Without Kant’s “nonsensical” detour through rationality, you don’t understand his position at all. There is no particular agreement on what “free will” means, and Kant chose to stick fairly closely to one particular line of thought on the subject. He maintained that you’re only really free when you act rationally, which means that you’re only really free when you do the right thing. Kant also held that a being with the capacity for rationality should be treated as if free even if you had little reason to think they were being rational (and so were free) at the moment (as, indeed, was the usual course of things). Hence his stance on how to treat wrong-doers; you treat, say, a murderer (murder is definitely irrational for Kant!) as if he’s being rational, that is, as if killing someone were a reasonable response in certain circumstances, by applying this principle to your treatment of him; by executing him. All very convoluted, to be sure, but while I am not going to insist that it all works (since I don’t think it does), it certainly does link freedom and morality very closely together without having any absurd implication that morality isn’t concerned with doing the right thing.
I agree that I don’t understand Kant. It’s impossible to understand something that doesn’t make sense. The best you can do is try to construct the most-similar argument that does make sense.
it certainly does link freedom and morality very closely together without having any absurd implication that morality isn’t concerned with doing the right thing.
The word “certainly” appears to be an attempt to compensate for a lack of a counter-argument. When I’ve said “A, B, A&B=>C, therefore C”, responding to my argument requires you to address A, B, or A&B=>C, and not just assert “not(C)”.
Kant’s focus on assigning credit or blame as being an essential part of morality implies that the end goal of moral behavior is not to get good outcomes, but the credit or blame assigned, as I explained at length in the post. This “morality may be concerned with doing the right thing—as a precondition—but it isn’t about doing the right thing.
Kant used his peculiar meaning of free will, but at the end turned around and applied it as if he had been using the definition I use in this post. If Kant truly meant that “free” means “rational”, then making a long argument starting from the precept that man is rational so that he could claim at the end, “Now I have proven man is rational!” would not make any sense. And if Kant was inconsistent or incoherent, I can’t be blamed for picking one possible interpretation.
Without Kant’s “nonsensical” detour through rationality, you don’t understand his position at all. There is no particular agreement on what “free will” means, and Kant chose to stick fairly closely to one particular line of thought on the subject. He maintained that you’re only really free when you act rationally, which means that you’re only really free when you do the right thing. Kant also held that a being with the capacity for rationality should be treated as if free even if you had little reason to think they were being rational (and so were free) at the moment (as, indeed, was the usual course of things). Hence his stance on how to treat wrong-doers; you treat, say, a murderer (murder is definitely irrational for Kant!) as if he’s being rational, that is, as if killing someone were a reasonable response in certain circumstances, by applying this principle to your treatment of him; by executing him. All very convoluted, to be sure, but while I am not going to insist that it all works (since I don’t think it does), it certainly does link freedom and morality very closely together without having any absurd implication that morality isn’t concerned with doing the right thing.
I agree that I don’t understand Kant. It’s impossible to understand something that doesn’t make sense. The best you can do is try to construct the most-similar argument that does make sense.
The word “certainly” appears to be an attempt to compensate for a lack of a counter-argument. When I’ve said “A, B, A&B=>C, therefore C”, responding to my argument requires you to address A, B, or A&B=>C, and not just assert “not(C)”.
Kant’s focus on assigning credit or blame as being an essential part of morality implies that the end goal of moral behavior is not to get good outcomes, but the credit or blame assigned, as I explained at length in the post. This “morality may be concerned with doing the right thing—as a precondition—but it isn’t about doing the right thing.
Kant used his peculiar meaning of free will, but at the end turned around and applied it as if he had been using the definition I use in this post. If Kant truly meant that “free” means “rational”, then making a long argument starting from the precept that man is rational so that he could claim at the end, “Now I have proven man is rational!” would not make any sense. And if Kant was inconsistent or incoherent, I can’t be blamed for picking one possible interpretation.
Win.