Thanks for noting the connection to Kant; ADT’s minimally-metaphysical yet deontological approach, i.e. its Kantian approach, is its hallmark and triumph. (TDT goes heavier on the metaphysics and is weaker for it.)
Note that Kant actually claimed that he was not preferring one consequence over another, he was finding a self-contradiction in one consequence, and no self-contradiction in the other.
That is, “you should not steal” because, at the end of the slippery slope, there is a self-contradiction, something like “if everybody ought to steal, what does theft even mean?”. (I’m trying to give Kant a fair shake, though I think he’s wrong.)
I’m really not very familiar with Kant, but I guess I always thought to frame it like, after an infinity of time certain norms will defeat themselves, and other norms will reinforce themselves, and if we are to support a self-defeating norm then that’s like choosing to become counterfactual. Then endorsing a self-defeating norm seems metaphysically but not phenomenologically possible, and since Kant didn’t care about metaphysics, it’s straight up impossible. Or something, agh. But anyway it looks ADT-esque, except that Kant had a hard time with meta levels for some reason.
I don’t think it’s right to say that Kant didn’t care about metaphysics. Given that his work on ethics was Metaphysics of Morality and that was based on the more-metaphysical Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morality. Whether one can choose a norm that is inconsistent, is a question for the noumenal world, not the phenomenal world.
Thanks for noting the connection to Kant; ADT’s minimally-metaphysical yet deontological approach, i.e. its Kantian approach, is its hallmark and triumph. (TDT goes heavier on the metaphysics and is weaker for it.)
It’s a funny sort of deontology that is justified by the agent’s preferences over its consequences …
That’s true, it is a funny sort of deontology.
Note that Kant actually claimed that he was not preferring one consequence over another, he was finding a self-contradiction in one consequence, and no self-contradiction in the other.
That is, “you should not steal” because, at the end of the slippery slope, there is a self-contradiction, something like “if everybody ought to steal, what does theft even mean?”. (I’m trying to give Kant a fair shake, though I think he’s wrong.)
I’m really not very familiar with Kant, but I guess I always thought to frame it like, after an infinity of time certain norms will defeat themselves, and other norms will reinforce themselves, and if we are to support a self-defeating norm then that’s like choosing to become counterfactual. Then endorsing a self-defeating norm seems metaphysically but not phenomenologically possible, and since Kant didn’t care about metaphysics, it’s straight up impossible. Or something, agh. But anyway it looks ADT-esque, except that Kant had a hard time with meta levels for some reason.
I don’t think it’s right to say that Kant didn’t care about metaphysics. Given that his work on ethics was Metaphysics of Morality and that was based on the more-metaphysical Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morality. Whether one can choose a norm that is inconsistent, is a question for the noumenal world, not the phenomenal world.