Categorical Moral Reasoning
“Locates morality absolute moral requirements, in certain duties and rights, regardless of the consequences.”
(Harward-Edu, 2018)
The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperative) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant’s 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, it may be defined as a way of evaluating motivations for action.
According to Kant, human beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in an imperative, or ultimate commandment of reason, from which all duties and obligations derive.
He defined an imperative as any proposition declaring a specific action (or inaction) to be necessary. (Encyclopedia, Categorical Imperative, 2018)
EVASIVE SKEPTICISM
“And so maybe it is just a matter of, each person having his or her principles and there’s nothing more to be said about it, no way of reasoning.”
That is the version of skepticism, to which I would offer the following reply. It is true, these questions have been debated for a very long time, but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that, though they are impossible in one sense, they are unavoidable in another. Moreover, the reason they are unavoidable is that we live some answers to these questions every day.
So skepticism, just giving up on moral reflection, is no solution. Immanuel Kant described the problem with skepticism when he wrote,
“Scepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement… Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.”
(Harward-Edu, 2018)
LOGIC AND REASON EXPLAINED
LOGIC IS ABOUT clear and effective thinking. It is a science and an art.
“The whole purpose of reasoning, of logic, is to arrive at the truth of things. This is often an arduous task, as truth can sometimes be painfully elusive. But not to pursue truth would be absurd since it is the only thing that gives meaning to all our endeavors. It would be equally absurd to suppose that truth is something forever to be pursued but never to be attained, for that renders our activity purposeless, which is to say, irrational, and turns truth into a chimera.” “Many mistakes in reasoning are explained by the fact that we are not paying sufficient attention to the situation in which we find ourselves. A fact is something made or done. It has a clear objective status.”
(McInerny, 2004) (p. 4)
Objective facts
“There are two basic types of objective facts, things, and events. A “thing” is an actually existing entity, animal, vegetable, or mineral. A subjective fact, to the subject experiencing it, is self-evident under normal circumstances.
However, through such mechanisms as self- delusion or rationalization, a person could fail to get straight a fact even about himself. We all tend to favor our own ideas, which is natural enough. They are, after all, in a sense our very own babies, the conceptions of our minds.
But conception is possible in the thinking subject only because of the subject’s encounter with the world.
Our ideas owe their existence, ultimately, to things outside and independent of the mind to which they refer: objective facts). “Our ideas are clear, and our understanding of them is clear, only to the extent that we keep constant tabs on the things to which they refer.
The focus must always be on the originating sources of our ideas in the objective world. We do not really understand our own ideas if we suppose them to be self-generating, that is, not owing to their existence to extramental realities.”
(McInerny, 2004)
Subjective Ideas
“The more we focus on our ideas in a way that systematically ignores their objective origins, the more unreliable those ideas become. “The healthy bonds that bind together the subjective and objective orders are put under great strain, and if we push the process too far, the bonds may break. Then we have effectively divorced ourselves from the objective world. Instead of seeing the world as it is, we see a projected world, one that is not presented to our minds but which is the product of our minds.”
Establishing a fact “
When we speak of “establishing a fact,” we do not refer to establishing the existence of an idea in mind. The idea in mind, as we have seen, is a subjective fact, but the kind of fact we are concerned with establishing is an objective fact. To do so, we must look beyond our ideas to their sources in the objective world. I establish a fact if I successfully ascertain that there is, for a particular idea I have in mind, a corresponding reality external to my mind.”
Match Ideas to Facts
“Match Ideas to Facts: There are three basic components to human knowledge: first, an objective fact (e.g., a cat); second, the idea of a cat; third, the word we apply to the idea, allowing us to communicate it to others (e.g., in English, “cat”). It all starts with the cat. If there were no real cats, there would be no idea about them, and there would be no word for the idea.”
(McInerny, 2004) (p. 9).
The clear idea in reality
“It is a clear or sound idea to the extent that we can relate it to the objective world. But many things in the objective world go together to compose the rich meaning of the idea of democracy: persons, events, constitutions, legislative acts, past institutions, present institutions.”
“If my idea of democracy is going to be communicable to others, it must refer to what is common to me and others, those many things in the objective world that are its originating source.” “To prevent my idea from being a product of pure subjectivism, in which case it could not be communicated to others, I must continuously touch base with those many facts in the objective world from which the idea was born.”
(McInerny, 2004) (p. 10).
Bad ideas
“Bad ideas can be informative, not about the objective world— for they have ceased faithfully to reflect that world— but about the subjective state of the persons who nourish those ideas. Bad ideas do not just happen. We are responsible for them. They result from carelessness on our part, when we cease to pay sufficient attention to the relational quality of ideas, or, worse, are a product of the willful rejection of objective facts.”
(McInerny, 2004) (pp. 10-11).
Order of things
“As we have seen, first comes the thing, then the idea, then the word. If our ideas are sound to the extent that they faithfully represent the thing, then they will be clearly communicable only if we clothe them in words that accurately signify them. Ideas, as such, are not communicable from one mind to another. They have to be carefully fitted to words so that the words might communicate them faithfully. Putting the right word to an idea is not an automatic process, and sometimes it can be quite challenging. We have all had the experience of knowing what we want to say but not being able to come up with the words for it.”
(McInerny, 2004) (p. 11)…………
Read on………………….
Victor Leinonen. A Claim For A True Worldview (Kindle Locations 6030-6038).
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