Kant, Second Analogy,and Causation

Kant argues that mere conformity with the moral law is not sufficient for moral goodness. I will argue that Kant is right. In this essay I will explain why Kant distinguishes between conforming with the moral law and acting for the sake of the moral law, and what that distinction means to Kant, before arguing why Kant was right.

In Kant’s Prolegomena, he states that space and time are pure intuitions. Kant’s assimilation of space and time relates to his idea of contingency and how necessity is not derived from experience. In this essay I will give the premises for Kant’s statement in relation to space and time being pure intuitions in order to make his argument salient. I will also disambiguate definitions that are involved in the premise; and information on the basis of Kant’s understanding of pure and empirical intuitions regarding space and time. Then after a concise explanation of his argument, I will object to it by reconstructing his argument and showing the skepticism of space and time being from pure intuitions. Finally, I will give a possible response on behalf of Kant that ties his concept of space and time existing in a form of pure intuitions.

In this paper, we will be exploring both theories, but we will be favoring Kant’s theory. We will be applying both the theories to a case. The case being you lost your Philosophy textbook and then borrowed your friend’s Philosophy textbook to study for an upcoming test, which you also unfortunately lost. This morning your friend, asked for his book back so he can study for the same test. You looked into

According to Kant, a person’s will is also known as their want to do something. This means that if a person has a good will he or she had a good reason to act on something. Kant also states that the rather or not a person is right or wrong in doing something is based off of reasoning. It is because of this that it can also be concluded that Kant believes no matter what if a person has a “good will” that person also has a “right will”.

Except the clear convicion that, even if there never were actions springing from such pure sources, our concern is not this or that was done but that reason of itself and independently of all apprearances commands what ought to be done… This duty, as duty in general, prior to all experience, lies in the idea of a reason which determines the will by a priori grounds.

The Prolegomena to any future metaphysics thesis is, Kant addresses the question of “whether such a thing as metaphysics be at all possible” (818). He is addressing this topic to correct Hume’s skepticism. He also asks, “If it be a science, how come it that it cannot, like other sciences, obtain universal and permanent recognition” (818)? To begin the answer to these questions, Kant addresses David Hume’s attempt at metaphysics, and explains where Hume did not present a conclusion to the questions he had brought up.

Kant’s metaphysical theorizing was in large part focused on the matter of how synthetic a-priori judgements were possible. For Kant, the question of how synthetic a-priori judgements operated was central to understanding the nature of human thinking, and to enabling metaphysics. Previously Kant had been alerted to the writings of David Hume. Hume had effectively claimed that knowledge only came from analytic a-priori judgments or by synthetic a-posteriori. Hume criticized the notion of cause and effect, and claimed it to be product of conventions of thought, rather than reason. Kant had recognized that if Hume’s claims were to be regarded and applied to other key concepts, that it would undermine the basis of metaphysics; due the criticisms ability to be applied to many other key notions of the world. Since metaphysics was being called into question, and it seemed that people were not making progress in metaphysical understanding in the way the sciences seemed to have been doing, Kant figured that he needed to discern away in which metaphysics was possible, and could be established as a science.

In the depths of Amazonian rainforest, on the edge of the Maici River, the Pirahã people exist firmly trapped in the present. Their culture acknowledges only direct personal experience and history does not exist for them beyond individual living memory, and even that is limited. They have no numbers nor have they been observed to use other means of numeracy (i.e. counting on fingers or keeping tally with rocks or sticks). They also lack words for color beyond: “blood-like.” It is also debated whether they even had pronouns before making contact with the Guraní tribe. Additionally, the Pirahã language has no subordinate clauses. The theory proposed is that since language is created by culture, and they have no need for numeracy or subordinate clauses in

Immanuel Kant mentioned many moral structures and reasoning’s a few had been based on a perception that the motive is the final authority for morality. In Kant’s eyes, cause is immediately correlated with morals and beliefs. Actions of any type, he believed, ought to be undertaken from a feel of responsibility dictated by purpose, and no motion done for appropriateness or entirely in obedience to law or custom can be seemed as ethical. An ethical act is an act completed for the "proper" motives. Kant might argue that to make a promise for the incorrect cause is not ethical you might as well not make the promise. You have to observe a positive code so one can discover truth behind your movements. Kant believed that you need to deal with everybody

David Hume asserts that the grounds upon which connections between causes and effects are established are not rooted in reason. Hume argues that while reason does play a large role in understanding rational relations of ideas, the same principles cannot apply to matters of fact. He justifies this claim with the fact that the associations we make between cause and effect are the result of constant conjunction and habituation. He also stresses the irrationality of the principle of uniformity of nature, which is a key principle of making connections between causes and effects. Although the observations of the nature of ideas surrounding cause and effect are sound, the conclusions of irrationality seem far stretched. He hastily throws around the label of “irrational”, and does not consider that perhaps lacking rationality in the classical sense is not necessarily conducive to being driven without reason.

For Silber, Kantian consequentialism is benign because it does not concern the actual consequence of an action but rather the willed consequences. When agents act as the result of an imaginary law, expected or intended consequences of an act result. As we have seen Silber argues that the nature of Kantian consequentialism is subjunctive consequentialism as the inhabitants of consequences of an act all acted on maxims which were analyzed according to the subjunctive consequences of the action as spelled out in this sentence. As Silber’s simpler but less precise formulation “the moral man considers what other men would have to do if his maxim were a universal law” (Silber 213).

The key to (i) is to be found in his insistence on the cognitive certainty of the following metaphysical thesis. Even if the phenomenal self is completely determined causally, the moral self is free because it is noumenal (see the Critique of Practical Reason 28-34, 43-52, 55-59, 100-106; hereafter Practical Reason). He claims that the noumenal self is a cause imminent in "experience" because it is an "efficient cause through Ideas" (50). In short, Kant rejects the formation of moral habits through repetition in order to protect radically the freedom of the moral agent from phenomenal and scientific determinism. The key to (ii) is Kant's rejection of Aristotle's following advice. Since the cognitive results of a kind of reasoning is determined by its subject matter, it is foolish to require of moral reasoning the certainty and precision one can expect

He persuasively unveils imperatives both universal and hypothetical, the elements of unconventional practical reason, and examples of extreme controversy that force people to consider situations from a previously unconsidered moral perspective; however, Kant’s initial moral work is not without its critique: ranging from

In the critique of pure reason, Kant states, “All alternations occur in accordance with the law of the connection of cause and effect.”1 This statement is interpreted in two different ways: weak readings and strong readings. Weaker readings basically suggest that Kant's statement only refers to “All events have a cause”; however, the strong readings suggest that “the Second Analogy is committed not just to causes, but to causal laws as well.”2 To understand the difference between the readings, it is helpful to notice Kant's distinction between empirical laws of nature and universal transcendental principles. Empirical laws have an empirical element that universal transcendental principles cannot imply.

Act and potency and their distinction are an important and fundamental theory in philosophy. It helps approach questions in metaphysics concerning substance, essence, and causation. In this essay, I will be using this theory of act and potency to show how the four causes and the theory relate to each other. Thus, the four causes: formal cause, material cause, efficient cause, and final cause are related to each other and can be explained through the theory and concepts of act and potency.