Philosophy -- Kant and Ethics/Existence

Philosophy -- Kant and Ethics/Existence of God Provide an argument in support of Kantian ethics and against Kantian ethics. The strongest advantages of Kantian ethics are that they are easier to apply correctly according to their formulae and less susceptible to errors in judgment or to the influence of subjective perspective. Framing the ethical quality of human actions according to Kant's deontological rules does probably ensure the most rational possible society over the very large scale and time period.

If human societies recognized, respected, and valued categorical imperatives, those imperatives would substantially eliminate most of the potential problems associated with objective analyses, especially in relation to the influence of the motivation from self-interest of every individual. Similarly, Kantian ethics recognizes the importance of the motivation behind human behavior. In general, emphasizing the value of intentions over the value of consequences of human conduct is more likely to result in societies that are maximally rational and beneficial to all.

Since the specific moral rules and ethical obligations are derived logically and objectively, they are more immune to corruption than those derived based on the particular consequences in individual circumstances. The strongest disadvantage of relying on Kantian ethics is that it is insufficiently flexible and cannot accommodate justifiable exceptions to absolute rules regardless of how unfortunate the consequences in particular instances.

For example, if the general rule that is most rational and therefore best for society is an obligation to be truthful, Kantian ethics does not recognize the fact that lying may achieve the more moral result than obeying the rule that is generally better than its converse in most situations. Strict application of Kantian analysis would prohibit lying to a criminal who asked whether a person knew the whereabouts of his intended victim.

Kantian ethical analysis would have prohibited the sheltering of Jews in Germany and occupied Europe during World War II or of assisting runaway slaves cross state lines through the Underground Railway before the American Civil War. Generally, Kantian ethics may produce rational societies but, ironically, the failure to incorporate some means of analyzing unique or exceptional situations as objectively as the logical derivation of categorical imperatives is its greatest weakness. In principle, many exceptions could certainly be categorized within the general framework of categorical imperatives.

That concept is widely evident throughout modern legal standards and exceptions that justify departure from general rules without necessarily contradicting or conflicting with those general rational rules. The Aviation Transportation System Security Plan of 2007 outlines important principles for the effective inter-agency and intra-agency coordination as a fundamental God is believed to have created all other life. Does God exist? God may exist, but it is probably considerably less likely that any God exists than it is that any God does exist.

We know that mortal living creatures exist simply because we have abundant direct evidence of that fact all around us and in our own existence. Admittedly, we do not know how it that anything (such as a physical universe) exists, let alone exactly how it came about that life came into existence. It is often suggested that there must be a God since it is impossible for anything to come into existence spontaneously through "self-creation" and equally impossible that anything existed forever in the past.

Regardless of how elementary the very first particle of matter (or energy) and regardless how long ago it first emerged, it must have come from somewhere and through some process. In the minds of many people, the only logical explanation for the existence of the universe and (especially) of life is that it must have been created by a God. However, there are serious logical problems with that belief.

First, it necessarily relies on completely circular reasoning: either spontaneous existence from nothing is possible or it is impossible; it cannot be impossible for the universe but require no explanation for the supposed spontaneous self-creation (or perpetual) existence of God.

That fundamental logical problem cannot be resolved by defining God as "that which requires no creator" or as "that which has existed forever." Instead of answering the question of where we came from, the supposition that it is the work of a supreme creator only adds another layer of questions that cannot be answered any more easily than the original questions about how it is that a universe either existed forever or suddenly emerged from nothing.

Even without the slightest understanding of how the universe (or life) came to be or from where, one thing is obviously certain: the.