This book, THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE: Uniscience and the Modern World, by Robert Hanna, presents and defends a critical philosophy of science and digital technology, and a new and prescient philosophy of nature and human thinking.
It is being made available here in serial format, but you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text–including the BIBLIOGRAPHY–of THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE FUTURE HERE.
This fifty-fifth installment contains section 5.2.2.
We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them. (Pascal, 1995: #110, p. 28)
If there is any science humankind really needs, it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in [the world] that is assigned to humankind, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be human. (Rem 20: 45)
Natural science will one day incorporate the science of humankind, just as the science of humankind will incorporate natural science; there will be a single science. (Marx, 1964: p. 70, translation modified slightly)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A NOTE ON REFERENCES TO KANT’S WORKS
0. Introduction: Science, The Four Horsemen of The New Apocalypse, and The Uniscience
0.0 How Uncritical and Unreformed Science Is Literally Killing The Modern World
0.2 The Uniscience and Pascal’s Dictum
Chapter 1. Natural Piety: A Kantian Critique of Science
1.0 Kantian Heavy-Duty Enlightenment and The Uniscience
1.1 Kant’s Neo-Aristotelian Natural Power Grid
1.2 Kant, Natural Piety, and The Limits of Science
1.3 From Kant’s Anti-Mechanism to Kantian Anti-Mechanism
1.4 In Defense of Natural Piety
1.5 Scientific Pietism and Scientific Naturalism
1.6 How to Ground Natural Science on Sensibility
1.7 Sensible Science 1: Natural Science Without Natural Mechanism
1.8 Sensible Science 2: Natural Science Without Materialism/Physicalism
1.9 Sensible Science 3: Natural Science Without Scientism
1.10 Frankenscience, the Future of Humanity, and the Future of Science
2.1 Wrestling with Modernity: 1900-1940
2.1.1 Six Sociocultural or Sociopolitical Developments
2.1.2 Two Philosophical Developments: Classical Analytic Philosophy and First Wave Organicism
2.1.3 Architectural and Artistic Trends
2.2 The Historical Black Hole, The Mechanistic Mindset, and The Mechanistic Worldview: 1940-1980
2.2 The Emergence of Post-Classical Analytic Philosophy
2.2.3 The Two Images Problem and its Consequences
2.2.4 Modernism and Countercurrents in the Arts and Design
2.3.1 The Rise of Po-Mo Philosophy
2.3.2 Po-Mo Architecture: Unconstrained Hybridity
2.3.3 Other Apocalyptic Developments: Crises in Physics and Big Science, and The One-Two Punch
2.4 From The Mechanistic Worldview to Neo-Organicism
2.4.0 Against The Mechanistic Worldview
2.4.1 Seven Arguments Against The Mechanistic Worldview
2.4.1.1 Logical and Mathematical Arguments
2.4.1.2 Physical and Metaphysical Arguments
2.4.1.3 Mentalistic and Agential Arguments
2.4.2 Beyond The Mechanistic Worldview: The Neo-Organicist Worldview
2.4.2.1 The Neo-Organist Thesis 1: Solving The Mind-Body Problem
2.4.2.2 Dynamic Systems Theory and The Dynamic World Picture
2.4.2.3 The Neo-Organicist Thesis 2: Solving The Free Will Problem
2.4.2.4 Dynamic Emergence, Life, Consciousness, and Free Agency
2.4.2.5 How The Mechanical Comes To Be From The Organic
3.1 A Dual-Content Nonideal Cognitive Semantics for Thought-Shapers
3.2 The Cognitive Dynamics of Thought-Shapers
3.3 Constrictive Thought-Shapers vs. Generative Thought-Shapers
3.5 Thought-Shapers, Mechanism, and Neo-Organicism
3.6 Adverse Cognitive Effects of Mechanical, Constrictive Thought-Shapers
3.7 How Can We Acknowledge Organic Systems and Organic, Generative Thought-Shapers?
3.8 We Must Cultivate Our Global Garden
Chapter 4. How To Complete Physics
4.2 Frame-by-Frame: How Early 20th Century Physics Was Shaped by Brownie Cameras and Early Cinema
4.3 How to Complete Quantum Mechanics, Or, What It’s Like To Be A Naturally Creative Bohmian Beable
4.4 Can Physics Explain Physics? Anthropic Principles and Transcendental Idealism
4.5 The Incredible Shrinking Thinking Man, Or, Cosmic Dignitarianism
Chapter 5. Digital Technology Only Within The Limits of Human Dignity
5.1 What’s So Special About Human Dignity? The Metaphysics of Human Dignity
5.1.1 How to Refute the Dignity Skeptic
5.1.3 The Metaphysical Ground of Human Dignity: Human Real Personhood
5.2 Human Dignity and The Highest Good: Nonideal Dignitarian Moral Theory
5.2.2 How to Solve the Universalizability and Rigorism Problems
00. Conclusion: The Point Is To Shape The World
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. A Neo-Organicist Turn in Formal Science: The Case of Mathematical Logic
Appendix 2. A Neo-Organicist Note on The Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem and “Skolem’s Paradox”
Appendix 3. A Neo-Organicist Approach to The Nature of Motion
Appendix 4. Sensible Set Theory
Appendix 5. Complementarity, Entanglement, and Nonlocality Pervade Natural Reality at All Scales
Appendix 6. Neo-Organicism and The Rubber Sheet Cosmos
BIBLIOGRAPHY
5.2.2 How to Solve the Universalizability and Rigorism Problems
In the Groundwork, Kant provides four (or alternatively, depending on how finegrained one wants the theory of basic moral meta-principles to be, five) distinct formulations of The Categorical Imperative:
The Formula of Universal Law (aka FUL):
Act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. (GMM 4: 421)
[Alternative Formulation: The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature (aka FULN):
Act as though the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature. (GMM 4: 421)]
The Formula of Humanity as End-in-Itself (FHE):
So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. (GMM 4: 429)
The Formula of Autonomy (FA):
The supreme condition of the will’s harmony with universal practical reason is the Idea of the will of every rational being as a will that legislates universal law. (GMM 4: 431)
The Formula of The Realm of Ends (FRE):
Never .. perform any action except one whose maxim could also be a universal law, and thus .. act only on a maxim through which the will could regard itself at the same time as enacting universal law. (GMM: 433)
Each of the formulas of The Categorical Imperative is a procedural moral meta-principle that tells us how to select first-order moral principles. According to the broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian theory of moral principles, there’s also a lexical ordering relation between The Formula of Universal Law/Formula of the Universal Law of Nature and the other three formulas of The Categorical Imperative, considered as a single three-membered set. In other words, The Formula of Universal Law/Formula of the Universal Law of Nature is a formal presupposition of the other three procedural moral meta-principles, hence it always logically, semantically, and normatively precedes the three of them, taken as a group. More precisely, The Formula of Universal Law says that nothing will count as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a “maxim,” unless that objective moral principle or maxim consistently generalizes. Now according to Kant, a maxim is a “principle of volition” (GMM 4:400) or act-intention in some or another act-context. So The Formula of Universal Law, as the formal presupposition of all procedural moral meta-principles, says that nothing will as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a morally permissible objective principle of volition or act-intention in any act-context, unless it consistently generalizes.
The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature, as I’m understanding it, is just a specification of The Formula of Universal Law, which in turn says that nothing will count as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a morally permissible objective principle of volition or act-intention in any act-context, unless it consistently generalizes in possible worlds that include our laws of material nature, that is, in worlds in which causality is really possible.
By contrast, the other three formulas of The Categorical Imperative are material or substantive procedural moral meta-principles. The Formula of Humanity as an End-in-Itself says that nothing will count as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a morally permissible objective principle of volition or act-intention in any act-context, unless it essentially supports the absolute, nondenumerably infinite, intrinsic, objective value of human real persons as ends-in-themselves—i.e., human dignity— by entailing that they are never treated a mere means or as mere things. The Formula of Autonomy says that nothing will count as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a morally permissible objective principle of volition or act-intention in any act-context, unless it essentially supports the self-legislating freedom of human real persons. And finally The Formula of the Realm of Ends says that nothing will count as an objective moral principle, and in particular nothing will count as a morally permissible objective principle of volition or act-intention in any act-context, unless it essentially supports the self-legislating freedom of human real persons in a universal intersubjective community such that each human real person is considered equally or impartially in the free choices or acts of every other human real person.
Curiously, Kant says that there are “three ways of representing the principle of morality” (GMM 4: 436, underlining added), namely, FUL, FHE, and FRE; but that is clearly just Homer nodding and miscounting, since he has actually provided four formulations in the immediately preceding run of text. So, charitably, what Kant really means is that there are four ways of representing “the principle of morality” (underlining added), namely FUL, FHE, FA, and FRE. Now, granting that charitable reading, then precisely how many Categorical Imperatives are there? One or four? The correct answer is: both. This is because The Categorical Imperative is most correctly construed as one set of four lexically-ordered, analytically interderivable, and necessarily equivalent procedural moral meta-principles, one of which (FUL) is also the formal logical, semantic, and normative presupposition for the other three considered as a group (FHE, FA, and FRE). Each of these procedural meta-principles occupies a certain normative-semantic position in the overall structure of broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian moral theory; each plays a certain normative-semantic role, within one and the same larger lexically-ordered, hierarchical system of broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian moral principles; and each differs from the others only in its specific functional normative-semantic nature and in its finegrained intensional content:
[T]he above [four] ways of representing the [categorical imperative] are at bottom only so many formulae of the very same law, and any one of them unites the other [three] in it. (GMM 4: 436)
And here’s a directly relevant mathematical analogy. Consider the following statements, T1 to T4, four different ways of thinking about triangles. And, to make the direct relevance of the moral-mathematical analogy even more obvious, let’s call the complete set of four statements, The Triangularity Imperative:
(T1) As a geometer, you must think that triangulars are triangulars.
(T2) As a geometer, you must think that trilaterals are trilaterals.
(T3) As a geometer, you must think that triangulars are trilaterals.
(T4) As a geometer, you must think that trilaterals are triangulars.
Now statements (T1) through (T4) are all analytically interderivable and necessarily equivalent a priori truths, each of them expressing The Triangularity Imperative, but they are not synonymous. Moreover, (T1), as embedding a straight-out identity statement about triangles, is a formal presupposition of (T2) to (T4). So too, according to nonideal broadly Kantian dignitarian moral theory, The Formula of Universal Law (aka The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature), The Formula of Humanity as an End-in-Itself, the Formula of Autonomy, and The Formula of the Realm of Ends are all analytically interderivable and necessarily equivalent a priori moral principles, but they are not synonymous, and The Formula of Universal Law is a formal presupposition for the other three. Just like T1 through T4, each of the several distinct formulations of The Categorical Imperative is conceptually or intensionally distinct from all of the other formulations in a semantically finegrained way. Yet at the same time they all belong to a single, multi-termed holistic conceptual network (Hanna, 2015a: section 4.6), which, in turn, is fully embedded within one and the same larger hierarchical system of principles, whether moral or mathematical. What makes this moral-mathematical analogy not merely directly relevant but also deeply relevant, is the fact that, just as (T1) through (T4), aka The Triangularity Imperative, is a single set of four analytic truths about how, as a geometer, you must think about triangles, whose subject-matter belongs to the synthetic a priori exact science of geometry, so too the four distinct formulations of The Categorical Imperative are all analytic meta-procedural principles about first-order moral principles, whose subject-matter belongs to the synthetic a priori human science (Geisteswissenschaft) of morality.
The broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian theory of moral principles is not only deeply analogous to mathematics, as Ross notes: it’s also deeply analogous to logic. Indeed, I’ve argued explicitly and at length, in Rationality and Logic and Cognition, Content, and the A Priori, that logic and morality are essentially connected (Hanna, 2006: ch. 7, 2015a: ch. 5). The essential connectedness of logic and morality is particularly salient when we jointly consider broadly Kantian approaches to philosophical logic and to morality alongside each other. Then it’s clear and distinct that there is a significant structural analogy between (i) the logico-normative role of The Formula of Universal Law in Kant’s metaphysics of morals, and (ii) the logico-normative role of The Principle of Non-Contradiction in Kant’s pure general logic. The classical Principle of Non-Contradiction says that necessarily, no statement is such that both it and its negation are true. Or equivalently, in broadly Kantian terms, since Kant himself presupposes universal bivalence in pure general logic, the pure general logic version of the Principle of Non-Contradiction says that necessarily, no statement is such that it is both true and false. Hence, according to the classical and broadly Kantian pure general logic versions of The Principle of Non-Contradiction alike, there can be no “truth-value gluts” or “true contradictions.” But in view of recent and contemporary work in non-classical logic, especially including dialetheic paraconsistent logic (Priest, 1987, 1998), there’s good reason to reject universal bivalence. In dialetheic systems, truth-value gluts or true contradictions are statements that receive both classical truth-values, True and False, on some interpretations, including some theorems of logic. For example, arguably, both the Liar Sentence, which asserts its own falsity (Tarski, 1943)and also the Gödel Sentence (which asserts its own unprovability (Gödel, 1931) are true contradictions. So dialetheic systems that permit the semantic evaluation of either the Liar Sentence or the Gödel Sentence, allow for the existence of true contradictions. Dialetheic systems, in turn, are a sub-species of paraconsistent systems. The defining feature of a paraconsistent system is that it includes an axiom which prevents the valid derivation of every statement whatsoever from any given contradiction, a logical phenomenon which is called “Explosion.” So let’s call that special axiom a No-Explosion axiom. By including a No-Explosion axiom, dialetheic paraconsistent systems constrain the logical powers of contradictions in order to accommodate the possibility of true contradictions within the system, while also preventing the state of global inconsistency or complete logical anarchy or chaos, in which every statement is a truth-value glut.
In order to appreciate the full logico-semantic and normative force of Kant’s pure general logic, from a broadly Kantian point of view, we should interpret The Principle of Non-Contradiction non-classically and in a minimal or nonideal rationally normative way, as a strictly universal, absolutely necessary, and pure a priori logical meta-principle that lays down a necessary logical constraint on what will count as a true first-order statement in any language or logical system, but also allows for the existence of true contradictions in dialetheic paraconsistent systems. My own proposal for this minimal, nonideal, strictly universal, absolutely necessary, pure a priori, categorically normative logical principle is what I call Minimal Non-Contradiction:
Accept as truths in any natural language or logical system only those statements which do not entail that it and all other statements in any or all natural languages or logical systems are both true and false.
Minimal Non-Contradiction, in turn, guarantees what I call “minimal truthful consistency.” Truthful consistency, as such, means that you must accept as truths in a natural language or logical system only those statements which do not entail that any argument in that language or system leads from true premises to false conclusions. By contrast, minimal truthful consistency means that you must accept as truths in any natural language or logical system only those statements which do not entail that every argument in any or all natural languages or logical systems lead from true premises to false conclusions. This latter notion of course is consistent with holding that some arguments in that natural language or logical system lead from true premises to false conclusions, and indeed it is also consistent with holding that some arguments in that natural language or logical system lead from the null set of premises to necessarily false conclusions. If so, then some statements in that natural language or logical system are both true and false, hence are true contradictions. So minimal truthful consistency is consistent with dialetheic paraconsistency. In other words, then, Minimal Non-Contradiction essentially secures minimal truthful consistency, and rules out Explosion. Minimal Non-Contradiction is not a strictly truth-preserving logical principle, and not even a strictly consistency-preserving logical principle—hence it’s not a maximal or ideal standard of rational normativity in logic—but it nevertheless strictly rules out global inconsistency, that is, logical chaos. Logical chaos, in turn, is the ultimate result of Explosion: If every statement whatsoever in any or all natural languages or logical systems follows from a contradiction, then the negation of every statement whatsoever also follows from a contradiction, and if every statement whatsoever in any or all natural languages is both true and false, therefore every statement whatsoever in any or all natural languages or logical systems is a truth-value glut or true contradiction.
In the 1980s, Hilary Putnam very plausibly argued that the negative version of Minimal Non-Contradiction is the one absolutely indisputable a priori truth:
I shall consider the weakest possible version of the principle of [non-] contradiction, which I shall call the minimal principle of [non-] contradiction. This is simply the principle that not every statement is both true and false… [I]f, indeed, there are no circumstances in which it would be rational to give up our belief that not every statement is both true and false, then there is at least one a priori truth. (Putnam, 1983: pp. 100-101)
Now, Putnam and I disagree about the nature of apriority (Hanna, 2015a: ch. 7). As I see it, his view of apriority has been too heavily influenced by Quine’s critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction and Quine’s deflationary epistemic re-construal of the notion of the a priori. But leaving that disagreement aside, my own broadly Kantian way of making a somewhat similar point, but even more radically, is to say that Minimal Non-Contradiction just is The Categorical Imperative, insofar as it inherently governs all logic, cognition, science (whether formal, exact, or natural), and theorizing more generally, as rational human activities, as well as all practical and moral activities.
What, more precisely, is the connection between Minimal Non-Contradiction and The Categorical Imperative? The connection has to do with the crucial notion of cognitive and practical construction, as it’s construed according to broadly Kantian constructivism. According to this construal, a specifically cognitive construction is how the human faculty of cognition (including the sub-faculties of understanding, logical reason, sensibility, and imagination) generates empirically meaningful or objectively valid judgments as outputs, given intuitions, concepts, and an actual context as inputs, under innately specified categorically normative objective principles. Thus Minimal Non-Contradiction is an innately specified, strictly universal, absolutely necessary, pure a priori, categorically normative, and immanent structural generative objective meta-principle, specifying low-bar, minimal, or nonideal rationally normative logical standards for the cognitive construction of scientific or more generally theoretical knowledge. Also according to broadly Kantian constructivism, analogously to cognitive construction, a specifically practical construction is how a person’s faculty of desire produces a morally permissible causally efficacious rational choice or moral judgment—that is, a complete act-intention-implemented-in-a-context—as an output, given desires, practical reasons, and an actual act-context as inputs. Correspondingly then, according to the broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian theory of moral principles, The Formula of Universal Law says that necessarily no moral principle, including every candidate principle of volition or act-intention, will count as a legitimate and objective moral principle unless it consistently generalizes over the entire domain of moral principles, and thereby rules out the moral equivalent of Explosion, namely moral contradictions or moral dilemmas all over the place, that is, moral chaos:
Accept as objective moral principles, in any or all human real individual personal lives or social institutions, only those moral imperatives or ought-claims which do not entail that it and all other moral imperatives in any or all human real personal lives or communities are both permissible (or obligatory) and impermissible.
So The Formula of Universal Law is, essentially, a minimal objective moral meta-principle of non-contradiction, that is, a higher-order or formal objective moral principle that lays down an absolutely necessary and pure a priori minimal truthful consistency and generalizability constraint on what will count as a first-order substantive ceteris paribus or material objective moral principle in the system of objective moral principles. The Formula of Universal Law tells us what the specific logical character of any first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle must be. In this way, The Formula of Universal Law is not a criterion of moral epistemology—hence it is not a super-powered first-order substantive objective moral principle. Instead, The Formula of Universal Law is a psychologically generative objective meta-principle for the practical construction of first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles and moral duties.
Therefore, The Formula of Universal Law, just like Minimal Non-Contradiction in relation to the cognitive construction of theoretical judgments, is an innately specified, strictly universal, absolutely necessary, pure a priori, categorically normative, and immanent structural generative objective meta-principle, specifying low-bar, minimal, or nonideal rationally normative moral and logico-semantic standards for the practical construction of rational choices or moral judgments. Now, all construction, as an intentional activity of rational human animals, namely human real persons, is in certain basic respects an activity of practical construction. Thus all construction, whether cognitive or otherwise, is inherently constrained and guided by The Formula of Universal Law.
But perhaps the most crucial point here is that The Formula of Universal Law says precisely nothingabout how we are going to be able to apply it to particular candidates for being first-order substantive ceteris paribus material objective moral principles that are suitable for application in particular actual act-contexts. Therefore, even if it turns out to be epistemically impossible to apply The Formula of Universal Law effectively to some prospective first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles, simply because it turns out that some cases are epistemically indeterminate, this fact has no bearing on the objective validity of The Formula of Universal Law, as long as it turns out that necessarily, any actually implemented first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle has the logico-semantic property of consistent generalizability. As Kant correctly points out, the problem of epistemic indeterminacy in applying first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles belongs to moral or practical anthropology, and not to the metaphysics of morals (GMM 4: 388-389) (MM 6: 217).
More specifically however, and by way of working out the rudiments of a logicizing and dignitarianly moralizing psychosemantics, just how does The Formula of Universal Law (or for that matter, The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature, The Formula of Humanity as an End-in-Itself, The Formula of Autonomy, or The Formula of the Realm of Ends) work as a psychologically generative objective meta-principle for the practical construction of first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles, and also for the construction of morally obligatory or morally permissible objective principles of volition (namely, moral duties and moral licenses)? Two points are crucial here.
First, insofar as it is applied in actual contexts, The Formula of Universal Law properly operates only on complete act-intention contents and actual or possible act-worlds. A complete act-intention content, according to broadly Kantian nonideal dignitarian moral theory, is a fully meaningful maxim. That is, a complete act-intention content is a propositional content which includes essentially non-conceptual contents—the contents of sensory intuitions, desires, and feelings, and the semantic contents of directly referential terms—and also conceptual contents in the form of an imperative indexed to an agent, plus whatever background information about that agent, other agents, or the actual world is required to make that content fully meaningful in that actual act-context. In other words, then, a complete act-intention content is the content of an-act-intention-implemented-in-an-actual-context.
Possible worlds according to my broadly Kantian view, in turn, are nothing more and nothing less than complete and mutually logically compatible sets of different conceivable ways the actual manifestly real natural and social world could have been. If you added any other concepts to one of these sets, then a contradiction would be entailed. So in other words, according to my broadly Kantian view, possible worlds are nothing more and nothing less than maximal derivability-consistent sets of concepts (Hanna, 2001: section 5.1, 2015a: sections 3.3 and 4.7). Possible act-worlds, in turn, are possible worlds in which human freedom of the will can occur, that is, possible worlds in which psychological freedom, deep freedom (which Kant calls “transcendental freedom”), and wholehearted autonomy can all occur. Since deep freedom is the naturally creative, source-incompatibilistic spontaneous power of a living, conscious, self-conscious rational human animal agent to perform basic intentional actions in the manifestly real world (Hanna, 2006a: esp. ch 8, 2009, 2018b: chs. 1-5; see also sub-sub-section 2.4.2.3 above), then it follows that every act-world is therefore also a manifestly real natural and social world in which conscious, self-conscious intentional causation and rational human animal free agency are not only really possible, but also fully actual, natural, and social facts of life.
Second, insofar as it is applied in actual contexts, The Formula of Universal Law properly evaluates the consistent generalizability of complete act-intention contents or fully meaningful maxims only over relevantly restricted classes of possible act-worlds—neither over all logically possible act-worlds, nor over all really or synthetically possible act-worlds, nor even over all naturally or nomologically possible act-worlds.
I’m now in a position to propose a broadly-Kantian-nonideal-dignitarian-moral-theory-driven and logico-semantically-driven solution for the classical problem of Kantian rigorism—the problem of the apparent over-strictness or apparent overly-extended strictly universal scope of Kantian moral principles. What Kant variously calls (and unfortunately misnames, due to his failing to note and heed his own crucial distinction between moral principles and moral duties) the strict duties, perfect duties, or ethical duties are, in fact, (i) the first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle telling us not to lie and not to make false promises (in effect, the duty to be sincere or truthful), and (ii) the first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle telling us to preserve one’s own faculty for pure practical reason, not to murder other human real persons, and not to commit suicide (in effect, the negative duty not to harm human real persons). By contrast, what Kant variously calls (and again, unfortunately misnames) the meritorious duties, imperfect duties, or duties of virtue are, in fact, (iii) the self-regarding first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle telling us to pursue individual happiness, develop our own talents, and perfect ourselves (in effect, the duty telling us to pursue Aristotelian eudaimonia in a Kantian sense), and (iv) the other-regarding first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle telling us to promote the happiness of other human real persons, provide benefits for them, and protect them, hence treat them with kindness (in effect, the positive duty telling us to maximize public utility in a broadly Kantian sense, including providing positive goods for other real persons and also preventing harm to them, but also including an egocentrically-centered, broadly Kantian version of the Aristotelian virtue-obligation to choose and act with kindness towards others).
Granting these distinctions, then the two points I made a few paragraphs above, effectively solve the problem of Kantian rigorism by guaranteeing that no first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle—and, in particular, none of the so-called strict, perfect, or ethical duties—will ever have a strictly universal scope that is more extended than some relevantly restricted class of possible act-worlds. By the very nature of the logico-semantic evaluation of complete act-intention contents of fully meaningful maxims, then, there simply cannot be a first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principle that is overstrict, overgeneralized, or overextended in its strict universality. Therefore, by the very nature of the logico-semantic evaluation of complete act-intention contents of fully meaningful maxims, the so-called strict, perfect, or ethical duties simply cannot be applied to any cases to which they do not actually already apply.
These same points also solve the problem of what might be called Kantian under-rigorism, which is that the so-called meritorious duties, imperfect duties, or duties of virtue, seem to be not strict enough, in that they do not seem to hold in all cases in which the so-called strict, perfect, or ethical duties also hold. But this problem disappears too, as soon as we realize that the so-called perfect and imperfect duties, namely, the first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles, must have exactly the same modal extension or reference, namely, they must apply to all and only the members of some relevantly restricted class of possible act-worlds. They both tell us what we ought to do in all and only such act-worlds, other things being equal. Then both the so-called perfect duties and also the so-called imperfect duties must have exactly the same modal scope, namely the total domain of possible act-worlds, under a ceteris paribus condition.
Granting that, what is the significant difference between the so-called perfect and imperfect duties? My proposal is that their significant difference is not at the level of modal extension or reference, since they are all first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles with the same modal scope, but instead at the level of modal intension or sense. In other words, the so-called perfect and imperfect duties are just different modes of presentation of the same class of act-worlds, that is, different egocentrically-centered and consciously-grasped aspects, or presented partitions, of the same total domain of possible act worlds. Thus the so-called perfect duties are nothing but first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles that seem salient to the moral agent in every possible act-world, whereas the so-called imperfect duties are nothing but first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles that seem salient to the moral agent in all and only the act-worlds in which opportunities for pursuing individual happiness and perfecting oneself, or promoting the happiness of others, positively benefitting them, and preventing harm to them—hence, treating them with kindness—are also salient. But that difference in mode-of-presentation is perfectly consistent with the fact that all of the so-called perfect and imperfect duties are just first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles that apply to all and only the members of a relevantly restricted class of possible act-worlds, for any complete act-intention or fully meaningful maxim.
It’s crucial to remember here, again, that the question of how anyone could ever come to know what the relevant restricted class of possible act-worlds for a given complete act-intention or fully meaningful maxim is, is a completely separate moral-anthropological or moral-epistemological question that is simply irrelevant to the logico-semantic and normative specific character of the first-order substantive ceteris paribus objective moral principles.
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