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Maybe Kant would say you should refuse to tell the axe murderer the location instead of lying.

• Ukv 3y ago
  Kant did write a response to the scenario, still taking the position that "Truth in utterances that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of a man to everyone, however great the disadvantage that may arise from it"[0]. [0]: http://www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/kant_lying.pdf http://www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/kant_...
  • masswerk 3y ago
    Mind that Kant was very much about conflict resolution. So, where is the conflict? In this case, it's about weighing the evils of withholding information from the potential axe murder against participating in his crimes by doing so. This should be an easy one… Particularly, this is not an isolated event. Yes, in case this was an isolated event and we were to be challenged on this, we could not reason for a universal rule for lying. However, given that this is a complex situation, while we are indeed failing in what may be expressed in terms of duty, who is going to challenge us on this? Therefor, this is a totally hypothetical argument. Its meaning is really that we can't build general rules on particular exceptions. And, if we were to be challenged on the morality of our proceedings, this had to be broken down to individual actions and the conformity to general rules. The really interesting aspect, however, is this: just by statistical weight, an AI trained on an English corpus comprising mostly anglo-saxon reception of Kant, should arrive at different productions than its sibling trained on a German corpus, which may include a more genuine reception.