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Schroeder Scope Kant Mark Schroeder The University of Maryland at College Park Final revisions August 15 th , 2004 The Hypothetical Imperative? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83(3): 357-372. September 2005 Abstract: According to the standard view, Kant held that hypothetical imperatives are universally binding edicts with disjunctive objects: take-the-means-or-don’t-have-the-end. But Kant thought otherwise. He held that they are edicts binding only on some – those who have an end. On the other hand, the question as to how the imperative of morality is possible is undoubtedly the only one requiring a solution. For it is not at all hypothetical; and hence the objective necessity which it presents cannot be based on any presupposition, as was the case with the hypothetical imperatives. – Kant, Groundwork [4:419] 1 1.1 Introduction The contrast between hypothetical and categorical imperatives is central to Kant’s ethical theory. According to Kant, all imperatives present a practical kind of objective necessity, but with hypothetical imperatives that necessity is based on a presupposition , while with categorical imperatives it is not. Hypothetical imperatives commend taking the necessary means to a certain class of agents – those who have the end. If you have the end, then you ought to take the necessary means. But many contemporary commentators on Kant disagree. According to them, Kant believes in a Hypothetical Imperative that is not based on any presupposition; instead, it has a disjunctive object . It tells everyone to ‘[t]ake the necessary means or else give up the end’ [Hill 1973: 436]. They say that, ‘[t]aken strictly, it [the hypothetical imperative] counsels us either to take the means or to give up the end’ [Darwall 1983: 16]. 1 Page references in the text are to the Prussian Academy edition of Kant’s works, by volume and page number, except where indicated otherwise. 1 One of the ways in which the problem can be seen to arise 2 is to follow deontic logicians in interpreting ‘ought’ as a sentential operator, on the model of ‘necessarily’ and ‘possibly’. In deontic logic, ‘ought’ assigns practical , as opposed to alethic or metaphysical necessity to propositions. So, in the generic statement of hypothetical imperatives – ‘if you will the end, then you ought to take the necessary means’ – there are two salient choices for how to interpret the scope of the ‘ought’, since there are two salient sentential clauses in which it figures. One choice is to give it scope merely over the consequent of the conditional. Let us call this the Consequent Scope reading of the conditional. The other choice is to give it scope over the entire conditional. Let us call this the Wide Scope reading. 3 Consequent Scope: ∀x∀e (if x wills end e, then x ought ( x takes the means to e)) Wide Scope: ∀x∀e (x ought (if x wills end e, then x takes the means to e) It is important to notice two obvious differences between Consequent Scope and Wide Scope. Because the difference between them derives from whether ‘if x wills end e’ qualifies which x ought to do something, or whether it qualifies what the x ought to do, Wide and Consequent Scope disagree not merely about what kind of thing hypothetical imperatives enjoin us to do. They also differ with respect to who they enjoin to do it. According to Consequent Scope, hypothetical imperatives enjoin those with the end to take the necessary means. Their mandate is, as Kant puts it, ‘based on a presupposition’, and they don’t mandate it to those who don’t satisfy the presupposition. But according to Wide Scope, the Hypothetical Imperative is not based on any presupposition. It applies to everyone unconditionally, no matter what they are like. It sounds, in short, very much like a special kind of categorical imperative. 2 “Ought” is probably not a sentential operator [Schroeder forthcoming ], and Kant certainly didn’t think that it was. Kant held that ‘ought’ express a relation between someone who ought to do something, and an action – not a proposition – which she ought to do . Imperatives, that is, ‘say that something would be good to do or to refrain from doing, but they say it to a will that does not always’ do it [4:413, my italics]. Fortunately, however, we don’t need this assumption in order to get this dispute going. Kant never actually says, ‘if you will the end, then you ought to will the necessary means.’ He only says things like, ‘[a] hypothetical imperative thus says that an action is good for some purpose, either possible or actual’ [4:414-415]. So we don’t need the thesis that the sentence is actually ambiguous – we only need ideas like those of Hill and Darwall for what hypothetical imperatives might require. 3 Stephen Engstrom [1993: 408] classifies the central options slightly differently. He seems to think that there is only one possible version of the Consequent Scope view, and it is that it is to be restricted to ends that are ‘set by reason’ [408], and hence obligatory. He calls this view the ‘material’ reading of hypothetical imperatives, and contrasts it with the ‘formal’ reading, which is essentially Wide Scope. His ‘material’ reading of hypothetical imperatives, however, is itself merely a special case of the consequent scope reading – it is possible to hold a Consequent Scope view which applies even to ends that are not ‘set by reason’. This non-exhaustive classification of views might appear to be a slight problem for Engstrom, since his argument in that paper is supposed to pose a dilemma for one of Allison’s views. But as we’ll see in section IV, I do hold that a version of the ‘set by reason’ view is in fact that way that Kant’s Consequent Scope view works. 2 The dominant view of Kant on hypothetical imperatives is that Kant accepts hypothetical imperatives only with a Wide Scope reading. 4 But in this paper I’ll explain why this is a clear mistake, at least with respect to the Kant of the Groundwork and the second Critique . I’ll point out, in fact, that the only serious motivation for this interpretation of Kant stems from considerations which are entirely extra- textual, 5 and I’ll argue that Kant’s view plausibly possesses other resources to deal with these considerations. It will be a consequence of my interpretation that, contra interpreters like Korsgaard and Hill, Kant never seriously took there to be a Hypothetical Imperative, capital-H, capital-I, an independent and fundamental objective principle of practical reason of which hypothetical imperatives are the expression, in the way that categorical imperatives are expressions of the Categorical Imperative. The structure of the paper is simple. In the remainder of part 1, I present two arguments in favor of the Consequent Scope reading of hypothetical imperatives, either of which I think ought to be conclusive. Then in part 2 of the paper, I turn to Kant’s famous argument that hypothetical imperatives are analytic. I argue that given Kant’s conception of analyticity, there is only one viable way of interpreting this argument, and that on this interpretation the argument only supports Consequent Scope. Finally, in part 3 of the paper I turn to consider the motivation for the Wide Scope interpretation. I note that while my arguments are textually based, this motivation derives from an extra-textual philosophical problem faced by contemporary interpreters of Kant. And I note that if my interpretation of the analyticity argument is correct, then Kant already has a solution to this problem. 1.2 Wide Scope and Categoricity Among imperatives, as I noted above, Kant distinguishes between those which are categorical , and those which are merely hypothetical . Categorical imperatives are addressed to all finite rational agents, and are not also hypothetical imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives, according to Kant, address themselves only to those who have certain ends. This doesn’t mean that they don’t address themselves to all finite rational 4 [Hill 1973] is the classic and one of the clearest statements of this interpretation and its motivation. Hill also later reiterates his position [Hill 1989: 365]. I take it that Rawls would agree, since Hill cites his lectures as inspiration [Hill 1973: 429]. Korsgaard endorses Hill’s reading [Korsgaard 1997b: footnote to 234], and offers two detailed accounts of what Kant’s arguments were for this view at different points in his career, which I’ll consider in part 2 [Korsgaard 1997b: 238-240, 245- 247]. Barbara Hermann follows Hill at least as far as talking about ‘the Hypothetical Imperative’ in the singular [Hermann 1993: 144, 214-5]. Stephen Darwall [Darwall 1983: 16, 47] and Jean Hampton [Hampton 1998: 144, 165] certainly commit to the view, and I suspect that many if not most contemporary Kantian thinkers in ethics are guilty of making the same mistake. H.J. Paton is extremely unclear about how he uses the word ‘conditioned’ in his The Categorical Imperative [Paton 1947], but he clearly thinks, like Hill, that individual hypothetical imperatives are ‘conditioned’ on the Hypothetical Imperative, which is in turn not ‘conditioned’ on ends at all, but only on the moral imperative. See section 3.3. 5 [Greenspan 1975], [Gensler 1985], [Hampton 1998], [Broome 1999], Schroeder [forthcoming]. Simon Blackburn [Blackburn 1998] also endorses this reading of hypothetical imperatives. Decision theory, conceived as a theory of instrumental reason, is probably also of the Wide Scope variety, and for similar reasons [Dreier 1996]. 3 agents. The imperative of prudence, according to Kant, is addressed to all finite rational agents.
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