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    Kant's contradiction in conception and contradiction in w... — Carmelics
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    Kant's contradiction in conception and contradiction in will tests of the formula of universal law refute Hume's argument that passions, volitions, and actions cannot be evaluated as reasonable or unreasonable.

    Virtue Ethics
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Hume's own account of calm passions admits that some motivational states are responsive to rational reflection and correction.
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    • 2.If even Humean passions admit degrees of rational responsiveness, Kant's tests show volitions fall within reason's evaluative scope.
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    • 3.Kant's contradiction in will test specifically targets the rational incoherence of willing universal exceptions, a normative standard Hume's fork cannot exclude.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Christine Korsgaard's constitutivism demonstrates that volitions presuppose a commitment to rational self-governance, making them internally assessable by reason.
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    • 2.A maxim that cannot be universalized without contradiction fails the very standard of coherence that constitutes rational agency, not merely an external moral criterion.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Kant's formula of universal law provides two tests — contradiction in conception and contradiction in will — for evaluating the rationality of maxims.
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    • 2.These tests apply rational evaluation to volitions and intended actions.
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    • 3.If volitions and actions can be rationally evaluated via these tests, then Hume's claim that they cannot be contrary to reason is false.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics

    Key Terms

    Contradiction in conception(as one of Kant's tests for determining morality)
    A test Kant proposed to check if an action is moral: if you tried to make your action a universal law that everyone followed, would it logically fall apart or become impossible?
    Contradiction in will(as Kant's second moral test)
    Kant's second test for morality: even if an action doesn't logically contradict itself, would you actually want to live in a world where everyone did it?
    Formula of Universal Law(Kant 1997, 4:421)
    The Kantian principle that one should act only in accordance with that maxim through which one can at the same time will that it become a universal law
    Hume(as the main philosopher discussed in this statement)
    David Hume was an 18th-century Scottish philosopher who argued that human knowledge comes from experience and observation rather than pure reasoning alone.
    Kant(as used in epistemology and metaphysics)
    Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was an influential German philosopher who argued that our minds shape how we experience reality, and that we can only truly know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves.
    Reasonable or unreasonable (in Hume's sense)(as the distinction Hume made that Kant challenges)
    Hume argued that emotions and desires can't be called 'rational' or 'irrational' because they simply exist—they're not the kind of thing you evaluate with logic.
    Refute(as what particularists must do to challenge the unity of virtue thesis)
    To prove that something is wrong or false by giving strong arguments against it.
    passions(Distinguishes passions as states of maximal engagement of the soul's lower cognitive and appetitive faculties)
    States in which almost the entire lower power of cognition and desire is engaged
    volitions(Cited as a subclass of future events known by an omniscient God)
    Mental events constituting acts of will

    Connections

    1 topic

    Free Will & Foreknowledge1 linked

    Related

    A maxim that cannot be universalized without contradiction fails the very standa...Christine Korsgaard's constitutivism demonstrates that volitions presuppose a co...Hume's own account of calm passions admits that some motivational states are res...If even Humean passions admit degrees of rational responsiveness, Kant's tests s...

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    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: kant-hume-morality
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    The third argument claims that a passion is an “original existence”, not an idea, or a mental copy of another object. Contradiction to truth and reason “consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those objects, which they represent” (T 2.3.3.5). Therefore, a passion cannot be contrary to truth and reason. Passions cannot, strictly speaking, be evaluated as reasonable or unreasonable, despite our practice of calling passions unreasonable or irrational when they depend in so
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    If volitions and actions can be rationally evaluated via these tests, then Hume'...Kant's contradiction in will test specifically targets the rational incoherence ...Kant's formula of universal law provides two tests — contradiction in conception...These tests apply rational evaluation to volitions and intended actions.

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