Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 07: "A LESSON IN LYING"

funding for this program is provided by additional funding provided by last time we began and trying to we began by trying to navigate our way through K moral theory now fully to make sense of K moral theory in the groundwork requires that we be able to answer three questions how can Duty and autonomy go together what's the Great dignity and answering to duty it would seem that these two ideas are opposed Duty and autonomy what's kant's answer to that need someone here to speak up on kant's behalf does he have an answer yes go ahead stand up K believes that you only act autonomously when you are when you're pursuing something only in the name of Duty and not because of your own circumstances such as like you're only doing something good and moral if you're doing it because of Duty not because something of your own personal gain now why is that acting what's your name mine is Matt Matt why is that acting out of freedom I I hear what you're saying you choose to accept those moral laws in yourself and they're not brought on from outside upon on okay good because acting out of Duty yeah is following a moral law that you impose on yourself that you impose on yourself that's what makes Duty compatible with freedom yeah okay that's good Matt that is K answer that's great thank you so K's answer is it is not in so far as I am subject to the law that I have dignity but rather in so far as with regard to that very same law I'm the author and I'm subordinated to that law on that grounds that I took it as Matt just said I took it upon myself I will that law so that's why for Kant acting according to duty and acting freely in the sense of autonomously are one and the same but that raises the question how many moral laws are there because if dignity consists in being governed by a law that I give myself what's to guarantee that that my conscience will be the same as your conscience who has count answer to that yes because a moral law trans is not contingent upon subjective conditions it would transcend all particular differences between people and so would be a universal law and in this respect there would only be one moral law because it would be Supreme that's exactly right what's your name Kelly Kelly so Kelly can't believes that if we choose freely out of our own consciences the moral law we're guaranteed to come up with one and the same moral law yes and that's because when I choose it's not me Michael sandal choosing it's not you Kelly choosing for yourself what is it exactly who's doing the choosing who's the subject who's the agent who's doing the choosing reason well reason pure reason pure reason and what you mean by pure reason is what exactly well pure reason is like we were saying before not subject to any external um conditions that may be imposed on it so that's great so the reason that does the Willing the reason that governs my will when I will the moral law is the same reason that operates when you choose the moral law for yourself yes and that's why it's possible to act autonomously to choose for myself for each of us to choose for ourselves as autonomous beings and for all of us to wind up willing the same moral law the categorical imperative but then there is one big and very difficult question left even if you accept everything that Matt and Kelly have said so far how is a categorical imperative possible how is morality possible to answer that question Kant says we need to make a distinction we need to make a distinction between two standpoints two standpoints from which we can and make sense of our experience let me try to explain what he means by these two standpoints as an object of experience I belong to the sensible World there my actions are determined by the laws of nature and by the regularities of cause and effect but as a subject of experience I inhabit an intelligible world he here being independent of the laws of nature I am capable of autonomy capable of acting according to a law I give myself now Kant says that only from this second standpoint can I regard myself as free for to be independent of determination by causes in the sensible world is to be free if I were wholly an empirical being as the utilitarians assume if I were a being holy and only subject to the deliverances of my senses to pain and pleasure and hunger and thirst and appetite if that's all there were to humanity we wouldn't be capable of Freedom K reasons because in that case every exercise of will would be conditioned by the desire for some object in that case all choice would be heteronomous Choice governed by the pursuit of some external end when we think of ourselves as free count rights we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members and recognize the autonomy of the will that's the idea of the two standpoints so how are categorical imperatives Possible only because the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world now Kant admits we aren't only rational beings we don't only inhabit the intelligible world the realm of freedom if we did if we did then all of our actions would invariably Accord with the autonomy of the will but precisely because we inhabit simultaneously the two standpoints the two Realms the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity precisely because we inhabit both Realms there is always potentially a gap between what we do and what we ought to do between is and ought another way of putting this point and this is the point with which Kant concludes the groundwork morality is not empirical whatever you see in the world whatever you discover through science can't decide moral questions morality stands at a certain distance from the world from the empirical world and that's why no science could deliver moral truth now I want to test kant's moral theory with the hardest possible case a case that he raises the case of the murderer at the door Kant says that lying is wrong we all know that we've discussed why lying is at odds with the categorical imperative a French philosopher Benjamin Kon wrote an article responding to the groundwork where he said this absolute prohibition on lying is wrong it can't be right what if a murderer came to your door looking for your friend who was hiding in your house and the murderer asked you point blank is your friend in your house conston says it would be crazy to say that the moral thing to do in that case is to tell the truth kstone says the murderer certainly doesn't deserve the truth and K Ro a reply and Kant stuck by his principle that lying even to the murderer at the door is wrong and the reason it's wrong he said is once you start taking consequences into account to carat accept I to the categorical imperative you've given up the whole moral framework you've become a consequentialist or maybe a rule utilitarian but most of you and most of K's readers think there's something odd and implausible about this answer I would like to try to defend Kant on this point and then I want to see whether you think that my defense is plausible and I would want to defend him within the spirit of his own account of morality imagine that someone comes to your door you were asked the question by this murder you're hiding your friend is there a way that you could avoid telling a lie without selling out your friend does anyone have an idea of how you might be able to do that yes stand up I was just going to say if I were to let my friend in my house to hide in the first place I'd probably make a plan with them so I'd be like hey I'll tell the murderer you're here but escape and that's one of the options mentioned so but I'm not sure that's aan an option H you're still lying though no because he's in the house but he won't be oh I see all right good enough one more try if you just say you don't know where he is because he might not be locked in the closet he might have left the closet you have no clue where he could be so you would say I don't know which wouldn't actually be a lie be because you weren't at that very moment looking in the closet exactly so it would be strictly speaking true yes and yet possibly deceiving misleading but still true what's your name John John all right John has uh now John may be on to something John you're really offering us the option of a clever evasion that is strictly speaking true this raises the question whether there is a moral difference between an outright lie and a misleading truth from K point of view there actually is a world of difference between a lie and a misleading truth why is that even though both might have the same consequences but then remember Kant doesn't base morality on consequences he bases it on formal adherence to the moral law now sometimes in ordinary life we make exceptions for the general rule against lying with a white lie what is a white lie it's it's a lie to make well to avoid hurting someone feelings for example it's a lie that we think of as justified by the consequences now Kant could not endorse a white lie but perhaps he could endorse a misleading truth suppose someone gives you a tie as a gift and you open the box and it's just awful what do you say thank you thank you you could say thank you but they're waiting to see what you think of it or they ask you what do you think of it you could tell a white Li and say it's beautiful but that wouldn't be permissible from K's point of view could you say not a white lie but a misleading truth you open the box and you say I've never seen a tie like that before thank you you shouldn't have that's good can you think of a contemporary political leader who engaged you can what are you thinking of remember the whole carefully worded denials in the Monica Lewinsky Affair of Bill Clinton now those denials actually became the subject of very explicit debate and argument during the impeachment hearings take a look at the following excerpts from Bill Clinton is there something do you think morally at stake in the distinction between a lie and a misleading carefully couched truth I want to say one thing to the American people I want you to listen to me I'm going to say this again I did not have sexual relations with that woman Miss Linsky I never told anybody to lie not a single time never these allegations are false did he lie to the American people when he said I never had sex with that woman you know he doesn't believe he did and because of the let me explain may I explain Congressman what he said was to the American people that he did not have sexual relations and I understand you're not going to like this Congressman because it you will see it as a a hair splitting evasive answer but in his own mind his definition was not okay I understand that argument okay all right so there you have the exchange now at the time you may have thought this was just a legalistic hair spitting exchange between a republican who wanted to impeach Clinton and the lawyer who was trying to defend him but now in the light of Kant do you think there is something morally at stake in the distinction between a lie and an evasion a true but misleading statement I'd like to hear from Defenders of K people who think there is a distinction are you are you ready to defend Kant well I think when you try to say that lying and misleading truths are the same thing you're basing it on a consequentialist argument which is that they achieve the same thing but the fact of the matter is you told the truth and you intended that people would believe what you were saying which was the truth which means it is not more the same as telling a lie and intending that they believe it is the truth even though it's not true good what's your name Diana so Diana says there that KH has a point here and it's a point that might even come to the aid of Bill Clinton and that is well what about that someone over here for C motivation is key so if you give to someone because primarily you want to feel good about yourself com with that has no moral worth well with this the motivation is the same it's to sort of mislead someone it's to lie it's to sort of throw them off the track and the motivation is the same so there should be no difference okay good so here isn't the motiv motive the same Diana what what do you say to this argument that well the motive is the same in both cases there is the attempt or at least the hope that one's pursuer will be misled uh well that you could look at it that way but I think that the fact is that your immediate motive is that they should believe you the ultimate consequence of that is that they might be deceived and not find out what was going on but your immediate motive is that they should believe you because you're telling the truth may I help a little sure you and K why don't you say and what's your name I'm sorry Wesley why don't you say to Wesley it's not exactly the case that the motive in both cases is to mislead they're hoping they're hoping that the person will be misled by the statement I don't know where they are or I never had sexual relations you're hoping that they will be misled but in the case where you're telling the truth your motive is to mislead while at the same time telling the truth and honoring the moral law and staying within the bounds of the categorical imp N I think K's answer would be Diana yes yes you like that I do okay so I think K's answer would be unlike a falsehood unlike a lie a misleading truth pays a certain homage to duty and the homage it pays to duty is what justifies that the work of even the work of evasion Diana yes you like okay and so there is something some element of respect for the Dignity of the moral law in the careful evasion because Clinton could have told an outright lie but he didn't and so I think kant's K's Insight here is in the carefully couched but true evasion there is a kind of homage to the Dignity of the moral law that is not present in the outright lie and that Wesley is part of the motive it's part of the motive yes I hope he will be misled I hope the murderer will run down the road or go to the mall looking for my friend instead of the closet I hope that will be the effect I can't control that I can't control the consequences but what I can control is standing by and honoring however I pursue the ends I hope will unfold to do so in a way that is consistent with respect for the moral law Wesley I don't think is entirely persuaded but at least this brings out this discussion brings out some of what's at stake what's morally at stake in con notion of the categorical imperative as long as any uh effort is involved I would say that the contract is valid and it should take effect but why what was what morally can you point to for example two people agree to be married and one suddenly calls the other in two minutes say I changed my mind does the uh contract have obligation on both sides well I'm tempted to say no fine last time we talked about Khan's categorical imperative and we considered the way he applied the idea of the categorical imperative to the case of lying I want to turn briefly to one other application of K's moral theory and that's his political Theory now comp says that just laws arise from a certain kind of social contract but this contract he tells us is of an exceptional nature what makes the contract exceptional is that it's not an actual contract that happens when people come together and try to figure out what the Constitution should be Kant points out that the contract that generates Justice is what he calls an idea of reason it's not an actual contract among actual men and women gathered in a constitutional convention why not I think K's reason is that actual men and women gathered in a real con tional convention would have different interests values aims and there would also be differences of bargaining power and differences of knowledge among them and so the laws that would result from their deliberations wouldn't necessarily be just wouldn't necessarily conform to principles of right but would simply reflect the differences of bargaining power the special interests the fact that some might know more than others about law or about politics so Kant says a contract that generates principles of right is merely an idea of reason but it has undoubted practical reality because it can oblige every legislator to frame his laws in such a way that they could have been produced by the United will of the whole nation so Kant is a contractarian but he doesn't trace the origin or the rightness of law to any actual social contract this gives rise to an obvious question what is the moral force of a hypothetical contract a contract that never happened that's the question we take up today but in order to investigate it we need to turn to a modern philosopher John RS who worked out in his book a theory of Justice in great detail an account of a hypothetical agreement as the basis for justice R's theory of Justice in Broad outline is parallel to K in two important respects like Kant r was a Critic of utilitarianism each person possesses an inviability founded on Justice R's rights that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override the rights secured by Justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests the second respect in which rs's Theory follows cons is on the idea that principles of Justice properly understood can be derived from a hypothetical social contract not an actual one and rals works this out in fascinating detail with the device of what he calls the veil of ignorance the way to arrive at the rights the basic rights that we must respect the basic framework of Rights and duties is to imagine that we were gathered together trying to choose the principles to govern our Collective lives without knowing certain important particular facts about ourselves that's the idea of the veil of ignorance now what would happen if we gathered together just as we are here and try to come up with principles of Justice to govern our Collective life there would be a cacaphony of proposals of suggestions reflecting people's different interests some are strong some are weak some are rich some are poor so R says imagine instead that we are gathered in an original position of equality and what assures the equality is the veil of ignorance imagine that we are all behind a veil of ignorance which temporarily abstracts from or brackets hides from us who in particular we are our race our class our place in society our strengths our weaknesses whether we're healthy or unhealthy then and only then R says the principles we would agree to would be principles of Justice that's how the hypothetical contract Works what is the moral force of this kind of hypothetical agreement is it stronger or weaker than a real agreement an actual social contract in order to answer that question we have to look hard at the moral force of actual contract there are really two questions here one one of them is how do actual contracts bind me or obligate me question number one and question number two how do actual real life contracts justify the terms that they produce if you think about it this is in line with walls and K the answer to the second question how do actual contracts justify the terms that they produce the answer is they don't at least not on their own actual contracts are not self-sufficient moral instruments of any actual contract or agreement it can always be asked is it fair what they agreed to the fact of the agreement never guarantees the fairness of the agreement and we know this by looking at our own Constitutional Convention It produced a constitution that permitted slavery to persist it was agreed to it was an actual contract but that doesn't establish that the laws agreed to all of them were just well then what is the moral force of actual contracts to the extent that they bind us they obligated in two ways suppose maybe here it would help to take an example we make an agreement a commercial agreement I promise to pay you $100 if you will go Harvest and bring to me a 100 lobsters we make a deal you go out and harvest them and bring them to me I eat the lobsters serve them to my friends and then I don't pay and you say but you're obligated and I say why what do you say well we had a deal and you benefited you ate all those lobsters well that's a pretty strong argument it's an argument that depends though on the fact that I benefited from your labor so contracts sometimes bind us in so far as they are instruments of mutual benefit I ate the lobsters I owe you the $100 for having gathered them but suppose now take a second case we make this deal I'll pay you $100 for 100 lobsters and 2 minutes later before you've gone to any work I call you back and say I've changed my mind now there's no benefit there's no work on your part so there's no element of reciprocal exchange what about in that case do I still owe you merely in virtue of the fact that we had an agreement who says those of you who say yes I still owe you why okay stand up why do I owe you I call you back after two minutes you haven't done any work um I think I spent a time and effort in uh drafting this contract with you and also have emotional expectation that I'll go through the work so you took time to draft the contract but we did it very quickly we just chatted on the phone that wouldn't be a for form of contract though well I faxed it to you it only took a minute as long as any uh effort is involved I would say that the contract is valid and it should take effect but why what was what morally can you point to that obligates me I admit that I agreed but you didn't go to any work I didn't enjoy any benefit because one my mentally go through all the work of harvesting the lobsters you mentally went through the work of harvesting the lobsters that's nothing is it it's not much is it worth $100 that you were imagining yourself going and collecting up it may not worth $100 but it may worth something to some people all right I'll give you a buck for it for that but what what I so you're still pointing what's interesting you're still pointing to the re reciprocal dimension of contracts you did or imagined that you did or looked forward to doing something on my behalf for example two people agree to be married and one suddenly calls the other in two minutes say I changed my mind does the uh contract have obligation on both sides nobody has paid any um work or nobody has benefited yet well I'm tempted to say no fine J all right what's your name Julian thank you Julian all right that was good now is there anyone who has who agrees with Julian that I still owe the money for any other reason now I have go ahead stand up I think if you back out it sort of cheapens the institution of contracts good but why why does it well I think this is kind of content but there's you know almost there's a certain intrinsic value in being able to make contracts and having you knowing that people will expect that you'll go through with that good there is some it would cheapen the whole idea of contracts which has to do with taking an obligation on myself is that is that the idea yeah I think so what's your name Adam so Adam points instead not to any reciprocal benefit or Mutual exchange but to the mere fact of the agreement itself we see here there are really two different ways in which actual contracts generate obligations one has to do with the act of consent as a voluntary act and it points Adam said this was a conent idea and I think he's right because it points to the ideal of autonomy when I make a contract the obligation is one that is self-imposed and that carries a certain moral weight independent of other considerations and then there's a second element of the moral force of contract arguments which has to do with the sense in which actual contracts are instruments of mutual benefit and this points toward the ideal of reciprocity that obligation can arise I can have an obligation to you in so far as you do something for me now we're investigating the moral force and also the moral limits of actual contracts and here I would like to advance an argument about the moral limits of actual contracts now that we know what moral ingredients do the work when people come together and say I will do this if you do that I would like to argue first that the fact that two people agree to some exchange does not mean that the terms of their agreement are fair when my two sons were young they collected baseball cards and traded them and one was there was a 2-year age there is a 2-year age difference between them and so I had to Institute a rule about the trades that no trade was complete until I had approved it and the reason is obvious the older one knew more about the value of these cards and so would take advantage of the younger one so that's why I had to review it to make sure that the agreement that the agreements were Fair now you may say well this is paternalism of course it was that's what paternalism is for that kind of thing so what what does this show what does the baseball card example show the fact of an agreement is not sufficient to establish the fairness of the terms I read some years ago of a case in Chicago there was an elderly Widow an 84 year-old Widow named Rose who had a problem in her apartment with a leaky toilet and she signed a contract with an unscrupulous contractor who offered to repair her leaky toilet in exchange for $50,000 but she had agreed she was of sound mind maybe terribly naive and unfamiliar with the price of Plumbing she had made this agreement luckily it was discovered she went to the bank and asked to withdraw $25,000 and the teller said what do you need need all of that money for and she said well I have a leaky toilet and the teller called authorities and they discovered this unscrupulous contractor now I suspect that even the most Ardent contractarians in the in the room will agree that the fact of This Woman's agreement is not a sufficient condition of the agreement being fair is there anyone who will dispute that no one am I missing anyone Alex where are you where are you so um maybe there's no dispute then to my first claim that the that an actual agreement is not necessary to their it's not a efficient condition of there being an obligation I want to now make a a stronger maybe more controversial Claim about the moral limits of actual contracts that a contract or an act of consent is not only not sufficient but it's not even a necessary condition of there being an obligation and the idea here is that if there is reciprocity if there is an exchange then a receipt of benefits there can be an obligation even without an act of consent one great example of this involves the 18th century philosopher the Scottish moral philosopher David Hume when he was young Hume wrote a book arguing against loide aidea of an original social contract Hume Heap scorned on this contractarian idea he said it was a philosophical fiction one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible operations that can possibly Be Imagined this idea of the social contract many years later when he was 62 years old Hume had an experience that put to the test his rejection of consent as the basis of obligation Hume had a house in Edinburgh he rented it to his friend James Boswell who in turn subl it to a subtenant the subtenant decided that the house needed some repairs and a paint job he hired a contractor to do the work the painter did the work and sent the bill to Hume Hume refused to pay on the grounds that he hadn't consented he hadn't hired the painter the case went to court the contractor said it's true Hume didn't agree but the house needed a painting and I gave it a very good one Hume thought this was a bad argument the only argument this painter makes is that the work was necessary to be done but this is no good answer because by the same rule this painter may go through every house in Edinburgh and do what he thinks proper to be done without the landlord's consent and give the same reason that the work was necessary and that the house was the better for it so Hume didn't like the theory that there could be obligation to repay a benefit without consent but the defense failed and he had to pay let me give you one other example of the distinction between the consent based aspect of obligations and the benefit-based aspect and how they sometimes run together this is based on a personal experience some years ago I was driving across the country with some friends and we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere in Hammond Indiana we stopped at a rest stop and got out of the car and when we came back our car wouldn't start none of us knew much about cars we didn't really know what to do until we noticed that in the parking lot driving up next to us was a van and on the side it said Sam's mobile repair van and out of the van came a man presumably Sam and he came up to us us and he said can I help you here's how I work I work by the hour for $50 an hour if I fix your car in five minutes you owe me the $50 and if I work on your car for an hour and can't fix it you'll still owe me the $50 so I said well what is the likelihood that you'll be able toix taks the car in he didn't answer but he did start looking under the poking around under the steering column short time passed he emerged from under the steering column and said there's nothing wrong with the ignition system but you still have 45 minutes left should I look under the hood I said wait a minute I haven't hired you we haven't made any agreement and then he became very angry and he said do you mean to say that if I had fixed your car while I was working under the steering column that you wouldn't have paid me and I said that's a different question I didn't I didn't go into the distinction between consent-based and benefit-based obligations but I think he had the intuition that if he had fixed it while he was poking around that I would have owed him the 50 bucks I shared that intuition I would have but he inferred from that this was the fallacy and the reasoning that I think lay behind his anger he inferred from that fact that therefore implicitly we had an agreement but that it seems to me is a mistake it's a mistake that fails to recognize the distinction between these two different aspects of contract arguments yes I agree I would have owed him $50 if he had repaired my car during that time not because we had made any agreement we hadn't but simply because if he had fixed my car he would have conferred on me a benefit for which I would have Ed him in the name of reciprocity and fairness so here's another example of the distinction between these two different kinds of arguments these two different aspects of the morality of contract now I want to hear how many think I was in the right in that case that's reassuring is there anyone who thinks I was in the wrong anyone you do why go ahead isn't the problem with this is that any benefit is inherently subjectively defined I mean what if you wanted your car broken and he had fixed it I mean no I didn't want it broken yeah in this case who would who would who would I don't know someone I mean what if what if Hume you know what if the painter had painted his house blue but he hated the color blue I mean you have to sort of Define what your benefit is before the person does it well all right so what would you conclude from that though for the larger issue here would you conclude that therefore consent is a necessary condition of there being an obligation absolutely you would what's your name Nate because otherwise how can we know Nate says whether there has been an exchange of equivalent or Fair benefits unless we have the sub valuation which may vary one person to the next of the situation all right that's a fair challenge let me put to you one other example in order to test the relation between these two aspects of the morality of contract suppose I get married and suppose I discover that after 20 years of faithfulness on my part every year on our trip across the country my wife has has been seeing another man a man with a van on the Indiana troll Road this part is completely made up by the way wouldn't I have two different reasons for moral outrage one reason could be we had an agreement she broke her promise referring to the fact of her consent but I would also have a second ground for moral outrage having nothing to do with the contract as such but I've been so faithful for my part surely I deserve better than this is this what I'm do in return and so on so that would point to the element of reciprocity each reason has an independent moral Force that's the general point and you can see this if you imagine a slight variation on the marriage case suppose we hadn't been married for 20 years suppose we were just married and that the Betrayal occurred on the way to our honeymoon in Hammond Indiana after the contract has been made but before there is any history of performance on my part performance of the contract I mean I would still oh come on come on I would still with with Julian I'd be able to say but you promised you promised that would isolate the Pure Element of consent right where where there were no benefit never mind you get the idea here's the main idea actual contracts have their moral force in virtue of two distinguishable ideals autonomy and reciprocity but in real life every actual contract may fall short may fail to realize the ideals that give contracts their moral force in the first place the ideal of autonomy May not be realized because there may be a difference in the bargaining power of the parties the ideal of reciprocity may not be realized because there may be a difference of knowledge between the parties and so they may misidentify what really counts as having having equivalent value now suppose you were to imagine imagine a contract where the ideals of autonomy and of reciprocity were not subject to contingency but were guaranteed to be realized what kind of contract would that have to be imagine a contract among parties who were equal in power and knowledge rather than unequal who were identically situated rather than differently situated that is the idea behind rs's claim that the way to think about Justice is from the standpoint of a hypothetical contract behind a veil of ignorance that creates a condition of equality by ruling out or enabling us to forget for the moment the differences in power and knowledge that would that could even in principle lead to unfair results this is why for content for RS a hypothetical contract among equals is the only way to think about principles of Justice what will those principles be that's the question we'll turn to next time don't miss the chance to interact online with other viewers of Justice join the conversation take a 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Channel: Harvard University

Views: 1,373,195

Keywords: Michael Sandel, Harvard University, Justice, WGBH

Id: KqzW0eHzDSQ

Length: 55min 4sec (3304 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2009