Week 5 post 1

 Lecture 13

1. How can duty and autonomy go together

1. Kant believes you only act autonomously when you are pursuing something only in the name of duty and not because of your own circumstances

2. What is the great dignity to duty

^ Aren't these two ideas opposed

3. acting out of duty is following a moral law that you impose on yourself. That’s what makes duty compatible with freedom.

4. Kant’s answer is that it is not insofar as I am subject to the law that I have dignity, but rather insofar as with regard to that very same law, I’m the author

1. I’m subordinated to that law on that grounds that I took it upon myself. I willed that law. That’s why, for Kant, acting according to duty and acting freely, in the sense of autonomously, are one and the same.

How many moral laws are there?

5. What’s to guarantee that my conscience will be the same as your conscience?

1. moral law trends are not contingent upon subjective conditions, so would transcend all particular differences between people and so it would be a universal law

2. there’d only be one moral law because it would be supreme.

6. How is categorical imperative possible?

7. How is morality possible? Need to make distinction between 2 standpoints.

1. 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.

2. As a subject of experience, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting according to a law I gave myself.

8. Only from the second standpoint can I regard myself as free, for to be independent of determination by causes in the sensible world is to be free

9. If I were wholly an empirical being, as the utilitarians assume, if I were a being wholly and only subject to the deliverances of my senses, to pain and pleasure and hunger and thirst and appetite,and  if that’s all there were to humanity, we wouldn’t be capable of freedom, Kant reasons.

10. When we think of ourselves as free, we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members and recognize the autonomy of the will.

11. We simultaneously inhabit the realm for freedom and the realm of necessity and there is always going to be a gap between what we do and what we ought to do

The Hardest Case: Lying

12. Kant says that lying is wrong. Your friend is hiding in your house and a murder comes and asks you where your friend is. Would it be wrong to lie to the murderer?

13. Kant stuck by his principle that lying, even to the murder at the door, is wrong

1. the reason it’s wrong, is once you start taking consequences into account, to carve out exceptions to the categorical imperative, you’ve given up the whole moral framework. You’ve become a consequentialist or maybe a rule utilitarian

14. Is there a way that you could avoid telling a lie without selling out your friend? Given an answer is true, possibly deceiving, misleading. Is there a moral difference between an outright lie and a misleading truth? Kant’s point is yes.

In A Theory of Justice (1971), the American political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) offers a novel version of the social contract. He argues that the way to think about justice is to ask what principles we would agree to if we did not know our place in society, our class, race, gender, or religion. If we thought about justice without knowing whether we would be rich or poor, healthy or frail, a banker or a bus driver, we would adopt a system of equal basic liberties for all citizens, and accept only those inequalities in income and wealth that work to the advantage of the least well-off members of society.

Lecture 14: 

What is the moral work of consent? What would be Kant’s answer for?

1. Kant’s political theory is about just laws is that they arise from a certain kind of social contract, not an actual contract. The contract that generates justice is an idea of reason, hypothetical contract.

1. 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, Immanuel Kant

2. This is not real consent Because different opinions from people, different interests, values, aims, bargaining power, differences of knowledge, does not produce a just result

3. What is the moral force of a hypothetical contract?

4. John rawl clarifies kants theory,

1. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice 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, John Rawls

The Veil of Ignorance

5. The idea that principles of justice, properly understood, can be derived from a hypothetical social contract, not an actual one.

1. Imagine that we were gathered together trying to choose the principles to govern our collective lives but there is a veil in front of everyone. To hide race, class, etc. This gathers in an original position of equality. That’s how a hypothetical contract works. To study hypothetical contracts, let’s look at real contracts.

2. How do contrats bind or obligate?

1. They are consent-based/autonomous. Active consent of voluntary act, Kantian. When I make a contract, the obligation is one that is self-imposed.

2. Benefit-based, reciprocity.

3. How do they justify the terms they produce? (they don’t)

4. Actual contracts are not self-sufficient moral instruments. The fact of the agreement never guarantees the fairness of the agreement.

6. What is the moral force of actual contracts?

7. First, say lobsters on sale for $100. I eat a lobster and I pay $100. Contracts sometimes bind us insofar as they are instruments of mutual benefit.

1.  Second, I’ll pay $100 for lobsters, but before you go to work I change my mind. Do I still owe you, merely in virtue of the fact that we had an agreement? If you back out, it cheapens (Kantian, taking obligations myself) the institution of contracts.

Moral Limit of Actual Contracts

8. A contract or an act of consent, is not only not sufficient, it’s not even a necessary condition of there being an obligation. If there is reciprocity, if there is an exchange, a receipt of benefits, there can be an obligation even without an active consent

9. Marriage with affair example

1. Married for 20 years there is consent and reciprocity

2. Just married there is only consent

3. Each reason has an independent moral force

10. Actual contracts have their moral force in virtue of 2 distinguishable ideas

1. Autonomy

2. Reciprocity

11. 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.

1. Imagine a contract among parties who were equal in power and knowledge rather than unequal, who were identically situated rather than differently situated, this is the idea behind Rawls’ claim that the way to think about justice is from the standpoint of a hypothetical contract behind a veil of ignorance

Lecture 15:

1.  Distributive justice. How should income and wealth and power and opportunities be distributed, according to what principles?

2. The First Principle

1. Consider major alternatives. Utilitarianism. People wouldn’t choose to govern their collective lives by utilitarian principles, for the greatest good for the greatest number. Because everyone knows that once the veil goes up and real life begins, we will each want to be respected, with dignity (if we turn out to be minority)

2. Utilitarianism makes the mistake of forgetting, or at least no taking seriously the distinction between persons. And in the original position behind the veil of ignorance, we would recognize that and reject utilitarianism we wouldn’t trade off our fundamental rights and liberties for any economic advantage

3. The Difference Principle

1. We have social and economic inequalities. The first principle says we have an equal distribution of income and wealth. A better idea is a qualified principle of equality.

2. Rawls calls it the difference principle. A principle that says only those social and economic inequalities will be permitted that work to the benefit of the least well off.

3. we shouldn’t reject all inequality of income and wealth, we would allow some, but the test should be, do they work to the benefit of everyone, especially those at the bottom. Only those inequalities that work to the benefit of the least well off are just.

4. How about merit based inequality?

1. A study of the 146 selective colleges and universities in the US examines students' economic background. Only 3% of students come from the bottom quarter of the income scale.

2. Distribution of income, wealth, and opportunities should not be based on factors on which people can claim no credit, it shouldn’t be based on factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view

3. John rawl addresses this;

1. Feudal aristocracy: people’s life prospects are determined by the accident of birth. That’s arbitrary from a moral point of view.

2. That led people to libertarian system more or less. Formal equality of opportunity, every person should be free to strive, to work, but this theory is not strong enough. 

3. if you let everyone run the race, everyone can enter the race, but some people start at different starting points, that race isn’t going to be fair.

4. the most obvious injustice of this system is that it permits distributive shares to be influenced by arbitrary factors

5. In a fair meritocracy, the society sets up institutions to bring everyone to the same starting point before the race begins for example Equal educational opportunities, head start programs support for schools in impoverished neighborhoods

6. ^Rawls thinks even that doesn’t go far enough in remedying or addressing the moral arbitrariness of the natural lottery.

7. the fastest runners would win, but is it their doing that they happen to be blessed with the athletic power to run fast? No! So the principle of meritocracy eliminate the influence of social contingencies and upbringing, it still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents.

8. You don’t have to have a kind of leveling equality (handicap the fast runners or make them wear lead shoes). You even encourage those who may be gifted to exercise their talents, but what you do is you change the terms on which people are entitled to the fruits of the exercise of those talents. This is the Difference Principle. Establish a principle that says people may benefit from their good fortune, from their luck in genetic lottery, but only on terms that work to the advantage of the least well off. For example, we tax Michael Jordan and Bill Gates.

9. Those who have been favored by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. John Rawls

Egalitarianism- the doctrine that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.

The Egalitarian Brain by david amodio

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_egalitarian_brain

1. Recent research in social neuroscience has revealed that prejudiced reactions are linked to rapidly activated structures in the brain—parts of the brain associated with fear and disgust, likely developed long ago in our evolutionary history. Does this mean that racism is hardwired into our neural circuitry?

1. Far from it. One of the things we also know from neuroscience is that the human brain is built for flexibility in how we respond to our social environment

2. While normal responses that promote our safety and survival can lead to inadvertent prejudices, causing automatic reactions of alarm and distrust when we perceive someone from another racial group, there’s more to the human brain than fear.

1. We are also wired for cooperation and fairness. Research on the neuroscience of prejudice is simultaneously discovering the roots of egalitarianism—and revealing new ways in which the brain can overcome our initial fears and biases. 

Blink of the eye

3. To understand prejudice and the brain, one must take the brain (and the mind) for what it really is: a survival machine

4. while our consciousness may be occupied with lofty thoughts, the brain is constantly working in the background like a personal assistant to take care of the details so we don’t have to think about them consciously

5. To understand how the brain overcomes initial responses to race, consider its evolutionary history

6. The basic machinery for gut reactions and snap judgments was present in the brains of our distant ancestors, and the same structures are still found in our brains today, primarily in the human subcortex. These relatively simple mechanisms for detecting us vs. them—and for automatically treating “them” as a threat—are quite helpful for species living in basic societies that do not require cooperation with outside groups

7. primate social networks grew in complexity, and the subtle demands of social interaction grew enormously. Alongside these changes came major increases in brain size. Humans now live in a multicultural society linked by neighborhoods, workplace and political hierarchies, states, nations, and global regions—and peaceful interdependence is now key to our survival.

8. the basic machinery of the mind that promoted the survival of our evolutionary ancestors becomes not-so-adaptive for social life in the 21st century

9. During the process of evolution, the brain didn’t simply get larger. It also developed completely new structures. In particular, the mammalian brain developed a neocortex—the outer “grey matter” layer of the brain—which grew atop the older subcortex (sometimes referred to as the “reptilian” brain). The neocortex provides a mechanism for fine-tuning and augmenting the functions of subcortical structures

The neuroscience of egalitarianism

10. How exactly does the neocortex keep our prejudices at bay?

11. While studies have shown that people are generally unable to deliberately turn down the intensity of a feeling or a stereotypic thought, people are quite effective at responding to those thoughts or feelings in a way that blocks the actual expression of bias

1.  people can overcome racism by keeping their eyes on the prize

12. The brain cannot be anti-racist, per se, because it never stops spotting differences and sorting people into categories. But it is pro-goal—and if the goal is to make judgments without regard to race, the brain can do that, though it may take a bit of effort and practice.

Study

13. the neural mechanisms that enable us to control behavior in the face of automatic prejudiced tendencies.

1. one study, we measured participants’ brain activity while they completed a computer task that required them to override stereotyped tendencies

2. In the task, white participants were shown pictures of various handguns and hand tools. Their goal was to classify these objects as guns or tools by pressing buttons on the computer keyboard.

3. But just before each gun or tool picture appeared, a face of either a white or black person flashed briefly on the screen. Given the stereotype that African Americans are dangerous, the momentary flash of a black face predisposes participants to expect to see a gun, rather than a tool.

4. In order to respond accurately on the task, participants need to override the influence of racial stereotypes. By measuring electrical changes in the brain as they completed this task, using electroencephalography (EEG), we hoped to shed light on the psychological processes involved in the control of prejudice.

5. We found that participants with positive attitudes toward black people showed greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex—a region associated with greater self-control—throughout the task.

6. More interestingly, this increase in frontal cortical activity appeared to tune other regions of the brain to perceive the black and white faces differently. 

7. this tuning of perception helped participants to respond more carefully and accurately when categorizing the target pictures (guns and tools), and as a result, their responses were less influenced by racial stereotypes triggered by the faces.

8.  low-prejudice people are more attentive to racial cues—and this helps them adjust their behaviors to respond without prejudice

14.  University of Wisconsin psychologist Patricia Devine describes many self-avowed egalitarians as being in the process of “breaking the prejudiced habit.” Despite their beliefs and their best efforts, they occasionally slip up

15. By knowing that biases work quickly to influence snap decisions, people can identify situations where prejudices may spring up, and then exert greater care in their actions. In this way, perhaps the egalitarian brain can help us build a more egalitarian society