I Kant believe it's not evolutionary!

This topic submitted by Tony Wentz, Creighton Bradler (wentzar@muohio.edu, bradlecc@muohio) at 10:53 am on 2/28/01. Additions were last made on Wednesday, March 7, 2001. 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 have no “genetic responsibility” 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 which states that people do things they believe will bring about the things they want. In this explanation of human behavior, humans act in ways that they believe most effective to fulfilling our desires.

In our research, we have been unable to find any studies dealing with the biological presence of the categorical imperative. Although much has been written about Kant and the categorical imperative we do not believe many studies have been done on it. In lieu of this, we are excited to begin research on the topic. In performing this test, we hope to be able to predict how “moral” people will act in certain situations. In knowing this, business owners and others may be able to set up environments that are less conducive to immoral behavior. By knowing that people are not inherently “good”, society may be modified to direct people towards moral behavior.

The experiment for our project will consist of distributing surveys to Miami students. The survey includes three hypothetical situations in which the participant is faced with choosing the “right” thing to do in three different social environments: when they are surrounded by friends, surrounded by random people, or alone. Each of these situations is framed in a series of varying social consequences. Will people still act out Kant’s categorical imperative even if there is no one to see them if they don’t do the “right” thing? The surveys will also ask the age, sex, and major of the participant. We do not expect different responses to the situations in terms of the participant’s age, sex or major (main vs. western) but it would be interesting to see if any differences existed. In addition, we will ask whether the participant considers acts of honesty, altruism, and kindness to be morally good actions. If the answer to the question is no, we will not use that survey in our results. Since staging our hypothetical situations in real life would extremely difficult to do, we feel that surveys are the best method for determining whether the categorical imperative decreases in certain social situations among the Miami student population. We will analyze the answers given in each of the surveys, and graph the results through StatView. Below is a sample of the survey we intend to pass out to students.

Sample survey
Age___
Sex___
Major________
1. Suppose you are walking to class with several of your friends. You spot a
wallet on the sidewalk and pick it up before any of your friends do. You open
the wallet and find $700 inside. Your friends regard you as an honest person.
Do you...
A. Return the wallet to its owner
B. Keep the $700
You are walking on the sidewalk of your hometown. You find a wallet containing
$700. You are not accompanied by anyone you know, but there are plenty of
people around. Do you...
A. Return the wallet to its owner
B. Keep the $700

You are using a public restroom in a town that is not your own. You find a
wallet on the floor containing $700. There is no one else in the restroom. Do
you...
A. Return the wallet to its owner
B. Keep the $700

2. Suppose you are fishing on a pier high above the water with several of your
friends. A small child who seems to have lost his parents is wandering around
the pier and suddenly falls into the water. You are the closest of your friends
to the spot where the child fell in the water. Your friends regard you as a
person who would make sacrifices for others. Do you...
A. Jump into the water after the child
B. Wait for one of your friends to jump in
You are fishing on a pier high above the water. Several other people are doing
the same. A small child who seems to have lost his parents is wandering around
the pier and suddenly falls into the water. You are the closest out of the
other people to the spot where the child fell in the water. Do you...
A. Jump into the water after the child
B. Wait for one of the others to jump in
You are fishing on a pier high above the water. A small child who seems to have
lost his parents is wandering around the pier and suddenly falls into the water.
Besides the child, you are the only person in sight. Do you...
A. Jump into the water after the child
B. Find the nearest phone and call 911

3. Suppose you are walking on the sidewalk with your friends. You see that an
elderly woman is stopped on the side of the road with a flat tire, and is
struggling to pull a spare tire out of her trunk. Your friends regard you as a
person who is quick to help others in times of need. Do you...
A. Walk over to the car and help the woman change her tire
B. Continue walking
You are in the parking lot of a fairly busy store. You see that an elderly
woman has a flat tire, and is struggling to pull a spare tire out of her trunk.
There are many other people around, but you are the closest to the woman’s car.
Do you...
A. Help the woman change her tire
B. Continue walking to the store
You are driving on the interstate. You see that an elderly woman is stopped on
the side of the highway with a flat tire, and is struggling to pull a spare tire
out of her trunk. There are many cars passing her, but no one has stopped yet.
Do you...
A. Pull over and help the woman change her tire
B. Continue driving
Do you consider acts of honesty, altruism, and kindness to be acts of high moral
value?
Yes No

We plan to hand out 200 of these surveys to Miami students. We feel this is a reasonable number, and we would like to have a fairly even distribution between main campus students and western students. We will also hand out these surveys to students in class, and discuss the questions that we asked on the surveys. Below is a time-line for carrying out our research.
Week 9 Print out 200 surveys
Week 10 Distribute surveys
Week 11 Collect data from surveys
Week 12 Poster presentation

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