reason, freedom and kant: an...

KANTIAN REVIEW VOLUME 12 2007 113

Reason Freedom and Kant An Exchange1

ROBERT HANNA AND A W MOOREUniversity of Colorado and St Hughrsquos College Oxford

1 Robert Hanna

Experience reveals only the law of appearances and consequently themechanism of nature the direct opposite of freedom (CPrR 5 29) 2

According to Kant being purely rational or purely reasonable andbeing autonomously free are one and the same thing But how canthis be so How can my innate capacity for pure reason evermotivate me to do anything whether the right thing or the wrongthing What I will suggest is that the fundamental connectionbetween reason and freedom both for Kant and in reality isprecisely our human biological life and spontaneity of the will aconjunctive intrinsic structural property of our animal bodieswhich essentially constitutes human personhood and rationalagency I say lsquosuggestrsquo because obviously no proper argument forsuch a conclusion could ever be worked out in a short essay Iwould nevertheless like to motivate my suggestion by way of acommentary on the second part of Adrian Moorersquos extremely richand interesting recent book Noble in Reason Infinite in Faculty3

(henceforth NIR)According to what Moore calls the Radical Conception nobody

ever freely does the wrong thing To do the wrong thing is to beunfree and to do the irrational thing Or in other words to actfreely is to act rightly and to act rationally (NIR 94ndash97) Andaccording to what Moore calls the Radical Picture not only is theRadical Conception true but also we can incur blame for things wehave not done freely hence irrationally (NIR 115ndash119) Strictlyspeaking Kant does not defend either the unqualified RadicalConception or the unqualified Radical Picture But there are pres-sures within his Critical philosophy to do so and he comes about

05 Hanna KR 12Master Testpages KR 19207 1427 13

as close to defending them as any philosopher ever has In thesecond part of Moorersquos book which consists in a discussion ofKantrsquos notion of freedom and some philosophical variations on itMoore wants to explore both the Conception and the Picture inrelation to Kantrsquos moral philosophy with an eye to understandingKant better and also if possible finding out some necessary truthsabout rational human nature

Moorersquos central proposal is what he calls the Basic Idea which isthat there is a conation or nisus in all of us more fundamental thanany other towards rationality (NIR 128) and that this innatedrive towards rationality is also experienced as what Kant calls thefeeling of lsquorespectrsquo for persons as ends-in-themselves and for themoral law (NIR 134 136) So being free in any way is expressingour drive to rationality and being autonomously free is authentic -ally and fully expressing that drive along with other free personsunder moral laws hence authentically and fully becoming ourselvesas individual moral animals in an ideal community of moralanimals Kantian ethics is thus a version of what Moore callslsquoconative objectivismrsquo (NIR 7) the theory that ethical thinkingdepends on the contents of certain psychological drive-states thatwe all innately share Otherwise put pure reason has motivationalforce and action-guiding content because it is essentially connectedwith its own unique kind of desire ndash the unique kind of desire thatmakes us us

I am deeply sympathetic to Moorersquos proposal In the end whatdistinguishes our views and where we will perhaps disagree isonly this I think that the innate drive towards rationality is thesame as the conjunction of our human biological life and spon-taneity of the will and that the human will is necessarily embodiedCombine that with a non-reductive view of biological concepts andfacts and call the resultant view embodied libertarian rationalismIn my opinion this view is the only way to get a satisfactoryKantian metaphysics of freedom of the will Such a metaphysicswould enable us to get beyond both (i) the classic Kantiandilemma as found in the third Antinomy between Newtonian orLaPlacean determinism on the one hand and libertarian indeter-minism on the other and also (ii) the more recent but even morerobust post-Kantian dilemma ndash to use Wilfred Sellarsrsquos evocativeformulation4 ndash between the Scientific Image and the ManifestImage of human beings in the world that is between Newtonian

ROBERT HANNA AND AW MOORE

114 KANTIAN REVIEW VOLUME 12 2007

05 Hanna KR 12Master Testpages KR 19207 1427 Page 114

LaPlacean determinism or stochastic indeterminism on the onehand (let us call this disjunctive view Natural Mechanism) andour irreducible phenomenology of free human agency on the other(let us call this Phenomenal Libertarianism)

In any case in order to unpack Moorersquos account I will need tosay something briefly about how Moore construes Kantrsquos concep-tion of rationality about the Radical Picture and finally about theBasic Idea

Rationality Moore sees as I do a deep affinity between Kantand Wittgenstein Rationality for Kant and for Moore is literallymaking sense or constructing meanings and this is possible onlyby way of an innate capacity for generating deploying andpossessing concepts (NIR 78ndash87) Some concepts are inherentlyaction-guiding or normative and to possess one of these conceptsis to live by it One central example of this is our innate capacityfor doing mathematics The other central example is our innatecapacity for doing ethics5 One Wittgensteinian dimension of thisconception of rationality as making sense or constructing mean-ings is that making sense is in turn possible only in a social contextand against a backdrop of shared practices This necessary linkageof rationality and sociability is of course not at all foreign toKant who speaks of the public use of reason (CPR A738ndash769B766ndash797) and the necessary communicability of judgments andthe necessity of certain types of shared feelings in aesthetics andmorality alike (CPJ 5 203ndash244)6 A robust conception of ration-ality naturally leads to philosophical rationalism The thesis ofrationalism according to Moore is the thesis that the humanability to reason or make sense comprehends both theoreticalreason (best exemplified by mathematics) and practical reason(best exemplified by ethical thinking) Unlike classical rationalismhowever which requires both God and also some sort of platonicobjects or mind-independent non-spatiotemporal essences in orderto explain this ability to reason Kantian rationalism holds that weneed only posit the existence of persons or rational humananimals over and above the existence of the many different sorts ofmaterial things that populate the empirical observable or macro-scopic natural world

But how can a personrsquos pure reason be ethical Ethical ration-alism would seem to imply implausibly that ethics is a kind offormal science that moral principles because strictly universal are

REASON FREEDOM AND KANT AN EXCHANGE



utterly insensitive to context and cultural difference and that asformal and pure reason has no action-motivating or action-guiding force One way of responding to these worries is providedby the Radical Picture

The Radical Picture Recall that in Moorersquos language theRadical Conception is that being free being rational and doing themorally right thing are one and the same from which it followsthat no one ever freely does evil and that all evil is irrational TheRadical Picture then adds the further idea that we must be heldmorally responsible for at least some things that we have not donefreely Thus the Radical Picture provides a response to the basicworries about ethical rationalism by essentially identifying reasonright action and freedom of the will What could be less formalless disengaged and more action-oriented than freedom

This brings us to Kantrsquos conception of freedom of the willMoore focuses his account on two central aspects of Kantrsquos theory(1) his distinction between Willkuumlr and Wille and (2) his meta-physics of freedom

Now what more precisely is the human will according to KantThe answer is that Willkuumlr or the power of choice is the power ofintentional causation that is effective desire by contrast Wille orthe will is the power of self-legislation or giving ourselves eitherinstrumental or non-instrumental reasons for the determination ofchoice (MM 6 213ndash214) To act on the basis of Willkuumlr is alwaysto move our animal bodies on the basis of our desires This can ofcourse occur in a Humean way by means of instrumental reasoningaccording to the hypothetical imperative Since instrumentalreasoning is itself a form of self-legislation it involves what wemight call the lsquoimpurersquo Wille To act on the basis of the pure Willehowever is to constrain and differently determine our Willkuumlr byrecognizing the categorical imperative which as recognizedprovides a universal overriding non-instrumental reason for actionSo to act on the basis of pure Wille is to do the right thing as deter-mined by our own pure practical reason no matter what theexternal and psychological antecedents and no matter what theconsequences This two-levelled conception of the human will inturn allows us to understand the Radical Picture The nub of thisunderstanding as Moore expresses it is this

Both irrational acts and rational acts qualify as exercises of freedombut whereas the former qualify simply through the agentrsquos choice to act




in one way rather than another the latter qualify in another way toonamely through the agentrsquos compliance with his own or her own mostfully autonomous judgment about how that choice is to be made (NIR119)

Here is the crucial point Even when we are acting unfreelyimmorally and irrationally it remains true that our capacity foracting freely non-instrumentally and rationally in the sense of pureWille is undiminished despite the fact that we have not adequatelyrealized that capacity in that context Only a being with an undi-minished capacity for pure practical reason can act unfreelyimmorally and irrationally Hence we remain morally responsibleeven for things that we have done unfreely and irrationally in thesense of pure Wille provided that we have also done them freelyinstrumentally and rationally in the sense of Willkuumlr This isbecause the capacity for pure Wille counterfactually guaranteesthat even if given the same set of external and psychologicalantecedents together with the fact that it had been in our selfish oreven benevolent interest to do something morally wrong then westill could have gone ahead and done the right thing instead of thewrong thing we actually did

But this explanation of the Radical Picture will not ultimatelywork without a metaphysics of freedom of the will according towhich the capacity for pure Wille has real causal efficacy Whatwould Kant say about this Moore construes Kant as an incompat-ibilistic compatibilist Kantrsquos view of freedom is incompatibilisticbecause he thinks that NewtonianLaPlacean determinism andlibertarian indeterminism are mutually metaphysically inconsis-tent But Kant is also a compatibilist who thinks that if we aretranscendental idealists and thereby adopt distinct phenomenaland noumenal standpoints on the will then despite the fact that wetake ourselves from the phenomenal standpoint to be acting atbest comparatively freely or unfreely instrumentally and impurelyrationally in the sense of Willkuumlr nevertheless from the noumenalstandpoint we can also take ourselves to be acting under the regu-lative idea of autonomy or pure rational freedom that is takeourselves to be acting absolutely freely non-instrumentally andpurely rationally in the sense of pure Wille

As Moore correctly notes Kantrsquos incompatibilistic compati-bilism even when construed according to the two standpointtheory of the phenomenon-noumenon distinction as opposed to




the two world theory is a metaphysical mystery bordering oncomplete unintelligibility (NIR 104ndash113) Timeless indetermin-istic natural-law violating libertarian agency in a spatiotemporaldeterministic nomologically-governed physical world is a non-starter even as a regulative idea And that is because the existenceof a deterministic physical cause both explanatorily and metaphys -ically excludes the timeless cause and timeless causal over-determination seems absurd How then can we make sense of theRadical Picture in terms of freedom In order to do this Mooreruns a variation on Kant and proposes the Basic Idea

The Basic Idea On Moorersquos Kantian approach to reason andfreedom to be free is to be rational and to be rational is to makesense But what apart from an ability for noumenal causation ortranscendental freedom could adequately align and relate purereason and freedom The first part of Moorersquos proposed answer isthat rational freedom is making new sense or rational creativity(NIR 65ndash66 71ndash78 121ndash122) This is the same as creating rad -ically new concepts and then living by them Moore connects thisidea again to Wittgenstein but this time to the early Wittgensteinof the Tractatus To create and live by a radically new concept is lsquotoexercise onersquos will in such a way that the world ldquobecomes an alto-gether different world It must so to speak wax and wane as awhole ndash The world of the happy man is a different one from thatof the unhappy manrdquorsquo (NIR 125)

In this way unfreedom and irrationality are ways of wilfullyrefusing to make new sense or ways of wilfully refusing to berationally creative And because they are wilful we are personallyresponsible for this refusal

The Basic Idea then adds this thesis we posses an innate nisus ordrive more fundamental than any other towards rationality (NIR128) Freedom and rationality are thus the full expression and real-ization of this most fundamental creative drive whereas unfreedomand irrationality are the self-suppression and wilful non-realizationof this creative drive So our most fundamental drive is to realizeourselves as autonomous creative rational animals in Kantrsquos senseAs rational animals we are all fundamentally trying to becomeauthentic persons in an ideal community of other persons and tocreate meaning in our lives by progressively conforming ourselvesto the categorical imperative And to refuse to try to be as rationalas possible in this sense is to be inauthentic and to refuse to be true




to ourselves In this way Moorersquos Basic Idea beautifully inter-weaves threads of existentialism and Wittgensteinrsquos philosophywith the vital cord of the Critical philosophy

But here is a worry about the Basic Idea If I have understoodhim correctly Moore himself is a conceptual or explanatory incom-patibilist because he holds what he calls the IncommensurabilityThesis which is that lsquoexercise of the concept of physical deter-minism precludes exercise of the concept of freedomrsquo (NIR 114Moorersquos emphasis) But conceptual or explanatory incompat -ibilism is logically consistent with metaphysical or ontologicalcompatibilism (NIR 120) just as conceptual or explanatorynon-reductionism in the philosophy of mind is logically consistentwith metaphysical or ontological reductionism

So as it stands it seems to me that the Basic Idea is logicallyconsistent with Natural Mechanism We could be at once naturallymechanized and also such that we possess an innate drive morefundamental than any other towards rationality But if so then weare at best only phenomenal libertarian rationalists And then it isall really a tragic illusion because we do not literally act freely andliterally move our own limbs either by means of Willkuumlr andimpure practical reason or by means of pure Wille and pure prac-tical reason In fact we are nothing but naturally mechanizedpuppets epiphenomenally dreaming that we are persons But if thatis true as Jerry Fodor observes in a closely related context thenpractically everything we believe about anything is false and itrsquosthe end of the world7

So what I would propose instead is an interpretation of Kantrsquostheory of freedom of the will and of Moorersquos Basic Idea whichtakes libertarian rationalism and conative objectivism to entail thedenial of both incompatibilism and compatibilism that is to beneither incompatibilist nor compatibilist

Consider first compatibilism Compatibilism says that freedomof the will and natural mechanism can co-exist On my interpreta-tion of Kantrsquos theory of freedom and Moorersquos Basic Ideacompatibilism is false This is because according to this interpreta-tion all causation bottoms out in event-causation and there are noevents that are at once free and naturally mechanized And since allindividual substances and agents are complex events there are alsono individual substances or agents that are at once free and natu-rally mechanized All the conscious animals and in particular the




rational animals and their actions are both alive and spontaneousand not naturally mechanized

Consider now incompatibilism Incompatibilism says thatfreedom of the will and natural mechanism cannot co-exist On myinterpretation of Kantrsquos theory and Moorersquos Basic Idea incompat -ibilism is also false This is because according to this interpretationthere can be a natural world parts of which are naturally mech -anized and parts of which are not naturally mechanized Livingorganisms for example are not naturally mechanized As Kantputs it there could never be a biological Newton who couldexplain the generation of even a single blade of grass (CPJ 5 400)Most relevantly conscious animals and in particular rationalanimals are not naturally mechanized They are alive and spon -taneous lsquobecause the mind for itself is entirely life (the principle oflife itself)rsquo (CPJ 5 278) And they have got freedom of the will Sothe thesis that there is a strong continuity between biological lifeand the spontaneity of the will when combined with an emergen-tist and non-reductive approach to biological facts entails thedenial of incompatibilism

Here is another way of putting the same crucial point It does notfollow from the fact that something is free that it violates the lawsof natural mechanism We can do only those things that arepermitted by the laws but at the same time the laws themselvestogether with the settled facts do not necessitate our intentionalactions even if what merely happens to us (as opposed to what wewill or do) still contingently conforms to the laws In a preciselysimilar way in a moral context as Kant points out we can morallydo only those acts that are permitted by the moral law (universaliz-ability) but at the same time the law itself does not necessitate ourintentional actions (ought does not entail is) even if what merelyhappens to us (as opposed to what we will or do) still contingentlyconforms to the law It is also true that for Kant we can actuallywill or do things that only contingently conform to the moral lawif we have done them for reasons other than the moral law itselfBut that leaves the distinction between somethingrsquos being permittedby the law somethingrsquos being necessitated by the law and some-thingrsquos contingently conforming to the law perfectly intact

This point is intimately connected to Kantrsquos idea developed inthe First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgmentthat there is an explanatory and ontological gap between what in




the first Critique he had called the lsquotranscendental affinityrsquo ofnature (= its transcendentally nomological character) and itslsquoempirical affinityrsquo (= its empirically nomological character) (CPJ20 208ndash211 see also CPR A122ndash128 B163ndash165) And this inturn is intimately connected to the problem of lsquoempirical lawsrsquo8

More specifically Kant is committed to the thesis that evenallowing for the existence of universal transcendental laws ofnature and also for the existence of general mechanistic laws ofnature it does not automatically follow that there are specificempirical laws of nature lsquoall the way downrsquo Indeed nature mightstill be lawless and chaotic in its particular empirical details If wetake this problem seriously then it is arguable that for Kant in thethird Critique the assumption that nature is pervasively determinis-tically nomological is merely a regulative but not constitutiveprinciple of the understanding which could then fail to apply to allof the material objects studied in natural science In that case thenneither the universal transcendental laws nor the general mech -anistic causal laws of nature would determine the specificbehaviours and natures of all material objects And in particularthey would not determine the specific behaviours and natures ofnon-animal organisms non-rational animals or rational animals

Now assuming that this suggestion is correct what can close thenomological gap The answer is that transcendentally free rationalanimal choices produce natural causal singularities and one-timelaws and thereby freely complete nature Transcendentally freeagents thus create new unique empirical causal-dynamic laws ofnature that fall under and are permitted by but are not compelledor necessitated by the general laws of natural mechanism This inturn is the same as what Moore calls creating novel concepts ornew sense If we frame this point in terms of properties rather thanconcepts then what I am saying is that for Kant in the thirdCritique in order to explain the behaviours and natures of livingorganisms including of course the behaviours and natures ofrational human animals we are theoretically obliged to posit theexistence of causally efficacious emergent properties that naturallyarise from self-organizing complex dynamical systems9 GivenKantrsquos anti-Humean view that empirical causal-dynamic laws areintrinsic to the events they nomologically govern 10 it then followsthat these laws themselves are also emergent and lsquoone-offrsquo Natureis not mechanistic either all the way down or all the way through




it is only partially naturally mechanized but also partially aliveand partially spontaneous As transcendentally free rationalanimals with embodied wills we enrich and ramify the causal-dynamic nomological structure of material nature by being theauthors of its most specific empirical laws In this way not only dowe make a causal difference we also freely make nature in partand on an appropriately human scale As finite and radically evilwe are most certainly not gods But we are small-time creatorsAnd how much more power over nature could we really want

But what then is nature On Kantrsquos view nature containsnothing but material or spatiotemporal events and substances yetsome of them are not naturally mechanical but are in fact biologic -ally alive and thereby instantiate some emergent non-mechanicalintrinsic structural properties and in particular the property ofbeing conscious and rational To put a twist on Josiah Roycersquosfamous definition of idealism (lsquothe world and the heavens and thestars are all real but not so damned realrsquo11) the natural world iseverywhere physical but not so damned physical On this view ofreason and freedom then biological life and mind are one and thesame and they are dynamically emergent intrinsic structural prop-erties of a neutral non-mechanical non-mental lsquogunkrsquo or fluidaether (OP 21 206ndash233) that consists of a system of dynamicevents and forces and consciousness is continuous with animal lifein suitably complex suitably structured animals Some of thoseanimals are rational human animals or persons Thus the naturalworld contains in addition to natural mechanisms and biolog-icalmental facts a further set of dynamically emergent intrinsicstructural properties which together with the natural mechanismsand biological facts jointly constitute human persons and theirliving embodied spontaneous wills

In this way we can make Kantrsquos embodied libertarian ration-alism depend on the idea that our innate drive towards rationalityis the same as the conjunction of our human biological life andspontaneity of the will which in turn is necessarily embodiedgiven that the mind is identical to life Another way of putting thisis to say that if biological life and mind are the same then sincehuman rationality includes conscious mind it follows that ration-ality is necessarily embodied and that the embodiment ofrationality is identical to our capacity for free choice The humanwill for better or worse is rationality incarnate Yet another way




of putting it is to say that the human will whether as Willkuumlr or aspure Wille is necessarily spatiotemporally located and materiallyreal neurobiologically real and alive irreducible to natural mecha-nisms causally efficacious unprecedented or temporally under-determined inherently creative inherently perverse self-guidingtheoretically reasonable practically reasonable and morally sublime

2 AW Moore

I am extremely grateful to Robert Hanna for the great care withwhich he has read my book and for the great generosity withwhich he has engaged with it12 Although I believe that there areseveral misunderstandings some of which are pretty serious andone of which I shall try to correct in this reply I am also aware ofhow much of the blame lies not in his reading of the text but inthe text itself13

Correcting that misunderstanding is one of two principal aimsthat I have The other connects with the thesis which Hannadevelops in the latter part of his essay in contradistinction to someof my own ideas and which he calls lsquoembodied libertarian ration-alismrsquo Embodied libertarian rationalism is a thesis with twocomponents first that the biological life of a human being and thespontaneity of that human beingrsquos will together constitute a struc-tural property of his or her animal body what we might call thehuman beingrsquos vitality14 and second that manifestations of thisvitality occur in the slack left over by mechanistic laws of naturewhich although they determine some of what happens in naturedo not determine everything that happens there Hanna sees thisthesis as both exegetically important in as much as it has agrounding in Kantrsquos texts and philosophically defensible in its ownright He presents it as part of the best answer to that fundamentalKantian question lsquoHow can pure reason be practicalrsquo The secondof my aims is to say something about where I think embodied liber-tarian rationalism stands in relation both to my own ideas and toKantrsquos

To begin then with the misunderstanding This concerns what Icall the Incommensurability Thesis Hanna cites the definition ofthe Incommensurability Thesis that I give in my book lsquoexercise of




the concept of physical [determination] precludes exercise of theconcept of freedomrsquo (NIR 114 emphasis removed)15 The idea isthat these two concepts are incommensurable not incompatible Inother words it is not that there is some conceptual rule thatprevents their co-application it is rather that the conceptual rulesthat govern one of them do not govern the other at all Supposethat someone asserts of some given action that it was physicallydetermined He or she is not thereby committed to denying that itexhibited freedom as well Rather what he or she thereby does is tolsquobracketrsquo or to put to one side the question of whether it exhibitedfreedom so that the question of whether it exhibited freedom doesnot so much as arise at least while what is at issue is whether theaction really was physically determined An analogy that I use inmy book to illustrate this idea is the contrast between the twofollowing claims that someone might make in the course of a game

(1) The next move in this game cannot be a pawn move because ifWhite moves any of his pawns then he will place himself in check

(2) The next move in this game cannot be a pawn move because itis a game of draughts

The lsquocannotrsquo in (1) is like the lsquocannotrsquo of incompatibility thelsquocannotrsquo in (2) is like that of incommensurability There is ofcourse much more to be said about this idea of incommensur -ability and the distinction between incommensurability on the onehand and various different species of compatibility and incompati-bility on the other hand is by no means always sharp But I hopethat these comments give some indication of what I have in mind

A brief caveat before I go any further I am presenting theIncommensurability Thesis as lsquomyrsquo thesis And I do indeed believethat suitably construed this thesis is correct But I claim no origin -ality for it nor do I make any attempt to defend it in my book It isa thesis that I mention almost parenthetically It does not play thesignificant rocircle in my thinking that I think Hanna thinks it playsThe bulk of what I say in the second part of my book the part withwhich Hanna is concerned is impervious to the IncommensurabilityThesis and would I hope survive its rejection Be that as it may Ido endorse this thesis and I do think that the question of how itrelates to theses that Hanna and Kant endorse remains of great interest




Now Hanna presents the Incommensurability Thesis as though itwere a variation on the theme of Davidsonrsquos anomalous monism16

He explicitly draws a comparison with what he calls lsquoconceptualnon-reductionismrsquo in the philosophy of mind which he says is logi-cally consistent with what he calls lsquoontological reductionismrsquo I amnot entirely sure what he means by these terms but I take this to bean allusion to the Davidsonian idea that although mental conceptsare quite independent of physical concepts still they may apply tothe very same things mental events may be physical events Thismakes the Incommensurability Thesis consistent with a freeactionrsquos being physically determined Or to put it in Hannarsquos ownterms it makes the Incommensurability Thesis consistent with afree agentrsquos being lsquonaturally mechanizedrsquo What this in turn meansHanna complains is that the freedom in question is not realfreedom It is at best only lsquophenomenalrsquo freedom a feature of howour own agency strikes us ndash which if our own agency is in factnaturally mechanized is in Hannarsquos evocative phrase lsquoa tragic illu-sionrsquo As Hanna sees it the problem with the IncommensurabilityThesis is that it is a version of classical compatibilism it leaves uswith a freedom which precisely because it is compatible withnatural mechanism is not the real article It is in this spirit thatHanna advocates his rival view embodied libertarian rationalismwhich he claims is neither compatibilist nor incompatibilist Andhe further claims that this rival view has a grounding in Kant

I want to turn the tables completely here Just as Hanna contendsthat my view is a version of classical compatibilism whereas his isneither compatibilist nor incompatibilist I want to contend that myview is the one that is neither compatibilist nor incompatibilistwhereas his is a version of classical incompatibilism And whereHanna wants to claim that Kantrsquos view is likewise neither compati-bilist nor incompatibilist I want to claim that on the contraryKantrsquos view is in some sense both That it seems to me is preciselywhat makes Kantrsquos view ultimately unsatisfactory

As regards my insistence that the Incommensurability Thesis isneither compatibilist nor incompatibilist that ndash in a way ndash is itswhole point The chessdraughts analogy was supposed to illus-trate this If what you are playing is draughts then there is noquestion of the next moversquos being a pawn move If what you areplaying is the language game of freedom then there is no questionof your saying that an action is physically determined Pace Hanna




the Incommensurability Thesis is not consistent with a free actionrsquosbeing physically determined On the contrary it casts lsquoThis freeaction is physically determinedrsquo as a piece of nonsense

As regards my reservations concerning Hannarsquos claim that hisown view is neither incompatibilist nor compatibilist let usconsider how Hanna defends this claim He defines incompati-bilism as the view that freedom and natural mechanism cannotco-exist he defines compatibilism as the view that freedom andnatural mechanism can co-exist and he distances himself fromeach But there is an equivocation here on lsquoco-existrsquo What hemeans by lsquoco-existrsquo when he distances himself from incompati-bilism is lsquoexist in the same worldrsquo What he means by lsquoco-existrsquowhen he distances himself from compatibilism is lsquoexist in the samething (event substance agent)rsquo This makes his claim to be neitheran incompatibilist nor a compatibilist something of a sham And ifwhat is at stake is what is usually at stake in philosophical discus-sions of these issues ndash roughly whether it is possible for everythingin nature to be naturally mechanized and for nature to containfreedom ndash then Hannarsquos view is straightforwardly incompatibilistHe thinks that this is not possible

On Hannarsquos view which he also takes to be Kantrsquos view ifhuman beings ever act freely then this must be because naturalmechanism does not determine everything that happens in natureIt must be because natural mechanism leaves gaps within whichfreedom operates And the way in which freedom operates withinthese gaps is by filling them with what Hanna calls lsquocausal singu-laritiesrsquo that is to say if I understand him correctly events that aregoverned by laws but by laws of a maximally specific kind lsquoone-timersquo laws that govern those events and those events alone

In attributing this view to Kant Hanna draws an analogy withthe way in which the moral law although it is a constraint of sortson what human beings do leaves gaps of permissibility withinwhich freedom can operate I have several misgivings about thisanalogy First Hanna says that the moral law no more necessitatesall that we do than mechanistic laws of nature necessitate all thatwe do adding in parenthesis lsquoought does not entail isrsquo But the factthat ought does not entail is which is basically a fact about themoral impermissibility of some of what we do seems to me to becompletely beside the point here and indeed out of tune with theanalogy (The fact that ought does not entail is has no counterpart




in the case of mechanistic laws of nature) If the analogy is to be areasonable one then the question of necessitation in the moral caseshould be with respect to morally permissible worlds just as thequestion of necessitation in the case of natural mechanism is withrespect to worlds that do not violate any mechanistic laws ofnature But as far as that question goes ought does entail is what-ever ought to happen in a morally permissible world does happenThis is related to Hannarsquos claim that some of what happens to uslsquocontingentlyrsquo conforms to mechanistic laws of nature In whatsense of lsquocontingentlyrsquo With respect to worlds that do not violateany mechanistic laws of nature nothing that conforms to thoselaws does so contingently (for conforming to those laws is aprecondition of happening at all) With respect to a broader rangeof worlds say logically possible worlds everything that conformsto those laws does so contingently (for the laws themselves arecontingent) Similarly in the moral case

True in the moral case there does seem to be some distinctionbetween actions that conform to the moral law as a matter ofnecessity and actions that do so merely contingently ndash the verydistinction to which Hanna subsequently draws our attention Butthat is an entirely different matter which has no analogue as far asI can see in the case of natural mechanism That is a matter of itsbeing possible to characterize actions without reference to whatmotivates them The point is this Given such a characterizationwe may be able to see that the action in question conforms to themoral law But it is then a further question whether the agent isacting morally or not that depends on whether or not the morallaw is what is motivating him If the moral law is what is moti-vating him then relative to his motivation (and prescinding fromcomplications concerning any lsquospecial disfavour of fortunersquo or lsquotheniggardly provision of a stepmotherly naturersquo [GMM 4 394]) it isno mere contingency that his action conforms to the moral law Ifthe moral law is not what is motivating him then relative to hismotivation it is a mere contingency (GMM 4 397ndash400) But torepeat I see no analogue of this in the case of natural mechanism

There is still of course the idea that the moral law leaves gaps ofpermissibility within which freedom can operate (which mayindeed be all that Hanna means by saying that ought does notentail is ndash although if that is all he means then he is guilty ofexpressing himself in a misleading way) It is worth noting




however that this idea like the idea that we can freely do what isimpermissible allows for exercises of freedom that are beyond thecontrol of pure reason which means that it is like the idea that wecan freely do what is impermissible in another respect tooalthough it is certainly to be found in Kant (GMM 4 439 andCPrR 5 66) it is arguably lsquoun-Kantianrsquo

Be that as it may there is still the question of whether Kantbelieves that natural mechanism leaves analogous gaps gaps whichare filled by lsquocausal singularitiesrsquo serving as the loci of humanfreedom Hanna it seems to me gives little in the way of evidencefor the claim that he does He appeals to the passage from Critiqueof the Power of Judgment in which Kant says that lsquoit would beabsurd for humans to hope that there may yet arise a Newtonwho could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade ofgrass according to natural laws that no intention has orderedrsquo (CPJ5 400) But that passage can be interpreted as making a quitedifferent point about the possibility of teleological principles super-vening on a completely naturally mechanized subvenient base

I think that Kant accepts determinism the thesis that every-thing that happens in nature is completely determined by its ante-cedent conditions in combination with mechanistic laws of natureFurthermore I think that he wants to combine this with bothlibertarianism the thesis that some of what we do we do freelyand incompatibilism the thesis that determinism and libertari-anism thus defined are in some sense incompatible with each other17

This shows what I mean when I claim that Kant is in some senseboth a compatibilist and an incompatibilist The way in whichKant thinks he can have his cake and eat it is by assimilating theincompatibility between determination and freedom that heendorses to the incompatibility between rest and motion There is asense a perfectly straightforward sense in which rest and motionare incompatible with each other We can all agree that a physicalobject which is at rest cannot at the same time be in motionNevertheless a physical object a luggage rack say can be both atrest relative to a train and at the same time in motion relative toan embankment The same sort of relativism Kant thinks appliesin this case He believes that an event can be both completely deter-mined by natural mechanism when considered from one point ofview and free when considered from another18




The second of these points of view involves reference to an atem-poral reality beyond the world of nature in which free agency isultimately to be located and with respect to which the world ofnature is mere appearance This is why I cannot ultimately acceptHannarsquos idea that for Kant freedom operates in gaps that mech -anistic laws leave within the world of nature still less that it does soby filling these gaps with lsquocausal singularitiesrsquo ndash by creating lsquoone-timersquo laws ndash where this in turn is to be understood in such a way thatfreedom is essentially embodied I think that Kantrsquos writings aboundwith material that tells against this interpretation One example isthe section from Critique of Pure Reason entitled lsquoResolution of theCosmological Idea of the Totality in the Derivation of theOccurrences in the World from their Causesrsquo (CPR A532ndash558B560ndash586) which seems to me more or less decisive

I shall not say much more about this now even though there ismuch more (obviously) to be said This is not least because I doubtwhether there is much more that I can say that is not both exceed-ingly familiar and for anyone who reads Kant differentlyunpersuasive But I shall add just one point and then indicate verybriefly why I think that Kantrsquos reconciling project fails (which isincidentally not for the reasons that Hanna suggests) 19

The point that I want to add is this I do take Kant to be committedto a kind of incompatibilism and not to the IncommensurabilityThesis There are some crucial passages in which he might beinterpreted in either way But much as I would like to I cannot ulti-mately read him as holding the Incommensurability Thesis ndash eventhough I do think that if he had held it then his conception wouldnot have been vulnerable to my main objection20

That objection is as follows There needs to be an answer to thequestion lsquoWhich of the things that we do exhibit freedomrsquo IfKantrsquos conception is to have any chance of being taken seriouslythen it must also have some chance of connecting with the imputa-tions that we are antecedently inclined to make Thus John cannotbe said to have acted freely when he suddenly jumped at thatgunfire nor when he came down with flu last week But now whatare the imputations that we are antecedently inclined to make Ifthere is anything in this area that we are antecedently inclined todo then it is to revise our imputations in the light of further knowl-edge We think twice about saying that a shoplifter is acting of herown free will when we discover that she is a kleptomaniac But ndash




and this is the crucial point ndash what we are antecedently inclined todo if we become persuaded of determinism and become persuadedof the incompatibilism on which Kant insists is to deny that thereis any freedom at all It is of no avail for Kant to argue that hisreconciling project shows that we do not need to do this Thereconciling project comes one consideration too late It is what weare antecedently inclined to do that dictates what is available to bereconciled

Notes

1 This paper is a revised version of a one-on-one discussion presented atthe lsquoFree Will Agent Causation and Kantrsquo conference at theUniversity of Sussex in June 2005 We would like to thank the BritishAcademy and the University of Sussex whose support made theconference possible Lucy Allais who organized the conference andthe other conference participants whose comments and questionshelped guide the revision of the discussion

2 For convenience we refer to Kantrsquos works infratextually in paren-theses The citations include both an abbreviation of the English titleand the corresponding volume and page numbers in the standardlsquoAkademiersquo edition of Kantrsquos works Kants gesammelte Schriftenedited by the Koumlniglich Preussischen (now Deutschen) Akademie derWissenschaften (Berlin G Reimer [now de Gruyter] 1902-) Wegenerally follow the standard English translations but have occasion-ally modified them where appropriate For references to the firstCritique we follow the common practice of giving page numbersfrom the A (1781) and B (1787) German editions only Here is a list ofthe relevant abbreviations and English translations

CPJ Critique of the Power of Judgment trans P Guyer andE Matthews (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2000)

CPR Critique of Pure Reason trans P Guyer and A Wood(Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1997)

CPrR Critique of Practical Reason trans M Gregor in ImmanuelKant Practical Philosophy (Cambridge CambridgeUniversity Press 1996) pp 133ndash272

GMM Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals trans M Gregorin Immanuel Kant Practical Philosophy pp 37ndash108

MM Metaphysics of Morals trans M Gregor in Immanuel KantPractical Philosophy pp 353ndash604

OP Immanuel Kant Opus postumum trans E Foumlrster andM Rosen (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1993)






3 A W Moore Noble in Reason Infinite in Faculty Themes andVariations in Kantrsquos Moral and Religious Philosophy (LondonRoutledge 2003)

4 W Sellars lsquoPhilosophy and the scientific image of manrsquo in W SellarsScience Perception and Reality (New York Humanities Press 1963)pp 1ndash40

5 See O OrsquoNeill Constructions of Reason (Cambridge CambridgeUniversity Press 1989) ch 2

6 See P Guyer Kant and the Experience of Freedom (CambridgeCambridge University Press 1993)

7 See J Fodor lsquoMaking mind matter morersquo in J Fodor A Theory ofContent and Other Essays (Cambridge MIT Press 1990) pp 137ndash59at 156

8 The problem is how to understand both the apparently a priori episte-mological and also strongly modal status of these laws in view of thefact that they are explicitly held to be empirical See eg H AllisonlsquoCausality and causal laws in Kant a critique of Michael Friedmanrsquoin P Parrini (ed) Kant and Contemporary Epistemology(Netherlands Kluwer 1994) 291ndash307 G Buchdahl Metaphysicsand the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge MIT Press 1969)pp 651ndash65 G Buchdahl lsquoThe conception of lawlikeness in Kantrsquosphilosophy of sciencersquo in L W Beck (ed) Kantrsquos Theory ofKnowledge (Dordrecht D Reidel 1974) 128ndash50 P Guyer KantrsquosSystem of Nature and Freedom (Oxford Oxford University Press2005) ch 2 M Friedman Kant and the Exact Sciences (CambridgeHarvard University Press 1992) chs 3ndash4 M Friedman lsquoCausal lawsand the foundations of natural sciencersquo in P Guyer (ed) TheCambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge Cambridge UniversityPress 1992) pp 161ndash99 W Harper lsquoKant on the a priori and mate-rial necessityrsquo in R Butts R (ed) Kantrsquos Philosophy of PhysicalScience (Dordrecht D Reidel 1986) pp 239ndash72 R Walker lsquoKantrsquosconception of empirical lawrsquo Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society63 (1990) 243ndash58 and E Watkins lsquoKantrsquos justification of the laws ofmechanicsrsquo in E Watkins (ed) Kant and the Sciences (New YorkOxford University Press 2001) pp 136ndash59

9 See H Haken Principles of Brain Functioning A SynergeticApproach to Brain Activity Behavior and Cognition (BerlinSpringer 1996) A Juarrero Dynamics in Action (Cambridge MITPress 1999) J S Kelso Dynamic Patterns (Cambridge MIT Press1995) Port and T Van Gelder (eds) Mind as Motion Explorations inthe Dynamics of Cognition (Cambridge MIT Press 1995)E Thelen and L Smith A Dynamic Systems Approach to theDevelopment of Cognition and Action (Cambridge MIT Press1994) F Varela Principles of Biological Autonomy (New York


ElsevierNorth-Holland 1979) and A Weber and F Varela lsquoLifeafter Kant natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations ofbiological individualityrsquo Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences1 (2002) 97ndash125 The notion of self-organization used by contempo-rary theorists of complex systems dynamics is slightly broader thanKantrsquos in that it includes non-living complex systems as well eg therolling hexagonal lsquoBeacutenard cellsrsquo that appear as water is heatedKantian self-organizing systems are all holistically causally integratedor lsquoautopoieticrsquo such that the whole and the parts mutually produceeach other

10 See E Watkins Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (CambridgeCambridge University Press 2005) ch 4

11 J Royce The Letters of Josiah Royce (Chicago University of ChicagoPress 1970) p 217

12 Like Hanna I shall refer to my own book as NIR13 Among the misunderstandings that I shall not discuss two I think

are worth mentioning in a footnote One of these concerns is what Icall the radical picture Hanna rightly points out that while I do notclaim to find the radical picture in Kant I do claim to find pressuresin Kantrsquos system to endorse it Hanna develops this point in terms ofKantrsquos WilleWillkuumlr distinction as though that were the place whereI took the pressures to be greatest actually that is the place where Itake Kant to be doing most to keep the radical picture at bay Thesecond misunderstanding comes in Hannarsquos claim that I identifyrational freedom with the creation of new concepts I certainly put aheavy emphasis on the creation of new concepts as a paradigm ofrational freedom But I am just as keen to recognize rational freedomin the exercise of old concepts The creation of new concepts and theexercise of old concepts have much in common and I do not want tosuggest that only when the element of autonomy that is characteristicof both reaches the intensity that is characteristic only of the formerdoes it constitute freedom

14 This is my term not Hannarsquos15 I have slightly modified the definition replacing lsquodeterminismrsquo by

lsquodeterminationrsquo I take this to be an inessential difference though themodified version is somewhat more convenient for my current purposes

16 D Davidson lsquoMental eventsrsquo reprinted in his Essays on Actions andEvents (Oxford Oxford University Press 1980)

17 In my book I tell an old joke which I take to illustrate Kantrsquos extraor-dinary ambitions here (NIR 209 n 1) I shall hereby allow myselfthe indulgence of repeating this joke Two people are in bitter disputewith each other about whether some proposed course of action can bejustified They consult a sage To the one who says that the course of






action can be justified the sage says lsquoYou are rightrsquo To the one whosays that it cannot be justified the sage says lsquoYou are rightrsquo Abystander protests lsquoBut they canrsquot both be right their views areincompatiblersquo Turning to the bystander the sage says lsquoAnd you areright toorsquo

18 I am here drawing on material from NIR theme two sect 319 I shall be drawing on material from NIR theme two sect 520 See further with references NIR pp 114ndash15


as close to defending them as any philosopher ever has In thesecond part of Moorersquos book which consists in a discussion ofKantrsquos notion of freedom and some philosophical variations on itMoore wants to explore both the Conception and the Picture inrelation to Kantrsquos moral philosophy with an eye to understandingKant better and also if possible finding out some necessary truthsabout rational human nature

Moorersquos central proposal is what he calls the Basic Idea which isthat there is a conation or nisus in all of us more fundamental thanany other towards rationality (NIR 128) and that this innatedrive towards rationality is also experienced as what Kant calls thefeeling of lsquorespectrsquo for persons as ends-in-themselves and for themoral law (NIR 134 136) So being free in any way is expressingour drive to rationality and being autonomously free is authentic -ally and fully expressing that drive along with other free personsunder moral laws hence authentically and fully becoming ourselvesas individual moral animals in an ideal community of moralanimals Kantian ethics is thus a version of what Moore callslsquoconative objectivismrsquo (NIR 7) the theory that ethical thinkingdepends on the contents of certain psychological drive-states thatwe all innately share Otherwise put pure reason has motivationalforce and action-guiding content because it is essentially connectedwith its own unique kind of desire ndash the unique kind of desire thatmakes us us

I am deeply sympathetic to Moorersquos proposal In the end whatdistinguishes our views and where we will perhaps disagree isonly this I think that the innate drive towards rationality is thesame as the conjunction of our human biological life and spon-taneity of the will and that the human will is necessarily embodiedCombine that with a non-reductive view of biological concepts andfacts and call the resultant view embodied libertarian rationalismIn my opinion this view is the only way to get a satisfactoryKantian metaphysics of freedom of the will Such a metaphysicswould enable us to get beyond both (i) the classic Kantiandilemma as found in the third Antinomy between Newtonian orLaPlacean determinism on the one hand and libertarian indeter-minism on the other and also (ii) the more recent but even morerobust post-Kantian dilemma ndash to use Wilfred Sellarsrsquos evocativeformulation4 ndash between the Scientific Image and the ManifestImage of human beings in the world that is between Newtonian





























































2 AW Moore


















































Notes
































































































2 AW Moore


















































Notes


















































































Notes







































reason, freedom and kant: an...

Documents