One of the fundamental insights of Kants ethical theory is that moral requirements cannot follow from our understanding of motivational capacities. Ethics must precede psychology. But Kant also believes we can learn new things about what we are capable of from ethics, in particular what it would be like to act out of respect for the moral law. This is the task of Kants moral psychology. It must explain how practical reason can, in place of desire, serve as an incentive for action.
I argue that Kants psychology of the moral incentive plays a crucial, but often ignored, role in his project of moral justification. While our view of human motivational capacities cannot dictate our understanding of moral requirements, we must still show how those requirements become effective in human conduct. That is, we must show how they enter into the structure of human motivation. The challenge for Kants moral psychology is to explain this. The trouble is that the relationship between practical reason and human sensibility is so puzzling that we may begin to doubt their connection. So we face a problem the problem of motivational skepticism.
My dissertation is organized into two parts. First, I argue that Kants project of moral justification in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) fails because it does not specify the psychological conditions required for moral action (PART I). Part of the problem is that Kant thought he could only explain these conditions in causal terms. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Kant abandons this assumption and develops a new analysis of the influence practical reason has on feeling. Secondly, I show that this analysis is meant to address a skeptical worry left unresolved in the Groundwork, namely, the worry that our will may be unfit for morality (PART II). By showing how we are capable of moral sensibility, then, I argue that the second Critique develops a powerful response to skepticism about moral motivation. / PhD
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OTU.1807/26257 |
| Date | 17 February 2011 |
| Creators | Ware, Owen |
| Contributors | Franks, Paul, Tenenbaum, Sergio, Ripstein, Arthur, Philosophy |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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