Laboratorios para Redes III 35

We have shown that the two solutions considered in sect. 4.1 and 4.2 fail to meet the non-superfluous demand. Instead of supplementing Kant’s universalisability re- quirement with a neutral principle of moral relevance, they replace it with a different requirement or moral principle. That they suffer from this flaw is not a coincidence. In fact, given how we have construed the problem, every attempt to solve it is bound to suffer from this flaw because there is no robust theory of moral relevance that is not, at the same time, a moral theory. If pleasure is morally relevant, it is relevant because it ought to be promoted; if all the considerations mentioned in divine com- mands are morally relevant, they are relevant because divine commands ought to be complied with. R.M. Hare gets to the heart of this idea when he says that it is

a great mistake to think that there can be a morally or evaluatively neutral pro- cess of picking out relevant features of a situation, which can then be followed by the job of appraising or evaluating the situation morally ... When we decide what features of the description are morally relevant, we are already in the moral business.270

Some solutions to the Problem of Relevant Descriptions may conceal the fact that a principle of moral relevance is always already a moral principle. Herman, for instance, goes to great lengths to convince the reader that her rules of moral salience

268 _{This reading of the Formula of Humanity goes hand in hand with the Agent-Scope Reading of}

Kant’s conception of universal validity, as it figures in his Formula of Universal Law. In both cases, the deontic status of actions is assessed relative to the circumstances in which these actions are embedded.

269 _{To solve the problem, one would have to provide the stipulations that Anscombe demands, that is,}

an account of moral sensibility or, in other words, an objective standard of moral relevance. To dissolve

the problem, one would have to provide an interpretation of the Formula of Universal Law that shows that no such stipulations are needed.

are there only to direct our attention to “moral danger” (1993: 78) and not to replace the universalisability requirement. Nevertheless, if we supplement Kant’s Formula of Universal Law with such a set of merely attention-guiding rules that we decide to privilege over other such rules (which, without a robust moral theory in the back- ground, would be arbitrary), we arrive at a compound principle that is different from and thus a substitute for the universalisability requirement. Either way, the non- superfluous demand cannot be met. So where does this leave Kantians?

In sect. 4.2 above, we saw that there is, in principle, as much reason to think that the Formula of Humanity faces the Problem of Relevant Descriptions as there is in the case of the Formula of Universal Law. But no one seems to be worried that it does. In fact, with the Formula of Humanity, the Kantian retort was at our fingertips: of course, being treated as an end in itself means being able to agree to being treated in this way, being able to agree to this particular action in these particular circumstances. In order to understand why there is this difference, why the Problem of Relevant Descriptions seems so urgent and pressing in one case, whereas, in the other, even raising it seems dumb, we need to remind ourselves of the distinction that we high- lighted in ch. 3, sect. 2.5. According to the standard Case-Scope Reading of Kant’s conception of universal validity, the Formula of Universal Law expresses the re- quirement to only act on principles that one can will to hold in all cases or in all cir- cumstances. It is a demand to act on principles whose moral standing is not only independent of whether they fit the specific circumstances that one is in, but in fact precisely a matter of whether they generalize to all other cases. With this reading in mind, one is bound to wonder how the universalisability requirement is meant to ensure that the maxims it countenances refer to all and only morally relevant features of the case at hand.

Here the Agent-Scope Reading comes to the rescue. According to this reading, the universalisability requirement is the requirement to only act on principles that one (any-one) can will to be morally viable for any rational agent who is in the same circumstance.271 The great advantage of this reading lies in the fact that it subjects the

agent’s assumption that their maxim fits the circumstances to critical scrutiny

271 _{Recall that this is the difference between universality and universalisability (see ch. 3, sect. 3.2). Not}

all principles of action are principles of duty. Many of them reflect our non-moral ends and projects. Such principles must be morally viable for anyone in the same circumstances in the sense that anyone must be allowed to act on them, but, of course, they do not bind people who don’t share the relevant ends.

through the universalisability requirement itself. In short, to satisfy the Agent-Scope version of the universalisability requirement, one has to act on a principle that fits the circumstances. As such, this requirement does not call for any Anscombian rele- vance-stipulations. In fact, to think of the universalisability requirement in this way is to think that it is Kant’s account of moral sensibility:272 that it is description-relative

in the general sense, not in the special sense, and that it urges us to ask, about each deliberative step that we take in forming our maxim, whether it can be justified to all rational agents. Unlike the Case-Scope version of the universalisability requirement, satisfying this version is not merely a matter of adopting or dismissing principles that were formed in accordance with another standard or through the employment of some random sensibility beforehand.

Recall the Asylum2 cases and immigration officer A who rejects the application simply because the grounds appealed to are invalid. There might be many situations in which his maxim would satisfy the Agent-Scope version of the universalisability requirement. But whether it does so in the circumstances at hand depends on wheth- er all rational agents can agree that the fact that the applicant is a victim of sexual persecution has no bearing on what one is allowed or obligated to do in the officer’s position. One may well think that it does.273

272 _{In fact, this interpretation is supported by textual evidence. In a section entitled “Of the Typic of}

Pure Practical Judgment”, where Kant discusses the problem of subsuming actions possible in the sensible world under the moral law, he claims that “the rule of judgment under laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of the nature of which you were yourself a part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will” (CPrR 5:69). This suggests that the Categorical Imperative itself bridges the gap between abstract principles and concrete actions.

273 _{Here, again, one might worry about the Empty Formalism Objection. See ch. 3, sect. 3.3, esp. fn.}