Tom Sorell and Kant on the Good Will

It's a little while since I last blogged about the role of the "good will" in the first part of Kant's Groundwork, the subject of which has provoked quite different responses from Richard Henson and Barbara Herman. However, Tom Sorell in a piece published in this collection, has offered a reply to both their pieces that articulates an interestingly different view of the good will and in this posting I'm going to summarise and partially amplify his general argument.


As with the other pieces reflecting on the use Kant makes of the notion of the "good will", so also in Sorell's case the principal question concerning it is to do with the view of "moral worth" Kant is canvassing in Groundwork I. Is it Kant's claim that moral worth owes nothing to benevolent feelings or, as we more colloquially might put it, to our "good nature"? This appears to be Kant's claim and it is, I venture to suggest, a quite radical view in some respects though, and this is the interest of Sorell's piece, it might nonetheless be a view that is founded on moral intuition (or "common sense" claims about morality). If the latter can be justified then it might turn out that the implications of ordinary morality are not entirely equivalent to how we often represent them to ourselves.


The first reason that Kant (and Sorell) provide for the claim that there is a lack of equivalence between the notion of the "good will" and the general idea of "good dispositions" is to the effect that there is only an "accidental" correlation between these notions. This claim appears to run up against the intuitive suggestion that someone who acts, for example, in a spontaneously kindly way, is more morally attractive than someone who rather has to deliberate to arrive at the right act to perform. It was due to the apparent conflict between the Kantian view and the alleged intuitive appeal of the spontaneous character that Henson and Herman presented rival accounts of the "good will". Henson distinguished the account given in the Groundwork (which he termed a "battle citation" model) from that given in the Metaphysics of Morals (which was a "fitness model") suggesting that whilst the former presents rightness in terms of conflicts of motives that the latter, rather, instead simply takes duty to be one motive amongst others so long as it could have brought about the right action on its own. Herman, by contrast, doubted that there really were two models of right action in Kant.


Whilst Sorell intends to reply to the dispute between Henson and Herman he also indicates his view of what is going on with the "good will" in Kant will turn out to provide us with a "simpler" view of how "good will" is to be understood. Henson raised the question of whether a right act can be backed by both moral and non-moral motives, a question that can also be framed as one concerned with the "overdetermination" of right action. However, neither Henson nor Herman take Kant to have himself offered a view on overdetermination and Sorell disagrees with them both on this point. It is clearly stated in the general introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals that juridical legislation "admits another motive than the idea of duty itself" and, indeed, the motive that therefore leads me not to commit an act that is contrary to duty may itself have no moral worth (in Kant's claimed equivalence of moral worth with actions that follow from possession of a "good will"). Kant also has a very complicated picture of promising which is presented as implying a juridical duty even though often it is not susceptible to external coercive enforcement. The latter point is used by Sorell to show that Kant does consider the case of overdetermination.


The reason to take promise keeping as so overdetermined is that the thought of duty alone is sufficient, on Kant's account, to lead one to act so as to fulfil this command even though it is also often a command that can be enforced coercively (which latter gives us an incentive to act rightly). When something is represented as a duty subjectively then it is also taken to be something we should, of necessity, do. As Kant puts this point, there are different "modes" of obligation involved here. However, inasmuch as what we are interested in is merely ethics alone, there is no ground for even considering any mode of obligation other than that commanded by duty so, whilst Kant appears to indicate that overdetermination is capable of being at work, he also suggests that such overdetermination is of no interest to someone with a "good will" since this person will simply act in accord with the thought of duty alone.


This argument - drawn from the introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals - is supplemented by Sorell by considerations drawn from the Groundwork. These latter involve the claim, made at Ak. 4: 400, that action done from duty excludes the influence of inclination. Henson raised the question of whether the presence of a co-operating inclination is something that is thereby ethically excluded on the grounds that it would appear that intuition permits this. Now, addressing this exact point, Herman argued that this would open up dutiful actions to the problem of including something that would only align in a fortuitous way with the demand of duty. This point does appear to be emphasised by Kant both at Ak. 4: 390 and at Ak. 4: 398. How Herman sees this point is, however, different from the argument Sorell wishes to present as Kant's. Herman takes it that a disposition to help, for example, might lead to helping someone who is in the process of performing an act that is not morally commendable. So the difficultly with reliance on inclination on Herman's view appears to be that inclinations are "indiscriminate" in their orientation. But this is not the way Sorell suggests we should view Kant's argument. Rather, on Sorell's interpretation, the point is instead that inclinations violate what he terms Kant's "no accident" principle.


To see the difference between Sorell and Herman here it is useful to understand what follows from the claim that it should be "no accident" that the right act is performed. Well, for Herman, it is sufficient that a right act not only meet the requirement that it not depend on "accidental circumstances" but also that "failure in different circumstances does not require denial of moral worth". So there are two different senses of "accidental circumstance" for Herman. Sorell, by contrast, denies that Kant could have accepted the second of Herman's senses of "accidental circumstance". A will viewed in this way is one that is open to conditional rightness and this appears to contravene Kant's requirement that the good will be a will that is good in an unconditional sense. However, when this difference between Herman's and Sorell's reading comes out this way it appears that Sorell's reading reinforces the suggestion, to which Henson's original argument was meant to reply, that there is something about Kant's requirements that is seriously in conflict with moral intuition. Now it appears that the conflict concerns the point that Kant appears to want it not to be accidental ever that the right act is performed whereas "common sense" would appear to be satisfied, like Herman, with the lesser requirement that what is actually willed is right even though, given appropriate variational difference, it could have turned out to be wrong.


Now that we have arrived at this difference between Herman's and Sorell's accounts it becomes clearer that the "no accident" principle in the latter's sense would appear to be the source of the alleged conflict between the unconditionality of duty and the presumed attractiveness of spontaneous good character. In order to see the connection between the "no accident" principle and this claimed conflict it is useful to follow Sorell in looking again at the "natural dialectic" with which Kant concludes Groundwork I. In this "natural dialectic" Kant discusses the contrary pulls of duty and inclination summarising the latter as providing a basis for scepticism concerning the purity and strictness of morals (what Henson termed Kant's "battle citation" model). The point Kant has in view in evoking this "natural dialectic" is to present the commands of moral requirements as inescapable or unconditional. Now the point about responding to the view that alleges spontaneous good character is more attractive in the manner of Henson's alleged later "fitness" model is that it is meant to show that inclination need not be seen as a barrier to this unconditional nature of duty. However the "no accident" principle shows that this unconditional character of duty is not restricted and this appears to cut against any argument that allows "moral worth" to even partially reside in the presence of good inclinations.


Now it is obviously part of Kant's general case that we can detach ourselves from that which we are inclined towards. This is part of the way Kant resists "naturalism" in the sense of arguing that there is nothing about our sensuousness as such that can be morally determinative when it comes to the pure command of duty. This is underscored by Kant's claim at Ak. 4: 410-11 that reason influence us more powerfully than the inclinations. However, as Sorell points out, this brings Kant into apparent conflict with a picture like the one many derive from Aristotle in which the cultivation of the virtues through habitual learning will co-ordinate perception and appetite in such a way as to make right action the general outcome. The "Aristotelian" picture is not without problems of its own though since, as follows from recognition of even Herman's restricted notion of the "no accident" principle, some tend to have less spontaneous direction towards the right than others and would, on this account, therefore tend less towards the right outcome. This would open morality up to the accusation that it sets forth requirements that are in fact ones that some are, due to various types of good fortune, better able to meet than others. Thus circumstantial bad luck would put the good life beyond reach which would seem a poor ground for being responded to with moral opprobrium.


Now, in response to this worry, a worry that Kant can use against the "attractiveness" of the "spontaneous" good character, Kant can and does adopt the view that the type of commendation the "good character" deserves is less moral than aesthetic. The person of "good character" on Kant's view is one who acts in a way that we can term "beautiful" whereas the person who possesses a good will is, rather, one we view as "sublime" in their character. The person with the "good character" of spontaneous type is one who charms us but does not, merely due to this, present us with a check on our view of ourselves. Rather the person of this sort can reinforce a "naturalistic" view of ourselves that leads us to think that if we just leave things alone we will, over time, get the "good character" in question just from habitual observances. By contrast, the "discipline" of reason is based on the sublime authority of the law, an authority that we find we only reluctantly give way to (which is why the person with the "good will" inspires us with respect).


Another way of putting the general point that Sorell has derived from the aesthetic contrast that Kant makes is that the "spontaneous" good character, to be really attractive, is one that we have to think of as one that the one who exhibits it, is responsible for. If the person of "spontaneous" good character really is "naturalistically" good it would follow they were not really a character worthy of commendation for their goodness as this goodness would be purely a lucky possession. Hence, moral intuition agrees with Kant that there have to be internal constraints on good character for it really to be good. Should the character be just an outflow of a "good nature" it would not be one that was really worth commending for its morality since it would not be expressive of a moral character. So we need a "good will behind a good nature" in order to show moral respect. So if there are good inclinations in the person of good will they cannot be what is generically causally the basis of their good acts as otherwise there is nothing there that is worthy of our moral commendation. From which it follows that Kant's thesis is perhaps not, after all, out of accord with common sense morality and thus that the latter might not, despite appearances to the contrary, favour "spontaneous" good character.

Allison, Kant and the Conclusion of *Groundwork* III

In my last posting on Allison I described the argument of his fourth chapter and in this one I am moving on to his fifth chapter. Whereas the fourth chapter had a relatively tight focus on two topics, the nature of maxims, and the characterisation of moral worth, the fifth chapter, by contrast, takes on a range of topics that are really only united in being all addressed in the final sections of the first part of the Groundwork.


The first part of Allison's discussion concerns three propositions that are stated in Groundwork I and the difficulty that the first of these propositions, whilst required, is not directly indicated by Kant with the result that a hermeneutic problem has arisen with regard to it. The "standard" view of it is that this first proposition amounts to the assertion that an action has moral worth if and only if it is performed from duty alone. However, some have called this reading into question since Kant indicates that the third proposition follows from the first two and it is not obvious, if the standard reading is accepted, how this takes place. Allison mentions three different interpretations of what this first proposition consists in prior to giving his own view concerning it.


On the first view, identified with Freudiger, Kant's first proposition states that duty presupposes subjective motivation but this requires that supplementary material also be added in order to make the third proposition follow from the first two so Allison rejects this contention. The second view, identified with Dieter Schonecker, is instead that the first proposition should be read as stating that an action from duty is an action from respect for the moral law. However, Allison rejects this claim on the grounds that it requires reading material into the text at this point that is not introduced until later. Finally Jens Timmermann's proposal is mentioned to the effect that the third proposition should be read as saying that an action that coincides with duty has moral worth if and only if its maxim produces this by necessity. However Allison thinks that this reading requires reference to a principle of non-contingence and that this is far from obviously equivalent to Kant's sense of "necessary".


In contrast to these views Allison argues that Kant's first proposition should be read as stating that a good will under human conditions is one whose maxims have moral content. One of the reasons for adopting this view is that the claim about possession of moral content would give some sense to the questions about non-contingency with which Timmermann was concerned. 


Kant's other two propositions are explicitly stated in Groundwork I and the second is to the effect that actions from duty have their moral worth not in the purpose they aim to achieve but in the maxim according to which they are decided upon. So the moral worth of actions is based on the principle of volition that was at work in willing them, not on the object of their action. This proposition relates back to Kant's earlier argument that the goodness of a good will does not reside in what it accomplishes. 


Kant's third proposition states that duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law and here Allison takes some trouble unravelling the nature of Kant's appeal to the notion of "respect" arguing that effectively two different notions of "respect" are stated by Kant and occasionally conflated in his treatment. On the one hand, there is the notion of "spectator-respect", a third-person pro-attitude towards persons, whilst, on the other hand, there is "agent-respect", a notion that involves consciousness of standing under the moral law. The long note Kant adds concerning respect at Ak. 4: 401 is also set out by Allison as containing eleven distinct claims. Kant here opens with acknowledgement that the reference to respect might appear obscure but undertakes to indicate reasons for its introduction including the contention that respect is a specific feeling that is not based on sensuous nature but instead on rationality in some sense. What is immediately recognised as a law for oneself is recognised with respect but the normative force of the law is not grounded on sensuous feelings. The feeling of respect is taken, by contrast, to trump all feelings of mere self-love though the argument of the Critique of Practical Reason that it involves direct humiliation is not here stated. The sense of the law as something self-imposed is here intimated in Kant's argument for the first time. Spectator-respect involves marvelling at how someone else is capable of incarnating the law in their conduct.


After outlining the account of respect Allison moves next to Kant's derivation of the moral law in Groundwork I. The representation of the law determines the will in the sense of providing it with a sufficient reason to act apart from any regard for a result. One of the reasons for this is that the will has had removed from its analysis any impulses that could arise from obedience to any particular law. All laws that are based on impulse have specific content that presuppose an end as the basis of their normativity so in excluding them Kant is left with a law that has its normative ground solely in itself.


Allison takes the derivation of the universal law in Groundwork I to be closely connected to the earlier discussion of the concept of a good will. Conformity to the law is a necessary characteristic of such a will. However the law that is stated now specifically builds in a requirement that maxims be willed as universal laws. Bruce Aune has famously objected to the derivation of the universal law on the grounds that Kant simply moves from a general argument for universal law to the specific one involving maxims which Allison presents as a move from a descriptive to a prescriptive principle. Maxims provide content to an otherwise empty notion of conformity to universal law and this is how prescriptivity is introduced into the law according to Allison. This principle enables one to test the permissibility of maxims rather than being, as is often thought, a self-standing generator of duties.


In conclusion Allison looks at Kant's final paragraphs of Groundwork I which concern the apparent "natural dialectic" which common human reason is said to be drawn into when it considers moral questions. This leads Kant to refer to the need for philosophy, a point that contrasts rather vividly with his treatment of dialectical questions in the Critique of Pure Reason which were thought to arise from philosophy. However Allison is unconvinced that a genuine dialectic is introduced here by Kant and, if there is one, it would have to be between empirical and pure practical reason though Kant seems not to take the conflict between these as dialectical.

Allison and Kant on Maxims and Moral Worth

In my last posting on Allison I discussed his initial account of the "good will" in Chapter 3 of his commentary on the Groundwork. In this posting I am moving on to an account of Chapter 4 of the commentary where Allison talks about 2 topics, the Kantian account of maxims on the one hand, and the dispute over the meaning Kant gives to "moral worth", on the other. The latter discussion expands upon some of the remarks about duty with which Chapter 3 closed.


The first part of the discussion in Chapter 4 on maxims opens with an examination of the two definitions Kant gives of the term "maxim" in the Groundwork. Key to these definitions is the view that "maxims" are "subjective" principles. Allison subsequently points that, in the Critique of Practical Reason (Ak. 5: 79), Kant also states that maxims presuppose interests and that interests rest on incentives. Further, in the Critique of Practical Reason, "incentives" are presented as subjective determining grounds of the will whilst an interest is defined there as "an incentive of the will insofar as it is represented by reason" (Ak. 5: 79). 


Maxims are ways of thinking and there can be a general orientation of the will that indicates its disposition to adopt maxims of certain sorts. They are the proper objects of moral deliberation and assessment and are related by Allison to a view of how deliberation takes place on a Kantian view. The generic account of deliberation includes a distinction between different forms of consciousness and self-consciousness but the key thing about these is that, in terms of practical deliberation, maxims are part of the spontaneity of an agent. When there is reflexive awareness of maxims then they become taken as guides for action.


Allison distinguishes three functions of maxims. Their first function is in moral deliberation where we examine maxims which requires their explicit formulation. By contrast, in moral assessment, we have to respond to the problem of Kant's account of the opacity of motivation. Allison argues, however, that Kant highlights such opacity only at the level of determination of the purity of motivation. Even spur of the moment decisions are choices made by agents and involve rational commitments. This point leads to the third level of discussion of maxims, which concerns their relationship to rational agency. What is crucial, on Allison's account, is that Kant's theory of rational agency requires that intentional action refer to some maxim even without requiring that there always be complete certainty about the nature of the maxim in question.


After going through the account of maxims, Allison turns to the objections that have been made to Kant's view of moral worth. One of the objections has concerned the relationship between duty and sentiment, in the name of more sentiment-based views. More radically, some argue that emphasis on duty is alienating (as Bernard Williams appears to have thought), a view that refers back to the traditional Schiller objection to the argument of Groundwork I. Allison mentions a number of possible responses to these objections, and, in particular, the more radical of them. The first response referred to is the one that was made by Paton and emphasised the view that Kant is practicing a "method of isolation" in the argument of Groundwork I. This argument has been taken further by Barbara Herman who takes Kant to be making not a general point about inclination but only a specific point concerning the alteration of the attitude of one person (as in the case about the sympathetic person who acts eventually only from duty). However, as Allison states, it is far from obvious that this is a sufficient reply to the Schillerian objection.


The second reply to objections given is the one formulated by Richard Henson and discussed in some detail here. Henson argues for a view he terms the "fitness report" model of moral worth in which the enjoyment of duty does not lessen its moral worth as long as the sense of duty is also present but this view is taken by Henson not to be the representative one given in the Groundwork where, instead, he found there to be a 'battle citation' model given which is essentially close to the argument that Schiller objected to. Not only is this so but, Allison argues, Henson's positive model reflects an empiricist view of agency.


By contrast to these two responses, Allison gives a third one in considerably more detail. This is the view argued for by Allen Wood which distinguishes acting from duty from possession of a "good will". Allison objects to the suggestion that someone with aversion or apathy to moral demands could be said to have a good will though this is in accord with Wood's own statements. However, unlike Wood, Allison stresses the need for self-constraint in following one's duty as there is always some temptation to act contrary to duty. Wood is also accused by Allison of failing to note the difference between taking duty to be a direct motivating factor and seeing it instead as an underlying commitment to do what morality requires. For Allison a maxim's moral content is evidently part of the maxim which leads him to the view that adoption of a good maxim is a reflection of possession of a good character. 


Allison's positive view of moral worth appeals to his conception of the "incorporation thesis", a thesis he famously located in a passage from Kant's Religion (Ak. 6: 24). On this view it is not the case that an incentive or desire can of itself provide us with a reason for action as such a reason is only given if the incentive or desire is incorporated into our maxim. Unlike with Henson's conception of overdetermination, Allison's view of the incorporation thesis does not take the will to be determined but it does involve seeing it as having determining grounds. When one adopts a maxim one also incorporates an incentive into one's reasons on this view. So you can act with inclination but from duty. However, as the previous chapter ended without a full enough view of moral worth emerging so this chapter ends without a full enough view of the incorporation thesis emerging and Allison promises to return to giving a fuller account of the latter later in the work.

Barbara Herman and Kant on Moral Worth

In my previous posting I looked at Richard Henson's article on Kant and moral worth and reported the basis of his conclusion that we may not have a duty to perform actions that have moral worth. The point of Henson's argument was to take the sting out of the view, as reported in part of the Groundwork, that there is a sense in which the presence of inclination is apparently sufficient to undermine the moral worth of an action. Henson's argument, whilst ingenious in its way, and certainly influential, has not gone without opposition. In this posting I am going to look at the reply to Henson made by Barbara Herman. 


Herman opens her piece by indicating that her sense of Henson's achievement consists in the notion that he has managed to salvage Kant's view by indicating two distinct views of moral worth in Kant's texts and that only one of these requires the view that the presence of inclinations undermines the moral worth of an action. The view that cuts against this conception, on Herman's account, is the fitness-report model of moral worth but this view is not, on Henson's report, the model of moral worth that Kant adopts in the Groundwork.  Henson appears to view the Groundwork account as requiring that respect for duty be present if an act is to have moral worth (and this is what he terms a "battle-citation" view). In responding to Henson, Herman's first move is to return to the text of the Groundwork to see if it supports the account that Henson has given.


Henson's interpretation of the Groundwork is based largely on the account of the sympathetic man (or "friend of mankind") mentioned in the first part of the work. This person normally does what is right due to finding an inner satisfaction in doing so. However, in extremis, when overcome by sorrow, he finds a ground for doing the right thing despite no longer having any inclination to do so and now for the first time, as Kant puts it, "his action has its genuine moral worth" (Ak. 4: 398). Henson generalises from this case to the position that there is a basic problem with inclination in the Groundwork which produces his "battle-citation" conception of moral worth. 


Herman, however, in returning to the text of the Groundwork, goes back prior to the invocation of this example by Kant in order to look at the wider context of the discussion in the first section of the work within which this example occurs. The first part of the Groundwork is evidently concerned with the conception of the good will and after the concept of duty has  introduced "certain subjective limitations" on the good will we arrive at the discussion of moral worth and the examples of acting for the sake of duty. This suggests, says Herman, that moral worth is part of an account of what it is that is involved in the good will. Now, the key to the good will, as appears from its connection to duty, concerns the motive involved in performing a dutiful act. The important thing, however, is that the motivation here considered is one in which acting dutifully means acting for the sake of duty rather than for the sake of something else.


This limitation on dutiful acts is undertaken in order to contrast such a form of motivation from ones in which dutiful acts are undertaken for some other end with the example of a dutiful act undertaken for self-seeking ends (as in the case of the shopkeeper) and due to immediate inclination (in the case of the "friend of man") brought in as contrastive to the action undertaken for the sake of duty alone. In the shopkeeper example it is evident that acting honestly is undertaken instrumentally and hence need not apply in all circumstances. Now this problem with the maxim of the shopkeeper does not obviously apply to the philanthropist who is generally disposed to act in ways that do accord with duty. Whilst the philanthropist has not adopted the right maxim instrumentally, however, it is still true, Kant suggests, that there is only a contingent connection between the ground of their maxims and right action and it lacks, he says, "moral content". In other words, the philanthropist is essentially indifferent to morality. 


Looked at in general terms, Herman argues, Kant's discussion of the examples is not intended to give an overall account of moral worth. But what it does do is show us a problem with dutiful actions being performed for motives that are not themselves dutiful. The key point then would not concern inclination ultimately (as it does for Henson) but, instead, an understanding of what is involved in moral motivation which is, for Herman, the claim that a moral motive, to be truly said to exist, has to give the agent adopting it an interest in the rightness of their actions. So the problem with Henson's account of "overdetermination" of motives really concerns whether such motives involve attention being directed to such rightness as, if they do not, their connection to the rightness of actions remains only contingent. To be sure that an action has moral worth we thus need a non-contingent (or necessary) relation between the motive of the agent and the duty that the action would manifest.


Once things are put in this way Herman can move to complicate the details of Henson's original picture which she does by considering two models of her own of moral worth. On the first account the fitness-report model of moral worth that Henson argues is articulated in the Groundwork requires to be understood through a notion of "greater strength". What this involves is that an action would be judged only to have moral worth if the moral motive was sufficiently strong to prevail over other inclinations regardless of whether they cooperation or conflicted with the moral motive. The battle-citation model is only different in the sense that it has here been specified that the moral motive has won out. In other words, on Herman's account, it becomes implausible to view Kant as having adopted different models of moral worth in the Groundwork and the Doctrine of Virtue as Henson argued. However the problem with this first account is that since it really collapses the two views of moral worth into one by upholding the battle-citation model that it seems to require that moral worth be understood as the same as moral virtue. 


On the alternative reading Herman requires that the moral motive be the one on which the agent acted and that the configuration of motives be one that is reliable in its outcome. The reliability of outcome seems to be guaranteed not by an appeal to "strength" (which perhaps was still a contingent measure) but by the direct invocation of the moral motive as the ground of the action so that an action with moral worth was produced. The stress here seems to fall on the action rather than the agent as the general structure of the agent's character is what is meant by virtue. The disambiguation that Herman has carried out in distinguishing this second alternative from the first thus consisted in seeing the appeal to the ground of the maxim as crucial to the given action rather than taking it to represent a permanent alteration in the structure of the agent's willing.


Herman's account of dutiful actions thus indicates the nature of the appeal to the moral motive as the assessment of the moral worth of the action undertaken. The motives provide what she calls "limiting conditions" on what we can do for other motives than the moral one. The key is that the moral motive be the effective ground of the action undertaken regardless of the presence or otherwise of other elements. It limits the effective presence of other motivations but is also a ground of appeal when we do act in its own right. 


However Herman's picture becomes more complicated when we note that she speaks of duty being a motive in a primary sense in dutiful actions whilst it is only limitative of the presence of other motives in, for example, merely permissible (but not mandatory) actions. So the role of duty is not always expressive in the primary sense as it can simply act as a means of filtering out immoral temptations. 


Going back to the "friend of humanity" who was important for Henson's original argument, Herman now presents this person in terms of a change of temperament and the point concerns not the kind of view that Schiller endorsed (and towards which Henson's interpretation inevitably drifts) but rather that this case has broken the person in question from having only a contingent connection between their willing and an action that can be said to be right. In support of this Herman also cites Kant's discussion of suicide in Groundwork I in which it becomes clear that it is not normally morally worthy that we avoid it but it becomes so when we are robbed of the normal reasons inclination provides us with not to wish for it. Inclination alone provides us with nothing that has moral worth as it gives no reason to act morally. So the appeal to being free of inclination in order for an act to have moral worth concerns, as Herman concludes by arguing, a situation of independence from circumstances and it is that which we have when inclination ceases to be the ground on which we act.

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.

Nelson Potter and Groundwork I

I recently set out a "casual" reading of the first part of the Groundwork promising thereafter to return to its argument in the light of some secondary literature. In doing so I've turned to Paul Guyer's edited collection on the Groundwork which features three articles on the first section and I'll be responding to these in turn. The first piece is by Nelson Potter and it's his reading of the first section I'll look at in this posting.


Potter's reading of Groundwork I works by analysing the argument into nine propositions, on each of which he comments. The first one is his statement of the first sentence which Potter translates as stating that only a good will has "absolute" worth. What Kant writes is that only the good will has "unlimited" worth with the point of the first paragraph being that other things that one could call "good" are limited in their goodness whereas the "good will" is not so limited. Potter, rather oddly, in translating the statement of the opening sentence into a claim about "absolute" worth, gives himself an unnecessary puzzle concerning where Kant provides an argument for this special status. Kant doesn't have an argument for this status because he doesn't make a claim about it. Nor does he simply think this claim would be "accepted" by anyone as Potter also suggests since the argument is immediately given about the limited goodness of other good things which are thereby contrasted with the unlimited goodness of the "good will".


Potter also speaks of the "good will" as a possibly pre-analytic concept but whilst it is true that Kant does not initially analyse it the subsequent discussion (which turns into an account of duty) does show what the "good will" has to involve. So the first parts of Potter's account are not very perspicuous and he has to restate the first proposition of the Groundwork as concerning the relationship between different kinds of value claiming that it amounts to a statement that moral value outweighs other forms of value. However, this is still an odd way to read Kant's argument since virtues, with which the "good will" is contrasted in the second paragraph, are also usually viewed as having "moral value" so Kant's claim can't simply be taken to be one about the incomparable weight of moral value simpliciter. Rather a point is being made here about the nature of moral value that requires subordination of the 'virtues' in some way (albeit prior to critically indicating a new sense of their status later).


Potter's second proposition is better stating, as it does, that a good will is not made good through what it brings about, a point clearly made as Potter correctly points out, at the beginning of the third paragraph of the first section. Here Potter is on solid ground pointing to the derivative character of that which is good as a means compared to that which is good in itself. Since, however, Potter confused the first proposition, he aligns this claim about something being good in itself with possession of an "absolute" rather than an "unlimited" status.


Potter now misses entirely the discussion of teleology that Kant engages in after making the point about the derivative character of things whose "effect" is good. Potter misses this part of Kant's argument out of his reconstruction because, as he puts it later, it is "unusual and not very convincing". The reason why Kant includes it, however, is to give support for the claim of the unconditional goodness of the good will in abstraction from considerations of utility. (It is also at this point that Kant does mention the "absolute worth" of the good will, absolute by contrast "in worth" to all derivative forms of "worth". ) The argument is a pre-emptive one concerning the difference between the ends of reason and the ends of nature with the latter understood to involve a concern with "happiness" and in arguing for a disconnect between these ends it is important.


In skipping past the two pages of discussion of teleology Potter moves directly to the claim that human actions are, as he puts it, "morally good" if and only if they are done from duty. This touches on Kant's distinction between actions done "in accordance" with duty as opposed to being done "from duty". The relationship between these claims about duty and the earlier ones about the "good will" are, however missed if we don't attend to Kant's claim that duty "contains" the thought of the good will albeit under certain "limitations". Potter thinks of the claim about "moral goodness" as being one Kant thought to "follow from" the earlier claim about the "good will" but is unclear how it is supposed to "follow". Potter emphasizes that looking at duty means discussing the value of actions that follow from the will rather than focusing on the value of the will alone. What Potter doesn't mention, however, is that we require here an account of "character", one that Kant in fact gives in describing dutiful action, a view that is contrasted directly there with an account of "temperament".


Potter's fourth proposition concerns a further development of the notion of dutiful action which is related now to the maxim on which it is based. This point is described by Kant himself as a "second proposition" of his argument at Ak 4: 399 and is the source of the general view that Kant takes motivation to be central to moral worth rather than consequentialist appraisal. Potter, however, states that Kant is not here "entirely clear about what he is arguing for". The principle of volition is described by Kant here as 'formal' and the point of this is to rule out motives grounded on "desires" in the Humean sense as all such would be merely "material". So what does Potter find "unclear" in Kant's argument?


Well the principal claim that Potter presented as proposition four of Kant's argument is now analysed by him as containing two sub-claims. One of these claims is that the moral value of an action is a quality of its maxim. This point is assumed to have a status separate from the claim that the maxim is one that will have a formal quality. However whilst it is true that maxims need not be formal in quality the whole point of Kant's argument at this point is to stress formality in opposition to materiality and the value of a maxim that was not formal would be merely derivative as follows from the previous argument on Potter's own construal so this point hardly seems sufficient to suggest that Kant was "not entirely clear"!


The next proposition on Potter's account is that the formal principle of volition is the same as the requirement that actions conform to universal law. Part of the problem with transitioning to this point next is that Potter has abstracted in his reconstruction from the account of "respect" that Kant includes at this point as when he states that duty is the "necessity of an action from respect for the law". Kant makes here an extended argument distinguishing between "objects","inclinations" and "effects" to arrive at the point that there is something that can serve the will as its ground rather than being an effect of it. This is the point about the law. It is only after this argument has been made that Kant gives the first section version of the categorical imperative.


However Potter leaves this aside at this point of his analysis moving swiftly from a claim that the formal principle of volition should be the requirement of conformity to universal law to a suggestion that Kant views the "essence" of law to consist in universality. This would appear to be a metaphysical claim that would be odd in the context of Groundwork I and there is little sign that Kant made it. It is after introducing it that Potter then moves to the "seventh" proposition which he takes to be the version of the categorical imperative made in this section. Potter in fact refines the version of the categorical imperative stated in Groundwork I into a second formulation that translates acting dutifully into acting in accord with a maxim that can be willed as a universal law. Finally, Potter returns to the "good will" claiming that such a will would always act on maxims that can be willed as universal law.


Potter's last two propositions are not directly stated in Groundwork I at all and hence should have been marked by him as implications of its argument rather than being part of its reconstruction. Further, some key elements of the argument have been entirely missed by Potter. Potter has not included the discussion of the example that Kant mentions in Groundwork I of false promising or the way it is used to make a first pass at a contradiction in conception test. Nor does Potter mention the notion of "standard of judgment" that Kant refers to as something that ordinary moral cognition is supposed to have before its eyes. Finally, Potter only mentions the "natural dialectic" Kant claims belongs to such ordinary consciousness but makes nothing of this. Potter's reconstruction of the central argument of Groundwork I thus seems to me incomplete even without looking further at his discussion of philosophical disputes concerning the meaning of its argument.

Related articles

• The Good Will, Duty and Universal Law (kantinternational.blogspot.com)

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)

W.D. Ross and prima facie duties

In his account of what makes right acts right Ross arrives at the notion of prima facie duty and, as we shall see in subsequent postings, this account is one that has been taken by some recent authors to be worth building in to a revised description of some aspects of Kant's moral theory. Because it has been so adapted it is worth exploring in this posting exactly the motivations for Ross' introduction of it and giving a careful characterisation of the view of such duties that he explicitly presents.


The discussion of these duties occurs early in the second chapter of The Right and the Good. Ross has been expressing dissatisfaction with utilitarianism and its commitment to viewing production of amounts of good as the basis for what makes right acts right (which has been rendered in recent treatments as making the good prior to the right). In opposing this position Ross refers to a "plain man" making a promise because he thinks he ought to do so, a situation that in this case is one that Ross takes to involve no thought of consequences. However, whilst this seems like a simple and direct opposition to the utilitarian position Ross in fact concedes a point to the utilitarian enquiry because he admits that circumstances can so conspire that fulfilling a promise is something that can have very adverse consequences such that we judge it right not to do this. Hence, whilst fulfilment of the promise might well be performed for reasons that have no reference to consequences the action of non-fulfilment of the promise is one that arises in an account in which consequences are taken account of.


Now, examples follow this statement that help to clarify it such as the point that the promise might concern something relatively trivial and non-fulfilment of it might be due to attending to victims of an accident. However, the example is clearly not the real point since its salient characteristic has already been described by including references to consequences so Ross' account appears to have become consequence-sensitive. This doesn't entail for him, though, that the reason for such sensitivity is due to a commitment to bringing about more good in the world. If this is not the reason then there can be a basis for consequence-sensitivity that does not lead one to embrace consequentialism.


It is when considering this point that Ross first introduces the notion of prima facie duties. In the example cited we can balance the duty of fulfilling a promise against a duty of relieving distress but, and here comes the specific mention, this latter notion does not strictly speaking involve thought of a duty but instead of "things that tend to be our duty, or prima facie duties" (18n). This is defined by the notion that there can be circumstances in which something that tends to be a duty can be set against something similar and one or the other of them will, "in the circumstances", tend to be more of a duty.


So the notion of prima facie is introduced as a way of speaking about consequence-sensitivity with the conception being that such sensitivity arises when there would be a conflict between two candidates for a duty to be performed which cannot both be adopted in the circumstances. Ross terms them, not unreasonably, "cases of conscience". This view is summarised neatly in the following statement:

I suggest 'prima facie duty' or 'conditional duty' as a brief way of referring to the characteristic (quite distinct from that of being a duty proper) which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind (e.g. the keeping of a promise), of being an act which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind which is morally significant. (19)

So the prima facie duties are ones that we would, were it not for other intervening factors (involving consequence-sensitivity) simply accept as being duties proper. Since the latter elements have to be taken account of, Ross also describes such prima facie duties as "conditional" duties. Ross' terminology here is awkward as he freely admits since the prima facie duty is, considered simply as a prima facie duty, not yet a duty at all. Further the expression "prima facie" suggests that it may only be a deceptive feature that leads us to think of the "duty" in question as being such whereas this is not Ross' view since he rather takes it that such "duties" include in them factors that render them quite clearly such as to involve a claim upon us (although he also has problems with the word "claim" since this refers mainly to others rather than to ourselves).  The fundamental point about them is that they "rest on a definite circumstance which cannot seriously be held to be without moral significance" (20).


Turning next to the description of what falls under the heading of such "prima facie duties" Ross gives six classes of them. The first group involves duties that arise from previous acts I have committed and this first group is divisible into two classes, basically duties of fidelity and reparation. The second group rest on previous acts of others and are duties of gratitude. With regard to both these first two groups Ross subsequently corrects the way he has described them as they seem to involve motives and he does not wish to suggest we have duties to have certain motives so the disposition to fulfil a promise does not require we adopt a motive to so fulfil it but only that we fulfil it because the promise has been made (and so created an "objective situation" regardless of our motives). Similarly "gratitude" is something that refers to certain acts of ours not the adoption of an emotion of gratitude.


The third class refers to duties of justice with reference here to distribution of pleasure or happiness with regard to merit. The fourth group of duties is duties of beneficence where we attempt to make other peoples situation better. The fifth group is duties of self-improvement and the sixth is non-maleficence towards others.


So what the theory of prima facie duties involves Ross in a commitment to is a pluralism about the right. These different potential grounds of a duty are not equivalent to each other for him or reducible to some other ground that is taken to be more basic (though he does later indicate that he thinks the grounds of beneficence and self-improvement are the same). In moral experience we find the situation to be even more complicated since these prima facie duties are there compounded. This ensures that Ross' account is certainly not tidy:

Every act therefore, viewed in some aspects, will be prima facie right, and viewed in others, prima facie wrong, and right acts can be distinguished from wrong acts only as being those which, of all those possible for the agent in the circumstances, have the greatest balance of prima facie rightness, in those respects in which they are prima facie right, over their prima facie wrongness, in those respects in which they are prima facie wrong...For the estimation of the comparative stringency of these prima facie obligations no general rules can, so far as I can see, be laid down. (41)

 Immediately after making this claim, one that seems to lead towards a strict form of particularism, Ross qualifies it by indicating that duties of "perfect obligation" have a greater stringency and he describes those as the duties of fidelity, reparation and gratitude adding that with the rest the decision "rests with perception". In subsequent postings I want to look at how some contemporary theorists have treated Ross' view of prima facie duties as a means of modifying the Kantian approach to ethics.