Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives

[Mww]

@Jay

@Mww

What do you think the subject matter of morality is?

I think these words, and similar ones of the sort that Foot is discussing, are the subject matter of morality.

I’m way deeper than that: morality is a condition of every rational being; the subject matter therefore would be that by which the condition is possible on the one hand, and that to which the condition, once proved possible, applies on the other.

The subject needs not think about any of that, does not need to cognize anything, insofar as he is the actual causality of whatever form his morality manifests itself.

@Jay

It’s a terminological nightmare, if nothing else.

Doesn’t need to be. Morality is for and belongs to a subject, ethics is for and belongs to a community of subjects. Ethics requires the intellect in its theoretical mode, in order for any one subject to understand any of the others. Morality, as there are no others in its purview, does not require the intellect in its theoretical mode, but instead in its practical mode, insofar as the intellect in moral affairs is necessarily causal for those objects to which its affairs relate.

In addition, ethics can be subsumed under prescriptions for that which is right, but morality has nothing to do with right, but only with the necessity in satisfaction of the good.
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@Jay

I hope Mww would agree that practical reasoning does manifest itself in the cat imp, but is only one feature of it.

Of course practical reason manifests, but practical reasoning is not a cognitive stance, as far as Kantian philosophy is concerned, which is a justified ground insofar as imperatives all belong to his philosophy. One does not think, does not take a cognitive stance for, a command of reason.
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@Jay

Here is another place where Kant can be his own worst enemy, because he makes it sound as if “applying the cat imp” is some specialized technical procedure that no one had ever thought of till he came along to explain it.

Or, he set out an explanation for why a guy knows what he ought do but ends up not doing it.

Given that the c.i. is a shall, he doesn’t have to choose anything but to acquiesce to some one or more of the three varieties of c.i., and he is guaranteed the status of moral agency. Problem is, he isn’t capable of fulfilling one formula, the command, act only in accordance with that subjective principle he can will into universal law for everyone else as well as himself. He is, nevertheless slightly more possibly capable of adhering to the other two formulae, in which case he authorizes himself as a perfectly moral agent.

So it is a specialized technical procedure, of practical reason, as a basic constituent in a system every one uses but wouldn’t realize it as such until laid out in the form of a metaphysical theory.

Anyway……just another brick in the wall.

[Jay]

@Mww

. Morality is for and belongs to a subject, ethics is for and belongs to a community of subjects. Ethics requires the intellect in its theoretical mode, in order for any one subject to understand any of the others. Morality, insofar as there are no others in its purview, does not require the intellect in its theoretical mode, but instead in its practical mode, insofar as the intellect in moral affairs is necessarily causal for those objects to which its affairs relate.

In addition, ethics can be subsumed under prescriptions for that which is right, but morality has nothing to do with right, but only with the necessity in satisfaction of the good.

Yes, I’m pretty sure this gets us to the same place. Reserving morality for individual good and ethics for right behavior in a community – if that’s what you’re saying – parallels the distinction I want to make.

@Mww

So it is a specialized technical procedure, of practical reason, as a basic constituent in a system every one uses but wouldn’t realize it as such until laid out in the form of a metaphysical theory.

OK, I can accept that too.

@Mww

morality is a condition of every rational being; the subject matter therefore would be that by which the condition is possible on the one hand, and that to which the condition, once proved possible, applies on the other.

Ummm . . . OK, but wouldn’t you agree that the ordinary moral terms are applicable when discussing what is good? I’m not hung up on “subject matter” so much as identifying the kind of discourse it is.

I appreciate the “austerity” of your Kant, though!

[Banno]

So there’s the reading. Here’s a summary:

• Foot breaks down the presumed distinction between “should” and “ought”, showing that these do not align with the hypothetical and categorical imperative.
• She uses this to undermine the supposed distinction between moral and amoral imperatives, using etiquette and club rules as her foil.
• She cites the “amoral man” to show a gap between both amoral and moral imperatives and the act; there is no “binding force” here.
• She reinforces this by contrasting it to falling, where there is such a “binding force”.
• She outlines the psychological disquiet experienced by some in this realisation; some have a psychological need for morality to be as binding as falling. But that need is not sufficient.
• She similarly rejects the binary that we either act in accord with the moral law or we act out of self-interest.
• This involves rejecting the Kantian decree that all non-categorical acts are acts of self-love.
• This reintroduces doing what we want to do into our moral considerations.
• She points out that we can want to be virtuous.
• She asks us to “allow as ends the things that seem to be ends”, and so to see virtues as ends.
• She again uses the “amoral man” to show that acting morally consists in adopting an approach to life, as opposed to doing what is decreed by a process of ratiocination.
• She re-grounds our choices in the visceral reality of getting on with living.

That’s my reading of the article.

[Jay]

Thank you. If we swerve away from Kantianism and just look at what Foot considers important, there’s a lot there. If I had to highlight a few things on your list:

• Morality is a way of living, and recognizing moral values is surely part of any approach to ethics, even if she hasn’t presented a full-fledged “decision theory.”
• “Ought” and “should” are mysterious unless part of a hypothetical imperative, and even there, the concept is often far from clear. What is the “binding force” that “ought” is supposed to convey, even in the hypothetical case?
• Therefore, non-categorical acts are surely part of the moral universe, and talk of them part of moral discourse. We don’t have to take a position on whether such things as virtues are “ends in themselves” in order to note that we really can’t do without them if we want to say anything worthwhile about morality. That is moral discourse.

All this can peacefully co-exist with a version of Kantianism with slightly modified vocabulary, mainly around “moral” vs. “ethical.”

[Banno]

The second, and the link to Anscombe, might be the next direction to take.

The “peaceful coexistence” involves removing the categorical imperative from the centre of ethics, something that folk might resist.

I’m not so sure there can be a reconciliation.

[Tom_Storm]

@Fooloso4

This leads to the question of what work in ethics looks like. What does one hope to achieve?

The ability to tell others they are wrong and bad…

[Tom_Storm]

@Banno

• as opposed to doing what is decreed by a process of ratiocination.

I’m assuming this is like a pot shot at Aristotelian derived morality?

[Banno]

Nuh. I’m having a go at Kant now.

[Jay]

@Banno

The “peaceful coexistence” involves removing the categorical imperative from the centre of ethics, something that folk might resist.

I suppose that’s right. I’m so used to doing so myself, while still thinking of my ethical orientation as indebted to Kant, that I no longer find it strange.

Do you think one could say, as I want to, that the cat imp is categorical if you want to avoid rational inconsistency and if you accept the Kantian version of what autonomy means? Yeah I know, now it’s hypothetical, but I’m looking for a way to honor Kant’s insight that the content of (what he calls) the cat imp adds something important to ethics – just not the force.

In fairness, we shouldn’t then call it “the categorical imperative,” of course, and perhaps to still claim this is Kantian would be like saying, “I enjoy Mozart except for the music part.” I dunno – I’m less concerned with the labels than with trying put the insights into a coherent picture.

@Banno

The second, and the link to Anscombe, might be the next direction to take.

I’d like to read a good Austin-style analysis of how “ought” and “should” show up in ordinary language. That would be informative, and might help explain why the concept seems so clear until you try to spell it out. It would also be important to look at other languages besides English – at a minimum, Greek and German.

[Banno]

So the question is, what of the categorical imperative can be rescued? A good point for ongoing conversation.

But I (we) need to go back to a few posts, and especially to @AntonyNickles.

[Banno]

@AntonyNickles

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”.

That seems to be were the paper goes. To be moral one must be removed from any interest; but this is a counterintuitive notion - to be moral is exactly to be involved. An d if reasons come after the act, there is no place for ratiocination, and seldom even for judgement; one just acts and then chooses how to describe one’s action post hoc.

Here’s the rub: So in both morality and etiquette, habit, or better habituation, is the source of our self-control; and this si very different to the Kantian notion of rational control.

[Fooloso4]

@Tom_Storm

@Fooloso4

This leads to the question of what work in ethics looks like. What does one hope to achieve?

The ability to tell others they are wrong and bad…

As I see it, ethics is part of the question of how I ought to live. It is guided by prudential reasoning or phronesis. It is primarily deliberative rather than rule based. Since we live in society, the question of what is best for me is not divorced from what is best for others. Concern for myself is expansive and includes concern for others.

[Leontiskos]

@Jay

Yeah I know, now it’s hypothetical, but I’m looking for a way to honor Kant’s insight that the content of (what he calls) the cat imp adds something important to ethics – just not the force.

It is precisely the force of moral utterances that draws Foot to Kant, and she later admits that in “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” she “made a rotten job” of distinguishing morality from etiquette in her arguments against Kant (link). Indeed, she eventually comes to realize that the hypothetical approach is shipwrecked because it carries with it no force at all (link).

[Banno]

@Jay

The more interesting question is whether “the good will” has to have the form of a reason that says, “I do X because is the right thing to do.” This is a kind of translation of the categorical imperative, and Foot is rightly calling it out for scrutiny

Yes, this is the central critique of Kant. There is a circularity in doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, but it is difficult to set out explicitly any viciousness here. At the least, “one ought do the right thing because it is the right thing to do” is not all that helpful. What Foot does in this essay is to make our disquiet with such circularity explicit.

[Banno]

@Mww

I would think etiquette is limited to hypothetical imperatives, insofar as the formulation of these satisfies a subjective want, contingent on how it makes the subject feel because of the action he takes.

So we want to differentiate the moral from mere etiquette by associating the former with the categorical imperative but the latter with some hypothetical imperative. Part of the trouble with such an account is that it renders the difference private. How are we to be sure that the motive for some moral act really was the categorical imperative, and not the satisfaction “of a subjective want, contingent on how it makes the subject feel because of the action he takes?”

The difference between etiquette and morality becomes cryptic.

[Banno]

I see you made much the same point as I just did.

[Jay]

@Banno

There is a circularity in doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, but it is difficult to set out explicitly any viciousness here. At the least, “one ought do the right thing because it is the right thing to do” is not all that helpful.

I think “I do the right thing because it is the right thing to do” is viciously circular. It seems to be saying, “I know what the right thing to do is, and that’s why what I’m doing is the right thing.”

Less clear is whether “I do X because it is the right thing to do” is empty of content. At the very least, it’s not helpful, as you say.

Neither one has much promise as a way of understanding Kant’s “good will.”

For that, we need a different way of describing my motivation. We can’t refer back to “the good will” as being itself motivating me. Something like “I do X because I can will that it doesn’t matter that it’s me who is doing X” would be closer, perhaps. It’s that “self-forgetting” idea I was offering in the first thread.

The thrust of the cat imp is that “the right thing” is universalizable. The fact that it’s me being discussed doesn’t matter one bit, so it shouldn’t matter to me either. My decision is meant to have nothing to do with my heteronomous nature, the fact that, as it happens, I am me.

[Jay]

@Banno
And just to follow that up a little . . . If we strip Kant of all the complex vocabulary (and the idea of a genuinely categorical imperative) I maintain that we find a simple, familiar idea that even children understand, though they may not always follow it: Fair is fair. If I say, I deserve 8 pieces, and there are no relevant differences between us, then you deserve 8 pieces too. It doesn’t matter that “you” and “me” happen to be the protagonists here. The principle holds for any two people. “The right thing” is not personal; it is universalizable.

And yes, there are a lot of issues with how that works. I’m just pointing out that the core insight is completely ordinary and familiar.

[Banno]

I think you may be right. This reduces the erstwhile grand categorical imperative to simple consistency. One consequence is that consistency is general, and not specific to ethics, it could no longer function as delimiting ethical discourse.

[Amity]

@Banno

The difference between etiquette and morality becomes cryptic.

Foot’s choice of ‘etiquette’ as an example sounds quite trivial and she may well have revised her opinion later. (see post 73 by @Leontiskos)
However, I am intrigued by her thinking process in the context and mores of her time. I intend to take a closer look…