Abstract
This chapter sets out to show that the problem of misdirected moral attention does not, perhaps despite appearances, attach to Kant’s moral philosophy at all. It also aims to go some way towards demonstrating that we can say the same thing about the problem of experiential incongruence. I argue for a novel account of what it is to have a maxim of action, or, as I shall put it, of the ‘possession conditions’ of a maxim of action. That account has it that possession of a maxim of action consists in an agent’s being disposed to take the obtaining of a situation of a particular type to be a reason for her to Φ, and her thereby being disposed to Φ in situations of that type. Further, a type of obtaining situation is taken as a reason to Φ on account of the agent’s possession of a particular type of incentive, viewed as a reason that is external to the agent’s maxim (a conative correlate of the maxim, rather than a proper constituent). Therefore, and crucially, the lawlike nature of her maxim is not the good-willed agent’s reason for Φ-ing when she Φs from duty; rather, it is the reason why something else—the existence of a certain sort of obtaining situation, and thus a ‘concrete consideration’—is the reason for her Φ-ing.
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Notes
- 1.
Stratton-Lake (2000).
- 2.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 9.
- 3.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 45.
- 4.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 49.
- 5.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 48.
- 6.
Dancy (1993), p. 10.
- 7.
A normative reason for Φ-ing, whether moral or prudential, is a reason that at least to some extent ‘favours’ Φ-ing, or that represents (again, at least to some extent) a good reason for Φ-ing. Such a reason remains a reason whether anybody acts on it or not. For example, there is a strong normative reason for me to visit the dentist when I have a toothache, regardless of whether or not that reason moves me to act. A motivating reason, on the other hand, is a reason for which, or on which, an agent acts when she acts: it is a consideration in the light of which she does what she does. So, for example, we might say that A’s reason for Φ-ing was R, but that R is not a good reason for Φ-ing. The first occurrence of the word ‘reason’ in this claim refers to a motivating reason, while the second refers to a normative reason.
This distinction between normative and motivating reasons, of which Stratton-Lake makes frequent use, is perspicuously explained by Jonathan Dancy , in Dancy (2000), pp. 1–5, and it is from here that the account I have just given is drawn. A motivating reason seems to be equivalent to what T.M. Scanlon in Scanlon (2000), p. 19 calls an operative reason. I will suggest later that there is a strong link between motivating reasons and maxims on the one hand, and normative reasons and imperatives on the other. Broadly, maxims make mention of motivating reasons, while imperatives (those objective principles that would necessarily be heeded by a perfectly rational being) specify normative reasons (though not invariably, I shall maintain, normative reasons to act).
- 8.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 70.
- 9.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 71.
- 10.
I should point out that I think there is for Kant a sense in which the Categorical Imperative accounts for the possibility of moral judgement. That is, I think Kant would insist that without the Categorical Imperative (as the supreme moral principle), no moral judgements at all could be made. But that does not preclude the moral law’s entering into moral judgment. The Categorical Imperative is both a condition of the possibility of moral judgement and a normative moral reason (though not a normative moral reason to act in certain ways).
- 11.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 16.
- 12.
There appears to be some similarity between Stratton-Lake’s symmetry thesis , and Scanlon’s ‘buck-passing’ account of value. That is, as Stratton-Lake himself writes in Stratton-Lake (2004), p. 5:
According to the buck-passing account of value, the fact that something is good is not itself a reason to care about it. Rather, the fact that it is good is the fact that some other fact gives us reason to care about it. On this view, then, the only reasons we have to care about the good are the features that make it good.
Similarly, we might say that, according to the symmetry thesis, the fact that we ought to do something is not a reason to do it. Instead, the fact that we ought to do something is the fact that some other fact gives us reason to do it. Therefore, the only reasons we have to do what is obligatory are the reasons that make it obligatory.
- 13.
- 14.
It would be possible to state Stratton-Lake’s point here in the form of a dilemma, mirroring that famously identified by Michael Stocker in his celebrated paper ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories’. Where Stratton-Lake convicts the agent who violates the symmetry thesis of irrationality, Stocker talks instead, though perhaps not unrelatedly, of a damaging bifurcation of reason and motive in the agent’s psyche. So, assuming the justificatory conception of the Categorical Imperative to be correct, we could be motivated by concrete considerations, but only at the cost of a split in agency—which Stocker ill-advisedly labels a “moral schizophrenia”—which cuts the motivation to Φ free of the reason that one ought to Φ. On the other hand, if we avoid such a split in agency by bringing our motive for Φ-ing into accord with the reason we have to Φ, we end up with a misplaced moral attention. As Stocker expresses the dilemma, we face “either a stunted moral life or disharmony, schizophrenia”: Stocker (1976), p. 465.
- 15.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 46.
- 16.
Kant (1996a), 4:429.
- 17.
Stratton-Lake (2000), pp. 46–47. The passage that Stratton-Lake references in support of this point is from Kant (1996a), 4:400: “since [the will] must be determined by something, it must be determined by the formal principle of volition as such when an action is done from duty, where every material principle has been withdrawn from it”. In Sect. 6.4, I will endeavour to show precisely why Kant thinks that this is the case.
- 18.
Kant (1996a), 4:436–437.
- 19.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 58.
- 20.
It is worth pointing out that there are occasions on which my telling the truth would be the right thing to do when I see someone drowning: namely, occasions on which my telling a particular truth (though not, admittedly just any truth) would constitute my doing what I could to save the drowning person. So, suppose that I am an inept swimmer, and that a little way away from me on the river bank there is a less than vigilant though otherwise extraordinarily efficient trained lifeguard, who has failed to notice that someone is in difficulty in the water. I take it that if I shout the truth “This person is drowning!” at the lifeguard, I will have discharged my duty.
- 21.
See Sect. 4.4.
- 22.
See Sect. 4.3.
- 23.
Peacocke (1993).
- 24.
Peacocke (1993), pp. 74–75.
- 25.
It may be objected that this cannot be correct, given that a maxim is a proposition such as ‘Whenever I find myself in a situation in which I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and falsely promise to pay it back’. That proposition, it will be urged, would exist even if nobody had ever expressed it, never mind if nobody had ever subscribed to it as a principle of action. Qua proposition, it is, like every other proposition, an eternal existent. That may well be true (in fact, I think it quite possibly is, though this is not the place to enter into a discussion of the ontological status of propositions). But the point is that when that proposition exists merely qua proposition—that is, when nobody subscribes to it as a subjective principle of action—it does not exist qua maxim. It gains maxim status only when it becomes somebody’s subjective principle. And that is just to say that it gains maxim status only when an agent A is disposed to count the occurrence of a situation of the type mentioned in its antecedent as a reason to … (etc.).
- 26.
I have said that this only helps us to meet part of the first of our two challenges. And so it does: we are still left with the fact that we appear not to be perennially conscious of the Categorical Imperative, or of using it to test our maxims of action. Nor are we aware, it seems, of incorporating incentives into maxims. These aspects of the first problem will be addressed in Chap. 6.
- 27.
Cf. Bratman’s claim that an intention is something settled, and thus possessed of “a characteristic stability or inertia”. Bratman (1987), p. 16.
- 28.
That this view is mistaken is suggested by Kant’s claim in Kant (1996c), 6:21 that:
We call a human being evil … not because he performs actions that are evil (contrary to law), but because these are so constituted that they allow the inference of evil maxims in him.
As we shall see, however, it is still more revealing of an agent’s character to identify a deeper level of considerations that she consistently counts as reasons. These are the reasons that make the obtaining of particular sorts of situations into reasons for the agent to act.
- 29.
Brewer (2002), p. 565.
- 30.
I expand on, and make further use of, this distinction in Sect. 6.3.
- 31.
See Kant (1996c), 6:29. Two points need to be made here. (1) Given what Kant says in the Religion, it appears that akrasia—or frailty (Gebrechlichkeit) as Kant puts it—is in operation when we take as an overriding motivating reason something which we know not to be normatively overriding, and so which we acknowledge ought not to be an overriding motivating reason (see also Sect. 4.3 of the current book). This occurs, according to Kant (1996c), 6:39, when the will is “not strong enough to comply with its adopted principles”. (2) There is something of a tension in Kant’s account here: I take it that an agent who consistently failed through akrasia to Φ in F-type situations could not be said genuinely to have the maxim of Φ-ing in F-type situations. This is in part because a maxim is defined as “a principle in accordance with which the subject acts” (Kant (1996a) 4:421n.). How often one may fail through akrasia to act on a principle P, and still have P count as a principle on which one acts, is presumably a question with no very definite answer. What is clear is that Kant thinks that the answer is >0.
- 32.
It might be objected that, while the incentive reason explains why the situational reason is a reason for the agent to act, it is not the agent’s reason why the situational reason is a reason to act. That is, it is not a consideration in the light of which she comes to see the obtaining of a particular type of situation as a reason to act; instead, it simply offers a psychological explanation of her doing so. This is an important objection: it will be addressed in Sect. 6.2.
- 33.
Just as the setting of an end can be an internal act (see Sect. 3.3).
- 34.
Remembering here that any desire for E (qua end) is not a mere desire. Rather, it is an incorporated incentive.
- 35.
However, when an agent holds a maxim Mn on moral grounds, the end associated with Mn does not explain her having that maxim. Rather, her possession of Mn explains her possession of that end. More will be said on this topic in Sect. 6.4.
- 36.
I say that they do not typically feature, since, as mentioned in Sect. 3.2, it is possible for ends and/or incentives to be mentioned in the specification of a type of situation that constitutes a maxim of action’s antecedent. Thus, to resurrect the example given in that earlier chapter, it would be possible for an agent to hold the maxim of action ‘For any obtaining situation s, if s is a situation in which I want to relax, then I will listen to soothing music’.
- 37.
Bittner (2001), Section 118.
- 38.
Bittner (2001), Section 126.
- 39.
Bittner (2001), Section 139.
- 40.
Bittner (2001), Section 126.
- 41.
Bittner (2001), Section 135.
- 42.
Bittner (2001), Section 119.
- 43.
Hazel Barnes , in her translation of Being and Nothingness, renders ‘motif’ as ‘cause,’ and ‘mobile’ as ‘motive’. She explains her choice of the former translation by commenting that (a) ‘motif’ has no precise English equivalent; and (b) it is used by Sartre to pick out “an external fact or situation” (Sartre (1969), p. 435, n. 2). There is something mystifying about (b) as a potential explanation, however: why should something’s being regarded as an external situation automatically be thought to justify our labelling it a cause, especially since, as Barnes warns, “[t]he reader must remember … that this carries with it no idea of determinism” (Sartre (1969), p. 435, n. 2)? Joseph S. Catalano prefers, more sensibly, simply to translate ‘motif’ as ‘reason’. In order not to court misunderstanding, I have chosen, following Jonathan Webber’s lead in Webber (2006) p. 114, n. 12) to leave both ‘motif’ and ‘mobile’ untranslated, both here and in Sect. 6.3.
- 44.
Sartre (1969), p. 436.
- 45.
Hill (1992), p. 125.
- 46.
Perhaps the most natural reading of Hill’s claim would be one that takes him to be saying that a maxim is not the whole of a reason for action. It should be clear that I hold completely the opposite view. That is, I think that a reason for action is not (expressed by) the whole of a maxim.
- 47.
Blackburn (1998), p. 216.
- 48.
McCarty (2009), p. 23.
- 49.
Sullivan (1989), p. 28.
- 50.
Bittner (2001), Section 78.
- 51.
Moore (2003), p. 30.
- 52.
Reath (2006), p. 19
- 53.
Baron (1995), p. 134.
- 54.
Reath (2006), p. 21.
- 55.
Anscombe (1957), Section 35.
- 56.
Bittner (2001), Section 137.
- 57.
Bittner admits, in Bittner (2001), Section 138, that we may sometimes speak of wants as reasons, but that when we do so we are in fact elliptically speaking of states or events. This claim relies on a certain conversational implicature coming into play when we offer, say, ‘I want a good Jersey cow’ as our reason for going to Hereford. So, Anscombe’s farmer, in saying ‘I want a good Jersey cow,’
… is not, strictly, answering our question about why he is going to Hereford, but by telling us how he feels about good Jerseys, that is to say by telling us of a subjective counterpart to the reason, he indicates, indirectly, what the reason is, namely, that there are good Jerseys available there.
- 58.
Bittner (2001), Section 140.
- 59.
This is in fact a rather rough and ready picture of what I take to be Kant’s view, and one that will be considerably refined in Sect. 6.3. There, I will suggest that it is not only incentive reasons (conative correlates ), but also incentives (conative characteristics , unassociated with any maxim), that illuminate the world in different ways. An incentive becomes a motivating incentive reason when it is incorporated into a maxim (becomes one of a maxim’s conative correlates), and so is allowed to determine the will.
- 60.
Stratton-Lake (2000), p. 48.
- 61.
I say ‘in so many words,’ simply because, of course, it is a central claim of mine that in talking of ends, incorporated incentives, and action on maxims, Kant actually is, using different terminology, talking about reasons.
- 62.
Kant (1996a), 4:400.
- 63.
Kant (1996b), 5:72.
- 64.
As explained in a footnote in Sect. 3.2, Kant uses ‘Triebfedern’ in the Groundwork to refer only to empirical incentives . This practice, however, is discontinued in the second Critique, where both empirical and formal incentives are labelled ‘Triebfedern’. It should also be noted that there is a certain inconsistency to be found in what Kant counts as the incentive of morally worthy action: at times, as in the quoted passage from the second Critique, he identifies the moral incentive as the law itself. Elsewhere, however, he identifies it either as consciousness of the law, or as a feeling of reverence (Achtung) for the law. The picture is further complicated by the fact that, as Ralph Walker points out in Walker (1993), pp. 97–98, Kant sometimes characterises Achtung as a feeling (an affective state), and sometimes as awareness (a cognitive state) of the law. Unfortunately, an assessment of these difficulties lies beyond the scope of this book.
- 65.
Brewer (2002), p. 542.
- 66.
Brewer (2002), p. 543.
- 67.
Brewer (2002), p. 551.
- 68.
Brewer (2002), p. 542.
- 69.
For more on the distinction between agent’s reasons and ‘reasons why,’ see Sect. 6.1.
- 70.
Note that I say only that it goes some way towards this goal. It still remains to be shown how we can square our supposed consciousness of the moral law, the Categorical Imperative’s universalisability test , and our incorporation of incentives into maxims with our everyday experience. These tasks will be attempted in the next chapter.
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Herissone-Kelly, P. (2018). Maxims and Reasons. In: Kant on Maxims and Moral Motivation. Studies in German Idealism, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05572-1_5
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