Readings
Texts
- Stephen Goldby, Saul Krugman, M. H. Pappworth, and Geoffrey Edsall: The Willowbrook Letters, "Criticism and Defense"; Paul Ramsey, "Judgment on Willowbrook" (from last time)
- Immanuel Kant, "Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals", Second Section (excerpt, from last time)
Notes
- Kantian Ethical Theory (from last time)
- A Kantian Deduction (from last time)
Cases
- Human Experimentation Cases (from last time)
- More 'Bad Blood' (from last time)
- Students' Little Helper
- Racial Profiling
- A Child's Right to Die
- The Useful Sibling
Synopsis
We began today by illustrating the Case of the Inquiring Murderer, an intriguing Reflective Equilibrium argument against Kantian Ethical Theory which seems to show that the theory cannot rule out the possibility of conflicts between moral duties which, since they are absolutely binding, leave us perplexed on how to proceed. Given the many ways one might have to respond to the case, we set it aside so as to focus on the the Willowbrook Hepatitis experiments as an example where the kantian insistence that we never treat a person as a means only collides with straightforward utilitarian interests in developing medical science.
From there and, particularly, having seen the kantian and utilitarian reasoning represented in letters to the editor regarding the moral permissibility of the experiment, we turned to other examples of the kantian/utilitarian divide, including the many radiation experiments of the cold war and the astonishing Tuskegee Syphilis study.
To be sure, our discussions about these cases revealed an important fact about applying moral normative theory. Theories like IAU and KET, say, are not computers into which we plug a case, hit return, and get a moral judgment. In general, applying a moral theory to a case is vastly more difficult than one would imagine. We should probably think of these theories not as 'deciders', but as frameworks which enable us to highlight and weigh important moral features of particular cases. As we move forward, I will be providing additional tools to help, but suffice it to say for now that the theories at best draw our attention to specific, coherent, and defensible ways to think about the moral dilemmas hard cases represent.
Yet thinking, as they say, is hard, even with such rich resources in hand.
Bearing in mind once again that moral normative theories are not black boxes or moral computers, it may help you to understand how KET is applied in a given case if you to study the following example: