So I finally succumbed and bought a new camera in preparation for my next adventure in Japan. I very had nearly forsaken my photographic preferences for a P&S camera (that’s ‘Point and Shoot’ to all those who don’t really care much for the likes of AE Lock and Aperture Priorities), but luckily at the last minute I found the wonder of the Ricoh GX100. This is a compact camera made for photographers, by photographers (or so I hear), but has many features that are usually only found on D-SLR cameras (Digital Single Lens Reflex - the big cameras with interchangeable lenses). So now I can take my little GX100 with me wherever I go and still have the flexibility to do a bit of creative photography when I don’t just need to take snaps of friends at the latest gathering.

So what was *my* reason for a new camera? That should be the question everybody asks themselves on the road to forking out a hefty wad of dosh. My camera history includes an old Ricoh SLR, the Olympus C-5060z and the Olympus C-7070z (because the former got stolen). While my C-7070z takes great pictures (the pictures of the GX100 in this review are taken by it), there are two main issues I have with it. One, recently when I power on, it turns itself off and on in succession several times, almost as if ‘warming up’ which leads to much frustration and many missed shots. Two, the camera, compact though it already is, it not compact enough. It still requires its own shoulder strap style camera case. In the end, this meant I didn’t take it out with me much unless I went out with the sole aim of taking pictures (which wasn’t often). Hence, I needed a pocket-sized camera I could happily taken with me at a moment’s notice. But at the same time, I didn’t want to sacrifice the ‘fun’ in photography which, for me, involves playing with settings and experimenting with picture taking. A P&S camera would destroy all that with its ’smart’ auto-everything.

The guy over at Luminous Landscape in his Canon G9 review said it for me:

The only great camera is the camera that’s there with you when the light happens.

First up, I should mention that this isn’t going to be a technical review of sorts. I’ve listed some good reviews at the bottom of this post for that matter. Rather, I just want to give my impressions of this camera and some sample pictures. I’ll probably update it as time goes by as well. So, the Ricoh Caplio GX100 has a 10 megapixel CCD and a 24-72mm lens (F2.5-4.4 aperture) as well as RAW DNG support. Here it is:

You can see the large grip and pop up flash. Unlike most compact cameras, this one feels great to hold. It sits in your hand snugly and doesn’t slip. You feel like you’re still *doing* photography, but that may only make sense for people who have used SLR cameras. For the average consumer though, it’s just better grip than other P&S cameras. The pop up flash is interesting. You press a button to the side of it to flip it up. I can only speculate at why it is in this position, but my best guess would be that it avoids the notorious problem of ‘white spots’ in the pictures. Usually when the flash is close to the lens, white spots appear due to the light from the flash. Again, this is only my guess. I haven’t seen white spots in my pictures yet.

The above picture shows the menu layout on the Ricoh GX100. Notice the lack of a viewfinder and large screen in its place. There is an optional viewfinder which sits in the hotshoe sync (for attaching external flash devices - another useful feature), but it costs about an extra £100 so I didn’t buy it. But it is worth noting that if you like ‘traditional’ photography and looking through a viewfinder, it is possible to do so with this camera. Notice also the rubberised grip next to the zoom function - this allows your thumb to sit comfortably while holding the camera. The ‘ADJ’ dial and the dial by the shutter button allow you to alter the shutter speed and aperture in manual mode - really quick and easy to use! The program dial on top is a little tricky to turn, but it has two ‘My’ functions. This allows you to save your favourite settings to use them quickly every time. I set one to Aperture priority Jpeg shooting and one to Manual Raw mode shooting, both with an exposure compensation of -0.3 and a slight increase of saturation and decrease of contrast - again, just personal preferences, but it shows that you can tweak the settings to take your pictures as you like them.

The actual settings menu is really, really easy to navigate. My old Olympus wasn’t bad by any means, but the Ricoh menu takes the cake. I don’t need to enter the menus much, as I use my own settings on the ‘My’ mode, but even when I do, it takes no more than a few seconds to change the setting I need to. This is something that needs to be tried in store to appreciate. If you’ve ever become frustrated at the menus on cameras being too complicated, you might find this a breath of fresh air. Also, as mentioned the camera sports Aperture Priority mode (setting the aperture - controlling the amount of light hitting the sensor - and having the shutter speed selected automatically), as well as full Manual and Program modes. No Shutter Priority though (setting the speed the picture is taken and having the camera select the aperture). I tend to find myself working in full manual mode most often recently. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and photography became a lot more fun because of it! Another great feature I’d never used before but now use everyday is the live histogram feature. I can’t believed I ever lived without this! The camera also has a grid feature, which divides the image up into thirds to aid your composition!

Basically in the histogram, the left side of the image shows shadows, the right hand side shows highlights and the middle shows midtones. If you over-expose your image, the highlights become ‘clipped’, meaning the camera cannot capture the full tonal range because the scene is too bright and you will have bleached-white areas. Vice-versa, if the image is underexposed, the dark areas appear as deepest black. Dpreview have a clear explanation of how the histogram works. Take a look! Histogram explanation

There are the pre-programmed scene modes such as portrait, night mode (etc.) but I don’t use these. There is also a bizarre mode that allows you to correct the skew (the angle of the picture). It’s used when taking pictures of other pictures and posters (etc.) so that, if you get the angle incorrect you can correct it to a nice, square image. I haven’t used it yet, but I imagine if you need to take pictures of information (such as bus timetables and such), it could be very handy. Also interesting is the ability to take sequential shots and stitch them together. Basically, the camera takes lots of small pictures and puts them together like a sop-motion slide show. Useful if you’re into animation and want to capture movements body positions in order to see the flow, but also just for having fun. You can also shoot in square format (1:1) like medium-format cameras which allows for another creative dimension.

I mentioned the raw mode briefly. This is very important on high end cameras as it allows you to shoot in better detail and they are easy to correct afterwards. In other words, you can take the images shot in raw mode into Photoshop or other similar programs and correct things like the exposure, saturation, brightness (etc). By shooting directly in Jpeg format, you automatically lose some of the detail in the picture. But, for those who are not into post-processing of photos, I’m happy to say that the Jpeg mode offers great images anyway. I find it hard to match the Jpegs when I try to correct my raw images, but that says more about my ability as a photographer than anything else. I still have a lot to learn. With the latest high speed SDHC memory card (I bought a Sandisk Extreme III SD 4GB Card - the maximum capacity this camera can take), shooting raw takes about 4 seconds to save each picture. This is unacceptable for some people, but I haven’t found it a problem yet. I was out shooting in raw format for the whole day just recently in Whitby (including taking pictures of friends) and I wasn’t bothered by the small time lag. That said, you certainly can’t take pictures in raw mode in quick succession with this camera, so it’s best to use it for composing good pictures and taking your time (which I find actually helps me to think about the composition more!) Also, the raw mode pictures take a noticeably longer time to save without a good memory card. I tried a standard SD card while I was waiting for my Extreme III card to arrive and it took around 2 or 3 seconds more to save each picture. So definitely worth buying a fast memory card!

Low light photography has always been the bane of my life with digital cameras. I recently found out why. Basically, the sensors in these sort of compact cameras are small. The smaller the sensor, the more noise (you can see the pixels in the image) which isn’t pleasant for most people. D-SLR cameras have much bigger sensors (bigger chips) and so can take good quality pictures up to much higher ISO settings. ISO is the speed of the ‘film’ (in traditional cameras), so ISO 80 is a slow speed film with a fine grain (you can’t see the pixels), and so good for bright, sunny situations as it requires more light. ISO 1600 (for example) is a much faster speed film and so good for fast-moving objects and low light situations. But the compromise is that the pictures become ‘grainy’ (you can see the pixels).

As noted elsewhere, with the Ricoh GX100, anything over ISO 400 is reputed to be unusable as the noise is too high. ISO 400 is acceptable, I feel, and has a rather nice grainy, ‘rustic’ quality to it. ISO 80-200 are fine, but I almost always shoot in ISO 100 for good quality pictures. You’ll need a tripod for night photography, but this camera also has the camera shake correction technology to neutralise the shake from your hands. I find this works quite well and I can take better pictures with no flash indoors. The flash, I’m sorry to say, isn’t so good. It was corrected a little with a firmware update this March and is acceptable now, but without the firmware it’s far too bright in low-light situations. Alas, there is no flash EV correction function either (to control the strength of the flash - something that I used often on my Olympus), so I’m a little disappointed with that. It does have a ’soft-flash’ setting though. The again having said all that, flash pictures from compact cameras in general look awful anyway without an external flashgun, so I don’t use flash much.

An area that this camera excels in is street photography. I took the camera through its paces the other day on a bright, sunny afternoon in Leeds. Shooting both in aperture priority and manual in Jpeg format, I could snap snap snap away casually and get sharp, colourful images back. Definitely something to consider if you like this sort of photography! There is also a ’snap’ setting which uses the hyperfocal point to remove the lag in automatic focus. Basically this means the camera only focuses at a certain point, but much more of the picture is actually in focus due to the depth of field. This enables you to take photos out on the street really quickly and get them coming back sharp!

Yet another area it excels is in Black and White photography. The aforementioned grain is a bonus here as the images take on a gritty look. I’ve found myself starting to take more black and white photographs with this camera and enjoying it.

I haven’t used the macro mode much yet, but I do like macro photography, so I’m happy this camera has a great macro mode (1cm in wideangle and 4cm in telephoto). Coupled with manual focus (at the touch of a button, I might add!), it’s great for close-up work. The camera also has a movie mode, but he quality is only average in my opinion. The 24mm wideangle lens is not to be sniffed at. I’ve always gone for wideangle lens cameras (usually 28mm), as I find they just offer so much more flexibility in photography. So using a 24mm lens has been even better! It has a little barrel distortion at the full 24mm, but it’s easily correctable in Photoshop with a plugin like Ptlens. I’d happily trade off the telephoto (long) end of the lens for extra width, and that’s exactly what I did. 72mm at the telephoto end of the lens is short, so don’t think about zooming in especially far with this camera. It’s all about getting up close. I’ve found though that I’d ideally like a little more in the telephoto end or a larger aperture at telephoto to give a better bokeh effect (the blurring of the background/foreground). Oh well, I guess I can’t have it all.

Battery life is moderate. A full day’s shooting lasts, **very approximately**, 6 or 7 hours with the camera on all the time. I bought a second lithium battery, but it’s worth noting that the camera takes 2 AAA batteries for those times you are in a pinch (though I doubt they would last long).

**********

So let’s take a look at some pictures shall we?

**********

Dust Problem

Some people have reported problems with this camera (among others) that dust gets into the sensor during normal usage. This results in dark spots or blotches in pictures. The only solution has been to send the camera back to Ricoh for cleaning, but I found this novel thread a while ago that claims to have a solution for dust problems on a similar camera. Sucking! Maybe it will work for the Ricoh? I don’t now if it’ll get dust off the sensor, but give it a try if you’re having problems. I’ll just have to pray I don’t have them at some point in the future.

I’ll copy and paste the content that ‘Dunakeszi’ wrote:

Hello All,

coming back from a London vacation I also experienced dust between the lens elements of my G7. Needless to say I’ve been hating Canon since then but after reading all the articles about this topic in the net I just found the SOLUTION at least for my own camera: :)
#1)

-I removed the silver ring around the lens, turned the camera on and set the lens to FULL telephoto, then cleaned carefully ALL the visible dust particles around the lens and the front of the camera. Take the time to make a nice job here! No any impurity should remain around the lens!
#2)

-When it was done, I set the lens to wide angle, then I put front of the lens into my mouth (don’t laugh! :), closing it carefully around with my lips.

After that I sucked the air slowly-continuously for couple of seconds thru the lens letting the air in the lens around the lens that I cleaned to spotless before as wrote!!
The result:
-No any dust particle can be seen on/in the lens now!

IMPORTANT!!!

-If you don’t clean the cam. BEFORE sucking the air thru the front of the lens you can even suck more dust in the camera!

-DO NOT throw air thru, ONLY suck!! The moisture you breath out can make it even worse!
Guys, I hope I could help to all of you!
Good luck!

Regards:
Dunakeszi

**********

Red Skies at Night review - Great review!
Phototropic review - Great video included in this review. It really gives you a feel for how compact and small this camera is!
Another review with sample pictures
Northlight Images review

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Unbelievable! There is nothing related at all?!

Filed under: English, Photography by Mike on Saturday, June 21st 2008 @ 7:26 pm | 2 Comments » |

Things have been busy on Knowing Nothing recently. Finally, after many trials and tribulations, I succeeded in adding a sidebar widget which allows you to display quotes. It’s the ‘Quotes Collection’ plugin from Srini’s Wordpress Laboratory. You can see it in action, modified slightly by me, displaying a random word from a rather swollen database of over 7800 that are listed as required for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 1. Since it took me so long and was painfully tedious and frustrating, I want to document it for other people, should they encounter a similar problem. So today’s entry is very technical and uninteresting unless you are trying to deal with csv files or have an interest in phpmyadmin!

It was no small task to get it functioning, I can tell you! The problem wasn’t with the plugin, but what happens when the plugin takes the words from the database in phpmyadmin, an administration console for managing databases like the ones needed to power forums or blogs like mine. Let me clarify: There are two ways to add words (or ‘quotes’). You can either insert them manually, one by one, through the admin interface in Wordpress, or you import a database - a csv (comma separated values) file - containing the items you want to display.

Of course, I wasn’t going to enter 7830 words in manually, so I decided to create a csv file and upload it through phpmyadmin. I used an excel file containing a list of the words for JLPT 1 that some kind soul created and uploaded somewhere (I forget where I downloaded it as it was some time ago).

You can download the JLPT 1 list of of words here.

I copied and pasted the list into notepad and set the ‘find and replace’ function to find all spaces and other characters and replace them with the relevant characters so that the csv file would function correctly. To cut a long, boring story short, I had to get the structure to something like this:

“挨拶”,”マイク”,”Ah!;Oh!;Alas!”,”yes”
“爆弾”,”マイケル”,”ohho”,”yes”
.
.
and so on

The first entry in Japanese, separated by a comma represents the ‘quote’ column. The second entry in Japanese, the ‘author’. The third is the ’source’ and the fourth is the ‘visible’ column. This is how a csv file works - I tell phpmyadmin how to separate the list of terms. In the case above I used commas to separate each field and quotation marks to enclose each item. Each new entry is on a separate line.

When I uploaded this to phpmyadmin, it worked. But when the Wordpress plugin tried to take the database entries and display them on my website, they appeared scrambled. For some reason, even though the Japanese text displayed correctly in phpmyadmin, it looked like a mess of characters on my front page. But I noticed that, when I input an entry through the admin interface in wordpress, it displayed correctly on my website, but became jumbled up in phpmyadmin. Take a look at the screen shots below:

The screen shot above taken in phpmyadmin shows the Quotes Collection database. Entry 21 shows the entry I uploaded via a csv file - it displays correctly in phpmyadmin. Entry 20 is an entry I added via the admin interface for the Quotes Collection plugin via Wordpress. Notice entry 20 appears scrambled in this phpmyadmin screen shot but, in the screen shot below and on my main blog page, it appeared correctly showing the Japanese text.

The screenshot above is from inside wordpress in the Quotes Collection admin panel. Notice entry 21 that I added via the csv file in phpmyadmin is now scrambled. But entry 20 that I added normally though the wordpress admin interface displays correctly. Also notice that this is only affecting Japanese characters - none of the romanised parts are affected.

So what could I do? I had to upload all 7000 some quotes and in order to do so, it seemed that I needed to put the scrambled characters into the database so, conversely and rather strangely, they would render correctly on my blog. And that’s just what I did. I copied and pasted all the entries in massive chunks into the Quotes Collection admin panel and ‘added’ them as single quotes. This resulted in huge ‘quotes’ of messy, scrambled text. Then, I copied the newly scrambled text back into excel, separating the columns again and adding the relevant ’spacing’ characters. The reason I needed to manually add the spacing characters in excel is that excel cannot export csv files containing Japanese characters.

My scrambled excel file is here to download, for reference.

And so:

/嗚呼/|/ああ/|/Ah!; Oh!; Alas!/|/yes/
/相/|/あい/|/together; mutually; fellow/|/yes/
/愛/|/あい/|/love/|/yes/

You see the scrambled characters instead of Japanese text. The / enclose each item and the | is the equivalent of a comma. I did this because some of the words had commas in them and so, upon importing the database, some entries would become corrupted. Using / and | as unique characters ensured this did not happen.

So after doing that for all the quotes (it took me about 12 huge ‘chunks’ to convert all the entries to jibberish), and adding the spacing characters in excel, I copied the entire lot back into notepad. This time, I had jibberish for Japanese characters, but all correctly formatted in the csv style. All that was left to do was to use find and replace to remove all the spaces between the ‘columns’ and I ended up with the following csv file for the JLPT 1 wordlist:

Download JLPT1 csv wordlist

*Phew!* What a lot of tedious work! But with this new file, once uploaded, it worked correctly. As you can see in the screen shot below, the entries in my database in phpmyadmin were scrambled, but displayed correctly in the admin console in wordpress and, most importantly, on my blog.

Unfortunately, the database is so big that it has seemingly broken the admin interface in wordpress, so I cannot get a screen shot showing the entries displaying correctly. However, the widget showing the Japanese words on the sidebar should be testament enough!

Good luck to anyone who wants to attempt the same thing and feel free to use the files I created to save yourself the hassle of creating a csv file!

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• Japan Diary! (Abridged)

Filed under: English, Website by Mike on Saturday, June 7th 2008 @ 2:33 am | 2 Comments » |

In a recent post about my attempts at some high-energy Spiderman Para Para, I mentioned one of the two artists, Hayoung Joo, was doing artwork based on the spider theme. We became better acquainted last week when I was summoned to her studio to once again lend my hand ‘in the name of art’. But it wasn’t actually my hand that I would be lending on this occasion. What’s more, I wouldn’t even be lending her anything…

Just past the University Union, up towards Cromer Terrace lies one of many redbrick buildings. This one in particular where Hayoung spends much of her time is devoted entirely to art projects. Each of the many rooms in the 3-storey house has a different feel to it, being decorated with half-finished projects and littered with various peculiar objects that wouldn’t usually be found in a house. It doesn’t take much to realise that that the art students have claimed this building for their own.

Hayoung’s studio is on the top floor, brightly lit by a skylight and another square window opening up and out on the street below. A couple of sets of shelves and bookcases line the left wall, filled with grubby paints pots and ink bottles, brushes and books in Korean and English. On the opposite wall is a display of her most interesting photography and artwork showing her current themes of tattooing and hair-plucking. It’s not for the faint-hearted, holding nothing back in its array of provocative and unusual imagery. Not just that, but Hayoung insists on showing me a video of her work which consists of people being plucked and recording their ‘plucked voices’. All those ‘oohs’, ‘ahhs’ and sighs of anticipation and simmering fear captured as the hair snaps from the skin. Art. *nods.

Looking back to the left wall next to the bookcases, I finally notice the collection of small, rectangular pieces of paper stuck carefully to the wall. Translucent yellow coloured paper with various patterns on them. It was only upon taking a closer look that I realised what they were, and what I was to become. They were waxing strips! Furiously ripped-out hairs all splayed out and hung up in a curious display. The more I looked, the more the display seemed riddled with the pain suffered by its victims, but it remained strangely alluring…

I had known in advance that Hayoung was after my hair. We’d been discussing it around the dinner table when her and several other people had come over to celebrate the end of the ‘Show your Gestures’ art exhibition. I had declined at that point and had her settle for just giving me a temporary tattoo. But having come this far to her studio, I knew I wasn’t going to get away lightly…

Before I knew it, 4 strips of my finest grade-A leg-hair were plastered to her cold studio wall, extending her ‘exhibition’ another column or two. She promises me my lost warmth will re-grow and shouldn’t be any less than before, but we’ll see about that. Surprisingly, it wasn’t anywhere near as painful as I thought. Much more painful was the sadistic peeling of the remaining ends of the wax strips from my red thighs by Hayoung’s friend. She seemed to be enjoying it, along with labelling my freshly waxed and reddened area as ‘chicken skin’… o.O;

Not content with ripping hair from me, she also gave me my first taste of a metrosexual makeover. I was filmed while her friend plucked a few of my eyebrow hairs. I didn’t utter a sound as it was done, which notably disappointed Hayoung, and I warned her not to dub any strange voices over my video afterwards for added ‘effect’… Particularly those of my friend who also had his stomach plucked and made no end of amusing comments.

Spider art

Enough with the plucking. Here’s what I was really fascinated by, Hayoung’s spider artwork. Done with a traditional calligraphy brush and ink on what looks to be rice paper. They have a dark, gothic feel to them and seem a little reminiscent of doodlings with the flowing strokes and dark, patterned lines. Hayoung even gave me permission to use some of them in making a new banner, which I’ll get right onto. ^_^

One of my favourite designs is below.

I’ve compiled a small selection of some of, in my opinion, her best drawings. Opinions?

And finally, her website. Some really interesting artwork and concepts there!

Hayoung Joo’s website and portfolio

Also, as a slightly random addition, I’ve uploaded a special live version of Oingo Boingo’s song ‘Spider’ that I acquired recently. It’s quite rare as it was taken from a fan-recording of a concert, but it’s still good quality!

Download Oingo Boingo - Spider (Live)

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• Spiderman Para Para
• Banners

Filed under: English, Uncategorised by Mike on Friday, May 30th 2008 @ 5:27 pm | 1 Comment » |

In his ‘Treatise’, Hume targets rationalism and is most noted for saying that ‘reason is the slave of the passions’ and challenging the thought held that morality is discovered by the use of reason. Hume is an empiricist, and his ideas about the passions are said to have influenced Kant in his rationalist argument for the Categorical Imperative.

Rationalism says that reason and sentiment (also known as the passions) are in a constant fight against one another to control our actions and that, in the end, it is reason that triumphs over the transient nature of the passions (our emotions and feelings). Thus it is reason that is the source of our justification for actions and in our determining which actions are moral. In direct contrast, Empiricism says that experience, especially that gained by the senses, is the main method used in the formation of ideas. As such, says Hume, morals are derived from sentiments - feelings or approval or disapproval that are felt towards some action or person. Although Hume does say that reason is necessary to discover the facts about different situations and to organise general social rules in the greater scheme of things, for an action to have moral worth, it must be based on a desire or ‘passion’ which motives us to act.

“Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (T2.3.3, p753)

Hume says that reason has no part at all in determining our ends

Some other philosophers have held that the necessity for us to act morally is, neither by reason nor the senses, but by divine revelation (God’s will). Others hold that it is by reflection on our conscience and the structure of human nature that we are required to act morally. Hume agrees that it is down to our nature as human beings (the ability to feel both pleasure and pain, the interdependence on other people such as our family, friends and co-workers) that makes us have moral obligations. Furthermore, Hume distinguishes between morality being something that is forced upon us by society (politicians or governments) in order to keep us in line and the natural inclination to act in a moral manner. He says that it must be the latter, because otherwise where would such concepts of virtues and acting in a correct manner come from? If we do not have the natural inclination to act humanely as part of a community to begin with, we would not be able to conceive of further social rules to govern societies.

On the Passions, the Will and Morality

So Hume sets out to prove that (1) “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will;” and (2) “that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will” (T2.3.3, p752). He goes on to asset that reason is motivationally inert; while it may help us with a great many things, from mathematics to logic, probability and other abstract relations of ideas and the causal relations of real objects in the world, it does not cause nay action. Because reason cannot produce a motive, neither can it oppose a motive. This is because, in order to oppose a motive, there must be another motive which acts against it. But we have said that reason does not produce any motive, so be the same token it cannot produce an opposing motive.

There are two instances where our passions may be called unreasonable: “First, when a passion, such as hope or fear, grief or joy, despair or security, is founded on the supposition of the existence of objects, which really do not exist. Secondly, when in exerting any passion in action, we choose means insufficient for the designed end, and deceive ourselves in our judgement of causes and effects” (T2.3.3, p753-4). He goes on to make another famous claim:

“It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger” (T2.3.3, p754).

Here Hume is saying that reason does have a subordinate role in our actions; it tells us how we can satisfy our passions. If our passions are based on false beliefs (for example, believing in objects that aren’t really there) or are based on mistakes in ‘means-end reasoning’ (coming to false conclusions about the effects of our actions), then we will end up will passions (desires) to do things which are contrary to reason. In other words, we make errors in our judgements about situations (we are only human after all), and this gives rise to feelings that attempt to avoid those causes that will make us feel pain. Similarly, for pleasure, we judge that an action will give rise to pleasure and our emotion naturally extends itself to attain the pleasure. But note that it is not the passion itself that is unreasonable, but our judgement or ‘causal reasoning’ about the situation.

For example, I see a a glass of clear liquid and conclude that it is water and want to quench my thirst. But you convince me that it is actually ethanol and would not be advisable to drink it. Hence, my passion (the desire to drink the liquid) is based on a false supposition. As soon as I realise this falsehood, my reason directs me to a different passion, the desire not to drink it. So it is not reason that motivates me not to drink, it merely convinces me of my mistake. The motivation not to drink come from a different desire that urges me not to drink.

But what stops me from acting immorally or satisfying my many selfish desires if it is not reason that does so? Hume says it is not reason, but ‘calm passions’ or ‘calm tendencies’ that do so. ‘Violent emotions‘ are those we feel evidently, like the rush of anger when someone insults us or pang of jealousy when we see someone we like in the arms of other person. These are our obvious passions, but there are others: ‘Calm desires‘ might be things like benevolence and resentment, kindness to children (etc). Hume says that because these passions are ‘calm’ and do not cause much disturbance within us, so we often mistake them for reason, but they are nevertheless there. Even though they do not produce much emotion in our minds, they are there in our nature, such as the general willing to live harmoniously with others and the propensity for pleasure over pain.

He goes on to talk of the motivation of morals: “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of reason” (T3.1.1, p756). Reason cannot motivate us to act, as we have seen, but moral judgements do cause us to act, so reason cannot be the source of moral good and evil. To elaborate on this, consider that we think of moral judgements as being worthy of praise and blame, but factual statements derived from reason do not incite such emotions. In other words, moral mistakes do not seem to be in the same domain as factual errors because we do not ascribe emotive responses like praise and blame to factual errors. Therefore moral judgements are not truth apt - they are not capable of being true or false because they are not facts or realities.

Morality is not based in facts; we don’t find evidence in the world for existence of good and bad facts or laws. They are all down to the passions, volitions and motives of individual agents. Virtue and vice are found by considering the thoughts and feelings we have as people and in the thoughts and feelings of other individuals. They may not be properties in objects, but dependent on the views of different people and our perspective as human beings (in the same way colours might be - see Moral Realism). In a famous passage Hume says:

“Take any action allowed to be vicious; wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you only find certain passions, motives, volitions, and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice certainly escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You can never find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action” (T3.1.1, p761)

Further consider that, if morality were derived from reason, then any statements that we could suppose from reason would be subject to our moral judgements. For example, as mentioned in my lecture: “Young oak trees could be convicted of patricide, and animals could be convicted of ‘moral turpitude’ for mauling each other” (Dr. Lang). But clearly convicting animals or trees of immorality is insane, so it seems to point to the need for motives, or passions, in our actions for them to hold moral worth.

But we might reply to this by saying that reasons are limited only to beings that are capable of making judgements about situations. Animals and trees clearly are not.

Moral Sense

Hume later goes on to talk more about our moral sense and discrimination. He says:

“Morality…is more properly felt than judged of; though this feeling or sentiment is commonly so soft and gentle that we are apt to confound with an idea, according to our common custom of taking all things for the same which have any near semblance to each other” (T3.1.2, p762).

He then asks a general nature about the nature of the passions and says that “the impression arising from virtue [is being] agreeable, and that proceeding form vice [is being] uneasy” (T3.1.2, p762). Very basically, it is because of the very feeling we have when we take action in a particular situation that we call it virtue (a pleasurable feeling) or vice (an uneasy feeling).

But this view seems troublesome. Is acting on our feelings really a reliable way of viewing situations? We may see a man wearing black glasses and wearing a long overcoat hanging around a bank and feel threatened thinking he might be ready to rob the bank, but actually it turns out he is the security guard. Are feelings free from partiality and are they fine-grained enough for the wide variety of moral judgements there are? We may feel one type of ‘pleasure’ from eating good food to saving a drowning child?

Hume says that “it is only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest, that it causes such a feeling or sentiment as denominates it morally good or evil” (T3.1.2, p762). So to solve the problems above, Hume is saying that we must consider the person or situation in general, not just focussing on the feelings that we have in one particular situation.

The praise and blame that we attribute to an action are decided by the moral quality of the action. In other words, the motives behind the action: “all virtuous actions derive their merit only from virtuous motives, and are considered merely as signs of those motives”. But such motives must be natural motives, or principles. They must have something general, or independent of the situation at hand that makes them morally worthwhile. Hume says that:

“When any virtuous motive or principle is common in human nature, a person who feels his heart devoid of that motive, may hate himself upon that account, and may perform the action without the motive, from a certain sense of duty, in order to acquire, by practice, that virtuous principle, or at least to disguise to himself, as much as possible, his want of it” (T3.2.1, p 765).

Here we see Hume mentioning the possibility of acting form duty, but such actions would only be second best to acting from one’s natural motives.

However, what about in the case of lending someone money. What reason or motive do we have to repay the money? We cannot just say because it is the honest action to take because there seems to be no natural motive of honesty in the same way that there is for other motives. We don’t feel the need to repay the money out of self interest, nor in the interests of the public (as the deal may be done in secret). A dutiful motive to be honest seems to be irreducible, and Hume says that “the sense of justice and injustice is not derived form nature, but arises artificially, though necessarily, from education and human conventions” (T3.2.1, p767).

This is the distinction between ‘Natural virtues’ - traits useful to people whether or not they are living in a society, and ‘Artificial virtues’ - traits that emerge as useful in large social groups and where social cooperation is needed among people. Natural virtues are, by nature, better become they give us a sense of satisfaction, but artificial virtues benefit people with their widespread implications in a community. Hume says that the rules of justice arise from the selfishness and limited generosity of human beings and the tendency for situations to change and scarcity of external resources. As such, the motive of self-interest is switched for a motive of duty in these larger public situations due to the public good needed to be served.

Lastly, a brief note about what Hume says on Freedom. Hume is traditionally seen as a compatibilist about freedom. He argues that all human actions are products of causal necessity, but at the same time, we are all free. Just as the movements between material bodies are causally connected (a billiard ball striking another), so too are the connections between human motives and circumstances and behaviour causally linked.

Consider an individual who has killed another person. If the person did so on purpose, then according to Hume, they have an some enduring passion or character trait that is bad and that is the cause of their committing murder. But if they did so by accident, then the individual will not incur blame. As individuals, we have choice as to whether or not we act in a given situation, but are still causally affected by our passions and the determinations in our will. So ultimately, we have freedom to act or not to act, but are (in both a moral and general sense) still bound by causal laws - the two are compatible, hence ‘compatibilism’.

Problems for Hume

Hume seems to suggest that reason is theoretical reason - it can only give rise to our beliefs about the world, but not reasons for action. Passions are not like beliefs because they are not based on facts (are not truth-apt) - they motivate us to act. But why do we have to assume that reason is restricted to the purely theoretical domain? Why not say that there is a practical form of reason?

Just because Hume may have been right to say that passion always features in our actions, it does not follow that passion is always the source of one’s doing something. Can’t we distinguish between unmotivated desires and motivated desires? We have unmotivated desires like those of appetite and stretching, and also motivated desires which are the results of considerations about different things, for example, thinking about going on strike opposing a war. We are not motivated to go on strike in the same way we are to stretch out our arms when we wake up in the morning.

Also, what about cases of depression and people who do not have a strong will, or worse are apathetic and cannot actually feel emotion. Are we to label them as immoral because they do not have the correct passionate responses to circumstances?

Instrumentalism

Some people have labelled Hume as an instrumentalist, but it is debatable as to whether or not he was. But as a theory, instrumentalism looks more plausible than following Hume and denying reason any role in our moral judgements. For an instrumentalist, Hume’s claim that ‘reason is the slave of the passions’ allows that, not only does reason discover the means to our ends (the circumstances and causal links in different situations), it also requires us to take these means. An instrumentalist says that:

(1) there are no ends that we ought to have and no ends dictated by reason
(2) but for the ends that we do have, we ought to take effective measures to fulfil them

In other words, we ought to take the means to my ends. But, for Hume, both ‘ends’ (normatively unconstrained passions) and ‘means to ends’ (normatively constrained passions) are put into the same category and as such fall outside the scope of reason.

Furthermore, Korsgaard raises the possibility of irrationality in one’s actions. Hume does not account for this when he says that:

“The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means our passions yield to reason without any opposition…whenever you convince me of my mistake, my longing ceases” (T2.3.3, p754)

Hume doesn’t speak of changing our behaviour once reason has shown us the flaw in our judgement because it’s ‘irrational’, he merely says our emotion ‘naturally extends itself’ to do some action. But if reason is supposed to be the slave of the passions, why does a discovery of a flaw in our judgement by reason cause our passions to change? What is the link between our passions ‘naturally’ changing and our reason discovering some logical flaw?

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Sources: Lecture handouts written by my lecturer Dr. Gerald Lang, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and ‘Classics of Moral and Political Philosophy’ (2005) by Michael Morgan

Go on, read more related posts!

• Moral Philosophy - primer
• Kant’s Moral Philosophy
• Moral Anti-Realism
• Moral Realism
• Hayfever… Oh joy.

Filed under: English, Philosophy by Mike on Friday, May 23rd 2008 @ 12:45 am | No Comments » |

Kant is known for his work the ‘The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals’ (or just the ‘Groundwork’) and his Categorical Imperative (CI). He sets out by analysing our general ideas and presuppositions of morality with the aim of showing that the foundations of morality are based on autonomous reason. Moreover, he thinks that we must first analyse and understand the concepts of a ‘good will’ and ‘duty’ (etc) and their relationships to one-another to further understand ethics.

He first says that ethics is material knowledge (concerned with some object) as opposed to formal knowledge (concerned with the form of understanding or reason itself) and that the laws of ethics are determined by material knowledge. In other words, ethics has to be based on laws of freedom and not on laws of nature (facts about the world) - if ethics were just based on facts about the world, we wouldn’t have control over it and hence there would be no value in acting morally.

But ethics is not empirical, it must be founded on entirely a priori principles; i.e. principles that based on reason, not on experience:

“Everyone must admit that if a law is to be morally valid, i.e., is to be valid as a ground of obligation, then it must carry with it absolute necessity … [and] that the ground of obligation here must therefore be sought not in the nature of man nor in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but must be sought a priori solely in the concepts of pure reason’ (G389, p894).”

For example, if we were to say that ‘One should not lie’ is a moral principle, it would have to hold true for all people and not depend on the circumstances of the situation. We likely get such ideas based on our experience at first however, and indeed, in order to effect our will we need a sharpened experience and good knowledge of the world in order to do so. But for our ideas to be moral laws, they must pass through our reason and judgement and not merely be based on our experience. In analysing ideas such as ‘one should not lie’, we are using our reason (a priori knowledge). Therefore he also thinks that ethics itself is also an a priori matter, because we must consider rationally what principles are absolute and true for everyone.

Another reason Kant feels it necessary to proceed by saying that morality must be pursued a priori is that a posteriori (experience-based) methods of investigation do not seem to tell us what we necessarily ought to do; they only seem to tell us the descriptive situation about the action we actually do perform. Kant thought that a posteriori observations could only only help us think about the conclusions of our behaviour - how satisfying our actions were and what effects they brought about. They do not help us to consider what actions are necessary and those which we are obliged to do. (For example, ‘I don’t lie because it allows people to trust me and I can have lots of friends’ would be an example of a posteriori analysis and thus Kant would not agree with it. It does not grant that I follow the principle of ‘not lying’ necessarily, because I am only doing it for some other end - to have friends or gain trust).

It is important to note that Kant is still working on ethics as a conditional until Groundwork III. He thinks that we must analyse what the supreme principle of morality is before vindicating it later. So let’s begin:

The Good Will

“There is no possibility of thinking of anything at all … which can be regarded as good without qualification, except a good will (G393, p896).” So says Kant at the start of Groundwork I. There can be other things which are good, such as courage and generosity, but unless they are grounded in a good will, they are worthless - consider the courage of a bank robber holding up a bank with a gun or the generosity of a paedophile trying lure in young children. In a similar vein, moderation of one’s passions and desires, while good, is not morally praiseworthy without a good will to back it up (consider the coolness of a villain). “The idea of a good will is supposed to be the idea of one who only makes decisions that she holds to be morally worthy, taking moral considerations in themselves to be conclusive reasons for guiding her behaviour”. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Furthermore, a good will is only good in itself and not because of its fitness to produce some proposed end. It “is good only through its willing, i.e., it is good in itself (G393, p896)” and, although other gifts of talent and fortune (including happiness) are valuable, they will lack value if no sustained by a person with a good will. To elaborate more, consider Snow White and the evil stepmother. Say Snow White is a person with a pure and good will, but through the actions of her wicked sisters and stepmother, she is never allowed to actualise her good will and perform the moral deeds she desires to. Even then, according to Kant, the good will would “like a jewel, still shine by its own light as something which has full value in itself (G393, p897)”. Again, this is showing Kant’s valuing the intrinsic worth and necessity of something (the deontology) over considering its ends (consequentialism). It is helpful to note that this idea of possessing a good will is similar to Aristotle’s claim that we need to build a beautiful character by cultivating the virtues within ourselves.

Kant says that reason’s “true function must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to produce some further end, but is good in itself…While such a will may not indeed be the sole and complete good, it must, nevertheless, be the highest good and the condition of all the rest, even of the desire for happiness (G393, p897-8)”. As further support for needing reason to produce the good will at the crux of our being, we might consider what would happen if our purpose in life was mere happiness. Kant says that if it were so, instinct alone would drive us to be happy and fulfilled in a way much better than reason could. But we see reason as meddling with the purpose of nature; it tries in vain to find out what would make us most happy and think of a plan for attaining it. Therefore, reason’s function in us cannot just be to enable us to attain a happy and simple life. Kant supposes its function is to develop the good will, to understand morality and lead us to act from duty to fulfil our moral obligations. (This is similar to what Nagel says about reason allowing us to transcend our basic metabolic functions and act of living and our reason for thinking contemplation is a human being’s most prized goal).

Three propositions

Kant proposes 3 things:

(1) An action must be performed from duty in order to have moral worth.

Kant goes on to say that duty brings about the best in a good will. We must act from duty and not according to duty. This means that we are doing the right action because it is the right action (and abstaining from doing wrong actions because they are wrong). If we were only acting according to duty we could do actions that, although they follow the same path as morally worthy actions, are not actually morally worthy in themselves.

To elaborate on this, consider people who act out of self-interest or people who are benevolent and good-natured towards other people. Kant would say that their actions do not have moral worth. The self-interested person acts in accordance with duty, but for himself and is clearly not a good basis for a moral law. The ‘friend of mankind’, while his actions are also in accordance with duty, are not from duty. Suppose one day that he becomes depressed and his mind clouded with sorrow and he no longer feels the desire to be benevolent and kind to people. He actions would stop and the moral obligation to do certain things would go unfulfilled. This is why Kant says it is necessary to act from duty, because our feelings, desires and passions are transient and not a solid basis on which to form a moral law. But if the ‘friend of mankind’, while remaining truly good-natured and benevolent, did he actions because he thought it his duty to do so, then his actions have moral worth, for he is not basing his decisions on such changeable things as feelings. It is also useful to consider apathetic people, who have no innate emotional responses to situations. If we follow Hume’s idea that passions are the basis for morality, these people who do not have the desires to do things, but nevertheless do them out of duty, would not have moral worth. Under Kant’s philosophy, they would because they act from duty.

It seems, however, that our desires conflict with what Kant is defining as a good will and need to act from duty. We feel constrained when we are told we must follow a moral law and it goes against our desires and passions in some cases. Kant says that this is what is essential to acting out of duty. If we consider a holy being, such a being would not have the desires we do and would be motivated by thoughts independent or morality. It is because we have these desires that could cause us to act without regard for morality that we have the need for a good will and a necessity to act from duty. We need to keep them in check to maintain order.

(2) An action done from duty has moral worth only in the maxim according to which the action is determined.

“An action done from duty has its moral worth, not in the purpose to be attained by it, but in the maxim according with which the action is determined” (G399, p900).

Continuing from the first proposition, Kant makes it clear that any action must be done for it’s own sake and not for the sake of any other end. The moral worth of some action is to be found in the maxim itself rather than the effects it produces. This is the distinction between deontology and consequentialism, as consequentialists would say that the moral worth of an action is to be found in the results it brings about. If we Kant didn’t make this distinction, the difference between ‘acting from duty’ and ‘acting according to duty’ would hold no weight. By looking only at the ends of our actions we would not be able to distinguish between people who act because they reason it is their duty to do so and people who act because they desire some other end - we could all act for self-interested or even benevolent reasons because we desire some outcome. Kant says that such actions cannot have true moral worth.

(3) “Duty is the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law” (G400, p900).

Further clarifying the need for actions to be done out of adherence to the law, Kant says that “only the law itself can be an object of respect and hence can be a command” (G400, p900). This is as noted, that if I think about the effects of my actions, I am showing that I am considering other causes reasons in my analysis of a particular situation. Therefore my actions will become tainted and I will not have acted purely from duty. As such, I have to deprive “the will of every impulse that might arise for it from obeying any particular law, [such that] there is nothing left to serve the will as a principle except the universal conformity of its actions to law as such” (G402, p901). Particular laws are decided according to the ends that they realise, but by doing this we are violating Kant’s idea of adhering strictly to duty and fail to sustain the vital distinction between acting from duty and acting merely according to duty.

The above three propositions lead us to the:

Formula of the Universal Law

“I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law”. (G402, p901)

This is what is known as the Categorical Imperative. It rest on pure reason alone and not on experience and is a command to exercise our will in a certain way.

Quite simply, whenever considering what actions to perform, we must whether or not we can make our action into a universal law that everyone would follow. Take lying for example. I can will lying as an action, but if I try to do so as a universal law, it would necessarily destroy itself. People would not trust one another and there would be no such thing as promises, so clearly it could not become a universal law in an ordered society.

But things aren’t quite so simple. Kant goes on to distinguish between hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. Imperatives are ‘ought’ statements (I ought to do some action). A hypothetical imperative applies to situations only conditionally, as a means to some other end. For example, ‘if you want to get stronger, you should go to the gym’. Therefore hypothetical imperatives are not justified in themselves but only as means to other ends.Categorical imperatives, by contrast, are unconditional and ends in themselves. They are not dependent on anything else for their justification.

Wikipedia offers a very good explanation of hypothetical imperatives, so I will include it as is: “Kant divides hypothetical imperatives into two subcategories: the rules of skill and the councils of prudence. The rules of skill are conditional and are specific to each and every person to which the skill is mandated by. The councils of prudence (or rules of prudence) are attained a priori (unlike the rules of skill which are attained via experience, or a posteriori) and have universal goals such as happiness. Thus, almost any moral “rule” about how to act is hypothetical, because it assumes that your goal is to be moral, or to be happy, or to please God, etc. The only non-hypothetical imperatives are ones which tell you to do something no matter who you are or what you want, because the thing is good in itself.”

So, to be categorical, an imperative must be good in itself and necessary to a will led by reason. But even categorical imperatives (such as ‘one must not lie’) have ends, or reasons for following them, despite being willed for their own sake and not for other ends. But what ‘end’ is this? What is the reason ‘one must not lie’? We might speak of a special, ‘The End’ - the ultimate aim of categorical imperatives leading to The Categorical Imperative.

Formula of Humanity

We have our will guiding us, led by reason. But what makes our good will objective? Why think that we can determine The Categorical Imperative by following our will and thinking a priori? There must be an end to which the will aims to justify itself. We might think of it like this:

Firstly, we are led by reason, and do not base our judgements on experience. Secondly, if we are aiming towards such an end, it must be equally valid for all human beings. Thirdly, this end must be objective (not dependent on our contingent inclinations and fourthly, it must be an end of absolute worth; worthy of being an end in itself and capable of grounding laws. Kant concludes that the end we are searching for is us, human beings, or more accurately, autonomous human beings. Human beings manifest rational nature itself: “I say that man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will” (G437, p915).

This is our freedom, our free will. To deny someone the freedom to make their own rational decisions is to treat them as a mere means to an end and undermines reason and ultimately Kant says, The Categorical Imperative. Of course, we use people as a means to an end everyday, such as taking a taxi or ordering food at a restaurant. The important thing is to not use people as a mere means to an end; to take away their own autonomy. The autonomous will is the source of moral action and decision-making, so we must always treat other people as ends in themselves. To not do so, for example by killing or maiming another person or enslaving them, is to harm their rational nature and thereby treat it as a means. In other words, we would take undermine the ‘categorical’ part of things; we would violate the will and reason on which The Categorical Imperative is based, and thus violate The Categorical Imperative. (Note this also rules out suicide because you would be violating your own rationality and will). This is known as the Formula of Humanity:

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end” (G429, p915).

Formula of the Kingdom of Ends

As the second formulation stated, we need an autonomous will and must allow others this privilege too. But in order to universalise this law (the Formula of Humanity), we must think of the laws as binding us to others or else they would not be laws about how to conduct ourselves in society at all. Therefore Kant gives us the hypothetical notion of a ‘Kingdom of Ends’ of which all people are members:

“All maxims proceeding from [an agent's] own legislation ought to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as a kingdom of nature” (G436, p919).

We ought to act only on laws which would harmonise with other people in a possible kingdom of ends. We ought to act only by maxims which would harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends. By ‘Kingdom’, Kant means: “a systematic union of different rational beings through common laws” (G422, p917). So we must not act on maxims which will create incoherent, unstable or undesirable states of affairs and only universalise those which promote harmony among people.

Applying The Categorical Imperative

Kant tries to illustrate how the Categorical Imperative would work with regards to four different situations:

(1) a suicidal person
(2) a deceitful person intending to borrow money and not repay it
(3) a person planning to neglect their talents in order to pursue pleasure
(4) a person avoiding harming others but withholding help and assistance from them

(1) and (2) are said to generate contradictions in conception and (3) and (4) are said to generate contradictions in the will when we try to universalise them. Contradictions in conception are often ‘but not exclusively) thought of as logical contradictions; i.e., there is already an error in the conception of such a possible maxim. In the suicide example, it would probably lie in the taking of one’s own life and undermining reason and the will. In the example of the person not intending to return money, it is because they are lying from the outset when they borrow the money. Contradictions in the will seem to be rules we can universalise, but fail to be acceptable to rational agents. It does not seem to merely be a logical contradiction with them as they seem to violate ‘wide duties’ that affect our general ability to pursue our ends. Such a contradiction might be labelled a ‘Practical Contradiction’ as, when universalised, such maxims would not be practical to the living of a fulfilled life.

There is much more to this debate however, including other proposed contradictions like the ‘Teleological Contradiction’. For more information, see this site: University of Victoria - Philosophy

Another complaint against the Categorical Imperative is the Triviality Charge. Some people hold that we can create universalised maxims for just about anything if we are specific enough. For example, if we say ‘I, Charlie Brown, born on 17th June 1767 can do whatever I want all the time’ or something to that effect. This is known as the problem of false positives because it passes the universalisability test (it is so specific) but it is still morally wrong. Another problem of false negatives can be illustrated by something like ‘I will go to the park on Sunday because it is quiet’. This fails the universalisability test (if everybody went to the park, it would not be quiet), but even though it fails the universalisability test, it is not a morally wrong action.

What can be said about such problems? We might say that the Categorical Imperative is not an algorithm. It cannot be effectively applied without a person’s sensitivity to something like ‘rules of moral salience’ or common sense. In the case of false negatives, we might say that the action is not deep enough to universalise and thus it lacks moral content. In the case of false positives, we might respond by saying that it is not an actual maxim because the detail involved doesn’t have anything to do with the actual situation. I.e. the person being Charlie Brown and born on a certain date does not have anything to do with the real matter at hand, which is the contradictory and non-universalisable maxim of doing anything one wants.

Another charge against the Categorical Imperative is Hegel’s famous ‘Empty Formalism Charge‘. Hegel accuses Kant of relying on ’social institutions’. For example, Kant would say that we cannot universalise the maxim ‘always steal’ because it would lead to to the breakdown of trust and erosion of society. But Hegel says that if we didn’t have the notion of private property as an institution, we would not object to stealing in society. Similarly, universalising ‘give money to the poor’, would cause us to become poor ourselves and is thus not universalisable, but Kant seems to hold that we would want to universalise such as action. We might respond to this by saying the maxim in question can be re-formulated to something like ‘give money to those who need it’ and can be consistently held in a world where no-one requires help. With the stealing example too, it might be re-formulated to say something like ‘do not claim ownership of items which are viewed as property or in a way which would cause grief to other people’ to avoid the problems in societies where there is no notion of private property.

Some further problems for the Categorical Imperative might be as follows: Cases of the Runaway trolley - a trolley heads towards 10 people and will kill them, but you can divert it, but thereby killing one person - or Rescue - on a sinking boat, you can only save one person - do you save a family member, a doctor with the cure for cancer or a pregnant woman? Or what about organ donation - is this treating people as a means to an end (etc)?

Freedom

Briefly, I will mention some of the things Kant talks about in Groundwork III:

Kant says that Freedom must be presupposed (this is what Kant calls a negative characterisation of freedom). For example, I must decide to act on my desire to do something; it won’t just happen. This is the freedom to make choices. If we do not consider that we are free, we may lapse into apathy thinking are lives are controlled or fated anyway.

Argument from Spontaneity

The positive characterisation of freedom is that a will must act for reasons, or on a principle or maxim. If it does not do because of some maxim or law, it fundamentally contradicts the idea of a will. We must find a principle for the will to act on - this is known as the ‘spontaneity of the will‘ because it must choose a law for itself. It must necessarily eliminate all possibilities except the Categorical Imperative. Other principles, such as self-love, fail because they compromise the will’s spontaneity and take things for granted (i.e. freedom). The will must be autonomous because it chooses the law to itself.

But how does the argument from spontaneity prove that the will has freedom? Just thinking that morality itself is imponderable if we aren’t free doesn’t solve the metaphysical standpoint of freedom itself.

Transcendental Idealism

Kant thinks that the phenomenal world (the world of sense) is causally determined and so cannot be the basis for genuine human freedom. He thinks that the phenomenal world that we interact with and affects us only shows us representations of objects and products of our own mental organisation. That is, we see them from the standpoint of human beings. What the objects are in themselves in the intelligible (the noumenal) world is forever unknown to us. This is known as transcendental idealism: that there is another world behind the world of appearances that we interact with. We have to see the noumenal world in order to understand the necessity of laws of nature, but we cannot do this directly. We can only conclude that the things we see in the phenomenal world exemplify laws of nature in the noumenal world.

In other words, we are necessarily ignorant of the true laws of nature, but, through reason, we can have a principled reason for knowing of the noumenal world and things in themselves. The fact that we can never know facts about the noumenal world and of objects in themselves is grounding enough for us to say that we must take it for granted that we have freedom. We can never have true theoretical knowledge of freedom, but, living in the phenomenal world where we need practical freedom in order to live our lives properly and conduct ourselves in moral situations, we must postulate that we have actual freedom.

Problems for Kant

Some more problems for Kant are briefed below:

Kant says that it is reason and not passion, that is both our motive for doing moral actions and the source of our moral obligations. Hume, in direct contrast, says that it is passion that is the source and motive of our moral requirements. But Kant is arguing that common sense dictates that our moral ideas cannot be based on our passions and desires alone. We are morally bound to perform certain actions regardless of whether or not we have the relevant desire to do some action. Having the desire to do it is good, but for an action to be morally praiseworthy, it must be done on the basis of reason and duty alone. This is what distinguishes Kant from Hume’s ideas of morality, as well as Aristotle’s focus on virtues and Mill’s focus on the consequences of one’s actions. But does Hume not have a point in saying that we are always motivated to action by a passion or desire? Doesn’t our duty spring out of a motivation to develop such an objective system such as the Formula of the Universal Law at first? Or is the reason we do so entirely based on reason?

Kant seems to show a distrust towards sympathy and emotions. Does he assume that human sentiments are intrinsically selfish (psychological egoism)? Perhaps not, as he describes amiable people as ‘friends of mankind’. Kant also seems to think the emotions are unreliable, but perhaps some emotions can be stable and enduring? Why can we assume that the motive of duty is reliable and constant?

Kant could be called cold for dismissing the importance sentiment holds in our day-to-day actions. He seems too focussed on the creating of rules and sacrifices human warmth which we highly value in society. An agent only acting out of duty and not because they possess a kind heart seems somewhat scary and disagreeable. It seems that we want emotional responses and passions, such as love and friendship to feature in our moral decision making. But Kant’s defenders have argued that what is crucial is that the motivational structure of the person to consider duty over other interests. It is not to say that we can disregard emotional responses; only that, when responding to situations, we need to put acting from duty as our highest priority over more transient emotions, but having the correct emotional warmth is preferable. Perhaps in developing a ‘good will’ to start with such emotional warmth is taken as a given when responding to situations.

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Sources: Lecture handouts written by my lecturer Dr. Gerald Lang, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and ‘Classics of Moral and Political Philosophy’ (2005) by Michael Morgan

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Filed under: English, Philosophy by Mike on Thursday, May 22nd 2008 @ 2:44 am | No Comments » |