Week 12 Philosophy - Draft 1, I Kant believe it's not socially constructed

This topic submitted by Tony Wentz, Creighton Bradler (wentzar@muohio.edu, bradlecc@muohio) at 6:29 pm on 2/5/01. Additions were last made on Friday, November 22, 2002. Section: Myers.

In his description human nature, Immanuel Kant states that "sometimes we accept an obligation, a moral "ought", a reason for action that holds irrespective of one's self-interested desires and may even go against them." (Stevenson, Haberman 118) Kant calls this sense of obligation to do the "right thing" in certain situations the categorical imperative. Is this categorical imperative inherent in us as humans, a gene or set of genes that has proven itself reproductively beneficial through natural selection , or is this sense of moral obligation a social construct, a learned set of behavior taught by relatives or culture?

We say we ain't ought to do anything.
Our prediction: in the absence of social consequence the categorical imperative disappears; that is to say as the likelihood of social consequences for one's actions decrease the strength of moral obligation also decreases. The categorical imperative is a social mechanism. We believe people act on the hypothetical imperative. In this explanation of human behavior we act in ways that we believe most effective to fulfilling our desires.

We plan to design a "survey" which presents two or three hypothetical situations. In the context of each situation we will ask people if they would act morally as the chance of facing social consequence rises and falls. We do not expect factors such as age, gender, or geographic location (Main vs. Western) to affect the participants replies but we will be collecting this information to see if any interesting trends materialize.
Potential Research design: We would like to set up some real life situations involving some of the ideas we are attempting to test. We are thinking of how to deal with things like informed consent and avoiding unnecessary stress to the participants, so for now we're sticking to the survey format

Preliminary Sources

Munsen, Ronald. Intervention and Reflections. “Moral Principles, Ethical Theories, and Medical Decisions: An Introduction.” 1988.

Stevenson, Leslie, Haberman, David L. -Ten Theories of Human Nature- Oxford University Press. New York: 1998.

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