So, for example, he argues that anything that can be considered theft is irrational and immoral because if everyone committed all acts of theft imaginable, society would collapse, and thus the idea of property wouldn’t exist, and thus we would have created a “contradiction”, and thus that would violate a universal definition of the word should, and it would thus be immoral
This doesn’t sound like a case of the ‘worst argument in the world’. Also, I’ve now twice encountered someone here who seems to be literally angry at a long dead philosopher. This is very confusing to me.
Kant rejects all specific cases of theft because he considers all general cases of theft to be “wrong” (because if all possible thefts happened it would create a “contradiction” according to his interpretation). Does that clarify what I’m saying?
I don’t feel angry at Kant, but I do like mocking him.
But Kant doesn’t hang anything on a term, like ‘theft’, in the way the WAITW does. Let’s look at Kant’s argument for this claim in the Groundwork. The following is from the second chapter of the Groundwork, which you can get online at earlymoderntexts.com (pages 24-25 in that copy):
(2) Another man sees himself being driven by need to borrow money. He realizes that no-one will lend to him unless he firmly promises to repay it at a certain time, and he is well aware that he wouldn’t be able to keep such a promise. He is disposed to make such a promise, but he has enough conscience to ask himself: ‘Isn’t it improper and opposed to duty to relieve one’s needs in that way?’ If he does decide to make the promise, the maxim of his action will run like this: When I think I need money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know that the repayment won’t ever happen.
Here he is—for the rest of this paragraph—reflecting on this·: ‘It may be that this principle of self-love or of personal advantage would fit nicely into my whole future welfare, ·so that there is no prudential case against it·. But the question remains: would it be right? ·To answer this·, I change the demand of self-love into a universal law, and then put the question like this: If my maxim became a universal law, then how would things stand? I can see straight off that it could never hold as a universal law of nature, and must contradict itself. For if you take a law saying that anyone who thinks he is in need can make any promises he likes without intending to keep them, and make it universal ·so that everyone in need does behave in this way·, that would make the promise and the intended purpose of it impossible—no-one would believe what was promised to him but would only laugh at any such performance as a vain pretense.’
So it’s not that this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’ which involves a contradiction. Rather, the maxim which describes this specific action cannot be understood as a universal law. That doesn’t make the action in any way contradictory. In fact, it’s a neat fulfillment of the demands of self-love. The point is that the agent is incapable, once he reflects on his action, of thinking of the action as one prescribed entirely by reason, because reason always speaks in universals, and this action cannot be understood as a case of a universal. Edit: To clarify, Kant’s point isn’t that this example is a case of a more general kind which is wrong, his point is that the lie is wrong because there’s no more general kind of rational action (which is to say, action, full stop) to which it can belong.
That’s why I don’t think this is a case of the WAITW, even if it happens also to be a bad argument. Incidentally, it’s worth noting (I’ve never noticed this before) that the whole second paragraph is the inner monologue of the lying man himself, not some external analysis. Kant never thought that the CI was somehow something no one could wriggle out of, only that it was in fact the core of the reflections of conscience that we do make.
Edit: I think the idea of mocking or ridiculing some idea or thinker should be met with extreme suspicion, and I think Nietzsche would probably even agree with me on that. Laughing at Kant is a way of not thinking about Kant. For Nietzsche, it was important that we be capable of just not thinking about some things, but we do so at the risk of just laughing everything off, even stuff we should be thinking about. And laughing has no internal limits, no little alarm that goes off when you laugh off something important.
So it’s not that this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’ which involves a contradiction. Rather, the maxim which describes this specific action cannot be understood as a universal law. That doesn’t make the action in any way contradictory. In fact, it’s a neat fulfillment of the demands of self-love. The point is that the agent is incapable, once he reflects on his action, of thinking of the action as one prescribed entirely by reason, because reason always speaks in universals, and this action cannot be understood as a case of a universal. Edit: To clarify, Kant’s point isn’t that this example is a case of a more general kind which is wrong, his point is that the lie is wrong because there’s no more general kind of rational action (which is to say, action, full stop) to which it can belong.
I’m having a hard time seeing this as distinct. It seems to me that the phrase “the maxim which describes this specific action cannot be understood as a universal law” is just a more vague rephrasing of the idea that “this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’ which involves a contradiction”. I agree that his argument is that the specific action can’t be understood as a universal law, but the idea of how we go about translating specific actions into universal laws to me seems to implicitly depend upon the idea that “this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’”. I don’t understand what universal law Kant is rejecting if not the universal law of lying.
Edit: I think the idea of mocking or ridiculing some idea or thinker should be met with extreme suspicion, and I think Nietzsche would probably even agree with me on that. Laughing at Kant is a way of not thinking about Kant. For Nietzsche, it was important that we be capable of just not thinking about some things, but we do so at the risk of just laughing everything off, even stuff we should be thinking about. And laughing has no internal limits, no little alarm that goes off when you laugh off something important.
Nietzsche explicitly laughs at Kant’s Categorical Imperative in the text I quoted. Laughing at things is fun, although I’ll agree it leads to dismissal. So, wait to laugh at an idea until after you’ve heard it out, and then have all the fun with it you want. I think that would be a fine solution. The alternative is to not laugh at bad arguments, and that sort of leads to despairing at the stupidity of the masses, I think.
I agree that his argument is that the specific action can’t be understood as a universal law, but the idea of how we go about translating specific actions into universal laws to me seems to implicitly depend upon the idea that “this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’”. I don’t understand what universal law Kant is rejecting if not the universal law of lying.
I don’t think your description is off the mark, but I do think this sets it apart from the worst argument in the world. if Kant were making the worst argument in the world, his claim would be that this man’s action is a lie, and that because some lies are bad or contradictory, this lie must be as well. But Kant doesn’t appeal to 1) a general action type, or 2) any other particular cases of actions similar to this one.
I take (2) to be obvious from the text, so I’ll just defend (1). The maxim of an action is not a general action type, but the law or rule of which some action is a case. So we have three things: the particular case of lying, the general action-type of lying, and the rule of which this particular case is a case. It may (or may not) be true that all cases of lying, and thus the action-type as a whole, fall under the same rule that this particular case falls under. This wouldn’t matter to Kant’s argument, since he only appeals to the rule under which this particular action falls. Notice that the maxim described in his argument doesn’t come close to being a rule for all cases of lying. It’s only intended to be a rule for this specific case.
I think that you think that Kant thinks that action-types are defined by maxims, such that a lie is wrong because it falls under the action-type ‘lying’ which is defined by such and such a maxim. But this can’t be right, because Kant’s whole point is that the lie he’s discussing, on reflection, simply has no maxim. It only seems to. Thus it cannot be the result of reason alone, and we can only explain the action in terms of a heteronomous will (a will governed by many conflicting interests, which he goes on to discuss at the end of chapter 2 and 3). So even if action types were defined by maxims, there wouldn’t be an action type for lying to fall under, because it has no maxim.
This doesn’t sound like a case of the ‘worst argument in the world’. Also, I’ve now twice encountered someone here who seems to be literally angry at a long dead philosopher. This is very confusing to me.
Kant rejects all specific cases of theft because he considers all general cases of theft to be “wrong” (because if all possible thefts happened it would create a “contradiction” according to his interpretation). Does that clarify what I’m saying?
I don’t feel angry at Kant, but I do like mocking him.
But Kant doesn’t hang anything on a term, like ‘theft’, in the way the WAITW does. Let’s look at Kant’s argument for this claim in the Groundwork. The following is from the second chapter of the Groundwork, which you can get online at earlymoderntexts.com (pages 24-25 in that copy):
So it’s not that this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’ which involves a contradiction. Rather, the maxim which describes this specific action cannot be understood as a universal law. That doesn’t make the action in any way contradictory. In fact, it’s a neat fulfillment of the demands of self-love. The point is that the agent is incapable, once he reflects on his action, of thinking of the action as one prescribed entirely by reason, because reason always speaks in universals, and this action cannot be understood as a case of a universal. Edit: To clarify, Kant’s point isn’t that this example is a case of a more general kind which is wrong, his point is that the lie is wrong because there’s no more general kind of rational action (which is to say, action, full stop) to which it can belong.
That’s why I don’t think this is a case of the WAITW, even if it happens also to be a bad argument. Incidentally, it’s worth noting (I’ve never noticed this before) that the whole second paragraph is the inner monologue of the lying man himself, not some external analysis. Kant never thought that the CI was somehow something no one could wriggle out of, only that it was in fact the core of the reflections of conscience that we do make.
Edit: I think the idea of mocking or ridiculing some idea or thinker should be met with extreme suspicion, and I think Nietzsche would probably even agree with me on that. Laughing at Kant is a way of not thinking about Kant. For Nietzsche, it was important that we be capable of just not thinking about some things, but we do so at the risk of just laughing everything off, even stuff we should be thinking about. And laughing has no internal limits, no little alarm that goes off when you laugh off something important.
I’m having a hard time seeing this as distinct. It seems to me that the phrase “the maxim which describes this specific action cannot be understood as a universal law” is just a more vague rephrasing of the idea that “this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’ which involves a contradiction”. I agree that his argument is that the specific action can’t be understood as a universal law, but the idea of how we go about translating specific actions into universal laws to me seems to implicitly depend upon the idea that “this guy’s lie is a case of some more general act ‘lying’”. I don’t understand what universal law Kant is rejecting if not the universal law of lying.
Nietzsche explicitly laughs at Kant’s Categorical Imperative in the text I quoted. Laughing at things is fun, although I’ll agree it leads to dismissal. So, wait to laugh at an idea until after you’ve heard it out, and then have all the fun with it you want. I think that would be a fine solution. The alternative is to not laugh at bad arguments, and that sort of leads to despairing at the stupidity of the masses, I think.
I don’t think your description is off the mark, but I do think this sets it apart from the worst argument in the world. if Kant were making the worst argument in the world, his claim would be that this man’s action is a lie, and that because some lies are bad or contradictory, this lie must be as well. But Kant doesn’t appeal to 1) a general action type, or 2) any other particular cases of actions similar to this one.
I take (2) to be obvious from the text, so I’ll just defend (1). The maxim of an action is not a general action type, but the law or rule of which some action is a case. So we have three things: the particular case of lying, the general action-type of lying, and the rule of which this particular case is a case. It may (or may not) be true that all cases of lying, and thus the action-type as a whole, fall under the same rule that this particular case falls under. This wouldn’t matter to Kant’s argument, since he only appeals to the rule under which this particular action falls. Notice that the maxim described in his argument doesn’t come close to being a rule for all cases of lying. It’s only intended to be a rule for this specific case.
I think that you think that Kant thinks that action-types are defined by maxims, such that a lie is wrong because it falls under the action-type ‘lying’ which is defined by such and such a maxim. But this can’t be right, because Kant’s whole point is that the lie he’s discussing, on reflection, simply has no maxim. It only seems to. Thus it cannot be the result of reason alone, and we can only explain the action in terms of a heteronomous will (a will governed by many conflicting interests, which he goes on to discuss at the end of chapter 2 and 3). So even if action types were defined by maxims, there wouldn’t be an action type for lying to fall under, because it has no maxim.
Okay, I misinterpreted Kant, thanks for the correction!
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
You can think a the Categorical Imperative as a special case of updateless decision theory.