Socrates Squad: The Case of the Inquiring Murderer

Socrates Squad: The Case of the Inquiring Murderer
In this discussion board, your task is to attempt to figure out some way that you can “solve” the Case of the Inquiring Murderer, remaining 100% true to Kantian Ethics and remaining morally right.
You may solve this puzzle on your own or you may enlist the assistance of others — a friend, roommate, family member, TikTok followers, you name it.
Remember, lying does not pass the Categorical Imperative (neither version that we have covered learned). You are morally forbidden to lie under any circumstance.
Report on your solution
Problems with Kantian Ethics
Problems
1) The Case of the Inquiring Murderer: According to Kant it is always wrong to lie—it does not pass the categorical imperative. Here a problem:
Suppose that your friend Joe is being chased by a someone possesses by homicidal rage and seriously intending to kill him. Your friend Joe comes to your door, tells you he’s going to hide in your shed. Then a few minutes later the murderer comes to you door, banging on it, and inquiring: “Do you know where Joe is?” As a Kantian you are obligated not to lie.
This case seems to show there is something much too rigid (restricting) about Kant’s theory. It seems obvious that you should lie and that it is morally right to try to save the life of your friend by lying to the murderer. If you are a Kantian, however, you could lie, but you would be morally wrong to do so.
Real Life Case: Dutch Fishing boats in WWII hiding Jewish refugees. These unarmed boats were stopped by SS patrols. Were they wrong to lie? It seems that lying was the RIGHT thing to do.
This is a very serious problem for Kantian Ethics. Many people have tried to solve it (unsuccessfully).
2) Conflicting Maxims:
Perhaps there was another maxim that You and the Dutch Fishermen were following: Protect human life against evil doers. Maybe you need to follow this absolute moral rule and not the one against lying. This poses a problem for Kant’s view, because absolute moral rules are just that—absolute. How do we rank them if there are two rules in conflict? Kant doesn’t provide us with a way to do this—it’s impossible. The very meaning of an absolute moral rule is that it is absolute and isn;t outranked by another more important rule. This seems like an intractable problem.
3) Tinkering with the Maxims: Maybe we could solve this problem by making our maxims very specific. So we might formulate a maxim, if anyone in my shoes were to be asked by a murderer where someone is, lie to them. It might appear that this maxim could be universalized—but it would also change the theory so substantially that it stops being a way to formulate moral rules. Once you add personal qualification based on circumstances that you are in, surely you could justify anything you want to do. Anyone in your shoes might do what you decide. But this starts to look like Ethical Egoism. (You become the center of the moral world.) The strength of Kant’s theory was that it universalized moral rules—provided rules that everyone, everywhere would have to follow. Tinkering with our maxims leads us away from the strength that the theory had.

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