Kant’s empirical account of human action
Patrick Frierson2014, Kant's Empirical Psychology
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Abstract
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says, "[A]ll the actions of a human being are determined in accord with the order of nature," adding that "if we could investigate all the appearances. .. there would be no human action we could not predict with certainty" (A549/B577). 1 He gives a striking example to illustrate this general point. Let us take a voluntary action, for example, a malicious lie .... First of all, we endeavor to discover the motives to which it has been due, and then, secondly, we proceed to determine how far the action ... can be imputed to the offender. As regards the first question, we trace the empirical character of the action to its sources, finding these in defective education, bad company, in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition insensitive to shame .... We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe the action is thus determined, we nonetheless blame the agent.
Key takeaways
- One important issue on which Wood and I disagree is that I see Kant as claiming Kant's theory of freedom has important implications for his empirical psychology.
- [28:254, cf. 29:895] The distinction between higher and lower faculties of desire is critically important for Kant's overall account of human action because the causal mechanisms governing desire op-41 Kant makes the same claim in the context of pleasure, but there Kant is careful to insist that while there is still a lower and higher faculty of pleasure, all pleasure is sensitive in itself (hence lower).
- In a revealing comparison of Descartes and Newton, Kant distinguishes As noted above, feelings that do not give rise to desire or aversion are particularly important for Kant's aesthetics.
- Before explaining the lower faculty of desire in some detail, it is important to note that for Kant, relatively few human actions are motivated directly by the lower faculty of desire.
- footnote 54. sire plays an indirect role in many actions motivated by the higher faculty of desire, and it has particular relevance for Kant's accounts of affects and for actions done from habit, Kant also maintains that humans, unlike animals, have a higher faculty of desire.
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