Rawls and Practical Reason

In my last posting on Rawls I looked at the account of the "thin" theory of the good with which Chapter VII of A Theory of Justice opens. In this posting, by contrast, I'm going to set out to provide a summary of the work in sections 63-5 of Theory where, effectively, Rawls provides a general description of practical reason. By saying this is a general description of practical reason I don't mean to suggest that it is any more, though, than a structure of deliberation that fits something like the overall task of indicating how end-oriented rationality is to be seen. Thus it is far from equivalent to a Kantian picture of pure practical reason, providing something more like a prolegomena of ground that would have been covered if Kant had described in sufficient detail how hypothetical imperatives work.


Rawls opens section 63 by stating that he has, up to this point in the chapter, only discussed the first stages of the definition of good in which no questions were asked as yet about the rationality of the ends taken as given. However we do often inquire into the rationality of ends (equated here with 'desires') and this is necessary if the account of the good is to be fit for the theory of justice. In making these claims Rawls draws explicitly on the American Idealist thinker Josiah Royce and his view of a person. Royce is said by Rawls to treat persons as human lives ordered according to a plan. When the plan is a "good" one then the person's conception of his good is rational. 


Two conditions for this conception of a rational plan of life are next added, to the effect that such a plan has to be consistent with the principles of rational choice applied to the relevant features of the person's situation and their plan has to be chosen with "full deliberative rationality", a notion left vague in section 63 but the subject-matter of section 64. Finally, a person's interests and aims are rational "if and only if" they are to encouraged and provided for by the plan rational to that person. Before discussing the principles of rational choice Rawls first expands upon the conception of a rational plan. Plans vary for individuals in relation to endowments and circumstances, involve provision over time and include a notion of postponement as one of the elements of rational choice. In a general sense a plan is something like a "hierarchy" of sub-plans involving often implicit commitments in terms of prioritisation. A plan incorporates some sense of the primary goods and a sense of scheduling. 


After setting out this generic picture of a "plan" Rawls turns next to principles of rational choice (though, with the notion of postponement, he has already stated one). The first principle is that of "effective means" which holds that we are to adopt the alternative, assuming there are alternatives available for realising a given end, which realises it in the "best" way. Otherwise put, with the "least expenditure of means". The second principle is that one plan is to be preferred to another if its execution would achieve all of the desired aims of the other plan and one or more aims in addition. This is a principle Rawls terms that of "inclusiveness". The third principle is that of the "greater likelihood" which favours a plan that makes it probable that ends will be realised whilst other aims are not less likely to be attained. These first three principles apply most obviously to short-term plans.


Rawls now moves on to long-term plans including the longest term plan of all, what one should do with one's life. The principle of inclusiveness has application also with regard to this as do the others already listed. The discussion of the principle of inclusiveness with regard to long-term plans is, however, more complex than that of the others since future desires and orientations are not evident to us now. This is why Rawls mentions here for the first time the notion of the Aristotelian Principle to which he devotes the whole of section 65 but which here is simply specified as saying that we have a higher-order desire to follow the principle of inclusiveness. A more comprehensive plan involves more complex combination of abilities and the Aristotelian Principle is that "other things being equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realised capacities", an enjoyment that increases the more the capacity is realised. This shows why we enjoy an activity the more proficient we become at it.


The three principles first given are what Rawls terms "counting principles" and alone they are insufficient, he adds, to order plans. This is one reason why there is appeal often made to principles of maximisation as a way of definitely solving such a problem of ordering. In contrast to such an appeal Rawls next follows Henry Sidgwick in developing an idea of deliberative rationality. On this view: "An individual's good is the hypothetical composition of impulsive forces that results from deliberative reflection meeting certain conditions". So a rational plan is one that would be picked out following principles of rational deliberation when the agent reviewed what it would be like to realise these plans. 


The situation in which this conception is laid out is, however, highly idealised since it assumes that the best plan for an individual would be one adopted in the light of full information, something which is never given. So the agent has to make do with the information that is given and is fallible. The process of such deliberation is governed also by the formal rule that specifies its range of operation when Rawls adds that reflection should continue up to the point that benefits from improving the plan come to be out-weighed by the costs of further deliberation. Further Rawls builds in a "realistic" assumption to the effect that different individuals will value the process of deliberation in different degrees.


One of the points involved in such deliberation is consideration of the genesis of wants since this often teaches us which desires are most strongly felt. The principle of postponement also counsels us to leave our options open in cases where this is possible. A further principle that affects deliberation is that of continuity in the sense that the plan is one we take to have a unity over time. Similarly we are to assume the advantages of rising expectations with regard to the plan as time advances. This latter point assumes that a characteristic of a rational plan is that it is not discarded subsequently. This leads Rawls to the view that: "the guiding principle [is] that a rational individual is always to act so that he need never blame himself no matter how his plans finally work out". This is described later as a principle of responsibility to self.The principle of responsibility to self is subsequently described by Rawls as resembling a principle of right. It applies in the original position so that the parties involved in it would not accept a conception of justice that would surely later lead to self-reproach. 


Section 65 concerns the "Aristotelian Principle" but Rawls opens this section with a discussion of what he terms some "general facts". These include the broad features of desires and needs as affected by physiological and other circumstances, such as maturation, growth and social interdependency. Goods include such things as friendship and meaningful work and they involve social interdependency as achieving them often requires contributions from others.


The Aristotelian Principle is added to these points as indicative of a sense of enjoyment that is involved in exercising our faculties and that, of two activities we do equally well, the one that draws on a larger repertoire of activities is preferred. The Aristotelian Principle thus includes a form of the principle of inclusiveness but it is also an important principle of motivation. It also includes recognition of the shift that occurs over time as increasing complexity is favoured in objects of attention. Learning, for example, which is often difficult, is nonetheless accompanied by satisfaction as tasks are met. There is an upper limit of difficulty and an equilibrium state is one where the effort and the satisfaction balance one another.


Rawls describes the Aristotelian Principle as a "natural fact" and concludes from this that it is rational to realise and train mature capacities. It states, however, only a tendency and not an invariable principle of choice but place has to be left in the design of social institutions for its operation. It is indeterminate in terms of the specific activities any one may prefer but shows that people, as they concentrate on an activity tend to become more proficient with regard to it and take pleasure in this increasing proficiency. But it is not the case that all activities are related to in similar ways which is why routine is favoured for simpler activities.


Rawls also terms the Aristotelian Principle a "deep psychological fact" that is part of the background that regulates considered judgments of value. It is also a principle that Rawls assumes connects to the primary good of self-respect.

Skorupski on morality and normativity

It is sometime now since I last blogged on John Skorupski's book The Domain of Reasons. This book, which is presented by some as an alternative to Parfit's On What Matters and which concerns, like Parfit, a general theory of reason, is one whose preliminary account of sentimentalism about practical reason (not morality) I looked at in my last posting on it. In the present posting I want to conclude my review of the introduction to Skorupski's book so that future postings on it can begin the arduous task of going through the major sections of the work.


Skorupski concludes his introduction to the work by discussing morality further and linking his view of morality to his general claims about normativity. With regard to morality Skorupski makes clear that an examination of the "sentiment" of blame is one that he thinks will help us to understand the "categoricity" of morality. By the "categoricity" of morality Skorupski means that morality is categorical in the sense that "it is a priori that if someone has a moral obligation to a he has reason to a" (28). The link of this to the view of blame is that to blame someone for something is to take them to have had a reason not to do the thing that they did. Further, blame (along with a list of other dispositions that Skorupski gives) involves a withdrawal of recognition from the one blamed. This does not mean that the one from whom recognition is withdrawn cannot retrieve the situation though Skorupski is perhaps going too far in claiming that the situation is one that can, as he puts it, "always" be retrieved since I can certainly think of cases (without having to move into serious crime) where it certainly is not possible for someone to recover from this withdrawal.


Skorupski's general view of morality, in addition to aiming to understand its categoricity, also aims at grasping the spontaneity of it as something that is basic to the epistemology of all norms. Skorupski relates this spontaneity to a conception of discussion that seems to suggest a relationship between his view and the Habermasian notion of communicative reason.


Skorupski's overall conception is one he terms the "Normative view" and he intends this to be the basis of a new form of "Critical" philosophy. As with previous forms of "Critical" philosophy Skorupski accepts a basic duality between spontaneity and receptivity but assumes that the epistemology of reasons requires that there are purely spontaneous responses with regards to norms. Reason relations, whilst irreal for Skorupski, are objective and form the "unconditioned condition" on which he will account for the possibility of knowledge and freedom. The account of the relationship between reason relations, normativity and morality will be central to the basic arguments of The Domain of Reasons and must constitute the main basis for assessing the success of the work.

Skorupski on Autonomy and Practical Reason

After outlining his general view of "Critical Philosophy" the next stage of the introduction to Skorupski's The Domain of Reasons concerns practical rather than theoretical claims. In making this practical turn, however, Skorupski remains in contact with Kantian themes, beginning with an account of the place of autonomy in his view of reason.


Skorupski's conception of practical agency requires a correlate to the epistemic notion of self-audit and is found in the view of an agent grasping, from a first-person insight, grounds for action. Skorupski also relates epistemic self-audit to recognition of what Parfit pictures as intentional objectivity regarding some form of such recognition as part of what provides us with a warranted reason for action. Skorupski puts this by saying that what one has reason to believe depends on the set of facts one apperceives.


If knowledge of such apperceiving of facts takes place at all then there must be a similar warranted apperception of norms. This latter gives Skorupski his picture of practical autonomy but what distinguishes it from the view of autonomy that is central to Kant is that it is not pictured primarily in relation to moral norms but practical norms of any kind (hence taking hypothetical imperatives to have the same relation to autonomy as categorical ones). 


Skorupski's general conception of reason allows for evaluative reasons to be distinct from epistemic ones but he does not join Kant in picturing reason as a general ability. One of the bases of Skorupski's departure from Kant here is that he is committed to a radical kind of pluralism about the different kinds of reason though he still thinks that reason relations have an epistemic and ontological unity which arises from our autonomous capacities. Given this latter point it is not that clear why Skorupski denies validity to a general claim about "reason".


When it comes to practical reason in general Skorupski builds out from the notion of "warrant" indicating that norms give warranted reasons for action only when combined with warranted beliefs about one's desires. In making this claim Skorupski builds in a kind of sentimentalism which is part of what he means by referring to "evaluative" reasons. On Skorupski's view what there is reason to do can depend on what there is reason to feel, something that invokes his idea of the "Bridge principle" which is stated by him as follows:

Bridge says that there is reason for x to do what the affective responses that there is reason for x to feel would characteristically dispose x to do (24).

Part of the point of this is apparently to reduce the "gap" between reason and sentiment that Kant introduces though a lot here depends on the nature of the feelings invoked. Kant is far from outlawing reference to feeling in practical evaluation despite the popular picture (one encouraged to a degree by the argument of Groundwork I). But feeling is nonetheless distinguished for Kant between practical and pathological, a distinction that can also be understood to refer to a difference between justified action by reference to feeling and unjustified action by reference to feeling (with the latter requiring the subordination of reason to "passion"). It remains to be seen whether anything like this distinction can be built into Skorupski's account of practical reason.

Skorupski distinguishes between two distinct kinds of sentimentalism making clear that he is not a sentimentalist with regard to practical reason as this would entail that the Bridge principle was the only principle of practical reason. A basic reason why Skorupski is not a sentimentalist with regard to practical reason is that he admits an important place for appeals to impartiality. Skorupski also understands the agent-neutrality that is involved in universalist forms of morality (including Kant's) as requiring a form of impartiality. However, whilst Skorupski thinks that the need for some kind of appeal to impartiality is a requirement for a full theory of practical reason he departs from Kant in terms of not taking the categorical imperative to be the foundation (or "supreme principle") of morality. In assuming that universalism is effectively the same as impartiality Skorupski also makes a large step towards equating the Kantian view of universality with a consequentalist one.

Skorupski's sentimentalism is partially justified by his account of blame where blame is understood as a sentiment that it is right to feel. So Skorupski, whilst denying sentimentalism concerning practical reason adopts it with regard to morality. Again this is partly due to his view that the type of impartial appraisal he wishes to allow for concerns a relation to the Good (rather than the Right). 


Skorupski's departures from Kant in the area of practical reason thus are partly due to a failure on Skorupski's part to see the place of feeling in Kant's view of practical reason and partly due to a simple conflation of universalisation with impartiality (and of the latter with an implicit consequentialism). But it is also true that Skorupski wishes to motivate a conception of feelings as having an immanent rationality that is specific to them, a rationality that is part of the sense of them as having an internal intentional objectivity. So Skorupski wishes to extend the area of spontaneity so that it encompasses feeling but doesn't see that so doing requires an internal relation of feeling to reason as he thinks of reason as always immanent to the area in question.

Public Reason and Practical Reason

One of the frustrations of trying to read Amartya Sen's recent book The Idea of Justice has been the recurrent feeling that it is not really concerned to present any kind of theory of justice. The general organisation of the volume shows some reasons for this. Whilst the first part of the work is concerned with what are termed "the demands of justice" the basic argument of this section is for a shift in theorising away from a concentration on institutions to what are alleged to be more situational concerns. However, the situational concerns in question turn out to be extremely general and culminate in an account of impartiality that is aimed at transcending the boundaries of any given society but which does not draw out much more than an allusion to Adam Smith's notion of the "impartial spectator".


The second part of the book then moves on to discussing "forms of reasoning" and presents an argument for taking account of plural types of reasoning as advanced from many sources of concern. This argument for plurality oddly echoes the concerns of John Rawls' second major work Political Liberalism which alleged, in view of the ineluctable pluralism of contemporary society the need to abandon the search for "comprehensive" views of social justice in which moral and political considerations were considered together in favour of a "purely political" theory of public reason. Interestingly, the latter work also concludes with a "reply to Habermas" despite the general argument of Between Facts and Norms also having voiced a criticism of a type similar to that of Political Liberalism of political theories that are guided too much by concerns derived from morality.


The oddest thing about the degree of convergence between these three books is the way in which very similar concerns are expressed despite the authors having quite different aims in view in many respects. Sen deliberately sets his theory up in opposition to that of Rawls, though it is true that it is mainly the early and not the late Rawls that he has in his sights. Habermas' concentration on providing a theory of law that can be disentangled from overly normative theories is again a reply to the early Rawls whilst Rawls' own late work is a considerable revision of the theory he presented earlier on.


However, and returning to the puzzle about the lack of direct engagement on Sen's part with the question of justice, what seems most at issue for each of these works, albeit in different ways, is the exploration of what might be called the theory of public reason. Each of the works marks, thus, not a theory of justice but, at best, a prolegomena to one.


In Rawls' early work A Theory of Justice the subject matter of justice was described as "the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation" (p. 6, both editions). Such a concern was narrowed in one crucial respect that Sen complains about in his discussion of impartiality by being understood in a contractarian way as "a closed system in isolation from other societies" and, in another way, also complained about by Sen, in terms of describing a "well-ordered society" in which everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions.


These two ways in which the subject of justice were narrowed by Rawls concerned focus on institutions as the primary distributive agent of justice within one society on the one hand and a conception of the maximal way such institutions could be conceived of as delivering justice on the other hand. Sen complains both about the focus on institutions per se and on the "closed" character of such focus as concerned only with the operation of one society but his more fundamental complaint is the pursuit of perfection in the theory. It is worth looking at the contrast between Rawls' reason for advancing the theory in terms of such a search for perfection, however, and the reasons why such a search is condemned by Sen. Rawls presented the theory of justice offered in the work of this title most comprehensively as a reply to utilitarianism. Indeed he wrote quite clearly: "My aim is to work out a theory of justice that represents an alternative to utilitarian thought generally" and a characteristic of such thought, commented upon by Rawls, is precisely the comprehensive character of its response to problems of morals and politics. It is to provide a theory that covers the same degree of ground as utilitarianism that Rawls writes A Theory of Justice and yet it is precisely this ambition of it which his later work abandons and which is also the subject of criticism of the early work by both Sen and, in a different way, Habermas.


Sen's basic reason for attacking the kind of comprehensive view presented by A Theory of Justice is his argument that arrival at a set of principles on which all could agree is neither necessary nor sufficient for an account of justice. However the question that emerges at this point concerns the structure and nature of a reason that can guide a given plurality of approaches, a concern that utilitarianism addressed in its own way and which justice as fairness is intended to respond to in a different way. Both theories begin with the understanding that there exist a plurality of persons with separate systems of ends and then determine how to respond to this given situation with procedures for demarcating a public reason. The shift from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism is not one that shifts this concern since the theory of public reason is central to the latter work. Utilitarians also work with a conception of public reason. For Rawls (both early and late) and the utilitarians such a theory of public reason is at the heart of their conception of how to provide an account of legislation (though utilitarians, typically, have no specific account of justice).


Rawls (both early and late) and the utilitarians conceive of the notion of such public reason in terms of an account of impartiality. So also do Sen and Habermas. At this point we can begin to see a key set of structural parallels between the accounts that emerge from each of the theories. In a certain light, the divergence between Rawls' early and late theories can thus seem to have less importance than he gave it. It can also appear that the distance between the early theory and the concerns of Sen and Habermas have, to a degree, been overplayed.


However, what enables a return to understanding the difference between the early Rawls and the works of Sen and Habermas is the manner in which the early work arrives at the conception of public reason offered. Here the conception of public reason is derived from a contractual procedure and driven towards an account of some over-riding principles that are taken to be central to the pursuit of justice, considered as the "first virtue" of social institutions. The problem suggested in Political Liberalism is that the early view presupposes a conception of morality and, in this work, an "impartial" approach is taken towards comprehensive views of it in favour of a view of "reasonable pluralism". It is this that is supposed to mark the understanding of a "reasonable" view of the political but such a view does itself make striking presuppositions including ones favourable to "democracy". It is this that marks the theory in question as "liberal".


In making these presuppositions the later Rawls effectively conceals under the heading of "politics" some deep moral choices that are meant to guide the interaction between persons and shape the basis of public reason. In a sense, although the topic of public reason is much more to the fore in Political Liberalism than in A Theory of Justice the truth is that the former work presupposes an account of practical reason and subordinates it within its description of public reason.


Exactly the same thing occurs within the work of Sen as in Political Liberalism and it is precisely this way in which an assumed account of practical reason is effectively subsumed within the description of public reason that produces the effect in both works of a kind of pious appeal. Both works really take the essentials for granted and this follows from the abandonment, I would suggest, of the aspiration towards a theory that has a clear reference to the ideal. Take out the ideal and you are only left with a supposition about the real, a supposition that was well supplied by utilitarian calculations. In a central sense, the abandonment of the comprehensive view ceded the ground of such views back to the utilitarian picture that the early Rawls was so careful at providing an alternative to. 


It would be a different matter to reply to Habermas and would require a more detailed posting but suffice it to say that the disappearance of "discourse ethics" from Between Facts and Norms is of a piece with the retreat from comprehensive views in Political Liberalism and the endless pursuit of pluralism in The Idea of Justice. All three of these works move in a non-ideal space and, whilst the need for non-ideal theory is real enough, the shape and fate of each of these works suggests strongly that the abandonment of comprehensive views was part of a structural neglect of the theory of practical reason.


Essentially, in arguing for a view of public reason that emerges from a more generic account of practical reason, I am aiming not merely at a rescue of the perspective of A Theory of Justice but also for the need to think about the manner of approach Rawls developed in this early work in relation to the classic manner in which Kant's Doctrine of Right relates to his general account of practical reason. The latter is itself a controversial topic but the need to see Kant's own conception as "comprehensive" is part of the requirement for a revival of such an approach if a theory of justice is to be defended, a theory, that is, that enables distributions to be seen from the perspective of a public reason that has been guided by an approach to practical reason.

Related articles

• What's the Best Approach to Distributive Justice? (filipspagnoli.wordpress.com)
• Liberalism: Rawls "A Theory of Justice" (haight68ashbury.wordpress.com)

Teleology and Practical Reason

The recent postings I have done have been focused on bringing into view a sense of practical reason. One of the consequences of the relatively basic conception advanced to date is that the notion of practical reason, if viewed in terms of the general structure of hypothetical imperatives, is one in which the notion of "ends" plays the key guiding role.


I want to first indicate some provisional points about the structure of the connection between hypothetical imperatives and teleology prior to raising a larger framework for further investigation of the reasons for thinking about practical reason in a teleological way. 


Hypothetical imperatives generally fit an instrumental model of rationality in which means and ends are adjusted to each other in order to attain a desired objective. Kant describes hypothetical imperatives in two ways though the nature of them is worthy of much more extended consideration on a future occasion. The two general ways are in terms of "skill" and "prudence".


The conception of hypothetical imperatives in terms of "skill" connects them to the provision of more or less sophisticated technical ways of achieving an end. Any kind of action or activity that requires the varied use of materials in order to produce a result will involve degrees of skill in both the relationship between the materials and the judgments concerning the ways of achieving the outcomes. This broad conception of "skill" indicates that everything here that requires instrumental relations tends to incorporate a form of "skill". This will apply to everything from development of trades or talents to the running of governments or the waging of wars. Hence it takes up a large portion of activity.


Contrast this now with "prudence". In developing talents we need to have an eye for what will be in demand so that we don't waste our time. This is prudential as also is avoiding certain kinds of people or activities, either of which might impair our chances of carrying out other activities already decided upon. So prudential reasoning is the province of a kind of judgment, one that tends to get sharpened by experience. Like the reasoning at work in "skill" it is a form of instrumental relation. I'll return generally on another occasion to questions about these relations but for now it will suffice to indicate an at least provisional relationship between hypothetical imperatives and instrumental relations.


It is clear in addition that the development of activities in accordance with hypothetical imperatives requires a sense of purposiveness. Hence hypothetical imperatives are generically capable of being seen as part of a teleological pattern of life.


Having made this relation between hypothetical imperatives and teleology relatively perspicuous the next step is to relate teleology in a more general sense to practical reason whilst bracketing for now further consideration of hypothetical imperatives. There are two kinds of way in which a general relationship between teleology and practical reason tends to get understood, ways which are on distinct levels from each other. One is through a theory of moral psychology that views practical reasoning as primarily teleological. The other is a meta-ethical stance concerning the types of considerations that are relevant to assessing right acts. The first is what is generically termed the "Humean" notion of moral motivation, the second is the consequentialist view of moral appraisal.


Taking these in turn, the Humean notion of moral motivation is an analysis of the psychological preconditions of being moved to act in certain ways. The basic claim of the Humean theory is generally understood to consist in a non-cognitivist view that an ethical belief is in itself insufficient to motivate action and that an affective state has to also be activated for someone to act in accord with a belief. Due to this general claim the teleological notion at work in motivation for the Humean is one that is taken to cut against a pure notion of practical reason.


By contrast to the Humean picture that thinks of teleological connections as the means of explanation of how we are motivated to act, the consequentialist view concerns the means by which action is justified (not necessarily how it is motivated though it may also claim this). Consequences are the means of assessment of actions and the conception of teleology is thus an instrumental one of how ends are best reached and how the "right" ends can be maximised.


The connection between means and ends in both of these pictures seems to have the pattern of an instrumental relation and in this respect to be of a piece with what we have uncovered concerning hypothetical imperatives. Due to this there is a general view that both the Humean conception of motivation and the consequential notion of ethical justification are inherently non or even anti-Kantian views. Certainly the consequence of the Humean view of motivation is that there can be no pure practical reason and in this important respect it is at variance with the Kantian view. It remains true, however, that there does need to be a Kantian picture of how we can be led to act in accordance with the moral law. Such a picture thus has to provide some kind of response to the Humean notion of motivation.


The consequentialist picture of justification, by contrast, whilst widely taken to be at variance with the Kantian picture of justification, is not universally so regarded. Rawls and his followers take it to be paradigmatically the view of morality that Kantians must reject and to which Kantian theory is a response. However, there has been developed a notion of "Kantian consequentialism" that aims to show there is not only no necessary conflict between Kant's moral theory and consequentialism but that they can even be combined.


The setting out of responses to both the Humean and the consequentialist views is essential to clarifying what the Kantian argument concerning the relationship between teleology and practical reason should be and will be part of what is at issue in many future postings.

Moral Disagreement

I've been having a conversation on Twitter over the last couple of days with some other philosophers about the topic of vegetarianism which emerged partly as a problem concerning whether moral disagreements are susceptible of rational resolution. I generally am of the view that they are so susceptible and couldn't subscribe to a Kantian model of practical reason unless I was. However, I am aware of certain disputes, including the one concerning vegetarianism, that are particularly intractable. Roughly, the intractable disputes seem to me to involve a problem concerning what or who should be included as a full participant in the moral realm. We can see this from the work of Peter Singer, for example. Singer's arguments in favour of vegetarianism, whilst broadly utilitarian in character, are also based largely on a claim that non-human animals are correctly understood, in terms of moral concern, as equivalent to human beings and therefore should be regarded as "persons". Not to so regard them is to be guilty of "speciesism" which treats being a member of a particular species as what is most morally significant, something as arbitrary on this view as "sexism" or "racism" (or, indeed, though this is more rarely mentioned in this context, heterosexism).


I'm not here going to examine either the arguments Singer gives for his view or look in more detail right now at the dispute concerning vegetarianism. What I would suggest, though, is that the dispute concerning it is akin to that which exists with regard to abortion. Those who proclaim the moral impermissibility of abortion allege that the foetus should be treated as a "person" in the sense that termination of its existence is equivalent to murder. This argument turns on the claim that the foetus is sufficiently akin to persons of other sorts as to merit treatment that would be correct for the latter.


In both the cases of vegetarianism and abortion there are central disagreements concerning where the area of moral concern correctly gets drawn and what is at stake in addressing something as equivalent to a "person". In a basic sense the disputants are divided over this question and thus draw the boundaries of the moral terrain differently. Because this is so there is something intractable about the debate. This doesn't entail that people are incapable of changing their view in either case. In both examples I have given we do find changes of view take place though it is also true, in both cases, that this is often due to emotive appeals having an effect rather than because practical reason has come to have a newly described and more apt shape.


The point of elaborating that this is the type of disagreement in these cases is to try to defuse the sense of scepticism about morality that often arises from consideration of such hard cases. It is because dispute in these hard cases is difficult and often unproductive that many come to the view that morality is not susceptible of rational argument at all and that such disputes are either matters of opinion (in much the way as is thought to be true of matters of taste) or that it is only by reference to emotional appeal that anything can be altered in a dispute.


To adopt the view that morality is, as taste is said to be, something particular and subjective, is to give up on practical reason just as surely as adoption of an emotivist view entails doing. But both ignore the wide range of moral agreement that exists. There is little dispute concerning the wrongness of murder even if there are border-line arguments concerning the applicability of the category (as we saw with the case of abortion). This indicates that, when it comes to the central issues of ethics, there is a general agreement, which we could follow theorists of the 19th and 20th century and refer to as "common sense morality". This "common sense morality" is something that requires to be related to grounds of justification precisely because of the temptations of moral scepticism and it is these grounds of justification, grounds that we can term "meta-ethical" that form the subject matter of much ethics. Whilst those engaged in "applied" or "practical" ethics look at the areas of actual wide disagreement and try to work through its basis the "meta-ethical" focus on the justification of the generally agreed core of morality is just as significant and is the true ground of resistance to moral scepticism.

Universality, Humanity and Rationality

One of the most basic disputes concerning the interpretation of Kant's ethics concerns the relationship between the different formulations of the categorical imperative presented in the Groundwork. One of the problems, mentioned sometime ago by Paton, concerns the question of how many such formulations there are with Paton favouring five but most commentators now content to think there are three. A rather more substantive concern has been with the practical implications of the distinct formulas with a wide variety of thinkers wishing to suggest that there are different implications relative to which version of the categorical imperative one adopts.


In particular there is a general felt need to choose between the formula of universal law and the formula of humanity. The partisans of the formula of universal law are, for various reasons, on the defensive though the major gain of this formula, relative to others, concerns its implicit appeal to a neutral standard separate from the "matter" of moral commitments. This is bought, allege the critics of this formula, at a cost, namely, the vacuous nature of what the formula is taken to state. This argument can trace its ancestry to Hegel and consists in a claimed "empty formalism" of the formula of universal law. Confronted with this type of attack on Kant's ethics it has been a generally adopted defence to argue that the formula of universal law is not the central Kantian principle.


So, on these grounds, the appeal has often been made to the formula of humanity by preference to the formula of universal law. There are advantages to stressing this formula, not least the intuitive appeal of the contrast it involves between ends-in-themselves and ends that are only relative. This contrast is connected to a conception of humanity that effectively equates humanity with rationality. Since this line of thought hence moves from humanity to rationality to a stress on "objective" or non-relative ends it has the makings of an incipient theory of practical reason. However, there are compensating problems with this stress, though these have not been at the forefront of much discussion. To begin with, the equations involved in the formula are ones that are far from obvious and call out for detailed defence. Secondly, the formula of humanity is itself described in such a way that it is evidently meant to be understood as universal in scope. So if there are thought to be problems with universality itself then these problems would apply also to the humanity formula. Thirdly, the resort to it as a defence against the "empty formalism" objection is one that threatens to turn Kant's ethics into one that asserts a need for an end or even a substantive conception of the good. In other words, the conflict, should there really be one, between these two formulas of the categorical imperative, is one that can re-stage within the terrain of Kantian ethics, the division between "teleological" and "deontological" views of the general area of ethics. In subsequent postings I intend to trace this division and debate it further in order to see whether it is possible to get a view of both Kant's ethics and the area of ethics generally that can move past this divide.

Dignity and Status: Kant and Waldron

In the course of giving the first of his Holmes Lectures at the Harvard Law School Jeremy Waldron makes a distinction between two conceptions of dignity. He mentions on the one hand the Kantian view of dignity and on the other the one that is (or ought to be?) at issue in law and civil conduct. The distinction is presented as being that on Kant's philosophical view it follows that dignity is something inherent in each of us as human beings whilst in the law it is rather the case that dignity represents a common status that we possess but which is not merely inherent in us but rather indicative of a certain achievement.

Waldron's first lecture raises a number of important issues, too many to be addressed in this posting which is why I wish merely to raise a query concerning this distinction. It appears to be based on taking the Kantian conception of dignity to reside primarily in a general picture of practical reason whilst the legal view of it that is raised by contrast is rather one that defines and describes a social standing and is hence not encoded in a general picture of practical reason. In response to this I want to raise a substantive point concerning the conception of right that Kant himself worked with.

Waldron's general concern in the first lecture concerns a certain kind of defence of "hate speech" legislation on the grounds that what is at issue in it is not an "intention" in the private sense on the part of the speaker but rather an effect that is at work amongst those to whom such "speech" (normally a form of writing) is addressed. The effect that is at work is one of reducing the respect shown certain members of minority groups such that they will not be taken to have a legitimate right to equal citizenship rights. As such this kind of "speech" undercuts the sense that there is a social contract to which all have a general kind of connection with. Since this is the point of the "hate speech" in question it aims to undercut "public order" not necessarily in the sense of wishing to instigate violence but rather in that it suggests that some are not truly within the bounds of the order that has been specified as public or not there in a full sense.

Waldron's general defence of "hate speech" legislation in these terms has much to commend it but does not fit well with his designation of the Kantian view of dignity as something generically distinct from the legal notion of dignity as a status and achievement. It is correct that Kant speaks of dignity in terms of his general picture of practical reason and in those terms it is presented as something of incomparable worth that we are all possessed of. However Kant's general picture of practical reason has to be related to his view of right. When we look at his view of right we find a conception of it that shows that there is Kantian precedent for the "legal" conception of dignity that Waldron speaks of.

In Kant's discussion of the preliminary concepts of the "metaphysics of morals" there is a definition of personhood that determines a person as someone whose actions can be imputed to them which leads on to the sense of a person as someone subject to no other laws than those they give to themselves (autonomy). This notion is important in connection with Kant's subsequent notion of right though it is far from equivalent to it. When Kant turns to specifying the notion of right it is done in relation to a "universal law of freedom" which involves coexistence of each freedom with every other (in the universal or supreme principle of right: Ak. 6: 230). Since this coexistence requires that right be founded on mutual restraint that is based on the ground of each person's freedom then it follows that for a legal order to exist is for the status of personhood to have been given form in such an order. Hence, legal order is itself a general achievement.

Kant's fuller account determines this order through notions of equality, freedom and independence (e.g. Ak 8: 290). It is true that the view of the last of these notions is problematic (and alters between the essay on theory and practice and the Metaphysics of Morals) but the notion of equality involved, as distinct from that of the freedom, is grounded in the order of the law whilst the freedom (which is recognised universally in human beings) is something that the law "restricts and realises". If we see the law as that which gives freedom its substantive content but also as something that requires equality in its nature then it follows that the Kantian view of legal dignity is one that matches the achievement sense given to it by Waldron.

The "hate crime" problem that arises from being based on the attempt to either reduce the scope of public status given to a member of a group or to find a way of expelling them from that status as such does thus violate the sense of equality of each before the law. In this respect then there is congruence between the Kantian notion of dignity and the legal sense given to it by Waldron. I won't here expand further on the question of "hate crime" though the nature of it (particularly in genocide) is something that is worth consideration in terms of its boundary and limit since it does present itself as one of the ways the social contract can be breached.

The Antinomy of Politics and Morals

The "appendix" to Perpetual Peace is divided into two halves, the first part of which discusses the "disagreement" of politics and morals with a view to the idea of perpetual peace, the second half of which covers their "agreement". The "agreement" involves the account of the two principles of publicity covered in previous postings. I now wish to go back to reviewing the basis of the initial "disagreement".

Kant opens the discussion of this "disagreement" by reference to the point that morals is practical of itself, a contention that clearly refers back to the whole account of practical reason in The Critique of Practical Reason. In making this point Kant refers in passing to the general claim that "ought" implies "can". The point of these initial references is to make the claim (in contrast to some contemporary readings of Kant's practical philosophy) that morals and politics belong together as distinct parts, as he here puts it, of "doctrine of right" (Ak. 8: 370). Morals is now presented as the theoretical part of this doctrine with politics described as the doctrine of right put into practice. This does involve a distinction in some sense between what Kant will put out in the Doctrine of Right as a theory and politics as conventionally understood. So there is some form of relation that needs to be mapped (as is also apparent from Kant's essay on theory and practice).

The relationship that Kant maps between morals and politics thus understood is subsequently condensed into two statements. Politics is presented as based on the statement that we should be wise as serpents whilst morals is indicated to limit the application of this statement (thus in a sense to schematise it) by means of the condition that we be also as guileless as doves. Both need to be able to exist together if there is not to be a conflict between politics and morals.

The problem of the origin of the conflict is next traced to the attitude of the "practical man" who takes morals to be only theory. This person adopts the view that it is pointless to will the conditions of perpetual peace due to a claim concerning human nature. After a careful rendition of contractarian reasoning Kant points to the point that is at issue here which concerns the nature of power. The claim of the practical man is to the effect that the one who holds power will not let the prescription of laws be based on the ground of the social contract. Further, that states, once independent, will not be constrained by reference to other states. These claims rest on an appeal to political prudence and empirical principles of human nature. It is the combination of the "prudent" attitude and the purely empirical view of humanity that is the ground of this "realist" position, the same position still adopted in various guises in contemporary IR theory. Subsequent postings will trace further Kant's account of the problems he takes this view to have.