Freedum Vs Freedom: What's the Difference and Why Should We Care? USA! USA! Edition

Introduction
Freedom. No single word is found more often on the lips of the American politician. It is 'Murika's rallying cry. But what does it mean? And, once we've settled on a meaning, what sorts of actions does that value commit us to? 

As everyone knows, 99% of philosophy consists in asking, "Ah, ha! But what do you mean by X?" That's pretty much all philosophers do. All day. We argue about what words mean. 

Of course, I'm being facetious. Nevertheless, at least part of philosophy is getting clear on the meanings of terms. Meanings do matter, after all--for both practical and theoretical concerns. Suppose you're debating with someone over whether happiness is the meaning of life. If you think happiness is a psychologically pleasant state then you'll formulate your argument one way. On the other hand, if you think, as Aristotle did, that happiness is a way of living--i.e.., living virtuously--then you will formulate different arguments. 

It's also possible for two people to agree that happiness is the meaning of life but disagree about what 'happiness' means. Unless they first clarify their terms, they'll end of talking past each other without any advance in the dialectic. In a political context, they'll likely advocate different policies and fail to understand why they disagree. 

A: "This policy will promote the general happiness (meaning pleasure)"
B: "No, it won't because it undermines virtue!
A: "Huh? What has virtue got to do with happiness?

In a way, I think this is what's going in with respect to 'freedom'.  In America there are two meanings to the term. I'll call the first 'freedum' and the second 'freedom'. People agree that freedom is important but are talking past each other. [Note: There are actually more meanings for freedom, but I'm going to focus on only two of them].

Freedum
Very simply, freedum is the combination of the absence of coercion combined with capacity to act according to your immediate desires. This is 'Murika's definition of freedom. In my more cynical moods, I call it the freedum to be an idiot. 

Ain't no gubmint gonna tell me what to do. If I want to walk around nekit in my front yard and shit on my lawn--it's my property and I'll do what I want. If I want to drive a diesel monster truck to and from work, despite the fact that I'm unnecessarily polluting the air, ain't no gubmint gonna tell me not to. I gots freedum. 

Freedum is the type of freedom an animal in the wild has. A desire pops up and no one is there to tell that animal that it can't act on that desire if it so chooses--no matter the content of the desire. 

Before dismissing freedum as somehow beneath a thinking creature, freedum does have value. Very few of us would want to live in a world where we were restricted from acting according to our desires. There are many important political freedoms that fit with what I've called freedum: Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to marry whomever you please, etc...

The main point, (to be expanded in the next section) is that at the level of the individual merely acting on whatever fancy enters one's pointy head is an impoverished view of freedom.

I've been overly disparaging of freedum to make a point. It isn't the only kind of freedom worth having, and, I will suggest, there is a more valuable kind of freedom which should sometimes eclipse freedum. 

Freedom
The absence of coercion is one thing but is doin' whatever the f*ck I want all there is to freedom? Perhaps, if you're a 13 year-old. 

Kant
Kant and subsequent philosophers noted that merely acting according to our desires isn't genuine freedom (to be fair, the idea starts with Socrates and Plato). In broad terms, freedom is acting according to reason. Let me explain:

You don't choose to have the particular desires and preferences that you have. For example, when you get a craving for ice cream, you didn't choose to have that desire. You just have the craving. Acting on your various occurrent desires requires no deliberation. You just act on whichever is strongest. On the other hand, freedom is rationally deliberating on your current set of desires (for current and future ends) and figuring out what the rational/best thing to do/pursue would be, then acting in accordance with what reason tells you to do. 

Similarly, we don't choose our preferences. You don't choose to like the foods, activities, people, books, etc.. that you do. For example, no one says "I think today I'm going to like studying philosophy" or "I'm going to like carpentry". You just do. 

Freedum would be simply taking these preferences and desires at face value. So long as no external force prevented you from pursuing and fulfilling them, you have freedum. But Kant's point is that genuine freedom takes more than this. As rational creatures we can take our sets of desires and preferences and submit them to rational scrutiny. We can rationally deliberate over whether they are good desires and preferences to have and whether it would be good to act on those desires and preferences. Freedom is freeing ourselves from our unreflective brute inclinations and instead carefully considering what we ought to do.

Freedom is not simply accepting my brute desire to eat a whole pizza to myself--cuz ain't nobody gonna tell me what to do. Freedom is rationally deliberating about whether it would be good for me to eat that whole pizza, concluding that it isn't, then acting in accordance with this conclusion. 

To drive the point home, if freedom were merely a matter of acting on our desires in the absence of coercion, we'd have to say the heroine addict is just as free as the person who carefully plans out and lives a successful and purposeful life.  Thinking this way confuses freedum for freedom and it turns freedom into a mockery of a travesty of a sham. 

Another way of thinking of freedom is self-legislation. I rationally deliberate upon a set of principles and values according to which I live my life. When a desire arises that clashes with my rationally arrived at principles and values (as will happen frequently), I accord my action with my principles and values--not the haphazard desire. 

For example, perhaps one of my values is to become a great philosophy teacher. To do this I know that in the evenings I have to spend time planning my lectures. However, sometimes in the evening I instead have an overwhelming desire to watch a movie. I am free when I live in accordance with my rationally conceived values and principles. And so, if I refuse to indulge the desire I am free. 

Conversely, I might think, "YOLO!!!". If I acquiesce to my occurrent desire, I give up on my own rules and values. I'm not in control of my life anymore--there are no principles guiding my actions. Like Otis, I just act on whatever fancy happens to enter my head in that moment. But I'm not free when I do whatever the f*ck I want. In such a case I only possess freedum. 

We can think of this notion of freedom not only at the individual but also at the political level. Political freedom can also be understood as self-legislation. We govern ourselves as a society according to the rules, principles, and values that we collectively rationally agree to. Of course, there will be disagreement within a society over exactly what those rules will be. Figuring out what to do in cases of disagreement is the heart and soul of contemporary political philosophy. I won't go into it in this post--I only want to suggest how Kant's idea of freedom extends to the political realm. (For an overview of how political philosophers approach the problem of political freedom, self-legislation, and disagreement see this post.)

Hegel and Marx
Hegel and Marx build on Kant but kick it up a notch in terms of explaining why you aren't free when you merely act on your desires. The best way to understand is by way of my version of an analogy which I loosely borrow from Peter Singer (Singer's original analogy concerns deodorant products).

Economist think an economy is good to the degree that people's actual preferences are satisfied. But the philosopher asks two further question: (a) why do people in that economy have the particular preferences that they do? and (b) are these good preferences to have? 

Take for example the massive popularity of fast food in the US of A. An economist will say that an economy is good in so far as people's preferences for fast food are being met.  The philosopher asks: (a) why do people in the US of A desire fast food so much? and (b) are these preferences for fast food good? Let's examine each in turn.

A little reflection provides several answers to (a) at various levels of analysis. The first point to consider is that the desire for fast food didn't arise spontaneously. It is the result of carefully crafted marketing campaigns to generate the desires. This insight counts as a strike against the idea that someone is free when they act according to their desire for fast food.  The desire came from without, not from within and an action is free only in so far it is the product of conscious deliberation. There's a lot more to the story which I discuss below.

The short version of the story is that our desires and preferences are the product of complex environmental factors external to us. Since their origin is external, accepting and acting upon them isn't commensurate with authentic freedom. Freedom, as should be clear by now, is acting on desires and preferences generated and reflected upon internally.  

Hegel's point (more fully developed in Marx) is that our political preferences--our values and principles that we think ought to order our society--are just like our preferences for fast food. They are the product of our particular place in history and its institutions, attitudes, and practices.

Marx emphasized that our values and preferences don't just shape our institutions and practices (namely capitalism) but our institutions and practices also serve to reinforce the prevailing values and preferences. To understand, we can return to the fast food analogy. 

People have the preference and desire for fast food because not just because of clever marketing but because of our existing practices and the very structure of our institutions. The practice of eating fast food reenforces the preference and serves to generate the desire. The structure of our cities, neighborhoods, and food production systems also serve to generate and reinforce our desire for fast food. 

When you're hungry and out of the house, what's the quickest easiest meal? Fast food restaurants are on every corner. It's much easier to find and pull into a drive thru than to find a quick affordable healthy option. And so, the very structure of our world (in some neighborhoods more than others) pushes us toward fast food. When it's all around us, the desire seems endogenous when in fact it isn't.

We can take further steps back in our analysis and ask why it is that we don't have time for sit down meals. This is also a contingent fact about how are world is currently structured. But it also pushes us toward the practice of eating fast food, desiring fast food, and further creates demand for fast food restaurants which in turn reinforces those material structures in our world. 

We can play this game all day but the point remains the same. Many values, desires, and preferences that we might think come from within, in fact don't. The structure of our world, our institutions, and our practices all serve to generate and reinforce values which fold back on themselves to reinforce the existing structures and practices that were their genesis. Freedom is about acting on internally generated (and deliberated upon) preferences, values, and desires. We are frequently mistaken about the origins of many of our desires; thus, we are also mistaken about the nature of our choices and actions with respect to freedom.

Once we've applied our critique of our values, practices, desires, etc... we must do the real philosophical work. We need to figure out what values and desires we would rationally will that are independent of being externally generated. Returning to the analogy, What would I rationally want to eat--devoid of external forces generating my various gustatory desires? 

More generally, what are the authentic unpolluted rational desires for human beings? For Kant there are universal rational answers to this question since reason is universal and we all (to varying degrees) possess rationality. If we all go to the same well, we all drink the same water. There are universal right answers for what humans should desire. (It's not clear in Kant's philosophy how specific those desires would be). 

Hegel's insight is that we never make choices completely divorced from an implicit value system. Just as we can never perfectly escape our own subjective point of view, we can't escape our point in history and all its implicit accompanying beliefs, values, practices, and attitudes. Nevertheless, through critical analysis we can come to understand the source and origins of our existing institutions, practices, and values and apply rational deliberation to them and the desires they generate.

To continue with the analogy, Kant might have us ban all the fast food restaurants along all the forces that created them. We couldn't rationally want to eat fast food, and so away with it! Hegel would tell us that since we can never exist apart from a value-laden environment we should do the best with the one we currently inhabit:  take the existing fast food restaurants and improve through application of rational deliberation. Fast food restaurants are both good and bad: They offer food that is quick, affordable, and convenient. Unfortunately, the food itself isn't good for us. So, let's tinker with the menu but preserve what's good. Marx might agree with Hegel regarding the menu change, but you best believe he'd also insist labor practices be changed too! 

Let's now apply this framework to life choices. Consider the fact that many students want to be business majors. Why? At the level of freedum, they may just have the brute desire. But a Hegalian analysis gives us much more to consider. We ask, why do they have that brute desire in the first place? If we look around at the structure of our society (capitalism) and the values it inculcates (money, power), the answer is apparent. In a capitalist society, status, power, and success are all tightly bound to how much money one has. Without money, you're in for a rough life.

In one sense, we can say these students are rationally choosing and are thus making choices consistent with freedom. They recognize that in order to be successful in the US of A you need money. Thus, if they had competing desires to go into social work or fine arts, we might say they are rational in choosing to study bidniz. 

But the Hegelian point cuts deeper. It asks how we came to value money so highly in the first place which in turn leads students to have the desire to pursue business degrees. What are the structures, institutions, practices, and attitudes that shape and maintain our value systems which in turn shape our desires? Since we didn't choose the conditions out of which our values arose, there is a sense in which we are not free when we accept them uncritically and the desires they generate--even when they are rational to pursue within a particular historical context.

It can be rational to desire money in a capitalist system and so in a sense you're free when you order your life in pursuit of it. On the other hand, in so far as you don't reflect on the social and historical origins of your deeply held desires and values you are not free. You mistakenly assume that values in your world are eternal and objective. They are the right ones. You fail to see that they are a contingency of your location in history. In so far as you don't see the contingency of your core values and desires, and don't subject them to critical analysis and rational scrutiny, your choices are not consistent with freedom. Otherwise stated, for your choices to be truly free in the Hegelian sense, you have to recognize that your values and desires are the product of your society, your location in history, and a function of various institutions, structures, practices, and attitudes. Only after you've done this intellectual work can a choice be considered to be free.

Conclusion
The next time someone rants about Freedom!!!1!1!!!! USA #1!!!!1!1!! or a politician makes proclamations about freedom, take a moment to reflect on whether they're primarily concerned with freedum or freedom. It's true that the gubbamint can constrain your freedum and that's something we should avoid. But if you reflect a little you might find that restricting your own freedum is sometimes consistent with freedom. And freedom, it seems to me, is frequently to be preferred to freedum. Especially when it comes to living in large groups...

Are We Better Off Without A Constitution?

Welcome back to my philoso-posts er'body.  This semester I, and by extension you, will be learning about the philosophy of law (amongst other things).  Since, the last philosophy of law course I took was in the summer of 1998 I'm basically starting from scratch.  Until I get further into the course my first few entries will basically be my attempts to distill the articles I have to read for class.  Where appropriate I will include my usual witty remarks and keen insight.  jk, lol, omg.  Without further ado...


Rule of Law and the English Constitution (A.V. Dicey)


     According to my main man Dicey, there are 2 characteristics of English (and later, by extension, American, Canadian, and Australian) political institutions that have remained constant: (1) omnipotence/supremacy throughout the whole country of a central gov't, and (2) the rule/supremacy of law. Lets check out the 2nd.


     Included in the English notion of the supremacy of law are 3 distinct concepts.  A.  People cannot be punished or fined unless they can be shown to have breached the law which has been (previously) established in a normal way in the ordinary courts.  This contrasts with other systems of government where law and breach of law can be determined by a person with great power and/or authority.
    So, why does this matter? What's really at stake here?  To illustrate lets look at some extreme examples.  On one end of the continuum we have a legal system (i.e. the English system) which gives its executive very little discretionary authority in applying the law.  The role of judges is to interpret laws and apply them as best they can to particular cases.  On the other end of the continuum is a system that allows great discretionary authority to judges.  In such systems, judges have more latitude to take into consideration non-legal mitigating factors. 
     Benefits of a system like that of the English where judges have little discretionary power is that arbitrariness is reduced and individuals have greater legal security; for, "where there is discretion there is room for arbitrariness...discretionary authority on the part of the government must mean insecurity for legal freedom on the part of its subjects."  If you never knew how a judge would interpret a law it would be difficult, in some cases, to determine beforehand if your action is lawful.


     The second concept in the rule of law is (generally) no one is above the law.  In other words, no matter where you rank on the political, economic, or social hierarchy you are subject to the ordinary law and can be tried in an ordinary court if your actions are suspected of running counter to the law.


     The third concept in the rule of law is that constitutional law is the result of executive decisions about particular cases whereas in most other counties it's the other way around.  Lets slow down and break this down...wika! wika! wika! remix!  So, like, ok, um, you live under English law, and, like you have constitutional rights? right?  But how are your constitutional rights (freedom of speech, assembly, etc...) determined?  Under the English system judges look at individual cases and previous judgements and make decisions that follow the precedents already set.  Interestingly, the UK doesn't have a formal constitution, instead it has several formal documents along with statutes and judicial precedents.  Under most other systems, rights and freedoms flow from the articles of the nation's constitution.  Lets look at this distinction in some more detail and what it means in terms of the law.
     The formal pronouncements of rights and freedoms we might normally find in the formally created constitutions of most countries still exist in the UK but are instead found by abstracting from individual prior judgements.  So, the right to individual liberty in the UK is secured from the precedents set from prior particular cases where judges ruled in favour of individual liberty.  In other most other countries the principle of individual liberty flows from or is secured by a county's constitution.  Under this system, individual decisions that involve cases where individual liberty is contested will be deduced from the principles of the constitution.
     Both systems are capable of obtaining the same result but, Dicey argues, the degree to which these rights and liberties are secured depends on the system out of which they arose.  The problem with the top-down constitutional model is that, while it spells out what the right and freedoms are, it doesn't give enough attention to how these rights and freedoms should be protected and enforced.  The English system, on the other hand, can do both.  Because of the judicial precedents of prior cases, not only do we have the rights and freedoms, but also a record of how previous judges have ruled on these cases, i.e., shown how those right/freedoms should be enforced.
     Another strength of the English system is that rights and freedoms are woven into the laws of the land whereas in a constitutional system, the two exist apart:  the ordinary laws and the constitutional laws exists and two different realms.   If we take the example of freedom of speech we see that in the English system this right is built into the ordinary law so it cannot be changed without changing centuries of judicial precedents.  But in the case of constitutional law, "all" that is required for this freedom to be limited or revoked is a constitutional amendment.  Of course, constitutional amendments aren't easy to achieve, but they are easier to achieve than undoing centuries of individual judicial rulings.
     To sum of this third point, in English law rights and freedoms are the consequence of the ordinary law but in constitutional countries the constitution is the source of rights and freedoms.




   

I Like Money, Wanna Hang Out? Kantian Ethics: Acting From Reason vs For Reasons

Preamble I loves me my preambles...

     First a few autobiographical notes: today I wrote my first midterm in 11 years.  I don't recall being so stressed about exams in undergrad but for some reason I was really worried about this one; maybe it's just a novelty effect and after a few more exams my reaction will settle down--I hope it will anyway.  I think part of my nervousness came from the fact that the way the exam was set up was a little unfair--that's my opinion anyway.

     Friday afternoon we were given the ELEVEN possible essay questions of which we were told the professor would pick 3.  It was explicit that it wasn't going to be a situation where he give 6 options and you chose 3 from the six--nope--there would just be three on the exam and those are the ones you are expected to answer.  I know undergrad was over a decade ago for me but I don't remember any professor doing anything like that especially with just the weekend to study. 

     Basically we had 3 days to learn enough content to write 11 essays from memory.  I think that's a bit excessive.  Anyhow, I stayed up Monday studying until 4:30am, took a nap 'til 8 am, got up, drank lots o' coffee and returned to studying.  When I got to class at 11:30am everyone looked like they were prisoners on the way to their execution.  A couple of people were saying that they expected to fail and would probably end up dropping the course. 

    The professor walks in and says, "I've decided to make things a little easier for you".  I've given you all eleven questions and I want you to pick either 2 about Descartes and 1 about Spinoza or vice versa".  Huge collective sigh of relief.  Anyhow, after my heart stopped pounding so hard from all the caffeine and adrenaline I took a few deep breaths and threw up Descartes and Spinoza all over the page.  In the end I did alright (I think).  Despite all the panic some good has come out of this...if anyone ever asks me about Scholastic, Cartesian or Spinozian metaphysics they'll get more information than they could ever want (and probably more than they did want).

Why Do We Study Kant?

      Ok, enough with the jibber-jabber lets ask an important question: Why bother studying Kant? Or any moral and ethical philosophy for that matter?  Doesn't it seem a little strange that people would commit so much time to studying something when all the true answers are right there in the bible?  The obvious question is, if philosophers are so curious about what is right and wrong and how to act, why they don't they just consult the bible where God has spelled everything out in black and white for everyone to read?  
     The answer is simple.  We do it just for fun.  We like to look at what some of the of the greatest human minds have dedicated their lifetimes to thinking about and point out the ways in which it does not measure up to the clear, unambiguous, logically consistent, intuitively correct divine teachings of sweet sweet baby Jesus and his fah-jah.  So, without further ado, lets entertain ourselves with Kants wacky ideas of morality arising out of our capacity to reason and freewill....

Still Trying to Figure out What We Can Know About Morality From the Concept of Freedom

Review

     We left off with Kant's hilarious notion that morality is somehow connected to our ability to chose our own course of action (rather than following the perfect 600 or so rules in the bible).  Remember that Kant wants to show that it is a priori true that morality arises out of the concept of a good will; that is to say, that the one concept is contained in the other just as the concept of "unmarried man" is contained in the concept of "bachelor".   In his last attempt he had to go outside of the concept of the will and appeal to the additional concept of positive freedom in order to derive the concept of morality; but Kant doesn't want to have to appeal to anything beyond the conceptual boundaries of the will for his proof.  As a further note, recall that for Kant morality is the (hilarious) idea that the motive upon which you act can be willed as a universal law.

Freedom Must Be Presupposed as a Property of the Will of All Rational Beings

      In the previous entry I made we learned that in order to get the concept of morality out of the concept of a good will we need to presuppose the concept of freedom.  We know that if we have freedom, then we can say we have morality; so in order to make the step from a good will to morality we will need to show that the concept of a good will entails the concept of freedom, which in turn entails morality.  In technical terms it looks like Kant is trying to construct what is called a hypothetical syllogism--i.e.,  if A then B, if B then C, so if A then C. 

     The other silly idea that Kant has is that morality is universal.  Why is morality universal?  First, it's because of Kant's assumption that the faculty of reason works the same universally (dubious...).  Second is that because morality only applies to beings that are rational--it wouldn't make much sense to apply morality to irrational beings like spiders and mice--and since morality is derived from freedom, we need to prove that freedom is a property of rational beings.  Also if morality isn't universal it is less meaningful.  
     In terms of proving that morality is universal we cannot prove it is such by appealing to particular examples; for example I can't prove the universality of morality by saying, "I'm a rational being, I know I have freewill, so morality applies to me, therefore morality applies to all rational beings".  In a particular instance, the fact that you are rational might be a wacky quality particular to you.  You can't prove a general law deductively (a priori) by generalizing from empirical facts; doing so would be inductive reasoning and its conclusions don't have the same logical force as do deductive arguments.  So again, to show that moral law is universal we need to show that freewill is a necessary  property of being a rational being.

     The first step in Kant's proof that rational creatures have the property of freedom starts with a naked assertion that so long a rational creature has the idea that he is free in his actions then (somehow) this means that he is actually free.  Lets take a step outside of philosophy for a second and go back to the real world.  For the average Joe, even the above average Joe, the fact that Kant should even have to prove that humans have freewill is just kind of loco; of course we're free! look I'm going to decide to type an '8'...and now a '+'....look at me exercising my freewill!  Woohoo!  I don't feel like there's anyone in a control tower making me type '8' and '+'...but there are many philosopher (and indeed some modern neuroscience) that argue our freedom is an illusion; we think we are free but actually there is measurable neurological activity in the body for a movement before we have "consciously" decided to make the movement.  All that aside, my point is that in the normal world, what Kant is asserting isn't very loco, but in the philosophy world it's odd that he just asserts it without backing it up with an argument.

     The next step is to say that every rational being (who by definition also has a will) can only act according to the idea that he can choose his course of action (amongst alternatives).  Again, this doesn't sound too loco but it is important.  What Kant is getting at is that when we (as rational agents) choose a course of action from amongst alternatives, the selection of the course of action comes from within us, not from some external cause.  If our action is directed by some external cause then our decision to act one way rather than another cannot be attributed to reason.  Ahh!  This is a critical move, because Kant wants to make two crucial distinctions here: action from reason (as a faculty) and action for reasons--i.e., actions from inclination--where inclination is not free action but action from reason is.

     When you act because of inclination--for instance, an action out of instinct, character predisposition, etc..--then you are no longer acting as a free agent.  Your actions arise out of something other than your will (which arises out of reason); that is, they aren't rational.  You are being caused to act by factors outside of your reason when you act out of fear, or anger, or addiction, or even selfish desires.  As a rational being in order to be free we have to act out of our own (rational) principles, and since all external reasons for action (i.e., I want ice cream, so I go get the ice cream) are, well...external to us, if we act on them we are not acting from reason rather for reasons.

    To summarize this idea, if I am to consider myself as having freedom when I act, the principles according to which I act must come from within me, that is from my will.  If I act on external reason or act out of inclination, that is, I direct my action toward some external goal, then the cause of my action does not come from within, i.e., from the will, so I am not in these cases acting freely.

     This distinction is a little bit tough to grasp so lets look at some examples.  But before I give my examples I'll just explain how I think about the distinction.  In the case of acting from external causes (for reasons) in these types of actions if you asked yourself "why did you do that?" the answer would be "I did x because I wanted x or wanted to achieve x".  In actions that arise from reason, if you ask yourself "why did you do that?" the answer would be something like "I did x because that's what one ought to do". 

      Simple examples: Case 1.  You see a 100.00 on the ground and no one around so you pick it up.  This was not a free action because if you ask "why did you pick it up?" the answer will be something like, "I picked up the money because I like money...wanna hang out?" So you acted because of something external to you.

     Simple Case 2: You see someone drop 100.00 on the ground and you pick it up and give it to them.  This was a free action (*as I will present it) because if you ask "why did you return the 100.00?" the answer will be "I returned the 100.00 because that's what one ought to do".  Notice there is no external end to which your action is directed; it is a restatement of a principle of action.
    Edit:  Ok, after sleeping on it I want to revise my first example.  I don't think Kant would think you are aren't free in that case because it's not a situation to which we apply moral principles.  I think the following set of examples better illustrate what Kant's trying to say (what I think he means, anyway)
     Case 3: You're in a hurry to get to work and see an old lady that's struggling to cross the street.  She reminds you of your own wonderful grandmother; because of this you feel both compassion and nostalgia.  You stop and help her cross the street.  If you ask yourself why you helped her, your answer is, "because she reminded me of my grandmother and I felt compassion for her".  Basically you acted out of a feeling of compassion.  For Kant this is an external reason so you are not acting from your (internal) will, and this not acting in a moral way; you are acting for a reason (because you feel compassion, have memories of your grandmother), not from reason.  To further illustrate why this is, lets look at case 4.
    Case 4:  Same situation...old lady....reminds you of your grandmother...late for work...etc...This time when you ask yourself why you helped her across the street the answer is "because you ought to assist the elderly".  In this case your action arose out of a principle that is in no way related to how you feel about the situation.  Here you acted from your internal will because you acted on a rational principle (which are internally generated), that is, you acted from reason, not for a reason.

     So it seems that Kant is saying that since humans are not purely rational (we also have emotional inclinations and irrational preferences) we can sometimes act from our will (internal) and sometime act for external reasons (both external to our to our rational will and external goals).  When we act from the will we are acting from reason, so we are acting as free agents;  when we act for reasons we are not acting as rational agents so we are not free agents.  For now, to conclude lets just say that Kant has shown that so long as we are acting from reason we can say we are free.  I'm not sure I agree with his conclusion but I'll get into that later.

I'll proof read this later my eyes are closing and my mind is pulp...

G'nite....

What Can We Know About Morality from the Concept of Freedom?

Is Morality Self-Evident?

Preamble

     Up until now we have just taken it on faith that Kant is right in that the supreme principle of morality is the Categorical Imperative (CI) in its various incarnations (i.e., formulation of universalization, of natural law, and of humanity as an end).  Now Kant begins his argument for why the CI is the only fundamental moral law.  For Kant it is not enough to give evidence for the CI, he wants to give a logical proof.  In philo-speak, Kant wants an a priori proof of the CI rather than a synthetic proof; that is to say he wants to prove the CI without any appeal to the experiential world; he wants to show that we can come to know the CI simply through rational/logical reflection of concepts.

     An obvious question is, why is Kant so hung up on avoiding appeal to experience?  The general answer is that if we appeal to external reasons to support moral thinking then if those reasons change, so will our moral laws.  For example, suppose after cooking you dinner your friend asks you how the meal was.  In fact, it was terrible but you know telling him this would break his precious heart, so you lie; that is, you lie for the reason that you don't want to hurt your friend's feelings.  

     A few weeks later the same friend announces they will be a contestant on a cooking show and would like your feedback on a dish they will enter in the competition.  He serves you the same dish they served you the previous week; this time you tell your friend that the dish isn't so good for the reason that you want to help them win the competition.  This also seems like a perfectly normal thing to do but the problem is we are left no clear guide to determining the "correct" moral action in situations where people ask for your opinion.  

     Every time our reasons to act change, so do our actions; and reasons are contingent upon our (often) ephemeral desires.  How can morality be so fickle and still have any worth and meaning?  And besides in both situations there are multiple, sometimes contradictory reasons according to which we could have acted.  Maybe in the first dinner I could have told him the truth based on the reason that I think my friend wants to improve his cooking and can't do so without honest criticism.  Of course one could reply that the rule according to which we are acting is "do whatever is going to produce the most happiness for the most people"; and this might be true, but this maxim comes with a boat load of its own problems and discussing them will take us far afield from the task at hand, so I leave it for now.  The essential point is that, for Kant, if we appeal to circumstantial reasons for choosing our behaviour, then what is moral is at the mercy of our circumstances. 

The Concept of Freedom as an Explanation for Autonomy of the Will

     Lets get a couple of definitions out of the way:  The first is 'will'; by will Kant means the ability to cause yourself to act (provided you are a rational being!); for example when you get up in the morning you are acting on your will to wake up.  Freedom is the property of the will that allows you to act independently of external causes.  If we were merely subject to external causes we'd be no different than a ball of tumble weed getting blown around.  Within philosophy the notion of free will is by no means a settled matter; but Kant assumes it nonetheless because it is required for morality.  For example, if we didn't have freewill (our actions were nothing but the total effects of external causes) how could be be culpable for our actions?  It is an entirely reasonable position that morality only makes sense if we have freewill; but the degree to which we have it, if at all, is still an open debate.  The essential point is that in our actions we are (to varying degrees) free from the influence of external causes--through our will and the fact that our will is freewill,.  The technical term for this type of freedom is negative freedom--that is, freedom from external causes.

     Kant is not satisfied with this feeble notion of freedom and argues for a more robust positive freedom as well.  Positive freedom is not just freedom from external causes but the ability to be the cause our own actions (i.e., act on our will).  But although our freedom (USA! USA! USA!) somehow grants us exemption status to external causes (i.e., natural laws which apply to objects) it does not mean our freedom is "lawless".  Along with causation (i.e., we can cause our own actions) comes the notion of laws according to which causation must conform.  For if our freedom of action were lawless our actions would be random, and that is to be no more free than to be subject to external causes; rather our freedom must be a force that conforms with "a special kind" of immutable laws.  

     I'm a little skeptical of this claim.  It seems pretty ad hoc; I mean, isn't it convenient that there are special kinds of immutable laws to which our will ought(?) to conform?  How does Kant know? Is he Jesus?  And doesn't it seem strange that, although we are (as far as we can tell) comprised of only matter, yet we are somehow exempt from the laws of nature (causal chains) when it comes to determining our own action?  These are some problems but are tangential to the issue so lets move on...

     So, given that the special causal power that rational beings have (freewill) conforms to some special kinds of laws Kant defines freedom of will as autonomy.  "What else can freedom of will be but autonomy--that is, the property which will has of being law to itself?" What he means here is that freedom is the ability to act on the laws that you make.  This idea can be a bit tricky to wrap your head around but it is a powerful one: every time you act, you act according to some principle; so every action is, in a sense, an instance of you writing a law.  

     For example, The other day I inadvertently dropped my phone.  A person who saw me drop it ran after me to give it to me.  In doing this action they wrote a law of the will which might be: "if someone inadvertently drops their phone, return it to them".  As I mentioned before, this is an idea I really like, and sometime I like to go through my day thinking (before I act) that what I do will become a law--try it! It's fun!

     Next Kant takes, as he will later admit, a logical jump; he goes from the plausibly defensible "what ever action I do becomes a law" to "I should only act in a way such that whatever I do will be a good universal law".   And the joy does not stop there; if we do make this step we can see that "a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same."  I think what he means is that a will that is free will always act in such a way that its actions make universalizable law and a (rational) will will always follow the "special laws" governing the will (which magically turn out to line up exactly with the CI--i.e., the universalizable laws).  It all sounds a bit too good to be true...

     Remember, the whole passage started with the intent of trying to extract, a priori, purely from concepts the principle of morality.  Kant says if we analyze the concept of freedom of the will (aka. autonomy) we can, without reference to the empirical matters, deduce the principle of morality (CI); that is to say, the notion of the CI in contained in the notion of freewill.  But not so fast.  First of all, this whole thing only works if we suppose freedom of the will.  And second, even if we suppose freewill and from freewill deduce the notion of morality, this does nothing to guarantee we can discover the content of morality--i.e., "a good will is one whose maxim can always have as its content itself considered as a universal law"--there is no reason why the content of morality might not be different; what if if it is, "act only in such a way that will maximize happiness for the greatest number of people?"  Simply analyzing the concept of freewill doesn't give us any indication either way...

     Recap: We started by saying that rational beings have free will in a negative sense (I can cause myself to act), then we said we also have positive free will (I can do the things I freely chose to do and I am not subject to external causes on how I act) and since positive freewill causes things to happen, it must be subject to some "special" causal laws (i.e., other than the laws of objects).  Because I have the ability to chose what I want (negative freedom) there is such a thing a morality; morality arises out of the fact that I can chose between "good" and "bad" things/courses of actions; i.e., the concept of morality can be known from rational reflection of the concept of negative freedom.  Regarding what can be known from the concept of positive freedom, we can know that there are (moral) laws that govern the will (because anything with causal power must act according to laws); however, even Kant admits that we cannot know what these laws are purely by examining the concept of positive freedom; we can only know that they exist, thus we need to look elsewhere for an a priori grounding of the CI...