bentham v. kant

[Gamer]

A friend of mine recently said something to the effect of:

“People who get mad about the violence in Ferguson are the same kinds of people that supported nuking Japan. They are hypocrites because they’ll turn to violence and murder innocent civilians to make a point, but when it comes to the blacks turning to violence to make a point, we condemn it. Step back and see the big picture. We have no right to condemn the violence in Ferguson.”

And then a bunch of people chimed in with varying degrees of agreeing and disagreeing. I remained silent.

Can you name all the embedded fallacies and confusion in this person’s statement?

[Prismatic567]

The first problem I note is that of context, i.e. the killing of hundreds of thousands against more millions. The Ferguson cases at most involve and handful or at most few hundreds. The global political situation re Japan is significantly different from the racist element in Ferguson.
I agree the nuking of Japan then was a optimal solution in terms of the quantum of death and future peace.

However in terms of the principles of morality,

@Bertham

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do… By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

A. The acts of violence on Japan and in Ferguson are justified by utility and subsequently avoidance of greater pains in future.
B. Similarly the acts of condemnations by opponents in the Ferguson case could be based on utility.

However in both events (A and B) the acts due to a range of factors’

1. rational ‘computed’ net positive utility
2. Vested personal political, racial, social and other interests.
3. Hidden and subliminal psychological factors.

This is the short fall of Utilitarianism, i.e. it does not provide a framework for deeper analysis and any hidden contingent subliminal psychological factors.

As for Kant’s moral and ethical system [not dependent in utility as its core, but rather on supreme moral principles], it will process the above as follows;

1. Accept the reality of what has happened.
2. Compare them to the ideal Categorical Imperatives, its duty, maxim, laws and rules.
3. Analyze the various gaps
4. Establish corrective strategies to close the gap.
5. Continually improve to narrow the gap.

The Kantian moral/ethical system will drive for continual improvement of human actions relying on the current exponential expansion of advancing knowledge and technology. This will drive humans to dig into all possible contributing variables 1-3 stated above.

For example, with the advancement genomics and connectome*, in the future humanity will be able to rewiring [foolproof methods] each individual to have higher and higher moral quotient (MQ) to the extent that violence is no more a significant human issue globally.

A connectome is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its “wiring diagram”. More broadly, a connectome would include the mapping of all neural connections within an organism’s nervous system. -wiki