Q&A: The Categorical Imperative and the Coronavirus Vaccines
The Categorical Imperative and the Coronavirus Vaccines
Question
There are many people who do not want to get vaccinated against the coronavirus at the first stage because of concern about the vaccine’s consequences.
These people do want the vaccine, but they do not want to be the guinea pigs.
Seemingly, this approach goes against the categorical imperative, since those who do not get vaccinated do not want everyone to think as they do, and refraining from the vaccine should therefore be morally invalid.
Is that indeed the case?
Answer
Not necessarily. After all, not everyone can be first. The proper thing would be to hold a lottery, and whoever is selected would receive the first vaccine. Everyone should be prepared to be among the first, but that does not necessarily mean everyone has to rush to try to be first.
Discussion on Answer
Does the imperative also obligate someone who can become a doctor to go study medicine and become a doctor? Let’s assume there would be the same number of doctors with him or without him, and let’s assume medicine is the field in which that person can make the greatest contribution.
I don’t know that your response, Achilles, is specifically addressing my question; it seems more like a question about the categorical imperative itself.
In any case, it seems that part of being a doctor is wanting to be a doctor, and therefore someone for whom studying medicine is not really their thing is better off not studying medicine and leaving it to those who do want to.
Indeed. But it is addressed to you in order to ask what you found in the race to be in the first group of vaccinated people that is different from the race to be in the group of doctors. In both cases there are others who are willing, or will be, the first / doctors. I don’t understand why, in your view, a doctor has to want on his own initiative to be a doctor rather than doing it for the sake of the categorical duty (or for the money and status, etc.). But even if so, there certainly would be no shortage of roles in the world that a person could fill out of a sense of duty and that would benefit the world more than whatever he may have decided to do for his own enjoyment.
I should note that personally I am careful, heaven forbid, not to engage in hair-splitting from my own mind about the boundaries of the categorical imperative, since in my eyes it is nonsensical fiction, and I am wary of musing about it and twisting myself into excessive ad hoc-ery lest I stray into frivolity, God forbid. Even so, when I have come to a place, I conduct myself according to its manners, and when I ask, I ask according to your view.
So it follows that a lottery is the correct method at the level of the decision-makers.
But when there is no such decision and the public has to act on its own, the categorical imperative again obligates anyone who can get the vaccine to go and receive it.