Transcript Types of Imperatives According to Kant

Kant’s Understanding of
Skepticism and Imperatives:
Immanuel Kant’s
(1743-1804):
Grounding for the
Metaphysics of
Morals:
Survey of Section II:
Transition from
popular moral
philosophy to the
metaphysic of morals.
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Section II.
Kant begins section II with problems of moral
skepticism (pgs. 25-29):
1.
Moral skepticism: a problem which troubles moral
epistemology; it persistently troubles the quest for
knowledge, challenging any theory of knowledge by
questioning whatever than be any knowledge or justified
belief at all.
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Section II.
Kant writes:
“Although many things are done in conformity with what duty prescribes,
it is nevertheless always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty,
so as to have a moral worth. Hence there have, at all times, been
philosophers who have altogether denied that this disposition actually
exists at all in human actions, and have ascribed everything to a more or
less refined self-love. Not that they have on that account questioned the
soundness of the conception of morality; on the contrary, they spoke with
since regret of the frailty and corruption of human nature, which though
noble enough to take as its rule an idea so worthy of respect, is yet too
weak to follow it, and employs reason, which ought to give it the law only
for the purpose of providing for the interests of the inclinations.... In fact, it
is absolutely impossible to make out by experience with complete certainty
a single case in which the maxim of an action, however right in itself,
rested simply on moral grounds and on the conception of duty (pg. 25-6).
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Section II.
2.
Several forms of moral skepticism as according to Kant:
A.Form # 1: Skeptic can deny there is any moral knowledge
or justified moral belief.
B. Form # 2: Amoralism: Even if you can offer an
objection to the existence or reality of moral knowledge,
you still have to contend with the amoralist who argues
that justified moral belief is outside the scope of morality.
This notion implies non-cognitivism (in morality) and a
radical view of moral motivation.
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Section II.
2.
Several forms of moral skepticism (The Problem of the Mind):
C. Form # 3: As an evaluator it is impossible to know the
thoughts of another. How is it possible to know the thoughts of
another or that another has thoughts at all?
D. Form # 4: As an evaluator it is impossible to know the agent’s
motivating reason for his moral action.
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Section II.
2.
Several forms of moral skepticism (The Problem of the Mind):
E. Form # 5: As an evaluator it is impossible to know the
agent’s motivating reason for action is his knowledge and
respect for what the moral obligation requires.
F. Form # 6: It is impossible for the agent himself to know that
his action.
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Section II.
Kant offers two responses to Skeptic claims regarding the
knowledge of moral motivation:
1.
Argument from agent’s self-knowledge;
2.
Argument from best explanation of agent’s action.
Let’s take a closer look at these responses!
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Section II.
1.
Argument from agent’s self-knowledge:
While the evaluator may have difficulty knowing whether the agent was
motivated by his moral reason, the agent himself has authority over the contents
of his mental life, including motives. In essence, the agent himself would know
what he thinks, wants, and what is motivating reasons are, especially the reason
for which acts. Therefore, while the skeptic may have a point as an evaluator,
he can’t deny the agent’s access to his own mind.
[I would add that if the skeptic was to deny the possibility of the agent knowing
his own mind, then how can the skeptic himself argue that he knows that he
knows there is no moral justified belief; This is self-defeating].
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Section II.
2.
Argument from Best Explanation of Agent’s Action:
A. Since the function of any hypothesis is to provide an explanation of a
phenomenon by answering the explanatory why-question about it, the
hypothesis counts as knowledge if it successful in answering the explanatory
why-question. Therefore, the correct hypothesis that supplies knowledge of
the agent’s motivating reason is the one that offers the best explanation of the
agent’s action.
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Section II.
2.
Argument from Best Explanation of Agent’s Action:
B. For example: In the case of the non-philanthropist, we can judge correctly
that his action has moral worth if we can establish the hypothesis that he acted
from duty; we can establish that if we know motives from which he might have
acted. We know that such benevolent action is noting his own interest; it
actually conflicts with it. And given his depressed and withdrawn behavior we
know that he has not feelings of sympathy for others. Thus, the best explanation
for his benevolent action is that he does it from duty.
[This is an interesting case because a virtue ethicist like G.E.M. Anscombe
would say that the person who is naturally inclined to do it is more virtuous than
the one who does it out of duty but whose moral character is not predisposed to
do it].
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Section II.
3.
Now we can apply the result of the explanation to the following argument in
order to reach our evaluative judgment of the moral worth of an action:
A.
If agent acts for a moral reason, his motivating reason is
purely moral; it is a moral motive.
B.
If agent acts for that purely morally motivating reason, agent acts
from duty.
C.
Agent’s action has moral worth if agent acts from duty.
D.
Since we know that agent acts from duty, we know that his action
has moral worth.
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Regarding the use of examples, Kant states the following:
“Even the Holy One of the Gospels must first be
compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we
can recognise Him as such; and so He he says of
Himself, ‘Why call ye Me (whom you see) good; none
is good (the model of good) but God only (whom ye do
not see?).’ But whence have the conception of God as
the supreme good? Simply from the idea of moral
perfection, which reasons frames a priori (independent
of all experience), and connects inseparably with the
notion of a free-will” (pg. 28).
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Kant distinguishes between holy and non-holy will. To
be sure, the human will is a non-holy will (pg. 30-4).
1. Pure, Holy Will: The agent’s action is determined
solely by what reason demands.
2. Impure, Unholy Will: The agent’s action is not
determined solely by reason: instead the agent is
subject to the non-rational motives of inclination as
well as to the motives of prudence. Therefore, action
determined by duty is action under constraint because
there are other possible conflicting non-rational
motives for action. The human will is not by nature
obedient to reason.
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Kant writes:
“For the pure conception of duty, unmixed with any foreign
addition of empirical attractions, and, in a word, the
conception of the moral law, exercises on the human heart,
by way of reason alone (which first becomes aware with this
that it can of itself be practical), an influence so much more
powerful than all other springs which may be derived from
the field of experience, that in the consciousness of its
worth, it despises the latter, and by degrees become their
master; whereas a mixed ethics, compounded partly of
motives drawn from feelings and inclinations and partly also
of conceptions of reason, must make the mind waver
between motives which cannot be brought under any
principle, which lead to good only by accident, and very
often also to evil” (pp. 30-31).
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Commands and Imperatives:
Kant writes:
“For the pure conception of duty, unmixed with any foreign
addition of empirical attractions, and, in a word, the
conception of the moral law, exercises on the human heart,
by way of reason alone (which first becomes aware with this
that it can of itself be practical), an influence so much more
powerful than all other springs which may be derived from
the field of experience, that in the consciousness of its
worth, it despises the latter, and by degrees become their
master; whereas a mixed ethics, compounded partly of
motives drawn from feelings and inclinations and partly also
of conceptions of reason, must make the mind waver
between motives which cannot be brought under any
principle, which lead to good only by accident, and very
often also to evil” (pp. 30-31).
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Commands and Imperatives:
1. Rules which constrain our will are commands.
2.
Imperatives express commands.
3.
Therefore, imperatives express constraints on
human will.
4.
Imperatives are prescriptive (ought) judgments.
5.
There are no imperatives or prescriptions for a holy
or pure will because the volition is already of itself
necessarily in unison with the law.
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Commands and Imperatives
(pp. 32-43):
Kant writes:
“Everything in nature works according to laws. Rational beings alone
have the faculty of acting according to the conceptions of laws, that is
according to principles, i.e., have a will. Since the deduction of actions
from principle requires reason, the wil is nothing but practical reason. If
reason infallibly determines the will, then the actions of such a being
which are recognised as objectively necessary also, i.e., the will is a
faculty to choose that only which reason independent on inclination
recognizes as practically necessary, i.e., as god. But if reason of itself
does not sufficiently determine the will, if the latter is subject also to
subjective conditions (particular impulses) which do not always coincide
with the objective conditions; in a word, if the will does not itself
completely accord with reason (which is actually the case with men),
then the actions which objectively are recognised as necessary are
subjectively contingent, and the determination of such a will according
to objective laws is obligation, that is it say, the relation of the objective
laws to a will is not thoroughly conceived as the determination of the
will of a rational being by principles of reason, but which the will from
its nature does not of necessity follow” (pg. 32-3).
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Commands and Imperatives:
Types of Imperatives: Hypothetical and
Categorical:
1.
Hypothetical Imperatives: These express
commands to adopt the means to a given
desired end. The prescribed action is
instrumentally valuable and ought to be done if
the agent wants to achieve the end for which the
action should serve as a means.
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Commands and Imperatives:
A.
Types of Hypothetical Categories:
1. Rules of Skill (technical): given some send, these rules
specify the means to achieve it.
2. Happiness and Counsels of Prudence
(pragmatic): Given happiness as the end, these counsels
specify the means to achieve it. However, the concept of
happiness is not determinate enough to dictate specific
actions as means.
3. Hypothetical imperatives are contingent because there is no
reason to act for this reason if one does not happen to want
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the end for which it is a means.
Commands and Imperatives:
1.
Categorical Imperatives express objective commands
of morality. They prescribe an action which reason
demands independent of any other end. The action is
ought to be done because morality requires it.
a. Only categorical imperatives are practical laws.
b. Laws involve necessity as opposed to hypothetical
imperatives because the latter are contingent upon the
pre-given ends (some possible purpose or happiness).
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One Categorical Imperative:
1. Principle of Universalizability:
“Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the
same time will that it should become a universal law.”
2. Principle of Humanity:
“Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person
or that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only”
3. Principle of the Autonomy of the Will:
“Act so that the will through its maxims could regard itself at
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the same time as a universal legislator.”
Significant Quotes:
“…it may be discerned beforehand that the
categorical imperative alone has the purport of
practical law: all the rest may indeed be called
principles of the will but not laws, since whatever
is only necessary for the attainment of some
arbitrary purpose may be considered as in itself
contingent, and we can at any time be free from
the precept if we give up the purpose: on the
contrary, the unconditional command leave the
will no liberty to choose the opposite;
consequently it alone carries with it that
necessity which we require in a law” (pp. 41-42).
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Significant Quotes:
“When I conceive a hypothetical imperative in
general I do not know beforehand what it will
contain until I am given the condition. But when
I conceive a categorical imperative I know at
once what it contains. For as the imperative
contains besides the law only the necessity that
the maxims shall conform to this law, while the
law contains no conditions restricting it, there
remains nothing but the general statement that
the maxim of the action should conform to a
universal law, and it is this conformity alone that
the imperative properly represents as
necessary” (pp. 42-43).
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Significant Quotes:
“A maxim is a subjective principle of action, and
must be distinguished from the objective
principle, namely, practical law. The former
contains the practical rule set by reason
according to the conditions of the subject (often
its ignorance or its inclinations), so that it is the
principle on which the subject acts; but the law is
the objective principle valid for every rational
being, and is the principle on which it ought to
act, that is, an imperative” (pp. 42-43; footnote).
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