Kant’s theory of freedom is famously described as a “compatibilism of compatibilism and incompatibilism” (Wood 1984: 74). On the one hand, Kant claims that human freedom is not a mere epiphenomenon of causally determined mental states, and, on the other hand, he seeks to reconcile this strong conception of freedom with thoroughgoing natural determinism of empirically observable actions of human agents. Equally famously, this theory of freedom has been given (at least) two different interpretations among contemporary Kantians. According to the first, “two-world” interpretation, human beings are free insofar as they exist in a noumenal world of thing-in-themselves and determined insofar as they exist in a phenomenal world of mere appearances. According to the second, “two-standpoint” (or two perspective) interpretation, human beings are free insofar as they are thought of from a practical or deliberator’s standpoint, and determined insofar as they are thought of from a scientific or observer’s standpoint.[1] Here the two standpoints are not primarily distinguished by different beliefs, but by different tasks: the theoretical standpoint seeks to explain natural occurrences in terms of causal laws, while the practical standpoint is the standpoint from which human beings act in the world.[2] But these different tasks have implications for belief. In particular, the practical standpoint requires thinking of agents as free, while the theoretical requires thinking of deeds as casually determined.
The two standpoint interpretation has, in recent years, dominated Kantian discussions of Kant’s theory of freedom, and it is at least implicit (and often explicit) in recent neo-Rawlsian versions of Kant’s ethics.[3] This two standpoint interpretation has at least two important advantages over two world accounts. First, it allows one to make use of Kant’s insights about freedom from a practical point of view without making substantive metaphysical assumptions. Especially for those primarily interested in Kant as a moral philosopher, this advantage is considerable. Second, it helps one avoid the difficult problem of making sense of how two different worlds can relate when Kant sometimes suggests that the only legitimate use one can make of concepts of relation (causality, interaction, etc) is when these are applied to the phenomenal world (see, e.g., B149, A139-40/B178-79).
Whatever the merit of these advantages,[4] the two standpoint version of Kant’s theory of freedom has recently come under fire from several directions. In this paper, I consider three related objections to two-standpoint approaches to Kant. First, two-standpoint theories seem to have a hard time making sense of the use of theoretical claims within practical deliberation, since such use seems to conflate two standpoints that are supposed to be distinct. Second, two standpoint theories seem to lack a suitable answer to the question of whether human beings are really free. And finally, two standpoint theories seem unable to make sense of Kant’s deep commitment to what Eric Watkins has called the “grounding thesis,” the fact that “things in themselves, or the noumenal world, ‘grounds’ or ‘underlies’ appearance, or the sensible world” (Watkins 326). In this paper, I show how two-standpoint approaches can meet these objections, where my solution to all three ultimately depends upon making sense of the grounding thesis in two-standpoint terms. In my conclusion, however, I suggest that the use of the grounding thesis opens two-standpoint theories to a new problem, the problem of moral anthropology. After briefly explaining how two-world theories might more easily address this problem than two-standpoint theories, I offer a conjectural beginning of a two-standpoint approach to moral anthropology.
1. The Theory-in-Deliberation Problem
On a “two-standpoint” interpretation of Kant’s theory of freedom, a person can be regarded as free from one standpoint and as determined from another. For the purposes of this paper, I focus on the two-standpoint interpretations offered by Onora O’Neill and Christine Korsgaard. As they put it,
We should . . . expect to find two accounts of action. The first, theoretical account would consider acts as natural events and would aim to explain their occurrence…. The second, practical account would consider acts as expressing certain determinations of the will, and moral action as expressing certain sorts of determination of the will. (O’Neill 1989: 67)
The deliberating agent,
employing reason practically, views the world as it were from a noumenal
standpoint . . .. The theorizing
spectator, on the other hand, views the world as phenomena, mechanistic and
fully determined. The interests of
morality demand a different conceptual organization of the world than those of
theoretical explanation . . . . Both interests are rational and
legitimate. (Korsgaard 1996: 173)
Both Korsgaard and O’Neill concur that “The two standpoints are to be thought of not as ontologically distinct realms between which human agents must switch, but as distinct, indispensable, yet mutually irreducible frameworks of thought” (O’Neill 1989: 68, see Korsgaard 1996: 160, 167-76). Korsgaard sometimes seems to associate the practical standpoint entirely with the deliberative or first person perspective, although all that is strictly required is that one takes a standpoint according to which a person must be considered an agent, and this can occur whether one deliberates or is evaluated in a practical way. The point is that people have different reasons to give accounts of human actions. Depending on the interests that motivate one’s account, one assumes either a practical standpoint according to which one is the ultimate free cause of the action or a theoretical standpoint within which one can trace natural causes that give rise to the action.
Recently, Dana Nelkin has summarized this view in a way that draws attention to the way that it helps Kant develop his unique sort of compatibilism between freedom and determinism. Nelkin explains,
According to the two-standpoints account, the propositions to which reason commits us are indeed contradictory. But we are not irrational in believing that we are free and undetermined, on the one hand, and believing that we are determined and unfree, on the other, because we can hold apparently contradictory beliefs from different standpoints. (Nelkin: 567)
Within traditional compatibilism, freedom is demoted to a mere form of internal causation, so the claims of freedom and determinism do not even conflict. But Nelkin rightly highlights that Kant’s compabilism does not do this; for Kant, human freedom is freedom from determination by natural causes, and this freedom exists along with a thoroughgoing natural determination of human actions. On a two standpoint interpretation of Kant, this apparent conflict is not a real conflict because the claims that freedom is real and that natural determination is thoroughgoing are made from different standpoints.
Nelkin goes on to offer several objections to this two-standpoint account. In general, she raises the “difficulty of producing a criterion that sorts beliefs appropriately into those held from the deliberative standpoint and those held from the theoretical” (Nelkin: 570). More particularly, Nelkin raises an objection based on the use of theoretical beliefs within the practical standpoint, an objection I refer to as the theory-in-deliberation problem. Nelkin argues,
When we are engaged in deliberation, we often rely on theoretical or scientific beliefs. For example, if I am deliberating about whether to sound a fire alarm, one of the things I rely on is my belief about what effects that action is likely to have. Does this mean, then, that my belief about the causal role of alarm sounding is a belief from the standpoint of the deliberator? It certainly seems so, for the belief seems quite “relevant” to my deliberative task. And if so, then it would appear that either I have two beliefs with similar contents that are distinguished by the points of view from which they are held, or I have a single belief that floats freely back and forth between standpoints. In either case, there seems to be nothing in principle that prevents a belief that is held from one standpoint to be held from another. (Nelkin: 570-71, see too Watkins: 322)
The problem with taking theoretical claims into account in deliberation is that it seems to obscure the distinction between standpoints. And if there is no clear distinction between standpoints, then there does not seem to be any reason to isolate the claim that one is unfree in a way that one isolates no other theoretical claims. The use of theory in deliberation seems to break down the distinction needed to insulate the practical belief in freedom from theoretical refutation.
Nelkin’s objection arises from interpreting the practical standpoint of deliberation as fundamentally opposed to the postulation of causal necessity in the world. But the practical standpoint of deliberation assumes no such thing. O’Neill insists that “the actions that agents perform assume a causally ordered and knowable world that provides the arena for action” (O’Neill 1989: 68) and Korsgaard helpfully lays out the structure of this practical standpoint: “the deliberating agent, employing reason practically, views the world . . . as an expression of the wills of . . . rational agents” (Korsgaard 1996: 173).[5] The point here is not that one sees the world as free of causal influence when one views it from a practical standpoint, but rather that one sees its causal relations as tracing back to one’s own, undetermined choices. Thus it is perfectly reasonable, even required, to take into account natural connections between one’s actions and their effects, but it does not make sense, from the practical standpoint, to take into account natural connections between one’s actions and their (sufficient) empirical causes.
Moreover, the way in which one takes into account natural connections is different, depending upon whether one is viewing the world from the practical or the theoretical standpoint. From the practical standpoint, the natural effects of pulling a fire alarm – panic, a rush of people to leave the building, etc. – are important reasons for or against action. Similar judgments about the effects of pulling a fire alarm could be made from a theoretical standpoint, but here they would operate not as reasons for action but as explanations of events. From this theoretical standpoint, it might be relevant to ask not only about effects of pulling fire alarms, but about the causes that lead people to pull them. But in the context of practical deliberation, the effects of sounding the alarm are considered only as the after-effects of one’s action, after-effects that are important in deliberation because they are after-effects of one’s action. Thus when deliberating, one views the world “under the idea of freedom.” One then chooses among options, all of which are largely constituted by objects the scientific properties of which may be relevant to one’s choice. But the fact that scientific considerations are relevant to choice does not change the fact that one chooses.
2) First- and second-order
judgments and the limits of scientific enquiry
The practical standpoint can accommodate judgments the content of which is theoretical because, from a practical standpoint, one sees the world as a series of effects of one’s choice, effects that begin in freedom but proceed in accordance with the order of nature. But Nelkin’s theory-in-deliberation objection cannot be disposed of quite this easily. Given that scientific facts about the world can be reasons as well as explanations, Nelkin asks “what is to prevent my taking th[e] theoretical belief [that one is unfree] into account in my deliberation just as I take into account other of my theoretical beliefs?” (Nelkin: 571). If deliberation can take into account scientific facts about the world, why not take into account the fact that one is unfree?
As a preliminary
response, we might turn to two related reasons why causes of choice should not
be taken into account from a practical standpoint. First, as Korsgaard notes, causes of one’s
choices literally cannot function as
reasons for choice. As she puts it, “imagine that you . . . know that your every
move is programmed by an electronic device implanted in your brain . . . . In order to do anything, you must simply ignore the fact that you are
programmed, and decide what to do – just as if you were free” (Korsgaard:
162-3). Second, the practical standpoint
is precisely the standpoint from which one holds oneself or others responsible for one’s actions, and Kant
insists that insofar as one is merely a secondary cause of one’s action, one
cannot be held responsible for that action (5:96). As soon as one introduces causal explanations
of a particular human behavior, one has ceased to consider that behavior as a
possible object of moral-practical evaluation, and one has thereby ceased to
see that behavior from a practical standpoint.
Again, though, these
responses might seem only to make the problem more acute. What these responses show is that one needs
to exclude the thought that one is unfree from the practical standpoint, but
they do not, in themselves, show why one is entitled to exclude that
thought. What distinguishes the thought
that one is unfree from other theoretical claims, such that one can rightfully
exclude that thought but not others from deliberation? To answer this question, it is crucial
first to be clear about the status of claims about one’s freedom. Within the standpoint of practical
deliberation, one takes into account reasons for actions that include purely
practical claims – “I should not cause needless suffering” or “I should not
deceive others” – and empirical claims taken as reasons – “Pulling this fire
alarm will cause panic” or “Pulling this fire alarm will make people wrongly
believe that there is a fire.” I call these
sorts of judgments, which include any that function as reasons or parts of
reasons for action, “first-order” practical judgments. Similarly, first-order theoretical judgments
include any descriptive and explanatory claims about the world. When one explains the rush of people emerging
from a building by saying that the immediate cause is a fire alarm, or explains
that the cause of the ringing of the fire alarm is a pair of children seeking
to cause trouble, one makes first order theoretical judgments. First order theoretical judgments can even
include the psychological laws that lead children to pull alarms or people to
respond to them, or the biological laws that explain certain predispositions in
human nature, or the physical laws that explain the working of the alarm. The content of at least some of these first
order theoretical judgments will be present in at least some first order
practical judgments; “the sound of a fire alarm causes panic” could be either a
theoretical or a practical judgment, depending on the context.
For addressing Nelkin’s concern about the theoretical belief that I am not free, it is crucial to note that beliefs about human freedom do not occur amongst first order beliefs in either the theoretical or the practical standpoints. One deliberates as if one is free, but one’s freedom is not itself a reason for action.[6] Likewise one conducts theoretical investigations as if the objects of such investigations can be explained in terms of natural causes, but ultimate explicability in terms of causes is not itself a first-order scientific claim.[7] But for Kant (and for Korsgaard), there are second-order judgments for both theoretical and practical reason. These are not judgments made within a deliberative or theoretical standpoint, but judgments that make philosophical sense of the basic presuppositions of each standpoint. As Korsgaard explains with respect to the belief in freedom, this is “not about a [first-order] theoretical assumption necessary to decision, but about a fundamental feature of the standpoint from which decisions are made” (Korsgaard: 163). In Kantian terms, we might say that second order judgments express the conditions of the possibility of legimately making first order judgments.
Korsgaard follows Kant’s terminology in referring to second-order practical judgments as “postulates” of practical reason. Korsgaard explains,
A postulate of practical reason is an object of rational belief, but the reasons for the belief are practical and moral . . . . Although these beliefs are theoretical in form – the will is free, there is a God – their basis and their function are practical. (Korsgaard 1996: 172)
Since both deliberation and evaluation require ascribing responsibility to oneself or others, one must always act (or judge) as if one is free. And since one must act as if one is free, one can make philosophical sense of the way one acts only if one maintains that one is free.[8] The belief that the will is free is a second order judgment that articulates the presupposition underlying first order practical judgments.[9] Similarly, the belief that all objects of nature are causally determined articulates a presupposition of first order theoretical judgments.[10] As Hume eloquently showed, one has no empirical evidence for the claim that the world is governed by causal laws, but, as Kant (less eloquently) showed, this claim is a conceptual precondition of making sense of the world that we experience. And the ideal of an exhaustive or sufficient causal explanation of the world is neither an empirical claim nor even a necessary condition of experience, but it is a necessary ideal of theoretical reason.[11]
This distinction between first- and second-order judgments helps show how the belief in freedom can differ from what Nelkin describes as cases where it is “rational to be irrational.” Nelkin considers an explanation of the “practical” belief in freedom that is based on a “justification criterion,” according to which one justifies certain beliefs on practical grounds and others on theoretical grounds. She mentions as examples the
sort of ‘practical’ justification which applies to Blaise Pascal’s belief in the existence of God (because he stands to gain eternal happiness if he believes and his belief turns out true), or William James’s belief that he can jump over a wide ravine (because he will have a better chance of succeeding if he believes than if he does not). (Nelkin: 573-74)
Nelkin describes these as cases in which it is “rational to be irrational,” but the status of the practical postulate that one is free is fundamentally different from the “practical” beliefs of Pascal or James. The beliefs of Pascal and James are adopted as parts of ordinary practical judgments. Pascal reasons that he should believe that God exists, in order to attain ends that he thinks are good. Likewise James reasons that he should believe in his abilities to jump the ravine in order to increase his chances of success. Both of these are reasons for actions. In each case, one decides to hold a belief because holding that belief is good for one in some sense. But the belief that one is free is not in itself good for one, and it is not adopted because it is advantageous. Rather, it is a belief that is necessary in order to make sense of the fact that one can be practically rational at all. It is the conceptual presupposition of adopting a standpoint that one must – as a rational agent – adopt.
And now, if we return to Nelkin’s question – “what is to prevent my taking th[e] theoretical belief [that one is unfree] into account in my deliberation just as I take into account other of my theoretical beliefs?” (Nelkin: 571) – the answer is clear. In deliberation, one takes the content of certain first order theoretical beliefs into account as (partial) reasons for action. In doing so, one assumes that there is some causal regularity in the world, but – in contrast to one’s standpoint in theorizing about the world – one need not assume that this causal regularity is universal. And the second-order belief in universal and sufficient causation is not a belief for which one has any justification; it merely articulates the presupposition of another standpoint on the world. So there is no reason why one would need – or even be entitled – to take it into account from a practical standpoint. Given that if one attempts to take its content as a practical belief (either first- or second-order), one finds that it conflicts with the practical standpoint itself; there is every reason not to take it into account. The difference between the belief that “the sound of a fire alarm causes panic” and “I am unfree” is that the first is a first order (theoretical and potentially practical) judgment and the second is a second order (theoretical) judgment. And this difference justifies taking the first, but not the second, into account in deliberation.
In the form in which she phrased it, Nelkin’s question has been answered, but there is a similar problem that arises even at the level of first order theoretical judgments. In particular, there are some first order theoretical judgments that might seem to conflict with the freedom presupposed by the practical standpoint, such as the claims that “my bad upbringing led me to be malicious and weak-willed,” and “given these circumstances, my malicious disposition inclines me to pull this fire alarm,” and “my weak will causes me to act on my inclination.” Of course, Kant – and two standpoint theorists –endorse this kind of causal explanation of human behavior:
Let us take a . . . malicious lie . . . . We endeavor to discover the motives to which it has been due . . . . [W]e trace the empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame . . . . We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. (A554/B582)
And so far, there does not seem to be any reason to justify excluding these sorts of judgments from practical deliberation. We cannot dismiss these judgments as different in kind from judgments about the operation and likely consequences of the fire alarm. Both sets of judgments are first order theoretical claims, but we take judgments about the fire alarm into account from a practical standpoint, but not judgments about ourselves. What justifies this distinction?
One might be inclined here to turn back to the preliminary argument offered at the beginning of this section. Judgments about causal influences on oneself simply can’t be taken into account in practical reasoning, so they do not need to be. But again, this begs the question against Nelkin’s objection. Nelkin’s point is precisely to show that there is a real conflict between the claims made from theoretical and practical standpoints. If it turns out that one is justified in using in deliberation the claim that one’s action is determined by one’s upbringing is (as the parallel with theoretical claims about the fire alarm suggests), and if the denial of this claim is required by the nature of the deliberative standpoint, then there is a contradiction within the practical standpoint, which is just what the two standpoint theory is supposed to prevent. Thus we cannot simply say that a theoretical claim can be dismissed because it would contradict the freedom required by the practical standpoint.
So now the question is, does the claim the one’s action is determined by one’s upbringing preclude the sort of practical thinking that Korsgaard insists depends upon the idea of freedom? It would preclude this thinking if one’s upbringing were taken as a sufficient cause of one’s action. But even from the theoretical standpoint, no particular cause is fully sufficient to explain its effect, for two reasons. First, every cause itself has a prior cause (in time), so whenever a cause is posited as an explanation for the necessity of an effect, one can still ask what made that cause itself necessary. Second (and more importantly), every cause brings about its effect by virtue of an underlying law or causal power, and one can always ask why that causal law or power must be the way that it is.[12] O’Neill helpfully summarizes this limit of theoretical explanation:
The important limitation is that all naturalistic explanations – even the most impressive explanations of some future neuroscience – are conditional explanations . . . . In a certain sense they are incomplete, for they can never explain that any natural law should take the form that it does. Even the most exhausting investigation cannot be exhaustive. Any explanations offered in terms of events and their effects is incomplete because it presupposes an account of the form of certain principles. Putting this in an old-fashioned way we might say that explanations under the heading of efficient causality presuppose explanations under the heading of formal causality. (O’Neill 1989: 68)
This
theoretical limit on causal explanation provides sufficient room for practical
deliberation. In practical deliberation,
one can take into account “defective education, bad company, in part also in the
viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame” (A554/B582).
One might reason, for instance, that telling the lie is not as bad for
oneself as for another, since one has, after all, such a bad natural
disposition, and people with dispositions like that tells lies; that’s just
what they do. But in the context of
deliberation, these judgments are merely potential reasons for action. One must still decide whether to give one’s
natural disposition the weight that it typically has. One must decide whether these influences will
have the causal power over oneself that they have been observed to have. And here, one cannot say, “well, it has
to have that causal power over
It is important to
highlight here that the insufficiency of these causal explanations of behavior
does not imply that freedom should play a role in theoretical
explanation. Insofar as one adopts a
theoretical standpoint, the insufficiency of any particular causal explanation
is a reason to look for further causal explanations, not a reason to posit
freedom. The second order theoretical
belief in universal causation commits one to that pursuit. But insofar as one adopts a practical
standpoint, one need not be committed to the possibility of complete causal
explanations of phenomena, and one needs to be – and, without contradiction,
can be – committed to freedom.
3) The grounding thesis and the reality of
freedom
Two-standpoint interpretations of freedom can accommodate ordinary theoretical judgments as reasons for action because these standpoints depend on seeing the world as the effect of the choices of rational agents, so causal explanations are wholly appropriate as long as these are explanations of the series of effects of or considerations for choice rather than an exhaustive series of causes of choice. Moreover, because the theoretical belief that one is not free is a second-order belief, it reflects a way of making sense of the theoretical standpoint, rather than an insight from that standpoint that might have relevant to practical deliberation. So there is no reason to think that one should take that belief into account, and in fact, one cannot take it into account in practical deliberation.
But given that the theoretical and practical standpoints depend on apparently conflicting second order judgments about human freedom, all of this may seem to beg the really important question: Is one really free? As Eric Watkins puts it,
Regardless of whether or not two standpoints can be held at the same time, can they both be true or must one of them be illusory? . . . . That is, granted that we conceive of ourselves as free and as determined (albeit from different standpoints at different times), which of these conceptions contains a true description of how we are? (Watkins: 322)
This question seems to be the one that most troubles objectors to the two-standpoint version of Kant’s theory of freedom. The point is that there must be an answer to this simple, yes-no question, and however much we want to say “yes” from one standpoint and “no” from another, eventually we are entitled to ask, “and which standpoint gets it right?”
Following Allison, Watkins suggests at least one possible answer to the question of whether one is “really” free. As he explains, “At this point, the proponent of the [two standpoint] interpretation could claim . . . that this last set of questions is illegitimate, perhaps suggesting that one would have to adopt either a God’s-eye viewpoint or stand outside of all standpoints so as to determine the accuracy or inaccuracy of each one” (Watkins: 322; see too Korsgaard 176). To some extent, this response is certainly correct, in that one cannot have knowledge – in Kant’s technical sense – about what the world is like “in itself,” so if what is meant by “are we really free?” is “what can we know about what the self is like in itself?” then the answer is surely that we cannot know anything.
But this response is insufficient, for three fundamental reasons.[14] First, as a reading of Kant, it ignores the fact that Kant does posit that one standpoint is more fundamental than the other, that one describes “things in themselves,” while the other describes mere “appearances.” Second, this response fails to distinguish the two standpoint reading from the “wretched subterfuge” of compatibilism, according to which “freedom” is merely a word for an “effect, the determining natural ground of which lies within the acting being,” a freedom that is no different that the freedom of “a projectile . . . in free motion” or a “turnspit” (5:96-7). Finally, this response fails to take seriously the nature of the practical standpoint itself, which is not merely a standpoint according to which one is free, but a standpoint from which one sees the world of appearance as the effect of one’s freedom. That is, the practical standpoint posits a relationship between itself and the theoretical standpoint, according to which the theoretical standpoint is necessarily secondary. In order to make sense of the practical standpoint, one must posit that this standpoint sees things as they really are, and that the theoretical standpoint sees things merely as they appear. (As we will see later, the theoretical standpoint does not similarly prioritize itself.)
Agnosticism about whether or not one is really free is thus unsatisfying. Christine Korsgaard has suggested another way to think about whether or not one is really free: “Both interests [of theoretical and practical reason] are rational and legitimate” (Korsgaard 1996: 173). Rather than agnosticism, Korsgaard offers a kind of syncretism: we really are both free and not free. There is a danger here of thinking that on this interpretation, one’s freedom amounts merely to a posture of deliberation, and not a commitment to the reality of one’s freedom. Even some of Korsgaard’s own language seems to suggest this concern, as when she says, “the point is not that you must believe that you are free, but that you must choose as if you were free” (Korsgaard 1996: 162).[15] This way of putting the status of freedom can make it seem as though freedom is merely the way we must think of ourselves for practical purposes, not the way we really are. But Korsgaard, following Kant, refuses to allow this interpretation of freedom. In The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard responds to the point about “reality” as follows:
You will say that this means that our freedom is not ‘real’ only if you have defined the ‘real’ as what can be identified by scientists looking at things third-personally and from outside. (Korsgaard Sources: 96).[16]
In fact, there is symmetry between the belief that one is free and the belief that one is determined by natural causes. Each is a necessary presupposition of its respective standpoint,[17] and the question of which belief is “real” does not arise for either standpoint. Both beliefs are necessary – and in this sense “accurate”– because both standpoints are necessary (see Korsgaard Sources: 96). While the last response denies the legitimacy of the question about whether or not one is really free by refusing to answer it, Korsgaard denies the legitimacy by answering it in two ways. The point is that questions about what is “really” the case always assume some conception of reality. If reality is limited to the scope of scientifically knowable things, then we are really unfree. But if reality is the world of our practical concern, then we are really free.
Unfortunately, at least as stated so far, Korsgaard’s solution falls into the same three problems that threaten the agnostic solution. As in the case of that solution, she fails to take seriously Kant’s apparent prioritizing of things in themselves, she risks devolving into the “wretched subterfuge” (5: 96) of compatibilism that would make morality a “phantom” or “chimerical idea” (4:445, see too 4:456), and she fails to address the fact that the practical standpoint depends – at least for Kant – upon not merely the legitimacy of seeing oneself as free but upon the supremacy of the claim of one’s freedom to claims about natural determination.
Both agnosticism and Korsgaard’s symmetrical affirmation fail to take seriously the asymmetry upon which Kant insists as a way of avoiding the crude compatibilism that he sees as threatening the commitment to priority implied within the practical standpoint itself. What is needed is a way of articulating the supremacy of the practical standpoint over the theoretical, and neither agnosticism nor Korsgaard’s syncretism seem capable of articulating this supremacy. And that seems, once again, to raise the question of whether we are really free, but in a way that is particularly urgent from the practical standpoint.
The failure of the agnostic and syncretist solutions to the question of the reality of freedom highlighs the important role of what Eric Watkins has recently called the “grounding thesis” for articulating an answer to the question of whether one is “really” free. Watkins draws attention to the priority of freedom in a way that makes clear how it can solve the problem of whether one is “really” free, but that also seems to raise problems for two standpoint theories. Watkins explains the grounding thesis as follows:
In various works,[18] Kant repeatedly suggests that things in themselves, or the noumenal world, “grounds” or “underlies” appearances, or the sensible world . . . . Despite the epistemic limitations Kant places on what we can know about how specific features of things in themselves might ground appearances, Kant makes several general claims about grounding. For one, Kant makes clear that the grounding relationship is one-way and not reciprocal . . . . Things in themselves ground appearances, but appearances do not ground things in themselves. . . . . For another . . ., not only does the noumenal world of things in themselves cause the existence of appearances . . ., it is also responsible for the laws that govern appearances. (Watkins: 326, 328)
It should be clear how this helps with the question of the reality of freedom. Insofar as freedom is located at the level of things in themselves, free choices provide the grounds for the very causal laws of nature that are observed by theoretical reason (at least insofar as those laws have bearing on one’s actions). Thus one is “really” free, but this freedom grounds a world that is really governed by causal laws. Because free choices ground the laws of nature, one avoids the “wretched subterfuge” of compatibilism and provides legitimacy to the priority implied in the practical standpoint.[19] And the account is consonant with Kant’s textual claims to the priority of things in themselves over appearances, which posed problems for the agnostic and syncretist views in the last section. Thus the dependency thesis provides a coherent way of answering the question of whether one is really free.
But is this account compatible with a two-standpoint account of freedom and determinism? Watkins thinks not. He introduces his account of the dependency thesis as a way to arbitrate the dispute between two-world and two-standpoint understandings of Kant’s transcendental idealism:
Despite the uncertainty and ambiguity that Kant’s use of these two different understandings [as two worlds or two standpoints] of Transcendental Idealism creates at a general level, we can still turn to a particular aspect of Transcendental Idealism that is fundamental to his understanding of freedom and determinism, namely the issue of “grounding.” (Watkins: 325)
In a sense, this objection might seem obvious. The description of the grounding thesis proposed by Watkins is permeated with two-world talk: “the noumenal world grounds . . . the sensible world,” etc. And Watkins is surely correct that “the ontological, two-worlds interpretation of Transcendental Idealism . . . has no difficulties with the grounding thesis” (Watkins: 329).[20] But why is it impossible to make sense of this thesis on a two-standpoint interpretation? Watkins argues,
[T]he assertion that “things in themselves ground appearances” is a claim that cannot be made from either standpoint. Assertions about things in themselves can be made only from the practical or deliberative standpoint, while claims about appearances can be made only from the theoretical or scientific standpoint. (Watkins: 328-9)
Phrased in this way, however, Watkin’s problem with a two-standpoint interpretation of the grounding thesis is based on the same misunderstanding as the theory-in-deliberation problem. Insofar as the practical standpoint involves deliberation about action in the world, it can and must make claims about appearances. Moreover, as we saw the last section, insofar as “the deliberating agent, employing reason practically, views the world . . . as an expression of the wills of God and other rational agents” (Korsgaard 1996: 173), the practical standpoint commits the deliberating agent to the dependency thesis. One who reasons practically precisely sees actions in the world – appearances – as the effects of the choices of a free – that is, “in-itself” – agent that determines – or grounds – those actions.
The real challenge to the two standpoint interpretation must come not from an inability to articulate the grounding thesis – since this can be done straightforwardly within the practical standpoint – but from particular features of that grounding relationship. Watkins draws attention to two features that are crucial to Kant’s use of the grounding thesis to avoid the “wretched subterfuge” of crude compatibilism about freedom. Of these, the more important is that “the grounding relationship is one-way and not reciprocal . . . . Things in themselves ground appearances, but appearances do not ground things in themselves” (Watkins: 328).[21] One might be concerned that while the practical standpoint can assert its priority from within that standpoint, the theoretical standpoint could as easily assert its priority from within its own standpoint. In other words, we might think that when reasoning practically, we must think of our choices as determining the way the world will appear when we study it scientifically, while when reasoning scientifically, we must think of empirical causes as determining the way people choose. And if both standpoints are, as Korsgaard insists, “rational and legitimate” (Korsgaard 1996: 173), then we are left either without a real grounding thesis or with a perfectly symmetrical one. Either way, we seem stuck with crude compatibilism.
Fortunately, the apparent symmetry between standpoints here does not hold up to scrutiny. While the practical standpoint does posit its priority over the theoretical by postulating that one’s choices affect the world as it appears, the theoretical does not similarly posit priority over the practical. In that sense, Watkins is partly correct: “Assertions about things in themselves can be made only from the practical or deliberative standpoint” (Watkins: 328). The theoretical standpoint is not in a position to challenge the priority that the practical ascribes to itself.
We might even go further. The theoretical standpoint cannot claim any knowledge of things in themselves, but even the theoretical standpoint posits things in themselves indirectly, as the vaguely articulated ideals towards which scientific attempts at explanation aim. The aforementioned (section two) incompleteness of science shows that within the theoretical standpoint itself, every particular explanation includes the recognition that something more needs to be said, that the explanation is incomplete. And while theoretical reason cannot posit freedom to fill in those incomplete explanations, it implicitly recognizes its own always only partially formulated explanations as dependent upon something more fundamental. Moreover, even the theoretical standpoint is importantly practical in the sense that the theorizer herself sees herself as a free agent, capable of making judgments based on the best evidence, and not merely as a result of various causes. Thus the practice of science depends on freedom in a deeper way than the practice of morality depends on science: “The enterprise of naturalistic explanation itself depends on freedom” (O’Neill: 69, see too Korsgaard CKE: 185, n.18).
The practical standpoint depends upon judgments about the observable world in the sense that that world must be seen as the effect of choices made by free agents. The theoretical standpoint depends upon claims about freedom in a less determinate sense. Freedom must be presupposed by the theorizing scientist as a condition of making judgments. And the scientific enterprise is necessarily incomplete, awaiting completion only in the realm of “things in themselves,” which turns out (though theoretical reason can never posit this) to be the realm of freedom. There is “a system of formal conditions that our understanding of the empirical world presupposes” and in the case of human beings in particular, “we . . . not only see ourselves as parts of nature with a certain incompletely known empirical character; we . . . also see this empirical character as presupposing another, unknowable but intelligible character” (O’Neill: 69).
Just as both the theoretical and the practical standpoints involve second order claims about freedom, each also involves second order claims about the dependence of standpoints on each other. The practical standpoint directly implies a second order claim of the dependence of what can be observed on (among other things) the choices of human agents. The theoretical standpoint does not imply this claim, but the incompleteness of that standpoint requires admitting that the theoretical standpoint itself can find its ultimate satisfaction only in a standpoint that allows for an unconditioned ground of the conditioned effects that are its immediate objects of study. In that sense, both standpoints posit the dependence thesis in ways that mutually support one another and that satisfy the concerns raised in the last section. A two standpoint account can make sense of the dependence of “appearances” on “things in themselves.”[22]
And once we have a two-standpoint account of dependence, we can better articulate a non-symmetrical answer to the question of whether one is “really” free. Korsgaard herself, immediately after claiming that “Both interests [of theoretical and practical reason] are rational and legitimate” goes on to say, “Or, if either is privileged, it is the practical” (Korsgaard 1996: 173). And this way of articulating the dependency thesis is just what one should expect – and all that is needed – from a two-standpoint theorist. Freedom is real, not merely in the sense that it is required from a practical standpoint, but also in the sense that this practical standpoint has priority over the theoretical one.[23] The dependency thesis, and the reality of freedom, are both captured in Kant’s insistence on “the primacy of . . . practical reason” (5:119-21).
6) Theory-in-deliberation strikes again: the problem of moral anthropology
This paper started with the problem of incorporating the content of scientific or theoretical claims into deliberation or, more generally, practical standpoints on human actions. The key to solving that problem is seeing that the practical standpoint is one that makes claims about the natural world, but only insofar as those claims are incorporated into reasons for action, either in the sense of consequences of action or relevant contextual features. The practical standpoint is not a standpoint disconnected from the world of experience, but rather a standpoint that sees that world as the effect rather than the cause of one’s choices. This characterization of the practical standpoint also allows for an answer to the question of the “reality” of freedom by providing a two-standpoint way of articulating what Eric Watkins has called the “dependency thesis.” Thus two-standpoint theories can make sense of theory in deliberation, they can coherently claim that human beings are “really” free (while also, in a subsidiary sense, unfree), and they can make sense of the dependence of “appearances” on “things in themselves” in terms of the priority of practical reason.
Unfortunately, the asymmetry between standpoints that provides for a two-standpoint account of dependency poses a new theory-in-deliberation problem in the context of certain sorts of theoretical claims that might play a role in certain sorts of deliberation. In particular, the dependency thesis claims that human freedom grounds the world as it appears, and this grounding relationship is not reciprocal. This claim might seem problematic given that, scientifically speaking, there do seem to be purely empirical causes of various human choices, but (as we saw in section two) the necessary incompleteness of scientific explanation opens room within the deliberative standpoint for seeing “causal” preconditions as a context for choice rather than a determinant of choice. But a different kind of problem arises when one seeks to make use of empirical claims about causes of human action from a practical standpoint. The sorts of theoretical claims that have the potential to raise a serious theory-in-deliberation problem are theoretical claims about causal influences on choices, where those theoretical claims are made use of as causal claims and the choices are considered as free choices in a practical context.
Unfortunately, there seem to be such theoretical claims.[24] For Kant, they arise explicitly in the context of what he calls “moral anthropology.” As Kant explains in the Metaphysics of Morals,
Moral anthropology . . . would deal . . . with the subjective conditions in human nature that hinder people or help them in fulfilling the laws of a metaphysics of morals. It would deal with the development, spreading, and strengthening of moral principles (in education in schools and in popular instruction). (6:217)
In cases such as moral education, one may seek to influence oneself or another through empirical causes, and influence oneself or another precisely insofar as one is a deliberative agent. In these cases, one reasons: “I will do some action A in order to bring it about by a sequence of natural causes that some person P does some action B for reason R.” Cases such as these seem to require viewing person P from both the practical and the theoretical-scientific standpoints at once and in the same respect. On the one hand, P must be viewed from the theoretical-scientific point of view, since one sees P’s choice here as the ultimate result of a prior cause, action A. On the other hand, P must be viewed from the practical point of view, and hence as free, since one’s goal is for P to act for a particular reason. The importance of “doing B for reason R” depends upon the fact that one holds P responsible for the acting in that particular way. If P were considered from a theoretical standpoint, one could seek to bring it about that P does B as a result of having a particular mental state, but one could not aim for P to do B for a particular reason.
The cases that raise conceptual problems for two-standpoint accounts of dependency must be distinguished from two similar but importantly different cases. One might treat another person as a mere object and seek to manipulate them through deceit, torture, or marketing. These forms of psychological manipulation are morally wrong, since they involve treating another as a mere thing, but they need not raise conceptual problems because one need not see the manipulated person as both manipulable and free.[25] In this case, one seeks to get another to do a particular action, but not for a particular reason (though perhaps as a result of particular psychological causes). The cases that raise difficulties for the dependency thesis should also be distinguished from ordinary cases of offering reasons to other agents. When I suggest a reason for you to do a particular action, I precisely see my action as providing a context for choice, not being a cause of choice. Thus I need not see you as causally determined, and I can aim for you to do a particular action for a particular reason, but not see your action for that reason as the causally necessitated effect of my action.
Sometimes, however, one seeks not merely to cause another to perform an action, nor merely to offer possible reasons for another to act, but to causally effect in another the state of acting for a particular reason. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre gives an example of the sort of consideration that causes this general problem. In his discussion of teaching a child to value the goods internal to the practice of playing chess, MacIntyre says,
Consider the example of a highly intelligent seven-year-old child whom I wish to teach to play chess, although the child has no particular desire to learn the game. The child does, however, have a very strong desire for candy and little chance of obtaining it. I therefore tell the child that if the child will play chess with me once a well I will give the child 50 cents worth of candy; moreover I tell the child that I will always play in such a way that it will be difficult, but not impossible, for the child to win, and that, if the child wins, the child will receive an extra 50 cents worth of candy. Thus motivated the child plays to win . . .. [T]here[26] will come a time when the child will find in those goods specific to chess, in the development of a certain highly particular kind of analytical skill, strategic imagination and competitive intensity, a new set of reasons, reasons now not just for winning on a particular occasion, but for trying to excel in whatever way the game of chess demands. (MacIntyre 1984: 188)
For the purposes of this paper, it is not necessary to get into the significance of this transformation for MacIntyre. What is important here is that one seeks to change not only the sorts of decisions that a child makes, but even the sort of reasons that the child takes into account in deliberation. One would not start the process without believing that it is likely to give rise to the “new set of reasons” for which one aims, so it is not the mere action at which one aims. And one seeks to get the child to play chess for the right reasons not by simply offering those reasons to the child, but by employing psychological tricks to eventually cause the child to see those reasons for herself.
From what standpoint is such a child considered? On the one hand, the child is clearly being viewed from the standpoint of theoretical-scientific reason, since one makes claims about how various empirical causes can influence the ultimate beliefs and actions of the child. On the other hand, one cares about the thoughts and actions of the child only insofar as one takes an evaluative, practical standpoint. One seeks to make the child better as a deliberator. One seeks to influence not merely the child’s beliefs and desires, but the child’s reasons, and one seeks to influence these reasons through causes in the natural-scientific world. Moreover, one does not simply seek to change the mental states that cause the child to act in a particular way. One seeks to affect the sorts of reasons that the child takes into account in deliberation. Thus in this case, one seems required to think of the child at the same time and in the same respect as both free, since only as a free deliberator do the choices of the child have the relevant weight, and as unfree, since one seeks to have a causal influence on those choices.
This problem arises in an even more poignant way with respect to moral development, since in this case one’s concern with bringing about a particular sort of choice in another is more clearly dependent upon holding that person responsible. So imagine that one seeks to influence the future deliberation of oneself or another. One seeks to promote a commitment to acting rightly for the sake of acting rightly. In such a case, one might pursue certain sorts of moral education, or practices of discipline, or the cultivation of emotional sensitivity of particular sorts, with the goal of making oneself or another more likely to make morally worthy choices. One might even promote social and political structures to positively affect the moral development of those living within such structures. The goal of one’s action is moral development, but in order to think of someone as morally better, one must think of that person as free. At the same time, though, in order to think that one’s action can promote that end, one must think of the person as unfree. For the maxim: “do action A in order to promote the moral development of person P” to be reasonable, one must think of P as both free and unfree.[27]
Decisions that involve promoting volitional development, and especially those that promote moral development, involve considering people as at once free and unfree. Two-standpoint theories cannot easily dismiss the contradiction between these claims in such decisions because both claims enter into the reasons for performing actions that promote volitional development. Thus in these cases, Nelkin’s general worry about a contradiction arising within a single standpoint does seem to arise.
7. Two-Standpoints and Moral Anthropology
The problems with which this paper began were problems specifically for two standpoint interpretations of Kant’s transcendental idealism. The problem outlined in the last section is more general. Even on a two-world account of Kant’s idealism, one will have to deal with a tension between the grounding thesis and the importance of having an influence upon the volitional (especially moral) development of oneself and others. In fact, because of the centrality of the grounding thesis to the problem raised in the last chapter, this tension will arise for two-standpoint accounts only insofar as they successfully meet Watkins’s challenge to articulate the grounding thesis in two-standpoint language.
Elsewhere (in Freedom and Anthropology in Kant’s Moral Philosophy), I addressed the tension between the grounding thesis and moral anthropology in general, but there I made liberal use of concepts and terminology drawn from a two-worlds interpretation of Kant’s idealism. Put extremely briefly, the account that I offered there involves seeing that one’s intelligible, noumenal character is expressed not merely in the individual phenomenal actions of a moment, but in one’s phenomenal life as a whole. Moreover, the evidence from the empirical character of one’s past suggests that one’s intelligible choice in the noumenal world is not a pure choice of good, but includes a radically evil subordination of morality to non-moral inclinations, and the expression of this radical evil in the phenomenal world involves not merely evil choices but a deliberate propensity to evil. Insofar as one still has an obligation to be good (noumenally), this goodness can only mean a “revolution” against one’s own radical evil, and the expression of this goodness (phenomenally) will be a life of constant struggle against one’s own evil propensity. Moreover, because radical evil is (in part) social, this struggle must take place in the context of community; so one will not only struggle against one’s own evil propensity but also seek to encourage others in their struggle against evil.[28] Thus promoting empirical features that will strengthen the (empirical) wills of oneself and others against the propensity to evil is a way of expressing a noumenal goodness-as-revolution.
However satisfying one finds this resolution to the tension between freedom and anthropology, it depends extensively on two-world language, and one advantage of a two-world interpretation of Kant’s idealism may precisely lie in that it allows for a better articulation of a Kantian solution to the problem of reconciling freedom with moral anthropology than two standpoint versions. That said, the rest of this paper will offer the sketch of a Kantian[29] solution to the problem in strictly two-standpoint terms. As in the case of the summary offered in the previous paragraph, the key elements of this solution will lie in thinking of one’s life as a whole as expressing free choice, in recognizing the challenges posed by radical evil, and in seeing one’s struggle against evil as part of a social struggle. The difference from the two-world way of dealing with the problem is that a two-standpoint interpretation is not entitled to the metaphysical speculations that underlie the articulation of these key elements in the last paragraph. But these elements can be developed in terms of a richer conception of what the “practical standpoint” involves. Typically, this standpoint is described in terms of deliberation about (or evaluation of) a particular action or choice, but the importance of moral anthropology forces a revision of this typical description.
In this context, the implication of the first – life as a whole – element is that deliberation and evaluation should not be seen primarily as dealing with actions – what to do – but with what one might call character, who to be. In deliberations at any given time, one should see oneself as constructing a life, not merely as deciding on a particular action.[30] In a sense, of course, one can only immediately determine one’s choices in the present. But Kant’s moral theory temporally extends these choices in two important respects. First, genuine choices, for Kant, choices for which one can be held responsible, are choices of maxims, which are policies for action. As Korsgaard explains, these policies must at least been seen to be temporally extended in order to constitute choices of an agent (see Korsgaard Sources: 231-2). Second, insofar as we choose a life rather than merely an action, we make individual choices about what to do in the light of how these choices will form us into a particular sort of person. The cultivation of talents is morally required only because one is a temporally extended person, who will have a will in the future that can make use of the talents that one cultivates. The cultivation of moral resolve, similarly, is morally required because one is a temporally extended person who can express that resolve in the future.
The implication of the second element – the importance of radical evil – is that the practical standpoint is not simply the standpoint of freedom, but a standpoint that one might, following Jeanine Grenberg, call the standpoint of humility.[31] As Grenberg explains it, humility is “that meta-attitude which constitutes the moral agent’s proper perspective on herself as a dependent and corrupt but capable and dignified rational agent” (133). Acting from the standpoint of humility is different from merely acting from a practical standpoint, and even different from acting from the standpoint of pure practical reason. From the standpoint of a morally responsible and dependent but non-corrupt agent, action is a free response to the condition of moral obligation in the face of temptations caused by inclinations. But the standpoint of humility that takes into account radical evil recognizes that one’s real enemy is not mere temptation, which can “be sought in the natural inclinations,” but a freely chosen “malice (of the human heart) which secretly undermines [one’s] disposition with soul-corrupting principles” (6:57). This humility in the face of one’s own corruption does not compromise the demands of morality. As Kant insists, it “is of no use in moral dogmatics, for the precepts of the latter . . . include the very same duties . . . whether there is in us an innate propensity to transgression or not” (6:50). Nonetheless, humility requires more of one than simple duty:
In moral discipline . . . the thesis means . . . this: We cannot start out in the ethical training of our connatural moral predisposition to the good with an innocence which is natural to us but must rather begin with a presupposition of a depravity of our power of choice in adopting maxims contrary to the original ethical predisposition and . . . with unremitting counteraction against [this depravity]. (6:51)
The standpoint of practical humility is a standpoint from which one sees one’s life as a life of struggle against one’s own self-wrought tendency to subordinate the moral law to one’s inclinations. And from this standpoint, one must not only do what is right in a particular moment, but act in ways that will promote an increasing good life overall.
Finally, the third key element – that the struggle against evil is social – means that the humble, practical standpoint is not solely an individual one. Of course, the standpoint is individual in the sense that each individual must decide how to act for herself. But when an individual deliberates, she should always see herself as part of a community. This requires seeking to live out in community with others one’s struggle against corruption, and it also involves seeing the ultimate consummation of that struggle in a new social condition. And that includes deliberately avoiding creating unnecessary temptations for others, exercising caution in relationships with others to avoid using their actions as a pretext for one’s own corrupt desires, aiming to cultivate good choices in others, looking to others for support and encouragement in one’s own efforts to improve one’s life, and conscientiously cultivating the sorts of community that can promote moral progress for all involved.
This two standpoint solution to the problem of moral anthropology is only a sketch, and considerably more detail would need to be filled in. In the end, however, a two standpoint interpretation of Kant’s theory of freedom would meet the challenges of theory-in-deliberation, even in the case of moral anthropology, by developing a sufficiently rich account of the practical standpoint. The practical standpoint must attend to the importance of character, radical evil, and the humans’ social nature. It must also have “priority”; practical reasoning is not merely one sort of reasoning among many, but the most fundamental perspective on a world about which human beings think but also within which we live and act. Nothing in this paper precludes making sense of these two standpoints by appeal to two metaphysically distinct “worlds,” but I have argued that two standpoint theorists do not need such an appeal. What is required to make sense of freedom is not a new metaphysics, but rather a certain sort of practical orientation, a form of life that takes seriously both the priority and the complex nature of practical reason.
[1] See Ameriks for an overview of the debate, and Prauss, Watkins, and Allison for different approaches.
[2] I thank Kyla Ebels Duggan for encouraging me to make this point more explicit and prominent in this paper.
[3] In this paper, I focus on Korsgaard and O’Neill as examples of this approach.
[4] See Watkins for an argument that these are not real advantages.
[5] Korsgaard actually says “of God and other rational agents,” though it is not clear just what role God is supposed to play here. I suspect that Korsgaard is alluding to the eventual role that Kant has God play in establishing the possibility of the highest good, and postulating God also helps see how agency as a whole could ground the world as a whole. Ultimately, though, what is immediately required is simply viewing the world as partly determined by the wills of whatever agents are being viewed practically. In the case of deliberation, the relevant agent will typically be oneself; in evaluation, the object(s) of moral evaluation. In my final section, I argue that given the social nature of human evil (and moral progress), one must view the world as at least an expression of all of the rational agents in one’s community (ultimately the world). But for now, all that is necessary is the sense that at least some rational agency at least partly determines the way the world turns out.
[6] At least, freedom is not itself a reason for action in normal circumstances. Sometimes one’s freedom might be part of a reason for a specific action. For instance, I might reason that since I am free, and this scientist tells me that he knows exactly what I will do next, I will do something totally random just to spite him. In a much more complicated way, one’s freedom might give one a reason to respect the moral law, although even here, one ought to obey this law because it is unconditionally binding, not because doing so confirms one’s freedom.
[7] At least, explicability in terms of natural causes is generally not given as a first order scientific judgment. Insofar as universal explicability is presented as a scientific theory in itself, it suffers from the problems with induction to which Hume famously drew attention in his Treatise, and which Kant further explained in his first Critique.
[8] This claim is based on Kant’s conception of (moral) responsibility. It is not the purpose of this paper to evaluate Kant’s argument for freedom, but only to raise a problem for a particular way of making sense of freedom.
[9] Korsgaard further explains that a person “needs this
belief” in order to deliberate properly, which in the context means to obey the
moral law (Korsgaard 1996: 172). Of course, a person can deliberate as if she
is free, and even act from respect for the moral law, without actually
affirming the practical postulate that the will is free. Kant insists that even “the most common and unpracticed understanding” is capable
of acting in accordance with the moral law (KpV, 5:36). Such a person need
not have a philosophical understanding of the relationship between freedom and
moral responsibility. Rather, ordinary
people need only sufficient confidence in their abilities to act as if they are
free. There may be various reasons that
it will be difficult to maintain a commitment to the moral law, or even to
serious deliberation, if one denies the
postulates (cf. 5:452; Wood “Rational Theology”), but even in those cases, such
a commitment remains possible. The
belief in freedom is a second-order belief, and thus not necessary in order to act as if one is free. All that is necessary for rational action is
good first order beliefs. Nonetheless,
one can philosophically make sense of
deliberation only by the belief that one is free.
[10] And as in the case of second order practical
judgments, it is possible to believe various theoretical explanations of the
world without formulating the explicit belief that everything has some prior
cause. But the only way to make
philosophical sense of one’s investigations and explanations is to believe that
the objects of those investigations and explanations can be explained by
natural laws.
[11] See the “Ideal of Pure Reason” in the Critique of Pure Reason. For discussion, see Grier.
[12] Here
(and throughout this paper), I use the term “cause” in the broadly Humean sense
that Eric Watkins has recently claimed is inappropriate in interpreting Kant
(see Watkins 384). For a brief response
to Watkins, cf. Frierson “Empirical Account,” p. 7, n. 16.
[13] One might, of course, have a theoretical explanation of the causal power of such a natural disposition, perhaps in terms of genetics. But then one will lack a theoretical explanation of why genes must function the way they do. The point is that at some level, one’s theoretical explanations will come to an end, and then one will find room for deliberation. Note too that one need not explicitly think of one’s choices in the way described here. That is, in deciding whether or not to have a cup of coffee, one need not make reference to one’s genes. The fact that freedom to choose whether or not to give in to the inclination for coffee is translatable in terms of freedom to choose whether to let oneself be influenced by genes is a way of validating the appeal to freedom in one’s ordinary deliberation, not a reason to shift to a new way of deliberating.
[14] Eric Watkins suggests another problem with this
response, suggesting that “the accuracy of a standpoint is not determined by
any putatively divine meta-standpoint, but rather simply be the metaphysical
facts of the matter” (Watkins: 322-3).
Ultimately, this need not be a problem for the two-standpoint theorist,
since such a theorist can simply deny that we even know what the question of
freedom would mean as a question
about “metaphysical facts.” Freedom has
a clear meaning in terms of empirical causes and a clear meaning in terms of
practical responsibility. And Watkins
seems to assume that it has a clear meaning “metaphysically.” But this depends on the legitimacy of a
“metaphysical standpoint” from which one can ask the question. Short of the legitimacy of such a standpoint,
we don’t even know what kind of “accuracy” a standpoint is supposed to have.
[15] Nelkin (see p. 567, fn 7) raises the question of how this passage relates to Korsgaard’s statement later that “the standpoint from which you adopt the belief in freedom is that of the deliberating agent” (in CKE 174, my emphasis). As I read these passages, the first is describing the view of the world in which the deliberative standpoint consists. One takes the view of the world that one would take if one were free. The later passage is part of Korsgaard’s discussion of the postulates of practical reason. Because one must act as if one is free, one is (practically) justified in ascribing freedom to oneself. On this reading, then, Korsgaard’s account does not warrant the question about whether one is “really” free, but her language can seem to raise this question.
[16] In her explanation of this argument, Korsgaard shifts her focus from freedom as such to the “reasons” that one offers within a practical point of view. Here “reasons” are first-order practical beliefs. Why pull the fire alarm? Because pulling the fire alarm will notify people of the fire and thus increase the likelihood that they will escape the building uninjured, and I should do what I can to help people avoid unnecessary injury. In her discussion in this section of The Sources of Normativity, Korsgaard’s point is that this is no less “real” an explanation for pulling the fire alarm than one based on states of my brain, or the evolutionary development of sympathetic instincts, or theories of social conditioning. An explanation in terms of first-order practical reasons is not scientific, of course. But there is no reason to deny that these reasons are any less real than the scientific causes that figure in scientific accounts. As Korsgaard puts it, “reasons exist because we need them” (96). However, in the same way that first-order reasons “exist because we need them,” the freedom that is postulated as the condition of deliberation exists because we need it.
[17] Here I draw heavily from Kant’s account in the Critique of Pure Reason. As far as I know, Korsgaard has not explicitly discussed the status of the belief that one is causally determined, but as far as I can tell there is no reason that she could not agree with Kant here.
[18] I’ve cut here Watkins’s references to and explanation of these various works. See too Frierson Freedom, chapter 1.
[19] For a detailed recent explanation of a similar point, see Watkins: 329-39.
[20] At least, the difficulties the two-worlds theory has are familiar ones, such as how to make sense of a causal relationship between things in themselves and appearances when the only conception of causation that we can understand is a schematized concept that applies only to appearances. For Watkins’s response to this problem, see Watkins: 324-9.
[21] In fact, Watkins specifically ties the problems two-standpoint theories have with the grounding thesis to these features of it. The second feature, that “not only does the noumenal world of things in themselves cause the existence of appearances . . ., it is also responsible for the laws that govern appearances” can also be accommodated on a two-standpoint interpretation, and the discussion of causal laws in sections 2 and 3 suggests how this might be done.
[22] One might, of
course, use a metaphysical account of two worlds, one of which grounds another,
to make further philososophical sense of the priority of the practical
standpoint. The point of this paper is
not to argue that the two world account of freedom is incoherent or even wrong,
but only that it is not necessary. The priority of the practical can, for a two
standpoint theorists, just be a basic fact about our standpoints, and one can
use this basic fact to make sense of the grounding thesis.
[23] This account provides a way to reconcile Kant’s different claims about the priority of the practical. On the one hand, Kant insists on the priority of practical reason (5: 119f.). But on the other hand, Kant claims that if “speculative reason had proven that freedom cannot be thought . . . then the [moral] presupposition [of freedom] . . . would have to yield” to this speculative conclusion ( (Bxxix, see too 4:456). On the two standpoint account I have articulated here, what Kant is saying is that if the theoretical standpoint were to claim priority for itself, we would have to accord it priority. But because the theoretical standpoint does not claim such priority, we can affirm the priority of the practical.
[24] Elsewhere Kant adds that moral education and churches (5:151f.,
6:474f., and Kant’s supposed lectures on pedagogy (Ak. 9)), politeness (6:473, 7:151-3), a
cultivated aesthetic appreciation for the beautiful and sublime (5: 268-69, 299, and 354-56) and even
belief in practical postulates can all
affect one’s deliberation in morally positive ways.
[25] To see what is wrong with these cases of manipulation, of course, one must in some sense see the agent as both determined and free. This problem also poses difficulties for the dependency thesis, but I do not focus on those here.
[26] MacIntyre actually says here that “we may hope” that there will come such a time. In some cases, this experiment may be reduced to one of the two sorts of cases described in the previous paragraph. The point is merely that it need not be. There are cases in which one might specifically aim to bring about this change.
[27] This kind of problem arises for non-moral cases, too. For example, I might deeply enjoy going to the opera with my partner, and enjoy it for the sake of the opera and my partner’s company. Moreover, I might deeply desire to be the sort of person who chooses to go to the opera for these reasons. But I often fail to consider going to the opera in my deliberation, or going to opera seems like more trouble than it is worth when I do consider it. But perhaps I know myself well enough to know that purchasing season tickets to the opera will make me more likely to decide to actually go. Having set dates ahead of time will effectively force me to consider going to the opera on the nights for which I have tickets. And having the tickets in hand will lead me to think that going is worth the trouble after all. One wouldn’t want to waste these tickets, after all. Here it’s important that the reason for going to the opera not be “to avoid wasting these tickets.” Rather, the consideration that one would waste the tickets is merely a means for discounting the practical details involved in going to the opera, a trouble that is usually exaggerated but in this case discounted. The reason for going to the opera is that I enjoy it, especially in the company of my partner. And I buy the season ticket because I want to be the sort of person who makes these sorts of choices. Even in non-moral cases, one considers oneself qua deliberator as susceptible to empirical causation.
[28] Cashing out the social nature of radical evil is challenging. For two different approaches, cf. Anderson-Gold and Frierson Freedom (ch. 6).
[29] In part, the reference to “Kantian” here is designed to highlight the role that radical evil plays in this account. One might develop a response to the problem of moral anthropology simply by shifting focus from individual acts to life as a whole. For Kant, however, the urgency of moral anthropology is due to the need to combat radical evil. Without this, it is not clear that the sorts of self-cultivation that pose prima facie problems for the dependency thesis would have an important role to play in Kant’s ethics.
[30] O’Neill explains,
We
must not only see ourselves as parts of nature with a certain incompletely
known empirical character; we must also see this empirical character as
presupposing another, unknowable but intelligible
character. This is the central claim
(CPR, a 539/B567ff.) of the most difficult of all Kant’s thoughts about the
atemporal character of human agency…”
(O’Neill: 69)
The “atemporal” character of this agency is explained, in part, by the fact that the intelligible character for which we hold ourselves responsible is the presupposition of one’s whole empirical character, that is, one’s life as a whole. Similarly, when Korsgaard explains that “the deliberating agent . . . views the world . . . as an expression of the wills of God and other rational agents” (Korsgaard 1996: 173), the point is that the temporally extended world as a whole – not merely the way the world turns out now – is an expression of one’s free choice.
[31] Frierson Freedom refers to this as the “perspective of moral anthropology” (p. 132).