Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives

Ethics
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Philippa Foot is the launch pad (or, perhaps, diving board) for the thread Furthering Philippa Foot , where we are looking at how her ideas fit into more recent ruminations.

This is one of Foot’s more interesting articles. Her topic, the hypothetical imperative, is the notion Kant juxtaposes with the categorical imperative in order that he might hang the whole of morality on the latter. Hypothetical imperatives have the rough form “If you want X, do Y”, while categorical imperatives have the form “You ought do Y”. So while a hypothetical imperative binds us only given a goal, a categorical imperative supposedly binds us in all cases.

Now Kant took it that only a categorical imperative could ground morality. Here, Foot argues otherwise. Along the way, she draws comparisons between ethics and etiquette that are well worth further consideration. It’s probably the former that might arouse the most replies, but for my money, the latter is more interesting.

This is another thread in which the intent is a step-by-step crawl through the article; my first, I think, in the new forum.

Here’s the article:

foot_mshi-2.pdf (3.0 MB)

There are some comments in SEP: Philippa Foot (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) .

So to the first page. Foot’s target is up front:

Kant established one thing beyond doubt - namely, the necessity of distinguishing moral judgments from hypothetical imperatives. That moral judgments cannot be hypothetical imperatives has come to seem an unquestionable truth. It will be argued here that it is not.

There’s a bit of fumbling between the use of “good” and “ought” before settling down to not paying it much attention by talking about both. That strikes me as a worthy approach, bypassing a swamp of linguistic gnats.

Over the page, Foot and Kant broaden the number of examples. Hypothetical imperatives include seeking pleasure; consider “if you would be happy, do X”; so utilitarian ethics sits pretty firmly in the realm of the hypothetical imperative.

Anyway, there’s a start.

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Furthering Philippa Foot
On taking a shit
Furthering Philippa Foot
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There are a few notes on the breadth of hypothetical imperatives, a scale from fleeting inclinations through to lifetime “projects”, and as including sometimes only individuals and sometimes groups. Their commonality is the service of some “desire” or “want”, but there is no strong implication in the choice of which. Perhaps Foot’s purpose in this paragraph—spanning pp. 2–3—is to contrast this variety with the relative sparsity of the categorical imperative?

Stronger implications are found in “should” and “ought”, with Foot’s claim that for Kant “should” relates to hypothetical imperatives while “ought” relates to categorical imperatives, and so suggesting that for Kant, it’s only categorical imperatives that have moral import. For Kant, “should” stands in need of support; not so “ought”. Foot then deflates this view with:

When we say that a man should do something and intend a moral judgment we do not have to back up what we say by considerations about his interests or his desires; if no such connection can be found the “should” need not be withdrawn.

A natural language argument: We do use “should” in setting out both categorical and hypothetical imperatives. “Ought” is not quite so important as Kant supposes.

Now at the top of page 4.

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So far Foot has undercut the use of should/ought as a marker for distinguishing hypothetical and categorical imperatives. It’s a neat piece of ordinary language philosophy, the sort of detailed analysis she well learned at the feet of Austin. It has an almost nostalgic appeal for me.

So there is supposedly a special characteristic that marks moral judgements: that they hold unconditionally. And this is what distinguished imperatives that are moral judgements from hypothetical imperatives.

Trouble is, we find categorical “should” statements that are not moral imperatives:

…an invitation in the third person should be answered in the third person…

Elegant stuff. I suppose that this is the sort of thing a President’s Granddaughter needs to know.

And here, at the hands of more natural language analysis, the Kantian scaffolding is looking decidedly weak. The should/ought ledgers are not lining up with the hypothetical/categorical uprights. Things are starting to look a bit shaky.

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So to Page Five.

It follows that if a hypothetical use of “should” gives a hypothetical imperative, and a non-hypothetical use of “should” a categorical imperative, then “should” statements based on rules of etiquette, or rules of a club, are categorical imperatives.

Ouch.

Foot addresses a potential reply: that imperatives of etiquette are answerable with "Why should I bother?', that is, that mere etiquette has no hold on us. We have to add some reason to follow the rules of etiquette. And “…by contrast, it is supposed that moral considerations necessarily give reasons for acting to any man.”

So to things not being as they should be. And here’s a curious comment:

…the amoral man, who agrees that some piece of conduct is immoral but takes no notice of that, is inconsistently disregarding a rule of conduct that he has accepted… The fact is that the man who rejects morality because he sees no reason to obey its rules can be convicted of villainy but not of inconsistency.

This plays somewhat against my own argument, from elsewhere, using T-sentences and Moore’s paradox.

Working through that, Foot seems to be asserting that her man can agree that X is immoral, continue to that one ought not to X and yet still do X, and not be considered as being inconsistent.

Still thinking on that, but as it stands, I think her amoral man is inconsistent, suffering that form of inconsistency we call hypocrisy.

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I’ll be following along. . . A few comments coming up.

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I don’t think that’s quite it. She’s saying that the immoral man doesn’t accept that “one ought not to X”:

In saying “he sees no reason to obey its rules,” I take her to be saying that the idea of “ought” makes no sense to him, or at least for him. So, as she says, he isn’t being inconsistent.

Talking of inconsistency leads me to another comment about her starting point, which is very dismissive of Kant. She says:

[M]any, for instance, agree in rejecting Kant’s derivation of duties from the mere form of law expressed in terms of a universally legislative will.

. . .and that’s the last we hear of it, at least so far. But in fact Kant’s version of what a categorical imperative might be is one of the few I’m aware of that deserve a close look. Kant does say that it would be inconsistent for the amoral man to see that X is immoral yet do it anyway. However, his inconsistency is of a peculiar type. It is a formal inconsistency, and Kant believes there are at least two types of contradiction involved. I don’t want to go into all that, because at the end of the day I don’t think there’s much force to the idea that “you should be moral because you contradict yourself if you aren’t.” I’m just pointing out that what Foot calls “mere form of law” is actually a strong and original attempt to forge the “is - ought” link.

Also, Kant made a big contribution to showing how ethics must involve universalizability. One may not agree that there could be such a thing as a categorical imperative, but the content of what Kant believes such an imperative says – the “maxim for everybody” idea – is extremely important.

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Furthering Philippa Foot
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Nice.

So he accepts the classification of a given statement as a ought, but then doesn’t agree that one ought do what one ought do? Foot does seem to be making a move along these lines.

If we have someone who says they ought do something, and yet, all things being equal, the do not do that thing, it seems to me they are either hypocritical or they have not understood he relation between “ought” and action.

It seems to me that “I ought X, but I am not going to X” requires some further explanation, a reason not to do X; and this is what we understand by “I ought X”.

But I may be missing some subtlety here.

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I’m not so familiar with Kant as I probably should be, and am happy to be guided.

I struggle with “universaliseable” ethics. I have my own approach, which I set out roughly in the thread on Nihilism, so I won’t do it again here.

Hope to move on with page six later.

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The extensive paragraph that runs on from p.6 to most of p.7 is a summation of the puzzles so far encountered.

The puzzles concern what is distinctive about moral obligation

  • What is it about the moral “should” that distinguishes it from statements of etiquette or the rules of a club? These are also not hypothetical imperatives, so why must we do the former, but the latter are not so binding?

  • There is a socially informed background for etiquette, for clubs, and for morals, that informs us that the “behavior is required, not simply recommended, but the question remains as to why we should do what we are required to do”.

  • It has been supposed that moral obligations are marked by our individual needs and desires being irrelevant; we ought act in such-and-such a way, regardless of our situation. But etiquette is marked by much the same requirement.

  • Whence the “binding force” of morality? What sort of thing is it? Not a physical compulsion, not penalty-avoidance, not mere acquiescence. Then what?

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Thank you for reviving Philippa Foot.

Grateful for the links to the article, along with the SEP. Your enthusiasm has stirred and shaken me (yeah!) to visit her and the others from the Quartet:
Mapping The Quartet

I hope to follow this discussion and be enlightened…or something.

To help me along, I found this:
Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives - YouTube

This video introduces the student to a strand of Foot’s thinking that opposes Kant’s notion of the Categorical Imperative. We often do what we ‘ought to’ because we have been brought up that way - not to lie for example. Such commands may appear categorical, but someone who acts against them is not necessarily irrational.

This series is developed by Liz McKinnell for Women In Parenthesis. More resources available at our website.

www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk

The video simplifies in 13:25 mins:
Philippa Foot 0:34
Kant’s Basic Rule 1:28
Hypothetical Imperative 6:18
Questions 11:59

I admit to being as intrigued by the 4 philosophers’ relationships. Particularly the personal one between Foot and Murdoch. But that is another story.

I understand that all 4 were exponents of ‘virtue ethics’ but did not always agree.

I’m always fascinated by philosophers and their theories of the what, why, and wherefore of ‘goodness’.

The theory-practice gap. I’m thinking of Iris Murdoch here. Fascinating tension.

First, I need to be clear on what Foot is actually saying or meaning. Hope to catch up…

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Understood. However, I haven’t read the Nihilism thread. Perhaps ask AI for a summary? :wink:

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Thanks for finding the Women in Parentheses site again - it is very good.

The Four are each important, and so are all of them - the “collective”. More strength to their arm.

Please, just add whatever you are thinking; I’ll proceed through the article closely, as planned, but there is no need not to digress from the main flow.

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To page eight, and falling.

One doesn’t get a choice about falling. It’s obligatory, in that way. One has to fall. But you can feel that you are falling while stationary. Saying “I felt I was falling” could be true whether one is falling or not.

One can feel one is falling, but not be falling. So could one feel obligated, but not be obligated?

There is no difficulty about the idea that we feel we have to behave morally, and given the psychological conditions of the learning of moral behavior it is natural that we should have such feelings. What we cannot do is quote them in support of the doctrine of the categorical imperative.

The wedge between the categorical imperative and the obligation is driven a bit deeper.

On taking a shit
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The use of should/ought never belonged to Kantian categorical imperatives: categoricals are shalls, hypotheticals are oughts.
(F.P.M.M., Sect2, 1785)

Note the concept of “law” in the maxim from which the formulae for c.i.’s arise, absent from formulae of mere hypotheticals.

Foot: “….. It follows that if a hypothetical use of “should” gives a hypothetical imperative, and a non-hypothetical use of “should” a categorical imperative….”

It doesn’t follow, but that’s what the “more natural language analysis” gets me.

Imperatives are indications of relations of principles to the will. Hypotheticals relate these principles, categoricals relate those. A non-hypothetical does not give any indication of which principles are being related, but only that these are not. If no indication is given, it cannot be said the principles categoricals use for its relations are in fact being used, which just is to say it cannot be that non-hypotheticals are categoricals.

But she’s right about one thing at least: “few contemporary moralists” will defend Enlightenment-era moral philosophy in general. Which is fine, expected even. Kant admits there’s an awful lot of methodological presupposing going on, in order to fill the severely restricted prescriptions for human morality.

Not sure how much it helps to shitcan the bottom half of them, and then hope to revitalize the remainder in their absence.

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Yes, it’s hard to say for sure what Foot means, but I think it does more justice to her perspicacity to interpret her as saying that the immoral man never gets to “ought” at all. Consider this passage:

These have all rested on some illegitimate assumption, as, for instance, of thinking that the amoral man, who agrees that some piece of conduct is immoral but takes no notice of that, is inconsistently disregarding a rule of conduct that he has accepted.

I want to read “agrees that some piece of conduct is immoral” to mean no more than that. The question of whether immoral conduct ought not to be done is not addressed. The “rule of conduct,” which our man ignores, would be “you ought not to do X,” but he doesn’t get that far.

So there is a separation of “moral” from “you ought,” conceptually, and of course that is debatable, but I think that’s what Foot means.

Universalizability, to my mind, is only one aspect, albeit an important one, of how we understand ethical thought. As I mentioned elsewhere, it clashes with the particularity of our individual lives, which inevitably display an unregrettable, indeed necessary, partiality.

What I appreciate from Kant here is that he offers a philosophically acceptable way to understand the moral insight that’s been around forever: You can’t make an exception of yourself. If you declare that it’s wrong to murder, that means it’s wrong for you to murder. And conversely: If something is an unearned good for everyone, I can’t claim to deserve more than my share of it.

BTW, by “wrong” I don’t mean “always prohibited.” I just mean what everyone usually means – that there are classes of actions which, all things being equal, are rarely the right thing to do, and then under extraordinary circumstances involving conflicts with other ethical pressures.

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I’ve started reading, but I need to catch up (can I ask for time?). Without the reading itself yet, it would appear that “inconsistency” is an attempt at having normative force, but there is still the matter of conceptual identity and responsibility. To not be judged of being “rude”, you must follow etiquette; whether you have a reason for doing it or not, one is still responsible. So being rude or not is, in this sense, “categorical”.

The matter at hand, however, appears to be whether it is necessary to be removed from any interest at all (or, apart from any lesser criteria than internal, abstract logic, Wittgenstein might say) is necessary to be considered “moral” in the first place.

Back to reading.

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Glad you are here to firm up our Kant. I’ll defer to you on exegesis. I understand that Kant mostly uses sollen, so “should”. Is there an issue with Beck? Does Kant distinguish “should” form “ought”? If that is so, then how?

Even so, perhaps Foot is aiming at more recent work, and in English. Ayer, to be sure, and perhaps Hare. Her target may be those who made the presumption of differentiating ought form should. That is, she is not simply presenting an exegesis of Kant.

You seem to be suggesting that there is a third class; that amongst the imperatives we have hypothetical, categorical, and a third class, non-hypotheticals that are not categorical. Is etiquette in this third class? Isn’t that a revision of Kant’s apparently binary classification, that imperatives are all either categorical or hypothetical?

That would be an interesting move, and in opposition to the more common Kantian move of seeing etiquette as hypothetical imperatives.

So where dos etiquette fit?

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Yes, and while I think her amoral man is guilty of a performative contradiction, she may be drawing attention to the absence of a formal contradiction. I can’t see any other way of reading that part of the text. Thanks for sorting that out for me.

Yes, but it’s not obvious that we need the full categorical imperative to achieve this. A hypothetical imperative has the same result.

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Please, proceed at your own pace. I think we are going fairly slowly as things are.

So have I understood your suggestion as being that there is an interest in ethical imperatives not found in etiquette? We can keep an eye on that to see if it can be filled out.

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Interesting. In one way, that’s very true. The universalizable aspect of ethics is a key insight no matter if one is a Kantian or not. In fact that may be why I’m able to admire so much of Kant’s ethical analysis, since I don’t think the cat imp is actually categorical in the way that Kant thought it was.

But then there’s this: We might say that Kant is using the idea of a categorical imperative to rule out the exception that would say, “I don’t accept the hypothesis, so the maxim doesn’t apply to me.” If there were truly a categorical imperative, no one would be able to say, “This doesn’t apply to me.” On this interpretation, making the imperative categorical does add something, in that it widens the idea of “universal” even further – no exceptions, you are bound by the cat imp because you are rational, and a fellow member of the realm of ends, not because you happen to seek a certain ethical result.