Foot's objection against the categorical imperative

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Recently I have been studying various moral theories and from discussing them I don’t think I’ve fully grasped Foot’s complaint against the distinction between hypothetical en categorical imperatives.

Please correct me if you think I’m wrong or add if you think something is missing.

As I understand it the hypothetical imperative (HI) is applicable when someone wants to achieve a certain goal.
It describes a normative necessity for the reaching of this goal, if you want to achieve this goal then you must want this mean to the goal, do x if you want y. When an action is deemed ‘good’ for reaching a certain goal it is HI.

The categorical imperative (CI) describes a objective necessity. Something that has to be obeyed no matter what. These actions are intrinsically good, irrespective of the consequences, do x just because. It is commonly stated as: act as if you want the maxime to be a universal law.

If I now correctly understand Foot, she means to object that CI is actually a HI because it doesn’t necessarily make us act how the CI would need us to.
Not doing something while it is good according to the CI doesn’t mean that someone is irrational. The CI doesn’t give us a reason to act according to Foot?

Is the problem here that Kant thinks that if someone doesn’t follow the CI and only acts out of self interest that then he wouldn’t promote things like justice?
Where Foot thinks that we don’t really need this coercion of the CI to act ‘good’?

If I haven’t been able to bring my question across in an understandable way, my apologies, please ask if anything is unclear.

2

I don’t know Foot, but I think I know what your saying:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristo_of_Chios
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicaearchus

So, what constitutes the Dicaearchian Constitution that Patriarch Photius last saw? It was a unique form of government apparently, from the rest of the Kyklos Cycle from antiquity. I’ve studied a Neo-Platonist text proposingba new kind of constitution, from the sixth century, but it doesn’t cut muster for what Photius claimed he read.

We do know there was considerable debates in the Stoic and Peripatetic schools over favoring idealized ends, versus pragmatic, achievable ends as the higher good.

Its not really a subject looked at anymore, found it of interest a while back for ending a long, drawn out argument that went on for years. Kant was the last major philosopher to investigate the Stoics in Germany, after that, they entered the dark ages, and only knew it through Hegel.

I don’t have the book on me, think it was Polymnia Athanassiadi in “Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity” that tackled the German problem as to why Germans Hegel on systematically blundered in interpreting Stoic philosophy… Kant gets by unscathed, did his research well.

3

No, wait… think it’s “Topics in Stoic Philosophy”
by Katerina Ierodiakonou.

Both by Greek Women, similar cover.

4

I don’t know Foot, but she seems to present the immoralist stance that there is no real objective reason to act morally to begin with. Or put in another way, you need to be convinced to act morally first in order for the rest to even follow. And i think she’s basicly right, Kant just kinda assumes that is what morality is, e.g. because it follows from pure reason and from the definition of what a law is or something like that… Read the beginning of his work on morals, you will not find a real justification for it, unless maybe you happen to buy into his metaphysics.

Edit: HI are of the form “If X than ought Y”, which means you only need to do Y if you want X. These are not really moral oughts but rather causal oughts. CI are supposed to be ends in themselves, that we are supposed to allways ‘ought’ e.g. not only if we happen want them… So i suppose Foot is saying that since Kant doesn’t really give us a reason why we ought to ought those, they are also merely HI. Which seems to me a convulted way of saying that Kant didn’t have a justification for his CI.

5

Seems like meaning making to me.

What kind of phrase is “normative neccesity”? Adds unnecessary bloat to the conversation.

Good and bad is in relation to an ideal. So if your ideal is saving lives, killing lives to save lives would be hypocritical according to that ideal. Who is to say that sacrificing one man to save a crowd is more right or wrong? Depends on who you value more, the man or the crowd. You could argue if the man was a scientist, and the crowd a bunch of bad people, his life would be more valuable. But it’s all meaning making. The difference between HI and CI are meaningless terms. How can their be an CI except in relation to an ideal? Both are in relation to an ideal, the difference is meaningless.

6

Unless one has a pragmatic basis to it.

Its something hidden in the theory of categorical imperatives, the Greeks recognized the difference.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia

Is the highest Eudaimonia something purely abstract, such as certain Stoics claiming that true Stoics are impossible… or is Eudaimonia the absolute best someone actually could do, like in Volitare’s Deism… “This is the best of all possible world”… when all the consideration of everone’s free will is juxtapositioned against one another.

I prefer the thinkers in the first two links… Ethics is linked to health and well being, history to causality, recognizing high ideals can lead to terrible consequences.

The US Military is the last great bastion of Kant’s Categorical Imperatives. If you go to west point, they spend a whole year drilling their teachings of it into you. Its why the military puts emphasis on using Rules of Engagement, you can’t just say to a soldier “All Live is Worthwhile” and “Peace is Always Best” and stand him on a checkpoint with a rifle and a few grenades at a highly hostile neighborhood… those abstractions are completely meaningless, and you’ll have one scared soldier and a bloodbath a little while later.

Instead, you structure those wide principles on a reductive basis, with a dependable position (preferably defensible, or with backup). You reduce qualitatively from the top down… your actions allow for “All Live is Worthwhile” and “Peace is Always Best”… when people are cooperating and not trying to kill you. But once you do, you react with the most limited amount of force within reason, set in advance by rules. “If they get uppity, shoot off a warning shot”. If this succeeds, they back off. If not, then reduce a further stance, shoot near them, if that fails, shoot to wound, if that fails and Only Humean is in full charge, screaming Allah Philosophia at you, shoot to kill.

None of those stances, save maybe the first, is the best Utopia we can imagine, and they have to be constantly adapted to events, and order skipped if time isn’t present to pull them off.

Greeks didn’t have as refined as a system, but they had each element of the argument. Categorical Imperatives are a vibrant, living part of philosophy… it’s part of our civilization, in active use. The dichotomy exists, legally and in practice in the field. There is a difference between abstract usage and concrete experience of it’s usage, and if you get it wrong, you can be jailed for it. Juries in the civilian world kinda apply it in their judgments at time. Is it legitimate to fight in self defence if you can just run away? Is the crime of self defense in this case, when it results in death of the attacker, that same as a premeditated murder? Our laws grade different kinds of offensives per class, but when there is wiggle room, juries often times make this deductive argument against a higher rules of engagement society never has fully codified. In early English law, it was more apparent we did. You look at Saxon law, like the Laws of Ingrid (I think 8th or 9th century) its more obvious.

In the Hittite legal codes, they also showed the evolution of law and penalty… “punishment or fine was this, now it’s that”.

There is a awareness of categorical imperatives in all people, but the emphasis on punishment, rights, and lethality is in flux, but not completely nebulas to the point you can put a pink unicorn as the highest ideal, punishment is sandwich. You can’t do a full Sauwelios here, cause the human mind is pidgeoned hole… we react within limited emotional ranges, and only can think in set neurological patterns, however alien your civilization us, due to hardwiring of the brain. Men generally react to force similarly, desire wealth similarly, fear similarly. When they don’t, we’ve experienced enough of history where our scholars can point out, they behave like this civilization for causes X, Y, Z… our psychologists can deduce why, and out tacticians adapt their methods in response. When friction arises, we record the fuck ups, so future generations can adapt.