The Pros And Cons Of Deontological Ethics

I stand to agree with the statement, it is not acceptable to anyone to commit a wrong against the other, it is wrong for one to fail to observe ethical principle for not believing in the existence of God. One can affirm to theological voluntarism while being morally skeptic cannot affirm without being morally skeptic. The statement is correct, one can do what is generally expected of morally, he/she can be skeptical or not, but fundamentally should observe moral principles. Normative theological voluntarism and moral skepticism is not a coherent combination of views. The two can exist divergently, for the view of being morally skeptical and believing in normative theological voluntarism or believing in normative theological voluntarism and not being morally skeptical.

Unlike utilitarianism, deontology requires that you set certain boundaries to one 's actions. Fried describes that the deontological perception involves taking into account how to achieve its goals because the act has a moral significance. Unethical acts like lying, slavery, denying, and harmless innocence can not be justified, although it could lead to a lot of good in some cases. For example, a follower of deontology would not argue that a person is happy if this happiness was caused by the suffering of an innocent person. Utilitarism, on the other hand, believes it is permissible to inflict an innocent person harm if this causes more happiness as a consequence of the action.

Thus the absolutist critique of the relativist as self-contradictory is not a valid critique, unless one is merely talking about an absolutist who pretends to be a relativist, in name alone. = = =

Kant’s principal of morality is a standard of rationality he called the “Categorical Imperative.” He believes that there is one, ‘super rule’ that helps you decide if the maxims you are following are morally sound or not. Kant believes one’s duty means acting in accordance with certain moral laws/imperatives, “so act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” [Section 2. pg 14].

Galen Strawson argues in his work, The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility, the theory that true moral responsibility is impossible. This theory is accurate whether determinism is true or false. Strawson describes this argument as the Basic Argument. He claims "nothing can be causa sui- nothing can be the cause of itself" (212).

He describes the nature of Moral Responsibility as an illusion. There is an argument which he calls “Basic Argument” which proves that humans can not be morally responsible for their actions. No matter if determinism is true or false Strawson still holds the view on validity of the Basic Argument. The Basic Argument is as follows.

To be able to have a genuinely rational theodicy we have to admit that just due to the fact that we do not like a specific belief, that does not make it untrue. The most popular theodicy is referred to as The Free Will Defense. The Free Will Defense maintains that God maximized the goodness within the world by means of creating free beings. If we are free, that means we have a choice to do evil things; a choice that a number of humans exercise. In order for free will to be authentic, God cannot place limits on our choices or intervene in any way.

Reasoning can be part of evolving of morals but thoughts of one person don’t affect the other one, if this person didn’t internalize his/her thoughts before. “Reason is always slave to the passions.” (Prinze; Bloom 490) Reasoning remains weak and doesn’t affect the moral values without emotions. Reasoning only tells about the facts about emotions tells how they should be.

The Formal and Non-Formal Values Controversy in Kant’s Moral Philosophy This paper will focus on the Formal and Non-Formal Values controversy in Kant’s Moral Philosophy. Primary in this line of inquiry is the question of whether Kant explicitly or implicitly support the formal and Non-Formal Values in his theory. In recent, the Kantian philosophers, Korsgarrd 1990, O’Neil 1992, Wood 2000; as the formal value opponents, claim that such value derives from Kant’s formal ethics where moral law is formal and universal, the universality is a syntactic aspect of every permissible, universalized maxim, which is a formally structured maxim. And the unity of three formulations of categorical imperative tends to emphasize the formal value of humanity,

Free-will is arguably the greater good; we would not be humans without it and we would not be a good creation without choice over our own actions. In protection of that greater good, God does not, and should not, get involved in dealing with moral evil and the suffering caused by it. Doing so would subvert our free-will, and ultimately take away our free-will. Since we have the choice whether to do good or evil, God should not be blamed for the actions that humans make. Following from this, God can still be omniscient (God knows that there is evil in the world), omnipotent (God has the ability to stop evil) and omnibenevolent (God does not want evil to exist, but ultimately allows it for our ability to have free-will).

Even though Kant makes some good points, I disagree with his notion of always

Based of the Non Identity Problem reading, it can be classified under three general principles. The first is that future acts that harm the existing or future person are considered morally wrong. Therefore, acts that benefit future people cannot be morally wrong. Next, we must consider if an act does affect any future person, it is considered morally right to let a person exist, rather than let them not exist.