One practical question that remains to be answered is how can we determine whether instances of our ‘will’ (our choices/intentions) are ‘free’ Vs. being only a consequence of the natural world, therefore deterministic, therefore not free but an expression of external forces that move us and of tendencies that merely ‘happen’ to us.
I suggest that choices that result from deliberation, made on the basis of consistent reasoning are, to a degree, free, whereas choices for which we have no clear reason are deterministic. Choices are perfectly free only if our reasons are perfectly consistent with the world as we know it, including our self-ideation within it.
You arrive exactly at what for some might be a weak point of Kant but what I regard his strongest point and the crux of his moral theory. The tricky thing however is that it is of course at the same time the hardest thing to understand in Kant's theory of freedom (at least for me it was). Not the least because freedom of the will can't be understood by means of our mere categories of the understanding but needs an overarching faculty (reason).
This question also circles back to our discussion about (real empirical world) minus (what’s conceptual about it) = ?
And like I said in part 1 Kant's use of examples doesn't make things easier.
Your question deserves a long and elaborate answer beyond the scope of introductory guides, I need time for that and maybe can result in a separate article (for which I have at least 1 reader! ;-)
For now I will address your last proposition and dm you the four last pages from Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" that might shed some light:
"Choices are perfectly free only if our reasons are perfectly consistent with the world as we know it, including our self-ideation within it."
I don't consider this in line with Kant's concept of freedom of will. Like I said: determination of a free will (in Kant's view) doesn't need an elaborate knowledge of the world.
After reading the 4 pages I can see how our prior discussion about the identity of Reality and the ‘idea of’ Reality is relevant to the Kantian conception of Freedom. Since Kant posits the ‘thing in itself’ as the unknowable source of meaning, for him Reality is always something more than ‘the idea of’ Reality, but, I argue, this position implies contradiction: a meaningless meaning. At the very least, it violates the principle of sufficient reason, which still implies contradiction. From this alleged error his notion of freedom emerges as an unprovable necessity on par with the inexplicable ‘in itself’.
Once we take everything that can be meaningfully posited as belonging to the realm of meaning, therefore the realm of ideas, it is then all subject to the laws of reason, the laws of sense, which also apply to the meaning of Freedom. I note that Kant does not completely close the door to this allegedly a priori consistent view:
“…the idea of a pure world of understanding as a whole of all intelligences, to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (though on the other side we are also members of the world of sense), remains always a useful and permitted idea for the sake of a rational belief, even if all knowledge stops at its boundary useful and permitted for producing in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can 4:463 belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature.”
Except there is no need to posit an “other side”; a distinction of type of signification is sufficient to avoid contradictions, a hierarchy of object- and meta-languages (these modern terms were nevertheless not available to Kant).
On this view, the meaning of freedom, in order to be consistent, must take into account the sense of what the freedom is about, the terms on which the moral choice is made. It does not suffice for perfect freedom to merely ‘have moral reasons’ (which are admittedly transcendental, not ‘empirical’ or even ‘phenomenological’) if those reasons could be morally nonsensical (arbitrary or conditioned by subjective desires), because nonsense is nothing, has no meaningful content, and freedom about nothing is equivalent to nothing, therefore not freedom.
I am not arguing that inconsistencies in our moral reasoning imply no freedom, but only limit freedom to something less than perfection. Another way, the degree of our moral freedom is limited by the degree of nonsense in our conception of the terms of choice, and those terms belong to the world as we know it, and without which our moral actions would be inconceivable.
On a seperate question, that of a practical reason for the necessity of freedom, I consider it proven that freedom is an essential, constitutive property of agency, and that it is impossible for agency not to value itself. As such, freedom (even if one desires the freedom to self-destruct) is something that conscious rational agency is motivated to maximise: the deepest reason behind every intention is to realise our intention perfectly, without impediment, without distortion, which is to say, agency seeks to perfect itself. Nonsense is an impediment to this universal aim.
I am not sure in what sense could ‘good will’ be ‘immediate’ but I argue that good will, good faith, or the recognition of others as beings who share our moral status, is an a priori condition of our individual agency, which is conditional on reflexive, meaningful, constructive relations with other rational agents.
I think your departure from Kant lies in your condition of "meaningful, constructive relations" which could be considered as indeed a condition dependent on "terms belonging to the world as we know it" as you put it. It seems your morality is dependent on a shared consistent view on the world as we know it (isn't that a lot to ask?)
The "immediate" in this Kantian sense is to be understood also as the opposite of "mediate". Meaning no need of mediation of external conditions.
In order to communicate, use a language, or to even ‘think’ or ‘imagine’, implies some common terms, a common meaning-content for multiple instances of consciousness (other minds), which implies being in ‘the same’ world. This does not preclude subjectivity being different from individual to individual, different interpretations of what we have in common, but even ‘disagreement’ presupposes having something in common that allows us to recognise that ‘we’ disagree about ‘something’. Common meaning is logically necessary (a priori) for the possibility of thought, therefore also for moral thought.
The question of ‘immediacy’ must then be qualified. Subjective thought is immediate insofar as it is not determined by the conditions of the world as we know it, hence there is choice; but it is not immediate (and therefore not free) insofar as consciousness is inherently socially mediated, depending on intentional reflexivity (in this we have no choice, if we are to persist as conscious agents).
One practical question that remains to be answered is how can we determine whether instances of our ‘will’ (our choices/intentions) are ‘free’ Vs. being only a consequence of the natural world, therefore deterministic, therefore not free but an expression of external forces that move us and of tendencies that merely ‘happen’ to us.
I suggest that choices that result from deliberation, made on the basis of consistent reasoning are, to a degree, free, whereas choices for which we have no clear reason are deterministic. Choices are perfectly free only if our reasons are perfectly consistent with the world as we know it, including our self-ideation within it.
Thanks for the thorough reading!
You arrive exactly at what for some might be a weak point of Kant but what I regard his strongest point and the crux of his moral theory. The tricky thing however is that it is of course at the same time the hardest thing to understand in Kant's theory of freedom (at least for me it was). Not the least because freedom of the will can't be understood by means of our mere categories of the understanding but needs an overarching faculty (reason).
This question also circles back to our discussion about (real empirical world) minus (what’s conceptual about it) = ?
And like I said in part 1 Kant's use of examples doesn't make things easier.
Your question deserves a long and elaborate answer beyond the scope of introductory guides, I need time for that and maybe can result in a separate article (for which I have at least 1 reader! ;-)
For now I will address your last proposition and dm you the four last pages from Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals" that might shed some light:
"Choices are perfectly free only if our reasons are perfectly consistent with the world as we know it, including our self-ideation within it."
I don't consider this in line with Kant's concept of freedom of will. Like I said: determination of a free will (in Kant's view) doesn't need an elaborate knowledge of the world.
After reading the 4 pages I can see how our prior discussion about the identity of Reality and the ‘idea of’ Reality is relevant to the Kantian conception of Freedom. Since Kant posits the ‘thing in itself’ as the unknowable source of meaning, for him Reality is always something more than ‘the idea of’ Reality, but, I argue, this position implies contradiction: a meaningless meaning. At the very least, it violates the principle of sufficient reason, which still implies contradiction. From this alleged error his notion of freedom emerges as an unprovable necessity on par with the inexplicable ‘in itself’.
Once we take everything that can be meaningfully posited as belonging to the realm of meaning, therefore the realm of ideas, it is then all subject to the laws of reason, the laws of sense, which also apply to the meaning of Freedom. I note that Kant does not completely close the door to this allegedly a priori consistent view:
“…the idea of a pure world of understanding as a whole of all intelligences, to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (though on the other side we are also members of the world of sense), remains always a useful and permitted idea for the sake of a rational belief, even if all knowledge stops at its boundary useful and permitted for producing in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can 4:463 belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature.”
Except there is no need to posit an “other side”; a distinction of type of signification is sufficient to avoid contradictions, a hierarchy of object- and meta-languages (these modern terms were nevertheless not available to Kant).
On this view, the meaning of freedom, in order to be consistent, must take into account the sense of what the freedom is about, the terms on which the moral choice is made. It does not suffice for perfect freedom to merely ‘have moral reasons’ (which are admittedly transcendental, not ‘empirical’ or even ‘phenomenological’) if those reasons could be morally nonsensical (arbitrary or conditioned by subjective desires), because nonsense is nothing, has no meaningful content, and freedom about nothing is equivalent to nothing, therefore not freedom.
I am not arguing that inconsistencies in our moral reasoning imply no freedom, but only limit freedom to something less than perfection. Another way, the degree of our moral freedom is limited by the degree of nonsense in our conception of the terms of choice, and those terms belong to the world as we know it, and without which our moral actions would be inconceivable.
On a seperate question, that of a practical reason for the necessity of freedom, I consider it proven that freedom is an essential, constitutive property of agency, and that it is impossible for agency not to value itself. As such, freedom (even if one desires the freedom to self-destruct) is something that conscious rational agency is motivated to maximise: the deepest reason behind every intention is to realise our intention perfectly, without impediment, without distortion, which is to say, agency seeks to perfect itself. Nonsense is an impediment to this universal aim.
That's a clear and elaborate departure from Kant.
I assume then the idea of "an immediate a-priori good will" is somewhat nonsensical in your view? Or maybe impossible?
I am not sure in what sense could ‘good will’ be ‘immediate’ but I argue that good will, good faith, or the recognition of others as beings who share our moral status, is an a priori condition of our individual agency, which is conditional on reflexive, meaningful, constructive relations with other rational agents.
I think your departure from Kant lies in your condition of "meaningful, constructive relations" which could be considered as indeed a condition dependent on "terms belonging to the world as we know it" as you put it. It seems your morality is dependent on a shared consistent view on the world as we know it (isn't that a lot to ask?)
The "immediate" in this Kantian sense is to be understood also as the opposite of "mediate". Meaning no need of mediation of external conditions.
In order to communicate, use a language, or to even ‘think’ or ‘imagine’, implies some common terms, a common meaning-content for multiple instances of consciousness (other minds), which implies being in ‘the same’ world. This does not preclude subjectivity being different from individual to individual, different interpretations of what we have in common, but even ‘disagreement’ presupposes having something in common that allows us to recognise that ‘we’ disagree about ‘something’. Common meaning is logically necessary (a priori) for the possibility of thought, therefore also for moral thought.
The question of ‘immediacy’ must then be qualified. Subjective thought is immediate insofar as it is not determined by the conditions of the world as we know it, hence there is choice; but it is not immediate (and therefore not free) insofar as consciousness is inherently socially mediated, depending on intentional reflexivity (in this we have no choice, if we are to persist as conscious agents).