Does abandoning GGT really help?

2025-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

This my second formal paper for PHILOS C153B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
In his attempted interpretation of Kant to account for moral perversity, Louden claims that Kant does not support the guise of the good thesis (what Kant called the old formula), namely the thesis that "to be motivated to pursue X, I must see X as being in some sense good." Rather, he introduced the idea of "the guise of the right", that "to be motivated to pursue X, I must see X as being (morally) right", and that we ought to act under the guise of the right – even though we are (as we know) not guaranteed to act under the guise of the right. When one does not act under the "ought" of the guise of the right (and not act under the guise of the good), it becomes possible for one to "reject the moral law in defiance" and to pursue evil for the sake of evil.
However, this account cannot be satisfactory unless it answers at least this further question: how does one not act under the ought/how does one reject the moral law in defiance? More specifically, he needs to explain how one can voluntarily elect to reject the moral law; for if one can only "reject" the moral law involuntarily, the "rejection" and the consequent actions would not really originate from the agent, and we cannot really attribute the moral perversity, if it exists, to the agent. What makes it harder is that such rejection must not only be voluntary, but shall also originate at least partly from a human faculty that is reason-guided – it would not be a case of moral perversity if moral laws were "rejected" by a mere animal, or if I end up only doing things immoral-seeming as a result of mechanism like patellar reflex; also, to act only for evil, the faculty needs to understand what evil is, which is an abstract property that cannot be understood without the help from reason/understanding. For there to be a genuine perversity, it must originate from a faculty that is (at least partially) constituted by reason, so that it can (1) fully recognize the value of morality yet still voluntarily reject it, and (2) know what actions are evil (and thus need to be done for the perversity). But Louden did not explain how this could be possible. This shall not be surprising, since (1) if the only aim of reason (or the faculty to reject morality, constituted by reason, as mentioned above) is morality/correctness of willing, then it would be impossible to explain how such rejection could be voluntary, and (2) if reason, or the faculty, has an aim competing with morality, then the account would really just become an awkward version of DeWitt's account – and her bifurcation of goods, as we will show, would remove Louden's need to reject the guise of the good thesis. Abandoning the guise of the good thesis does not help.
DeWitt's two-good interpretation goes roughly as follows: There are two goods, namely morality and happiness, where happiness is the net totality of agreeableness. These are both genuine goods valued by us and our reason, in the sense that we all genuinely aim for both of them in our actions. In cases where only one of them can be fulfilled, what we end up doing would show the subordination of goods within us. For example, if I really want to drink coffee, but the only way for me to get it now is to steal (e.g. I forgot my wallet), there are two options for me: to not drink it, or to steal and drink it. If I elect not to drink it, that's because I am abandoning the instance of agreeableness for the sake of morality, i.e. the good of happiness is subordinated under the good of morality. If, on the other hand, I elect to steal and drink it, I would be abandoning morality for the agreeableness, i.e. the good of morality is subordinated under the good of happiness. First of all, this allows us to explain how usual forms of evil could be possible: it is I voluntarily elect to steal, because I, who understand the value of morality and understand that stealing is immoral, yet still prioritize the other good, namely happiness, over morality.
But the above only explains how "evil for good" is possible – what about moral perversity, where one just rejects the moral law, and wills for evil just because it is evil? Easy, just make evil itself a good – i.e., the abstract property of evil can be agreeable to some people. In these people, moral evil is still evil, because it is against morality, a genuine good of theirs. But at the same time, it is also at the same time good, because their peculiar construction makes the abstract property of moral evil (or actions, etc., related to it) agreeable to these people, thus moral evil can further happiness, which is the other genuine good of theirs. When one is said to pursue evil for evil's sake, they are really pursuing moral evil for the agreeableness from moral evil. Since even completely rejecting morality and pursuing evil for the sake of evil can be good in the happiness sense, it becomes conceivable how reason, or a faculty of ours constituted by reason, can possibly voluntarily choose one over the other, because both kinds of goods are considered genuinely valuable by reason.
One may worry that the above account is not talking about true perversity, because as mentioned above, what this interpretation accounts for is "pursuing moral evil for the agreeableness from moral evil", and the agreeableness is a genuine good valued by us and our reason. That is, we are not showing how it is possible for one to pursue true evil for true evil, to pursue something in no way good for something in no way good. But is this really a problem? The real problem here should be, is such "true perversity" possible for us, or even any agent? If it turns out to be impossible, wouldn't the fact that the above account cannot show how such perversity is possible make the account rather more convincing? In fact, if we consider Kant's account of mind in terms of functions, it seems that we would arrive at something like "an absolute evil will would be good when it wills evil for the sake of evil", as argued in my week 10 reaction paper, which means that concepts such as "true perversity" or "absolute evil" could be self-contradictory.
There is one last question left unanswered. It is the "elephant in the room" – that is: "but still, why, would someone subordinate morality, a good that has unconditional value, under happiness, a good that is only conditional?" That question I cannot answer, and maybe can&should never be answered. Even taste doesn't seem to be able to account for that, for even someone who fully understands and values morality, autonomy, etc, and thinks those who subordinate morality under happiness ugly, can still be tempted to prioritize happiness over morality when they see the undeserved agreeableness right in front of them. No matter how good one is, as long as they are finite, moral evil would still always be a possible option for them, just as no matter how evil one is morality would still always be a possible option. But maybe we do not need to address this issue in this paper: even though both interpretations cannot explain why one would actually in some specific case act for evil, bifurcation of goods still is the better theory than the other because it explains how pursuing evil and moral perversity could be possible, and all of these can be explained without abandoning the guise of the good thesis.

Value or Affection, Reason or Emotions?

2025-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

This my first formal paper for PHILOS C153B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
Consideration of edge cases often helps us better understand the subject matter being studied and, therefore, revise theories to better represent it, and it is true for ethics as well. To account for psychopaths, an edge case that cannot be seen more in everyday life, we are both forced and helped to reflect upon many different positions of meta-ethics.
Are psychopaths not morally motivated because they cannot form genuine moral judgments, or are they not motivated morally just because they feel not to be moral, even though they can have actual moral judgments? The former view largely aligns with motivational internalism, the view that (moral) judgments are necessarily motivating, whereas the latter necessarily implies motivational externalism, the view that (moral) judgments are not necessarily motivating. While motivational externalism may seem appealing because of its simplicity (to explain their moral failure, we just say that they were lacking something external to them, period!), upon deliberation it is actually rather disturbing: such a structure of our will not only makes the explanation of psychopaths simple, but also makes the moral motivation of everyone else trivial in a way that renders genuine moral value impossible. This is because under externalism, a moral success/failure would then merely be a consequence of something external to the agent, without representing any goodness of the agent. It’s almost like I suddenly start to act morally once someone flips a switch on, and start to act evil once he turns the switch off. Because of this, motivational externalism fails to capture the essence of our concept of morality.
But if we want to stick to motivational internalism, a lot of hard questions would have to be answered – If we want to account for psychopaths while at the same time maintaining that moral judgments necessarily motivate, we would have to show that the psychopaths do not form genuine moral judgments. But what do we mean by that? In Nichols’ analysis, he divides conceptions of moral judgments into rationalism and sentimentalism. Under rationalism, moral judgments are judgments based on some kind of reason, “rather than emotions or cultural idiosyncrasies”, whereas sentimentalism considers moral judgments to be judgments based on emotions like affect. If psychopaths must not be able to form moral judgments, we should be able to account for their inability by showing what defect they have and how that defect corresponds to their incapacity to perform moral judgments. In Nichols’ paper, empirical data are claimed to show that under a rationalist conception of moral judgments, we are unlikely to account for psychopaths, whereas the affective deficit shown by data can much better account for psychopaths. From that, he concludes that “the defective capacity for moral judgment in psychopathy seems not to derive from a rational deficit, but rather from a deficit to an affective system”, implying that affection lies at the center of moral judgments. But is Nichols’ conclusion right?
To show the unlikeliness of accounting for psychopaths under a rationalist conception of moral judgments, Nichols (among other things he did, e.g., towards conceptual rationalism) tries to argue that many rational deficits rationalists may use to account for psychopaths fail to explain why only psychopaths fail to have genuine moral judgments. While I agree with most of what Kennett pointed out in her response to Nichols, in this paper, I would like to talk about something else – the perspective-taking abilities Nichols mentioned.
Nichols is right in saying that “there is no reason to think that psychopaths have such a deficit [to take a perspective not their own]” – we have seen many psychopaths in movies, if not also in real life, who, by taking perspectives, know exactly how to manipulate people to achieve their goals. Imagine asking a psychopath something like “Do you know how bad they would feel after you have done [insert immoral, deeply-harming action of your choice]?”, it would not be too much of a surprise if the psychopath replies “Yes, and what?” While we could accuse the psychopath of being cold-hearted or having a defective affective capacity, what I would like to focus on is value. We see that the psychopath does not value the well-being of others and thus chooses to harm others while being able to take another perspective and see how harmed they will be because of the action. Just as I, a normal person who would not care about how bad a criminal would feel when I have to kill them in order to save people’s lives from the crime. Just as in the latter case you would not accuse me of being cold-hearted and/or having a defective affective capacity, it doesn’t seem to be very reasonable to say that the psychopath’s lack of value (of other’s welfare) must originate from their lack of empathy or other emotion, because emotion is not the only thing that affects and justifies how one values something, as shown in the latter case of self-defense. In the case of self-defense, my not valuing the criminal’s welfare is grounded by moral principles and my valuing of the welfare of innocent people – and valuing something based on complicated things like these clearly needs some participation from reason (e.g. we need reason to know who is innocent – I do not act to protect people just because the innocent-appearing people affect me in a certain way, but also because I believe they deserve to be protected). That is to say, Nichols' consideration of perspective-taking is almost there, but he missed the difference between taking perspective to see one’s welfare and valuing one’s welfare.
The perspective-taking case can also be analyzed in another way: Think about why a normal person would be morally refrained from doing something if they realize through perspective-taking that it could harm innocent people. One way to explain this is that we are really in some way equal as imperfect rational beings. Using Kant’s words, this is because we, as imperfect rational beings, are really no different from other imperfect rational beings, and for reason to harm another instance of reason would just be reason harming itself, which is irrational and avoided by reason. If this is the case, we could say that our reason is end-setting, and in doing so, we genuinely value the well-being of each other. Then, it would seem possible to say that the psychopaths do not value others’ welfare exactly because their reason lacks at least the end-setting capability.
Further on, for Nichols’ idea that it’s really all about the affective response, we could question “so what?” – As a person with a well-functioning (at least I believe so) moral capacity, affective response seems to be far less powerful than necessitating an action. Rather, it seems perfectly conceivable that I can ask “why should I value the affective response and/or what it represents?” For example, what if I see a criminal being forced to compensate those who suffered from his actions at the cost of his welfare, even though I may possibly have an affective response, I would not say that the criminal shouldn’t be required to do so.
But valuing is not just about rationality. It is closely related to emotions, too. Consider the self-defense case again. Even though the motivating valuing of innocent people’s lives requires reason, it seems that the inner process and the resulting valuing have emotions everywhere: to believe that someone deserves to be protected seems to require emotions – I do not just run a formula and then become motivated to do something. It also seems to us that to value something is not merely about the reason underlying, but also about the surfacing valuing – which I believe is itself a kind of emotion. That is to say, moral judgment is not merely about affection/emotions, and not merely about reason/rationality either.
Perhaps the cognitive theory of emotion that feelings really just are cognitive judgments can help us better understand this: The actually motivating thing is valuing, which is an emotion, and is&represents underlying reasoning/cognitive judgment. Moral judgments are thus not about rationality or emotions, but rationality and emotions.

2025-09-29

2025-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

2024-12-01

2024-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

R 6:26
1. humanity -- Reason here doesn't seem to include Wille (considering 27)</li>
2. personality -- lies in Spontaneity (maybe also including Wille)</li> </ol> </li>
3. R 6:27
 1. the predisposition to personality is the susceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice </blockquote> </li>
 it is an incentive of the power of choice ... possible only becasue the free power of choice incorporates moral feeling into its maxim </blockquote>
 
 note that it's the free power of choice that does this incorporation</li> </ol> </li>
 c.f. RPML</li> </ol> </li>
 R 6:28
 
 ML w/ respect is personality itself, the subjective ground, as an addition to personality, is a predisposition to it.
 
 how is the subjective ground "a predisposition onto which nothing evil nothing evil can be grafted"? (c.f. R 6:21, "imputed to him")</li>
 how is it negatively good and a predisposition to the good?</li> </ol> </li> </ol> </li>
 Difference between inner sense and interior sense?</li>
 R 6:29-30 shows evidence for Maxim</li> </ol>

2024-11-27

2024-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

G 435</h2>
infinite worth, dignity, v.s. taste and price

KpV 5:73</h2>

Hence we can see a priori that the moral law, as the determining ground of the will, must by thwarting all our inclinations produce a feeling that can be called pain; </blockquote>
Is this how freedom deprives itself (the lower part) of the use of certain means? In this case, such pain would be a lower feeling -- which would be not quite right as the moral law needs to be always available.
Or it could be a "higher" feeling that only acts on the Willkur (where the spontaneity is).
By "will" is it talking about willkur or Willkur?
This can be problematic since there must be a consciousness of a free submission of the will to the moral law. In this picture, willkur is determined, then this pain must be generated freely by the Willkur.
How are these play with RPML?
PS: relationship between choose and choice in KpV -- do they strictly correspond to the lower nature?
Respect:</h2>
incorporated into maxim by wille -> does the lower willkur care about it? or is it just about Willkur here? But if it's just about Willkur it's unclear how this incorporation is needed.

the consciousness of a free submission of the will to the moral law </blockquote>
The will here must be Willkur, and free must be in the spontaneous sense (w/ first disposition). Otherwise it'll be practical love instead of respect (since Wille is just pV itself).
Apperception:</h2>
There needs to be a self-consciousness "I will" so that all my willings can be called what I have willed. This would be closely related to the Willkur, first disposition, fact of reason (consciousness of the moral law), and RPML (consciousness of free submission). Important question: is this the same (or aspects of the same self-consciousness) as the "I think" in sect. 16 of KrV, or are they different? In the latter case there would be a split self. In the former case it might offer a way to bridge rV and pV (also, need to consider the faculty of judgment).
Also, is there one single "I will" that alone unifies willkur and Wille (in the sense that willkur and Wille are actually wills as ends and are not really desiring on their own, i.e. to say we have willkur and Wille as two wills is really a use of incomplete symbols), or is there some consciousness in each of them on their own???
The "I will" must itself value both gratification/agreeableness and respect/moral correctness, or subordination wouldn't be possible.
How does the first disposition and taste come into play here?

2024-11-22

2024-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

How do inclinations, etc., affect the spontaneity/first disposition? Does that make it not free?

2024-11-20

2024-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

RMPL p58

respect is incorporated into the maxim </blockquote>
how?? by what faculty, into which part of the maxim??
p59

positively promotes </blockquote>
(because p57, the form of the maxim is valued as an object of respect)
KpV 5:80

The consciousness of a free submission of the will to the law [...] is respect for the law. </blockquote>
There needs to be a consciousness, and it must be able to freely submit the will to the law.
c.f. MM 6:251

For an object of my choice is something that I have the physical power to use. If it were nevertheless absolutely not within my rightful power to make use of it, that is, if the use of it could not coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law (would be wrong), then freedom would be depriving itself of the use of its choice with regard to an object of choice, by putting usable objects beyond any possibility of being used; in other words, it would annihilate them in a practical respect and make them into res nullius, even though in the use of things choice was formally consistent with everyone's outer freedom in accordance with universal laws </blockquote>
I can necessarily see ... as good -- the consciousness must be necessarily connected with the Wille, respect, and Practical Rs. (Taste involved?)
Is it the same consciousness as the apperception? How are they related to the spontaneity of the Wille?
If we take Willkur to be the faculty of desire that takes gratification/empirical pleasure and means/cognition of nature, and outputs maxims -- then Willkur, even without respect/wille, is free in the sense that it provides, through theoretical reason, an objective mapping from the set of tuples of pleasure and means to the set of maxims. -- It seems Willkur can be at the same time determined by nature (because it offers a pure function) and a self-caused cause. Note that we consider the apperception to be self-caused (even though given the same manifold it gives the same unity?).
Similarly, given the same maxim, Wille always outputs the same "verdict" of whether or not it's moral. -- In this sense, Wille is also "determined" -- even though it's self-caused.
How does willkur interact with theoretical reason? Is it just a side of theoretical reason? (Considering what Kant said in the intro of KU -- but then it'd be problematic to call Willkur a lower nature.)
Maxim (the conjunction, should be mentioned somewhere in R about incorporation) vs maxim
When Wille and Willkur evaluate maxims, they are likely evaluating the Maxim instead of just a particular conjunct.

2024-11-17

2024-11-17T00:00:00+00:00

R 6:21</h2>
footnote: cf. antinomies of time in KrV
--> can we say more about the inscrutability by going a layer above?
cf. KpV, on why there's no deduction of practical philosophy, and on fact of reason
first subjective ground/first disposition: part of the spontaneity, but not the spontaneity itself. (Prof. DeWitt)
R 6:24</h2>

"any incentive", "incorporation" </blockquote>

whoever makes it his maxim is morally good </blockquote>
~~(consider the conjunction of all sub-maxims as a single maxim, and incorporation is just adding new conjuncts)</del>~~
incorporation: making the incentive as the motivation/end (idk which one, maybe end) of a maxim.
R 6:25</h2>

to have ... disposition by nature as an innate characteristic ... means rather that it has not been earned in time ... </blockquote>

This disposition too, however, must be adopted through the free power of choice, </blockquote>

there cannot be further cognition of the subjective ground </blockquote>

we call it a characteristic of the power of choice that pertains to it by nature </blockquote>

even though the disposition is in fact grounded in freedom </blockquote>

Is it grounded in freedom because the subjective ground is that of the exercise of human being's freedom in general? (R 6:21) </li>

If the first disposition (by nature, out of time) of a person is evil, does that mean they'll always be evil??

No. x is good/evil by nature -> x can only be the whole species</li> </ol> </li> </ol>
R 6:26</h2>

rationality doesn't imply responsibility, since at least so far we can't see how "x has reason -> x has a faculty determining the power of choice unconditionally"</li> </ol>
Footnote:

Yet this law is the only law that makes us conscious of the independence of our power of choice from determination by all other incentives and thereby also of the accountability of all our actions. </blockquote>

Choice, Wille, and Respect: My First Reaction To "Respect for the Moral Law"

2024-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

This is my final paper for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
In Respect for the Moral Law: the Emotional Side of Reason, Professor DeWitt illustrates how respect, as a feeling, can at the same time be the source of moral motivation in Kantian ethics. She does this by first offering a cognitive theory of feelings (emotions), and then giving an interpretation of the Kantian structure of mind for sensibly affected (i.e. imperfect) rational beings, so that how respect can motivate could be explained. While I agree with Professor DeWitt for the most part of her paper and admire her unique and important contribution to Kantian moral psychology, there are still several points in the last section that I am not comfortable with, especially regarding the structure of mind proposed. Some of them could likely not be her fault, but Kant’s, as there is ample evidence from Kant’s writing that supports her interpretation. In this paper, I will try to explain why I find them not fully convincing, and argue that there needs to be a “unity” between the wille and choice, with references to her and Kant’s work where necessary.
To begin with, I shall introduce the convention of terminology in this paper: by “choice” I mean the lower power of desire, and “wille” the higher power of desire. For clarity, I would refrain from using the noun “will”, unless when trying to discuss something that applies to both, or when talking about something that contains both choice and wille (if there is such a “thing”). Then, I shall briefly sketch the relevant part of the Kantian picture of mind for imperfect rational beings interpreted by Prof. DeWitt, by focusing on the “pipeline” of feelings and maxims: First, lower feelings^{1</a> are presented to the choice, and the choice generates an maxim such that the action according to it would be expected to (most efficiently) yield the desired outcome/object of the lower feeling. Then, this maxim would be presented to the faculty of higher feelings, which, after judging, would generate respect, an a priori feeling that represents the necessary relationship between the wille/pure practical reason and the maxim (RML), if acting from that maxim is moral. Though this is not mentioned in her paper, let us call the higher feeling generated when acting from the maxim is immoral “disrespect.”2</a> Since respect and disrespect are feelings, they can be a source of motivation, and this solves the moral motivation problem. However, as pointed out by Prof DeWitt, since in this picture there are two potentially conflicting sources of motivation, i.e. the lower feelings and the higher ones, there must be an ordering between them, so that one of them can be subordinated to the other, allowing “a single unified principle of action.”}
And here comes the first problem(s): How is the maxim generated by choice presented to the faculty of respect for judgment? And, how is the ordering between the higher and lower feelings made? Though this is not explicitly stated, it seems that they must happen somewhere on the pipeline between the generation of maxims and the actual action, as otherwise the action would have been already done before respect could do anything, despite that respect/disrespect is expected to be capable of commanding a person to refrain from acting from a certain maxim. They could be done either by the choice, or something else (if there is) that (1) receives “input” from the choice, and (2) is required for action to be possible. First, consider how the maxim is presented to the faculty of higher feelings: If it is done by the choice, then it is the choice that actively submits the its maxims to the judgment of respect/moral law, and the choice must be free in deciding whether to do this or not, as in the Kantian picture self-deceit is possible. And now there are yet another two branches we can go: If the choice can directly result in action, the ordering has to happen here as well. Thereby, the choice can generate action/inaction from the maxim and the respect/disrespect, solving both problems. On the other hand, if the choice doesn’t directly result in action, it is possible that the ordering is done afterwards by something other than choice before the actual action, yet it would still only make sense if this is done by the choice, as otherwise why would the choice even bother to ask the faculty of respect about this if it’s not going to do anything with the higher feeling at all and just pass it through to the next faculty? That is to say, if it is the choice that submits the maxim to the higher faculty of feelings, then it would only make sense if it is also the choice that decides the ordering of feelings. This seems to be what Kant has in mind, at least to the best of my limited understanding, as he said in the second Critique that “That is to say, the sole principle of morality consists in [...] and at the same time in the determination of choice through the mere form of giving universal law that a maxim must be capable of.” (KpV 5:33) when he talks about autonomy. But this appears to be problematic to me: if the deciding of ordering (and thus whether to adopt the principle of morality) is done in the choice, and the moral law the form of wille, then how is it the case that this is really autonomy? It seems that in that case the consciousness “I” making the decision would be submitting my determination that is not in the “I”, unless the wille is a part of the choice. But that picture is not satisfying either: This would make it impossible for the wille to work independently from the choice, unless we claim that in every imperfect rational being there are two “copies” of wille, one of which is inside the choice, which gives an even less appealing picture.
Thus it seems that we have to go the other way around: That is to say, it is something else that (1) submits the maxim to the higher faculty of feeling, (2) decides the ordering between higher and lower feelings (for the same reason as argued above), (3) takes place before the actual action, and (4) has wille as part of it. It also would be the consciousness “I” that makes moral decisions regarding whether or not to follow the moral law. The only candidate that satisfies these requirements in the Kantian framework, as far as I can see, would be a unity of the two wills (wille and choice), as there are only three major divisions of faculties in the Kantian framework, and neither of the other divisions nor any of the each individual faculty in the desire division could satisfy these requirements. Let us call this unity “the I will”, so as to mirror the naming convention in the first Critique. If the picture has the I will, then these problems can be solved perfectly: the choice generates the maxim, and the I will submits this maxim to the judgment of the higher faculty of feeling, the result of which represents the principle of the wille, which is part of the I will itself. Then the I will can decide the ordering between the higher and lower feelings, which results in a unified action/inaction. 3</a>
^{1
The feelings that are merely subjective in that they are judgments that represent the relationship between objects and the need of the subject. – Respect for the Moral Law, Janelle DeWitt 2013 (thereafter RML)
</div>
^{2
It can be confusing to call it “respect” in this case, even though it is still respect for the moral law, as it could be misunderstood as ‘respect for the maxim.’ This new terminology to some extent mirrors the relationship between gratification and pain, and makes things clearer.”
</div>
^{3
I came up with some rough idea of some unity between the two wills myself, but it is Professor DeWitt who inspired us that there are these two wills and told me that she thinks there is a parallel to the original synthetic unity of apperception in theoretical reason here, without which I would definitely not be able to come up with this argument.
</div>}}}

Reaching into the Infinite: On Kant's Self-Legislation

2024-05-14T00:00:00+00:00

This is my midterm paper for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
Self-legislation and autonomy are at the very core of Kantian practical philosophy. It is the very concept through which Kant shows that there is unconditional moral law in the Groundwork, and that rational beings acting from them have dignity. 1</a> It is also Kant's "keystone of the whole structure of a system of pure reason," 2</a> through which he connects his theoretical and practical philosophy. In this paper, we will closely examine this notion in Kantian practical philosophy as it appears in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (G) and the Critique of Practical Reason (KpV). This paper assumes that the reader is already familiar with the basic concepts in Kantian theoretical and practical philosophy, and will only review relevant interpretations of Kant that can be different from the common ones. After that, we will spend most of the time considering the worry about self-legislation regarding whether it is compatible with the unconditional bindingness of law, and I will argue that this worry does not constitute a threat to Kant's argument. At last, we will see what Kant's very different conception of freedom as in autonomy offers us.
An important distinction to make at first in Kant's system is the concepts related to will. In this paper, we assume the interpretation of Kant in which the will has the following different components: 3</a> The higher faculty of desire (wille), 4</a> a faculty of reason 5</a> /understanding, 6</a> which is part of the will that is from pure practical reason alone; The lower faculty of desire (choice/willkür); and the will in the general sense, which is the combination of wille and choice. English translations of Kant often use the same word for them, but in pursuit of clarity, for everything not quoted I will precisely use "will" to mean that in the general sense, "wille" for that of the upper, and "choice" for that of the lower.
We will begin by examining Kant's conception of the freedom of "will" (which I shall show to be in the wille sense) in Section Three of G (G III) as the conclusion from this would be required for the following discussion. Kant starts with the notion of "will" as "a kind of causality of living beings in so far as they are rational," and the notion of negative freedom as "that property of such a causality, as it can be efficient independent of alien causes determining it," and then goes on to show that the "will" that has such negative freedom must also have positive freedom: a "will" as a causality must follow some law; but since it has negative freedom, such law cannot come from alien sources, but only from itself. Thus the "will" has to be the law to itself, and this is called autonomy/positive freedom. Yet such autonomy is precisely the principle of morality formulated in G II. 7</a> Then, as we know that our will in the general sense does not always act from the principles of morality, autonomy would be law in the sense of immediate causality only for the wille, and what Kant has been referring to as "will" in G 4:446-7 must be the wille.
Coming back to when the notion of autonomy/self-legislation first appears in G 4:431, where he combines the form of the categorical imperative (CI) in the Formulation of Universal Law (FUL) and the matter of the CI in the Formulation of Humanity (FOH) together to get the Formula of Autonomy (FOA), i.e. "the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will." First note that "will" in FOA must be referring to the will in general: Kant believes that the wille is always self-legislating, 8</a> so it cannot be commanded by CI to do so. It does not make sense for it to mean choice here either, as it is not much in our control. Secondly, note that "legislation" has a specific sense here. Consider the following text: "According to this principle, all maxims are rejected that are not consistent with the will's own universal legislation." (G 4:431) Note that the "will" here should be interpreted as the wille, or at least the source of the law lies within the wille: from the context he is explaining what "legislation" in FOA means, and if the "legislation" here is still referring to that only of the will in general then this would be explaining something in terms of itself. If this is true, then for the will in general to legislate universally (i.e. for one to fulfill FOA), the will has to reject maxims that are not consistent with the wille's universal legislation.
From this analysis, we can see something interesting: Note that the law to be legislated by the will in Kant's self-legislation is already there set by the wille. Thus, even though it is self-legislated by the will, the will cannot choose what law to legislate. Rather, it can only choose between legislating the law set by wille or not legislating any universal law. There is no middle ground because principles that are not laws from reason are not considered by Kant to be universal in the strictest sense. In this sense, the self-legislation of the will is not in conflict with the unconditional bindingness of the law. Not only are they not in conflict, but also that it is the case where one cannot have the former without having the latter.
Still, there are unneglectable questions left to be asked. For example, how can we say that the will is self-legislating if the law to be legislated is already there? For this, besides that the law is set necessarily by a part of the will (the wille), also note that the will has the freedom of choice (not in the sense of willkür) between whether to legislate universal law or not. Assuming that there is morality, such freedom is not veiled in the obscurity: The fact that we can choose whether or not to act from principles that cannot be possible universal law shows us that the will indeed has the freedom of choice on this. 9</a> If that is true, it would be not unreasonable to say this law is self-legislated by the will in general as well. That is to say, both our will and wille can be self-legislating, though at different levels and in different senses: The wille spontaneously generates the law, and the will in general spontaneously chooses to adopt such law, so that choice/happiness is subordinate to wille/pure practical reason. However, be careful that the freedom of choice of the will mentioned here is not the negative/positive/transcendental/in-the-strictest-sense freedom of the wille mentioned in G III or KpV. But still, if the will in general wills according to FOA, i.e. when the will uses its freedom of choice to choose to self-legislate the law given by wille, then and only then would the will in general be possible to have freedom in these senses as well, for the very same reason by which we cognize the wille as free in those senses of freedom in practical cognition as in G III.
But one may yet again argue that the will's freedom of choice, of whether or not to legislate the law from wille, is incompatible with the unconditional bindingness of law. For if the will has such freedom of choice, it would seem to be able to opt out of the legislation at any time. However, I would like to argue that if a will really sees the worth of the moral law and the dignity and freedom of the rational beings acting from it, such a will would not choose to opt out of the self-legislation. For if acting from the respect of moral law, as Kant claims, really has infinite value in it, then to give up this for the good of happiness/choice, which only has a finite value, would be no less absurd than to intentionally give up what has higher economic utility to one for something that has only a lower utility.
So why does Kant, and why do we, need to bother so much about such specific conception of freedom in the sense of autonomy? In fact, we have already talked about this: From such freedom, we have dignity and infinite worth. As he argues, when one legislates and is subject to moral law only because that it is legislated by themself, one has dignity as a rational being whose will is not determined by the laws of nature, but instead as an impartial judge who legislates to not only themselves but also the sensible world with the laws from themselves. 10</a> Such infinite worth is something that never comes along with other conceptions of freedom.

The second, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as this may be inferred from the purposive determination of my existence by this law, a determination not restricted to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaching into the infinite. </blockquote>
^{1
G 4:439-440, 446-448
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^{2
KpV 5:3
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^{3
From PHILOS 151B Spring 2024, taught by Prof. Dewitt
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^{4
KpV 5:23
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^{5
G 4:427
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^{6
KpV 5:23
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^{7
G 4:446-7
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^{8
G 4:446-448
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^{9
c.f. KpV 5:30 for Kant's example of the Gallows Man
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^{10
G 4:440, KpV 5:42-50, KrV A xxi
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Causality Beyond Its Limit?

2024-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

This is an informal piece of writing for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
Autonomy and self-legislation are at the very core of Kant's practical philosophy, as they are the very source of our dignity as rational beings. However, both of these are formulated in terms of the will causing/determining itself, despite that Kant himself has already pointed out that the concept of causality "has application and so too significance strictly speaking only in reference to appearances. (KpV 5:49)" in KrV and KpV. Still, Kant insists on the validity of such concept for our will in practical reason, and tries to explicate how that is possible in the deduction in KpV.
However, as it often has been, his explanation from 5:49-50 is not that easy to parse and may even seem crazy at time -- he first admits that the such validity cannot be shown in the same way as in theoretical reason, and makes the move to claim that practical reason needs only to put "the determining ground of the causality of the human being ... in pure reason ... and accordingly use[s] the concept of cause itself." He seems to be saying that we first act according to autonomy, and then we will be able show the significance/validity of the concept of causality by pointing to that part of the principle of autonomy in us.
But this still sounds circular to me: To make the concept of causality for will valid, we have to first act according to autonomy. However, to act according to autonomy, which is a rule that involves "self-causality" (if that is a valid concept), doesn't it presume us to understand what the "causality" of will is? For this argument to be valid, Kant has to presuppose that we can act from morality without understanding what the moral law is. The only way I can think of to explain how this is possible is to say that our will (somehow, and uncognizably) is inherently autonomous causa noumenon, and when we cognize its "action" from the side of noumenon we can "abstract" (5:49) its patterns of operation and call that pattern "self-causality/autonomy". This interpretation still seems unsatisfactory as it leaves the causa noumenon unknown, but in fact such "gap" corresponds to his notion of the fact of reason, which cannot be known from any antecedent date of reason. (5:31) That is to say, from antecedent data not only can we not know if there is a moral law, but we can not even know what the concept of moral law is/means.

Degrees in Semantics

2024-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

This is my midterm squib for LING 165C taught by Prof. Bumford at UCLA. </blockquote>
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Gallows Man, Fact of Reason, Moral Law and Freedom

2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

This is an informal piece of writing for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
Kant seems to have given two very different accounts for how morality is possible in G and KpV: In both of them, he shows the biconditional between the existence of an unconditional moral law and that of freedom. But the step he takes next differs a lot between these works:
In Section III of G, Kant then tries to persuade us that we must "necessarily attribute to every rational being who has a will also the idea of freedom, under which only can such a being act" (G4:448), and then with that we would have to admit that we must attribute to ourselves of this idea of an unconditional moral law by the biconditional.
Whereas in KpV, he just asserts that "the consciousness of this unconditional moral law is a fact of reason", which "one cannot reason from antecedent data of reason." (KpV 5:31) I was confused when I read this the first time -- How can we just have a "fact of reason" without any further reasoning for it? How can Kant just claim this without any warning? Why does he switch to an entirely different order of thinking about freedom and morality?
It also seems that in this shift Kant is trying to correct his mistake, for though he was trying to show morality through our idea of freedom in the G, in KpV he suddenly starts to remind us that "assuming the freedom of the will would require an intellectual intution." Thinking in that way, we might be able to understand the motive for which Kant would like to just claim we have a fact of reason for morality. But still, that seems unplausible at first glance -- you can't just claim whatever you want to show to be a fact of reason, or otherwise I can just show anything I want as long as they are consistent! But in fact, on a second read it seems that in the preceding pages Kant did give some evidence for this fact of reason (for how we can cognize that we have this fact, but not for how we have it), and that is where the Gallows Man (KpV 5:30) comes -- Since everyone can find it not completely unreasonable to act in a way that diminishes completely the ground for happiness (and thus all the future happiness), there must be a determining ground of our will (in the general sense) that is independent from that of happiness. And thus it would then not be crazy to assert the fact of reason of moral law.
But coming back to the previous question, did Kant really make a mistake? I don't think so. He of course understands what he wrote in KrV, and he does not seem to be a careless thinker to just assert we have intellectual intuition in G. What appears to be interesting here is that in Section III of G he has always been talking about the necessity of the idea of freedom, instead of just freedom.

On Kant's Introduction of FUL in the Groundwork

2024-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

This is an informal piece of writing for PHILOS 151B taught by Prof. DeWitt at UCLA. </blockquote>
After introducing the concept of a categorical imperative (CI) in Section II of the Groundwork (G), Kant immediately goes on to show that the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) is the only possible CI. (G420-421) His argument for this is extremely concise: A CI only contains the law it represents and the necessity that the maxim must conform to that law. Since the concept of CI does not limit the law in any way, the only part of the concept of law remaining in the concept of CI is its universality. "There is therefore only a single categorical imperative, and it is this: act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. (FUL)"
On my first few readings, I understood everything in this argument, except how it gets to the conclusion: Why can't a will be necessarily commanded to follow some law other than mere universality itself (he didn't say that such a practical law is impossible)? Also, suppose there are multiple practical laws (he didn't say that's impossible), why can't it be the case that each of them commands my will using their own CIs (so that we can have more than one CI)?
There seem to be huge gaps in this argument, despite of how Kant so confidently gives it. I know I sound stupid, but this question has been confusing me for more than two months.
Here is the only possible solution I can think of to fill this gap: If we assume that for a CI to be necessarily commanding, it is not only required for the law it represents to be universal, but it is also required for the cognition of this particular CI to be analytic, i.e., even if we know nothing synthetic about what the practical law is, we can still cognize this CI. Only in this case, a CI can only contain the concepts already lying in the concept of CI, which are the law of universality and the maxim's necessary conforming to the law; and in this case alone, can the CI formulated by FUL be the only possible CI. However, this requirement still seems to be unreasonable, and for this reason I tend to believe that Kant made a mistake here. But this is not fatal to his theory: the formula of autonomy (FOA), which is shown to be necessary in section three, seems to be equivalent to FUL, so at least FUL does represent a CI, though not necessarily the only one.
Note that the "analytic" here cannot be replaced by "necessary": what if one can cognize more than one practical law a priori? what if one can cognize, completely a priori, a practical law that is stronger than mere universality? (Kant did not say they are impossible) Since Kant's usual account (e.g. KrV B3) assumes "necessary" to be equivalent to "a priori", in these cases one would be able to cognize such law(s) necessarily, and it's unclear how the necessary cognition of a CI including such law(s) would need anything more than that.

Fixing van Inwagen's Modal Argument for Incompatibility

2024-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

This is my final paper for PHILOS 136 taught by Prof. Walsh at UCLA. </blockquote>
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Does abandoning GGT really help?

Value or Affection, Reason or Emotions?

2025-09-29

2024-12-01

2024-11-27

G 435</h2> infinite worth, dignity, v.s. taste and price</p>

2024-11-22

2024-11-20

2024-11-17

Choice, Wille, and Respect: My First Reaction To "Respect for the Moral Law"

Reaching into the Infinite: On Kant's Self-Legislation

Causality Beyond Its Limit?

Degrees in Semantics

Gallows Man, Fact of Reason, Moral Law and Freedom

On Kant's Introduction of FUL in the Groundwork

Fixing van Inwagen's Modal Argument for Incompatibility

G 435</h2>
infinite worth, dignity, v.s. taste and price</p>