all right hey guys welcome back today we're gonna be covering chapters nine and ten of our elements in wall and philosophy textbook so we're essentially getting into de ontology or damned logical ethics so chapter 9 begins with this question are there moral rules and it says you may not do evil that good may come this is from st. Paul in his letter to the Romans otherwise the in stone justified the means right so they begin in chapter 9 by talking about the creation of the atomic bomb and you know whenever Truman took over as president they said hey this is something that we've been building on it's in the works and we think that this could end the war there were originally planning on invading Japan like we did with Germany basically another d-day type invasion but this one was expect to be even bloodier and more gruesome and more lives lost and instead Truman decided to drop two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and this effectively ended the war but also it came at the cost of many many civilians innocent civilians in Japan and so it's like yeah this was this horrible thing but in the end maybe it was for the better we didn't justify the means right and it even says that Truman slept like a baby in this however there was Elizabeth Anscombe she was she's still considered one of the greatest philosophers especially British philosopher she was also very devout Catholic and she was very much against the atomic bomb and in fact she protested Truman and said that he was a murderer and she believed that Truman you know killed all these innocent people it should be stood on trial and Truman believes that he was justified and so this question that we have to grapple with is like well who's right you know do the ends justify the means or are there these imperative rules are these absolute rules that we can never disobey that we must always follow as you know Anscombe might be one to say so looking on 135 here's this first quote it's gonna be starting around halfway down the page for Anne's comb this is not good enough for men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their end she wrote is always murder to the argument that the bombing saved more lives and they took she replied come now if you had to choose between boiling one baby and letting some frightful disaster befall a thousand people or a million people if thousand is not enough what would you do in Sequim example is act the bomb blast at Hiroshima which ignited birds in midair did lead to babies being boiled people died in rivers reservoirs and cisterns trying in vain to escape the heat in saloons point was that some things may not be done no matter what it does not matter if we could accomplish some great good by boiling a baby it is simply wrong so enscombe says that you know essentially there are these exception lists or absolute moral rules hold on giving a supportassist I'm gonna stop that and so I want you to think like do you think that you know there's ever a situation where it's okay to boil a baby or kill an innocent person for the greater good so to speak do the ends justify the means and at what point do the and justify the means if at all so then we're getting into the categorical imperative so this is coming from Conte Conte may not be the first day oncologist but he's definitely the most popular and he really advanced a lot of deontological ethics one of his biggest contributions was the categorical imperative and so he says before the 20th the book says on 136 this is a long segment but it's really important I don't want to have to try to summarize this I just think all this needs to be said but before the 20th century there is one major philosopher who believed that moral rules are absolute Immanuel Kant 1724 to 1804 argue that lying is wrong under any circumstances he did not appeal to religion instead he held that lying is forbidden by reason itself to see how he reached this conclusion let's look at his general theory of ethics Khan observed that the word aunt is often used non morally for instance if you want to become a better chess player you want to study the game to magnus carlsen if you want to go to college you ought to take the SAT much of our conduct is governed by such odds the pattern is this we have a certain desire to become a better chess player to go to college we recognize that a certain course of action will help us to get what we want studying karlsen's games are taking the SAT and so we follow the indicated plan Khan called these hypothetical imperatives because they tell us what to do provided that we have the relevant desires so that's why it's imperative for you to do this thing provided that you want to accomplish this other thing so that's the hypothetical imperative a person who did not want to improve our chests would have no reason to study Carlson's games someone who did not want to go to college would have no reason to take the SAT because the binding force of the odd depends on having the relevant desire we can escape its grip by letting go of the desire so for example I can avoid taking the SAT by deciding I don't want to go to college moral obligations by contrast do not depend on having particular desires the form of moral obligation is not if you want so-and-so then you ought to do such-and-such instead moral requirements or categorical they have the form you ought to do such-and-such period so that's the difference between the hypothetical imperative and the categorical imperative the categorical imperative as you can't escape it especially to live the more life or to live a good life you have to do this thing that we are all morally obligated to follow these imperatives that's a categorical imperative so you ought to do such-and-such a period the moral rule is not for example that you ought to help people if you care about them or if you want to be a good person instead the rule is that you should help people no matter what your desires are what is that is why moral requirements cannot be escaped by saying I don't care about that hypothetical odds are easy to understand they merely tell us to do what is necessary to achieve our goals categorical odds on the other hand are mysterious how can we be obligated to behave in a certain way regardless of our goals Khan has an answer just as hypothetical odds are possible because we have desires categorical odds are possible because we have reason so it's our desires that cause the hypothetical odds and it is the it's our reason that causes the categorical odds or the categorical imperative categorical odds Khan says are derived from a principle that every rational person must accept a categorical imperative his foundations of the metaphysics of morals in 1785 Khan expresses the catechol categorical imperative as follows so there's a definition for it act only in according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law let me say that one more time act only to that maxim by which you came at the same time will literally become a universal law so and everything that you do you want to say is this something that I think is okay or permissible for everybody to do this principle provides a way to tell whether an act is morally allowed when you're thinking about doing something ask what rule you would be following if you actually did it this rule will be the maxim of your act then ask whether you would be willing for your maximum maximum to become a universal law in other words would you allow your rule to be followed by all people at all times if if so then your maximum is sound and your act is acceptable but if not then your act is forbidden so it's a lot there a lot to unpacked unpack but hopefully you understand the idea of the categorical imperative hypothetical imperatives and how desires and reasons play into these things but yeah from there you can think of a couple examples how a categorical imperative would be he's self-defeating let's say so I think they give this example of someone asking for a loan so like you really need this loan but you know that you won't be able to repay it um but if you were to you know kind of lie and try to get this loan anyways it's saying that you should always try to get a loan even if you know that you can't repay it and so therefore the categorical imperative would be everybody everywhere at all times should ask for a loan even if they know that they can't repay it but you see how that becomes self-defeating because then banks would not be giving out loans and like because their trust would be gone right or something like you know you should never give aid to other people um well then if like all of a sudden you're in dire need of help and you want something to give you aid then you would not be able to follow the categorical imperative because he said nowhere at any time should people help others but then you're wanting help so it becomes self-defeating and so a lot of this becomes from his understanding online right line under any circumstances Khan says is the obliteration of one's dignity as a human being so he gives two arguments for an absolute rule against lying the first is that it's a self-defeating rule so let's say that I think it's okay to lie and so like maybe I don't want to suffer some consequences and so I tell a lie well then I'm saying that the maxim is that it's okay to lie so far that you know you don't want to suffer the consequences of telling the truth but then you would have to say that you will that everybody at all times should be able to lie under any circumstances but then if everybody always lies no one's gonna trust anybody and so lying becomes moot or obsolete there's no self trust it kind of defeats a whole point um so that's why the maximum is something like you should always tell the truth is a categorical imperative for conte this is a rule that everybody must follow at all times universally so there's this excerpt on the 138th i don't want to read to cover that this argument has a flaw it's argument that I just gave would you become clear with an example so suppose it was necessary to lie in order to save someone's life should you do it complan reason as follows premise one we should do only those actions that conform to rules which we could we'll to be adopted universally categorical imperative premise two if you were to lie then you'd be following the rule it's okay to lie premise three the rule could not be adopted universally because it would be self-defeating people would stop leaving one another and then it would be impossible to lie so then the conclusion therefore you should not lie so although Ansem agreed with Kant's conclusion she was quick to point out an error in his reasoning the difficulty arises in step two it is ok to lie or why should we say if you lied you would be following this rule it's okay to lie perhaps your maximum would be I will lie when doing so would save someone's life that rule would not be self-defeating it could become a universal law and so by cons on theory it would be alright for you to lie and so yeah this is a main issue that a lot of people have with the categorical imperative is that it's too broad right that there's no exceptions and so what if we didn't even make exceptions we just narrowed it down to where it's like well it's never okay to lie unless you know someone's life is on the line then it would be okay to lie and that doesn't seem like it's self-defeating like the book said um and as an Sequim said but you know these are questions that we have to ask and so this is one of the main critiques that a lot of people have with damnit illogical ethics and in fact enscombe is a day ontologies but she kind of limits it to these more specific sets so it's not so easily refutable um so then there's the murder example that they give one reviewer challenging with this example imagine that someone is fleeing from a murder and tells you that he's going home to hide right and so the question is the murderer then comes in and says hey where's this person going and you know do you lie or do you tell the truth for [ __ ] you would have to tell the truth but then you know we would say hey you just caused him to go right to where the person he's trying to find is and you allowed this murder to happen you're partly responsible for the murder because you told the truth like wouldn't we clearly want to lie there and so the way that Conte deals with this question is he says like well suppose that they actually left their home and by you telling the lies saying oh they went that way you know they're not near their home they were out there the murder actually didn't then does find them and kills them then you would be responsible for their murder but for some reason he says that you know you're not responsible for their murder if you tell the truth so it's weird I think the reason for that the book seems pretty perplexed by that I think I can make out a reason for it being something along the lines of as long as you're following a categorical imperative you're doing the right thing and so like whatever consequences must fall you know at least you did the right thing whereas if you were to break the categorical imperative or to err in that regard then you must suffer the consequences of any of your actions afterwards but essentially what Kant's defense is is that we can never for certain know the outcomes of our effects or the consequences of our actions and so because of that instead we shouldn't focus on consequences like a consequentialist like the utilitarian theory we were looking at and said we should look at the rules or the day ontology so yeah his defenses we can never know the consequences so we can't judge things based off the consequences because like he gave in this example well it could be that the guy decided to leave his home and so by you lying you actually helped the murderer find him so because you can't know the consequences instead you should follow the categorical imperative that's the best defense I think I can give so we're gonna look at halfway through 139 there's this other excerpt here whoever lies Khan says must answer for the consequences however unforeseeable and pay the penalty for them con states his conclusion in the tone of a stern schoolmaster to be truthful in all declarations therefore is a sacred and absolutely commanding the Cree of reason limited by no expediency this argument may be stated in the general form we are tempted to make exception to the rule against lying because in some cases we think that the consequences of honesty will be bad and that the consequences of lying will be good however we can never be certain about the consequence of what the consequences will be we cannot know well that good results will follow the results of lying may be unexpectedly bad therefore the best policy is to avoid the known evil lying and let the consequences come as they may even the consequences are bad they will not be our fault for we love done our duty so that is his essential argument this points to make difficulty for the belief in absolute rules essentially shouldn't rule be broken when following it would be disastrous so--that's argument against it so then like if we're looking at this idea of like the known duty we can think about Truman and the atomic bomb you know do we know the consequences of what will happen No so instead we should follow this rule so was what Truman did right was what Truman did wrong according to data logical view and Vance calm being intelligence could see he clearly violated the wall we don't know what would happen if we didn't drop the atomic bomb um you know but for a lot of other people you know it might be the ends justify the means like look we stopped a war from lasting six seven more years you know potentially thousands if not millions of lives more lost you know what have you so maybe it's like this was the best outcome so the ends justify the means other than something I want to think about and kind of consider so some problems that they have um the book talks about with parent illogical ethics is the first one it assumes a very pessimistic view of what we can know right he's like well you can never be confident about the outcomes because suppose this person leaves or whatever and like to us to a certain extent that's true we must have some epistemological humility saying like it's possible something else could happen but I think we could still be quite confident right and that's what the book says but you'd still be pretty confident that like if I were to tilt this upside down the coffee would pour out of it now I can't know that for certain but like that's something I'm fairly confident in so the second problem is that it assumes we were morally responsible for bad consequences of lying but for not telling the truth so that's when I kind of already talked about like the question is why and like I think I gave the best argument I can give and it's really dependent upon the answer to the first problem because we can't know the outcomes for certain we have to abide by you know the categorical imperative or the rules so if we follow the rules were not in trouble for whatever outcomes may occur but if we break the rules then we're in trouble for it essentially and so that's where it gets to that let's exit I asked shouldn't a rule be broken when following it would be disastrous um that's the main issue a lot of people have like let's say look all you got to do is tell this one little white lie and let's say you save millions of people's lives I'm like just a murder example like it will one person like can't we say lines okay then like can't we do that now of course as we talked about calm would say absolutely not but Anscombe and other oncologists would say yeah like but that's because the rule isn't really being broken it's you should not lie unless you know you believe you can save someone's life right that's a categorical imperative not self-defeating that she would hold and so the rules not even broken in that case now whether a down't ologist could think that maybe it would be permissible under extreme circumstances like how tight they are with following the rules I'm not sure um that's something I haven't really looked into it seems at least theoretically possible right there's always exceptions to the rules kind of thing like maybe on some sense you're doing something wrong but breaking the rule but it's justified to a certain degree I don't know I would assume there's Dail intelligent so it called that yeah there's conflict between rules that's the other main thing that we're looking at like the way that the murder example can give is like you should try to save lives that's a categorical rule but also you should not line that's another categorical rule and so these issues come when you have conflict between rules and so any kind of Dan oncologist rebuttal like say hey you believe this rule you believe this rule but we could see an example where they might clash what do you do now so that's where a lot of the arguments against a ontology a curved so you know the book gives this example of it's wrong to kill innocent people and it's also wrong to let people suffer horribly with no compensating benefits and so it talks about in Katrina with like people and life support they lost power they're on these like life support machines then now are out and they're going to just die miserably with like sewage you know piling up in the hospital for like days like this terrible gruesome death and so a lot of the nurses actually went around and euthanized these people to put them out of their misery and you know they were charged for a manslaughter and on one hand like yeah what they did was they killed innocent people on the other hand it's like it also seems like maybe it was an act of mercy this is very similar to Freud the for example we talked about a couple months ago so the question is you know what do we do when these rules differ and what they also say is like and they acknowledge this is only an effective argument against a pair of rules so if the day oncologists can break down the categorical imperatives into really just one absolute overriding rule whether or maybe a hierarchy of rules right we're all these are secondary rules but there's one overriding absolute rule then you wouldn't have these conflicts the conflicts could easily be resolved and so maybe a lot of these down to logical criticisms could be quelled through such an approach some closed chapter nine just gonna read a couple excerpts from 142 and 143 so remember that conveyed the categorical imperative as binding on rational agents simply because they're they are rational in other words a person who rejected this principle would be guilty not merely of being immoral but also being irrational this is a compelling idea but what exactly does it mean and what sense would it be irrational to reject a categorical imperative um the contine twisted to point out that if you accept any considerations as reasons in one case then you must accept them as reasons in other cases as well if there's another case in which property would be destroyed in people killed you must accept this as a reason in that case - it is no good saying that you can accept reason some of the time but not all of the time or that other people must respect them but not you moral reasons if they are valid at all are binding on all people at all times this is a requirement of consistency and Conklin's right-hand man I it this insight has some important implications implies that a person cannot regard herself as special from a moral point of view she cannot consistently think that she is permitted to act in ways or forbidden to others or that her interests are more important than other people's interests as one person might put it I cannot say that it is alright for me to drink your beer and they complain when you drink mine if Kant was not the first to recognize this he was the first to make it the cornerstone of a fully worked-out system of morals so it's a very important contribution of constant illogical ethics but can't win one step further and said that consistency requires rules that have no exceptions one can see how his insight pushed him in that direction but the extra step does not seem necessary and it causes trouble for his theory rules even within a Content framework need not be absolute all that Kant's basic ideas requires is that when we violate a rule we do so for a reason that we would be willing for anyone to accept in the case of the inquiring murderer this means that we may violate the rule against lying only if we would be willing for anyone else to lie in the same circle senses and most of us would readily agree to that so again that's kind of where ants come updates his down to logical view um and the other thing I wanted to point out here that I thought kind of important with chapter 9 is especially content understanding of us as rational agents I think it's a very fascinating move to tie ethics into reason on one hand it seems intuitive but also on the other hand it seems are these things really that connected and how connected are they but it's interesting as well because he has this very high view of people and a very low view of animals um he thinks it's wrong to abuse an animal for example just because abusing an animal would do something to our character that you know if our character weren't ever to be impacted by abusing animals then it would be fun for us to do so and I think a lot of us have an issue with that and part of it too is just you know in the past 300 years 200 years we have understood a lot more about animal makeup and their psychology and such um and so part of it is just you know he's a person of his time but it is also interesting to think like I think there might be some truth to that like whenever a let's say a mother shark eats her pups right we don't call that cannibalism right or murder or you know when a lion eats a gazelle like that's not murder right that we don't hold animals as moral agents and so there does seem to be something about our unique position in the realm of reason as Khan would say that does give us is moral responsibility um so I don't know that's something that I think is interesting and maybe we'll talk about a little bit more in chapter 10 yeah so without further ado let's move on to chapter 10 so I'm just gonna begin by talking actually about Khan and his view of animals and the intrinsic worth of humans so that's the thing usually thinks humans have intrinsic worth because we are rational agents and animals are not because there are non rational agents now of course animals have some sense of rationality but not in the way that humans do and that's what Cohn argues so there's some issues with that there's also some truth to that I don't know I think we can't really necessarily throw out the baby with the bathwater in this case ambience so let's then read of excerpt one from 146 people come believed to have a dignity that mere things lack two facts about people can't thought support this judgment first people have desires things that satisfy those desires can have value for people by contrast mere things have value only insofar as they promote human ends thus if you want to become a better poker player a book about poker will have value for you but apart from such ends books about poker are worthless or if you want to go somewhere a car will have value for you it apart from such desires carbs have no value mere animals con thought are too primitive to have desires and goals thus they are mere things con do not believe for example that milk has the value for the cat who wishes to drink it today however we are more impressed with the mental life animals than con was we believe that non-human animals do have desires and goals so perhaps there are contine grounds for saying that animals are not mere things so although clearly the Rachel's are not deontologists I do appreciate very much the fact that they say look we can even use Khan's framework in a lot of these issues like just because like a Content and know these things about animals that we know today so updating these priors con could also update his views on animals what you think is again it's always best to if you've heard of straw mating it's you know like giving a week or an ad hominem kind of version of your opponent's belief so it's easier to tear down this would be steal meaning is you know let's give them the best possible argument that we can we make the other side and criticize that right but if you actually just criticize astro-man you're not actually changing anything in the debate like I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt the principle of charity right I'm gonna read you in the most charitable way anyways that's just something that is really important in philosophy to always get the principle of charity into steel man the other person's beliefs so I do greatly appreciate that they do that aside aside yakhont second reason would not apply to animals people can't set have an intrinsic worth ie dignity because they are rational agents that is free agents capable of making their own decisions setting their own goals and guiding their conduct by reason the only way that moral goodness can exist Khan held is for example creatures act from a goodwill that is to apprehend what they should do and act from a sense of duty human beings are the only rational agents that exist on earth non-human animals lack free will and they do not guide their conduct by reason because they're rational capacities are too limited if people disappeared than so with the moral dimension of the world the second fact is especially important for conte this Khan believed human beings are not merely one valuable thing among others humans are the ones that do who do the valuing and it is their conscientious actions alone that have moral worth human beings tower above the realm of things and so these thoughts are so central to control system can't believe that all of our duties can be derived from one ultimate principle which he called the categorical imperative Khan gave this principle of different formulations but at one point he puts it like this actually you treat humanity whether in your own person or in that of another always as an end and never as a means only and so it's important to understand this difference between on the end versus of the means and we kind of already talked about it versus extrinsic and intrinsic worth actions accorded be you know a car it's only valuable insofar as you know it helps you get to your ends so car is only valuable like you talked about for you to go somewhere but if you didn't want to go anywhere then the car has no real value versus like people have value in themselves so that's the intrinsic worth and so an intrinsic worth would be an ends treating people as ends in and of themselves to do something for the sake of that thing you know to do good for the sake of the good or for goodness sake goodness we would say has an intrinsic worth versus you know buying a book about poker um as a means to you becoming a better poker player that's your end um so it's important to understand and versus means and he says we should always treat people as ends no that's not to say that we don't use people as well he gives this example of like a plumber comes your house to fix your clogged toilet let's say right and so you're using that plumber as a means to unclogging your toilet but also like that's an agreed-upon thing you're not using him strictly or merely as a means you also recognize you know that person's autonomy and their ability to be a free rational agent and they're also consenting to the fact that like yeah you give me the money and I'll do this thing for you and so we can use people but we're never using people strictly as means even if we use people as means we should always consider them as also ends in and of themselves I hope that makes sense that you can understand how we can say that we still value the plumber we give the plumber intrinsic worth we acknowledge that they are important and that they're a person but also we could say yeah but we also use them on to unclog or toilet so we can use them as means but it's never okay to use them strictly as means or merely as means we have to respect and identify their own autonomy their own personal agency their own value so there also ends and then of themselves as well so then there's the utilitarian versus content on retributive justice the retribution and punishment is a very interesting thing I've never considered I'm looking at down to logical at I'm also not entirely convinced how important it is to dant illogical ethics as a whole but essentially your Tillet Aryans say like you know punishment is only so good as it promotes the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people right and so maybe we can justify punishment because it sets an example to keep other people from doing that same thing and so we do something bad to one person in order for the overall good to thrive so setting an example would be something that would allow utilitarians to be retributivist but it's not that they're doing something merely for the sake of justice right that there's no punishment for the utilitarian strictly in order to get even so to speak whereas for conte he believes that this is definitely the case so Conti injustice is this idea that look you did something wrong and so I have to punish you in order for justice to prevail so it is a very retributive retributive notion of justice or attributed notion of punishment so 148 and 49 is where they talk about that I'll let you read it for yourself so I'm going to look at 151 mmm near the top of 151 it says Khan despise the serpent windings of utilitarianism because he said the theory is incompatible with human dignity and the first place it has us calculating how to use people as means to our ends if we imprison the criminal in order to keep society safe we are merely using them for the benefit of others this violates cons believe that one man ought never to be dealt with merely as a means subservient to the purpose of another moreover rehabilitation is really just the attempt to mold people into what we want them to be as such it violates their right to decide for themselves what sort of people they will be we do have the right to respond to their wickedness by paying them back for it but we do not have the right to violate their integrity by trying to manipulate their personalities those conte will have no part of utilitarian justifications and said he believes that punishment should be governed by two principles first people should be punished simply because they have committed crimes and for no other reason second punishment should be proportionate to the seriousness of the crime small punishments may suffice for small crimes but big punishments are necessary for big crimes I think it's really interesting because whenever we think about respecting human life and respecting human value something more like restorative justice comes in my mind whereas retributive justice seems something that's more inhumane and so although utilitarian concept is not restorative it is definitely more restorative than retributive and what kahn saying is look you're not respecting them by doing that um because you're just trying to mold them into what you want them to be or you're using them as an example in either way you're just using these people merely as means and not as ends in and of themself whereas he saying look I value I valued their autonomy I value them as indignant of themselves and part of it means that uh because I value them as an end I also value the fact that they made this decision and that they are then responsible for their behavior if I didn't think that they were valuable or not an indignant of themselves I wouldn't treat them as a response responsible for their behavior you know like we don't kill a shark for eating its pups because it's a cannibal or so to speak right we don't value sharks under this contine way as engine and on themselves or as moral agents and so he's saying look I tell you them as moral agents that made this decision and so because of that I'm gonna hold them responsible for their decisions and so it's interesting to think about this idea of retributive justice as a way of really valuing people and he turns a tide on the utilitarians and say you're deceiving them as means I'm using them as cents or treating them as ends in and of themselves and so also because he has this kind of eye for an eye justice mentality accounting would likely support the death penalty but it talks about very clearly in the book at least in theory but not in practice so you could say look the whole justice system is really messed up a lot of times innocent people are wrongly convicted and so like yeah like if we lived in the perfect society I would say the death penalty is fitting but because we don't I think it's better to err on the side of caution and so I thought that was an important point for them to make all right looking at the bottom of one fifty three and really all of one fifty four mmm there's a lost excerpt furthermore in dealing with responsible agents we may properly allow their conduct to determine at least in part how we respond to them if someone has been kind to you he may respond by being generous and if someone is nasty to you then you may take that into account in deciding how to respond and why shouldn't you why should you treat everyone alike regardless of how they have chosen to make condoms as point a distinctive twist there is on his view a deep reason for responding to other people in kind when we choose to do something after consulting to our own values we're in effect saying this is the sort of thing that should be done remember the categorical imperative that you will whatever you do should be universalized and kanji and terminology when implying that our conduct be made into a universal law therefore when a rational being decides to treat people in a certain way he decrees that this is the way that people are to be treated those have we treat him in the same way in return we're doing nothing more than treating him as he has decided that people are to be treated every treats other badly and we treat him badly while you're complying with his own decision we are in a perfectly clear sense respecting him by allowing his own judgment to control how we treat him the criminal concepts his own evil deed trial as a punishment upon in itself this last argument can be questioned why should we adopt the criminals practice of action rather than our own shouldn't we try to be better than he is also bear in mind that even the wicked sometimes behave well so we treat the evil evildoer well wouldn't we be also following his judgment a judgment that he is enforced on many occasions at the end of the day what we think of Conn's theory may depend on our view of criminal behavior and we see criminals as victims of circumstances who do not altom Utley control their own lives the utilitarian model may appeal to us on the other hand if we see criminals as rational agents who've really choose to do harm and contain retributive ism will have more appeal the resolution of this great debate about punishment might thus turn on whether we believe that human beings have free will or whether we believe that outside forces impact human behavior so deeply that our freedom is an illusion the debate about free will however is so complex and so concerned with matters outside of ethics that we will not discuss it here this kind of dialectical situation is common in philosophy when you study one matter deeply you often come to realize that it depends on something else something that is just as hard as a problem you began with so that's an important point I think to be made to that oftentimes you start to dig beneath the surface you realize that oh the real thing that you're arguing is dependent upon this whole other thing entirely and you start to kind of unwind the web um which i think is great a lot of people find frustrating about philosophy but I always like to look at okay what are we really talking about here what are we really arguing mmm mmm I don't know I closed my book pay for dramatic effect there's one other part point I wanted to make here like I just wanted to say I don't know I thought it was interesting that like hey because you treated me badly and you've therefore following this categorical imperative that you think this is how everyone should be treated um and that means that that's how you think you should be treated in kind so we're saying look this is the categorical imperative that they came up with and it's self-defeating but we're still respecting them by treating them badly in return because this is what they want the world to be like um now of course they gave some arguments against if it was like oh that's a clever I think it's a clever way of looking at de ontology yeah at least content a ontology one question I wanted to kind of end with with this excerpt is can you be a day on Tala just and non retributive or a utilitarian and/or attributive um and if so what would that look like but other than that if you have any thoughts questions violent objections again please put them down in the comment board um I've saw a lot of great responses a lot of good back and forth I want to try to get that poppin just because I think it's a great way for us to stay engaged and have a back and forth as you know a class anyways I think oh and I will see you on Thursday