I was casting about for a quick reference on Kant the other day, in the hopes of clarifying a question I had about how he viewed the relationship between autonomy and moral action, when I came across this fantastic resource . (H/t David Barnes)
Given Tim Carney’s recent look at the bailout , I found the following quotation particularly chuckle-worthy:
How long before the NSF begins funding brains-in-vats research?
Consider, for example, the case (#2 in the text) of someone who contemplates relieving a financial crisis by borrowing money from someone else, promising to repay it in the future while in fact having no intention of doing so. (Notice that this is not the case of finding yourself incapable of keeping a promise originally made in good faith, which would require a different analysis.) The maxim of this action would be that it is permissible to borrow money under false pretenses if you really need it. But as Kant pointed out, making this maxim into a universal law would be clearly self-defeating. The entire practice of lending money on promise presupposes at least the honest intention to repay; if this condition were universally ignored, the (universally) false promises would never be effective as methods of borrowing. Since the universalized maxim is contradictory in and of itself, no one could will it to be law, and Kant concluded that we have a perfect duty (to which there can never be any exceptions whatsoever) not to act in this manner.
