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Moral Objectivity: A Kantian Illusion?

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Notes

  1. See e.g. Jonathan Dancy, “Two conceptions of Moral Realism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 60 (1986): 167–187.

  2. Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  3. While disputing objectivity, antirealists commit themselves to account for the objectivist pretensions of moral claims. Anti-realists agree with the traditional view that moral experience supports realism, John L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London: Penguin, 1977), pp. 30–35, 50–63; Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), chapters. pp. 8–13; Michael Smith, “Objectivity and moral realism: On the significance of the phenomenology of Moral Experience,” in Reality, Representation, and Projection, eds. John Haldane and Crispin Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 235–255; Terry Horgans and Mark Timmons, “What Can Moral Phenomenology Tell Us About Moral Objectivity?” Social Philosophy and Policy 25 (2008): 267–300.

  4. Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 93, chapter 6.

  5. Constructivism is cognitivist and irrealist in that it holds that moral judgments carry genuine moral cognitions and thus can be either true or false, but they are not made true by mind-independent facts. Rather, the truth of moral judgments consists in their being entailed from the standpoint of pure practical reason. This characterization is helpful in so far as it captures both Kant’s rejection of the realist claim that moral judgments are made true by some facts independent of the standpoint of pure practical reason, and his defense of objective practical knowledge, see Carla Bagnoli, “Constructivism in Meta-ethics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2011 Archive, pp. 1–51. As an interpretation of Kant, this is less problematic than other constructivist interpretations because it does not qualify as a form of anti-realism, cf. Robert Stern, Understanding Moral Obligation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 7–40. For a large extent, it is in agreement with Stephen Engstrom who places Kant in the tradition of practical cognitivism, see Engstrom, The Form of Practical Knowledge, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), Stephen Engstrom, “Constructivism and practical knowledge”, in Constructivism in Ethics, ed. C. Bagnoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), see also Carla Bagnoli, “Morality as Cognition”, Analytic Philosophy, Vol. 53 No. 1 March 2012, pp. 60–69; Carla Bagnoli, “Constructivism about Practical Knowledge”, in Constructivism in Ethics, ed. C. Bagnoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 153–182.

  6. I focus on the objectivity of moral demands or obligations because this is the case where the traditional realist and rationalist arguments from moral phenomenology seem to converge. There is a disagreement about the features of the moral experience to be listed as “objective-seeming features”, cf. David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 25–29; David McNaughton, Moral Vision (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 19, 48, 56; Mark Timmons, Morality without Foundations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 74–106.

  7. I will be concerned here with skepticism as a meta-ethical rather than normative position, following Mackie’s use the term in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong.

  8. McNaughton, Moral Vision, 57. For a critique of this model see Author, Article 3.

  9. See David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics, pp. 25–29.

  10. See Terry Horgans & Mark Timmons, “What Can Moral Phenomenology Tell Us About Moral Objectivity?”; Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, pp. 32 ff.

  11. In drawing this contrast between recognitional and constructivist theories, I follow Berys Gaut, “The Structure of Practical Reason,” in Ethics and Practical Reason, eds. Garret Cullity and Berys Gaut (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 161–187. I defend constructivism in a very specific sense, as an account of the authority or obligatoriness of moral obligations. See Carla Bagnoli “Constructivism in Meta-ethics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2011 Archive, pp. 1–51; “Morality as Cognition”, Analytic Philosophy, Vol. 53 No. 1 March 2012, pp. 60–69; Carla Bagnoli, “Constructivism about Practical Knowledge,” in Constructivism in Ethics, ed. C. Bagnoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 153–182.

  12. Cp. Don Loeb, “The Argument from Moral Experience,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (2007): 469–484, p. 483. In contrast, to Loeb, my diagnosis is that this impasse depends on the failure of this tradition of meta-ethics to properly address the agent’s moral experience, see Carla Bagnoli, “The Exploration of Moral Life”, in Iris Murdoch, Philosopher, ed. J. Broackes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 193–221.

  13. Simon Blackburn, “Error and the Phenomenology of Value”, in Morality and Objectivity, ed. Ted Honderich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 186.

  14. “It is absolutely impossible by means of experience to make out with complete certainty a single case in which the maxim of an action otherwise in conformity with duty rested simply on moral grounds and on the representation of one’s duty. It is indeed sometimes the case that with the keenest self-examination we find nothing besides the moral ground (…); but from this it cannot be inferred with certainty that no covert impulse of self-love, under the mere pretense of that idea, was not actually the real determining cause”, Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, ed. A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 4: 407/61. The rejection of introspection is in line with Kant’s repudiation of the Cartesian and rationalist methods of inquiry, see Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 3–28, especially pp. 6–7.

  15. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 4: 389.

  16. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, ed. A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), vol. 5, p. 114.

  17. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 152, 156.

  18. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 30. Similar examples are offered in v 5: 155–157.

  19. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 6, 30–31, 42–47, 55, 71–80, 91, 105; see also 30, 151, 155–158. Kant considers from “whence the cognitive awareness of the unconditionally practical status start, whether from freedom or from the practical law”, Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 29.

  20. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 30; see also 5: 155–157.

  21. In his Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Martin Heidegger judges Kant’s account of respect as “the most brilliant phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of morality”, Heidegger, (1927), 136; cf. also, Edmund Husserl, “Kant and the Idea of Transcendental Philosophy”, trans. Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 5 (1974): 14.

  22. See, for instance, Karl Ameriks, Interpreting Kant’s Critiques (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 263–282; cf. Pauline Kleingeld, “Moral Consciousness and the ‘fact of reason’”, in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. A Critical Guide, ed. Andrews Reath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 55–72. Charles Larmore is right that constructivists have culpably disregarded the fact of reason, The Autonomy of Morality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 83–84. This paper is partly an attempt to redress this mistake.

  23. See, for instance, Onora O’Neill, “Autonomy and the Fact of Reason in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, pp. 30–41,” in Immanuel Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, ed. O. Höffe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2002), pp. 81–97. See also P. Łuków, “The Fact of Reason: Kant's Passage to Ordinary Moral Knowledge,” Kant Studien 84 (1993): 204–221.

  24. Rawls “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, in Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 303–358, 340; Rawls, “Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy, in Collected Papers, pp. 497–528, 523–524.

  25. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 42.

  26. Cf. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:155f

  27. Williams, “Ethics and the Fabric of the World”, pp. 172–182, 175.

  28. The perspective of reflection is the same in practical as in theoretical deliberation, and requires the agent “to stand back from his desires and interests, and see them from a standpoint that is not that of his desires and interests. (…) That is the standpoint of impartiality”, Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, pp. 65–66.

  29. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, pp. 66–67. Cf. Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or objectivity?” Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 21–34.

  30. “The recognition of practical necessity must involve an understanding at once of one’s own powers and incapacities, and of what the world permits, and the recognition of a limit which is neither simply external to the self, nor yet a product of the will, is what can lend a special authority or dignity to such decisions”, Williams, Moral Luck, pp. 130–131.

  31. Williams thinks that what Kant takes to be distinctive of morality is something that pertains to a larger phenomenon – that of “practical necessity”; see Williams, “Practical Necessity”, in Moral Luck, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). For Kant, morality is the condition of possibility of all other evaluative activities. This claim confirms Williams’ diagnosis that for Kant, morality occupies a special position. However, this is not because morality represents a definite domain of special objects, or because it demands deliberative priority, as Williams supposes. It is, rather, because moral activity is the “most complete” form of rational activity. Moral agency exhibits a distinctive form of practical necessity only in the very specific sense that it represents the most complete realization of the ideal of practical rationality, which is nevertheless present in all sorts of choice. To take morality as the transcendental ground of all valuing indicates that there is no ontological dichotomy between moral and non-moral activities. Interestingly, these remarks bring Kant closer to Williams’ concerns. Kant would indeed concur with Williams that acts falling under the category of practical necessity are “expressive of character”, and thus qualify as one’s own in “the most substantial way”, Williams, “Practical Necessity”, p. 130. More importantly, Kant would also agree that such “conclusions of practical necessity […] are indeed the paradigm of what one takes responsibility for”, Williams, “Practical Necessity”, p. 130.

  32. To be sure, an adequate moral phenomenology should account for the varieties of moral experiences. The Kantian approach does not deny the relevance of cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences, but it points at some shared structural features of morality.

  33. Williams, “Ethics and the Fabric of the World”, pp. 175–176.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Williams, “Ethics and the Fabric of the World,” p. 176.

  37. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, p. 191.

  38. In rebutting this objection, I thus find myself in agreement with McDowell: “Kant precisely aims to combat the threat of a withdrawal on the part of the world we aspire to know. Kant undermines the idea that appearance screens us off from knowable reality; he offers instead a way of thinking in which appearance just is the reality we aspire to know (unless things have gone wrong in mundane ways)”, McDowell, “Toward Rehabilitating Objectivity”, in Rorty in his Critics, ed. Robert Brandom (London: Blackwell, 2000) pp. 109–128, 112. I will pursue this defense of Kant’s construal of objectivity by interpreting the fact of reason as a phenomenological argument.

  39. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 6, 31, 42–47, 55, 71–80, 91, 105.

  40. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 79–81.

  41. Kant acknowledges auxiliary motives for morality, such as fear of punishment, a sense of honor, and compassion, but when these are they only motives present, the action lacks moral worth, see Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 156–157. I discuss the issue of moral incentive at length in “Emotions and the Categorical Authority of Morality”, in Morality and the Emotions, ed. C. Bagnoli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 62–81.

  42. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 76. See Carla Bagnoli, “Emotions and the Categorical Authority of Morality”, in Morality and the Emotions, ed. C. Bagnoli (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 62–81.

  43. This option is obviously ruled out as an interpretation of Kant’s reverence for the law, which is reverence for the capacity of self-legislation, and thus is distinguished from the reverence for specific norms with contingent content.

  44. For this reading, see Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, p. 269.

  45. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 4: 412.

  46. Stephen Darwall suggests this reading when he writes that respect is “the fitting response” to the distinctive value that persons equally have (dignity), Stephen Darwall, The Second Person Standpoint, (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 119–120, see also chapter 10.

  47. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 73/200.

  48. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 31.

  49. “How a law can be of itself and immediately a determining ground of the will is for human reason an insoluble problem and identical with that of how a free will is possible”, Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 72/198.

  50. What we have to show a priori is not the ground, but “what must affect the mind insofar as it is an incentive”, Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5: 72/199.

  51. See Paul Franks, “Transcendental Arguments, Reason, and Skepticism: Contemporary Debates and the Origins of Post-Kantianism”, in Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, ed. Robert Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 111–145, p. 125.

  52. Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Northwestern Society of Ethics and Political Philosophy in 2009, at the International Kant Congress in Pisa, and at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame in February 2011. I would like to thank these audiences, and especially my commentator Paul Bloomfield, Karl Ameriks, Robert Audi, Paul Hurley, Elijah Millgram, James Sterba, Abe Roth, and the referee of this journal for their helpful comments.

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    Carla Bagnoli

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Bagnoli, C. Moral Objectivity: A Kantian Illusion?. J Value Inquiry 49, 31–45 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-014-9448-7

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