I have taken a hiatus from updating this journal in recent weeks in the hope that anyone who was skipping my tutorial and just reading the lecture notes online would come and hear the words from the horse's mouth.

Kant is difficult enough that not only should you read the notes I am putting up online, but you are also strongly encourage to come and attend the tutorial on Friday. It could payoff bigtime come quiz time, as those of you who came out to the lecture today know.

To begin, I would like to recommend this amusing little comic that sums up part of what Kant is going on about in a bite sized piece.

Second, I would like to direct you to an articulation of Kant's ideas that I think is pretty much bang on, and also offers a way of thinking about Kant in the fun context of a game!

"HOW TO BE MORAL: THE BOARD GAME ( the CI procedure)
Hey, kids! Let's play the Practical Deliberation and the Categorical Imperative Procedure game! ;)

START HERE -- C'mon everyone! Join in!

Step One: Formulate a maxim in roughly this form:

I am to do X (some action) in circumstances C in order to achieve Y (some state of affairs).

Step Two: Test this maxim in accordance with the Hypothetical Imperative (the principles of self-interested rationality suitably understood) in the following way:

A rational agent who wills an end (or set of ends) is also to will some means that are effective (necessary and sufficient) in achieving this end (or set of ends) and preferably is to will the most effective means.

Wheee! Having fun yet? I know I am! ;D

Step Three: Test only the maxim which has survived Step Two by a separate test, videlicet, the Categorical Imperative procedure. Here's how it goes:

1. Start with the maximum which survived the Hypothetical Imperative test and hence was proven to be rational. Such a rational maxim will take the following form:

I am to do X in circumstances C in order to achieve Y.

2. Generalize the preceding maxim so it now takes the following form:

Everybody is to do X in circumstances C in order to achieve Y.

3. Transform the general precept from (2) into a law of nature as follows:

Everybody does X in circumstances C in order to achieve Y.

4. Adjust the system of existing nature in accordance with the law of nature from (3):

Everybody does X in circumstances C, etc., in this now adjusted or perturbed system of nature.

If the maxim produces a contradiction at (4), then it has failed the CI procedure. If it doesn't, it has passed.

Step Four: If the rational maxim from Step Two fails the CI procedure, then player must return to Step One without collecting $200 and must try again. He must formulate another rational maxim, run it against the CI procedure, and keep doing so until the maxim is rational and reasonable. Only then is the agent supposed to act on the maxim.

STOP

Here's the general idea behind the CI Procedure:

All moral philosophy before Kant depended on the view that the good was an object of desire, of knowledge, of volition, etc. The notion of the good was identical with some intrinsically valuable material concept, be it happiness (encapsulated in Mill's utilitarianism and criticized in the first half of of your Kant reading), perfection, moral feeling, the will of God, the Ten Commandments, the good life for man, etc. All of these are objects that we're supposed to seek after.

But all of these moral theories suffer from a fatal paradox: none is sufficient for the possibility of morality. They're all absolutely wrong in principle.

There are two premises that are constitutive of moral obligation, and pre-critical moral theories violate one or both:

1. There is a constraint on the will to act in a specific fashion, whether or not it's what one desires. The fact of our desire cannot determine what we're supposed to do.



2. This constraint (call it "duty") not only determines the will but must also be capable of being freely chosen by the agent. Otherwise it's coercion and not morality.

Both premises are constitutive of moral obligation and tell us what we have to do with necessity. They're determinative features of our moral experience. For the good to be a meaningful concept, it must be related to the agent as an obligation to internalize it and make it a principle of the will.

All human acts are a priori legislative. The presupposition of all modern moral philosophers (e.g., Kant and Nietzsche) is that the moral law points out a contradiction in my willing. But why is a contradiction immoral? Because it amounts to making an exception for myself, thereby excluding myself from the community of human beings. Logical consistency is the minimal necessary condition of free action. This means that moral action is the law of contradiction in action. All of the formulations of the moral law -- the categorical imperative, humanity as an end in itself, and the realm of ends -- all have this idea as their source. The immoral action is the one that makes an exception for an individual, thereby excluding him or her from the rules that the rest of humanity has to follow."