leonardomenderes wrote:
None of which puts any dent in "categorical",
which obviously is introduced as
no exceptions of any kind, any place or time.
Those are rather pointless in the face
of the intent, pages of definition, and
the usage of "categorical" by Kant in his
derivation. That is his ENTIRE point,
that there are no exemptions.
It is what is is, good or bad.


You suggest that Categorical Imperatives, once judged, are for all time and for all people. To this I have agreed, but with the limitation that while the words in the representation of a judgment may remain the same, the concept to which they refer may be changed.

Judgments are made on the basis of concepts; judgments are represented on the basis of words. If a concept referred to by a word in the representation of a judgment changes, we make a new judgment through thinking what the representation of our judgment refers us. This does not reverse our old judgment which employs different concepts and still retains its universality.

You would have it that the concept involved does not matter, and we examine the word itself apart from the concept. In this case, if I take ‘x’ to mean murder and you take ‘x’ to mean hug, it is completely opaque what to make of the maxim, “I should x people”, if we only consider the sign ‘x’ without any concept. When we introduce our concepts, rather than merely examining the word, it is clear that I will judge that “I ought not to x people”, while you will judge that “I ought to x people”. We will disagree in our judgments, and start a disputation, but as soon as we give account of what ‘x’ means to each of us, it will be clear that each of us has judged correctly. Furthermore, if you adjust your understanding of ‘x’ to mean murder, you will also judge that “I ought not to x people.”

Let’s examine the Categorical and Hypothetical imperatives and account for the concepts involved.

Imperatives tell us that we ought to do (or not do) something on the grounds that that action (non-action) is good.

Judgments determine objects under concepts.

Hypothetical Imperatives produce judgments that are 1) universal, 2) subjectively necessary. These judgments refer us to an action that is good for a reason.

Categorical Imperatives produce judgments that are 1) universal, 2) objectively necessary. These judgments refer us to an action that is good in itself.

Universal judgments – Apply a concept to all objects of a certain type. Concepts are either empirical or pure.
----------Empirical concepts are only known from experience.
----------Pure concepts are known prior to experience.

Subjectively necessary judgments – Are judgments that are determined by reason with reference to the subjects taken end.

Objectively necessary judgments – Are judgments that are determined by reason without reference to any ends.

Judgments through the Categorical Imperative apply to all beings thought to be rational – this is their necessary objectivity. These judgments also apply to every instance where the maxim is applied (the specificity of the maxim is important here, as maxims can be more or less specific) this is their universality.

All judgments are made by subjects. This does not mean that all judgments are subjective – subjects make both objective and subjective judgments. Because judgments are made by a subjects each subject may understands a different concepts as applying to the same possible intuitions. We take the concepts available to us as also available to all other agents that possess the same faculties and who share the same world. Our judgment is objectively necessary because, given the concept we employ, and the availability of such a concept for other agents, our judgment would hold for any other agent employing those concepts. If our judgment was absolute, then we would take our judgment to determine the judgments of all other agents. It is this later case that you seem to take Kant to be involved in with the Categorical Imperative, which is entirely wrong.

Categorical means always.

when Kant says "strictest duty", he means it (at the time he wrote it).


You suggest that Categorical Imperatives, once judged, are for all time and for all people. To this I have agreed, but with the limitation that while the words in the representation of a judgment may remain the same, the concept to which they refer may be changed.

Judgments are made on the basis of concepts; judgments are represented on the basis of words. I


And then you become a poster child for how
people mess with the true definition of words
to prove black is white and up is down.


Judgments are made on the basis of concepts; judgments are represented on the basis of words. If a concept referred to by a word in the representation of a judgment changes, we make a new judgment through thinking what the representation of our judgment refers us. This does not reverse our old judgment which employs different concepts and still retains its universality.


Pretty slick pretzel-bending. "categorical" brooks no such slipperiness.



You would have it that the concept involved does not matter, and we examine the word itself apart from the concept.


Kant's CI works like this: the concept is pre-considered. That judgement is made.
The CI-compliant maxim is hatched, completey sans concept. It is supposed to
be that way.
Even if I go back to the concept, the concept is
"only do this if you must always do this".


Look, I don't even happen to agree that the CI standard works.
But making Kant's writings into a ventriloquist's puppet
wipes out any hope of co-opting the credibility or respects.
It's kind of funny, in light of your bending the 'always, everywhere' aspect.
I don't think I have ever seen such an obvious mangling of language
for ulterior purposes. You are what Kant was trying to "burn from the alloy".
Fascinating...you cannot resist.

leonardomenderes wrote:
when Kant says "strictest duty", he means it (at the time he wrote it).

Perfect/strict and imperfect/lax duties are each categorically imperative but not exactly the same in every case. Therefore being categorically imperative is not the same as being "strict" or "universal" (not universal in *your* sense of the word, that is) (it means unconditional, which sounds a lot like generality but which in Kant's technical writing about reason has a specialized reference).

the concept is pre-considered. That judgement is made.


True, we are in agreement(unless you take the concept to be the Categorical Imperative, this is not considered, but pre-existing).


The CI-compliant maxim is hatched, completey sans concept. It is supposed to
be that way.


False, the maxim contains the concept - if it didn't how would the concept apply to the judgment? If by concept here you mean Categorical Imperative, and you may,then we are in agreement. But the maxim is most certainly not pure (without empirical input).

Here is an example of a maxim concerning suicide when one is in unfortunate circumstances - this is directly from the text:

"For love of myself, I make it my principle to cut my life short when prolonging it threatens to bring more troubles than satisfactions."

This clearly contains empirical concepts.

Here is from the groundwork concerning maxims:
"A maxim is a subjective principle of volition. The objective principle is the practical law itself; it would also be the subjective principle for all rational beings if reason fully controlled the formation of preferences."

Here Kant tells us that the maxim is subjective, and that the maxim would be the same for all rational beings if reason controlled the formation of preferences, that is, if reason alone provided our empirical understanding apart from experience - that would be absurd.


Even if I go back to the concept, the concept is
"only do this if you must always do this".


No the concept is the action being judged about in the maxim, not the Categorical Imperative. If you take the concept to be the categorical imperative, then of course it is the same, but returning the categorical imperative is not what changes our judgment, returning to the empirical concept and causing a new maxim to be generated relating to the same activity is what I am talking about.

Your interpretation is utterly groundless concerning Kant's text. I do admit that the text is difficult and that you are on good ground concerning the tradition we are both in which interprets Kant.

No the concept is the action being judged about in the maxim, not the Categorical Imperative.


We are talking about maxims that comply with the categorical imperative, yes?
Therefore your statement is instantly self-defeating. A CI-compliant maxim
has everything to do with the CI.

Or are we simply talking about any maxim you pull from anywhere?



If you take the concept to be the categorical imperative, then of course it is the same, but returning the categorical imperative is not what changes our judgment, returning to the empirical concept and causing a new maxim to be generated relating to the same activity is what I am talking about.


...if we are talking an=bout CI-compliant maxims, I do not "return to the CI".
the maxim is never ever supposed to leave it.



Your interpretation is utterly groundless concerning Kant's text. I do admit that the text is difficult and that you are on good ground concerning the tradition we are both in which interprets Kant.


As to what 'categorical" means, I am quite grounded, and solidly
in the vast majority. It is the model of unconditional duty.
Go patronize a million other people. It isn't a tough definition
at all, as far as reading Kant.


Universal is not conditional, hypothetical, or anything else.

----E.KANT------------
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
--------------------

The text nails the lid down...anywhere, anyone, any time.
Over and over. Explains why...any violation causes the faulting.
Over and over.

c-a-t-e-g-o-r-i-c-a-l

Szavieur wrote:

Didn't [idealism] lead to women being able to vote (here in the US)?

This defends on how you construe idealism---what reasoning you predicate its meaning on. If you say women ought to vote because, ideally, this is the best of all possible worlds, you have no way of demonstrating this aside from professing it to be your own [political] ideal.

You have no way of transcending phenomenal [historical, cultural] contexts and demonstrating this should be true universally for all women for all time.

Yes, I believe it is true. But if I am confronted with someone who believes it is not true, we can go around and around forever arguing about it but neither of us can ever resolve it.

At best a Kantian is reduced to, "I just know down to the bone this is a manifestation of the Moral Law."

Historically, the liberation of women [however one wishes to define this] has always been about power. It's ever political in the end.

neither/nor original post:

Give me one---just one---historical example of a moral problem solved such that informed judgments were "blanked out" and the right solution was just "come up with". Again, this seems surreal to me. I can't relate it to a single ethical conflict of any topical significance I am familiar with.

I don't know (right now) if any *have* been solved that way (to everyone's satisfaction...). I'm suggesting that it's the only way they CAN be solved, though.

I can understand this point of view. But, again, the motivation here in my view is largely psychological. We want to be able to resolve these conflicts once and for all. We never really do though and so we extrapolate Kant forever into the future.

What the political idealists do though is to take a shortcut. They simply insist their way of doing things IS the only way to resolve it.

The reason for setting aside the question of [H]umanity [in grappling with right and wrong behavior] would be that it involves words or concepts—human and species or whatever—that are too unclear or unproven for us to determinately use them when trying to figure out what to do.

Yes, and my point is that they must ever remain unclear in the same manner in which the words and concepts "freedom", "justice", "duty", "obligation" must ever remain unclear in judging the ethical parameters of human behavior.

We are not able to denote what these things ARE, only what different people touching the elephant in different spots SAY they are.

My point is that you yourself, by claiming to accurately describe our social world in terms of existential vantage points, etc. are striking out into the land of abstraction just as well as I am. For "existential vantage point" or "Dasein" are abstract conceptualizations of different aspects of the world. Now if you can pull it off, how am I unable to? Why don't *my* theoretical constructions mean anything?

I always make it very clear however that I do not exclude my own point of view from my own point of view. I would never insist that an existential perspective on human ethics is the most rational, most morally sophisticated way in which to view these things. I can only state that, based on my own unique, personal experiences "out in the world" to date and the manner in which I have come to give them meaning "in my head" [here and now], this seems reasonable to me.

"Dasein" is basically just a practical, commonsensical construct [meme] to me. Because we are born and raised in different [sometimes very different] historical, ethnological, political, social, economic, experiential etc. contexts [ever shifting and evolving in contingency, chance and change] we come to learn about the world around us in different [sometimes very different] ways. How, then, is there a way for Kantians to integrate this into an epistemic, philosophical framework such that we can derive behaviors said to reflect our duty and obligation towards others? Is there a way?

Nope. Not with respect to the hundreds of moral conflicts that have plagued mankind now for centuries. And basically you are reduced to arguing they CAN be. And, sure, if we both lived forever it might be interesting to so how it all turns out. But we don't do we?

Imagine confronting someone convinced that his or her moral beliefs are true. You start saying "phenomenal contingencies" and he or she shrugs it off by citing his or her "real world" feelings: "I can feel God telling me what to do," or, "It feels right to me." Where does your own abstract theoretical structure go then? Same place mine does?

It goes only where it can go---by pointing out there are countless other folks around the globe embedded in countless other existential circumstantial contexts who would shrug me off in turn while professing that THEIR God and THEIR "real world" feelings reveal the one true moral law. Then what? Well, hopefully the person is intelligent enough to think, "Gee, we can't ALL be right" and then acknolwedge his motivation may well be a primordial psychological need to anchor the phenomenal in a Whole Truth. His own more likely than not.

That's the starting point for recognizing the inherent limitations of philosophical language here.

neither/nor original post:

Before being sent over to Vietnam, "I" was a very conservative, deeply religious, wholely integrated man. After I came back from Vietnam, "I" was a politically radical, fiercely atheistic and profoundly broken man. How, in your view, is that, "just a function of x = us referring to x."

It means that there is very little that is essential to our nature, next to nothing actually, in which case the stuff that gets attached to us over the course of our lives can suffer extreme flux and yet our core existence remains unchanged.

Core existence? And with respect to the before "I" and the after "I" above what in the world might that be? How would we get in touch with it?

Suppose instead we peel away the existential layers and find out that "I" basically ARE [IS?] the layers. What would the mind's I be able to capture that transcends the phenomenal reality of actual human interaction in Vietnam? What could it tell us about what those behaviors should have been?

What do you mean by "what does it mean"? It just is what it is. My experiences aren't Mary's. I can't apply a general ethical rule to her particular case because her case isn't mine. I can only tell her what the rules are, or better what they can be. I can help to show her the limits of reason, but not absolutely everything within those limits.

You go from HER experiences to YOUR rules. And your extrapolation seems to be that, just because you think about these things philosophically and she doesn't, you can. Well, suppose you can't. Suppose you just think you can instead?

Now, I am not foolish enough to suggest we can actually establish this epistemically. I'm just "wise" enough to speculate that I can pull you farther and farther away from your own Kantian assumptions.

If....others think I'm wrong, let them explain why. If they don't, if they just "thump" me, it goes to show that their attitude towards disagreement is intolerant or something.

My point is that the thumping can often occur because, try as we might to win folks over to our side of the "duty" debate with arguments, their arguments continue to seem just as reasonable to them. And there is no "perfect", transcendental argument able to resolve it.

When the thunping really starts to get out hand, however, is when the philosopher-king gains access to both political, economic and military power on the one hand and theology/ideology on the other.

The rest as they say is history.

To which you respond:

But the law can deal with them generally, too, right? And those who are in charge of deciding the law can, then, deal with it generally also.


Yes, but "general" thinking here is precisely the most dangerous in my view. It can lead to the assumption there must be general behaviors to match it.