wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) (08/02/83)
I tried to post this once before, but it seems to have been lost. If this is a second posting to some sites, I apologize. From Paul Torek: It's interesting that Alan Wexelblat has read Kant's works and I've read commentaries on it only. Whoa! I don't want to come across as a know-it-all. I said that I've read \excerpts/ from Kant's works. The professors whom I've learned from might have read all of Kant, but that's a hefty task. Wanting a limited good is not ruled out by the universality test. The universality test applies to "maxims," which are principles on which a person acts. Suppose my maxim is to take some of this limited good AS LONG AS this does not create severe scarcity (e.g., driving the price too high may be a measure of severe scarcity, in the case of the limited good oil). My maxim IS universalizable, I would not object to everyone's following it. I agree that wanting a limited good is not necessarily ruled out. I merely tried to point out that it \might/ be ruled out in a reasonable case. You make several assumptions here. 1) You assume that the good is divisible. 2) You assume that there will be enough to go around (if everyone takes only a little). 3) You assume that the good is quantifiable in absolute terms (like price). 4) You assume that you are able to know the effects of your acquisition of the good. All these are reasonable assumptions, IN SOME CASES. I think you can easily see that there might be cases where NONE of these assumptions would hold. Choosing a loved one over an unknown person to be rescued is not ruled out. The maxim to prefer a loved one IS universalizable, since a world in which people rescued strangers would be dispreferred to one in which people rescued loved ones. The people in the latter world would be happier, because loved ones would be more likely to be together in the latter world. I would be curious to hear what you consider to be an appropriate formation of the maxim to rescue loved ones. As I pointed out originally, it's going to end up sounding ridiculous. Your point about "better worlds" is not only unprovable, it's irrelevant. Kant does not care about the 'happy' world, just the 'rational' one. Granted that I might be upset if a loved one said he rescued me BECAUSE OF a rational principle. But he doesn't have to say that: it's misleading. It would be more accurate to say that he rescued me because he loved me. He acted IN ACCORD WITH, rather than BECAUSE OF, a principle. True, it would be more accurate. What we are concerned with is the motivation for action, especially in the moral sense. In order to determine if the action of saving was a moral one (according to Kant), we should apply the universal maxims test. My idea is that this is ludicrous. One wishes to speak of moral actions motivated by love. This is something Kant does not allow for. As far as giving to CARE is concerned, I'm not sure the universality test requires this (although Kant seems to have thought so). But also, I don't find the idea terribly offensive. COUNTERINTUITIVE, yes, but I think any moral theory has to (and even should!) go against our moral intuitions in some cases. I would be suspicious of someone whose moral theory confirmed all his intuitions -- it just seems too convenient. Tell me: who's going to get your goodies when you die? How much do you contribute to charity each year? How much do you spend on frivolous things like vacations, entertainment, etc? This is not a personal attack (I don't expect you to answer), but rather an attempt to point out that we (all) are "immoral" in the Kantian sense most of the time. Yet we do not feel immoral. And this brings me to your other point. If someone is to create a complete moral system, he must either follow mankind's (general) intuitions about what is moral, OR he must provide an explanation of why morality conflicts with intuition. Kant does not provide this sort of explanation. Presumably, we all have some moral sensibilities (I take it that we would not be 'human' if we did not), and although they may differ, it is the resposibility of the moralist to explain why our intuitions are wrong; by their very nature, we cannot explain why we feel that they are 'right.' Perhaps the universality test does not rule out "pure altruism". I think Kant would say that human nature rules it out, because nobody would want to live in a world where nobody could do anything or make anyone happy, and because we all come equipped with physical needs which inevitably create physical desires. In fact, the universality test extols pure altruism. Look at any act that a pure altruist could perform in today's world! Everything he did would mesh perfectly with the four-part test, ASSUMING THAT HE (or only a small group) WAS THE ONLY ONE ACTING THUS. As soon as you take step four to its logical end (ie everyone follows the maxim), the system breaks down. The altruists are a perfect example of why step four of the test is irrelevant. Furthermore, the universality test is not the only formulation of the Categorical Imperative. A second formulation is "treat humanity, *whether in your own person or that of another*, always as an end and never merely as a means" (emphasis added). True, this is Kant's other formation of the CI. I deliberately left it out, though, out of kindness, since it is a much poorer form, and open to much more criticism. I'll mention just a few problems here: 1) What does it mean to treat a person as "an end"? 2) Are there such things as objective ends? 3) Are objective ends preferable (the first formulation of the CI makes it clear that they are, but this is less clear here)? There are many other problems, but all of them stem from the fact that there is no clear answer to question 1. For an interpretation of Kant that says he does justify the universality test, see W. Michael Hoffman, *Kant's Theory of Freedom*, (Wash. DC: University press of America, 1979), esp. pp. 53-69. Kant says that "the mere concept of a categorical imperative ... provides us with the formula containing the only proposition that can be a categorical imperative" (quoted in Hoffman, p. 62). This concept is that of "a pure practical law ... given through reason completely *a priori*, and which is prescribed to us not in an empirically conditioned but in an absolute manner ... a product of pure reason." Products of pure reason are universal. This is exactly what I mean by Kant not providing any explanation. Throughout his works, he says, effectively "This is the way it is, and you should be this way because this is the way that it is." (Incidentally, this is what turned me off of Kant early on.) He says that just because he has a concept which he calls purely practical (depite demostrations of its impracticality), it is absolute, and a product of pure reason. But nowhere is it stated why universality should be of any concern, or why we should allow him to prescribe *a priori* any absolute rule of conduct, or why does his universal rule run counter to what I think is right! The objection that held that Kantian morality requires perfect knowledge began with the claim that what is important is the "'greatest good' to the universe." But that claim makes Kant out to be a consequentialist, which most scholars on Kant would flatly deny. Kant was a "deontologist." But even if, contrary to fact, he were a consequentialist, he would not fault persons for incomplete knowledge. The morality of an action, in Kant's view, depends on the *maxim*. I would like to see why most scholars object to this view. It is a perfectly plausible interpretation of the fourth step of the test, which explicitly requires that we consider what the world would be like if everyone followed the maxim. It seems to me that this requires that one take into account the possible consequences of one's acts. It should probably be noted (for those who don't know) that a deontologist studies ethics, which is another plausible interpretation of Kant, but one which in no way rules out his being a consequentialist. --Alan Wexelblat decvax!ittvax!wex