From: "Phil Roberts, Jr." 




malenor wrote:
> 
> "Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
 
> >
> > 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.
> 
> The CI isn't contingent on anything except the very existence of free
> agents themselves. (You can't very well choose *not* to be a free
> agent, because this implies your free agency.) 

Agreed.

> I have tried to show in
> the past that there is a lower CI and a higher CI. The lower CI isn't
> really a CI, but it has some of its features. It's concern, though, is
> primarily in the empirical realm, but it makes its presence known in
> the statements and attitudes of people who become rigid on some issue
> because "its the principle of the thing." But once their emotional
> rigidity passes, you will notice so do the alleged, unspoken
> principles behind them. This is a rather base reflection on the actual
> CI which is a part of our nature, and attempts to make itself felt
> even on empirical and psychological grounds, although always and
> necessarily imperfectly. That's because the grounding of these
> principles is not transcendental, but empirical or psychological
> (conditioned by circumstances and emotions). What you are asking for
> is a transcendental grounding of the CI, and this is what Kant gives
> in the CPR2.

Yes.  But this not particularly relevant here and was discussed 
earlier.  I'm trying to understand how it would be possible for
Kant to maintain that a deliberately irrational agent with free will would
nonetheless remain obligated to conform to the categorical 
imperative.  If it will help, here is a bit of a summary for 
Kant's argument I got from Garrett Thomson's 'On Kant':


     We can represent Kant's OVERALL argument in the Groundwork as 
     follows:

     1. If we are beings with free will, then the Categorical Imperative
        applies to us without exception.
     2. We are beings with a free will.
     3. Thus the Categorical Imperative applies to us without exception.

According to Thomson, the core of the overall argument is in the
first article, and is established according to the following 
argument for 1 above.

     1. If we are beings with a free will, then we have practical reason.
     2. If we have practical reason then we are rational beings.
     3. If we are rational beings then the CI is possible for us.
     4. If the CI is possible for us then it applies to us without 
        exception.
     5. If we are beings with free will, then the CI applies to us without        exception.

I think where this thing starts to go wrong is already in 2.  The fact that
I might have practical reason does not mean that I have to be completely
rational.  With a free will, I can take it or leave it, can't I?  
Indeed, in 'The Ideal of Rationality', Steve Nathanson presents a summary
of a number of short stories by John Kekes which show how an obsession 
with rationality leads to a lunacy all its own.  In short, there is 
reason to suspect that its irrational to be rational when it becomes
an obsession.  


pr