From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




malenor wrote:
> 
> > >
> > > "Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> > > >
> > > > The categorical imperative isn't actually a categorical
> > > > imperative.  It is entailed by the implicit premise, 'Given that one
> > > > chooses to be rational'.
> > >
> > > Where did you get the idea that this was the
> > > idea behind the CI?
> >
> > My own limited imagination apparently, and my assumption that justification
> > is about rationality through and through.   Are you
> > suggesting that we are obligated to conform to the CI for no reason
> > whatsoever?
> >
> Kant does mention "duty" 99 times in the Critique of Practical Reason,
> for a reason. Your use of the term "reason" implies its meaning as a
> motive. I like your tricky equivocations on terms, it makes me have to
> stop and think. What is my reason for conforming to the CI, i.e., what
> is my *motive* for doing so? In other words, you're talking about the
> efficient cause of my behavior, but it is not an empirical cause,
> rather, one generated internally and originally. 

I could use a short refresher on 'efficient cause'.

> And so through
> reflection I am able to realize that there are two senses of "desire"
> that impel me to act in the world, a lower and a higher. The lower
> desires find their "reasons" in the empirical and psychological realms
> (circumstances and inclinations). 

Coming from an evolutionary perspective, I would simply say lower 
and higher emotion, with the lower EMOTIONS (PLURAL rather than
singular, i.e., the id is not some evil monster, but more like
a bunch of bungling [very shortsighted] idiots)
associated with remnants of our prereflective heritage in which 
survival was not the result of any long range intention or
will to survive,
but merely the cumulative effect of a bunch of independent mini-wills
(have sex now) which were undertaken in a robot like fashion with 
little if any understanding
of the overall objective they were "designed" to achieve (the perpetuation
of one's DNA).

  "Sex is nature's way of getting us to behave AS IF we wanted to
   have lots and lots of offspring"  (Robert Wright).

> The higher desires find their
> reasons in the transcendent. It is, for all intents and purposes, as
> if I am saying that I do my duty for no apparent reason whatsoever,
> "duty is its own reward," duty for the sake of duty. And, as far as
> empirical conditions are concerned, this is the case.
> 

I would say that the higher emotions are the result of the fact that
our capacity to reason makes us increasingly more aware of reality from
an increasinly more objective perspective which increasingly makes
us more susceptible to feelings of worthlessness in that an 
objective assessment of one's worth requires EVIDENCE that one 
warrants that worth.  To counter this,
nature has instilled in us a lust for self-significating experience 
(e.g., needs for love, purpose, meaning, moral integrity, power, wealth
etc.) to try to constrain our valuative objectivity as much as possible 
due to the fact that organisms that think they're the hottest thing on 
the planet are far more likely to survive and reproduce.

> But one must be careful and not read into this principle a motive for
> self-sacrifice. The CI is the highest principle of the self and so to
> discard the self is to discard the CI. And besides, a being of
> positive emotional self-worth is far more likely to practice the
> higher good in the world, than a being who is lowly and contemptible:
> 
>  "And now the law of duty, in consequence of the
> *positive worth* which obedience to it makes us feel, finds easier
> access through the respect for ourselves in the consciousness of our
> freedom. When this is well established, when a man dreads nothing more
> than to find himself, on self-examination, worthless and contemptible
> in his own eyes, then every good moral disposition can be grafted on
> it, because this is the best, nay, the only guard that can keep off
> from the mind the pressure of ignoble and corrupting motives." (CPR2,
> emphasis mine.)
> 

Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  I was unaware of this passage in
Kant.  Could you give a bit more of a specific reference on this.
Is my unfamiliarity with this passage simply because I just 
haven't been paying attention, or is it because 
Kant scholars have been woefully remiss in drawing attention to
it?  ITS A MAJOR AND CRUCIAL ELEMENT in case no one else
has noticed.

Yes.  Here is the reason YOU AND I (as opposed to an ideally rational
agent)  "ought" to conform.  Because, as interminably 
self-interested organisms, the self-worth which ensues from conforming
to the CI will make us happier more contented beings.  Yeaaaaaahh!!! 
In other words, on many occasions it is emotionally selfish to be
physically unselfish (e.g., Mother Teresa). 

> This is interesting because it demonstrates the connection between
> duty, self-worth and free will. Doing your duty brings positive
> feelings of self-worth because you sense that you are a free,
> undetermined being in control of yourself and your life. When you get
> used to this state of being, soon you begin to dread the opposite
> state ("worthless and contemptible"). When you feel high self-worth,
> and this is an established state of mind such that you begin to dread
> the opposite state of self-esteem, you develop a good moral
> disposition, meaning, you become more and more predisposed to doing
> your duty to reason. It is a self-sustaining cycle. 
>
> On the other hand,
> you have the being whose morality is contingent on external or
> psychological factors (forces), who does not feel in control of
> himself or his life, whose self-esteem is low and who has little
> consciousness of his own freedom. To such a being the CI makes its
> presence felt still through his awareness of his own contemptuousness,
> despite the fact that the CI is hardly ever practiced. 
 
> Such a being is
> motivated merely by a hedonism either short-term (pleasure) or
> long-term (happiness). Since the Ideas of reason still reign in all
> human life, this being seeks a higher perfection, only it becomes
> lower, empirical, and thus impossible to attain, as there is no such
> thing as empirical perfection. 
> It's not that happiness should be
> rejected by the person of high moral worth, only, it does not become a
> motivating factor. And the feeling that results from doing one's duty
> is not the (imperfect) happiness created by the satisfaction of one's
> lower needs (mitigated by the anxiety of knowing that the future might
> not bring happiness), but the perfect *contentment* (which is more an
> aesthetic feeling than moral) derived from achieving an accord, a
> balance, a state of harmony within.

I think we are possibly in agreement here.  I would say that to
the extent that the purpose in conforming to the CI was strictly
the increase in pleasure and contentment it brings, that that would
be a LESS RATIONAL motive than if it were done out of a genuine 
concern for the well-fare of others.  In other words, I would maintain,
somewhat similarly to like Kant I believe, and contra to the utilarians,
that the rationality/morality 
stems, not from the increase in happiness which ensues, not even in
the world, but rather from THE INCREASE IN OBJECTIVITY.  That's 
because 'being rational' isn't a matter of being
happy, but rather a matter of 'being able to "see" what is going on',
i.e., 'being objective'.

pr

P.S.  I'm still wondering where all this leaves us with regard to
my original contention however.  Isn't the CI contingent on the
premis, 'Given one chooses to be rational' blah blah blah.?
Wouldn't this be so, even though we both might agree that it
is not rational because it makes one happy, or even increases
the sum total of happiness in the world, but rather because
of the nature of rationality itself.