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PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
CDT409
Conscience, Egoism, Kant
Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Mälardalen University
2007
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Conscience
Egoism (Psychological and Ethical)
Immanuel Kant’s Deontological* Ethics
* ‘deon’ = duty
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Conscience
Based on: Lawrence M. Hinman, Ph.D.
Director, The Values Institute
University of San Diego
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The Seven Essential Virtues
defining “Moral IQ”
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Empathy
Conscience
Self-Control
Respect
Tolerance
Fairness
Kindness
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Wisdom*
Courage*
Temperance*
Justice*
Integrity
Responsibility
Honesty
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*Aristotles cardinal virtues
The Origins of Conscience
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Etymology:
cum + scire = to know with
As science (scire) means knowledge, conscience etymologically means
self-knowledge . . .
But the English word implies a moral standard of action in the mind as
well as a awareness of our own actions.
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Conscience
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The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct
together with the urge to prefer right over wrong.
A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement.
Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct.
The part of the superego in psychoanalysis that judges the
ethical nature of one's actions and thoughts.
Present in most cultures
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The Biological Origins of Conscience

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Conscience biological mechanism is
probably genetically determined, while its
content is learnt, like language, as part of a
culture. For instance, one person may feel a
moral duty to go to war, another feels a
moral duty to avoid war under any
circumstances.
Studies of brain damage show that damage
to the anterior prefrontal cortex of the brain
results in the reduction or elimination of
inhibitions, with a radical change in behavior
patterns. When the damage occurs to
adults, they may still be able to perform
moral reasoning; but when it occurs to
children, they may never develop that ability.
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Function of Conscience

Conscience is a mechanism which judges our own actions, as
being right or wrong, good or bad, and punishes us with its
condemnation (disapprobation), or rewards us with its approval
(approbation), according as these are, or are not, conformed to
the moral standard.

Conscience implies both a knowledge of our duty and an ability to
perform it.
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Characteristics of Conscience
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Conscience is the steering-gear and a corrective mechanism that
forces us to act in accordance with our ethical norms
Both negative (remorse, guilt, regret) and positive (good, clear
conscience)
Usually only a guide to one’s own behavior - not oriented toward
judging others
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Medieval Background
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Conscience is the power of reason and
discernment applied to moral issues
Develop an informed and sensitive
conscience by living in a Christian
community (defining the norm)
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The Central Question

If conscience represents the urge to conform to moral principals,
what happens in case of conflicting principles?
How to reconcile
– Loyalty to the friend
– Loyalty to society
in case when there is a conflict between the two?
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Deadlock in Conscience
The case of Huck and Jim

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Huck is faced with the dilemma of
turning in his friend Jim, a runaway
slave.
– Huck would despise himself if
he turned Jim in
– Huck feels he is going
against his conscience by not
turning Jim into the
authorities
Mark Twain, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
(Tom Sawyer'sComrade)
http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/finn/finntitl.html (e-book)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
(born Samuel L Clemens)
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a Professional Role

Aristotle defended a strong “unity of virtue" thesis - the unity of the
four cardinal virtues (wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice).

Today most ethicists would agree in sharply rejecting the unity of
virtue.
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a Professional Role

Character is invariably riddled with "moral gaps“. Character traits are
situation-sensitive, moral virtues are enormously varied (and
sometimes in conflict), and both situations and personalities vary
enormously.
(Owen Flanagan in the Varieties of Moral Personality)
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a Professional Role

Moral gaps arise not only from having some virtues (for example
generosity) and lacking others (truthfulness), but in manifesting
the same virtues in some contexts, roles, or dimensions of roles,
but not others.
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Unity of Virtues?
Responsibly in a Professional Role
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Clearly a person's character is relevant to their acting responsibly
in a professional role.
The most important of these are humaneness, self-control, general
responsibility, and honesty (both trustworthiness and truthfulness).
Professionals generally are placed in positions of trust, serving an
important need of client or society. The specific importance of trust
is broad-based and in varying degrees open-ended.
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Conscience in Professional Life
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Issues about private conscience in professional life are
notoriously complex. How far should we allow private conscience
to guide professional conduct when it departs from the moral
consensus expressed in the relevant code of ethics?
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Conscience in Professional Life

We all agree, for example, that college professors should
have great freedom to express their views. Academic
freedom is central to what college professors are
supposed to be.

But what about an atheist philosopher who grades down a
student for defending religion in an essay? The professor
is wrong, of course. The question is what should we, his
colleagues, do about it?

Here, I think, a code of ethics is essential in setting and
enforcing standards-even though codes are always vague
and incomplete.
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Conscience in Professional Life

What does it require by way of setting aside personal values in
order to meet professional responsibilities, to avoid greed, sexual
dominance, paternalism, or conflicts of interest, and otherwise to
meet minimum standards for practice of the profession?
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The Freudian Critique of Conscience
Sigmund Freud (1932)
The Anatomy of the Mental Personality
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– ID (instinctive part, driven by
pleasure and pain, fully
unconscious )
– EGO (mostly conscious, deals
with external reality )
– SUPER-EGO (partly conscious, is
the conscience or the internal
moral judge. )
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The Freudian Critique of Conscience

Freud’s saw conscience as the voice of
the superego
– Initially, the internalized voice of
parental restrictions
– Later, the internalization of
societal prohibitions
– Almost exclusively negative,
saying “no” to the id.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Egoism
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Two Types of Egoism

Two types of egoism:
– Psychological egoism
• Asserts that as a matter of fact we do always act
selfishly - descriptive
– Ethical egoism
• Maintains that we should always act selfishly
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Analyzing the Psychological Egoist’s
Claim
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The psychological egoist claims that
people always act selfishly or in their
own self-interest.
One of the earlier advocates of this
view was Thomas Hobbes, who saw
life as “…nasty, brutish, and short.”
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
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Psychological Egoism:
A Common and Widespread Belief
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Folk psychology
– There is a widespread belief that people are just
out for themselves
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Social Darwinism: everyone is just trying to survive.
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Social sciences
– Economics: rational agent theory
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Foreign policy
– Belief that other nations will always act solely in
terms of self-interest
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Psychological Egoism
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What exactly does the psychological egoist maintain? Two
possible interpretations:
– #1: We act selfishly, or
– #2: We act in our self-interest
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What Does it Mean to be Selfish?
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If we are selfish, do we only do things that
are in our genuine self-interest?
– What about the chain smoker? Is
this person acting out of genuine
self-interest?
– In fact, the smoker may be acting
selfishly (doing what he wants
without regard to others) but not
self-interestedly (doing what will
ultimately benefit him).
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What Does it Mean to be Selfish?

If we are selfish, do we only do things we
believe are in our self-interest?
– What about those who believe
that sometimes they act
altruistically?
– Does anyone truly believe
Mother Theresa was completely
selfish?

Think of the actions of parents. Don’t
parents sometimes act for the sake of their
children, even when it is against their narrow
self-interest to do so?
Mother Theresa (1910-1997)
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 1
The standard view of human motivation embedded in
discussions of psychological egoism sees egoism and
altruism as opposite poles of a single scale:
Human Motivation
Egoism
Altruism
The premise is that an increase in egoism automatically
results in a decrease in altruism, and vice versa.
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 2
Instead of seeing this one a single scale, we can see egoism and altruism
as two independent axes:
Conceptualizing the issue in this
way allows some actions to be
done both for the sake of others
and for one’s own sake, and
avoids falling into a false
dichotomy between altruism and
egoism.
However, an additional
distinction remains to be draw.
High
Altruism
Low
Egoism
High
Egoism
Low
Altruism
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 3
In addition to having two independent axes, we must distinguish between
the intentions of actions and their consequences. Thus we get two graphs:
Not
intended
to benefit
self
Intentions
Consequences
Strongly intended to help others
High beneficial To others
Strongly
intended
to benefit
self
Strongly intended to harm others
Highly
harmful
to self
Highly
beneficial
to self
Highly harmful to others
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Re-conceptualizing Psychological
Egoism, 4
This double grid suggests that any given action can be ranked according to
both:
– Intentions
– Consequences
And that, for each of these two issues, each act can be ranked along two
independent axes, concern/consequences for self and
concern/consequences for other.
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Ethical Egoism
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Be My Valentine?
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“Love, we are repeatedly taught, consists of self-sacrifice. Love based
on self-interest, we are admonished, is cheap and sordid. True love, we
are told, is altruistic. But is it?

“Genuine love is the exact opposite. It is the most selfish experience
possible, in the true sense of the term: it benefits your life in a way that
involves no sacrifice of others to yourself nor of yourself to others.”
Gary Hull
Valentine’s Day, 1998
Ayn Rand Institute
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Ethical Egoism

Selfishness is praised as a virtue
– Ayn Rand, The Virtue of
Selfishness
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May appeal to psychological egoism as a
foundation
Often very compelling for high school
students
Ayn Rand (1905-1982).
(born Alice Rosenbaum)
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Versions of Ethical Egoism

Personal Ethical Egoism
– “I am going to act only in my own interest, and
everyone else can do whatever they want.”
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Individual Ethical Egoism
– “Everyone should act in my own interest.”

Universal Ethical Egoism
– “Each individual should act in his or her own self
interest.”
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Altruism
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Unselfish concern for the welfare of others; selflessness, charity,
generosity.
Zoology. Instinctive cooperative behavior that is detrimental (harmful) to
the individual but contributes to the survival of the species.
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Arguments for Ethical Egoism
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Altruism is demeaning.
Acting selfishly creates a better world.
It doesn’t result in such a different world after all.
demean = degrade oneself
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Argument for Ethical Egoism:
Altruism is Demeaning
Friedrich Nietzsche argued that altruism was
demeaning because it meant that an
individual was saying that some other person
was more important than that individual.
Nietzsche saw this as denigrating oneself,
putting oneself down by valuing oneself less
than the other.
Comment. Concern for the welfare of others
does not mean no concern for ones own self!
Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900)
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What is great in man is that he is a bridge
"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman -- a
rope over an abyss...What is great in man is that he is a bridge and
not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is a transition..."
Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
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Argument for Ethical Egoism: Acting Selfishly
Creates a Better World
Ethical egoists sometimes maintain that if each person took care of
himself/herself, the overall effect would be to make the world a
better place for everyone.
– Epistemological: Each person is best suited to
know his or her own best interests.
– Moral: Helping others makes them dependent,
which ultimately harms them.
Comment. It is rational for people to solve together their
common problems. Building e.g. state institutions, that exist
everywhere in the world means putting energy in a common
societal project that is not in the first place meant to satisfy my
own personal needs.
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Argument for Ethical Egoism: Ethical egoism
doesn’t result in a different world.

This argument presupposes the people in fact
already act selfishly (i.e, psychological egoism) and
are just pretending to be altruistic.
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If psychological egoism is true, then we should admit
its truth and get rid of our hypocrisy.
Comment. It may not make a big difference in a
world of independent, strong and healthy adults, but
in a world with children and people at risk or in need,
they would be put in further jeopardy.
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Criticism of Ethical Egoism
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Cannot be consistently universalized.
(But can work in sports!).
Presupposes a world of indifferent strangers.
Difficult to imagine love or even friendship between ethical egoists.
Seems to be morally insensitive.
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Universalizing Ethical Egoism

Can the ethical egoist consistently will that everyone else
follow the tenets of ethical egoism?
– It seems to be in one’s self-interest to be selfish
oneself and yet get everyone else to act
altruistically (especially if they act for your benefit).
This leads to individual ethical egoism.

Some philosophers such as Jesse Kalin have argued that in
sports we consistently universalize ethical egoism: we intend
to win, but we want our opponents to try as hard as they
can!
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Ethical Egoism:
A philosophy for a world of strangers

Some philosophers have argued that ethical egoism
is, at best, appropriate to living in a world of strangers
that you do not care about.
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Egoism, Altruism, and
the Ideal World
Aristotle
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Ideally, we seek a society in
which self-interest and regard for
others converge—the green
zone.
Egoism at the expense of others
and altruism at the expense of
self-interest both create worlds in
which goodness and self-regard
are mutually exclusive—the
yellow zone.
No one want the red zone, which
is against both self-interest and
regard for others.
Tocqueville’s
“Self-interest rightly understood”
High
Altruism
Kant
Self-sacrificing
altruism
Low
Egoism
Not beneficial
either to self
or others
Drug addiction
Alcoholism, etc.
Self-interest
and regard
for others
converge
High
Egoism
Self-interest
at the expense
of others
Low
Altruism
Hobbes’s
State of Nature,
Nietzsche?
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Sinking Titanic: Egoism vs. Altruism
(Even Risks in Technical Systems)
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Immanuel Kant
The Ethics of Duty
(Deontological* Ethics)
* ‘deon’ = duty
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Living by Rules

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Most of us live by rules much
of the time.
Some of these are what Kant
called Categorical
Imperatives.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
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Categorical Imperatives

Always act in such a way that the maxim of your
action can be willed as a universal law of humanity.
--Immanuel Kant
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The Ethics of Respect (1)
One of Kant’s most lasting contributions to
moral philosophy was his emphasis on the
notion of respect (Achtung).
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The Ethics of Respect (2)

Respect has become a fundamental moral concept in
contemporary West
– There are rituals of respect in almost all cultures.

Two central questions:
– What is respect?
– Who or what is the proper object of respect?
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Kant on Respect
“Act
in such a way that you always treat
humanity, whether in your own person or in
the person of any other, never simply as a
means, but always at the same time as an
end.”
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Kant on Respecting Persons
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Kant brought the notion of respect (Achtung) to
the center of moral philosophy for the first time.
To respect people is to treat them as ends in
themselves. He sees people as autonomous,
i.e., as giving the moral law to themselves.
The opposite of respecting people is treating
them as mere means to an end.
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Using People as Mere Means

The Tuskegee Syphilis
Experiments
– More than four hundred African
American men infected with
syphilis went untreated for four
decades in a project the
government called the Tuskegee
Study of Untreated Syphilis in the
Negro Male.
– Continued until 1972
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Treating People as Ends in Themselves
What are the characteristics of treating people
as ends in themselves?
 Not denying them relevant information
 Allowing them freedom of choice
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Additional Cases
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Plant Closing
Firing Long-Time Employees
Medical Experimentation on Prisoners
Medical Donations by Prisoners
Medical Consent Forms
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What Is the Proper Object of Respect?

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For Kant, the proper object of respect is the will. Hence,
respecting a person involves issues related to the will-knowledge and freedom.
Other possible objects of respect:
– Feelings and emotions
– The dead
– Animals
– The natural world
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Self-Respect

Is lack of proper self-respect a moral failing?

The Deferential* Wife
– See article by Tom Hill, “Servility and Self-Respect”
*Deferential = Respectful, considerate
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Self-Respect

Aristotle and Self-Love
– What is the difference between self-respect and selflove? Clearly, there is at least a difference in the
affective element.
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Self-respect, Self-regard, Self-love

Self-respect: Due respect for oneself, one's
character, and one's conduct.

Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include:
–
–
–
–
–
self-love (which can express overtones of self-promotion)
self-worth
self-regard
self-esteem
self-confidence (a sometimes disparaging term which can
(more than self-esteem) suggest excessive self-regard
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The Kantian Heritage
What Kant Helped Us to See Clearly

The Admirable Side of Acting from Duty
– The person of duty remains committed, not matter
how difficult things become.

The Evenhandedness of Morality
– Kantian morality does not play favorites.

Respecting Other People
– The notion of treating people as ends in
themselves is central to much of modern ethics.
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The Kantian Heritage
Critique of Kant´s Deontology

The Neglect of Moral Integration
– The person of duty can have deep and conflicting
inclinations and this does not decrease moral worth—
indeed, it seems to increase it in Kant’s eyes.

The Role of Emotions
– For Kant, the emotions are always suspect because they are
changeable.
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The Kantian Heritage
Critique of Kant´s Deontology

The Place of Consequences in the Moral Life
– In order to protect the moral life from the changing of moral
luck, Kant held a very strong position that refused to attach
moral blame to individuals who were acting with good will,
even though some indirect bad consequences could be
foreseen.
The Kantian Heritage
Conclusion
Overall, after two hundred years, Kant remains an absolutely
central figure in contemporary moral philosophy, one from
whom we can learn much even when we disagree with
him
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