Ralf M. Bader

This chapter argues that we have transcendental freedom, according to Kant, due to being both rational and sensible creatures that face two heterogeneous incentives. Freedom is, accordingly, located at the crossroads between reason and sensibility and is restricted to the choice between rational self-love and self-conceit. It then examines how practical deliberation proceeds and how incentives are incorporated to result in actions in order to identify the different types of practical irrationality that Kant countenances. It argues that there is only one type of practical irrationality in the moral sphere, namely having a bad will, but that there cannot be weakness of will in terms of implementing one’s commitment. In the prudential sphere, by contrast, there is no irrationality with respect to end-setting, yet there might be practical irrationality in pursuing happiness, since there can be actions that lead to more pleasure despite bringing about less happiness.

This chapter argues that the normative significance of humanity is not to be understood in axiological terms (and that it is hence somewhat misleading to speak of the “value of humanity”) but is instead to be construed in distinctly deontological terms (and that it is accordingly preferable to speak of the “status of humanity”). It argues, in particular, that humanity has dignity insofar as humanity is the ground of being a member of the domain over which maxims have to be universalizable. Since the domain of universalization would be empty if there should not be anything having dignity, humanity classifies as the ground of the categorical imperative.

The first part of this chapter argues that there are no non-symmetric relations at the fundamental level. The second part identifies different ways in which asymmetry and order can be introduced into a world that only contains symmetric but no non-symmetric fundamental relations. The third part develops an account of derivative relations and puts forward identity criteria that establish that derivative non-symmetric relations do not have distinct converses. Instead of a plurality of relations, there are only different ways of picking out the same relation. The final part provides an account of how generative operations can induce order and argues for a reconceptualisation of grounding as an operation rather than as a relation.

The first part of Chapter 11 uses considerations of sequential choice to argue that suboptimal beneficence is impermissible. The second part shows how the prohibition on suboptimal beneficence follows from an agent-relative theory that understands permissible actions in terms of a dominance principle defined over both the agent-relative and the agent-neutral ordering. This theory incorporates agent-relative prerogatives that ensure that agents are not required to do what is impartially best, yet rules out suboptimal beneficence. The third part shows that the prohibition on suboptimal beneficence is in tension with dynamic consistency, since it leads to violations of expansion consistency condition beta. If an agent makes use of myopic choice principles (which are purely forward-looking) or sophisticated choice principles (that make use of backwards induction), then there can be cases in which he can, by means of a sequence of permissible choices, bring about an outcome that is deemed to be impermissible from the outset. This problem is addressed by developing global choice principles that ensure dynamic consistency.

The supervenience argument against non-reductive moral realism threatens to rule out the existence of irreducibly normative properties by establishing that for every normative property there is a corresponding non-normative property that is necessarily co-extensive with it. This chapter identifies a hyperintensional analogue of the supervenience argument that threatens non-reductionism even within a hyperintensional setting by establishing that for every normative property there is a corresponding non-normative property that has the very same grounds and is, accordingly, hyperintensionally equivalent. It is then argued that non-reductionism can nevertheless be salvaged by distinguishing the different grounding relations that are involved in grounding the normative property and the corresponding non-normative property. Non-reductionist versions of moral realism thus turn out to be committed to there being irreducibly different grounding relations.

This chapter argues in support of moralized conceptions of liberty on the grounds that distinguishing between liberty and license allows us to develop a theoretically fruitful notion of freedom that is intrinsically normatively significant and that can play a substantive role in political philosophy. Section 2 argues that the contrast between liberty and license is to be understood in terms of a moralization of the z-parameter, whereby the domain of this parameter consists of permissible courses of action. Section 3 defuses the prisoner objection, which is frequently taken to be one of the primary reasons for rejecting moralized accounts. Section 4 argues that only moralized conceptions of liberty can underwrite the presumption of liberty by providing us with a notion of freedom that is intrinsically normatively significant.

By providing an interpretation of Nozick’s justification of the state in _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_, this paper identifies and illustrates a form of justification that is distinct from traditional hypothetical, teleological, and historical justifications. The proposed counterfactual or rectificationist justification treats the justification of institutional structures as being analogous to that of property distributions, subsuming these domains under a unified theory of justification. The first part of the paper resolves three interpretative puzzles that arise when trying to understand Nozick’s attempt to justify the minimal state by means of a hypothetical invisible-hand account, whereas the second part of the paper develops the general approach in abstraction from Nozick’s framework.

This chapter provides a framework for understanding two ways in which reasons can vary across contexts, namely through the effects of (1) conditions which take the form of enablers and disablers, as well as (2) modifiers which take the form of intensifiers and attenuators. The chapter establishes that the distinction between those features of the context that condition or modify a reason and those that constitute the reason is metaphysically robust and can be drawn in a non-arbitrary and non-pragmatic manner, and that the former features cannot be included in the specification of the reason. Moreover, it will be shown that intrinsicality as well as restricted forms of non-trivial separability can be preserved, thereby establishing that the additive theory of weighing reasons can be rendered consistent with these forms of context-dependence.

This chapter explains how outer appearances end up in time, despite the fact that time is only the form of inner sense, on the basis that they are objects of representations of which we become aware in a temporal manner by means of an act of reflexive awareness. This temporalising function of inner sense is to be distinguished from the subjective temporal ordering that results from the reappropriation of mental states by means of inner intuition. Both these functions pertain to sensibility and are, in turn, to be distinguished from time determination, which is performed by the understanding. There is thus a three-fold progression: 1. the temporalising of appearances as a result of reflexive awareness (subjective simultaneity), 2. the subjective ordering of representings that occurs as part of the reappropriation of mental states (subjective succession), and 3. the objective ordering identified by means of time determination (objective simultaneity and succession).

McMahan and Savulescu have put forward a two-tier view that combines person-affecting and impersonal considerations and that is supposed to both favour gene editing over genetic selection and favour saving an existing person over creating a new person. This note shows that a contrastive construal of person-affecting reasons does favour saving over creating, but fails to favour gene editing over genetic selection, whereas a non-contrastive construal does the reverse. Moreover, it shows that both approaches lead to dynamic inconsistencies and to sub-optimal outcomes being chosen.

This paper provides an account of the asymmetry in population ethics. The first half of the asymmetry is explicated by means of a person-affecting view, whereas the second half is established by means of a structural consistency constraint. This account can be integrated into a general theory that can handle (i) cases where there are externalities in that members of the original distribution are positively or negatively affected by bringing the miserable life into existence, (ii) cases in which one is concerned not only with bringing individual persons into existence but also groups of people, and (iii) situations in which it is uncertain whether an action will result in the addition of lives that are worth not living.

This paper argues that impersonal versions of utilitarianism involve an objectionable axiology that does not take personal good seriously. Rather than attributing ethical significance to personal good, they only consider it to be ethically relevant. As a result, they end up sub-ordinating and sacrificing personal good for the sake of impersonal good and thereby treat persons as mere containers of impersonal good. This gives rise to particularly troubling implications in variable-population cases. The paper then evaluates the prospects for person-affecting versions of utilitarianism. It argues that same-number person-affecting utilitarianism is the only version of utilitarianism that neither involves an objectionable axiology nor requires problematic metaphysical commitments.

Pluralists argue for the distinctness of coinciding objects on the grounds that they have different properties. The grounding problem is the problem of explaining how the supposed difference in properties can arise in the first place. This paper considers this problem as an instance of a more general phenomenon, namely, the problem of dealing with underdetermination in asymmetrical systems admitting of non-trivial automorphisms. It argues in favour of primitivism by developing an account of stochastic grounding that makes room for non-fundamental bruteness and substantially mitigates the costs of primitivism.

This chapter provides an interpretation of the account of the highest good that Kant puts forward in the _Critique of Practical Reason_. The chapter addresses in particular the questions (i) why happiness is included in the highest good, (ii) in what way we are meant to bring our dispositions into complete conformity with the moral law, (iii) why happiness should be distributed in proportion to virtue, (iv) in what sense the highest good is something that we are meant to bring about, and (v) why the validity or bindingness of the moral law presupposes the possibility of the highest good.

Uygar Abaci's Kant's Revolutionary Theory of Modality starts with a helpful and illuminating historical contextualization of Kant's theory of modality. It sets out the ontotheological debates that form the backdrop of Kant's pre-Critical modal theorizing. Abaci covers the proofs of the existence of God by Anselm and Descartes, as well as Leibniz and Wolff. The first two start from the idea of God as the ens perfectissimum and then try to establish the existence of God by arguing that existence is a perfection. The last two, by contrast, consider God to be the ens necessarium, such that God exists necessarily, provided the concept of God is not self-contradictory; they then attempt to establish the possibility of...

This dissertation provides a systematic account of the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. According to the proposed theory, appearances are understood as intentional objects, while phenomena are considered as logical constructs that are grounded in noumena, whereby the grounding relation can be modelled by means of a coordinated multiple-domain supervenience relation. This framework is employed to provide a vindication of metaphysics, by giving dual-level explanations that explain how the world can have ontological structure, making intelligible the applicability of metaphysical concepts, such as unity, persistence, causation and mind-body interaction, to the empirical realm. The key claim that is advanced in the dissertation is that in order to be realists we have to be transcendental idealists. In particular, transcendental arguments are provided that establish that if realism about science, metaphysics and ethics is to be possible, then the world must have a transcendental structure that integrates the fragmented perspective-dependent spatio-temporal frameworks into a unified perspective-independent space-time manifold, space and time must be forms of intuition that give rise to correspondences between appearances and phenomena, making it the case that we can have non-trivial scientific knowledge of the world, and we must have a priori concepts, namely the mathematical and dynamical categories, that allow us to cognise the empirical as well as ontological structure of the world. The ‘fact of experience’ as well as the ‘fact of reason’ are then brought in to strengthen the case for scientific, metaphysical and moral realism, thereby warding off the threat of nihilism. Moreover, a refutation of the more attractive versions of scepticism and idealism is provided, namely of those versions that claim that a subject’s representations or episodes of awareness can be temporally ordered even though they deny or doubt the existence of a law-governed external world. The conclusion then is that a realist stance is to be adopted and that we should consequently accept transcendental idealism and hold that the world has a transcendental structure.

This chapter provides an account of the Kantian theory of value, showing how a plurality of incommensurable values, namely the fundamentally heterogeneous values of morality and prudence, can be integrated into a complete ordering by appealing to the conditionality of the value of happiness, which allows us to explain how the claims of prudence can be silenced by the claims of morality, thereby solving the Sidgwickian problem of the dualism of practical reason. Moreover, it establishes that the Kantian understanding of silencing is the only way of rendering dualism coherent, given that the question as to what one ought to do, considering all the normative demands to which one is subject, requires either that these demands be commensurable, which presupposes monism, or that these demands never conflict, which can only be ensured in principle by means of conditional value structures.