Kant Deontological Ethics -- Also

Kant

Deontological ethics -- also known simply as deontology -- is an approach that ethics that judges the morality of an individual's actions based on the action's adherence to a rule or a set of rules. Because of this, deontological ethics is also sometimes known as rule-based ethics because they hold you accountable for your duty. Kant, as the father of deontological ethics, was a deontological absolutist, believing that the only absolutely good thing is good will. The single determining factor of whether an action is right or wrong is the will -- or motive of the individual doing it. For example, if they are acting on a bad moral, for example, "I will lie," then their action is wrong even if there is some good that comes out of the action. W.D. Ross, on the other hand, was a non-absolutist, and he held that because some good consequences can come out of lying sometimes, that makes lying sometimes the right thing to do. Ross's seven prima facie duties must be taken into consideration when deciding if one should do something. Ross's prima fascia duties system is preferable to Kantian absolutism of deontological rules because sometimes there are moral duties that surpass or are more significant than other moral duties.

In looking at the issue of lying, we'll look at the example of a Poker game. If all of the participants reasonably know and expect that the other players will lie, then the action of lying during the game would pass Kant's universal law test ("Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will). Kant believed that lying is forbidden under any and all circumstances. Lying, Kant insists, contradicts the reliability of language -- that is, if everyone were to believe that everybody else was lying when they spoke, then nobody would believe anybody and everything that came out of peoples' lives would be considered lies. The right to lie cannot be claimed it would deny the status of the person deceived as an end in himself. The lie is not compatible with Kant's Kingdom of Ends. For Kant, lying is not allowed ever because lying could never be successful and lying always violates the Categorical Imperative. When one lies, Kant believes that two things happen: first, lying corrupts a person's ability to make free and rational choices; second, lies rob others of their freedom to make rational decisions. In order to value people as ends (not means), we have very strict duties and there are no exceptions to these duties as we can never interfere with or misuse the ability to make free decisions.

W.D. Ross's prima facie duties are not absolute duties and they are different from what he considered "proper" duties. Essentially, the prima facie duty is the concept of a duty and it can be a good reason for not doing something -- such as lying -- but it is never absolute and it always has to be weighed against other duties. A proper duty would have to be acted upon once all the prima facie duties have been contemplated and weighed against one another. Ross thought that all people should be benevolent and so if lying affects one's benevolence, one needs to decide if lying is better for the sake of benevolence.

Ross' non-absolutist take to ethics is preferred because is considers what is morally right in certain situations. In the instance of a Poker game, it is a game that relies upon lying or "bluffing" so it actually does pass Kant's universal law test. Kant would probably not take issue with the game of Poker because it is a game that needs the aspect of bluffing in order to work. But, if we want to use the example and examine it purely from a Kantian perspective on lying, then we must consider that people are acting from a means approach and not an end approach and all of the players have the same intention in mind -- to wind the game -- and thus they have to use lying as a means to get what they want (the pot of money).