Why 'Ought' Still Implies 'Can'
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Sunday, December 03, 2006 at 12:30 PM
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2 Comments |
I have no argument for the Kantian maxim that 'ought' implies 'can.' But I believe it to be true.
There are three broad strategies philosophers have employed in attacking the maxim. The first involves fairly straightforward counterexamples. The second employs more exotic Frankfurt-style-cases as counterexamples. The third strategy is the most interesting, I think, claiming that the maxim entails the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), which is itself subject to counterexample by Frankfurt-style-cases.
Defending the maxim against the first of these three attacks is perhaps the easiest task for its advocate. So naturally, I have taken up that task in this paper. In it, I defend one formulation of the maxim against counterexamples by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Company. (This piece is a big chunk out of the paper I wrote for my ethics class this term; I've omitted a rather dry section about the maxim and moral dilemmas/deontic logic).
It's not clear how one can consistently maintain that the maxim is true while also claiming that PAP is false (and subject to counterexample by Frankfurt-style cases). But I do all of this. So suppose defending the coherence of this larger position is something I'll have to be thinking, reading, and writing about over the next couple of months. =)
2 Comments:
Noumena at 8:57 PM said... I'll be taking a look at this when I have more time (whenever that is - sigh), but I noticed on your Kant quotations that you're citing the English pagination. Perhaps this isn't the custom among M&E folks, but because I'm pedantic and you just might not happen to know, Kant scholars (like most historians) never, ever use the English pagination. There are just too many different editions floating around. Cites to the first Critique give the page numbers for both the A and B edition, and cites to other works give the volume:page number for a standard German edition. These are in the margins of the three English editions you cite.
Andrew Bailey at 5:36 AM said... Thanks Dan, I suspected as much. The Kant quotations aren't doing a lot of work for me, but I think I'll keep them.
I got in trouble once for not citing the Stephanus numbers in a Plato paper, so I'll try and fix this before I turn in this piece today. =)
