Allison and Kant's Practical Deduction

In the final chapter of Allison's commentary on the Groundwork he describes the way he understands the "deduction" of the categorical imperative in the third part of Kant's work. Given how controversial the argument of Groundwork III has become it is surprising that Allison's final chapter does not only focus on this question. However Allison also includes here an account of the way Kant concludes the Groundwork by describing the limit of practical philosophy though this account is certainly much less interesting than that of the "deduction" and it is the latter that will be the focus of this posting.

It is the fourth section of Groundwork III that is headlined "how is a categorical imperative possible?" and it is here that the focus on the reading of the "deduction" of the categorical imperative is based. As Allison puts it: "Since every imperative involves a necessitation...of the will, to account for its possibility is to account for this necessitation" (332). With regard to the categorical imperative we have a synthetic a priori proposition and accounting for the necessitation requires showing that the imperative is, as Allison puts it, "practically possible" by which is meant that it expresses something whose binding character can be shown.

In the opening paragraph of the fourth section of Groundwork III Kant discusses the sense in which rational beings are forms of "intelligence" and indicates that if we were merely members of the world of understanding all our actions would conform 'perfectly' with the principle of autonomy of the pure will. Kant also goes on to claim later that the world of understanding contains the "ground" of both the world of sense and of its laws and purports to use this claim to show that as a being of intelligence I am therefore bound by the laws of the world of understanding. 

Allison's analysis of the "deduction" argument begins with the claim that thinking beings place themselves in the world of the understanding but adding to this the point that it is only if such beings also have will that the argument can begin. The next step of the argument, for Allison, is the claim that the self, considered as an active being, possesses spontaneous causal power so that, when viewed as an intelligence, it is seen to be a causal agent. The third key step is that actions, when considered thus to be originated by the agent in question so viewed are part of the "space of reasons". Fourthly, this aspect of the self is contrasted with the empirical one which is governed by reference to "happiness".

Allison's major interpretative move, however, concerns the fifth and final step of the argument as he views it, a step he breaks down into two sub-steps. The first sub-step is concerned with the claim that the world of understanding contains the "ground" of that of sense. The key question with regard to this claim concerns the way the grounding relation is to be understood. Following his general deflationary manner of reading Allison dismisses the idea that this should be seen in a "metaphysical" way as a causal claim. However in addition to the general philosophical reasons Allison possesses for resisting this reading he adds an important normative one to the effect that such a reading provides no binding ground for accepting the validity of the "laws" of understanding. What is needed instead of such a reading is thus one that does show the ground of validity of these laws.

Hence it is not only "ground" that needs to be given an account of but also "laws" in the sense that there could be a "law" of understanding that was validly taken to be binding by a sensible being. In the Critique of Pure Reason this question drove the argument of the transcendental deduction, the schematism and the general Analytic of Principles. From the argument of this part of the Critique we arrived at an account of the conditions of possibility of experience and the analogy between this procedure and that undertaken here in Groundwork III would appear to be that the latter text must provide an additional way of viewing the "possibility of experience" that allows us now to see a way in which there is included amongst "experience" the working of moral law (in the shape of the categorical imperative). Since the will belongs also to the world of understanding it would seem that Kant views it as the basis for providing laws that have to be added to those laid out in the Critique of Pure Reason.

The second sub-part of the fifth claim is where Allison finds the "crux" of the argument. Here Kant includes the claim that the being of sense is nonetheless subject to the laws of understanding which Allison argues are intended to be seen as holding simultaneously with the laws of the type described in the Critique of Pure Reason. This is followed by a paragraph that Allison sees as "explaining" the deduction apparently now given. It opens by declaring that categorical imperatives are "possible" but Allison views this claim as only being that we have had provided to us a reason for thinking that the categorical imperative is a necessary and not a sufficient condition of the argument that the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world. Further it is the "idea" of freedom only that makes one a member of such a world. Being a member of such a world is seen by Allison as having the mere intellectual capacity to think the idea of such freedom.

However Allison's conception of the "explanation" of the deduction runs into a problem with the appearance of a "sollen" (or "ought") that arises next when Kant states that I "ought" to conform my actions to the laws of the intelligible world. Allison thinks this move is here introduced illegitimately since all Kant has shown are epistemological grounds for being in two "worlds" and that a normative requirement does not arise from this alone. Part of the problem here is that Kant had earlier suggested that entirely belonging to the world of understanding would have produced the outcome that one simply "would" have followed the laws of understanding, a point that appears to render these laws, as Allison says, "vacuous". Allison argues that the problem with the text at this point arises from Kant not yet having explicitly to hand the distinction developed later in the Religion between two aspects of the "will". 

Kant next provides an account that is meant to give a basis for "confirmation" of the deduction and involves the awakening of a "scoundrel" to consciousness of the moral law. The claim of how this takes place in Groundwork III is, however, contrasted negatively with the parallel discussion in the Critique of Practical Reason by Allison. In Groundwork III Kant appears to state that it is the idea of freedom alone which suffices to change the standpoint of the scoundrel. By contrast, in the Critique of Practical Reason the "fact of reason" is invoked to provide the basis for a view that one does stand independent of determination by sensuous needs. This passage, even so amended, is, however, less plausible as a piece of moral psychology than Kant provides later in the Religion.

When Allison turns to assessing the deduction as he has reconstructed it he begins with the question of how to understand the argument that the world of "understanding" provides a ground for that of sense that enables a normative claim to be made on behalf of the former. Key to this is the point that the difference between the two is centred in the argument of Groundwork III on the self alone. This enables Allison to make the point that we need not view the supremacy of the "world" of understanding as a claim about a specific "realm" separate from that of sense. Further at Ak. 4: 458 Kant speaks of the distinction between the two "worlds" as that of a change in "standpoint". This change requires us to view ourselves as capable of legislating laws and having the capacity to recognise our own legislation as binding upon us. When we look at the "two standpoints" practically Allison adds we can give the "law" of understanding a content by means of the moral law. Such "laws" can also then be understood as "reasons". 

Allison also looks at the question of whether there is some specific non-empirical "interest" which supports the moral law and admits that it is impossible to account for the possibility of one. So Allison does not think Kant resolves or is capable of resolving this problem. However this leads to the question of the boundary of practical philosophy since this boundary is reached in terms of arguing that it is impossible to demonstrate the impossibility of freedom. Freedom is only an idea, not an "absolute reality" and it rests, for Allison, on viewing the relationship between a subject and an action in divergent ways. Part of Kant's defence of this claim was that it is essentially recognised within common human reason itself. The world of understanding, considered from a practical point of view, is the world of the will and this point requires us, given the general picture of the world, to see the will as something non-empirical. This supports the point that the "standpoint" of freedom is one that reason takes up in order to be able to think of itself practically.

However when Allison looks at the final passages of Groundwork III he argues that Kant here weakens some of the claims made earlier in the same section. Kant here states that the question of the possibility of the categorical imperative can be answered "to the extent that one can state the presupposition on which alone it is possible" (Ak. 4: 461). This "presupposition" is the idea of freedom. Allison's point is that this claim involves accepting that the deduction provides only a necessary condition of the possibility of the categorical imperative not conditions that are sufficient to account for its actual possibility. Thus it would appear, on this view, that the argument of Groundwork III is of less moment than it initially appears to be. This points, for Allison, to the superiority of the account of the "fact of reason" in the Critique of Practical Reason. Indeed the commentary Allison provides to the Groundwork ends with the claim that this work is "in many ways a transitional as well as a foundational work". 

Allison's account of the third part of the Groundwork in his commentary on it is instructive as the deflationary view of transcendental idealism that is Allison's hallmark is used here primarily to buttress the sense that the transcendental distinction has a primarily practical significance. However the conception that arises of the argument of the third part of the Groundwork is certainly a disappointing one and worth contrast in subsequent postings with quite different readings to that of Allison.

Allison and *Groundwork* III

In Chapter 11 of his commentary on the Groundwork Allison looks at two questions concerning the interpretation of the third section of the work. On the one hand, he assesses the way freedom is discussed here and on the other looks at the nature of the apparent "circle" the argument reaches at a crucial point. In looking at these points in Chapter 11 Allison prepares the way for an account of the "deduction" apparently carried out in Groundwork III. 

The first point Allison makes is that Kant does not really attempt to "prove" the reality of freedom but only the need to "presuppose" it (thus disagreeing with the view of Karl Ameriks who assimilates the argument of Groundwork III to certain passages from lectures in the 1770s). The "presupposition" in question is a necessary one in the sense that morality expresses a law for every rational being as such and so its principle must be bound up in an a priori fashion with the will of such a being. One of the reasons for taking this to be true is that it is requisite rationally to be able to act and one does so under the "idea" of freedom. The "idea" in question is understood by Allison to be freedom in the sense of transcendental spontaneity, the ability, that is, to begin a series absolutely. However this is not equivalent for Allison to the claim that it is necessary to "believe" that one is free or to the fictive claim that this freedom is "heuristic". Rather the idea in question is one which is a necessary product of reason and is thus possessed of objective validity. 

Not only is this the case but the idea of freedom also has normative force and acting in accordance with it places one in the "space of reasons". The use of this Sellarsian vocabulary is particularly interesting given that Allison connects the question of freedom to reason in two respects, both theoretical and practical. The understanding is the source of spontaneous grasp of truth (as given in the German for "concept") and it does this in a rule-governed way which is part of its internal operation. Similarly freedom in a practical sense is a product of the internal operation of the will. However whilst Kant's argument, as construed by Allison, appears to lead at this point to the conclusion that there is operative a practical reason whose "reality" we can show, the argument instead takes the turn that leads towards the "circle" that stops its progression in the manner that appears obvious.

Allison's account of the move the argument of Groundwork III takes at this point is grounded on the view that all that has been established up until now is a conditional claim. Freedom has not, as yet, been shown to be actual and the consciousness of autonomy is not one whose binding validity has been shown. So the establishment of the supreme principle of morality has not been achieved and thus the reason for departing from empirical interests has not been conclusively given. This is why Kant speaks now (at Ak. 4: 453) of a "hidden circle" having been apparent in the argument up to this point. Kant's reference to this "circle" is one that has puzzled many including Paton whose commentary Allison cites as a case of misrepresentation of Kant's argument. Allison understands the "circle" to consist in an inference from freedom to autonomy or from negative to positive freedom. However this does mean that Kant was not previously really guilty of arguing in a "circle" but only of begging the question in the sense of taking freedom to have an immediate certainty. 

In preparing the way for the resolution of the "circle" in question Kant discusses the notion of "two standpoints" and the rest of Allison's chapter is devoted to looking at the way these standpoints are characterised in Groundwork III. This distinction is one that has to be shown not to be merely an ad hoc device and Kant aims also to show that it is recognised by common understanding although the latter claim is regarded by Allison as dubious. The account of the distinction between appearances and things in themselves is drawn crudely enough in Groundwork III however and it may be, as Allison suggests, that the reason for this crudity is precisely to make the distinction one that can be related to "common understanding". It does, however, also include the distinction between two aspects of the agent, one that certainly seems at variance with "common understanding" but which is justified to it by means of the difference between active and passive aspects of the self. The active element includes the sense of spontaneity in the production of ideas, a capacity not sensibly conditioned. However the question of whether this consciousness is illusory has to be addressed. This is where the claim that all Kant is showing is that freedom is a necessary "presupposition" comes in for Allison since the presupposition is one that we have a warrant for adopting inasmuch as we consider ourselves as members of the intelligible world. This provides, on Allison's reading, a basis for claiming a "deduction" of the "moral law" though not the categorical imperative given his commitment to a "double deduction" reading.

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.

Herman and Mutual Aid (I)

Apologies to readers of this blog for my extended absence from writing. Various things came up and for a while they created problems with finding time and space for blogging. In returning to the practice I want to look at an essay from the collection on Kant's Groundwork that was edited by Paul Guyer. The piece I'm going to address here and in the next posting is the one by Barbara Herman on mutual aid (which originally appeared in 1984 in an issue of Ethics).

Herman's piece opens with a long epigraph from the Groundwork (Ak. 4: 423) where Kant relates the question of beneficence to the formula of the law of nature. After citing this Herman claims that it is not a "crude misunderstanding" of the passage to see it as making a "prudential claim" for the duty of beneficence. The example as given relates the duty to the conception of a contradiction in the will and does so by pointing out that the adoption of a maxim of non-beneficence would lead an agent to deprive themselves of the help they will in future need for themselves. The "prudential" understanding of this argument has a substantial history going back to Schopenhauer and being repeated in one way by Sidgwick. It is, despite the evident reasons for championing it, a reading that runs full tilt against the overwhelming general case made in the Groundwork for distinguishing morality from prudential foundations. This general heuristic point gives one a clear reason for rejecting the prudential reading of the beneficence example.

In addition to referring to this heuristic point Herman points out a "double function" of the categorical imperative. One part of this is to "establish" moral requirements, the other is to assess actions and policies whose "permissibility" is uncertain. This "double function" should lead to seeing the use of examples as part of the general case for the duty in question and not as severed from it.

Herman's argument subsequently develops a view of the way the test that is given in the example is meant to work. Her overall claim is that the point of it should be to establish that the categorical imperative "correlates well with our considered judgments" (134). This notion of "considered judgments" is unclear since it could involve a notion of "common sense" or it may refer to a "reflective" kind of work that is undertaken on the typical judgments of "common sense". Further Herman refers to the point that Kant takes it that the categorical imperative is, in some way, "embedded" in ordinary judgments as would seem to follow from the argument of the first part of the Groundwork. "Correlation" is not a strong enough link to establish this claim but this claim could itself be interpreted in a similarly dual fashion as requiring either that common sense exhibits the categorical imperative or that a reflective analysis of its operation would demonstrate the categorical imperative whose result therefore would not be equivalent to a descriptive analysis of the operation of common sense.

This first issue is thus far unresolved. The next point that arises concerns the way that Herman views the operation of the procedure of moral judgment. This is done by means of iteration of the method of the "typic" outlined in the Critique of Practical Reason where Kant speaks of construction of a "world" in which the maxim in question has got the status of being a law of nature. If something can't be adopted as such a law without a contradiction of one of two kinds (in either conception or in willing) resulting then the maxim must be rejected. (Herman neglects to engage here in any discussion of the theory of maxims.) The example from the Groundwork involves no contradiction in conception and instead Kant there insists on the notion that there is a contradiction in the will.

The prudential reading of the example produces no specifically moral reason for acting on a maxim of beneficence. It typically instead trades on considerations of the vulnerability to misfortune of the agent with the putatively non-beneficent maxim. But if the argument is a prudential one it follows that there are many situations in which helping others is very inconvenient and that a generalized maxim of non-beneficence might, on the whole, be preferable. It would also produce a non-universalizable conception of beneficence since, as Herman puts it, some might be more whilst others are less willing to "risk it" that they will need and want help in the future. The whole problem seems then to turn into one about insurance and assurance and then the degree of beneficence one is willing to practice becomes dependent upon the way one calculates one's real risks of being in need.

The result of the prudential conception of the beneficence example is that the consideration of it becomes one in which moral actions are viewed in terms of "pay-off" and resultant expectations of well-being and this seems not to capture correctly the intuition we have of the importance of morality in our life. Herman mentions a possible alternative view to the prudential reading of the example as used by Rawls in his lectures on Kant's moral philosophy. Here Rawls invokes his conception of the veil of ignorance but Herman interprets it in   terms of the prudential argument for beneficence since it merely makes everyone conservative about risk taking. There are passages where Rawls suggests this in Theory but I don't take this to be his point here. In Theory, as Herman rightly states, the veil of ignorance is used against the backdrop of the "original position" but Rawls makes no reference to the latter when he interprets Kant's moral philosophy in his lectures. So I don't think the "prudential" reading that makes some sense of Rawls' overall political argument is one that is evidently right with regard to his reconstruction of Kant's moral philosophy.

Herman's interpretation of Rawls' view of the beneficence argument leads to seeing it as based on a view of the "representative person" rather than on an assessment of the position individuals are placed in. The point of emphasizing the latter is that Kant's examples generally function to counter the typical strategy revealed in many maxims of "exempting" oneself, just for this once, from a rule accepted to hold generally. Seeing the example this way makes the question of testing the maxim of non-beneficence one that is merely a special case of a general problem of egoistic self-preference. This way of seeing the example has the virtue of being close to the prudential reading in one central respect whilst also presenting a case for the prudential reading being wrong overall.

A second element of Herman's resistance to the Rawlsian reading concerns the fact that maxims appear to be tested by Kant as they are willed by the agent and hence the test of them has to include information of a sort ruled out by the veil of ignorance. I am unconvinced by this second "problem" with Rawls' reconstruction since the information that is relevant is only the generic information concerning the rationale for adopting the maxim. It doesn't incorporate specifically individual features into its consideration, the Herman reading, and nor could it or should it. In not doing so however it is no better placed than the Rawlsian reading.

Herman's interpretation turns, not like the Rawlsian one, on a view of information but instead on a view of rationality. Herman wishes to show that the adoption of the maxim of non-beneficence is irrational but not because of its implications of being non-prudential. In presenting an alternative view of the irrationality of the maxim of non-beneficence Herman looks in particular at the qualities of "ends" agents adopt. She wishes to show two qualities of ends that will be sufficient to show the irrationality of the maxim of non-beneficence. These are, firstly, that there are ends that are more important to agents than any alleged benefit derived from the aim of non-beneficence and, secondly, that there are ends that it is not possible for agents to forego. These two claims could be termed the importance claim (as in "importance of what we care about") and indispensable ends claim (ends we cannot fail to have).

So the categorical imperative procedure is viewed by Herman as showing that these two claims hold with regard to our ends. Central to her reconstruction will be showing that the aid of others is something we cannot do without and thus that aiming to maintain relations with others that will ensure that such aid is forthcoming should it be required is an indispensable aim for us. This point requires looking again at the theory of action that Kant outlines in his account of hypothetical imperatives. The conception of these was that means are not contingently connected to ends in the sense that certain kinds of means are essential to the accomplishment of certain kinds of ends. To this Herman adds that we essentially have recourse to three kinds of means: the utilisation of our own powers (as is discussed in the duty of self-improvement), the use of "things" or "objects" and the use of the services of others. Put like this the argument concerning beneficence aims to show that one of the basic conditions of our action incorporates a relation to the services of others.

In response to this Herman conjures up the figure of a "negative Stoic" who is prepared to give up any end that will require the help of others to be realised. Such an agent has taken the Stoical end to be a limit on all other ends. This does require taking this end to have a supreme kind of value and if there are other ends that are also taken to be important the problem with maintaining such a view will be manifested in demonstrating to oneself why this end should always have over-riding value. Not only is this so but whether the conditions faced by this agent are ones that present serious problems for them are not themselves under the agent's control. It may be that one will need help to resist temptations that are very strong and if this is resisted then the maxim of independence may become self-defeating. Whilst this argument doesn't strike me as having conclusive force what it does show is that any given end has to be related to the conditions that enable it to be realized and that one of the elements that have to be considered there is the potential help of others. Cutting oneself off from this seems unreasonable whatever one's ends otherwise are.

Herman's central claim is that there are ends that a rational being cannot give up and this is her gloss on Kant's notion of "true needs". Included amongst these are the need for the help of others given the natural limits on our powers as agents. As Herman puts this: "Because we are dependent rational beings with true needs, we are constrained to act in certain ways" (143). It is not obvious how this argument fails to be a variant on the conception that the duty of beneficence turns out to be something that it is prudent to accept. Herman's view that conditions of agency include the ability to call on the help of others seems right but this ability to call on the help of others is neither always requiring of beneficent acts nor does it mandate the scope of these acts. Further whilst a relation to others does seem to manifest a "true need" there are reasons to think separation from others is also so required (as in Kant's discussion of friendship).

Herman herself, however, appears more concerned with the suggestion that an implausibly stringent requirement of beneficence might be thought to follow from her argument. So she considers a maxim of non-sacrificial beneficence as a means to counter such a result and suggests that it would fail the categorical imperative test. However, in countering the suggestion that such a result points to an implausibly strong duty she argues that what is required when sacrificial help is needed is not "sacrifice" itself but something specific and availability of this latter depends on contingent circumstances.  Hence a maxim of non-sacrificial beneficence does not involve a contradiction in the will in the way that a maxim of non-beneficence generically does.

However it might seem that such an argument can be used against the duty of beneficence in general. Whenever help is needed it is something specific that is required not the help as such. Whilst this is true it is only the agency of another that can provide the help in question whatever that is.

What Herman's argument as shown does do not do is demonstrate that there may not be imprudent consequences from acting in a way that serves our own "true needs". Further she cannot demonstrate that our "true needs" may fail to be met in future because we acted beneficently. So, in an example she considers, it may be that a rich person will give away resources beneficently that will later make it impossible for this person to get an expensive medical treatment that would have had major effects on their life. This fact shows that the argument for beneficence is far from an easy one to sell. Herman herself deals with this in terms of how there is no requirement to meet all contingent circumstances in such cases but only to show what is required for agency to be truly realised. But given that the circumstances of scarcity seem far from "contingent" if they are likely to always hold in an agent's life this argument is not clearly conclusive.

Constructivism and Common Sense

I've been reading and thinking about constructivism today mainly as a response of some sort to it will have to feature in work I am currently pursuing. Whilst doing so, however, a question arose for me in relation to how constructivism is understood by Onora O'Neill in her criticism of Rawls. This question concerned the priority she gives, in her criticism of Rawls, to the notion of "reflective equilibrium".


The essay of O'Neill's I'm referring to is one that appears in Samuel Freeman's edited collection on Rawls. In this piece O'Neill concentrates on the way in which the constructive procedure in Rawls works looking at the range of what can be constructed according to Rawls, the justification he offers of the constructive procedure and, most importantly for her critique, the address of Rawls' construction. The view offered by her of these topics ranges across Rawls' work, moving from Theory to Political Liberalism. 


In O'Neill's picture of Theory the key notion is "reflective equilibrium" which is taken to provide a coherentist test of "our considered judgments" and to rely on a conception of the reasonable that is explicitly discussed in Rawls' later notion of "Kantian constructivism". O'Neill subsequently refers to this notion of "reflective equilibrium" when she draws out that "Kantian constructivism" appeals to an idealised Kantian view of the person and rests its appeal to this notion on reference to "our moral experience". Part of what enables this appeal for O'Neill is Rawls' reliance upon a coherentist justification of practical reason in his view of "Kantian constructivism". Her view of Rawls' later "political" turn is that what happens is that the conception of practical reason as rested on a generic coherence is replaced by a closed appeal to "public reason" where the resources of public reason are simply derived from the common conceptions of a democratic culture much as the earlier appeal was to "our moral experience".


In contrast to Rawls' later political turn O'Neill sets out a view of Kantian reason as something that cannot be anchored in a given public culture but accessible in principle to anyone including "outsiders" to the culture of the West that produced Kant's own philosophy. So O'Neill's first move is to depict the appeal to "public reason" Rawls makes as a fatal concession to relativism. The point in doing so is to widen the view of what is to count as public reason suggesting that reasoning is not "completely" public when it rests on appeals to particular properties and beliefs which can appear merely arbitrary to anyone outside the original community that rests on them. In contrast to this view O'Neill states that we need justifications of claims that can be satisfied only in terms of what can be followed in principle by anyone. This is part of what motivates O'Neill's general view that the categorical imperative is not merely the supreme principle of morality but also the supreme principle of reason.


An implication of O'Neill's argument is that reason is "cosmopolitan" for Kant and does not rest on "bounded societies" as political institutions are incapable of conferring justification. This is why O'Neill argues that Kant's view of the construction of ethical principles is more demanding than the "Kantian constructivism" described by Rawls as Kant requires justification to be capable of "aiming to reach all others without restriction". This is why practical reason itself is something that O'Neill argues is capable of construction by Kant as it was not by Rawls.


Having rehearsed O'Neill's critique of Rawls I now want to suggest that there is a central problem with her view that does not apply to Rawls' constructivism and suggests a reason for thinking that Rawls' appeal to "reflective equilibrium" and to "our moral experience" may be less alien to Kant than O'Neill's arguments would lead one to suppose. The first problem that can be posed with O'Neill's view is that it is unclear from her general picture of reason how the process of public reason is to be carried out. She argues that public reason is incomplete if it involves appeal to particular beliefs held by some and thereby appears to take the reference to universal law to require abandonment of commitment to any given prior beliefs and to provide us with a  de novo conception of justification. It is partly due to following a view like this however that the procedure of trying to justify the Kantian appeal to universal laws off the ground gets involved in terrible tangles. The notoriously involved difficulties in providing justifications of universalised maxims that are morally permissible arises from thinking that we need to provide an account for maxims that no one normally takes to need justification at all. Necessarily any and every type of maxim has to be looked at in terms of its permissibility if the point of appeal to universal law is to provide us with a means of assessing morality without bringing in previously agreed moral data.


Moreover, the point of appeal to public reason on O'Neill's view appears to be to arrive at a standard for what can be shown to be acceptable so that the procedure of public reason is itself the arbiter of what we agree can be done. This makes the arrival at universal agreement the ground for permissibility rather than the possibility of convergence being shown to be based upon salient factors that allow the agreement to hold. This seems to put the burden of justification in the wrong place. A second but related point concerns how the standards of public reason on a neutrally determined view of universal reason are to be set out. This point concerns not the kind of consideration that Rawls was interested in with reference to "pluralism" but rather deep problems with reasoning with some who appear to be committed to principles that are deeply antithetical to universality. Racist views for example are directly in contradiction to appeal to universality and would have to be dealt with as providing non-public reason in some sense but if this is not to be stipulative through moral content (as clearly is impossible on O'Neill's view) this has to require a structural notion of formal public reasoning to rule out certain types of reasoning from the start. 


In order to rule out appeal to certain kinds of reasons as non-public there have to be ways of showing to those who adopt these reasons a basis for agreement on their behalf to a standard of reasoning that rules out appeals to their favoured principles. The means that O'Neill appears to favour is by reference to a view of agency that requires us to see the agency of others as intertwined with our own in an important way. So she refers in Towards Justice and Virtue to activity as inclusive of plurality, connection and finitude. What is meant by these notions is that we have to relate to others as independent sources of activity (plurality) who there is a real possibility we will affect by acting (connection) and that these others are limited enough to be vulnerable to our actions (finitude). Conversely we are reciprocally related to them in the same way. So rules of action should generally take these characteristics into account. It is likely that the point of these descriptors is to give a basic notion of moral standing to O'Neill but the problem is that the notion has itself to be constructed in terms of "public reasons" and there are problems with doing so. The basic sense that we would expect from her general view is that the reasons in question would have a neutral status and not require any one to adopt specific beliefs in the sense that she criticises Rawls for requiring. If that is right, however, then the notion of plurality only points to a constraint on my action if I independently have reasons to regard others as having standing as it does not itself provide them with such standing. The fact that I am connected to others and vulnerable to them provides some general prudential constraints on action but, again, is insufficient to give others serious moral standing. The only one of these three criteria that really has the significance that it would provide a reason for morally taking others seriously is the criteria of vulnerability but if I interpret it from a first-person perspective it only grounds a prudential one and requiring as a matter of reason that I see it more broadly is not to follow the basic constructivist rule.


If O'Neill's view of public reason is one that just draws on generic criteria like these it is not going to get off the ground and it requires some additional elements to be taken seriously as a guide for a normative conception of public reason. Such further elements are available if we make the appeal to common sense that Rawls makes with his notion of "reflective equilibrium" and for which O'Neill criticises him. The ability to appeal to "common sense" as a means of understanding conditions of action is part of what is at work in Rawls' discussion of such things as the "circumstances of justice" and the "strains of commitment", both of which build into practical reason the basis for the coherence requirements that O'Neill dislikes. Without them, however, she has to fall back on a generic conception of public reason that is either too thin to build anything from or to implicitly rely on normative commitments that she has not constructively justified. Either way it seems less obvious than O'Neill may think that cosmopolitan conceptions of reason can get by without appeal to some views of pre-conceived moral standards.


Not only is this so but Kant's own procedure seems not to mirror the generic requirements of practical reason that O'Neill presents. Not only does the first part of Kant's Groundwork proceed from data of common human reason but the examples of how to test maxims that are supplied by Kant in this work presuppose the normative existence of practices. This is evident in the way Kant discusses promises, suicide, the cultivation of talents and benevolence. In each case Kant proceeds from a pre-existent conception of moral views and provides a means for understanding, by reference to them, reasons for thinking certain types of maxims are impermissible. The maxims in question do not arise as de novo tests but as ones that have pertinence against the background of a set of practices which give them the sense that they have. Perhaps thus Rawls' reference to "reflective equilibrium" is rather more Kantian than O'Neill's allegedly "cosmopolitan" view of reason.

O'Neill and Kant on Rational Willing

In a piece originally published in 1985 and reprinted in Paul Guyer's edited collection on the Groundwork Onora O'Neill discusses the understanding of consistent willing that Kant offers with his idea of willing universal laws. It's worth going through the general argument of this piece again, not least since it stands as a corrective against views that, due to the influence of Derek Parfit, are once again current concerning the categorical imperative.


O'Neill opens the piece by pointing out that there is a tendency to discuss universality tests in terms of what everybody or somebody wants done either by or to everyone. Due to understanding what wants done in terms of what happens to be contingently wanted this way of presenting universality tests ensures that they are seen in heteronomous fashion. Kant's own view of universality testing makes no reference either to want everyone wants done or to what somebody wants done either by or to everybody. This is why the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) reads simply: "Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law" (Ak. 4: 421). So, as O'Neill puts this, we are invited here to consider that we can will only that which it is possible or consistent to will as a universal law and no reference is made to what we would will or would find acceptable or would want. So Kant's formulation does not match those that are often given. This is why Kant is taken by O'Neill to have what she terms "an uncompromisingly rationalist foundation for ethics". I'd have to parse this notion of "rationalism" a little myself but it is, I think, clear that what O'Neill means here is that the formulation is one that moves away from desire/inclination models entirely and that this is what is distinctive about it.


Now, one of the reasons why universal law tests tend to import heteronomous elements in their discussion is to avoid charges of triviality or emptiness (as the shadow of Hegel falls over most discussion of universal law tests). Substantive conclusions are generally thought not to be available from formal tests alone. O'Neill's piece sets out to show why this view is problematic and thus to offer a basis for viewing formal universality testing of a Kantian sort as capable of responding to the challenge of providing substantive conclusions. 


The first step in O'Neill's reconstruction is to bring out that there are two aspects to how the Kantian universality test is to go and in describing these she brings out how FUL proposes to us two points. Firstly, FUL indicates reference to action on a maxim. Secondly, it restricts the types of maxim we can appeal to by reference to the capability of a maxim being one that can become a universal law. So the two elements of working out how to understand what "action on a maxim" means and how the restriction of maxims to conditions of universality is to work have to distinguished in order for the test to be understood in its complexity.


So O'Neill's analysis opens with an account of what "acting on a maxim" involves and follows Kant's basic statements of "maxims" as being "subjective principles" of action (Ak. 4: 421n). Such a point is not meant by Kant to suggest that they are "subjective" in the sense of being purely arbitrary or having any content whatsoever. Maxims are not only constrained in their form in ways we'll look at in a moment but they are also available generally in the sense that any number of agents could adopt them, they could be adopted at different times and places and refer to apparently very different actions. However, it is also the case that whilst Kant discusses action through his conception of "maxims" that it is no part of the Kantian conception to think of "maxims" as being consciously referred to always. But in a given situation there are involved in the description of the "maxim" of action references to the agent, the act and the situation itself. 


Maxims are not (pace Parfit) the same thing as "intentions", not least because "intentions" include many details that are not relevant to the consideration of maxims. Maxims are, rather, the underlying principles that guide specific "intentions" as O'Neill puts this. I'll formulate this point slightly differently to how O'Neill does but, I think, in conformity with the general thrust of her view. On my account, a maxim can be understood in general terms as formulating a kind of aim we have, one that exists whether it is consciously at work for us at various times or not and which forms the context in which we develop specific policies that are expressed in given specific actions. This understanding of maxims as stating aims is important although it does mean that it is not always transparent, simply from observing someone's actions, what maxim they are following. Nor might an agent always be able to answer if we pressed them as to their maxim since it is possible the general aim of their action was not at that given point before them even though the understanding of it as a background condition is what really made sense of their action. So we infer them as a result of understanding not specific actions in isolation but by connecting specific actions together in view of the policies involved in them in order to arrive at a sense of the basic aim in view.


Now part of O'Neill's point in this article is to use this argument to distance Kant from a general understanding of universality tests that frames the way they are put by reference to heteronomous considerations. The point here is that universality tests tend to be seen through the prism, as O'Neill puts it, of "categories of right". Rightness and wrongness are then seen primarily in terms of appraisal of outward actions. On O'Neill's account, however, this is not the prime point of using the categorical imperative in a universality test with regard to maxims. Rather than this being the point the basic question the categorical imperative is being used to put is whether the aim with which we propose to act is consistently universalizable. If this is the point of the test then it follows that what we want to know when we apply it is whether acting on this maxim will produce an act that is morally worthy and this is the way we can tell whether or not the act is one that conforms to duty. So duty is comprehended through the question of moral worth and not the other way around on O'Neill's view. 


This key point distances the understanding of the point of the categorical imperative's universality test away from understanding of outward actions towards moral worth with moral worth now emerging not as something that is merely bound by duty but rather as the central case of duty. Understanding of outward appraisal of actions would, by contrast, be derivative of this. Putting matters this way shows that the understanding of what "action on a maxim" involves is not a trivial part of the process of constructing the universality test.


A result of seeing the Kantian universality test in this way is that the general objections to universality testing that are posed by many can be seen to be faulty. So, for example, the basic problem of "maxim-fiddling" that is formulated to show that any act can pass the universality test arises because it is taken to be the point of the test to appraise outward actions and to see whether if the actions in question were performed by others a contradiction would arise. By contrast, on O'Neill's construction, the outward actions are not the primary point of the test. Another way that counter-examples tend to get presented is through focus on specific policies as the target of maxim testing rather than underlying aims, a basic failure to get the point of the reference to maxims.


The first point of the process is thus to identify maxims as aims of actions and to evaluate policies by reference to aims. It is only a secondary part of the process to appraise outward actions. A major plus of this reading is that it brings the first two parts of the Groundwork closer together than they are often seen as. The account of moral worth in the first part of the Groundwork is frequently seen as if it had little to do with the account of the categorical imperative in the second part whereas O'Neill's view leads us to seeing the categorical imperative instead through the prism of moral worth. It is thus the consequence of her argument that we should basically apply the universality test to our own aims of action as it is we who are adopting maxims. 


The second part of the process opens now we have an account of what "acting on a maxim" involves. This second part requires testing the maxim in terms of its consistency with universality. O'Neill famously formulates two types of inconsistency: one within an agent's maxim (contradiction in conception) and one between either the different policies that follow from the aim or between the policies and the aim (contradiction in the will). The first type is here termed by O'Neill conceptual inconsistency and the second type volitional inconsistency. There are different ways that maxims can express either of these types of inconsistency.


The most basic way a maxim can be inconsistent is by expressing an aspiration which is, for some reason, impossible. This is so if, for instance, it involves mutually incompatible aspirations. This would prevent action on the underlying maxim from being possible and would point to the emergence of action that is seriously disjointed as a consequence. However, the point of my distinction between policies and aims comes out clearly when we consider how O'Neill formulates this point: "A non-universalisable maxim embodies a conceptual contradiction only if it aims at achieving mutually incompatible objectives and so cannot under any circumstances be acted on with success". It is clear that the underlying aim is the problem here and this is what a maxim is basically concerned with. The policies come into conflict with themselves as they are part of an aim that is intrinsically impossible to realise.


Maxims are principles of action in that they give us principles that we aim to realise and this aim is what is meant by saying that we have willed the maxim. The conceptual contradiction emerges when the willing in question incorporates something in its aim that is not possible. The more interesting case, in many respects, however, concerns volitional inconsistency. It is with regard to it that O'Neill is led to an account of rational action that is particularly rich. Kant describes hypothetical imperatives as involving a kind of analytic connection between means and end assuming that reason has decisive influence on action. O'Neill terms this the Principle of Hypothetical Imperatives (PHI) and says that it means that agents "intend any indispensable requirements" for the achievement of their aims. However, whilst Kant's text in the second part of the Groundwork appears to rest with this point, O'Neill articulates a broader view of rational aiming (called by her rational intending but I think this is misleading). The broader account leads to her setting alongside the PHI a list that is unlikely to be complete but which extends the general discussion of rational volition further.


Included amongst O'Neill's family of principles of rational aiming are the following: a) a requirement of rationality to direct policies that are not merely concerned with indispensable or necessary means (as with the PHI) but also with sufficient means for achieving the aim; b) adding to sufficient means the seeking of such means when they are not available; c) including in one's policies all necessary and sufficient components of what is aimed at; d) ensuring that specific policies are mutually consistent; e) ensuring that the foreseeable results of specific policies do not conflict with the underlying aim.


O'Neill understands the point of the family of principles as one of bringing together what she calls "surface and underlying intentions" but which I would term bringing together policies and aims. Policies must express commitment to acts that provide either the means to or components of aims and must not undercut the aims. The fact that the policy not undercut the aim is central here and points to a basic standard of action. 


Having clarified this point O'Neill returns now to the universality test and states that her view is that the basic intuition expressed in it is a non-egoistic one of not singling ourselves out for special consideration or treatment. This is clear when Kant talks about how we often "make exceptions" of ourselves when we attempt to formulate maxims and O'Neill understands this point to mean that FUL includes in its basic reference a notion of a plurality of interacting agents. The consideration of maxims is one in which we are understanding ourselves to adopt a maxim that meets the condition of being able to be adopted by others and maxims, as we will see in a moment, often are concerned with relations to others. 


Now when the universalisation of maxims is presented in the Groundwork Kant moves from FUL to the Law of Nature formula and after referring to the latter he states the two types of inconsistency (Ak. 4: 424). Contradictions in conception often would not involve a contradiction if we did not attempt to universalise them so it is the process of putting them to the test of universality that reveals the problem with them. A clear case of this occurring is with maxims of deception which involve no incoherence so long as they are not universalised but which do when they are. With regard to the examples of contradiction in conception the distinction between aims and policies is particularly important. 


Maxims that lead to volitional inconsistency state no manifest incoherence even when universalised. So what they conflict with is one of the family of principles of rational volition that O'Neill spoke of earlier. The most obvious case is where they conflict with PHI which Kant takes to apply to the case of non-beneficence. The maxim of neglect of talents, by contrast, is one that O'Neill thinks contravenes not merely PHI but also the second requirement of adoption of sufficient means for realisation of aims. And she has similar arguments that invoke her criteria of rational action with regard to other types of maxims. The point of the cases of contradiction of the will is that they show that a number of maxims require, for their realisation, stable relations with others as a necessary condition. The general argument thus shows that a Kantian argument for a universality test that is grounded on considerations of formal consistency and rationality can ground substantive requirements without needing to refer to notions of desire and preference.

Rawls and the Good for Persons

In my last posting on Rawls I addressed the first half of Chapter VII of A Theory of Justice which focused on the kind of view of practical reason that emerged from it. In this posting, by contrast, I want to look at the second half of Chapter VII where, essentially, Rawls addresses topics concerned with the good for persons, a topic that emerges out of the previous discussion of practical reason.


In section 66, Rawls directly discusses the definition of the good for persons, prior to going on to focus on some excellencies and deficiencies of valuation later and concludes the chapter with some summary differences about the role of the notion of the "good" compared to that of the right. So the unity of the second half of the chapter is clearly focused on filling in the "thin" theory of the good and arriving at a "full" theory of it. At the beginning of section 66 Rawls summarises what has been achieved by the previous half of the chapter as indicating that a person's good involves the successful execution of a rational plan of life. Having arrived at this notion it is now possible to introduce, as Rawls puts it, "further definitions".


The primary goods that have been referred to throughout Theory are now described as goods that it would be rational to want whatever else is wanted and to be presupposed within the original position. They are explained essentially by the "thin" theory of the good and include liberty, opportunity, income, wealth, and self-respect, the latter of which has a special place here. The general theory of goodness as rationality is taken to account for these primary goods as arising from the account of practical reason previously given. However, Rawls now points out that the conception of reason that has guided his account is one that is regarded with some suspicion by some philosophers, particularly on the grounds that it provides only an instrumental conception of value and thus does not suffice to account for the notion of "moral worth", the very notion that Kant is particularly concerned with in Groundwork I.


Rawls' view is that if we apply the thin theory directly to the account of moral worth then we will indeed arrive at only an instrumental conception of goodness but that the thin theory is only meant to provide "part" of the description of the original position. We have, that is, to develop our account of the good in order to arrive at an account of moral worth, moving from the "thin" theory to the "full" theory. The first way of making this move that Rawls identifies is concentration on basic roles and positions, taking the example of the notion of the "citizen". If we identity key elements of what is involved in the notion of the citizen this would be one route to a view of the good person since the good person would be someone who particularly exemplified the role in question. This could be seen by thinking of the reasons other citizens would have to see the good person in this way. Having begun on this track the second logical move is to see the "good person" as representing a general or average assessment so that the idea of a good person can be extended beyond the specific starting point. Finally, there can be seen to be properties that a person occupying particular social roles would be desired to possess generally and then to assess these broad properties as ones that it would be rational to endorseas dispositively to be encouraged.


These three different accounts of how we could arrive at a conception of the good person are considered by Rawls and the third, which Rawls indicates he derived to an extent from Thomas Scanlon, is specifically taken to be valuable. But Rawls confesses that there would be difficulties in filling in this idea of a "good person", so considered. Firstly the point of view from which the properties in question are selected has to be identified. It surely includes, Rawls thinks, a sense of the virtues as classically considered. Representative people in a society will want a fair demonstration of virtuous action as underpinning the right institutions in the right way. However there are also, as Kant would say, "talents" that it is a good idea to encourage the development of although such talents still need to be regulated by a sense of justice in those who possess them. 'Talents' broadly considered are natural assets and have to be distinguished from virtues properly so called.


The "good person" then has moral worth due to possessing, in a higher degree than is normal, features of moral character that it would be rational for all to want to be manifested in action. This provides us with a generic sense of moral worth to be placed alongside the theory of justice and the thin theory of the good. However getting this sense of moral worth is not equivalent to a full theory of the good. Rather such a full theory requires as well a clearer sense of what the good generically consists in and its sub-parts. So Rawls defines "good action" in the general sense as an act "performed for the sake of the other person's good". This account of goodness thus presupposes the general sense of the good as being benevolence perhaps because such guided action is thought of as the most natural way that we leave behind the specific sphere of pursuing our own rational ends and relating to others. Such a conception also has the attraction of making clearer than many others in what supererogation consists, namely, an act "which a person does for the sake of another's good even though the proviso that nullifies the natural duty is satisfied". In other words, a kind of good act that is undertaken at potential cost to our own interests.


A complete sense of "rightness as fairness", the notion that is implicitly supposed here, would require, as Rawls confesses, some view of "reasonable self-interest" as defined from the original position and work outwards from there but this is not here provided. What does arise from the brief generic view of the good that has been given is a set of distinctions that provide a rudimentary theory of vice. So Rawls distinguishes between unjust, bad and evil persons taking the first two to relate themselves to aims that are in themselves legitimate but to use them in an excessive way. Hence the "unjust" person, on this conception, seeks dominion for the sake of wealth and security when wealth and security are, in themselves,  legitimate ends. Similarly, the "bad" person is one who wishes for arbitrary power as they have an excessive desire for ends that again are fine in themselves such as the esteem of others and a sense of self-command. So the "unjust" and "bad" persons on this picture are seen in an essentially Aristotelian way as over-stepping the mean in relation to ends. By contrast, the "evil" person delights in the humiliation of others for its own sake, an end that could never be legitimate thus leaving behind real intercourse with others.


Having given this generic account of virtue and vice in section 66 Rawls turns, in section 67, to an analysis of some specific elements of the full theory of the good. The first concentration here is on the primary good of self-respect, a good already referred to as having a specific status that is higher than other primary goods. The conception of goodness as rationality is intended to show why self-respect has such a high status. Two reasons are essentially picked out for this status existing. On the one hand, self-respect underpins any sense of a rational plan of life as worth pursuing. On the other hand, it implies confidence in the ability to carry out such a plan. Hence if rational plans of life are to be nourished at all the primary good of self-respect has to be encouraged and taken, within the original position, as a central value that the basic structure should underpin.


The first of the two parts of self-respect, the sense of plans worth pursuing, is developed by means of ensuring that such plans relate to the Aristotelian Principle and that our person and deeds are confirmed by others and that association with others is grounded in shared esteem. One of the ways the relation of such shared esteem is emphasised in practice is through the development of talents that require intricate appreciation. Anyone who can display talents that do this is more likely thereby to appreciate the achievements of others. As Rawls puts this point: 

the conditions for persons respecting themselves and one another would seem to require that their common plans be both rational and complementary: they call upon their educated endowments and arouse in each a sense of mastery, and they fit together into one scheme of activity that all can appreciate and enjoy.

The general problem that could be raised with this would be that such development cannot be one realised across the society. However Rawls understands the condition given here to be met if there are associations within which such appreciations can be developed and which therefore will be supportive of separate types of talents.

There is no general principle of perfection that is taken to be endorsed within the basic structure. Rather such a principle has earlier been rejected as unfitting for such a role and hence the diversity of talents is, by contrast, essential to the way that the plurality of goods is assumed within the society. Having laid out the general sense of self-respect and how it is to be understood Rawls next turns to the relationship between it and both "excellencies" and shame.

Shame is introduced at this point as it is understood by Rawls as the feeling of injury to self-respect. It implies, on this view, a particularly intimate connection to our person and to those who are especially close to us. However this definition of shame is not where Rawls leaves its discussion as he turns to giving an account of the reasons why shame is so understood. In order to do so Rawls develops his account of "excellencies" as shame will subsequently be related to this. Rawls thus distinguishes between goods that are primarily good for the one possessing them on the one hand and goods that are good for others as well as the one possessing them on the other. Exclusive goods that are owned only by certain persons are mainly understood to be belong in the former class whilst "natural assets and abilities" including such things as beauty and intelligence are in the latter class. People join together in appreciation of the latter class of goods and they are what Rawls terms the "excellencies". For the one possessing them they enable a sense of mastery in relation to activities to develop but they are also appreciated and valued by others and are thus, as Rawls puts it, "a condition of human flourishing".

Having outlined this account of the "excellencies" Rawls now returns to his account of shame and describes "natural" shame as arising from failure to exercise or display the excellencies. On these grounds one type of shame is manifested with regard to appearing to others to be lacking in grace or slow in understanding. Even should these qualities not be voluntary they affect self-respect and this is the basis for them producing shame. Rawls thus describes what he calls "natural" shame as based on perceived "blemishes" in the person experiencing it. Such shame relates either to generally valued qualities which we seem deficient in or, more especially, to failures with regard to our adopted rational plans.

However, interesting as Rawls' view of "natural" shame is, it is but a prolegomenon to his description of "moral" shame. This arises from combining the previous account of the "good person" with the account of "natural" shame. Someone is liable to "moral" shame inasmuch as the excellencies they particularly value are moral ones. So actions that betray the absence of the moral attributes so valued produce moral shame and a sense of a diminished self. There are a couple of grounds for this. The first is that the Kantian interpretation of the original position leads us to the view that the desire to do what is right and just is the main way for persons to express their nature and, similarly, from the Aristotelian Principle, it follows that this expression of their nature is a fundamental part of their sense of the good. 

Rawls subsequently spends some time distinguishing between shame and guilt but the essential difference for him is that guilt is appropriately felt when someone acts contrary to their sense of right whilst shame indicates a failure of self-command. It is the inability to carry out aims that seem to us worthwhile that is productive of moral shame. 

In the final section of Chapter VII Rawls turns to a series of contrasts between the right and the good, contrasts that illuminate the distinct places of these notions within his conception. The first difference is that the principles of the right are what would be chosen in the original position whilst the principles of deliberative rationality that are central to pursuit of the good would not be chosen. There is no necessity for an agreement on the principles of rational choice as each person is free to plan their life as they please assuming that their plans are consistent with the principles of justice. The general desire for the primary goods is assumed and that of self-respect taken to be essential to all but there is no need to assume agreement  on all the standards of choice with regard to the good. Secondly, pluralism with regard to the good is taken to be a good thing whilst this is not a good thing with regard to the right. There is no need for a publicly accepted judgment of the good of individuals in the way that there is such a need with regard to the right. Thirdly, applications of the principles of justice are restricted by the veil of ignorance whilst evaluations of the good require full reference to facts. The latter is so as the good relates to talents and talents are developed by individuals in distinct ways that cannot be specified in advance.

Samuel Freeman's Review of Parfit

In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books there is a review of On What Matters by Samuel Freeman. Since I have previously covered reviews of the work by Simon Blackburn and Philip Kitcher it seems only right to provide a general summary and response also to this one by Freeman.


Freeman's review opens with comments aimed at the general reader concerning the philosophical attempt to explain the purposes of common sense moral rules and to resolve moral dilemmas. Freeman refers to Kant almost immediately afterwards mentioning both the unconditional character of moral demands on Kant's conception and the Formula of Humanity. The argument of the first part of the Groundwork is implicitly referred to when Freeman mentions the view that the categorical imperative "justifies" our common sense duties to one another and also provides a "more fine-grained method of reasoning" concerning what we ought to do. Following Parfit's own startling conjunction of names in the "Preface" to On What Matters Freeman moves from Kant to Sidgwick and the latter's argument in The Methods of Ethics that it is the principle of utility that truly "justifies" common sense morality. The move from Kant to Sidgwick also allows Freeman, however, to refer to the Rawlsian challenge to the dominance that the utilitarian tradition had, until recently, in the area of social theory.


The introduction of the account of utilitarianism into Freeman's narrative also allows him to mention that the method of ethical appraisal promoted by this school is really a specific form of the general notion of consequentialism and that many consequentialists today have abandoned a simple commitment to hedonism and do not necessarily view utility as the best way of assessing consequences. After mentioning the shift within moral theory from utilitarianism to consequentialism Freeman fills out his picture of the general state of contemporary moral reflection by mentioning Thomas Scanlon's notion of "contractualism", a much more recent theory than Kantian and consequentialist ones. Scanlon is presented by Freeman as someone who modified the Rawslian view so that it was applied not to the theory of justice but instead to personal duties or duties towards others. Not only is this the basis of contractualism according to Freeman but this view is related by him to the Kantian one in terms of recognising the equal status of persons as integral to moral reasoning and, in making this emphasis so significant, as ensuring that these accounts stand together against consequentialism.


As Freeman mentions in a footnote, the three theories of Kantianism, consequentialism and contractualism are the centre of Parfit's book and are related together by him as the key traditions that have to be brought together, a point that ensures that virtue theory is simply left without consideration by Parfit. Parfit intends overall to articulate what he terms a "Triple Theory" that will combine optimific considerations with Kantian and contractualist ones thus producing what Parfit calls a "Kantian rule consequentialism". This argument for a "Triple Theory" of normative ethics is combined by Parfit with a general account of moral reasons that is aimed at showing their objectivity with the arguments in favour of this claim being the centre of the first and the sixth parts of the book. The latter claim is specifically presented by Parfit in response to subjectivist views of reasons and in riposte to a claimed nihilism with regard to values said to characterise much contemporary theorising about morals.


Parfit's attack on subjectivism is rightly presented by Freeman as mainly consisting in responses to the "Humean" theory of reasons that understands reasons primarily through the prism of desires. In response to such a claim Parfit insists on an account of objective reasons based on a view of intentional objectivity but the nature of the specific theory Parfit here elaborates and the problems with it are not considered by Freeman who simply presents it as laudable that Parfit attacks relativistic subjectivism without discussing whether such an attack is, as stated, either too blunt or unconvincing. This is a peculiar weakness in Freeman's review and is likely connected to a dialectical strategy of refuting the "Triple Theory" but upholding the significance of Parfit's book in terms of the defence of "objectivity" in morals. One of the reasons why Freeman may have taken this tack is due to the prevalence of forms of the "Humean" theory in contemporary economics and the need to challenge such a model as applied there.


Freeman looks at Parfit's treatment of the Formula of Humanity and chides Parfit for considering it in separation from Kant's general moral theory. However there are further significant problems both in terms of how Freeman views Parfit's discussion of the Formula of Humanity and with how Freeman understands the place of the Formula of Humanity in Kant's own theory. With regard to Parfit's treatment Freeman stresses the way that the discussion of the "mere means" requirement appears to be favoured by Parfit above other considerations though this point is here not well made given that Parfit considers another point to flow from the Formula of Humanity than this. Parfit also stresses a notion of "rational consent" that he articulates as the basis of the first part of the Formula and, whilst Freeman may not find this a persuasive reading of the Formula it is remiss of him to simply present Parfit as viewing the Formula only through the "mere means" requirement. It is true that Parfit does not view the Formula in terms of a "respect requirement" but Parfit does provide arguments for not viewing the "respect requirement" as really providing further normative guidance and this requires to be discussed and answered.


Freeman indicates some awareness of the "respect requirement" but moves rather quickly from referring to it to an account of some themes from Kant's philosophy of right including the "innate right to freedom" and the notion of independence from being constrained by another's choice. Since these themes belong not in Kant's general moral theory but to the account of right it is not at all clear why they are referred to by Freeman and it is not remiss of Parfit to have failed to engage with them when formulating his notion of a Kantian consequentialism. It is correct to argue that the Formula of Humanity appears to include a constraint on action in terms of describing something one should not act against but Freeman fails to bring this point out and generic reference to the notion of "individual rights" is insufficient to make clear the specific problem with Parfit's view of the Formula of Humanity.


Parfit is, in any case, as Freeman recognises, more concerned with Kant's discussion of universal law than with the Formula of Humanity. The discussion of universal law is interpreted by Parfit in accord with a principle taken from Thomas Scanlon so that it becomes understood as prescribing the requirement that everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will. This notion of a "Kantian Contractualism" is one that requires viewing the notion of universal law in terms that are not derived from Kant himself but Freeman emphasises more the application of the principles that follow for Parfit. Freeman terms Parfit's application "peculiar" and part of what is thus peculiar is the way the combination of Kant with Scanlon is meant to underpin rule consequentialism. Parfit requires us to see the reference to what makes things go best as grounded on some kind of formal rule process built into an understanding of rational willing. This has the result, as Freeman puts it, that "morality is then a kind of efficiency in promoting universal good". 


Once we have a concentration of this optimific sort ethics clearly becomes axiological and this is part of what Freeman rightly regards as controversial in Parfit's view. Kant and Scanlon are generally taken to have provided moral views that are not consequentialist (although there are other varieties of "Kantian consequentialism" such as the one articulated by David Cummiskey). In making the move of bringing Kant and Scanlon into alliance with consequentialism Parfit follows the method inaugurated by Sidgwick who made a similar move the centre of The Methods of Ethics. Freeman suggests that this move on Parfit's part will have particular effect for Kantians since he claims that: "Parfit's consequentialist interpretation of the categorical imperative will stimulate philosophers for years to come".


Despite making the suggestion that Parfit's reading of Kant is one that is likely to be philosophically significant Freeman rejects quite central aspects of Parfit's methodology. One of the elements of Parfit's work that provoked Simon Blackburn's ire was the insistent use of Trolley problems in the work and Freeman joins with Blackburn in finding recourse to them problematic. One of the reasons Freeman gives for rejecting the use of Trolley problems is that such problems can be varied with resultant differences of appraisal. Freeman also cites Susan Wolf's reply printed in the second volume of On What Matters in which she claims that there is "no single principle" underlying our moral intuitions in Trolley type cases. In citing Wolf (and also Allen Wood) in opposition to the use of these cases, however, Freeman seems simply content to state their objections to Parfit's procedure without considering the extensive replies Parfit includes to interlocutors, something which certainly seems rather odd. Freeman also seems to rest content with claiming that if Trolley problems really are of little use in moral philosophy that this in itself undermines Parfit's 'Triple Theory' thereby implying that there are no substantive arguments given by Parfit with regard to the formulation of the 'Triple Theory' that are separable from the use of Trolley Problems and this contention, as put, seems a rather strong reading of the recourse to Trolley Problems.


Freeman's overall evaluation is strongly negative since he argues that Parfit does not address the questions as to why we should view morality axiologically or provide us with a view of what the ultimate good is that we are to optimise. However, the first point is stronger than Freeman himself ultimately puts it since he recognises a strain in Parfit's work that derives from Sidgwick and is based on the notion of a general impersonality. It may be, as Freeman says, a kind of "refined philosophical sensibility" that prefers this concentration to one on personal affairs of the sort provided by Scanlon but it is the basis of a ground for axiological conceptions of morality. In so being it is, as Freeman rightly stresses, somewhat out of key with Kantian and Scanlonian views of morality and this cuts against the sense that the basis of the three views Parfit treats can easily be reconciled. However in considering why Parfit takes it that there is an ultimate ground of unity between the views Freeman retreats again to the assertion that Parfit's argument substantively depends on an inductive generalisation from the consideration of Trolley problems and this argument is one I think over-states the importance of the Trolley problems Parfit considers.  


It is a separate problem and a better point to argue that Parfit is never specific about the general good that is to be optimised though it seems to me that part of the basis of this general good is to be found in the view of objective reasons that Parfit defends and which Freeman fails to challenge. Freeman concludes his review with a statement to the effect that Sidgwick's syncretic project has been brought to a point by Parfit that ensures it has a greater range than even Sidgwick would have thought possible. Whilst this might be true the grounds of the difficulty with the 'Triple Theory' cannot simply reside within normative ethics alone but must also be grounded on the account of the "objectivity" of ethics that Parfit articulates, an account that Parfit himself presents as importantly in tension with the kind of Rawlsian view that Freeman himself defends and to which therefore Freeman should have taken time to respond in his review.