In the first chapter of Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind, May (Reference May2018, p. 5) claims that moral theories in the tradition of Kant “have taken a serious beating” from sceptics about the role of reason in moral cognition. “To be fair,” he says, “Kantians do claim that we can arrive at moral judgments by pure reason alone,” at least in the sense that they think we can arrive at basic moral principles without appealing to emotions. In that sense, they are what we might call philosophical optimists about moral reason. However, exactly they think of reason, they believe that it alone can rule some general moral judgments in or out.
May follows much of the experimental literature in taking Kantians to also be committed to an empirical optimism about moral reason, or what May (p. 4) calls “an optimistic rationalism.” There are at least two reasons why one might think that Kantians have that empirical commitment. The first is particular, to do with their premises, and the second is more general, to do with reason's priority. First, one might think it plausible that the premises of Kantians’ moral theories could be undermined by research into the psychological grounds of our accepting them. Kantians would be empirical optimists in assuming that such research would not undermine their premises if there was a modest chance those premises could indeed be “empirically debunked,” (p. 80) in “the now common epistemological” sense (p. 83).
Second, one might think that if the science seems to show our moral judgments are driven by emotion, then surely emotion – rather than reason – ought to play the basic role in our moral philosophy. There are more and less “common sense” ways of trying to argue this. Among the more philosophical ways, one might try to appeal to some kind of motivational internalism or to a science-first methodology. To really press the point, one might attempt a version of an argument Kant (Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:448–53) himself has been read as making: If morality consists in rational requirements, it only binds us if we are rational – and we are not on questions of morality.
What any individual Kantian is committed to is neither here nor there. However, at least some Kantians are not obviously committed to anything deserving to be called empirical optimism. They are what I have called philosophical optimists, but as to whether our moral judgments are emotionally driven, rather than being optimists, pessimists, or something in between, they instead defend an active indifference. On the one hand, these Kantians take their theories to have premises which are not vulnerable to empirical debunking in the same way as intuitions about what to do in cases or what kinds of thing morally matter. On the other, they argue that reason must play the basic role in moral philosophy not because it drives us, but because we need its concepts to help us make the right moral judgments. To make the point I want to in this commentary – about where May's book sits in the literature – I will have to explain one Kantian's position in a little detail.
Perhaps the best-known defender of a Kantian kind of empirical indifference is Christine Korsgaard, one of May's (Reference May2018, pp. 5–6, 176, 179, 183–85) examples of a contemporary Kantian moral theorist. The premises of Korsgaard's (e.g., Reference Korsgaard2009b, pp. 18–26, 64–67) arguments are descriptive claims in the philosophy of action, concerning how we conceive of what we are doing when trying to act. Those conceptions cannot be false as such, because they are not meant to correspond to some fixed features of the world (cf. Kant Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 5:54–57; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2008, pp. 322–24). As our own conceptions, there is also plausibly a limit to how wrong our claims about them can be.
For those claims to be debunked, we would have to discover that something like an irrelevant emotion affected how we thought we conceived of our agency but not how we actually conceived of it. As I understand her, Korsgaard (cf. Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 254–58, 125–26) does not mean to leave much space for that possibility. How we think we conceive of our agency is at least part of how we do conceive of it. What we can be mistaken about is what claims we are committed to about our agency whatever else about it we may also happen to think. Korsgaard's (Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 113–25; 2009b, pp. 20–25) best-known argument for our having Kantian commitments starts from our own particular conceptions of our agency, not from intuitions about those commitments. It attempts to show that we must take our common humanity to be a source of reasons to take ourselves to have reasons as teachers, lovers, citizens, or whatever else.
To be justified in believing her conclusion, Korsgaard might have to be justified in taking herself to be able to make and follow valid conceptual arguments. I think Korsgaard would argue the justification need not be empirical, but even if it had to be, supposing one was possible would not obviously make her an optimist. She could still think that swathes of intuitions about moral dilemmas are ripe for debunking, that moral knowledge based on such intuitions is impossible, and that virtue is unattainable. What she would be supposing in offering an empirical justification – and as I said, I do not think she would – is the falsity of the “truly global skepticism” May (p. 22) leaves outside of the scope of his book.
If Korsgaard is committed to empirical optimism, then, it does not seem like it is in virtue of her premises. That still leaves the possibility all Kantians become committed to that optimism by giving a more basic role to reason than emotion in their moral theories. Again, however, someone like Korsgaard is going to argue against such a commitment. The starting point of such an argument might be that however sure we are our moral judgments are made for us, we still have to grapple – inside our own heads – with the deliberative task of trying to make those judgments. The significance of rational principles does not rest on our being driven by reason rather than emotion, but rather on the fact we have to reason even if we are driven by something like emotion.
Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 162–63; Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 94–97 and cf. 238–42) makes at least two versions of that argument. In the first, she asks us to suppose that we know all our reasoning is guided by a device implanted in our brains. In the second, she imagines that someone can predict everything that she is going to do. In both cases, her claim is that we would still face the deliberative task of trying to make our own choices (cf. Hill Reference Hill1992, pp. 116–19, 131–38). Within the scope of dealing with that task, there would still be a role for rational concepts.
At most, our moral judgments being determined by our emotions might show that in some sense we are not responsible for them (but cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 188–212). In addition, our being driven by the wrong emotions might well put some kinds of moral virtue out of reach. May (pp. 230–37) never sounds more Kantian than when he closes Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind with a discussion of moral enhancement. Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard1996a, p. 324) claims “it is not an accident that the two major philosophers in our tradition who thought of ethics in terms of practical reason – Aristotle and Kant – were also the two most concerned with the methods of moral education.” Neither of them premised their moral thought on an assumption that we were guaranteed or likely to be rational, but they also did not think it followed that when making moral judgments, we need not try to choose rationally.
In fact, Kant does not exactly think that we ought to try to be rational (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009b, pp. 153–58). He thinks we ought to try to act as a free will would, and that this comes to the same thing as trying to be rational. As I understand it, Kant's (Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:440–55 or 5:28–33) basic idea here is straightforward. It begins with the claim that we only get to determine our actions if we have free will. It follows that there are no ways we can determine ourselves to act which are inconsistent with our having free will. In that sense, when trying to determine how we act, we can take it for granted that we have free will. That claim naturally extends to others when we are trying to make judgments about what they should do (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 200–12).
As I mentioned, Kant (e.g., Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:451–52) draws a connection between free will and rationality. On his view, reason is fundamentally just our capacity to be genuinely active, and it has principles because there are conditions of the different ways we might be genuinely active (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2018, pp. 132–34; Reference Korsgaard2009a, pp. 32–38). When Kant says we can take it for granted that we are able to act with free will, he is also saying we can take it for granted that we are able to be rational. It does not matter how convinced we are that we are driven by forces like our emotions. What matters is that we still face the deliberative task of trying to choose our moral judgments for ourselves. Kantians like Korsgaard argue that there is a proper way of going about that task, and they are philosophical optimists because their arguments do not appeal to our desires or emotions (cf. e.g., Street Reference Street2010, pp. 369–70; Velleman Reference Velleman2009, pp. 147–49).
If I am right about Korsgaard's commitments, at least, then philosophical and empirical optimism are separate. Behind much of the debate in which May is engaging, however, is an assumption that the former requires the latter. The only way that reason can be central to morality seems to be if it is central to our moral psychology. That assumption comes quite naturally if we do not separate “speculative” or “theoretical” questions from “practical” ones in quite as radical a way as Kant did (cf. Allison Reference Allison2004, pp. 47–49; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 167–76, 201–205). In other words, the assumption that the two kinds of optimism go together is itself anti-Kantian. It supposes there is no deep, perspectival divide between psychology and ethics, or the tasks of trying to explain a part of the world and trying to act in it.
Of course, not everyone is a Kantian, and not every Kantian is like Korsgaard. As I mentioned earlier, the point I want to make here is one about where May's book fits into the literature. Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind is a challenge to pessimists about moral reason, but a challenge made on the pessimist's terms. If it succeeds, it shows their position is undermotivated even granting their philosophical assumptions. A Kantian like Korsgaard, however – an optimist in one sense – would not grant those assumptions to the pessimist. They would be unsettled by arguments for the claims May's granting, but not otherwise for the claims he is challenging.
You have
Access
In the first chapter of Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind, May (Reference May2018, p. 5) claims that moral theories in the tradition of Kant “have taken a serious beating” from sceptics about the role of reason in moral cognition. “To be fair,” he says, “Kantians do claim that we can arrive at moral judgments by pure reason alone,” at least in the sense that they think we can arrive at basic moral principles without appealing to emotions. In that sense, they are what we might call philosophical optimists about moral reason. However, exactly they think of reason, they believe that it alone can rule some general moral judgments in or out.
May follows much of the experimental literature in taking Kantians to also be committed to an empirical optimism about moral reason, or what May (p. 4) calls “an optimistic rationalism.” There are at least two reasons why one might think that Kantians have that empirical commitment. The first is particular, to do with their premises, and the second is more general, to do with reason's priority. First, one might think it plausible that the premises of Kantians’ moral theories could be undermined by research into the psychological grounds of our accepting them. Kantians would be empirical optimists in assuming that such research would not undermine their premises if there was a modest chance those premises could indeed be “empirically debunked,” (p. 80) in “the now common epistemological” sense (p. 83).
Second, one might think that if the science seems to show our moral judgments are driven by emotion, then surely emotion – rather than reason – ought to play the basic role in our moral philosophy. There are more and less “common sense” ways of trying to argue this. Among the more philosophical ways, one might try to appeal to some kind of motivational internalism or to a science-first methodology. To really press the point, one might attempt a version of an argument Kant (Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:448–53) himself has been read as making: If morality consists in rational requirements, it only binds us if we are rational – and we are not on questions of morality.
What any individual Kantian is committed to is neither here nor there. However, at least some Kantians are not obviously committed to anything deserving to be called empirical optimism. They are what I have called philosophical optimists, but as to whether our moral judgments are emotionally driven, rather than being optimists, pessimists, or something in between, they instead defend an active indifference. On the one hand, these Kantians take their theories to have premises which are not vulnerable to empirical debunking in the same way as intuitions about what to do in cases or what kinds of thing morally matter. On the other, they argue that reason must play the basic role in moral philosophy not because it drives us, but because we need its concepts to help us make the right moral judgments. To make the point I want to in this commentary – about where May's book sits in the literature – I will have to explain one Kantian's position in a little detail.
Perhaps the best-known defender of a Kantian kind of empirical indifference is Christine Korsgaard, one of May's (Reference May2018, pp. 5–6, 176, 179, 183–85) examples of a contemporary Kantian moral theorist. The premises of Korsgaard's (e.g., Reference Korsgaard2009b, pp. 18–26, 64–67) arguments are descriptive claims in the philosophy of action, concerning how we conceive of what we are doing when trying to act. Those conceptions cannot be false as such, because they are not meant to correspond to some fixed features of the world (cf. Kant Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 5:54–57; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2008, pp. 322–24). As our own conceptions, there is also plausibly a limit to how wrong our claims about them can be.
For those claims to be debunked, we would have to discover that something like an irrelevant emotion affected how we thought we conceived of our agency but not how we actually conceived of it. As I understand her, Korsgaard (cf. Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 254–58, 125–26) does not mean to leave much space for that possibility. How we think we conceive of our agency is at least part of how we do conceive of it. What we can be mistaken about is what claims we are committed to about our agency whatever else about it we may also happen to think. Korsgaard's (Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 113–25; 2009b, pp. 20–25) best-known argument for our having Kantian commitments starts from our own particular conceptions of our agency, not from intuitions about those commitments. It attempts to show that we must take our common humanity to be a source of reasons to take ourselves to have reasons as teachers, lovers, citizens, or whatever else.
To be justified in believing her conclusion, Korsgaard might have to be justified in taking herself to be able to make and follow valid conceptual arguments. I think Korsgaard would argue the justification need not be empirical, but even if it had to be, supposing one was possible would not obviously make her an optimist. She could still think that swathes of intuitions about moral dilemmas are ripe for debunking, that moral knowledge based on such intuitions is impossible, and that virtue is unattainable. What she would be supposing in offering an empirical justification – and as I said, I do not think she would – is the falsity of the “truly global skepticism” May (p. 22) leaves outside of the scope of his book.
If Korsgaard is committed to empirical optimism, then, it does not seem like it is in virtue of her premises. That still leaves the possibility all Kantians become committed to that optimism by giving a more basic role to reason than emotion in their moral theories. Again, however, someone like Korsgaard is going to argue against such a commitment. The starting point of such an argument might be that however sure we are our moral judgments are made for us, we still have to grapple – inside our own heads – with the deliberative task of trying to make those judgments. The significance of rational principles does not rest on our being driven by reason rather than emotion, but rather on the fact we have to reason even if we are driven by something like emotion.
Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 162–63; Reference Korsgaard1996b, pp. 94–97 and cf. 238–42) makes at least two versions of that argument. In the first, she asks us to suppose that we know all our reasoning is guided by a device implanted in our brains. In the second, she imagines that someone can predict everything that she is going to do. In both cases, her claim is that we would still face the deliberative task of trying to make our own choices (cf. Hill Reference Hill1992, pp. 116–19, 131–38). Within the scope of dealing with that task, there would still be a role for rational concepts.
At most, our moral judgments being determined by our emotions might show that in some sense we are not responsible for them (but cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 188–212). In addition, our being driven by the wrong emotions might well put some kinds of moral virtue out of reach. May (pp. 230–37) never sounds more Kantian than when he closes Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind with a discussion of moral enhancement. Korsgaard (Reference Korsgaard1996a, p. 324) claims “it is not an accident that the two major philosophers in our tradition who thought of ethics in terms of practical reason – Aristotle and Kant – were also the two most concerned with the methods of moral education.” Neither of them premised their moral thought on an assumption that we were guaranteed or likely to be rational, but they also did not think it followed that when making moral judgments, we need not try to choose rationally.
In fact, Kant does not exactly think that we ought to try to be rational (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2009b, pp. 153–58). He thinks we ought to try to act as a free will would, and that this comes to the same thing as trying to be rational. As I understand it, Kant's (Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:440–55 or 5:28–33) basic idea here is straightforward. It begins with the claim that we only get to determine our actions if we have free will. It follows that there are no ways we can determine ourselves to act which are inconsistent with our having free will. In that sense, when trying to determine how we act, we can take it for granted that we have free will. That claim naturally extends to others when we are trying to make judgments about what they should do (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 200–12).
As I mentioned, Kant (e.g., Reference Kant and Gregor1996, pp. 4:451–52) draws a connection between free will and rationality. On his view, reason is fundamentally just our capacity to be genuinely active, and it has principles because there are conditions of the different ways we might be genuinely active (cf. Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard2018, pp. 132–34; Reference Korsgaard2009a, pp. 32–38). When Kant says we can take it for granted that we are able to act with free will, he is also saying we can take it for granted that we are able to be rational. It does not matter how convinced we are that we are driven by forces like our emotions. What matters is that we still face the deliberative task of trying to choose our moral judgments for ourselves. Kantians like Korsgaard argue that there is a proper way of going about that task, and they are philosophical optimists because their arguments do not appeal to our desires or emotions (cf. e.g., Street Reference Street2010, pp. 369–70; Velleman Reference Velleman2009, pp. 147–49).
If I am right about Korsgaard's commitments, at least, then philosophical and empirical optimism are separate. Behind much of the debate in which May is engaging, however, is an assumption that the former requires the latter. The only way that reason can be central to morality seems to be if it is central to our moral psychology. That assumption comes quite naturally if we do not separate “speculative” or “theoretical” questions from “practical” ones in quite as radical a way as Kant did (cf. Allison Reference Allison2004, pp. 47–49; Korsgaard Reference Korsgaard1996a, pp. 167–76, 201–205). In other words, the assumption that the two kinds of optimism go together is itself anti-Kantian. It supposes there is no deep, perspectival divide between psychology and ethics, or the tasks of trying to explain a part of the world and trying to act in it.
Of course, not everyone is a Kantian, and not every Kantian is like Korsgaard. As I mentioned earlier, the point I want to make here is one about where May's book fits into the literature. Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind is a challenge to pessimists about moral reason, but a challenge made on the pessimist's terms. If it succeeds, it shows their position is undermotivated even granting their philosophical assumptions. A Kantian like Korsgaard, however – an optimist in one sense – would not grant those assumptions to the pessimist. They would be unsettled by arguments for the claims May's granting, but not otherwise for the claims he is challenging.