The categorical imperative aims to solve the problem of what norms to pick, but goes on to try to claim universality. ... The trouble is that the categorical imperative tries to smuggle in every moral agents’ values without actually doing the hard work of aggregating and deciding between them.
That would be a problem, if that is what it were doing. The categorical imperative aims to define the obligation an individual has in conducting themselves consistent with the autonomy of the will. Each individual may have a distinct moral code consistent with that obligation, and that is indeed a problem for ethics, but the categorical imperative does not attempt to help people pick specific norms to apply across multiple agents.
Kant lays out a ton of definitions and then leans on them heavily; it’s classic old philosophy. Understanding what Kant said means you need to read Kant, not just his conclusions. That’s a big strike against the clarity of his writing (it is a real slog to get through), but whether he achieves his intent should be judged vs. his self-professed intent, not against a misunderstanding of his intent.
This is a totally fair criticism, but also I don’t think it matters for my purposes.
My not entirely secret agenda here is to say something in response to people taking a closer look at deontology after some folks getting scared by SBF’s naive utilitarianism. Most of them are going to be performing the same surface-level interpretation of Kant that I am here, so that’s the thing I want to address.
I’m very sympathetic to your point of view, though. I often feel the same way about people’s readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre among others.
Ah, makes more sense now. I’m generally not a fan of that approach though, and here’s why.
My comment was that your conclusion about the categorical imperative vis-a-vis its aims was off because the characterization of its aims wasn’t quite right. But you’re saying it’s okay, we’re still learning something here because you meant to do the not-quite-right characterization because most people will do that, and this is the conclusion they will reach from that. But you never tell me up front that’s what you’re doing, nor do you caution that the characterization is not-quite-right (you said your purpose was to “make the case that the categorical imperative tries to pull a fast one” not that “laypeople will end up making the case...”). So I’m left thinking you genuinely believe the case you laid out, and my efforts go into addressing the flaws in that. Little did I know you were trying to describe a manner of not-quite-right thinking people will do, a description which we should be interested in not because of its truth value but because of its inaccuracy (which you never pointed out).
I’ve seen this before in another domain: someone wanted to argue that doing X in modeling would be a bad call. So they did Y, then did X, got bad results and said voila, X is bad. But they did Y too (which in this particular case was a priori known to be not the right thing to do and did most of the damage—if they did Y and not X, they’d get good results, and if they had just not done Y, they’d get good results without X and adequate results with X)! When I pointed out that X really wasn’t that bad by itself, they said, well, Y is pretty standard practice so we’d expect people to probably improperly do that in this particular case anyway. You gotta tell me that beforehand! Otherwise it looks like a flaw in your commenting on the true state of the world as opposed to a feature of your analysis of the typical approach. But it also changes the message: the problem isn’t with X but Y, the problem isn’t with the categorical imperative but analyzing it superficially. Of course, that message is also the main point of my comment.
whether he achieves his intent should be judged vs. his self-professed intent, not against a misunderstanding of his intent.
What if I don’t care about his intent or whether he achieves it? Is it a useful framework for me to make decisions within, and to judge and cajole others in their actions?
1. My comment was contra “the case that the categorical imperative tries to pull a fast one.” Evaluating this (the point of the OP) very much requires an understanding of intent.
2. Well sure, if you don’t care about the point of the OP, you can care about other things. Whether it is a useful framework for you to judge and cajole others in their actions is a very important question! You might still care about intent though. Is a handsaw the right tool for hammering a nail? I would recommend you look at a handsaw’s intended use case and rule it out. If you really want to see how it would do, okay then, I can’t really stop you. You can conclude a handsaw it bad at hammering nails, but don’t go to the hardware store and complain. Likewise, is the categorical imperative a good way to aggregate preferences? I say it’s not for that, so you don’t really have to try it. If you really want to see how it would do and find out that it’s bad for the job though, great. But don’t say you were duped!
That would be a problem, if that is what it were doing. The categorical imperative aims to define the obligation an individual has in conducting themselves consistent with the autonomy of the will. Each individual may have a distinct moral code consistent with that obligation, and that is indeed a problem for ethics, but the categorical imperative does not attempt to help people pick specific norms to apply across multiple agents.
Kant lays out a ton of definitions and then leans on them heavily; it’s classic old philosophy. Understanding what Kant said means you need to read Kant, not just his conclusions. That’s a big strike against the clarity of his writing (it is a real slog to get through), but whether he achieves his intent should be judged vs. his self-professed intent, not against a misunderstanding of his intent.
This is a totally fair criticism, but also I don’t think it matters for my purposes.
My not entirely secret agenda here is to say something in response to people taking a closer look at deontology after some folks getting scared by SBF’s naive utilitarianism. Most of them are going to be performing the same surface-level interpretation of Kant that I am here, so that’s the thing I want to address.
I’m very sympathetic to your point of view, though. I often feel the same way about people’s readings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre among others.
Ah, makes more sense now. I’m generally not a fan of that approach though, and here’s why.
My comment was that your conclusion about the categorical imperative vis-a-vis its aims was off because the characterization of its aims wasn’t quite right. But you’re saying it’s okay, we’re still learning something here because you meant to do the not-quite-right characterization because most people will do that, and this is the conclusion they will reach from that. But you never tell me up front that’s what you’re doing, nor do you caution that the characterization is not-quite-right (you said your purpose was to “make the case that the categorical imperative tries to pull a fast one” not that “laypeople will end up making the case...”). So I’m left thinking you genuinely believe the case you laid out, and my efforts go into addressing the flaws in that. Little did I know you were trying to describe a manner of not-quite-right thinking people will do, a description which we should be interested in not because of its truth value but because of its inaccuracy (which you never pointed out).
I’ve seen this before in another domain: someone wanted to argue that doing X in modeling would be a bad call. So they did Y, then did X, got bad results and said voila, X is bad. But they did Y too (which in this particular case was a priori known to be not the right thing to do and did most of the damage—if they did Y and not X, they’d get good results, and if they had just not done Y, they’d get good results without X and adequate results with X)! When I pointed out that X really wasn’t that bad by itself, they said, well, Y is pretty standard practice so we’d expect people to probably improperly do that in this particular case anyway. You gotta tell me that beforehand! Otherwise it looks like a flaw in your commenting on the true state of the world as opposed to a feature of your analysis of the typical approach. But it also changes the message: the problem isn’t with X but Y, the problem isn’t with the categorical imperative but analyzing it superficially. Of course, that message is also the main point of my comment.
What if I don’t care about his intent or whether he achieves it? Is it a useful framework for me to make decisions within, and to judge and cajole others in their actions?
1. My comment was contra “the case that the categorical imperative tries to pull a fast one.” Evaluating this (the point of the OP) very much requires an understanding of intent.
2. Well sure, if you don’t care about the point of the OP, you can care about other things. Whether it is a useful framework for you to judge and cajole others in their actions is a very important question! You might still care about intent though. Is a handsaw the right tool for hammering a nail? I would recommend you look at a handsaw’s intended use case and rule it out. If you really want to see how it would do, okay then, I can’t really stop you. You can conclude a handsaw it bad at hammering nails, but don’t go to the hardware store and complain. Likewise, is the categorical imperative a good way to aggregate preferences? I say it’s not for that, so you don’t really have to try it. If you really want to see how it would do and find out that it’s bad for the job though, great. But don’t say you were duped!