Can morality just be about how we feel, or how we normally act?

Hume.

Morality is based in disinterested approval.

Smith.

Morality is based in sympathy.

Railton.

We reason about how to act by asking, What would a normal or typical person do in these circumstances?

• “It’s right because it’s what a normal or typical person would do.”
• “It’s good because I approve of it.”
• “I approve of it because I feel I would do the same thing in the circumstances.”

If not sentiment, then what?

Hume goes out of his way to argue that morality can’t be founded in reason.

Waking from the dogmatic slumber

Kant:

I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction. (Ak. 4:260)

Do you know the sun will rise tomorrow?

• How?
• We normally take our causal knowledge of the world for granted.
• Hume argued that you can never learn a necessary law from experience.
  • “Necessary” means “without exceptions”
  • Experience only teaches us that there haven’t been any exceptions so far
  • If something can only be discovered by experience, then it could have turned out otherwise and is not necessary.
• Compare two laws:
  1. The sun always rises in the morning
  2. The sun always rises in the morning until April 16, 2026, when it stops
• Hume: when we think we know a causal law linking two things, what we actually know is their “constant conjunction”: that they have tended to go together so far.
  • Habit, not knowledge.
• Kant agrees that you can never learn a necessary law from experience – this is what woke him from his dogmatic slumber.
• He then takes on the challenge of showing how you can know necessary laws at all.

Kant’s critical philosophy (in a nutshell)

Kant wants to preserve Hume’s insight, but also say that we can have knowledge of causal laws. He does this by identifying the objects of thought with the objects of experience.

Hume on morals and laws

• Hume extends the same thinking to morals:

  In order, … to prove, that the measures of right and wrong are [necessary] laws…: We must … point out the connexion betwixt the relation and the will; and must prove that this connexion is so necessary, that in every well-dispos’d mind, it must take place and have its influence…. … [I]t has been shown, in treating of the understanding, that there is no connexion of cause and effect … which is discoverable otherwise than by experience…. ’Tis only by experience we learn their influence and connexion; and this influence we ought never to extend beyond experience. (Hume 1739, 3.1.1 / 299-300)

• If morals were based in reason:

  1. Every “well-dispos’d mind” must be guided by (the same) morality, and
  2. Morals must be learned a priori, from reason, not from experience

Moral reasons must motivate (internalism)

• Hume: Morals can’t be derived from reason, because morals motivate us to action, and all motivation is based in the passions.
• Williams: any internal reason for acting morally must be based in motivations an agent has.
• How can a rationalist oppose this argument?
• What is Kant’s response to this argument?

Choosing well cannot be what makes an action good

Recall Hume’s parricide argument.

Can the difference between sapling and human parricide be choice?

Hume says no. - That is: it can only be wrong to choose an action because the action is wrong.

• The wrongness of choosing doesn’t explain the wrongness of the action.

• The wrongness of the action must explain the wrongness of the choosing.

This is what Kant is going to deny.

Sentimentalist points and how Kant will respond

1. Moral judgment must include motivation (internalism).
   . . . Kant: reason is practical and necessarily involves motivation (Groundwork, s. 3).
2. A good choice must be good for a more basic reason.
   . . . Kant: the only unconditional good is the good will (s. 1).
3. If moral judgments are based on necessary laws discoverable by reason, they must be a priori.
   . . . Kant: moral judgments are based on necessary laws discoverable by reason and are a priori (s. 1).

The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

This book is an argument for moral rationalism: that moral judgments are based on laws of reason.

Section 1: Commonsense morality

Kant aims to show that, in our ordinary moral thinking, we are already rationalists instead of sentimentalists. The argument looks something like this:

The unconditional good

• Many things can be good by accident. For example, if red is my favorite color, it might be good to give me a red shirt. But we wouldn’t say that red shirts are good, period. If I hated red, giving me a red shirt would be bad.
• The moral good is non-accidentally or unconditionally good.
• Most ordinary goods are only accidentally or conditionally good.

Even the warmest sentiments are not unconditionally good

To be beneficent where one can is a duty, and beside this there are some souls so attuned to sympathetic participationa that even without any other motive of vanity or utility to self, they take an inner gratification in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the contentment of others insofar as it is their own work. But I assert that in such a case the action, however it may conform to duty and however amiable it is, nevertheless has no true moral worth, but is on the same footing as other inclinations. (Kant 2018, Ak. 4:398 / 13)

To act from duty means, to do the right thing for the reason that makes it right. (Not because of something that could be present whether or not it was right.)

Why aren’t the effects of an action its moral test?

The good will is good not through what it effects or accomplishes, not through its serviceability for the attainment of any intended end, but only through its willing. … Even if through the peculiar disfavor of fate, … this will were entirely lacking in the resources to carry out its aim, if with its greatest ef- fort nothing were accomplished by it, then it would shine all by itself a like a jewel …. (Kant 2018, Ak. 4:394 / 10)

Conformity to reason

• If the good will is good not by virtue of sentiments or results, what is left over is that it is good by virtue of the willing itself.
• Since our will is determined by our reason (more in a bit), its goodness is its being reasoned correctly.
• What is the content of morality?
  • “I ought never to conduct myself except so that I could also will that my maxim become a universal law” (Kant 2018, Ak. 4:402 / 17).
    • “My maxim”: in Kantian jargon, “the subjective principle of my action.” That means something like, how I think about my action in my own circumstance.
    • The “law” by contrast is “universal” and objective.
    • Morality then says, I have to act on subjective principles …
    • … that I would also want to be objective principles.
    • I endorse the principles I guide myself by as principles for everyone.

Moral law examples

• Reminder: “I ought never to conduct myself except so that I could also will that my maxim become a universal law” (Kant 2018, Ak. 4:402 / 17).
• Kant applies this idea to several examples throughout the book. Let’s try that.
  • Kant: “When I am in a tight spot, may I not make a promise with the intention of not keeping it?” (Kant 2018, Ak. 4:402 / 17)
  • As I come to the vending machine, someone leaves in frustration. I find that the bag of chips they wanted is dangling. I shake it loose and keep it for myself.

Section 3: acting under the idea of freedom

• We’ve seen that Kant says morality is based in our nature as rational beings. What is our nature as rational beings?
• Begin with an observation about two kinds of laws.
  • Non-rational objects obey laws like gravity.
  • Rational beings obey laws like the speed limit.
  • What is the difference?

Section 3: acting under the idea of freedom

• Non-rational objects obey laws by causal necessity.
• Rational beings obey laws because they acknowledge their authority.
  • The speed limit controls my actions only because I acknowledge its authority.
  • I am autonomous because I am bound in this way only by my own authority.
• Causation means behaving according to laws. Rationality means obeying only my own laws.
• If I am a free agent, that means I cause my actions.
  • So they occur according to laws.
  • But they can only be laws I make for myself.

A little more on being free and rational

• Another way to make Kant’s point about the nature of being free and rational is:
  • Non-rational objects do what they do because of causes.
  • Rational agents do what they do because of reasons.
• You might be wondering, what does it mean to act for reasons.
  • One kind of answer is, if you’re asked why you do something, you can justify (and not just explain) it.

Section 2: the content of the moral law

• Being a free rational being means, making laws for yourself.
• Morality (if it exists) is the law that applies unconditionally to free rational beings (recall Hume).
  • Unconditional = categorical. So one name for morality is “the categorical imperative.”
• What could a law that applies unconditionally to free rational beings be?
  • Because we are rational beings, the law must have us act under laws.
  • Because the law is unconditional, it must apply the same to all rational beings.
• Kant says, the only principle that satisfies these two criteria is: “So act, as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature”
  • The same idea can be reformulated in different ways, including: “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.”