Kants Categorical Imperative

• "Act so that the maxim [determining motive of the will] may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings."

With regard to meritocracy, which he disdained, Kant clarifies this:

• "the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it, nor in any principle of action which requires to borrow its motive from this expected effect."

In other words, KantsCategoricalImperative suggests actions are intrinsically right or wrong in and of themselves with no conditions, independent of any circumstances, goals, or desires. It is for this reason that only a categorical imperative can be a universal and binding law, that is, a moral law, valid for all rational beings at all times.

Unfortunately for Kant and his followers, to this day no such law has ever been discovered. Even RawlsMoralPhilosophy? relies on an ordinality of laws - hence conditionals - and a consideration of consequences. This reduces Kant's maxim to CrowleysLaw, at best.

I offer five points of disagreement:

First, your second statement is not part of KantsCategoricalImperative. The second part of the Imperative is that any maxim capable of being universalizable is a moral law. The second statement is just Kant's way of asserting that morality is not consequentialist.

Yes, you're quite right on this. Dependency noted above.

Second, non-consequentialism contradicts the idea that "actions are inherently right or wrong" unless you confuse the intent of an action with the action itself. And your idea also contradicts the man who wrote

"There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will."

Kant was well aware that the murder of a tyrant could be considered good. If your interpretation of things leads you to conclude that a respected philosopher is a moron, then you will be wise to check your interpretation.

I can only direct your attention to Shandon Guthrie's excellent treatment of Kant at http://members.tripod.com/~sguthrie/kantethics , which I've merely paraphrased here. If you can explain how Guthrie is using Kant out of context, my understanding would be much improved and I'd be very much obliged.

Kant's reasoning is obsolete, full of loopholes and nonsense. His treatment of suicide is a good example. Kant decides a priori that suicide is irrational. He hides this assumption in his definition of 'despair' as that emotion which compels one to remedy one's situation. The correct definition is actually that emotion which occurs upon the realization of the impossibility of remedying one's situation. Kant then proceeds to use his absurd definition to argue that suicide is irrational and thus immoral. Classic circular reasoning and blatant contradiction of the facts to boot. Of course, as a theologian in an institution that harshly prohibited suicide, he could hardly approve of the practice. What this means is that explaining Kant's worldview requires using careful selections, reinterpretations and explanations of some of the stranger assumptions. You can't just quote Kant and expect modern people to understand. In specific, the entire language of intent versus action is extremely problematic. Suffice it to say that by "action" Kant meant the intent behind physical acts whereas the above suggests physical acts themselves. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Categorical Imperative is far more readable than Guthrie's essay. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/catimper.htm

Guthrie writes that "the categorical imperative determines whether or not any act is right or wrong" but this is incorrect. The CI only says whether something is good or bad and says nothing about whether taking an action is right or wrong (whether it will achieve the good). This kind of distinction isn't made by Kant so it's not exactly wrong of Guthrie to not make it (I'm guessing on the side of charity). However, the distinction is made by Utilitarians and it's a lot harder to understand a philosophical choice without knowing the alternatives. Guthrie quotes Miller saying that CIs are not predicated on "any thing" and then writes that Kant is only concerned with abstract moral acts free from actual consequences. Put those two together and you can conclude that CIs are not supposed to be predicated on each other. Now, if you understand the difference between good and right then you can see that the goodness of each CI is not predicated on each other even though the rightness of an action is predicated on many CIs. For example, it's bad to lie and it's bad to murder even though it may be right to lie in order to avoid murder. If you don't understand good versus right then the CIs all contradict each other and Kant gives a completely useless philosophy. -- Mind you, my knowledge of this comes from assuming that Kant gives a workeable philosophy and putting everything else I know about philosophy into an appropriate context.

Third, be careful not to mix up universalizable and universal. Universalizable means that it is possible for everybody to simultaneously obey a maxim. Universal means something very different. I'm afraid Kant gave even less consideration to implementation of morality than Rawls did.

But I'm merely attempting to understand your position, Richard. You're so intent on it - really, I greatly admire your passion - I've become honestly curious about its derivation. So far I've discovered that it involves an idiomatic reinterpretation of Kant and Rawls, and since I am no philosopher, their views are strange and new to me. Obviously not terribly appealing, but if you can explain further I hope to warm to them. Indeed you're doing me a wondeful service by revealing this stuff, and I look forward to discovering still more in the years to come, dear friend.

Fourth, an ordinality of maxims is irrelevant in Kantian human rights since Kantian non-consequentialism only requires that maxims not be conditioned on factual events.

Now you're confusing me again; you've said that Rawls point 1. is "merely a restatement" of Kant, yet Rawls is vitally concerned with ordinality. Were you perhaps drawing too long a bow with that comment on the Rawls page?

Rawls is not vitally concerned with ordinality, other people are. Ordinality is widely accepted as compatible with both Kant and Rawls.

Fifth, RawlsMoralPhilosophy? is generally regarded to be non-consequentialist, in contradiction to your conclusion. Compared to Utilitarianism, surely it is. In human rights theory, if you kill someone then this is always immoral and wrong. Not killing a tyrant whom you know for a fact will order the execution of a thousand people the very next day would just be more wrong. Of course, this is assuming a contrived scenario where it is both possible to kill the tyrant and impossible to stop him in any other way.

Every last human right, whether justified in a Kantian or Rawlsian manner, is a categorical imperative. Utilitarianism can be conceived as a degenerate morality where there is only a single imperative; to maximize the Global Utility Function. When put in these terms, the distinction between a consequentialist and non-consequentialist theory is pretty arbitrary. Unfortunately for Utilitarianism, it's been proved that no GUF can be constructed.

I'm not certain I understand this, but I am of course merely an egg when it comes to philosophy. If Kant is justified in killing a tyrant whom he fears will kill others, why is the tyrant not justified in killing Kant, whom he fears will kill him? Yes, of course, I don't favor tyrants, but the logic you're quoting doesn't seem entirely clear - can you expand on this?

All the tyrant has to do in order to defuse the threat from his enemies is convince them he won't order a mass execution on the next day. A trivial way to achieve this is to abdicate. The tyrant has options he can resort to. His enemies don't.