Silliman's Papers

PHILOSOPHY PAPER
Kant’s categorical imperative and the is/ought problem
By Daniel Silliman

The is/ought problem is the trouble created by trying to deduce an ethical obligation from facts about the world. “Is” refers to data about the universe, statements of fact. “Ought” refers to the ethical command, statements that we should do something. We cannot deduce a command from facts. “Is” cannot give us “ought.” Data or descriptions about nature, man, or the nature of man do not tell us how to act.

If Kant was brilliant and influential, it couldn’t be guessed by his writing. Kant is an awful writer. He writes in circles that lead to obfuscation, not understanding. I think I see bad logic, but it may merely be bad writing. Kant sets forth five premises in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals from which he deduces the categorical imperative, saying man ought to act only in a way he could also will everyone to act (683). The five premises Kant uses intentionalism, will, reason, duty and universalization.
Kant’s first premise, though not the first one he argues for, is intentionalism. He uses this first premise in establishing the second and fourth premises. He says that the worth of an action can be found in the action itself and not in the results (683). This gives a statement, an “is,” not a command to action. Intentionalism is not an imperative.
Kant sets forth “the absolute worth of a mere will” and says, “qualities…have no inner unconditional worth but always presuppose a good will” (680). All qualities then are based on the will. Wills are good in themselves and “[u]sefulness or fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it” (680). This premise, however dubious, is also not imperative. It is a statement about the way the world is. A psychologist or a physiologist would deal with such topics as the inner workings of man, describing the way things are.

While Kant thinks will is good of its own volition, reason must have a purpose. I’m not sure why he thinks this is so, but he does. “[R]eason…is given to us as a practical faculty” (681). He continues with the idea that the practical faculty the reason was purposed for is to produce the will. “[T]hen, where nature has everywhere else gone to work purposively in distributing its capacities, the true vocation of reason must be to produce a will that is good” (681). When describing reason Kant again is describing the workings of the mind and the nature of man—the way the world is.

Kant’s third premise is duty (681). I find duty the most confusing premise. He spends a lot of time distinguishing duty from self-interest and inclination. I see definitional arguments about duty; something a lexiconographer might spend his day on. Kant tries to distinguish between intention and action, but he never tells us how we ought to act. He wraps the question of duty into a very knotted and dense argument that isn’t (apparently) moving toward the conclusion of the categorical imperative. Perhaps he got distracted or I’m missing something, but duty would have been a good premise to use for a statement of obligation. An “ought” could have been produced in this premise—e.g., “one ought to do his duty”—but instead we deal with questions as to the meaning of duty, which is again statements about the world from which we cannot deduce an ethical code. Maybe Kant was assuming the “ought” of duty, but he skips over it without a defense so I don’t see why I should accept it as a premise.
With the first four premises—intentionalism, will, reason and duty—we are given statements about the way things work, but no imperatives about the way men ought to act. When Kant fails to use duty as an “ought” statement, despite it being handy, we find the premise argument producing four “is” statements and no “ought” statements. Since the conclusion is a statement about how we ought to act and we cannot derive an obligation from a description of the functions of the world around us, the first four premises do not take us to the conclusion. They cannot get us over the logical bar.

The final premise, universalization, is a bit tricky. The books and articles I read did not point to it as a premise and the students I spoke with do not mention it as a premise. Nevertheless, I think Kant uses it. After the first statement of the categorical imperative, Kant’s conclusion, he goes on to discuss the necessity of universalization. He calls universalization a compass by which we can “distinguish in every case that comes up what is good and what is evil” (684). Kant tells us that when we universalize our personal actions and look to see if we are content with the universalization we find out if they are good actions. This premise, if it is a premise, could be dug out, clarified and interpreted in two ways, but neither leaves us with a valid argument.

If we see universalization as an “ought” statement, we phrase it: “A man ought to act as if his personal actions were to become universally acted upon.” But this is no more than a restatement of the conclusion and we are presenting an invalid argument by begging the question. If this phrasing of the premise is the correct one, then we are saying: “A, therefore A.” Kant isn’t presenting a valid argument for the categorical imperative.

We can avoid this logical error by interpreting universalization differently, phrasing it: “Universalization of personal actions tells us if our actions are good.” This is the best premise in the argument for the categorical imperative, but it too is an “is” statement lacking a command on how man should act. If we had a companion premise stating a man ought to act in a good way, we would have an “ought” statement to deduce an ethical imperative. We have no such statement and are left, in this interpretation of the premise, with another “is” statement.

None of the five premises I could identify in Kant’s convoluted prose produced a valid argument. The is/ought problem almost incessantly plagues Kant and his categorical imperative. When we come close to avoiding the problem of deducing an obligation from a fact, we produced another logical error, begging the question. Kant’s logic transgresses the is/ought distinction and does not suffice.