I am back from a bracing walk – it was 34° – and ready to spend some time responding to a number of interesting comments on my blog post concerning what I see as a fundamental incompatibility between Kant’s theory of knowledge and his ethical theory. I will begin by repeating and expanding on my account of how I approach a philosophical text, this time using as an example not the Critique of Pure Reason but rather a contemporary text with which, I imagine, many of you are familiar, namely A Theory of Justice by John Rawls.
What interests me about a philosophical text are not the
opinions of the author or the relationship of those opinions to the opinions of
other thinkers but rather a powerful and deep argument that I find in the text.
When I cannot find that sort of argument, I set the book aside as
uninteresting. I am not at all claiming that this is the only or the best way
to read a philosophical work. I am simply reporting that is the way I read one.
Almost always, when I grapple with a great work of philosophy or even one not
so great, I find that there is a great deal in the text that is ancillary to
the argument I am interested in and frequently even in conflict with it. For
the most part, I simply set aside those portions of the text as irrelevant to
my inquiry. Quite obviously my identification of what I consider an interesting
argument is subjective and personal and my view may not be shared by other
readers, many of whom of course may be far more accomplished scholars than I.
But that is what I do and when I have completed my investigation and have published
it, I simply hope that what I have to say will find readers who consider it
interesting or helpful.
A good example of this approach is my engagement with the
work of John Rawls as set forth in my book Understanding Rawls. Some of you may
be quite familiar with my take on Rawls and to you I apologize for repeating
myself but as Socrates replies to Callicles, who complains that Socrates is
talking about the same things over and over again, “yes, Callicles, and in the
same way too.”
Rawls began in the 1950s with a problem and a brilliant idea
for its solution. The problem was the seemingly endless and irresoluble conflict
between the two major schools of Anglo-American ethical theory, Utilitarianism
and Intuitionism. Rawls’ idea was to reach back to the social contract
tradition of political theory and marry it to the quite modern discipline of
Game Theory. He claimed in his early article, Justice As Fairness, that he
could prove, as a theorem, that a group of rationally self-interested
individuals situated roughly in the condition of those posited by social contract
theory would arrive at a unanimous agreement on two principles to regulate
their social interactions, and these principles Rawls described as the
principles of justice. It was, as I say, a brilliant idea which seemed to offer
the possibility of resolving the conflict between utilitarianism and
intuitionism while preserving what was appealing and powerful in each. Problems
with his first formulation, which undermined his claim to be able to prove the
theorem in Game Theory, led Rawls to introduce a number of revisions into his
theory, including most famously what he called the Veil of Ignorance.
By the time Rawls published A Theory of Justice the journal
article had ballooned into a 400 page book with seemingly a thousand words on
every page. Rawls had elaborate and interesting things to say about an
extraordinarily wide variety of subjects, all of which he attempted to hang on
or connect with or derive from his core idea.
I was not powerfully drawn to Rawls’s vision of a just
society – to put it as simply as I can, he had learned nothing from Marx. But I
thought his core idea was brilliant and fascinating and so I engaged with it,
ignoring all of the ancillary materials that stuffed his big book. (Not in my
commentary, but more recently, I have taken to describing the book as a slender
monograph wearing what in the film world is called a fat suit, but that, I am
afraid, is somewhat unkind.) I thought about Rawls’ central argument carefully
and came to the conclusion that, for a variety of technical reasons which
interested me, the argument did not work. And I demonstrated that in my book.
But that was not the way Rawls’ book was read by most of the very wide
readership which spanned a number of different disciplines. I did not care.
What interested me was the core argument, with which I engaged quite seriously,
and once I had demonstrated to my satisfaction that the argument simply did not
succeed in demonstrating what it sought to demonstrate, I published and stop
thinking about Rawls.
I do not by any stretch of the imagination mean to suggest
that Rawls and Kant occupy the same philosophical universe. But I approached
their work in the same way. It took me years to work through Kant’s arguments
and come to conclusions that I did. It only took me about three weeks to do the
same with the arguments of Rawls.
Now let me turn to the comments on my blog post. When I had finished my engagement with Kant’s
ethical theory and had published my thoughts in a book called The Autonomy of
Reason, it occurred to me that there was an irresoluble conflict between the
argument I had succeeded in finding in The Critique of Pure Reason and the
claims Kant was making in his ethical writings. I was fairly confident that
Kant himself had not seen this conflict, and I even had some idea why that
might be, but a conflict it clearly was and I articulated it in the rather
obscure article that I referenced in my blog post.
Now it is one thing for me to say that Rawls’ argument does
not work. I am not nearly as important a philosopher as Rawls but we inhabited
the same universe of late 20th century American philosophy. So it
is, one might say, a fair fight. But when I say the same thing about Kant, that
has somewhat the comic air of a flea crawling up the hind leg of a female
elephant and yelling” Rape!” Not only am I clear that Kant does not see the
problem that I claim to see. The major philosophical tendencies of the past 2 ½
centuries do not see it and instead find countlessly many other things of
interest in Kant’s great writings.
Let me get right to the central issue, which is whether two
noumenal agents can encounter one another in the field of experience. Clearly
Kant believes they can. That is not the issue. My question is whether it is
logically compatible with his central argument to say that they can. I take it
as not in dispute that Kant’s ethical theory requires that they can, because it
is as moral agents, as selves in themselves, so to speak, that they have
binding obligations to one another, obligations to tell the truth, to keep
their promises, to treat one another as ends always and not merely as means.
As I argue at length in my book, Kant’s Theory of Mental
Activity, and also in my nine part series of lectures posted on YouTube, one
can only make sense of the central argument of the Transcendental Deduction by
taking seriously the argument from the first edition in what is usually
referred to as the Subjective Deduction concerning the so-called threefold
synthesis of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. And if one spells
that argument out precisely, it follows, as I explained in my original post,
that no Transcendental Ego can encounter another Transcendental Ego in the
field of experience. That was the point of my example about the creative
writing class in which the students write stories about the class.
One commentator noted that my interpretation of Kant made
his views incompatible with the modern understanding of the natural sciences as
a collective undertaking, and that is absolutely correct. Kant’s conception of
science is derived from the work of people like Newton. He has no idea
whatsoever of a group of researchers led by a principal researcher going into a
laboratory together, doing collaborative experimental investigations,
publishing them collectively, and interacting with other groups of researchers
to arrive at some advance in our scientific understanding of the universe. I do
not think the core argument of the Critique can be made compatible with such a
conception of scientific research, to which one can only say, so much the worse
for the Critique.
Well, I will stop there. Perhaps I can conclude with a little
story about Hannah Arendt which I have told before. Back when I was teaching at
Columbia, I gave a lecture attacking the views of John Stuart Mill. Arendt was
in the audience and came up afterward to say hello. She was pretty obviously
not thrilled with the talk but she politely asked me what I was working on and
I replied that I was writing a book on Kant’s ethical theory. She brightened
and said, “Ah, it is so much more pleasant to spend time with Kant.”
I can only say that it has been more pleasant spending time
with Kant that obsessing about the results that will come in this evening.
16 comments:
Surely in order to make the argument that you are, you have ended up talking about things as they are in themselves (as when you explicitly discuss whether noumenal agents can encounter one another). It seems to me that a large part of the Kantian tradition thinks Kant was right that you can't know anything about things as they are in themselves as he has described the category. He does, of course, end up making some claims about things as they are in themselves, but he shouldn't have, and those claims should be set aside as mistakes.
In the context of that larger debate, it seems like one required element of what you are saying is that you are saying Kant's ethics cannot survive that approach; it requires the kind of discussion of things as they are in themselves which so many neo-Kantians have tried to set aside. And I guess I don't see this; it seems to me that, for example, Korsgaard's story, which would exclude any such "theoretical perspective" issues from the "practical perspective" of ethical decision making, is quite tenable. So I guess my kind of huge question is what indispensable role do you think talking about noumenal agents and transcendental egos actually plays in Kantian ethics? Granting, of course, that Kant sometimes talks about them in talking about ethics, why are you sure those parts of his discussion are actually needed?
They are needed because according to Kant all our behavior in the phenomenal realm is causally determined and hence, considered as such, incompatible with the freedom which he thinks is the essence of the moral condition. Now if you're not concerned with that problem and indeed are not concerned at all the significance of the causal determination of our behavior, then to be sure you may talk about the practical perspective of ethical decision-making but then you are simply not talking about Kant's philosophy, at least so far as I can see. Making moral freedom compatible with causal determinism is the heart and soul of Kant's philosophical enterprise.
Couple of brief comments, neither one of them about Kant. First, a minor nitpick: Rawls's TOJ is closer to 600 pp than 400 pp. Whether that is or is not a point in its favor is debatable, I guess.
Second, I've been dipping into Forrester's _In the Shadow of Justice_. Some readers of this blog may find it worth a look.
'my account of how I approach a philosophical text'
Me first!: I quibble of course, but Kant presented
nothing as being in so many words 'Kant’s theory of knowledge', and Kant presented nothing as 'his ethical theory.'
My objection is more urgent in the case of 'his ethical theory', which connotes, I think, that there can be an ethical theory. And that, in turn, connotes that suppositions are involved. By contrast, a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based would not be a 'supposition', maybe not therefore, so to speak, a 'theory', and maybe it still seems that I am quibbling. But what if I am deciding, for example, that
I am 'male'. Is this a theory, a supposition? Or can I actually *decide*, on a principle here, upon which my activity is based. When it comes to justifying a course of action, there is the way that things theoretically are, and there is the way that I make it simple by deciding the way that things should be. That's practical reason.
'What interests me about a philosophical text are not the opinions of the author or the relationship of those opinions to the opinions of other thinkers but rather a powerful and deep argument that I find in the text.'
Well, I think you are drawing a distinction between taking a merely scholarly or historical interest, on the one hand, and actually taking an interest, like an existential interest, as if the issue is, like, relevant. Like I could wonder about Newton, or I could wonder about space and time.
'I am not nearly as important a philosopher as Rawls.'
Check your privelege, sure, but is there actually any such thing as the American Philosophical tradition at all? --that's a rhetorical question, btw.
LFC
Rawls could have used a good editor. The 600 pages should have been 400. I read somewhere that Burt Dreben said that TOJ "reads like it was transliterated from the original German." And he was a good friend of Rawls!
'Let me get right to the central issue, which is whether two noumenal agents can encounter one another in the field of experience.'
I don't think I can choke down the locution 'noumenal agents'. Sure, Kant and the noumenal agent, but the term is, I think, catastrophically facile. In other words, what is Immanuel Kant's position on free will? Who cares? More interesting than anything that is actually in Kant in so many words, is this idea of an agent outside space and time - a noumenal agent, which is an element that can be particularly difficult to tangle with, even if Kant never tangled with it in so many words. I don't think I can stipulate here, that these questions must be dealt with in order to assess the viability of Kant's doctrine. What is Kant's doctrine? Who cares? We are only pretending that this involves Kant at all. People who have actually read Kant never tarried for a discussion about 'noumenal agents', though many things got discussed.
'Clearly Kant believes they can.'
So of course I didn't make it to here.
'That is not the issue.'
Heh.
'My question is whether it is logically compatible with his central argument to say that they can.'
Actually, I can muster impatience even, with this reference to 'his central argument', as if there is in Kant something that is described as being 'my central argument', let alone as if I want to guess what argument this might supposedly be. I don't insist, by any means, that Kant could roll over in his grave to successfully
guess at this one. Kant himself, doesn't know what you are talking about. His central argument? Even worse is when this gets clarified:
'the central argument of the Transcendental Deduction'
lol.
I am a bit persnickety, which is not attractive, but it saves me some trouble when we get to the next sentence:
'I take it as not in dispute that Kant’s ethical theory requires that they can, because it is as moral agents, as selves in themselves, so to speak, that they have binding obligations to one another, obligations to tell the truth,
to keep their promises, to treat one another as ends always and not merely as means.'
So yeah, this is gobbledygook. There is in Kant no 'ethical theory', no 'moral agents', no 'selves in themselves, so to speak', so to speak.
'I take it as not in dispute that Kant’s ethical theory requires that they can,..'
Given the dispute about whether there can be an ethical theory at all (especially for Kant), let alone something called 'Kant's ethical theory', I take it as being actually in dispute that Kant's ethical theory 'requires' etc.
Furthermore, the word 'requires' is ambiguous actually, and I wonder if it occured to Kant to use it in this fashion. I mean, I think not, and I call it ambiguous because to 'require' might be to specify as compulsory, or it might be to cause to be necessary, like maybe in some other fashion, or it might be to 'need', to 'require', for a particular purpose, in which case are we asking for? Are we claiming? Are we doing this by some sort of right or authority? Are we just calling for as suitable or such? Or we having a ompelling need? Or are we demanding? Thus, a broken leg will probably require surgery, and then there is what Kant's ethical theory will probably require? Maybe what's required is a complete reorganization of the system? Why won't she say she needs me?
(1) Re Rawls and length etc. (D. Palmeter): yes, probably. Though the style doesn't bother me much, it's a little formal, among other things: no use of the first person, for instance, that I can recall.
(2) Danny: "Given the dispute about whether there can be an ethical theory at all"
Is there such a dispute? I guess the young A.J. Ayer and some others perhaps thought that all normative statements are merely preferences on the level of "I like strawberry ice cream," but I was not aware that this position was still taken v. seriously. (But then, I'm not a philosopher.) And w the evening of election day approaching on Eastern Standard Time, at any rate, this will prob be my last visit to the blog tonight.
Protagoras asked about 'transcendental egos' and 'noumenal agents'.
Robert Paul Wolff said...
'according to Kant all our behavior .. is causally determined' hence 'incompatible with the freedom which he thinks is the essence of the moral condition.'
Well, my reaction is I stare at 'all our behavior in the phenomenal realm' is causally determined, and I query whether there is such a thing at all, as 'our behavior', in 'the phenomenal realm'. Or at least, I worry that calling it 'our behavior' seems to imply that some heavy lifting has been done here, theoretically, to settle what we take to be the connection between our minds and our behavior, such that we are calling 'our behavior' ours, and not, perhaps, somebody else's, and also not, perhaps, simply the electrochemical behavior of acetaminophen or such. If I were to talk about amperometric determination of tyrosine and tryptophan in my brain, then this is causally determined, but is it 'our behavior', such that it is really ours?
'Now if you're not concerned with that problem and indeed are not concerned at all the significance of the causal determination of our behavior,'
Note, a psychologist is concerned about the so-called significance of the causal determination of 'our behavior', in that he is trying to predict and control 'our behavior'. Of course, for example, the researchers and scientists who study behavioral psychology are trying to understand why we behave the way we do and they are concerned with discovering patterns in our actions and behaviors. I guess, too, that we can all put our 'psychologist' hats on, and not just those of us who have degrees in psychology.
'..then to be sure you may talk about the practical perspective of ethical decision-making'
Note, this is abstract and rather informally stated. I don't blanche at the phrase 'practical ethical decision-making' simply because these are big words, but because for example, I'm not clear on whether 'practical ethical decision-making', might be different from 'idealized decision-making'. Or I mean, what if I don't take into account all possible consequences of our actions, because that's not 'practical'? Is this what Kant means by 'practical reason'? No it's not. Perhaps, then, you may talk about the practical perspective of ethical decision-making, but what is Kant talking about?
'but then you are simply not talking about Kant's philosophy,..'
tou·ché
/to͞oˈSHā/
'Making moral freedom compatible with causal determinism is the heart and soul of Kant's philosophical enterprise.'
I think this is rather abstract, and stated loosely to boot. As to 'making', -- Are we making something, like as in producing something? Or are we listing essential ingredients needed for something? And as to 'compatible', the word isn't used by Kant, and seems to imply a thesis that is not Kantian to my eyes, given that compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. If Kant wanted to present this thesis in so many words, I don't know, but he ultimately resisted the temptation.
So, are noumenal agents and transcendental egos needed?
Well, Kant never claimed that noumenal agents are needed. Happy day, 'transcendental egos' sounds Kantian, but I think we are equivocating here with the locution, in that Kant uses 'transcendental ego' to describe that which synthesizes sensations according to the categories of the understanding. It would be different, for example, to simply take 'transcendental ego' as a synonym for 'the self'.
Your general view about Kant was shared by Searle.
LFC said...
--
(2) Danny: "Given the dispute about whether there can be an ethical theory at all"
Is there such a dispute? I guess the young A.J. Ayer and some others perhaps thought that all normative statements are merely preferences on the level of "I like strawberry ice cream," but I was not aware that this position was still taken v. seriously. (But then, I'm not a philosopher.)
--
You mention 'normative statements', and you have gathered the impression that 'normative statements' are not normally (see what I did there) taken to be 'merely preferences'. I'm not sure what this would look like as a multiple-choice question. Thusly -- normative statements are:
A: merely preferences
B: wicked cool
C: edible
I'm kidding, but also, even using the phrase 'normative statements' does some heavy lifting, to my eyes, implying that 'normative statements' are not some other kind of statements, such as actual rationally justified propositions or such.
But okay, what do *I* mean? When I query the notion that there can be an 'ethical theory' at all? I mean, as a choice of emphasis, more than as anything particularly original or controversial in the realm of Kant exegesis, that Kant has this distinction that he draws, between 'practical reason', which is a synonym for 'will', I think, and at least, these two terms are concerned with questions of morality, so 'practical reason', and then there are other things, like especially, there are things theoretical and judicial. When you are concerned with questions of morality, then you are concerned with concerned finding the sources of such action. But do you 'find' such sources, by studying the world with a telescope or a microscope? Can you scientifically study the question? Put it this way, is there a 'a priori' element here? And then especially, is there an 'a priori' element here, when we are doing it right and properly?
Practical reason, is one thing, and theoretical reason, if you will, which is concerned with questions about our knowledge of the ordinary world, is another thing. Or at least, there is this distinction according to Kant. The world science seeks to understand, is not, for Kant, concerned with questions of morality. Thus, finding the source of 'such knowledge' can take you to different sources, for different kinds of knowledge.
I'll be talkative, in case these are not trivial matters. The Kant stuff, it's hard to be brief actually, even for those who like to be brief.
Robert Paul Wolff said...
'One commentator noted that my interpretation of Kant made his views incompatible with the modern understanding of the natural sciences as a collective undertaking, and that is absolutely correct.'
Well, no deal. Indeed, I note a 'burden of proof' issue here of staggering proportions -- didn't Kant supposedly attempt to articulate a philosophical framework that places substantive conditions on our scientific knowledge of the world? I mean, if we could at least agree on what he is attempting -- maybe he didn't try hard enough to succeed, is that it? But he did try hard, at least -- developing a philosophy of science that departs from broadly empiricist views and certain necessitarian views, and so forth. If we appreciate Kant's distinctive metaphysical and epistemological doctrines, and still, something made his views incompatible with the modern understanding of the natural sciences, then was he not privy to the modern understanding of the natural sciences? I'm unclear, do you mean some 'modern understanding' that is ours but not Kant's? The discovery of DNA or such? But you do proceed to reflect on the way in which Kant's position fits in with the views of other natural philosophers of the period:
'Kant’s conception of science is derived from the work of people like Newton.'
Okay, but these people like Newton, you mean, people who were, for Kant, other natural philosophers of the period? So maybe 'Newton and Leibniz' would serve even better? Yet I am amused to have found an occasion to write 'people like Newton and leibniz', and thereby offend everybody, including Newton and Leibniz.
'He has no idea whatsoever of a group of researchers led by a principal researcher going into a laboratory together, doing collaborative experimental investigations, publishing them collectively, and interacting with other groups of researchers to arrive at some advance in our scientific understanding of the universe.'
This hints, I suppose, at there being systematically important questions to which Kant's conception of natural science proper would perhaps neglect to immediatly give rise. But I'm not sure what they might be. Indeed, is Kant wrong about something? For example, Kant claims that mathematics is inapplicable to the phenomena of inner sense and their laws. Kant also asserts that the very possibility of natural science proper depends on the law of inertia, since the rejection of it would be hylozoism, “the death of all natural philosophy”. Kant was interested not only in the inanimate bodies studied by physics, but also in living organisms, which he viewed as deserving of additional philosophical scrutiny due to their special status -- an organism is “cause and effect of itself”. In a sense, a living entity is self-caused, and indeed by a causality that we can grasp solely “under the idea of purposes as a principle”. If this is 'wrong', I am unclear on how, but I can see how it might seem relevant, in that it is just these peculiarities that create philosophical challenges not met with in physics and chemistry. Kant tackles them in the latter half of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, of course.
'I do not think the core argument of the Critique can be made compatible with such a conception of scientific research, to which one can only say, so much the worse for the Critique.'
Well, few of these construals heed close to Kant’s words, but okay, so much the worse for these construals, at least.
I shouldn't have steered this thread away from Kant in my brief comments. It just introduces (more) confusion into the thread.
If Danny is interested in discussing the status of normative statements (without particular ref to Kant), that can be done in another thread. If he is interested in discussing ethical theory and whether ethical theories are a "thing" (i.e., can exist as coherent bodies of propositions or whatever), that can also be done in another thread.
So I'll bow out of this thread.
well, guess what I am interested in discussing! ;)
We can maunder about essential traits that commonly define being an 'I'. Thus, self-identity comes to mind, self-consciousness comes to mind. But right away, one might also ponder whether self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. Thus, they bear quite an odd relation to each other. Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. I hesitate over whether this is the bedrock of his thought. What might be familiar as Kantian and post-Kantian discussions of self-consciousness, is not precisely the same thing, to my mind, as Kant. Kant’s account of self-consciousness and its significance is complex. What might be the agenda for a great deal of post-Kantian philosophy, is to my mind,
not necessarily Kant. a philosophical tradition stemming from Kant’s work has tried to identify the necessary conditions of the possibility of self-consciousness and so forth. This can involve exploring the relation between the capacity for self-conscious thought and the possession of a conception of oneself as an embodied agent located within an objective world. This kind of thing, is a tradition. But whatever we take to be the most influential
account of self-consciousness in the post-Kantian tradition, that's not Kant.
A view more in line with Hume’s sceptical account, may not be so familiar.
For example, Frege suggests a form of self-acquaintance, claiming that “everyone is presented to himself in a special and primitive way”. It might sound reasonable. But, Hume’s denial that there is an inner perception of the self as the owner of experience is one that is echoed in Kant’s discussion in both the Transcendental Deduction and the Paralogisms, where he writes that there is no intuition of the self “through which it is given as object”.
So okay, there is supposedly Kantian transcendental apperception or somesuch, but if you read this locution and immediatly understand it to refer to one natural way to think of self-consciousness that maybe comes to your mind, then it might be worth pausing a moment to consider how first-personal language and thought is commonly taken to be sui generis. First-person representations are special. My belief “I am F” is not equivalent to any non-first-personal belief. The first-personal way of thinking about ourselves is irreducible. Consider, are there, perhaps, the facts that make such thoughts true? Facts, or states of affairs? A special class of first-person facts? When I think self-consciously, I cannot fail to refer to myself. It has often been claimed, that I cannot take another person to be me. Is this making sense? I am just bringing some stuff up, about which ink has been spilled, this is just 'some philosophers maintain' kind of stuff. Thus, Some philosophers maintain that self-consciousness is also present in various forms of sensory and non-sensory experience, while also, I guess it is presumably a form of consciousness, right? But, the claim that there is a form of self-consciousness in experience can be undestood in a number of ways.
It is natural to suppose that self-consciousness is, fundamentally, a conscious awareness of the self. Nevertheless, this is the view, mentioned, that Hume seems to be rejecting with his claim that when he introspects he can never catch himself, but only perceptions. Hume’s claim has not found universal acceptance. The issue is whether one is, or can be, conscious of oneself as oneself, a form of awareness in which it is manifest to
one that the object of awareness is oneself. And I'll wrap up with the point that the claim that there is no such conscious awareness of the self is philosophically
significant, for the reason that it plays an important role in Kant’s First Critique, most obviously
the Transcendental Deduction, the Refutation of Idealism, and the Paralogisms -- various well known arguments.
The truth of determinism as such -- this is, shall we say, an issue.
Determinism is the idea that every event is determined by fixed causal laws.
And then another issue, is 'what is as Kantians tend to put it?', or, 'what is a broadly Kantian approach?'
And here, we are familiar with ideas like that Kant says
I must control my conduct, and thus, not causal laws control my conduct. Similarly, not mere chance, controls my conduct. Yet it may well be that every event is somehow random in origin.
Thus, we have here, several familiar points in the free will debate.
And, the free will debate bears a disquieting similarity to an older controversy. Theologians developed various doctrines to overcome this difficulty -- I mean, how God's omniscience could be reconciled. If God knows what we will do, then this seems to imply that it is already decided whether we will act well or badly and thus, what about his moral judgment? What about being sent to heaven or hell? And I mentioned Theologians and the various doctrines that they developed to overcome this difficulty, but I take it that few sound convincing to modern ears. Perhaps the problem itself is no longer a live one, though I can't speak for most believers.
Nonetheless, we tend to think there is something sufficiently distinctive about human action, so that many non-religious people find the idea of free will plausible. This may not precisely pass muster as what 'we tend to think', but what if I throw out that more or less, at some stage of evolution, and at some stage toward maturity, certain animals become “free,” when before they had all been determined in their conduct. Within a Christian framework, human beings have souls (and only human beings have souls).
Free will simply, what, pops into existence at a certain stage of human development?
It's a rhetorical question, and the point is that before we proceed to attribute something like to to Kant, it might be worth working out a position in our minds about these issues that seems more or less plausible to us going in (to reading Kant).
The idea of the will is complex. Consider too, that people will vary in how far they possess a bundle of capacities that are needed to control action in the light of moral concerns. Adult human beings 'of sound mind', really seem to possess these capacities, is that right? But is there, a straightforward moral dividing line between children and adults, between humans and other animals, and while we ponder this, I also wonder if it is taken to be a scientific question, a theoretical sort of question, which certainly it seems to be at first glance. I'm not insisting that it seemed that way to Kant. And even if it did, I'd happily concede that the sort of ultimate control over one’s moral character supposed in Kant’s or similar “free will” accounts is unlikely to be vindicated in this way.
I was thinking about the 2 noumenal agents and asked myself whether one can talk about them in the plural in the Kantian sense. I do not think so. You can't do it any more than you can talk about ‘things in themselves‘ in the plural. In the space-free and timeless nowhere of the ‘thing in itself‘ one cannot count either. By Noumenon, Kant means “precisely the problematic concept of an object for a completely different view and a completely different understanding than ours, which is therefore a problem itself.” (AA IV, Critique of Pure Reason, 184) This 'other view' and 'this other mind' is perhaps so “problematic” because it completely lacks the inner horizon of the 'thing in itself'.
Truman in the film "The Truman Show" is perhaps such a problematic creature. One day, Truman, played by Jim Carrey, sits down in a small boat and sails to the edge of his world and is amazed to find that the infinite horizon, whose faint promises he longs for, is actually just a flat painted wall. If we consider Truman as a special being in the Kantian sense, he could perhaps calm Kant's doubts as to whether it was at all possible to get through to transcendental objects. Truman simply punched a hole in the wall
'I was thinking about the 2 noumenal agents and asked myself whether one can talk about them in the plural in the Kantian sense. I do not think so. You can't do it..'
Here is a Kant quote that might address this:
'How should one behave, for example, toward human beings who are in a state of moral purity or depravity? Toward the cultivated or the crude? Toward the learned or the unschooled, and toward the learned in so far as they use their science as members of polite society or outside society, as specialists in their field (scholars)? Toward those whose learning is pragmatic or those in whom it proceeds more from spirit and taste? How should people be treated in accordance with their differences in rank, age, sex, health, prosperity, and poverty, and so forth? These questions do not yield so many different kinds of ethical obligation (for there is only one, that of virtue as such) but only so many different ways of applying it.'
The question here is how to treat different kinds of individuals, in accordance with their social roles, capacities, and contingent characteristics. But, the variety of human subjectivity is immeasurable, and we can’t rely on explicit rules directing us what to do
in each case. We must use our individual capacity of judgment. The role of judgment does not admit to systematizion. Here ethics 'falls into a casuistry', which cannot be conceived as a 'science', but only as the practice of moral judgment.
And I think that what you describe as 'Kant's doubts as to whether it was at all possible to get through to transcendental objects' might seem like Kant gave up too easily on a problem just because it is a little difficult.
I take Kant's point to be that being primarily concered with establishing objective conclusions, limits you. Instead, in practical terms, we ‘make ourselves’ moral agents: “It is not even in the divine power to make a morally good man (to make him morally good): He must do it himself”. Constituting oneself as a person, that's a moral notion. Kant specifies that the use of judgment is
‘technical’:
“The reflecting power of judgment thus proceeds… not schematically, but technically, not as it were merely mechanically, like an instrument, but artfully.”
Reflective judgment is practical in the sense that an artist is -- proceeding freely and creatively in action and thought with the principles given to oneself.
“Even the organism is contained in the consciousness of oneself. The subject makes its own form in accordance with a priori purposes.”
We ‘make ourselves’ by constructing systems of ideas (including the idea of one’s self as a human being), but also, we ‘make ourselves’ as embodied, purposive organisms. Conceiving of ourselves as purposive organisms
requires the use of reflective judgment.
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