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    Kant's Critical Philosophy's phenomenal/noumenal distinct... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    Kant's Critical Philosophy's phenomenal/noumenal distinction is necessary to preserve the possibility of moral agency.

    Free Will & ForeknowledgeMoral Responsibility
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    Reasons For

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    • 1.Science, on Kant's view, describes how the world appears (the phenomenal world), not how it ultimately is (noumenal reality).
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    • 2.Determinism is a feature of the phenomenal world as structured by scientific cognition, not of noumenal reality.
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    • 3.If determinism were the noumenal truth about persons, autonomy — and thus moral agency — would be impossible.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.The phenomenal/noumenal distinction renders noumenal freedom empirically vacuous, making it unable to ground genuine causal efficacy for moral action.
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    • 2.Moral agency requires that an agent's reasons actually cause their behavior, but Kant's noumenal self cannot causally intervene in the deterministic phenomenal causal chain.
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    • 3.A freedom that operates entirely outside space, time, and causation cannot intelligibly explain how deliberation produces action, leaving moral agency unexplained rather than preserved.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Strawson's reactive attitudes account shows that moral responsibility is grounded in interpersonal relationships and participant stances, not metaphysical freedom from determination.
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    • 2.If moral agency can be preserved through the compatibilist framework of holding attitudes within a deterministic world, the phenomenal/noumenal distinction is not necessary but merely one optional solution.
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    • 3.Kant's distinction therefore fails the necessity claim: compatibilism provides an equally coherent foundation for moral agency without positing an unknowable noumenal realm.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityFree Will & Foreknowledge

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    3 topics

    Truth & Knowledge1 linkedConsciousness & Mind1 linkedSkepticism1 linked

    Related

    A freedom that operates entirely outside space, time, and causation cannot intel...Determinism is a feature of the phenomenal world as structured by scientific cog...If determinism were the noumenal truth about persons, autonomy — and thus moral ...If moral agency can be preserved through the compatibilist framework of holding ...
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    Kant's distinction therefore fails the necessity claim: compatibilism provides a...Moral agency requires that an agent's reasons actually cause their behavior, but...

    Similar

    The phenomenal/noumenal distinction allows persons to be viewed as det...88%Free moral choice in the noumenal realm must nonetheless be capable of...76%Aesthetic and teleological forms of human experience and judgment toge...76%What is a necessary presupposition of rational moral agency is somethi...75%

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    SEP: moral-arguments-god
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    It is, however, controversial whether Kant himself was a constructivist in this sense. One reason to question whether this is the right way to read Kant follows from the fact that Kant himself did not see morality as free from metaphysical commitments. For example, Kant thought that it would be impossible for someone who believed that mechanistic determinism was the literal truth about himself to believe that he was a moral agent, since morality requires an autonomy that is incompatible with det
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    Details

    Science, on Kant's view, describes how the world appears (the phenomenal world),...
    Strawson's reactive attitudes account shows that moral responsibility is grounde...
    The phenomenal/noumenal distinction allows persons to be viewed as determined fr...
    The phenomenal/noumenal distinction renders noumenal freedom empirically vacuous...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (1 for, 2 against)
    Edits
    1 edit