Phi202

Kantian

Recall that Hume thinks moral claims don't answer to matter of fact (or at least, if they do, they cannot count as knowledge). His idea: such facts can be established neither a priori nor a posteriori. I.e one cannot validly derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. (Quote at beginning of MacIntyre article)

It is a form of utilitarianism that is one of Hume's main targets in arguing that moral claims can't be derived from empirical observations. We praise, he says, these actions that as a matter of fact lead to happiness, but 'were we indifferent to the ends (happiness) we would be equally indifferent t the means (the act). Our lack of indifference is not something logically required by the empirical facts.

A factiori, we can't, he says, derive moral claims without recourse to empirical facts. (He doesn't directly address the possibly counter-response that mathematical reasoning itself rests on axioms that are self-evident, known by pure reason a priori. In which case, why couldn't moral axioms be evident in the light of pure reason too? One response open to Hume is to argue that the very concepts involved in the moral axioms ahve not been shown to have objective reality. That is, it's not obvious, it might be argued that we have managed to affect any objective meaning to words like 'good' at all. It might be argued that this is different from the case of mathematical concepts e.g. 'circle'.

Kant thinks he can answer this Humean challenge, by showing how there can be objectively valid a priori knowledge, despite Hume's argument. Kant agrees that we can't know claims like 'pleasure is good' on the basis of self-evidence. Such a claim involves empirical concepts (just as 'red is a colour' involving empirical concepts) but such claims cannot be known a priori unless they're analytic (which 'pleasure is good' is not) unlike 'red is a colour') Kant derives Hume's strategy of: accepting that moral claims lack objective validity and keeping on making them anyway.

For Kant, the only claims that can be known a priori, unless they're analytic, are those that involve as empirical concepts i.e. those that are pure a priori.

Fr Kant, this insoucicience isn't good enough. He held Hume in great esteem, however, for pointing out the inadequacy of traditional accounts of a priori knowledge.

For Kant, moral truths derive from formal principles. Using these, he says, we can deduce moral claims with objective validity: claims that can't just happen to be accepted by most people, because their happen to be of a certain sort, but that must be accepted by any rational agent.

(This works, he says, because moral truths are not just knowable by pure reason, in a sense they are about pure reason; the concepts derive from pure reason.)