The most charitable thing that categorical imperatives can be called is arational. The most accurate thing they can be called is unintelligible. The statement “You should do X” is meaningless without an “if you want to accomplish Y,” because otherwise it can’t answer the question, “Why?” More importantly, there is no way to determine which of two contradictory CIs should be followed.
No moral rule can be derived via any rational decision making process alone. Morality requires arational axioms or values. The litany of things you “should” have done if you were individually rational does not actually follow. “Rational” gets used to mean “strictly selfish utility maximizer” a bit more often than it should be, which is never. There may be people who are indeed individually arational to not do those things, but as we all have different values, that does not mean we all are.
-I’m using categorical imperative as distinct from hypothetical imperative—“Don’t lie” vs. “Don’t lie if you want people to trust you.” There can be some confusion over what people mean by CI, from what I’ve seen written on this site.
The most charitable thing that categorical imperatives can be called is arational. The most accurate thing they can be called is unintelligible. The statement “You should do X” is meaningless without an “if you want to accomplish Y,” because otherwise it can’t answer the question, “Why?” More importantly, there is no way to determine which of two contradictory CIs should be followed.
No moral rule can be derived via any rational decision making process alone. Morality requires arational axioms or values. The litany of things you “should” have done if you were individually rational does not actually follow. “Rational” gets used to mean “strictly selfish utility maximizer” a bit more often than it should be, which is never. There may be people who are indeed individually arational to not do those things, but as we all have different values, that does not mean we all are.
-I’m using categorical imperative as distinct from hypothetical imperative—“Don’t lie” vs. “Don’t lie if you want people to trust you.” There can be some confusion over what people mean by CI, from what I’ve seen written on this site.
Categorical imperatives that result in persistence will accumulate.
Why should any lifeform preserve its own existence? There’s no reason. But those that do eventually dominate existence. Those that do not, are not.