on the left side of the road in Tristan de Cunha, but she could have decided on the right side. We have the dollar bill in America, we could have had the pound, or the yen, or the giant Ralstone if we wanted to. There's no necessity to it.
▶︎ 7:09 Whereas for an absolutist, there is necessity. Two plus two has to equal four. There's no other option. We don't have any power over it, we can't change it. That's what it is.
▶︎ 7:27 Because relativism is contingent, it also is variable. That means different cultures can have it differently. Different cultures can have different fashion, they can have different table manners, they can have different music tastes, because there's no objective fact about these matters.
▶︎ 7:52 On the other hand, absolutism is invariable. Absolutism is universal. Every culture has to believe that two and two equals four, or they're just wrong. You can't have a Japanese math and an American math. You just have math. There is one math for everyone, and it's going to be the same answers that everyone gets, and they have to get that.
▶︎ 8:26 So anything that's relativistic can be different. And therefore, it can vary from culture to culture, historical period to historical period, whatever you're, it's relative to. Whereas for an absolutist, whatever's absolute has to be that way. And therefore, it has to be the same for everyone. And Kant is arguing that ethics must be absolute because it must be necessary and universal.
▶︎ 8:54 If you are a relativist, whatever your relativism's about, you have to say that that topic, the truth of it, the accuracy of it, the rightness of it, is relative to that culture or historical period. There is a fact about which side of the road to drive on in Tristan de Cunha. It's the left side. That's true. That's a fact. But which side of the road you ought to drive on, which side of the road is correct to drive on, is relative to the country you're talking about.
▶︎ 9:32 When you go to Tristan de Cunha or England, you ought to drive on the left side of the road. That is correct. But if you go to America, you ought to drive on the right side of the road. That is the correct side of the road in America. So the fact here that we're talking about, the truth here that we're talking about, which side of the road is correct, which rule you should follow, is entirely relative to the country that you're in, what laws they have passed.
▶︎ 10:01 If your relativism is about ethics, that means that what is good and what is bad is entirely relative to a historical period or a culture. Now, there have been cultures that have embraced and approved of things like slavery, things like genocide. If you are a relativist, Kant is arguing, then you have to say, "Well, you can't have a genocide here. We don't allow that. But hey, in that country, it's fine." Not only can I not condemn their genocide, I have to approve it.
▶︎ 10:48 I have to say, "When you go to England, you need to drive on the left side of the road. You ought to drive on the left side of the road. It is correct to drive on the left side of the road." And if I accept relativism about ethics, then I have to say, "In that country, when you're there, you ought to endorse genocide. When you're in that country, you ought to own people because they accept it, and good and bad is relative to cultures." And therefore, they are correct in their borders. Just as much as we are correct in our borders.
▶︎ 11:24 And Kant says, "If you cannot condemn Nazis who did things illegally, then you don't have an ethics at all." If you can't condemn atrocities that are
▶︎ 11:42 accepted in their countries, it's not that you have a bad ethics, you don't have an ethics at all. We have to have the capacity to approve or condemn things regardless of where they happen. The geographical location is simply not a morally relevant factor.
▶︎ 12:05 Right now, the laws in America on marijuana are a mess. They're all variable and they change from state to state. So, for example, in Colorado, it's legal and in Kansas, it's illegal. Imagine that you go to one of those parks that show you the exact location of the border between states, and you stand on the border of Kansas and Colorado, and you light up a joint. I'm not endorsing you do it, but some people do it.
▶︎ 12:38 Now, you're standing on the border, left foot in Colorado, right foot in Kansas. You lift your right foot and you're standing entirely in Colorado, what you're doing is legal. You lift up your left foot, you're standing entirely in Kansas, what you're doing is illegal. Legal, illegal, legal, illegal. If you're a relativist, then what you're doing is moral, immoral, moral, immoral, and that's ridiculous. The geographical locations, going a few inches in either way, should not be determinative of the moral quality of an action. Either it's good or it's not. Either it's evil or it's not.
▶︎ 13:15 Kant says, "We are all absolutists about morality. We just tell ourselves we're not sometimes. We think we're not." But if you follow out the implications the way that Socrates made his interlocutors do, you realize that we are. You are not a relativist, that you want to condemn the Nazis, and therefore, you are an absolutist, that you want to say that switching feet on the border makes no difference to the morality of an action, and therefore, which society that you're in is irrelevant to the morality of an action, and therefore, you're an absolutist.
▶︎ 13:56 The only legitimate kind of morality, according to Kant, is an absolutist, which gives us necessary and universal laws. If you watch the lecture on Kant from my other course, you will have seen that he believes this in science too. Science also needs necessary universal laws because he believes that we have one faculty of reason, and that reason is the same when it applies to math and science and when it applies to ethics. It's the same faculty, and it demands necessary universal laws in both fields. They're going to be different laws, different qualities, different topics, but reason is the faculty of necessary and universal laws for Kant.
▶︎ 14:49 And he has these arguments for it. Anything less than a necessary universal law will trap you in relativism, which means you have to approve of other societies endorsing genocide or atrocities, or that things like which foot you're standing on makes a difference. And he thinks, "We don't really believe that." But now we face the same question that Mill faced.
▶︎ 15:18 Mill wanted a universal law. He wanted a morality that would apply to every situation. And therefore, Mill said, "I need to base my morality on something that is universally shared by all humans, something in human nature." And he picked the feeling, the ability to feel pleasure and pain. This is something that is in human nature. All humans feel it. And therefore, if I base my morality on it, the greatest happiness principle derived from theory of life, then I can have universal application.
▶︎ 15:51 Kant says, "That might be good enough for Mill. It's not good enough for me." Kant was a very, very good astronomer. In fact, there was a Kant-Laplace law that was in effect for many, many, many years. And Kant believed in the existence of alien life forms. And Kant asked, "Okay, Mill, what happens when an alien comes down and we meet the alien? Where is your theory then?" Your theory is based on human nature, which means it can say nothing to the alien. It has to be silent about the alien, which means if the alien eats us, utilitarianism just shrugs its shoulders and says, "Well, I don't know. I guess. That's not good for us. We don't like that. And that violates local culinary rules. But hey, it's not a human, so it doesn't apply to them."
▶︎ 16:51 That's not good enough for Kant. Kant is thinking about one of the questions that we always have to ask ourselves with Mill is, to whom does morality apply? Who is a morally relevant being? For Mill, anything that feels pleasure and pain. Kant doesn't think that's right for a number of reasons, but one of them is this reason.
▶︎ 17:18 For Kant, what it means to be a moral agent, a being who can be held responsible for their action, means that you can choose your own actions. And what it means to choose your own actions is to entertain various possibilities. "I could do this, I could do this, I could do this," and reflect on them. Is this the right thing to do? Is that the right thing to do? What it means to be a responsible moral, to be an agent, moral agent who is responsible for your actions means that you've chosen your actions. What it means to choose your actions is you have the capacity to entertain various possible actions, examine each, and decide which of them you're going to take. That is the exercise of reason. It's not the exercise of feeling pleasure and pain. It's the exercise of reason.
▶︎ 18:14 It's rational agents, beings who can think, that are moral agents. We don't blame a lion for eating people because it's a lion, it's an animal. We don't blame a hurricane for causing destruction, it's an inanimate object. But we blame people for doing bad things because they could have done otherwise, because they could think about their actions, they could think about whether their actions were good or bad, and they could decide what to do.
▶︎ 18:49 It is the capacity to reason that makes a person subject to the moral law, that makes them subject to judgment and evaluation, that makes them responsible for their behavior. And therefore, that will be the quality that Kant will base his philosophy on, his ethics on. Not feeling pleasure and pain like Mill, but the capacity to reason. The capacity to reason, wherever it's found.
▶︎ 19:22 If it's found in an AI, then the AI is a moral agent. If it's found in a porpoise or an octopus or a bird, then that animal is a moral agent. It doesn't matter the species. It doesn't matter the biology. All that's irrelevant. All that matters is the ability to reason. And reason is, for him, the faculty of coming up with the necessary universal laws, whatever the field is.
▶︎ 19:54 So for Kant, if that alien built a spaceship and came here, then it's rational. It's got reason. It's able to have technology. And when we meet the alien, that alien has the same faculty of reason as we do. It found the same math, it found the same science, it's got the same reason. And therefore, it has access to the same moral laws that we do.
▶︎ 20:22 Kant wants ethics to apply universally. Every single action, every single event, every single circumstance, there must be a right thing to do. If we're basing ethics on human nature or something like that, then we have to wait until the alien comes down, we learn each other's language, we hammer out a deal, we hammer out rules, and then we have rules. Just like we had to wait for the queen to decide before we had a left, before we had a correct side of the road to drive on.
▶︎ 20:57 But Kant says that first meeting has to be ruled by ethics. That first meeting has to be governed. There have to be laws already in place. And the only way that could happen is if the alien had access to laws independently of talking to us. The same laws.
▶︎ 21:20 Now, that's weird. Usually, we think of having the same things through communication. You and I, we'll sit down, we'll talk and say, "Hey, let's meet at the restaurant at three o'clock." We have to communicate to get an agreement. But we didn't have to communicate for the alien to find math. We didn't have to communicate for the alien to find science. And Kant thinks we don't have to communicate for the alien to get ethics.
▶︎ 21:42 Because these laws, Kant will argue, are hardwired into our capacity to reason. He is going to say that ethics is entirely derivative of logic. That's very strange. You should be skeptical. Doesn't seem like that. Mill would say, "The only way we know what people should do is by empirically studying what people actually do." That we need empirical information. We need to watch and see how people do.
▶︎ 22:19 But we can't empirically watch the aliens before they come here. And therefore, the first encounter would be unruled. For Kant, if reason, by its very nature, has these laws built into it, then we can find the same exact laws that the alien will before we talk, before we hammer out an agreement. Because us being able to meet and talk and agree, all that's contingent. It might happen, it might not. But if our reason already contains them, then it's necessary that we have the same rules. They might not obey them, but they have them. And therefore, they can be held accountable.
▶︎ 23:11 So for Kant, ethics cannot be empirical. For Kant, ethics must be a priori. A priori is a technical term in philosophy meaning independent of empirical data. Not observed, not seen, not experienced, somehow already in our minds. Kant will try to derive rules that will fit Socrates' demands for form, that will apply to every action we do, that will tell us what to do, that will tell us the essence of goodness and badness without a single fact about humans. Without a single fact about the way we behave, the way we live, what we like, what we dislike. Nothing, nothing about us.
▶︎ 24:09 From zero, he will derive an entire ethics that will tell us what to do in every single situation. Purely from logic. Because every rational agent has access to logic. Or else they're not a rational agent. And this is how he's able to secure a universality that goes far, far beyond Mill's. It's an extraordinary ambition, and we should be skeptical whether he can get it, and we need to hold his feet to the fire and see if he does.
▶︎ 24:46 The second thing he's against is consequentialism. Again, here is something that Mill endorses and Kant rejects. It's very simple. For Kant, you cannot control the consequence of your action. You can't predict them with any certainty, and you can't control them. You want to do something really, really nice for your friend, so you buy them a bicycle because they need it to get to work. They've got a long commute. So you buy them a bicycle and the next day, they get in a crash and break their leg. The consequences were bad.
▶︎ 25:23 On a strictly utilitarian basis, and again, there are more sophisticated versions, but a strictly utilitarian basis, your action was bad because it had bad consequences. But it's not your fault. It's just bad luck. You were in control of buying the bike. You weren't in control of what happened. The events that occur in the world are not under your control, but that's what determines the consequences. Good or bad consequences are entirely a matter of what happens. They're contingent.
▶︎ 25:58 And Kant argues we should only be judged on what we can control, on what we choose. You chose to buy the bicycle. That's your action. Your friend getting into a car accident was not your action. That's the consequence. You shouldn't be held accountable for it. The consequences are not the right aspect of an action to evaluate.
▶︎ 26:26 We said with Mill that every one of the philosophers we look at is going to look at a different aspect of action as the morally relevant facet. For Mill, it's the consequence, what follows from, what are the results from it. Kant is arguing that's wrong. Kant is arguing what matters, what you should be judged for, is and is only what you can control, what you actually do. And you can control one thing and one thing only, your will. What you intend to do, what you decide to do. You have absolute free will in terms of what you decide to do. You have no control over what then happens after that.
▶︎ 27:12 So the only thing that you should be focused on, the only thing that you should be talking about, the only thing that you should be judged for are the decisions you yourself make. The real-world effects, that's out of your hands, and therefore it's entirely irrelevant. We ignore those. What matters again is what's a priori, not what's empirical. The consequences are empirical. The decision, the will, the choice, that's inside of you. That, you have total control over. And so that's the only thing you should be evaluated for.
▶︎ 27:55 If you intend to do something wonderful and it goes awry, that's not your fault. You should be judged for what you intend to do, what act you choose, not what consequences actually result from it.
▶︎ 28:17 The third thing he's against is eudaimonism. This is any ethical theory that says that happiness is the central value. Happiness is the goal. Happiness is the point. Happiness is what we want to get. Again, Mill is eudaimonist. Mill said that happiness is the only absolute good, is the only intrinsic good, and therefore everything is about maximizing happiness. That's the greatest happiness principle.
▶︎ 28:44 And there are two different types of eudaimonism. There's psychological eudaimonism, and that's the theory of life. That's Mill's theory of life. This is an analysis of human motivation, of human behavior. Mill's argument is we do, as a matter of fact, only act for happiness. That's the only thing that we can choose. Anything that we choose ultimately is really for the purpose of happiness. We choose all kinds of things, but they're all instrumental goods ultimately for the sake of the intrinsic good of happiness. And that's all we can do. There's no other ability.
▶︎ 29:27 And then ethical eudaimonism is his greatest happiness principle that he derives from that, which is that the only true good that ethics should be concerned with is happiness, that we should maximize happiness because it's the only intrinsic good.
▶︎ 29:41 Kant disagrees with both. Kant disagrees with ethical eudaimonism for several reasons. One reason is that, as we saw with Mill, any focusing on happiness has the danger of leading into exploitation situations. If we are trying to maximize happiness and only happiness, if we treat happiness as a simple good, then the perpetrator's happiness is as good as the victim's. And that can lead into these terrible situations of exploitation that utilitarianism does not seem able to condemn. And again, for Kant, if you cannot condemn slavery, if you cannot condemn torture, then you don't really have an ethics. So Kant is against both types of eudaimonism, ethical and psychological.
▶︎ 30:49 And we'll take them on one by one. He's against ethical eudaimonism, the idea that ethics is about maximizing happiness, for several reasons. One reason being the exploitation situations that we saw utilitarianism is vulnerable to, that if you take happiness as your absolute good, then you cannot evaluate different kinds of happiness or different types of different people's happiness. So Kant argues that we should not simply endorse happiness in an absolute way, as Mill does.
▶︎ 31:28 For Kant, there is such a thing as bad happiness. A perpetrator who inflicts suffering and enjoys that, who gets enjoyment out of inflicting suffering, for the utilitarian system, they can condemn that because the suffering vastly outweighs it, but it in itself, simply as happiness, is positive. Every happiness is positive. Kant says that's fundamentally confused. There's something wrong with a theory that can at all approve of the pleasure that a perpetrator gets out of inflicting suffering, even if it gets outweighed. And again, we saw it doesn't always get outweighed.
▶︎ 32:20 Kant says there's such a thing as bad happiness, that someone who has undeserved happiness, someone who gets happiness from doing something awful is a bad thing in itself, not just because it gets outweighed, but in and of itself, it's bad. Because, Kant argues, ethics isn't about happiness. It's not about being happy. It's about deserving to be happy.
▶︎ 32:51 Mill has made a fundamental error for Kant. Mill wants ethics to be about maximizing happiness, being happy. Kant thinks that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of ethics. Ethics isn't about being happy. Ethics is about being the right kind of person, that you deserve the happiness. Whether you're happy or not, whether you actually become happy or not is a matter of consequence. There's no one can control that. What ethics is about is doing the right thing regardless. Kant's ethics is do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may. What matters is your duty, and
▶︎ 33:50 That's what his ethics is called. Deontology comes from the Greek word for duty, deon. It's doing what you are obligated to do, not caring about the consequence. The consequences will take care of themselves. You need to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do, not because you'll get something out of it, not because anyone will get something out of it. Simply because it's the right thing to do.
▶︎ 34:18 Once we introduce happiness into the equation, not only does that get us into consequences which are not in our control, which are contingent, but we slide from ethics into what he calls prudence. Prudence means taking care of yourself, doing things for your own good. Now, there's nothing wrong with prudence. We all prudently exercise, you brush your teeth, you invest your money. All that's good. But it's not morally praiseworthy to do that. You aren't a good person because you work out, even though it feels that way sometimes. You're taking care of yourself. You're benefiting yourself. That's great. That's good behavior for your enjoyment of life. That's not what morality is about. It doesn't have to be about your suffering either. That's just irrelevant for it. It has nothing to do with morality for Kant.
▶︎ 35:17 He tells the story of a shopkeeper. So a shopkeeper is in a store, and a child walks in with a large bill, a $50 bill, and buys a piece of candy. Now, the shopkeeper can say, "Oh, that's a $50 piece of candy," and pocket the money. Or the shopkeeper can be honest and say, "It's five cents," give all the change back. If prudence is in here, is a consideration, then the shopkeeper has to think, "Well, it's good, it's a good business practice to be honest, because if I cheat the kid, it'll get around eventually. If I get in the habit of cheating, people will find out, and I'll get fewer customers." That's prudence. Nothing wrong with it. Good to have good business practice, but it's not ethical.
▶︎ 36:06 The ethical reaction is it's simply wrong to cheat the child, period. Doesn't matter what happens. It doesn't matter if my business flourishes or crashes. What matters is doing the right thing, and these are completely different ways of looking at it. He's not being honest for his own good or even for the good of the child, the good of family. He's being honest because you should be honest, because honesty is the right thing. That's the perspective Kant has for ethics. And once you start taking happiness into account, that whole perspective is ruined for him, and it becomes extremely hard not to slide into prudence.
▶︎ 36:54 There have been many scientific studies done that show, MRI studies, of people in an MRI machine, who give money to charity. And it turns out when they give money to charity, the same part of their brain gets stimulated as the part that gets stimulated when they eat chocolate, the reward center, the pleasure center. Humans are hard-wired to feel pleasure from being good, from doing good to each other. But that cannot be the reason why we do it. That cannot be the motivation for Kant.
▶︎ 37:32 Because what happens when you don't feel good, number one? Number two, that turns ethics into a selfish action. If you are being good because it makes you feel good, that turns ethics into the same kind of activity as playing video games or going dancing, anything you enjoy. Nothing wrong with it. It's great to do things you enjoy. But it's no longer ethical. It's not unethical, it's not bad, it's just something you do because you enjoy it. It's a hobby now. Great. Go do that hobby. It's terrific.
▶︎ 38:05 But that's not ethics anymore. That's finding something that you enjoy doing, finding something that gives you pleasure. You should be doing things that give you pleasure. You should be finding things that give you pleasure, but that's not ethics. Ethics is only about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, nothing beyond that. It's very strict in that sense.
▶︎ 38:29 And another final reason why he doesn't want to talk about happiness is, again, because of the variability and contingency of our feelings. We all feel different things and have different emotional reactions, and therefore, if we base this ethics on what makes us feel good, well, what makes me feel good is different what makes you feel good. And what makes us feel good can often be manipulated by irrelevant factors. We talked about which foot you stand on determining whether what you're doing is legal or illegal.
▶︎ 39:06 There was a study done in 1997 in a shopping mall, they still existed back then, where random people were asked for something that was a minor, minor inconvenience, to make change for a $20 bill. Something you didn't want to do. You go to the shopping mall, you want to go shop, you don't want to sit there for five minutes and count out change. But it's a nice thing to do. It helps someone, so it's this slight ethical behavior that costs you a little bit of pain.
▶︎ 39:37 And they set up this at two different spots in the mall, and in position one, 22% of people made the change. They were willing to go through the unpleasantness of standing there making the change before they left. In position two, 61% of them stayed and made the change. Same exact ask, same exact task, same exact phrasing, same wordings, same exact people making the question, making the request. But in position two, there's almost triple the number of people who were willing to do it.
▶︎ 40:12 And the difference was that position two was in front of a Cinnabons where the smell of the cinnamon and the sweetness was in the air. Just having that wonderful smell affected, stimulated people's happiness and pleasure drive and made them better people, made them more willing to help out a stranger. That's why real estate people spray cookie smell in their houses before they show them to put people in a good mood.
▶︎ 40:47 But Kant argues if we can be made more moral by the smell of a cinnamon bun, then that cannot be entrusted with our ethical obligation. If we are that manipulable, then we need something that resists manipulation. We need something that's not susceptible to that kind of absurd, irrelevant manipulation. And reason doesn't care about the smell of the cinnamon bun. Your reason knows you shouldn't be eating it, it's horrible. The number of calories, don't look it up if you ever want to eat one again. Reason can understand this even while our appetites can't.
▶︎ 41:29 And this leads us into the second point, the psychological eudaimonism. Because all this can be right, but it'd be irrelevant for our behavior if we have no capacity to choose anything except happiness. Mill says that the only thing that we can choose, we can only act for happiness. Kant has to give us a different theory of life, a different moral psychology that enables us to behave in non-eudaimonistic ways, that enables us to choose morality over happiness when it conflicts with happiness. Remember, Mill said that's impossible. Mill said that everything ultimately leads to happiness, all of your choices.
▶︎ 42:19 Kant disagrees with this. Kant says when we have to make a decision, our will is at what he calls, it's at a crossroads between two possible influences. Reason is one and inclinations are the other. Inclinations are our emotions, our tastes, our preferences, the things that we like, the things we are inclined towards. These can come from our past, from our bodies, from our motions, all kinds of different sources. But we are between these. Our inclinations tell us to do one thing, and our reason tells us to do something. Often, these will differ.
▶︎ 43:17 Inclinations are entirely and exclusively focused on happiness. It's what you're inclined to do, what you like. And they say, "Go get what you like. Eat the Cinnabon, ignore the person who's asking you to make the change. Go shop. Do the fun thing. Do the thing that makes you happy. Do the thing for enjoyment." And it's about your happiness. Inclinations are entirely focused on you.
▶︎ 43:43 But reason is impersonal. You see, there's my happiness and that's totally different from your happiness. But there's not my math as opposed to your math. There's not my logic as opposed to your logic. All the things that reason deals with are entirely impersonal. They're the same for everyone. Happiness is different. The things that I like are not things that you like. But the math we all hold, think of, the logic we all think of, that would be the same.
▶︎ 44:18 Reason is intrinsically impartial. It has no preference for you or me. It treats everyone the same. So that egalitarianism that we saw with Mill, for Mill, we have to really make an effort. Everyone's happiness is the same, "Well, no, because my happiness is special to me." I'm sorry. I might think your happiness is important, but I can't help but feel differently towards my happiness than your happiness. My happiness feels more important, even if I don't think it is. That's just the way we're hardwired. It feels different.
▶︎ 45:07 That's why, another reason why we shouldn't be basing morals on feelings, because my inclinations are about what I like that make me happy. That's not morality. Morality is what one should do, what anyone should do, what the right thing to do is. Not what I want, not what I like, not what. Because happiness is always personal, individual, self-centered. Reason is built into it to be impartial, because that's the way it works. It works necessary, universal laws. A universal law has no exceptions, no special cases. It's the same for everyone, and that's what ethics ought to be. For Mill, I have to do a
▶︎ 46:05 really extra special effort to try hard to treat my happiness the same as yours. And it doesn't seem like you can ever really fully do that, to some degree, but reason does that from the start. Reason cannot treat me as different from you, because I'm gonna have the same math, I'm gonna have the same science, I'm gonna have the same logic. So it immediately, from the start, puts me into an impartial mindset, which is the right mindset for ethics, according to Kant.
▶︎ 46:39 It automatically discounts happiness, which is only about prudence and self-satisfaction and my happiness by getting what I want, which isn't what ethics should be about for Kant, which is only about the consequences which are not under my control for Kant. You see, all of these things fit together. Kant is such a master. He'll list a whole bunch of things, but once you see through the variety, you see the really one idea that he's just looking at all the different facets of, and turning it over and turning it over and looking at every different part of it. There's just no one like him.
▶︎ 47:19 So because we have these two different faculties, inclinations, and reason, we have the capacity to act for reasons other than happiness. This is his disagreement with Mill's theory of life, Mill's psychological eudaimonism. Mill's claim that the only reason we can ever act is for happiness. Kant says, "No, that's wrong. We can act simply to do our duty because it's the right thing to do and ignore happiness entirely. I don't do the right thing because ultimately it increases happiness. It can decrease happiness overall. I only do it 'cause it's the right thing."
▶︎ 48:04 This, for Kant, is wholly separate from any considerations of happiness. We have the capacity to make the decision psychologically. We have the obligation to make the decision ethically. That is what enables us to make absolute decisions. Happiness is relative. My happiness is relative to me. Your happiness is relative to you. Ethics is absolute.
▶︎ 48:40 The right thing to do is the right thing to do for anyone necessarily. And it's all a matter of what the right thing to do is, what the right thing for me to do is, not what follows from it. And this is how we can have an a priori ethics for Kant and an ethics that isn't relativistic, isn't eudaimonistic, and isn't consequentialist.