I remember I came up with a similar thought experiment to explain the Categorical Imperative.
Assume there is only one Self-Driving Car on the market, what principle would you want it to follow?
The first priciple we think of is: ”Always do what the driver would want you to do”.
This would certainly be the principle we would want if our SDC was the only car on the road. But there are other SDCs and so in a way we are choosing a principle for our own car which is also at the same time a ”universal law”, valid for every car on the road.
With this in mind, it is easy to show that the principle we could rationally want is: ”Always act on that principle which the driver can rationally will to become a universal law”.
Coincidently this is also Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
I remember I came up with a similar thought experiment to explain the Categorical Imperative.
Assume there is only one Self-Driving Car on the market, what principle would you want it to follow?
The first priciple we think of is: ”Always do what the driver would want you to do”.
This would certainly be the principle we would want if our SDC was the only car on the road. But there are other SDCs and so in a way we are choosing a principle for our own car which is also at the same time a ”universal law”, valid for every car on the road.
With this in mind, it is easy to show that the principle we could rationally want is: ”Always act on that principle which the driver can rationally will to become a universal law”.
Coincidently this is also Kant’s Categorical Imperative.