The Issue with Gary Francione and Deontological Veganism?

[brimstoneSalad]

@brimstoneSalad, will you explain what you think is wrong with the categorical imperative?

https://www.coursera.org/learn/altruism ... bjectivism

Thanks Darl, I haven't watched that (not sure if I'll have time).
@Cirion Spellbinder please let me know if that's not an adequate explanation.

IIRC the criticism section on the Wikipedia page is also pretty good.

[Cirion Spellbinder]

I have some questions @DarlBundren and @brimstoneSalad.

(1) In the presentation they gave the example that leaving 1 hour before rush hour would be forbidden because if it was universalized, rush hour would be at that earlier time, and therefore not avoided. Does this mean that murder and stealing would be considered moral since they don’t cause a similar paradox? Everyone constantly stealing from one another does not create a contradiction (just a rapid movement of property) and everyone killing one another just leaves everyone dead, but the action is still universalized once.

(2) In the presentation, the view of R.M. Hare is introduced as a fix to the problem that any specific maxim be justified. For example, if I just drive 1 hour before rush hour, universalizing this is not contradictory. Hare says:

To make a moral judgment implies that the
judgment we have made holds for any
situation, real or hypothetical, that is
identical in its universal properties to the
situation in which we are now making the
judgment.

Given that, what the hell are universal properties? Freckles are an example of a universal property and being oneself is an example of something that isn’t. Why can’t I universalize myself unto others if I can universalize my freckles unto others?

(3) Why is the categorical imperative considered ethical and not a guide of how to prevent paradoxes? Does Kant justify why the universalizability of an action would correlate to its goodness?

(4) What does rationality mean with respect to Kant’s ideas. I’ve for a while considered to always be rationality with respect to a goal. For example, it is rational for someone with a desire to be good to act in accordance to morality, but I would never describe acting morally as acting rationally in and of itself.

[brimstoneSalad]

Does this mean that murder and stealing would be considered moral since they don’t cause a similar paradox? Everyone constantly stealing from one another does not create a contradiction (just a rapid movement of property) and everyone killing one another just leaves everyone dead, but the action is still universalized once.

The assertion of contradiction was basically Kant's argument, but you're right that it's a weak one.

Kant's argument was that if everybody murdered then we'd all get murdered up and wouldn't be able to carry on murdering in practice. If everybody stole, then there would be no property so nobody would really be "stealing" -- these are sort of true in practice.

But of course, that doesn't mean that a society without property would be impossible by any means; simply contradicting the viability of a concept does not prove that concept is actually essential. Maybe we just don't need the concept of property at all, or could do with a radically different one. So, you could go around taking whatever you wanted without being morally in the wrong as long as you didn't act on the pretenses of holding any regard for the concept of property.

A murdered society would probably be impossible (since once murdered it's gone and can't do the thing anymore), so he may have a stronger argument with that extreme if you take his categorical imperative seriously. But it's also pretty easy to differentiate different categories of people and just murder them without murdering your own category and avoid the issue (e.g. murdering children born on odd days).

I'll let @DarlBundren answer #2 because I don't really know the context.

(3) Why is the categorical imperative considered ethical and not a guide of how to prevent paradoxes? Does Kant justify why the universalizability of an action would correlate to its goodness?

He thinks he does, but he doesn't. Just these assertions of contradictions. Kind of like Isaac (Ask Yourself) actually... except Kant made the mistake over 200 years ago while VERY well educated on philosophy and was breaking new ground. Isaac is just repeating the mistakes long since put behind us by any serious philosopher, he's doing it not just in total ignorance but while lazily strawmanming other philosophical positions, and much more clumsily (relying on ambiguity to hide his mistakes rather than eloquently arguing his claims with precision). Also, Kant made real contributions to philosophy beyond his blunders with deontology.

(4) What does rationality mean with respect to Kant’s ideas.

Avoiding his "contradictions".

I’ve for a while considered to always be rationality with respect to a goal. For example, it is rational for someone with a desire to be good to act in accordance to morality, but I would never describe acting morally as acting rationally in and of itself.

That's a question of binding force to morality.

It may or may not be true that we are rationally compelled to be moral.
If the paradox of hedonism is some essential property of mind, then we may be. But that's nothing like what Kant argued.

[DarlBundren]

Given that, what the hell are universal properties? Freckles are an example of a universal property and being oneself is an example of something that isn’t. Why can’t I universalize myself unto others if I can universalize my freckles unto others?

I am not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but I assume that Hare is simply saying that you cannot universalize an action only because you, Cirion, are the one who is involved. You should look at the situation from a higher point of view – as if you were not Cirion, but a random individual.

In other words, we should only take into consideration the universal aspects of a particular situation: those that would apply in other similar circumstances too. "Being someone" can be a universal property - of course - as long as it’s seen in its most general characteristics.

Murdering you is not wrong because you are Cirion and you’d hate to be killed, but because any person who shares your relevant characteristics would feel the same. What matters is the suffering itself – the universal property - not the particular person to whom it's attached.