Ugur Yilmazel
FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant assumes that in moral imputation we can never determine the real merit and guilt of actions. It is impossible to figure out to what extent natural inclination or grounds of reason play a role in bringing about a course of action, Kant says. As he puts it, this holds for the first-person and the third-person perspective in the same way. He elaborates on this impossibility in his example of a malicious lie only in reference to the third-person perspective. Even if not explicitly stated for this example, we can assume that, according to Kant, the liar herself cannot determine the real morality of her action either.
I claim that this parallelism between the first-person and the third-person perspective doesn`t hold. Compared to the third-person perspective, it is a stronger assertion to say that the agent is not able to ascertain the morality of her own action. Kant does not give any further argument for this stronger assumption. Moreover, I think that the parallelism is at odds with one of Kant’s major reasons to assume something like a causality of reason, namely the idea of an ought in the realm of the practical. Controversial though it is, I take Kant here as referring to the entire practical realm. Accordingly, Kant suggests that the necessity connected with reasons can capture both the necessity to choose appropriate means for a certain end and the necessity categorical imperatives impose on us. As I will argue, the underlying capacity for both is that we can reflect on and think about events in the empirical realm and our potential actions in relation to them. Urges and natural inclination, instrumental and non-instrumental reasoning in the light of ends, we set for ourselves, reflection on possible actions in the face of external limits are components of a complex network of mental performances of the agent, which constitutes the basis of our judgement about moral merit and guilt. As I will show, it is therefore counterintuitive to speak of the hiddenness of the real morality of actions in both perspectives in the same way.
Finally, I will argue that moral imputation in the forum internum requires conceptual space that can only be achieved by assuming that merit and guilt of actions can be better determined in the first-person perspective than it is possible in the third-person perspective.
Chair: Felix Danowski
Time: September 7th, 10:40-11:10
Location: SR 1.005
SOPhiA 2026 