I agree with you that choosing the appropriate set of actions is a non-trivial task, and I’ve said nothing here about how Kantians would choose an appropriate class of actions.
I am unclear on the point of your gang examples. You point out that the ideal maxim changes depending on features of the world. The Kantian claim, as I understand it, says that we should implement a particular decision-theoretic strategy, by focusing on maxims rather than acts. This a distinctively normative claim. The fact that, as we gain more information, the maxims might become increasingly specific seems true, but unproblematic. Likewise, I think it’s true that we can describe any agent’s decisions in terms of a lookup table over all conceivable situations. However, this just seems to indicate that we are looking at the wrong level of resolution. It’s also true that I can describe all agents’ behaviour (in principle) terms of fundamental physics. But this isn’t to say that there are no useful higher-level descriptions of different agents.
When you say that actual human Kantians offload work to invisble black boxes, do you mean that Kantians, when choosing an appropriate set of actions to make into a maxim, are offloading that clustering of acts into a black box? If so, then I think I agree, and would also like a more formal account of what’s going on this case. However, I think a good first step towards such an formal account is looking at more qualitative instances of behaviour from Kantians, so we know what it is we’re trying to capture more formally.
I agree with you that choosing the appropriate set of actions is a non-trivial task, and I’ve said nothing here about how Kantians would choose an appropriate class of actions.
I am unclear on the point of your gang examples. You point out that the ideal maxim changes depending on features of the world. The Kantian claim, as I understand it, says that we should implement a particular decision-theoretic strategy, by focusing on maxims rather than acts. This a distinctively normative claim. The fact that, as we gain more information, the maxims might become increasingly specific seems true, but unproblematic. Likewise, I think it’s true that we can describe any agent’s decisions in terms of a lookup table over all conceivable situations. However, this just seems to indicate that we are looking at the wrong level of resolution. It’s also true that I can describe all agents’ behaviour (in principle) terms of fundamental physics. But this isn’t to say that there are no useful higher-level descriptions of different agents.
When you say that actual human Kantians offload work to invisble black boxes, do you mean that Kantians, when choosing an appropriate set of actions to make into a maxim, are offloading that clustering of acts into a black box? If so, then I think I agree, and would also like a more formal account of what’s going on this case. However, I think a good first step towards such an formal account is looking at more qualitative instances of behaviour from Kantians, so we know what it is we’re trying to capture more formally.