Banno who has made clear he doesn't like. definitions and thinks they derail discussion. — tim wood

Banno's point, consistently over many years, is that fathoming how a word is used is often the task of philosophy; and hence commencing with definitions is usually superfluous. This thread being typical.

Your insistence that we would understand were we only to read more Kant reads like an invitation to a cult - arcane knowledge is to be had, come join us!

freedom is confined to just raw capacity — tim wood

What do you mean by "raw capacity". You speak as if freedom has a meaning other than being able to do whatever we want. Pray tell, what is this other meaning?

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"Murder" would never be moral. As to killing, it's conceivable that she should be killed, but not that I should do it. The reason being that marriage is a peculiar, unique contract — tim wood

It's things like this that I don't know how to respond to, and yet your posts are littered with them. Am I to take such brazen declarations as something you're supposedly educating me about, or as a rhetorical device to seek agreement/disagreement. It's really hard to tell, you keep just declaring things to be the case without offering any support or inviting agreement, it's frankly a bit odd. Not that I mind odd, but it's difficult to formulate a response.

What does HR do? He puts me at disproportionate risk of damage, harm, injury, death. — tim wood

Right. As does the helmeted rider via other means. That was my point. He doesn't serve as a waymarker of anything other than your personal preference for riding motorcycles but doing so with helmet. Or, being more charitable, if he does serve as a waymarker it is only of the basic truth that some behaviours are less socially responsible than others. I don't see how it's any waymarker helping to decide which are which.

That is, if you're going to argue that moral freedom includes the ability to determine the moral action on the basis of what you like or don't like, then we're irreconcilable — tim wood

You've misunderstood the purpose of my example. I'm not arguing that what is moral is just what we like or don't like. I'm saying that "Y will lead to X and you'd like X" is an example of a conclusion with normative force. Equally ..."and X is better for society" might do the same, or "...and X will make your loved ones happier"...

At root, people will only do what they feel some motivation to do, and that includes behaving rationally.

The reason being that in liking or wanting, to that extent we're not free, but rather subject-to. A matter of having a liberty. Agreed, the word "freedom" is commonly used here, and well-understood, but it cannot stand because it's a contrary to the freedom Kant has in mind. — tim wood

Again, this skirts the issue here. I'm quite happy with the notion of a 'Kantian' Definition of freedom. Let's call it Freedom B and the more normal definition Freedom A. Now when one says "you ought not do X because it leads to a loss of Freedom A", one does not need to go any further. People risk their lives for Freedom A, it is evidently something people aspire to and so any course of action advised on the grounds of avoiding it's loss has normative force already. But when you say "you ought not do Y because is leads to a loss of Freedom B", there's no such self-evident manifestation of people's aspiration. People do not regularly risk their lives in aspiration of Freedom B. You need to provide a reason why we should aspire to Freedom B because it is not already self-evident that we do.

I've acknowledged that the word freedom has various usages; I think Kant's is the ultimately correct usage. — tim wood

Tangentially related perhaps, but how so? How do you judge the 'correct' usage?

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what does not constitute the principle of morality. — tim wood

Does that a lot, doesn't he? It’s not this, it’s not that, get rid of enough of the stuff a thing isn’t, what it is arises as all the more legitimate.

Be great to arrive at that which is impossible to be rid of.......

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I think that when one reaches for that, one finds not ground but bootstrap — tim wood

Hmmm....perhaps. I wonder if Kant knew the word. He certainly maintained the necessity, hence the validity, of causality. The prime intellectual conception of causality being, of course, freedom. And just as no unconditioned causality in Nature can be discovered, so too is it impossible to prove the reality of freedom as a purely intellectual causality. A form of bootstrapping, indeed, but perhaps logically permissible. Perhaps? If not that, then what?

“....Now I affirm that we must attribute to every rational being which has a will that it has also the idea of freedom and acts entirely under this idea. For in such a being we conceive a reason that is practical, that is, has causality in reference to its objects. Now we cannot possibly conceive a reason consciously receiving a bias from any other quarter with respect to its judgements, for then the subject would ascribe the determination of its judgement not to its own reason, but to an impulse. It must regard itself as the author of its principles independent of foreign influences. Consequently as practical reason or as the will of a rational being it must regard itself as free, that is to say, the will of such a being cannot be a will of its own except under the idea of freedom. This idea must therefore in a practical point of view be ascribed to every rational being. I adopt this method of assuming freedom merely as an idea which rational beings suppose in their actions, in order to avoid the necessity of proving it in its theoretical aspect also. The former is sufficient for my purpose; for even though the speculative proof should not be made out, yet a being that cannot act except with the idea of freedom is bound by the same laws that would oblige a being who was actually free. Thus we can escape here from the onus which presses on the theory...”

Gotta start somewhere, right?

:heart: I love your OP. Absolutely correct and when that is not understood as a truth and it is not passed on by the culture, there can not be liberty.

Unfortunately, the US has forgotten what morals have to do with liberty and it is becoming a paranoid police state. When I became frustrated trying to do a money transfer at Walmart, I was told by the women at the service counter and someone supposed to be the manager that they have been trained to watch out for fraud. Well good for them. Better training in customer service would make the store more active. But it is not just Walmart, how about when we make a business call and get the message the phone call may be recorded to assure quality assurance purposes. How sad the employers do not trust their employees and think they must be kept under surveillance. Not even dentists and doctors are treated respectfully, but they too are expected to follow orders from the office manager and policy just like uneducated laborers.

Liberal education as we had in the past, beginning with the first grade, would correct this problem because it would create a culture that embraced what you said in the OP. The more everything is kept in a file, and records are checked, and people are kept under surveillance, the worse things get and this is what we defended our democracies against in two world wars. Today China is a model of government control of people, but the US is not far behind.

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What do you mean by "raw capacity". You speak as if freedom has a meaning other than being able to do whatever we want. Pray tell, what is this other meaning? — TheMadFool

Laugh, believing we are free to do anything we want seems to lack awareness of consequences. Because there are consequences resulting from what we do, we are not exactly free. Sooner or later the wrongs will come back to bite us.

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Nor do I find in this any ground whatsoever that relativism might survive in. — tim wood

Agreed, here is no room for relativism with respect to freedom as a necessary intellectual conception. It is worth remembering “intellectual” just indicates a conception having nothing to do with sensibility, the conceptions of which are always empirical, which in turn means there are physical objects subsumed under them. Freedom has no physical object, obviously; it is nonetheless an object of pure practical reason.

The relativism resides in the will of the subject, of which freedom is merely the ground of the will’s capacity to author moral laws to which that subject obligates himself.

I am not sure Kant would say that there even are situations where you cannot do your duty. If you cannot do something, it cannot really be considered your duty. What makes your actions free is then choosing your duty. — Echarmion

I apologize for being so gross, but what comes to mind is if you can not get your zipper down you can not pee. But nature isn't so reasonable and sometimes we pee before we are ready. That does not change the fact that is preferable to wait until the zipper is down and our body parts are correctly positioned. No matter what, our duty is to do our best to control what happens even though it is possible something may go wrong.

Thanks but he took way too long to get to the bottom line. Did he ever mention what education has to do with this and what the 1958 National Defense Education Act has to do with the US ending the transmission of its culture? That is, ending education for good moral judgment and leaving moral training to the church. We now live with a Christian mythology and do not know our history from Athens to the United States. "The Founding Myth- Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American" by Andrew L. Seidel.

Thank you for spreading the information that is sadly lacking in the US. If we do not correct the education wrong, very soon, our democracy will be forgotten because our young have no idea of what it once was to be a citizen in the United States to have liberty without authority over us and without constant surveillance. Every school should have a Statue of Liberty and every student should understand why she holds and torch and a book.

We all need to know, only highly moral people can have liberty, for the same reason we keep poorly trained dogs on a leash in the city. We ended education for good moral thinking and now we are on a leash and under surveillance and this could be the end of being an international leader.

You’ve shown adequately why one shouldn’t appeal to the dictionary. At best dictionaries record current usage of a term, not what it should or should not mean, nor what it has meant in the past or what it might might mean in the future. It’s ridiculous to confine a discussion to a dictionary definition.

But the purpose here is to draw attention to people who claim as a matter of right under freedom to do what they want...

I enjoy your take on duty and freedom, but I depart from the logic after we leave Kant’s thinking and venture into your own.

If I recall correctly, Kant mostly limits his coercion to those who hinder freedom, so I’m not sure he would advocate penalizing those “who claim as a matter of right under freedom to do what they want”.

I think it’s laudable to say one has a duty to be safe and avoid the risk of harm, and one is free to do so, but once this principle is forced upon others or they are penalized for risk, I think we have the realm of freedom into its opposite.

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Following Kant (and subject to correction on the details), the argument here is that freedom is exactly freedom to do one's duty, and nothing else. * * * Duty, for the moment, is just what reason tells us ought to done.... But the purpose here is to draw attention to people who claim as a matter of right under freedom to do what they want... And I think the logic of the thing compels agreement. Yes? — tim wood

A very important discussion currently, so thank you for the post. What sparked my curiosity was the idea of duty and whether there is any compulsion. First, there is the distinction between the rational and emotional, or (Hume's) moral sense/innate moral judgment. I would argue that we can bypass this and still have a personal moral decision bound to reasonable action.

Starting with the idea that duty is "what reason tells us ought to [be] done", I would point out that this frames our moral decisions as occurring beforehand; rationally coming to a morality--a defined moral standard (in Kant's case), or theory, or the setting of what is a moral/immoral act (through authority, agreement, or other process, etc.--"regularity" Kant says). Morality and the "ought" have their place, but, like much of the moral, they have no force (apart from moralism, punishment, shame, etc.). I can make a case for what you ought to do (like Kant), and even have reasons that make sense (including internal coherency, categories or levels or rationality, etc.), but that does not ensure anyone will do what they ought to (see, e.g., Dostoyevsky). The same applies to the Good, though I believe teleology makes sense in relation to an object, say, in bettering our institutions.

Instead, imagine a case after our morality (beyond Good and Evil, as Nietzsche says)--a moral moment. As Cavell would say, when we do not know what to do; we are at a loss despite our deontological rules. Part of the picture here is that we are standing in the present, with a current context. And by this I do not mean a pre-determined context as in some thought-puzzle; a context that is as full and deep as the entire world, and that includes not only physical circumstances, but also our morality, all the distinctions we make and could make, and, most importantly, us as an unfinished work. One of Emerson, Wittgenstein, and Nietzsche's important contributions is that our action defines us; we are not here good/bad, right/wrong, but lazy, selfish, courageous, etc. Wittgenstein talks about "continuing a series" and taking an "attitude". Our action reflects on us; so consequences matter, but when we come to the end of a rule, who we are is at stake. Sometimes even, as Nietzsche and Thoreau point out, the "immoral" act is the necessary act.

So whatever moral "force" there is, it is not (only) immorality, punishment, or wrong/bad, but our responsibility (to ourselves, our words, our actions), our integrity--not so much our reputation, as our character--our moral identity, in a sense. People, obviously, sometimes don't care about these things (nor do they have to), but they are nevertheless subject to this human condition in the moral realm. As I have said in my post on Witt's lion quote--when we come to the end of knowledge of the Other's pain, we either accept or reject them (their moral claim on us). He says, "My attitude towards [them] is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the 'opinion' that [they have] a soul." p. 178. We don't have knowledge that they have a soul, we treat them as if they do (or not), but the point being that we are in the mix here, our human frailty and possibility.

Now if our course of action is not defined (by, say, rules) ahead of time, nor by others (entirely); if we are lost and our character is on the line, what is our duty? If we can not rely on rationality to tell us what to do (should do)--say, definitively, certainly, "objectively", as it were, without our "person" being involved (though not emotionally/"subjectively")--are there criteria for determining our duty in that moment? Now here, all the moral philosophers I have read spend most of their effort pushing against simple morality/moralism (Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Cavell, Emerson) so, what came to me first, actually, was the Bhagavad-Gita. Not that I agree with the answers themselves, nor feel that ours is a theological argument, but the situation and the type of discussion is an example of the type of grounds/criteria for a "reasonable" determination of our duty.

The case is that Arunja is going to war against his own family, and he is filled with doubt, pity, grief, etc., and turns to his "charioteer" Krishna for advice (imagine he is talking to himself). Krishna does not make a case for war (say, a "just" war), nor does he rely on how one should treat others--it is not a discussion of ends nor means. As part of the discussion, Arjuna keeps asking how he will know what to do, and Krishna is left with only being able to show Arjuna "his totality"--here again imagine Krishna is Arjuna's own voice to himself--to which Aruna says "You [I, as it were] alone fill the space" (20). It is similar to how Job's questioning is finally left only with the vision of the Leviathan--turning him back on himself to provide the answer.

Arjuna asks what defines a person whose insight is sure (54). They discuss discipline, detachment from emotions and goals, necessity, what differentiates an act from a motion, the need to ask questions, reflection, and the partial nature of our world's concepts and outcomes (only made whole by our action). Krishna advises "knowing the field", which is a way of saying the lay-of-the-land, which I take as making explicit the criteria of the (then-present) situation as well as of our concepts of action, courage, selfishness, flippancy, thoughtfulness, being reasonable, etc. These are criteria for defining a person in light of their actions. I submit that our duty is found in this space and the context and the ways our character/"humanity" is judged, not as right or wrong or good and bad, but nevertheless as rational (reasonable), rigorous, careful, detailed--as if our approach to a moral moment required an ethical epistemology.

Are we bound to our duty? In this sense we are; we are bound to our act. In these ways we are more responsible than just to rules/laws; we are, in a sense, created by our actions and finished as well (to a particular conception of ourselves). (The fact that here there are excuses and mitigation--such as lack of freedom to do what we decide is our duty--aides the point.) I believe these are not traditional philosophical rationale, but ordinary, everyday criteria. The "logic of the thing [that] compels agreement" is that we are disappointed by people, we no longer trust them, we believe they are fools, braggarts, cowards, etc.; that they made their choice in a moral moment thoughtlessly, hastily, self-servingly, recklessly, on a whim, etc. Do they care? Maybe not. Nonetheless, it can be true.

I think that your argument is very detailed in analysis and manages to connect the whole area of duty on the level of motivation with the actual practice of moral actions. This moves the understanding of ethics beyond the apparent conflict between the deontological and utilitarian approaches of Kant vs. J S Mill. The two have most often been seen as in opposition to one another and I believe that you have succeeded in offering a way of bridging the two viewpoints.

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Laugh, believing we are free to do anything we want seems to lack awareness of consequences. Because there are consequences resulting from what we do, we are not exactly free. Sooner or later the wrongs will come back to bite us — Athena

Google definition of "freedom": the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants. Freedom is precisely how it's been defined but the actual situation on the ground may vary. Read the fine print :joke:

On a more serious note, one has to draw a distinction between what we mean by freedom and to what degree we possess it. These two are entirely different things. One - the meaning of freedom - represents our conception, expectation, and perhaps even our hope and the other - the freedom we possess - is reality's constraining, modifying, limiting effect on us.

Of course you might say that the facts as they stand matter - we have to mind the consequences of how we act, speak, and think - and that tells an entirely different story of human "freedom" than that supposed in the definition of freedom. True but notice a simple fact. Would you call this situation, having to walk on eggshells as it were, always mindful of the consequences of our acts, speech, and thoughts, freedom? No, right? I rest my case.

Duty, for the moment, is just what reason tells us ought to done — tim wood

Let us call this parameter one.

Duty itself informed by good will. — tim wood

Let us call this parameter two.

Therefore, applying the above two parameters, I postulate the following:

Mark realizes that, due to pollution, over harvesting, habitat destruction, over population, and the lack of meaningful change to rectify these problems, the earth will no longer be able to sustain life, human or otherwise, within the next three hundred years. Mark, being an exceedingly talented geneticist, has the ability to create a virus which will eliminate 75% of the human population over the next hundred years. There is no suffering to speak of, simply a massive reduction in the ability to reproduce and the resulting population decline. This action will result in the betterment of future generations as well as restoring global balance and harmony.

Duty suggests that Mark release his virus, despite his personal feelings on the issue. He is aware of both outcomes, elimination of everyone (no action on his part) or elimination of 75% of humanity (action on his part). Good will (ensuring that life goes on) informs Mark's Duty to Act, which is supported by reason (Continuation of life over the cessation of life), and therefore, the act that Ought to be done.

And there is a rationalized justification for an act that most would consider genocidal. Lovely frame work. Thanks Kant.

And there is a rationalized justification for an act that most would consider genocidal. Lovely frame work. Thanks Kant. — Book273

There you have it, folks. Perhaps the greatest thinker since Aristotle, personally responsible for the last real paradigm shift in modern philosophy, develops a moral theory with so many holes in it a ten-year-old can blow it up with a single existential possibility.

Schopenhauer is probably wondering why he never thought of it; Hegel first, then Quine, both want to be remembered as having thought it already.

“....[f]or non-Kantian philosophers, there are no persistent problems — save perhaps the existence of Kantians....”
(Rorty, 1982)

On the vulgar understanding’s forays into the academic:

“.....a sophistical art for giving ignorance, nay, even intentional sophistries, the colouring of truth, in which the thoroughness of procedure which logic requires was imitated, and their topic employed to cloak the empty pretensions.....”
(CPR A61/B86)

Still....one remains free to think whatever he likes. (Sigh)

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A very important discussion currently, so thank you for the post. What sparked my curiosity was the idea of duty and whether there is any compulsion. First, there is the distinction between the rational and emotional, or (Hume's) moral sense/innate moral judgment. I would argue that we can bypass this and still have a personal moral decision bound to reasonable action. — Antony Nickles

This would be highly dependent on our culture, associations, and the books we read. Social animals have what some call a pre-morality. They are wired for group behavior. They have different learning capabilities, with chimps having more ability to learn than baboons, however, animals can transmit culture to each other. They do not have the language essential to the thinking humans do, and we are not born with this language, nor are we born knowing the concepts essential to moral thinking and we aren't born knowing the high order thinking skills. Any "personal moral decision bound to reasonable action" is dependant on what we learn and because our circumstances are different, our sense of morality can be different.

This is where the higher-order thinking skills come in. That is the learned ability to reason through our choices and make decisions. The US focused on teaching these skills, and used the Conceptual Method, and had education for good moral judgment until the 1958 National Defense Education Act. Now the US has the reactionary politics Germany had. The US replaced its education with the German model. The best way to learn history is to experience and the next few days, months, year- will be very interesting. :grin: Morality based on how we feel instead of how we think, leads to power struggles not a high standard of morality.

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