Lesson 9- UNIVERSABILITY

UNIVERSALIBILITY

To figure out how the faculty of reason can be the cause of an autonomous action, we need to learn a
method or a specific procedure that will demonstrate autonomy of the will. But before explaining this
procedure, it will be helpful to first make a distinction about kinds of moral theories, namely,
substantive and formal moral theories.

A substantive moral theory immediately promulgates the specific actions that comprise that theory. As
such, it identifies the particular duties in a straightforward manner that the adherents of the theory
must follow. The set of Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition an unambiguous example
of a substantive moral theory. The specific laws are articulate mostly in the form of a straightforward
moral command: "Honor your father and mother" You shall not kill" and so forth.

In contrast, a formal moral theory does not supply the rules or commands straightaway. It does not tell
you what you may or may not do. Instead, a formal moral theory provides us the "form" or "framework"
of the moral theory. To provide the "form" of a moral theory is to supply procedure and the criteria for
determining, on one's own, the rules and moral commands. Metaphorically, we can think of a cookbook
as akin to a formal moral theory. In using a cookbook, we are given instructions on how to cook certain
dishes, but we are not given the actual food themselves, which would be "substantive" In following a
recipe for sinigang, for example, we may add a slight variation to the ingredients and sequence of steps.
But if we want the dish to remain sinigang and not transform it into some other kind of viand like
pochero, we need to follow the steps that are relevant to making sinigang. To be exact, a formal moral
theory will not give us a list of rules or commands. Instead, it will give us a set of instructions on how to
make a list of duties or moral commands.

Kant endorses this formal kind of moral theory. The Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, which he
wrote in 1785, embodies a formal moral theory in what he calls the categorical imperative, which
provides a procedural way of identifying the rightness or wrongness of an action. Kant articulates the
categorical imperative this way:

Act only according to such a maxim, by which you can at once will that it become a universal law. (Ak
4:421)

There are four key elements in this formulation of the categorical imperative, namely, action, maxim,
will, and universal law. Kant states that we must formulate an action as a maxim, which he defines as a
"subjective principle of action" (Ak 4:422). In this context, a maxim consists of a "rule" that we live by in
our day-to-day lives, but it does not have the status of a law or a moral command that binds us to act in
a certain way. Rather, maxims depict the patterns of our behaviour. Thus, maxims are to the "standard
operating procedures" (SOPs) in our lives. We act according to a variety of maxims, even if we are not
aware of them. Actually, we become aware of our maxims when we talk about ourselves, when we
reveal our habits and the reasons behind them. For example, we tell our friends what we ordinarily do in
certain specific situations: When the weekend comes, I usually go to the beach with my family to relax.
When the exam week begins, I go to mass so that I will be blessed with good luck. Whenever I meet my
crush, I wear my hair in a braid so that he will notice me. These are usually personal "policies" that may
or may not be unique to us, but we act according to these maxims nonetheless. This is why Kant calls a
maxim a subjective principle of action. We have many maxims in our daily lives, and we live according to
them.

In the formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant calls our attention to the kind of maxims that we
live by. He claims that we ought to act according to the maxim “by which you can at once will that can
become a universal law? It means that the maxim must be universalizable, which is that it means to "will
that it become a universal law." This means nothing other than imagining a world in which the maxim,
or personal rule, that I live by were adopted by everyone as their own maxim. In this formulation, Kant is
telling us to conceive of the maxim as if it obligated everyone to comply. This mental act imagining a
universalized maxim we picture a world in which everyone actually followed the maxim. Instead,
imagine the maxim as a law that everyone ought to follow. The proper way to imagine the universalized
maxim is not by asking, "What if everyone did that maxim?" but by asking, “what if everyone were
obligated to follow that maxim?" Here is a clear example.

In Groundwork towards a Metaphysics of Morals, Kant takes up the issue of making false promises (Ak
4:422). He narrates the predicament of a man who needs money, but has no immediate access to obtain
it except by borrowing it from a friend. This man knows that he will not be able to pay the money back,
but if he says he cannot return the money, then no money will be lent to him. Hence, the predicament is
simply about him borrowing money, while knowing that he cannot pay it back. This is a specific act
under the general category of acts called false promising. Kant says that the man would like to make
such a promise, but he stops and asks himself if what he is about to do is right or wrong: Is it real wrong
to borrow money without intending to pay it back? If we were to formulate this act as a maxim, it would
go this way: "When l am in need of money, I shall borrow it even when I know I cannot pay it back"

Remember that Kant states that we should act according to a maxim by which we can at once will that it
become a universal law. What does it mean to universalize the maxim about borrowing money without
intending to return it? It is simple. Imagine a hypothetical world in which each person, whenever she is
in need of money, is obligated to borrow from another even when she knows she cannot pay it back. We
do not imagine that people actually borrowed money without intending to return it. Instead, we think of
them as obligated to do so. Now, there are two possibilities in this hypothetical world where people are
obligated to borrow money without intending to pay: the maxim can either make sense or not make
sense as a universal law. By “making sense”, we refer to the logical plausibility of the universalized
maxim. The opposite of logical plausibility is self-contradiction or logical impossibility.

Let us assess that hypothetical world. If borrowing money without intending pay were everyone's
obligation to comply with, what would happen to the status of the universalized maxim? The purpose of
borrowing money would be defeated because no one will lend money. In a world where it is an
obligation to borrow money without paying back, all lenders would know that they will not be paid and
they will refuse to lend money. The institution of money-borrowing would lose its meaning if everyone
was obligated to borrow money without intending to pay it back. As a universalized maxim, it would
self-destruction because it becomes impossible. This is how Kant assesses it:

Here I see straightaway that it could never be valid as a universal law of nature and be consistent with
itself, but must necessarily contradict itself. For the universality of a law that each person, when he
believes himself to be in need, could promise whatever he pleases with the intent not to keep it, would
make the promise and the purpose that he may have impossible, since no one would believe what was
promised him but would laugh at all such expressions as futile pretense (Ak 4:422).

In the passage above, Kant distinguishes between being "consistent with it" and contradicts itself. Look
at the maxim again: "When I am in need of money, I shall borrow it even when I know I cannot pay it
back" The meaning of the act "to borrow" implies taking and using something with the intent to return
it. In the maxim, the claim is to borrow "even when I know cannot pay it back" which contradicts the
very meaning of "to borrow." The contradiction is evident: to borrow (implies returning) but the
intention is not to return. Of course, in the real world, many people borrow money without intending to
pay, but it is the logical plausibility of the universalized maxim that is at stake. Here, we reveal the
contradiction that occurs when we scrutinize the maxim because, after all, one contradicts oneself when
one borrows money (implies intent to return) without intending to pay it back. It makes no sense. This is
why Kant claims that the universalized maxim "'could never be valid as a universal law of nature and be
consistent with itself, but must necessarily contradict itself" Thus, we can conclude that the act of
borrowing money without intending to pay is rationally impermissible. Here, we discover two ways by
which Kant rejects maxims. The universalized maxim becomes either (1) self-contradictory or (2) the act
and its purpose become impossible.

What is the result of all these? We reveal the rational permissibility of actions insofar as they cannot be
rejected as universalizable maxims. In contrast, those universalized maxims that are rejected are shown
to be impermissible, that is, they are irrational and thus, in Kant's mind, immoral. But what does rational
permissibility mean? Simply put, it refers to the intrinsic quality of an action that it is objectively and
necessarily rational. Using the universalizability test, we can reveal the objective necessity of an action
as rational. Observe, for example, the quality of the arithmetical claim, "1 +1 = 2" It is objectively
necessary because the quality of the claim is universally and logically valid, and we understand this to be
always true as rational beings. Observe the difference between the quality of objectively necessary
claims with contingent claims, such as claims about the world like "The sky is blue," the truth of which
depends on the actual situation in the world. Therefore, we have demonstrated that borrowing money
without intending to pay, as a kind of false promise, is objectively and necessarily wrong, insofar as it
encounters a self-contradiction and logical impossibility when it is universalized as a maxim.