For Duty and Humanity!

[whitefork]

Dedicated to Diezel:

As human beings, do we have duties? If so, what is their origin and what are they?

Do duties differ from obligations?

I would like to hear from the Ayn Randians here, since she really despised Kant and believed that the concept of duty was a horrible, irrational, and anti-human one.

(first one to identify the source of the thread title wins nothing).

[Diezel]

Wow, all this time and this is the first thread ever dedicated to me. I would like to thank everyone that made this possible...

I, of course, do believe we have a duty to mankind and I commend Kant for trying to incorporate that into his Ethical theory. I disagree with him on his reasons why, though. He, in my opinion, pushes the "rational creature" aspect too far.

I, on the other hand, believe our duty to mankind is to promote society. Humans are societal creatures and cannot survive (as a species, not as an individual) on their own. They must form societies in order to survive. I believe humans have a duty to other humans to preserve that society, in order to further promote the species.

[whitefork]

I take duty to be absolute, and obligation to be relative. If we have duties, they are inherent in our nature and not contingent on anything that we do.

Obligations are relative, and most of them seem to be the result of interaction with others, roughly speaking contractual.

Robinson Crusoe, pre-Friday, would have duties but no obligations.

Kant's contribution would be the derivation of duty from human nature as such.

Anybody out there?

[arcticpenguin]

For Duty and Humanity:
This is the immortal slogan of the Men in Black.
http://www.angelfire.com/ny/nyuk/stoogequiz.html

[whitefork]

Give that penguin a virtual cigar!

[Checkmite]

You've had a Happy Birthday thread dedicated to you, Deizel, if I recall correctly.

[Diezel]

Quote:

Originally posted by Joshua Korosi
You've had a Happy Birthday thread dedicated to you, Deizel, if I recall correctly.

Your right, I forgot about that.

Whitefork - I'm intrigued with your view on duty and obligation, but can you clarify it a little more. Can you show an example of a duty and obligation and how they can act together, or be seperated?

[whitefork]

OK, say I take out a mortgage. I have assumed an obligation to make the monthly payments. Circumstances may arise where I have a duty to miss a payment because I must spend the money on something else.

Obligations may be in conflict, too. I'm obliged to go to work, but I have to meet the roofer on Tuesday.

A duty as defined by Kant would be non-negotiable, and duties cannot be in conflict with one another, and would always override obligations.

In your MASH example, the duty to kill the child overrides all obligations regarding care of infants and whatnot.

[MartinGibbs]

Men in Black borrowed "Duty and Humanity"

It is from a Three Stooges episode "If a Body Meets a Body", and they are "doctors"

"For duty and humanity"

[DialecticMaterialist]

The idea of duty ends up as a teleological value judgement. In the end you see certain duties as justified because of the effects following through with them regularly produce. If you don;t agree with the ends, i.e. they are not of value, you don't adhere to the duty.

Quote:

Originally posted by Diezel

I, on the other hand, believe our duty to mankind is to promote society. Humans are societal creatures and cannot survive (as a species, not as an individual) on their own. They must form societies in order to survive. I believe humans have a duty to other humans to preserve that society, in order to further promote the species.

In a hypothetical situation, let's say a person manages to come up with a way to live happily entirely on his own, not needing the least bit of intervention from society for sustenance. He can just go out into the wild virgin wilderness butt-nekkid and survive.

Does he still have an obligation to promote society?


Here's another one: Can one be indebted in any way by an exchange that is not entered into voluntarily? For instance: If someone just gives you something without you asking for it or giving your consent to receiving it.

Can any form of involuntary exchange make one indebted, give one a duty, or create an obligation?

I'm thinking "yes", but only to a limited extent, and only if the original involuntary exchange was helpful and initiated in good faith.

Example: You're walking along one day and something happens to you and something happens such that you are unconscious and without the ability to consent to something or not, and someone comes along and spends their time and resources, and risks their own safety to save you - to what extent are you indebted, obligated, or have a duty to reciprocate?

Is it a moral/ethical issue, or is it purely a matter of personal preference, such as one feeling thankful and wanting to reciprocate in some way, or doing so as a matter of amoral utility? Can morality even be sepperated meaningfully from utility?


I suppose a more cogent question is, "Does any objective - non-subjective/personal - duty or obligation exist in the above scenario?"

[Ladewig]

Quote:

It is from a Three Stooges episode "If a Body Meets a Body", and they are "doctors"

"For duty and humanity"

Thanks for the reference. When I saw the threadd's title I knew it looked familiar but I didn't know why.

[Yahzi]

Whitefork, I don't understand your the difference between duty and obligation, except to put as this: duties are obligations you are born with.

I believe in absolute (or at least objective) morality, so yes, I think you have an innate duty to propagate the welfare of your species. I also think that if you wish to possess certain goods like freedom, then you are duty-bountd to pay the fair price for them - but I suspect you would classify this as obligation.

Perhaps I do reject the notion of duty, in the sense that if you do not wish to have freedom, I don't think you have to pay for it. I think you can choose suicide. If I believed in duty, then I wouldn't allow you to opt out of the deal. We spend lots of time and money raising people to adulthood - do they have the right to kill themselves before society has gotten enough work out of them to pay for all that? I say yes, your right to self-determination trumps all other obligations. Does that count as rejecting duty?

[whitefork]

Quote:

Originally posted by Yahzi
I say yes, your right to self-determination trumps all other obligations. Does that count as rejecting duty?

Nice point: I offer this hypothetical in response. (Please note the IF)

If the right to self-determination trumps all (other) obligations, then self determination is a duty.

As to being born with duties, the argument would be that one component of human nature is that you have duties, and these can (or ought to be) derivable from your human nature as such. What they are, that's practical question (and after all, Kant's book is called The Critique of Practical Reason).

[ebola]

Rand's hatred of the concept of duty lies in the idea of need; that need could not be a sufficient reason to take someone else's property. Her ethics ( and the foundation of the US ) are based on the idea that all rights arise from the individual, and it is only by the consent of the individual that these rights are abridged for the good of society. She felt that when an individual who had earned his property had it seized by an individual who had not earned it ( based on need ), that the first individual had been "enslaved" by the second. It was this that she considered horrible and anti-human, as it would reduce the incentive of rational beings to be productive ( which she considered the ultimate virtue ), and would reduce man ( both the thief, as a parasite, and the victim, as a slave ) to subhuman status.

As Rand did not believe in subjective morality, I don't believe she would see any difference between a duty and an obligation.

She did recognize the importance of community, but she based that on capitalism: that people's needs were met by trade. Her philosophy was that everything from the sale of a gumball to true, romantic love was based on value for detriment contract law, whether it was a straight up cash deal, barter, or emotional involvement.

She also recognized the importance of a fair government, to protect the individual freedoms that we value so highly, to arbitrate disputes, and to provide protection from external threats. As such, we have duties within our society, but none which require us to divest ourselves of the fruits of our labor ( other than taxes, to which she was opposed ).

Eric

[whitefork]

Ebola, I'd read the title essay in For the New Intellectual to get the full flavor of Ayn Rand's opinion of Kant. It goes far deeper than individual rights and capitalism. I regret that I cannot with justice summarize the main points here, since I would no doubt misrepresent her position. It's been years since I've read it.

Side note:

Duty vs Right follows the same logic as necessity vs possibility.

If you have the duty to do X you do not have the right not to do X.
If you have the duty not to do X you do not have the right to do X.
If you have the right to do X you do not have the duty to not do X.
If you have the right not to do X you to not have the duty to do X.

[ebola]

Whitefork

I have read that essay. I could have gone into more depth, but I wanted to keep the post relatively brief. Notice how, in the previous post, I completely avoided any discussion of how Rand wanted to replace the existing income tax with an optional contract surcharge.

Eric

[whitefork]

Oh, be as verbose as you like. I was hoping that someone would give a synopsis of Rand's critique, since as I said, my memory is hazy. But just the anti-Kant anti-duty arguments, rather than the full theory of politics....

[ebola]

Verbose?
Here goes...

As I understand Kant ( and please tell me if I am wrong ), his morality has two basic tenets:

The first is to act as if each choice were a universal law. This really is simply the golden rule from another frame of reference. Where the golden rule is do unto others etc., the universal law recognizes that each interaction an individual initiates with others, others are initiating with him. It ends up being the same thing. This is not where Rand had her problems with Kant.

In the second tenet, Kant posits that there are two motives for any act:

1) From inclination or desire

2) Out of a sense of duty

Kant holds that an act is virtuous only if it performed out of a sense of duty. Where an individual is inclined to act out of a sense of duty, the greater the sense of duty ( and the the less the inclination to act ), the more virtuous the act is. The short of it is, the less you want to do something, the more virtuous you are when you do it. This is bizarre, as I am about to explain, and the major sticking point with Rand.

Suppose you live in a cookie cutter suburban house in a ubiquitous suburban subdivision, and you have the Smith family living to your left, and the Jones family to the right. Suppose you host a nice Saturday afternoon barbeque, and invite both families, and they both attend, and enjoy themselves. Smith then says "This is a great idea. We should do this again next week at my house." Whereupon, the next Saturday the three families all meet at the Smiths' house and again enjoy the afternoon meal which the Smiths prepared not out of any sense of duty, but because they genuinely enjoyed everyone's company and were inclined to host out of the desire to do so. At this point, Jones looks around, a little guiltily, and realizes that he probably ought to reciprocate. He says "We need to do this at my house next week." Now Jones really does not want to host an afternoon barbeque, in fact, no one in the family enjoys preparing food, or for that matter, shopping for it. They hate the thought of cleaning up before the guests arrive, they hate the thought of cleaning up after the guests leave, and they really would rather spend the weekend alone, but, out of a sense of duty, they prepare a meal comparable to the first two, and everyone again enjoys a fine afternoon barbeque.

Who acted most virtuously? It is the same act performed by all three families, but Kant holds, because the Jones family acted out of a sense of duty, rather than inclination or desire, that they have acted most virtuously. Like I said, bizarre.

Rand's major heartburn comes because this morality eliminates any form of values. In order for an act to be virtuous, it does not have to be good, it only has to be undertaken out of a sense of duty. You can perform tasks in the most slipshod manner possible, but if the act was derived from a sense of duty, then you have behaved virtuously, despite the fact that your inferior work might need to be completely undone and redone. In the above example, the Jones family would still be morally superior despite the relative quality of the meals, if, for example, the Jones family served beans and franks, while the first two events were surf and turf. According to Kant, the sole criteria for virtue is duty. According to Rand, this is ludicrous.

Rand postulates three major values:

1) Reason
2) Purpose
3) Self Esteem

From these descend the three major virtues:

1) Rationality
2) Productivity
3) Pride

As we can see from the above example, Kant's definition of virtue is irrational and incoherent. Asking someone to perform out of duty rather than inclination is counter-productive, and subjugating the self to act only from a sense of duty degrades and eventually eliminates self esteem. This is why Rand despised Kant; that his moral code denied the self and replaced it with duty, and that he failed to identify any objective good.

That wasn't too long, was it?

Eric

[whitefork]

Nice summary there, Eric. Thank you.

I can't give an adequate response right now, but I've always believed that she misrepresents Kant (and I believe that you've stated her views correctly here).

Perhaps someone like Diezel can address these points. I'll probably return to this in a couple of days in any case.