[lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life and the Categorical Imperative
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:02:30 -0330
Thanks to Omar for providing us with Strawson's text. The view that I was
maintaining over against Robert involved a distinction between on the one hand,
intuitions, sentiments and sensibilities - such as resentment and indignation -
and on the other, our justifications of the legitimacy of those intuitions and
sensibilities. Such justification of principles and judgements epistemically
appeal to those same intuitions and sensibilities only on pain of begging the
question. Our sense of moral right and wrong clearly can originate in such
affective responses, but surely the norms and categories we appeal to within
justification of moral judgement do not themselves arise within such
psychological states. Without the conceptual framework given to us by
deontological morality, we would not be able to experience "the moral," or to
respond to certain actions and situations with resentment and/or indignation.
(Yes, other cultures understand "the moral" in essentially different ways. But
that empirical fact is of no necessary relevance to the cogency of claims made
by deontology as a theory of morality. Again, "phenomena" do not grow on trees;
they are constituted by the conceptual resources provided by our linguistic
frameworks. Propositions do not correspond to facts; true propositions express
facts.)
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> I believe that this is the essay (by Peter Strawson):
>
> http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwstrawson1.htm
>
> O.K.
>
>
> --- On Sun, 12/14/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > From: wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
> > Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The meaning of life and the Categorical
> Imperative
> > To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Richard Henninge"
> <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Date: Sunday, December 14, 2008, 7:32 PM
> > Very brief replies here -------->
> >
> >
> > Quoting Richard Henninge
> > <RichardHenninge@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> >
> > > In a post responding to Robert Paul's challenging
> > of his analysis of
> > >
> > > > "survival of the fittest" as a maxim in
> > Kant's sense
> > >
> > > Walter O provides their previous exchange on the
> > subject, in the course of
> > > which he writes the following:
> > >
> > > The imagined law would itself
> > > >> be internally inconsistent if it said that
> > all should do what some
> > > >> should do; but of course it doesn't say
> > that.
> >
> > --------> I didn't say that. I think RP did.
> >
> > >
> > > And yet of course it does. What more is the
> > Categorical Imperative, after
> > > all, than saying that ALL (the entire category of
> > agents) SHOULD (the
> > > imperative), which in turn would have to subsume what
> > "some should" do.
> >
> > -----------> The question is whether all
> > "could" so act, not whether they
> > "should so act." Moral judgement is made after
> > the results of the CI test are
> > in.
> >
> > >
> > > Earlier in the post Walter, speaking apparently on
> > behalf of Kant--
> > >
> > > Neither I nor Kant deny this. What
> > > > we deny is that such facts about human beings
> > have any final epistemic
> > > > authority
> > > > in the justification of moral judgement--
> > >
> > > and waving a red flag, for me at least, in the form of
> > "a fine essay" by
> > > Strawson
> > >
> > > on these
> > > > empirical factors,
> > >
> > > whose title he forgets,
> >
> > -----------------> Apologies. The title is
> > "Freedom and resentment." What
> > objections would you have to this piece?
> >
> > > he lets drop his loaded, slippery-slope thesis:
> > >
> > > And such facts do not invalidate
> > > > the claim that moral judgement is
> > transcendentally conditioned for its
> > > > possibility by the autonomy and dignity of the
> > capacity for giving reasons
> > > >
> > >
> > > which seems to come down too heavily on individual
> > capacities for giving
> > > whatever reasons one will for making moral judgments,
> > and precisely too
> > > lightly on the human reason's ability to compare
> > facts to make such
> > > judgments reasonable, and hence applicable
> > categorically.
> >
> >
> > --------------> For Kant, as an autonomous agent one
> > does not give "whatever
> > reasons one will" since the will is guided by
> > practical reason. (At the
> > transcendental level, the will is naught but pure practical
> > reason.) I'm afraid
> > the second half of your text above makes no sense to me.
> > Could you articulate
> > further the point you're trying to make?
> >
> > Walter O
> > MUN
> >
> > >
> > > Richard Henninge
> > > University of Mainz
> > >
> > >
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