Herman on Mutual Aid (II)

In the previous posting I began to look at Barbara Herman's reconstruction of Kant's argument for beneficence in the Groundwork. In this posting I want to look at the second part of Herman's argument and respond to some elements of it. If the first part of her reconstruction concentrated primarily on providing a response to prudential readings of Kant's argument, the second part, by contrast, attends to some questions that emerge from her alternative reconstruction.

Herman mentions, for example, Kant's rationale for including some sense of "true needs" in his view of beneficence given that he has apparently "excluded" empirical considerations from his argument. The basis for Kant being able to do both these things is, claims Herman, due to the way he understands the "exclusion" of empirical considerations. On the one hand, empirical considerations are not meant to account for the "foundations" of morality. This is based on Kant's view that reason itself is not to be understood on empiricist lines. Connected to this point is the distinct claim that moral requirements are separate from any contingent and empirical ends we may possess. These claims about the "exclusion" of empirical considerations need not entail (and does not for Herman) that the "content" of morality has no relation to the empirical nature of things.

Despite having made this clarificatory comment about Kant's "exclusion" of empirical data from his view of morality Herman admits that the presence of claims about agential dependence in her reconstruction of the argument for beneficence might still trouble us. After all, what is to prevent there being rational agents who are not dependent in the way we humans appear to be. Given this possibility it would appear that factors trading on contingent characteristics have been given undue weight in her reconstructed argument and this is important given that the categorical imperative is meant to apply to all rational beings. However, in reply, Herman argues that whilst the fundamental categorical imperative would apply to all rational beings this does not entail that the same duties would emerge from the application of it for all rational beings. So there would be rational beings that would not have the duty of beneficence despite being subject to the categorical imperative.

This implication of Herman's account is somewhat surprising and reveals that her claim about indispensable ends is anthropologically inflected. The duty of mutual aid emerges for her as one that attaches to beings that are dependent on each other in the way that humans are. Another surprising element of her view is that the claim of mutual aid can be said to be met if it is recognised as valid even should it be the case that no aid is able to be given. This latter claim involves saying that the claim is "met" in a sense if it is recognised that someone is of the class of persons and hence we can see that their claim is one we should meet if we can. Even though it may be we cannot meet their claim the act of recognition of its validity is a kind of way in which it is acknowledged and this itself appears to Herman to matter.

This second surprising element of Herman's argument is one to which she pays more attention than the first surprising element. Seeing a claim as "valid" is seeing that it is right that the need it expresses be considered she states and this does not entail that the claim even should be met. 

The next element of Herman's account worth remark is that she takes the duty of mutual aid to be one that is indeterminate with regard to action. It expresses what she calls a "general policy maxim" which expresses a form of intent with regard to the formation of specific maxims of action. The intent is that the specific maxims of action should take the general policy to guide their formulation. This view of the way the duty works is now used to begin to formulate what Herman takes to be the casuistry of mutual aid.

In outlining this casuistry Herman argues that the way a maxim is to be understood is in terms of what is "behind" a maxim. So, using the example of refusing to give to charity, she articulates the very different reasons that might lead someone to adopt such a policy and argues that the general policy behind the specific adoption of this view is what matters. The lesson of this example is then applied to other examples including the reason why someone who has ability and opportunity to help another does not do so on a specific occasion. Acknowledging another's need as a claim on one is taking it to provide a reason why one should help them. Relevant reasons for failing to act on the claim are introduced in the context of competing claims. 

The basis of mutual aid is revealed for Herman to be the preservation and support of persons in their activity as rational agents. The basis of refraining from helping others in general is the threat this may pose to our own agency. The same action may therefore be mandated for one and yet not for another so the universality of the duty is not a basis for claiming uniformity of what is required to be done.

A further surprising implication of Herman's account is that if mutual aid really relates to "true needs" then many acts of helping others that we perform are not really acts that are morally mandated and therefore not duties at all. This view is distinct from the claim in the Doctrine of Virtue (Ak. 6: 387-8) that the happiness of others is an obligatory end for us, which implies a more stringent requirement of beneficence than Herman allows. Herman is unhappy with this suggestion since she thinks if interpreted strictly it fails to distinguish between different kinds of need of others. The passage cited from the Doctrine of Virtue is very thin and principally aimed at arguing against the view that I have a duty to promote my own happiness. Herman also has a more moderate view of the passage taking it to mandate no more than possessing a duty of contributing to the meeting of the true needs of others. 

The focus on "true needs" as the basis of the requirement of beneficence is a way of distinguishing between the help that morality mandates and that which may be naturally given by a kindly soul but Herman does not wish to present the difference this way since she argues that a full Kantian account of helping would attempt to integrate both types of help. The problem with this is that the view of kindness offered still stands as one on Herman's account that tends to be viewed in terms of inclination as when she refers to it as "good-heartedness". This construal of it assimilates it to the position of the kindly person described as lacking in moral worth in the first part of the Groundwork. 

Herman's account of beneficence has, in sum, three difficulties: 1) it surprisingly limits the scope of beneficence to only certain kinds of rational beings; 2) it brings in a view of a relationship between beneficence and kindness that appears to point to a fuller Kantian theory of helping but also undercuts this suggestion; 3) in ruling out more stringent accounts of beneficence it appears to leave a large amount of the filling in of the determinancy of the judgment about this duty to latitude.

Parfit and Kant on respect

In my last posting on Parfit I looked closely at how he uses thought experiments in the first of his 2002 lectures, the lectures that present the core origin of his book On What Matters. In this piece I'm going to address the remainder of that first 2002 lecture where Parfit looks at the topic of respect.


Up until this point Parfit has concentrated on dividing the Formula of Humanity into two sub-parts, one of which relates to consent and the other of which concerns the reference to not treating others as "mere means". However, as Parfit points out, others have looked at the Formula of Humanity instead in terms of respect for the worth of humanity and this reference to dignity or worth appears particularly important in the Doctrine of Virtue. This leads Parfit to formulate a "respect principle" that simply formulates this demand for action in relation to respect for the dignity or worth or rational beings. However, after so formulating this principle, Parfit differs from Allen Wood's treatment of it as Wood appears to believe that respect is not a state of mind and hence does not relate to attitudes. Parfit, by contrast, takes the respect principle to cover both attitudes and acts. 


The major question concerning the respect principle, however, is what application of it would involve. Here Parfit differs from Kant's own sense of what appears to be involved in respecting humanity given that Kant indicates that such an attitude would indicate that suicide is generally wrong. Part of Parfit's disagreement with Kant is only an indication of the refinement which Kant showed in practice in discussing cases of consideration of suicide since Kant did indicate that the Stoic attitude towards suicide might not be blameworthy. However Parfit also broadly suggests that Kant's understanding of what an attitude of respect might involve is not necessarily reliable. This latter, stronger, point, is, however, not articulated very clearly in terms of how Kant's "going wrong" is itself theoretically grounded and what other grounds might be adopted in preference.


Similarly, when Parfit disagrees with other views of respect he is somewhat cavalier in his treatment. Citing Thomas Hill's view that respect is most indicative of the value of rationality Parfit just assumes that the type of rationality Hill here means is something purely theoretical and thus easy to reject, a rather questionable and unlikely assumption. 


The final section of the first lecture turns, by contrast, to Parfit's generic contrast between types of theories of practical reason reiterating the by now familiar contrast between desire-based and value-based theories and affirming the latter against the former. Unlike monistic theorists, however, Parfit affirms a plurality of goods including the sense that some things are good for their own sakes which is what enables him to say that his value-based theory is a "wide" and not a "narrow" one. Having drawn this contrast Parfit returns to some of the examples discussed in my previous posting in order to argue that desire-based theories have more problems with them than his favoured value-based theory would have. 


However a second aspect of Parfit's review of the cases in question is a suggestion that Kant's "consent principle" may conflict too strongly with common sense morality and that other principles than consent surely matter to us. Finally, Parfit indicates that the Formula of Humanity is not the best principle to appeal to in order to determine what is wrong but that the Formula of Universal Law is to be preferred to it, a conclusion that, whilst at odds with much contemporary Kantian writing, does conform to Kant's own strong statements with regard to universality. This is where the first 2002 lecture ends and, in subsequent postings on Parfit, I'll look at how the concluding considerations of this first lecture are refined in the subsequent texts leading up to the publication of On What Matters and, indeed, in On What Matters itself.

Allison, Kant, and the Good Will

It's been a little while since my last posting on Henry Allison's book on the Groundwork. In that posting I addressed some of Allison's remarks on Kant's relationship to the previous traditions of moral philosophy. The discussion of that relationship closed the first part of Allison's book and the second part is concentrated entirely on the interpretation of the first part of the Groundwork. The second part consists of three chapters, looking at different aspects of the argument of Groundwork I and in this posting I'm going to look at the first of these, Chapter 3, in which Allison concentrates in particular on Kant's discussion of the good will.


Chapter 3 of Allison's book is devoted entirely to the first thirteen paragraphs of Groundwork I which deal with the topics of the good will, Kant's "teleological" argument and a discussion of acting from duty. Allison's chapter is divided between these topics, beginning with the account of the good will. Kant's account of the good will involves the specific claim that it is the only thing that is good "without limitation" (Ak. 4: 393). Partly this argument is negative, in terms of showing the limitations of other things that might be deemed "good". However, Kant also makes the positive point that the good will possesses the characteristic of having "absolute worth" and Allison follows Allen Wood in taking the "higher worth thesis" to be logically independent of the "good without limitation thesis". To claim that the good will has absolute worth tells one something about the degree of its goodness whilst claiming that it is good without limitation, by contrast, tells one about the kind of goodness it has.


The claim about the good will's absolute character, however, does commit Kant to the view that it is the condition of value of all other goods, according to Allison. This is part of the way Allison makes sense of the distinction Kant makes between what has a "price" and what possesses "dignity" (where the latter is "beyond" all price). In many cases, particularly with regard to pleasure, the claim here is not difficult to see since pleasure is evidently possible with regard to almost anything so in itself it is too indeterminate to hold as a measure of value. This is why Kant talks about being "worthy" of happiness. 


However, Allison is careful to point out that despite claiming that the good will is what is good without limitation that this does not entail that the good will is equivalent to the "complete" good. Allison rather identifies the latter with the "highest good" (though, in so doing, he is failing to note some of the distinctions involved in the discussion of the latter in the Critique of Practical Reason). This argument is not, in any case, made explicit in the discussion of the good will in the Groundwork. It is, though, clear enough that a world in which the good will was capable of having effect would be a morally preferable one to one in which it was not so capable.


The possibility of the good will having an effect is also at work in how Allison understands the goodness of the good will since he determines this to consist not in an occurrent condition but rather in possession of a dispositional trait. In making this claim he follows the hints Kant drops that the good will is to be understood in terms of the possession of a certain kind of character. The character involved would be one of a general orientation towards the moral, based on principles rather than sentiment.


Allison's opening account of the good will is followed by an investigation of the four paragraphs of Groundwork I where Kant refers to teleology and which many commentaries have failed to address. Kant's discussion of this is prefaced by the mention that there could be sceptical doubt about the very possibility of the "good will". In addressing these doubts, on Allison's construal, Kant develops a kind of polemical reply to the views of Christian Garve, to the effect that there is some sense in which nature has provided reason to human beings as part of a superior means of self-preservation. On this view there is something prudentially (and, ultimately, eudaemonistically) good in human possession of reason.


Kant replies to this suggestion with some indications of why reason is far from being able to meet this requirement of also providing those possessed with it the advantages suggested. Not only does reason not make it easier to attain ends of self-preservation, it also complicates matters by multiplying the types of ends we strive after. Allison also mentions a relationship of the discussion in Groundwork I to the account of historical teleology Kant gives in his Idea of Universal History. Both the earlier essay and the Groundwork agree that reason is not something that makes mechanical possession of happiness easier but rather something that replaces the ends of instinct with other types of end. 


The final part of Allison's account concerns Kant's analysis of acting in accordance with duty. Having a good will is not, on Allison's argument, sufficient for one to act from duty. The discussion of the relationship between acting from duty and moral worth is a controversial matter, however, as some of the recent postings on this blog attest to. Allison analyses five paragraphs of Groundwork I in terms of how they relate to these questions.


Here are included some of Kant's famous examples, including that of the shopkeeper who does the right thing, not because it is right, but purely from prudential interests. Kant also here considers cases of doing the right thing from inclination rather than from duty and Allison points out that there is an important similarity between acting in such a way and acting purely prudentially since, in both cases, the action that accords with duty is not undertaken for its own sake. The difference between them, however, is that those who have a sympathetic disposition that leads them, in some almost immediate sense, to do the right thing, do deserve a kind of moral praise that the merely prudential behaviour does not merit. This does not, however, mean that such behaviour is equivalent to that which has true moral worth, not least because the inclination is quite capable of simply leading to beneficent actions that in fact could even conflict with morality. Kant does, though, still mark an important difference between such attitudes given that he is capable of arguing, as he does in the Doctrine of Virtue, that there is an indirect duty to cultivate sympathetic feelings.


The case of the person who loses their sympathetic inclination and yet nonetheless does the right thing is, by contrast, meant to draw out the true source of moral worth is not resident in the immediacy of sympathetic inclination but rather in a relation to duty. Whilst Allison's view of these examples has a character that is more sympathetic towards them than some others it is also clear that his account is foreshortened and fails to address some of the problems others have raised. Further, the discussion in Chapter 3 is essentially introductory of Allison's response to the argument of Groundwork I and there are two more chapters devoted to its argument. Subsequent postings on Allison's book will look at these later chapters, which will enable a more considered view of Allison's account of moral worth to be evaluated.

Richard Henson and Kant on Moral Worth

I have posted a number of pieces recently concerned with how different commentators have responded to the argument of the first part of the Groundwork, including, most recently, Christine Korsgaard's account of its argument. However, what I have not addressed thus far in the postings given over to this topic, have been the contributions in the secondary literature that have focused specific attention to the topic of "moral worth", something that is worth some detailed attention as the literature on this topic has, in recent years, rather grown. As one of the first pieces devoted specifically to discussing moral worth was by Richard Henson I will, in this piece, seek to retrace the main points of Henson's argument in order that the subsequent responses to it can be given separate consideration in later postings.


Henson's article is meant to focus on the question of what is involved in attribution of "moral worth" to an action given Kant's statements and the statement analysed in particular in Henson's article is in the first section of the Groundwork. It is worth adding, however, that Henson also emphasises the notion that moral motivation can be "overdetermined" as it may involve a mixture of inclinations and determining reasons. In relation to the maxim being taken to be a moral one Henson also points out that it is not sufficient that it pass the universalisation test (although it is necessary that it does so) but failure to carry out the action should also be wrong. However, the key point for Henson doesn't concern duty itself but rather "moral worth" and the suggestion that an act "only" has such worth if it is done from duty. Finally, for the purposes of introduction of Henson's argument, the suggestion that moral worth attaches only to actions done from duty, is taken by him only to feature as an argument in the Groundwork and not to be part of the argument of the Doctrine of Virtue, not least because, in the latter work, we have a distinct class of "duties of virtue" which are simply not performed at all unless done from duty.


The key passage from the Groundwork on which Henson builds so much is the one concerning the "friend to mankind" who has been overcome by some sorrow such that they are no longer capable of possessing an inclination to do a good act but manage to tear themselves "out of this dead insensibility" and perform the required act "without any inclination" and then have performed an act which has "genuine moral worth" (Ak. 4: 398). Having cited this passage Henson questions its import on two levels, asking both (A) what it means to ascribe moral worth to an act and (B) under what circumstances we are to say that someone has acted from duty. The first question concerning the ascription of moral worth is one that is presented as having two possible answers, either (a) that the person at the time of performing the action was in a "fit moral condition" or (b) that the person at the time acted in such a way that we feel they won a significant battle against evil.


The second question (B), by contrast, concerns overdetermination of acts given that it is often the case that one may well have many distinct motives for performing a given act. Henson argues that Kant gives no direct answer to this second question but that he could have given one of three possible answers to it: 1) reverence for duty was present and would be enough without anything further; 2) other inclinations were present and show the act was not  done from duty; 3) both could be present but this does not show, in any given case, on which motive the agent was acting. Henson effectively rules out 3) (despite giving it some supporting grounds) in order to argue between 1) and 2) and argues that the example given at Ak 4: 398 tells in favour of 2) and thus to support the view that it is only when one acts without any supporting inclination that one is acting from duty.


Henson does concede, however, that many would be tempted to deny that Kant adopts 2) as the right answer to B) simply because it seems to leave him open to the view of Schiller to the effect that he is endorsing the suggestion that having pleasure in doing duty is itself "wrong", an odd and counter-intuitive result and one that most Kantians have always been concerned to reject. 


In order to respond to this putative objection to his account Henson rolls together his responses to A) and B) now in order to articulate what he takes the full Kantian reply to be to the question of what it means to say that a dutiful act has moral worth and he states that the choice is between one of two answers: i) provided respect for duty was present then it doesn't matter whether or not there were other motives; ii) only if respect for duty was the sole motive was there moral worth in the act performed. Now this full response also relates back to the alternative answers given to question A) since the  fitness report model (a) would coincide with i) whereas the battle model would require ii). 


Now, having stated these points Henson returns to the putative objection from Schiller and points out that it counts as such only if Kant agrees c) that the presence of inclinations defeats the attribution of moral worth and d) it is a moral defect not to perform actions which require moral worth. Both conditions are required for Schiller's response to the Kantian account to be the right one since the failure of c) would ensure that the presence of inclinations had no effect on the award of moral worth to an action whereas the failure of d) would show that it was not necessary to put oneself in positions where it is was required to act from duty. (So there would not be a duty to act from duty.)


Assuming that Henson's earlier argument was accepted it would follow that part of Schiller's condition was fulfilled since c) would hold and the presence of inclinations would have an effect on the award of moral worth to an action but this does not, by itself, entail that d) also has to hold. This means that the battle that could be won in overcoming evil is not one that we would necessarily encourage people to undertake. A reason for adopting this view, according to Henson, is that the argument of the Groundwork does not lead to the conclusion that we have to perform acts that have moral worth (or even, he says, that we "ought" to). The reason for this is that the situation that requires moral worth is not one that we should wish to be placed in and nor is it one that we have a duty to find ourselves in. A supporting argument for this view is the suggestion made at Ak. 4: 428 concerning the wish to be free from inclinations which Henson takes merely to require that we be free of inclinations which would hinder us from performing our duties not of inclinations per se (which takes part of the sting out of Schiller's attack).


The final part of Henson's argument turns on his view of the case in the Doctrine of Virtue since the duties of virtue require, he states, that we adopt the end in question and if we lacked it we would not have performed the said duties at all. On this model it does become the case that it is a moral defect to fail to perform acts having moral worth (d) on Schiller's account but not evidently a problem that there be cooperating inclinations. So neither the Doctrine of Virtue account nor that of the Groundwork satisfies both conditions of Schiller's gibe though each work possesses one of the conditions of meeting it. This does suggest that the works are inconsistent with each other on Henson's view but he argues the reason for this inconsistency is that Kant failed to pay sufficient attention to the question of overdetermination of actions. 


Having set Henson's argument out in detail I will, in future postings on moral worth, review some of the responses to it that have appeared in the secondary literature but will link back to this posting when I do so in order that the replies can be evaluated in terms of how well they have depicted Henson's original argument.

The Good Will, Duty and Universal Law

I haven't read the Groundwork for a little while so decided today to look at the first section of it to see whether a fresh reading would produce a different slant on it to previously and I have to say I was struck, on re-reading, by the wealth of considerations set out in the first section. So struck was I that I've decided to do a series of postings on the Groundwork, setting out the results of a casual re-reading of a section first and then following up with responses to articles found on the appropriate section. So the next series of Kant postings will focus just on Groundwork I. In this posting I'm going to go through the stages of the argument without raising major interpretative issues, just indicating what strikes me as it comes.


The first sentence of Groundwork I is justly famous as Kant indicates here that the "good will" is the only thing that is good without limitation. After opening with this bold statement he proceeds in the first paragraph to contrast the "good will" with a number of other things that are "good" in order to show that the goodness of these other things is only a limited form of "good". So "good will" is thereby distinguished from goods of talent, goods of temperament and goods of fortune. The distinction between the "good will" and goods of temperament is particularly significant since it indicates that the "good will" is not merely a "virtue" that can be listed alongside other virtues but is something that is over and above anything that could be understood as a "virtue".


After these contrasts have been completed Kant proceeds to distinguish the "good will" from gifts of fortune and the whole she-bang of "happiness" and "well-being". This list of contrasts that fills the first paragraph of Groundwork I is subsequently mitigated slightly in the second paragraph where Kant admits that some qualities are conducive to the "good will" and included under this heading are some of the Aristotelian qualities such as moderation in affects and passions. This partial mitigation indicates the sense in which Kant does see the point in the account of virtue (something that evidently is important in the later Doctrine of Virtue) as is made emphatic when he states that the latter constitute part of the "inner worth" of people. This does not prevent the contrast between these virtues and the "good will" still holding in the sense that the virtues are "conditional" goods, not, like the "good will", unconditional ones.


After distinguishing the "good will" from virtue Kant next contrasts it with considerations of utility and consequences since the "good will" is stated to be something that would be good in itself even were it not able to accomplish anything so long, that is, as it did attempt to (and this enables it to be distinguished from "mere wishing"). It is after this second contrast, however, that the argument takes a different turn as Kant considers the obvious objection that the praise he has given to the "good will" contains something extravagant in it.


In considering this objection the point that Kant includes to test it involves a discussion of "predispositions" (a term that returns in his later work on religion). These "predispositions" are what are at work in an organism and indicate its teleological orientation. What is meant by this is that there is something about the purposes an organism has that suit its nature. The reason these considerations are mentioned are to understand the basis of the presence in a being of reason and a will. Kant's point here is that reason and a will do not appear engineered to ensure the happiness of the one who possesses them. Rather, if the point of reason and the will were to promote "happiness" something would have gone awry since instincts are better at attaining some form of it. So this point is intended to suggest that if reason is something that has sway over the will then the basis of this sway is not to produce "happiness" in the being that has them.


Now these considerations touch even the "arts and sciences" (an indication of Rousseau's influence on Kant). But the basic point of them is to suggest that the practical faculty of reason  points to something different from a result based in "happiness" and thus indicates again the ground for thinking that there is something "good" in itself about a will formed by reason. This consideration suggests something of a "content" for the "good will" since it has here been clearly distinguished from the promptings of instinct and concerns with "happiness" in favour of direction by reason alone. 


After invoking this point suggesting that considerations of purposes cannot lead one to see the point of reason's effect on the will being other than the production of a pure kind of will Kant next unveils the conception of "duty" as something that contains the idea of the "good will" albeit "under certain subjective limitations and hindrances" (Ak 4: 397). This "containment" of the idea of the "good will" is reminiscent of the general procedure of schematism as the latter involves restriction and realisation of a conception. Restriction is indicated in the reference to "limitations and hindrances" but realisation is also referred to as these restrictions "elevate" the conception of the "good will" and allow it to shine more brightly.


Having mentioned the idea of duty Kant now discusses the conception of acting in accordance with duty and mentions how self-seeking aims can produce action that conforms with duty whilst not being done from duty. This point is then contrasted with those who act for a different reason in conformity with duty, due to the gifts of their temperaments (again repeating the point indicated at the beginning that temperament is a conditional good). Being beneficent is not something that should or could depend for its worth on temperament but is grounded in duty as a sole guide to good character.


Similar considerations are again used to rule out determination of worth by reference to acting with regard to one's own happiness before the next point is raised, namely, that actions done from duty do not have their worth in an aim held in view but only on the "principle of the volition" (Ak 4: 400). This principle of the volition is thus understood in a formal way as everything material has been removed from consideration. The result of this isolation of worth is that duty comes to be seen as including in its conception a form of necessity. The "necessity" in question concerns the way that duty presents itself to us. To act in a way that enables us to say we have done something "from" duty is to act with "respect for the law".


The understanding of this notion of "respect" is by means of the will being grounded in a consciousness of law as a representation that undercuts any form of self-love. So respect is something that is distinct from pathological feeling as it is not imposed on us from without but rather given to us by ourselves in relation to law. To say we "respect" law is to say we allow it to move us for itself alone. 


This conception of "respect" requires a sense of the law in question and that is one that is seen purely through a formal representation. The law in question cannot concern anything material since we have already removed any material as a ground of affect upon us. It is after this point has been reached in the argument that Kant decisively introduces the conception of "practical judgment" in relation to "common sense" (or "common human reason"). The "practical judgment" of such a common standpoint is precisely to be understood as operative through the representation of formal law.


An example is introduced to illustrate the notion reached which involves the notion of false promising which is shown to produce a practical contradiction (contradiction in conception). Kant suggests that the case helps to show that the common understanding can be led to the idea of universal formal law by merely being made aware of "its own principle". Furthermore, the philosopher has "no other principle" with which to deal than that of common understanding.


This raises the question of why it is necessary then to invoke philosophy at all. Kant's concluding consideration is that whilst common understanding reaches for the universal formal law in its practical judgment that it nonetheless is caught in a "natural dialectic" in which inclination is at war with the law. The needs and demands of inclination cannot be simply done away with and yet they corrupt the law at its root. In response to this "unnoticed" dialectic that afflicts common understanding there is a need for philosophy in order that the "source" of the principle of judgment that such understanding uses can be brought to light.

Related articles

• Parfit, Sidgwick and Kant (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

Report on UEA Kant Workshop on Analogical Reasoning

I've recently returned from this workshop that was run on 20th November at the University of East Anglia and that was organised by Angela Breitenbach. The focus of the workshop was analogical reasoning and reflective judgment. Breitenbach gave the opening paper which broached the old topic of Kant and the "as if". In this paper Brietenbach looked at the different uses of "analogy" in Kant's work, contrasting the way he speaks about it in the Lectures on Logic with how it is discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment. In the first of these, according to Breitenbach, analogy is discussed as a "heuristic" or regulative guide for empirical enquiry, something quite different from the account of analogy in the Analogies of Experience. Both are also distinct from the notion of analogy used when Kant discusses the "symbol" in the Critique of Judgment.


The Lectures on Logic relate analogy to induction and present both as always revisable, associated with a regulative account of the unity of nature and as having purely subjective validity. In using analogy we say something about how we look at an object, not something about the object itself. By contrast, the Analogies of Experience of the Critique of Pure Reason belong to the systematic account of experience. Breitenbach referred here though to the intriguing question of why Kant refers to these analogies as, in one sense, "regulative" and, in another sense, "constitutive". Two kinds of relation are compared by Kant when he introduces these "analogies", one from mathematics in which if three relations are given the fourth can also be given, which means "constructed". By contrast, philosophy deals with qualitative relations in which if three relations are given only the relation to a fourth can be given, not the fourth member itself. Due to this difference the Analogies of Experience are "constitutive" of experience as such but not, Breitenbach suggested, of individual perceptions. This account leads Breitenbach towards a "weak" reading of the analogies suggesting that they contain no reference to causal laws. Empirical concepts of laws are taken, following the work of Gerd Buchdahl, to be analogous of the transcendental sense of laws.


Symbolic presentation, by contrast to the previous two forms of analogy, is one in which something is given that can only be presented indirectly. Breitenbach concluded by suggesting that the distinction between reflective and determinant judgment did not map on to that between regulative and constitutive as there are senses in which a reflecting judgment can be "constitutive" of the intuitive grasp of something.


A surprising and welcome aspect of this workshop was that each paper was followed by a structured response in the form of a "comment" by another speaker and Breitenbach's paper was responded to Fiona Roxburgh, a doctoral student at UEA. Roxburgh's comment focused on the relationship of Kant's use of analogy to the philosophy of science and she suggested that analogies are means by which the Regulative Idea of unity can both be applied and rendered comprehensible for us in the first place. The general conception Roxburgh presented was that the regulative idea of unity is the boundary notion of a unified or fully complete science.


John Callanan gave the next paper which focused on the view that transcendental idealism is best seen as a form of "meta-philosophy". The key to this paper's contribution to the workshop was the view that thinking is best viewed as analogous to cognising in a Kantian sense. Callanan is interested in the question of what is involved in providing a philosophical account of anything and suggests that this concern is central to the Critique of Pure Reason. Callanan discussed Henry Allison's contrast between theocentric and anthropocentric standpoints which connected the first to transcendental realism and the second to transcendental idealism. On Allison's view ontological interpretations of transcendental idealism have to involve a distinction between levels of reality and this distinction must lead to seeing phenomenal reality as not "really" real.


The notion of "objective" is viewed by Callanan as reached by starting from some judgments (such as those given in mathematics) and then moving to the conditions of them. Callanan regards Kant's Copernican Revolution as consisting in an inquiry into what makes some judgments "cognition-apt" as we inquire what it is for something to be cognition apt prior to investigating what kinds of things there are. On this view we can have no account of what really is that does not also tell us what the essence of things is so the collapse of the distinction between metaphysics and ontology is cardinal for transcendental idealism. The ways we have of presenting things-in-themselves is through symbolic constructions and talk of these "things-in-themselves" should only be seen as symbolic.


The "comment" on Callanan's paper was provided by John Collins. Collins argued that philosophy and the sciences should be seen as continuous. On Collins' view noumenal thinking is neither contradictory nor dialectical so long as we take it to be indeterminate. Since thought is not answerable to noumena there is no sense in which transcendental idealism is less than true. Collins pointed out that on Callanan's view transcendental philosophy becomes analogical thinking but that there is a problem with this which is that the type of analogy involved in thinking transcendental idealism would need to be distinguished from the type of analogy involved in thinking things-in-themselves.


The next paper was given by Ido Geiger who focused on reflective judgment and the problem of empirical knowledge. Geiger opened by pointing out that there are two distinct problems identified in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment, the problem of relating theoretical and practical reason (a "unity of reason" problem) and the separate problem of describing the transcendental conditions of our particular empirical experience of the world and knowledge of its laws. The second problem was the focus of Geiger's attention who also pointed out that a better title for the Third Critique would have been the "critique of reflective judgment". 


The second problem on which Geiger focused can be captured by saying that laws, for Kant, have to include necessity but that what is strictly "empirical" is not necessary so there seems a problem with describing empirical laws as "laws". Further we have no "experience" of the necessity of empirical laws. In response it was the burden of Geiger's argument to suggest that the assumptions of the aesthetic and the conceptual purposiveness of nature are jointly transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. This depends on the general view that the purposiveness of nature gives necessity to empirical laws.


Geiger briefly spoke about the specific principle of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature arguing that the point of the critique of teleological judgment was to argue that for discursive intellects teleological judgment is a necessary transcendental condition of any empirical experience and knowledge. However this did lead him to claim that the universality of empirical concepts and the necessity we attribute to empirical laws are, in an important sense, "assumptions". The origin of these "assumptions" was argued to rest on a "general" regulative idea that nature is made to be known by discursive intellects.


Geiger spent much more time on the principle of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature than he had on the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature. Again, the aesthetic purposiveness of nature was presented by him as a transcendental condition of experience. Aesthetic judgments were taken to express a feeling of harmony or "fit" between understanding and imagination despite the fact that no concept is applied to a manifold in these judgments as they present no cognition of objects but, suggested Geiger, they do present conditions of cognition.


The fundamental problem Geiger tackled was that whilst aesthetic judgments are non-conceptual that experience and knowledge are conceptual for Kant. This creates the problem of how aesthetic judgments can, as Geiger had suggested, be part of the conditions of empirical experience when they don't seem to fit Kant's general conditions of such experience? In reply to this question Geiger pointed to Kant's statement in the "First Introduction" to the Critique of Judgment that the principle of reflection on "given objects of nature" is that for all things in nature "empirically determinate concepts" are available (Ak. 20: 211-212). This was taken by Geiger to entail that we sort nature into like objects and natural kinds according to their spatial form alone (hence in an aesthetic way).


Geiger subsequently argued that the "Appendix" to the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason importantly pre-figured the argument of the critique of teleological judgment. In the former Kant argued for an analogue of the schema that is given to intuition by means of reference to the maximum of division and unification of the understanding's cognition in one principle. By this reference Kant suggested that the idea of reason is an analogue of the schema of sensibility although the latter is only a rule of principle of the systematic unity of use of the understanding (A664-5/B692-3). The difference between this argument and that presented in the third Critique is that the latter work argues that the aesthetic purposiveness of nature supplies the sensible or aesthetic aspect that was missing from the notion of the analogue of a schema of sensibility. 


It follows from Geiger's reading that some philosophically interesting elements of the Critique of Judgment are not of high systematic importance with the accounts of the organism, art and the sublime being less important than is often suggested when seen from the standpoint of Kant's system. However Geiger argued that his reading enables us to view the third Critique as a single coherent work and that this should be the desideratum of any reading of the work. (For a similar conception, if argued rather differently, I could also refer here to my own first book, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics.)


Sacha Golob presented the "comment" on Geiger's paper and stated that the key questions to ask where what did this paper "add" to our understanding and what was the status of what was being added? On Golob's view reflective judgment is an abstractive process, a conception he took from the Lectures on Logic to which Breitenbach had earlier referred. Golob presented a series of questions and problems for Geiger's view. Firstly, Golob asked why Geiger's solution was better than the view that what produced unity in space and time was nothing other than the schema of pure understanding? Golob also questioned whether the texts Geiger had cited were sufficient to reach the conclusion suggested.


Golob's second alternative to Geiger's view concerned the status of the necessity of empirical laws, suggesting, in contradistinction to Breitenbach as well as Geiger, that the status of the Second Analogy could be seen as relatively "strong" and justifying the principle of "same effect, same cause" (SCSE). Even on this reading you could still say that particular laws needed more determinate filling out and for this reflective judgment was required but this would be a more moderate use of reflective judgment. Golob also argued that Geiger's reference to "natural kinds" was far from equivalent to a notion of "basic" judgments as natural kinds are a pretty theoretical notion. Further, the notion of pre-conceptual "grouping" seems strange since the activity of grouping appears to involve consciousness. 


Another alternative to Geiger's view is presented, according to Golob by Beatrice Longuenesse's notion that there is a schema that is understood in such a way that there are no experiences available to us that do not involve concepts. Finally Golob also pointed to the fact that Geiger's notion of pre-discursive synthesis was indeterminate with regard to the models available for such a notion, models that range from Husserl's conception of passive synthesis to Hanna's idea of bodily synthesis and that articulating some notion of this level of synthesis should involve continuity between human and animal experience.


The last of the papers given was by Alix Cohen who spoke about Kant's view of moral feelings, a view that she mentioned, citing my book on practical philosophy, as a "well- kept secret amongst Kantian scholars". One of the reasons Kant's account of such feelings is such a "well-kept secret" is, she stated, due to the continuing lack of attention given by writers on Kant to the Metaphysics of Morals and, in particular, to the Doctrine of Virtue. A second reason why there might well be continuing reluctance to engage with the area could also be that Kant seems to use the term "feeling" in this area in more than one sense.


Cohen started by saying that the current consensus view is that feelings can't play a motivational role in actions done for the sake of duty as otherwise we will be led to a conception that is heteronomous. This leads to a problem, however, which is that Kant refers very specifically to the "feeling" of respect for the moral law and we need some account of what role this feeling plays in his view. Cohen argued that the feeling of respect is functionally equivalent to feelings of pleasure and pain and that it is a feeling as it is connected to the faculty of desire, is a subjective ground of activity and it produces an interest.


However this "feeling" of respect is a peculiar kind of feeling as it is rational, being produced solely by reason, being cognised a priori and giving rise to an intellectual pleasure. So the status of respect needs some work and Cohen provided a typology of the treatments of this feeling in contemporary readings of Kant, suggesting there are currently four models of how to view it. On the first model, which she associated with Andrews Reath, the agent's reason is viewed in terms of the law, as is their motivation, and the connection between respect and the law is simply that there is a phenomenological effect of the law in terms of respect. The second model, taken from Karl Ameriks, sees reason and motivation in the same way as Reath, but views the connection between respect and the law in terms of an affective accompaniment.


The problem with both these first two views is that respect has no proper function in them. By contrast, on the view of Thomas McCarthy, law and respect are operative in the agent's reason and respect in his motivation with the connection being that respect provides affective motivation for the law. Finally, a further view would take law to be operative in the agent's reason, law and respect in their motivation and the connection to be one in terms of the effective force of the law. These second two accounts provide a function for respect and explain how it is possible to be moved to act for the sake for the duty.


However, whilst the second two accounts appear better than the first, the problem with them, according to Cohen, is that motivation implies a kind of Humean picture as it gives a theoretical account of what it is to be practical. We should give, she stated, not an explanation of respect, but a transcendental argument concerning its role. By contrast to these accounts Cohen used the Doctrine of Virtue to suggest that what the notion of respect helps us to see are the conditions of receptivity to duty on us. In the Doctrine of Virtue respect, moral feeling and conscience are all discussed in terms of natural predispositions "for being affected" or being put under obligation. 


The more restricted sense of "moral feeling" that Kant discusses as a specific type of "feeling" in the generic sense is listed alongside conscience as a "subjective condition of receptiveness" to duty as they provide us with a practical interest in the law. The problem that might be thought to relate to this view is that, in stressing this idea of receptivity, it could subtract from our essentially autonomous and spontaneous relationship to morality. However, Cohen stressed, that instead this account preserved this notion of autonomy and made us aware of our awe of the moral law. On her view the agent's reason is governed by the law but we do not attempt to fill in their motivation and the connection between respect and the law is explained by stating that respect is the effect of the law on our sensibility and the cause of our awareness of the law. 


Cohen argued that the point of moral feelings was to make us aware of certain "objects" we ought to treat as persons from the practical standpoint rather than merely explain or experience as things from a theoretical standpoint. Practical spontaneity is enabled, on her account, by the transcendental conditions of an aesthetic of morals.


Sasha Mudd provided the "comment" on Cohen's paper and opened by asking the question whether the feelings all work together or are some feelings constitutively prior to others. She also asked how the feelings come together with the categorical imperative in synthesis (if that is how we are to take the analogy). Suggesting that the feelings make a moral demand on us could easily lead us back to heteronomy she cautioned. Mudd also had a problem with seeing what could be gained by thinking of persons as "objects" since Kant refers to ends that are constructed as "objects" and does not refer to persons in this way. The claim of the primacy of practical reason also puts pressure on the view that there is a cognitive role for feeling in practical reason.


The conference also included much lively discussion and marked an occasion when a set of topics that are routinely marginalised in Kantian study came out forcefully. It was a great occasion and produced, as I hope this report has shown, much food for thought!

Ethics and Teleology (II)

Essentially what is meant by describing an approach to ethics as "teleological" at the moment can be summarised as a very particular understanding of what an "end" involves. So, on this conception, an "end" is something that can be taken to be a goal or intention. Not only is this so but it represents something that we can realise in differential amounts with the general aim being to "maximise" it. On these grounds a teleological approach to ethics is rendered pretty much equivalent to consequentialism.


If someone were to claim that Kant had this kind of approach to ethics then it would require a lot of work. Some have claimed this and the view they give would take an examination that was very specific. I assume, for the sake of this posting, however, that there are few philosophers who take Kant to be endorsing consequentialism. Since this is so it will then automatically appear necessary to deny that Kant could possibly be saying anything teleological about ethics.


So let's approach the question next from a different angle. I mentioned in the previous posting that there are variant understandings of the formula of humanity at present and that some articulate a ground for supporting it as the favoured way of representing the categorical imperative on the basis that this offers a reply to Hegel's "empty formalism" objection. (Incidentally this criticism is one that has had formidable influence including on philosophers who would otherwise disregard Hegel's views.) Now, those who approach the formula of humanity in this way, such as Allen Wood, view an end primarily as "something for the sake of which we act" (85 of Kantian Ethics). However, Wood also views the notion of humanity as incorporating a reference to a value, the value of rational nature. Since this value is something independently specified from the formula of universal law (since if it were not there would be little point in favouring it as a formula over that of universal law) it follows, on Wood's account, that humanity is hence a goal towards which we aim and that, as such a goal, it also possesses a value.


Now, the teleological ethic that emerges from Wood's interpretation has to be regarded as importantly different from classic consequentialism. It does, however, treat the idea of the reference to an "end" in the humanity formula in much the way that consequentialists view ends. The difference is only that this "end" is taken to have a weight (an "absolute" status) different from that of any other end. Since it has this weight it can be given something like a Rawlsian lexical priority over other ends and be treated as special and not to be sacrificed in considerations of commensurate weighting. Whilst this view maintains the distinction between "price" and that which is beyond all price it still essentially views the end-in-itself as an end in the same kind of way as other ends.


Now does this do any better than the classic consequentialist view as a reading of Kant's ethics? The problem with it is, that if we take Kant's reference to an "end" in the humanity formula in this way then it is not clear how the notion of rational nature really relates to the idea of universal law. The point of suggesting that the formulas of the categorical imperative are inter-related is to make some kind of connection between these ideas. But if universal law is essentially conceded to only state something emptily formal whilst we have a substantial value with the formula of humanity it follows that the value in the latter formula has no grounding in the law of the first formula but is something independent of that law. And that seems to make nonsense of Kant's approach to ethics.


However the notion of a teleological approach to ethics does not have to take either the path of classic consequentialism or the idea put forward by Wood of relating to humanity as a value independent of the law. There must be another way since Kant, in the Doctrine of Virtue, describes ethics as "the system of the ends of pure practical reason" (Ak. 6:381). If ethics is a system of ends then there has to be a sense in which adopting the categorical imperative gives us a response to ends that is distinct from either the classic consequentialist view or a view that has to formulate the sense of humanity as different in principle (and in value) from the idea of universal law.


Just after making the claim about ethics just cited Kant makes the following distinction between two types of end:

One can think of the relation of end to duty in two ways: one can begin with the end and seek out the maxim of actions in conformity with duty or, on the other hand, one can begin with the maxim of actions in conformity with duty and seek out the end that is also a duty. (Ak. 6: 382)

This contrast is related by Kant to the distinction between right and virtue and raises a number of interesting questions about right that I will turn to on another occasion. The Doctrine of Right, says Kant, takes the first way. That is, when viewing things in terms of right, we begin with the end as something given and seek out, on the basis of this pre-given end, a relationship to what duties we have. However, with ethics, says Kant, we go the opposite way. That is, we start from the view that there are duties and on the basis of this we seek out ends that conform to such duties. If Wood's reading of the formula of humanity were right then it would appear that this difference between right and virtue could not be specified in the way Kant has done since, on Wood's reading, it appears that humanity is an independent value whose end we start with. So the end of humanity sets out a constraint for duties. But that is not how Kant views virtue, hence, not how he sees ethics.

It follows from this way of presenting the distinction that there is an internal connection between an "end" and a "duty" when we are dealing with virtue and if this is so (and the notion of "duty" is dependent on the sense of universal law) then it follows that there must be an important sense in which the formula of humanity is something that emerges out of the formula of universal law and is not something that can be set against the formula of universal law. This is also specified concretely in the supreme principle of virtue: "act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have" (Ak. 6: 395).

So, Kant's ethics appears "teleological", if this is the right expression, in the sense that it is importantly concerned with ends. However, if the ends that it is concerned with are ones that emerge from passing through the process of meeting the criteria for permissible maxims then one cannot start, in a Kantian approach to ethics, with some specific ends as pre-given and think about how to maximise them (which cuts against consequentialism) and nor can we think of the notion of humanity as expressive of a value independent of law (which cuts against Wood's reading). Since this is the case it may appear that there is little sense to using the term "teleology" here at all. However, this does not quite follow or, at least, this reaction should be modified. In the Groundwork Kant writes: "The categorical imperative would be that which represented an action as objectively necessary of itself, without reference to another end" (Ak. 4: 414). So there is reference to an end importantly built in (as with the remark I cited earlier saying that virtue is a system of ends). This end, however, requires no reference to any other end separate from itself. In this respect it is not a goal if goals are taken to require means-ends reasoning as is usual. It is, rather, an "end-in-itself". If there are ends in themselves then it is not our task, pace Wood, to act "for the sake of" these. Such an expression suggests that the notion of end in the formula of humanity is not different in kind from the type of end that is at work in instrumental reasoning but Kant does distinguish these from each other. The difference is not that this end is given a mysterious absolute status despite being essentially similar in kind to other ends. It is not: it is different in kind from other ends. In this respect it has really an eschatological rather than a teleological sense. And this sense is importantly connected to rationality. That would require another posting to show but this distinction between an eschatological and a teleological sense of ends should clear up a confusion I inadvertently created in my book on practical philosophy.

Philosophy and Dinner Parties

I was prompted to think about the topic of this posting by a conjunction of two events, one concerning activities common to the season and the other the recent re-reading of a passage in the Doctrine of Virtue. Let's take the two in turn.

Firstly, this is a season for inviting people round to dinner and being invited by others. On such occasions, conversation is a principal activity and such conversation includes general topics of interest. There are two notable features of such conversations. The first is that topics that win general favour include politics (despite or perhaps because of the controversy they bring), relationships and topics of local interest and, in addition, references to mutual acquaintances and their goings-on. What is generally absent from such discussions is any explicit mention of philosophy. This doesn't entail, however, that there is no philosophical content to the conversations in question. There frequently is such content and it comes in two general forms. One of the forms is an implied reference where beliefs that are sincerely held are defended and elaborated in more or less sweeping ways and often involving detailed statements of quasi-religious sort that verge on the metaphysical. The other form, perhaps more frequent but certainly less entertaining, are the implied references to logical or general principles to sustain, underpin or often undermine, the views of others. The second type of reference is much more covert than the first and less intriguing to examine.

So let's take the first type of reference. This is activated usually when the fundamentals really do, in some form, come up. References to such verities as "human nature" are invariably involved in such instances and such references have, of late, been given renewed support by environmental crisis which apparently permits the vocabulary of original sin to get a new outing. In addition to these appeals to the role of "human nature" we can also find on such occasions a general appeal to principles that are of real or ultimate importance with such quasi-Feuerbachian claims as the generic appeal to love or such neo-Platonist conceptions as a visible incarnation of goodness having a real role in history occasionally surfacing. This occurs, naturally, when conversing with the most idealistic of one's associates. By contrast, the more cynically minded can compete by making the "human nature" appeal count in a different direction such that the original sin contention serves to undermine the idealism of the other party. The striking element involved in such conversations remains however the lack of appeal to any general standards of evidence in argument and the instant dismissal of any attempt at sustained serious enquiry as not remotely relevant.

This brings me to the second element of my posting, the recent re-reading of a section of the Doctrine of Virtue. This is where Kant is discussing the question of stupefying oneself by excessive use of food or drink. Whilst the general considerations given here aren't immensely interesting the casuistical questions that are posed in regard to the topic are. Here Kant talks about how the use of wine "enlivens conversation" and allows people to speak more freely though he does go on to point out the problem with measuring when someone have themselves become incapable of carrying out any measurement! So the use of drink poses a moral problem since use of it does further the end of the occasion but over-use undercuts it. How to square such a problem?

The second element of Kant's casuistical questions concerns the way that banquets aim at a moral end since they bring people together for the sake of conversation. However, the number of guests should not, as Kant, following Chesterfield, puts it, exceed the number of the muses since otherwise the arrangement of the guests will then allow for only a little conversation. There is a further problem in the very nature of such occasions since they do tend to promote intemperance, something itself immoral. Such are the fine calculations that philosophically need to be considered in relation to dinner parties. Oddly enough, whilst giving these philosophical reflections on the dinner party Kant says little, as I have above, about the extent to which philosophy itself appears in the conversation at these parties. Perhaps the parties he attended involved less philosophically inclined guests than those I am encountering at present?