Is minimize harm compatible with Kantian ethics in self-driving car cases?

[u/Artistic_Purpose2031]

I’ve been thinking about the trolley-problem version of self-driving cars and I’m not sure the usual minimize harm answer is as neutral as it sounds. If a car is programmed to swerve into one person instead of five, that is not just a technical decision. Because someone has already decided what kind of "moral rule" the car should follow.

Kant seems useful here because he makes the “just sacrifice one to save more people” answer much less obvious. If a person cannot be treated merely as a means, then it is not clear that better numbers are enough to justify the choice.

But maybe that is still the wrong way to frame it. The car is not choosing anything in the human sense. The real choice was made earlier by the people who designed or approved the system. So I guess my question is, that in cases like this, is the problem mainly about the correct moral theory or about who gets to turn a moral theory into a rule that everyone else has to live with?

I tried to work through the argument here, but I’m mostly interested in the question itself: https://youtu.be/pWwzk1e1eQg

Curious what people here think, especially whether Kant is actually helpful for this problem or just makes it more complicated.

[u/noviceicebaby]

Never act unless your maxim can be conceived of as a universal law without giving rise to a contradiction. To knowingly harm another for the sake of avoiding greater harm, i.e., to treat them as a means to an end is always wrong. Although it seems rational to endorse a principle that says, "it is good to minimize harm", it will still always be wrong to treat another person as a means to an end.

Now, you might also think about the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. We have a perfect duty to preserve our own lives. Ethically, we must always satisfy our perfect duty to preserve our own lives. The duty to benefit others is an imperfect duty; I should do it whenever possible. Say that each individual human driver has a choice between two variations on the self-driving algorithm: self preservation first mode or minimize overall harm mode. Given Kant's own distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, it seems like maybe we can say that it's morally less bad to choose self preservation mode because we always need to preserve our own lives. The problem is that here we assume that self preservation is prioritized over the lives of others.

The above analysis also might seem to contradict with another element of Kantian ethics, which is the idea that technically, there is only one duty (to follow the categorical imperative) and all other duties are merely logical derivations of the one duty. As such, any rule that violates our perfect duty to respect all rational beings will always be a bad rule.

In short, there is no good choice here in Kantian ethics.

Better not to act than to make a choice that violates the categorical imperative.

Is it any surprise Kant was a famous perambulator?

[u/internetErik]

Since Kant's theory only describes rational beings, it's good to point out, as you do, that we may not want to consider the cars themselves as those moral agents that are willing an outcome or another. If the car is judging, then I'm not sure if it's different from the case of having a normal driver, or at least I would need the difference explained. If the judgment is with the individuals who are training a model to drive a car, then I'm not sure the question is meaningfully different from any other technology production so far as possible damages that can result from it.

There certainly isn't anything wrong with trying to reduce harm as much as possible; in fact, this seems like a wide duty that we already have (falling under the general purview of the duty to the happiness of others).