Kantian autonomy and the moral self

Review of Metaphysics, The, Dec, 2008 by Eric Entrican Wilson

   pure practical reason is a faculty of ends generally, and for it to
   be indifferent to ends, that is, to take no interest in them, would
   therefore be a contradiction, since then it would not determine
   maxims for action either (because every maxim of action contains an
   end) and would not be practical reason. (14)

Because of its centrality to rationality, end-setting is the essential mark of our humanity: "The capacity to set oneself an end--any end whatsoever--is what characterizes humanity (as distinguished from animality)." (15)

In our actual practical reasoning the relationship between means and ends is mediated by incentives (Triebfeder). (16) We select what we take to be the best means toward prescribed ends, but we must also in some sense be "moved" to adopt those ends as our goals. This is the job of an incentive, which Kant characterizes as the "subjective determining ground of the will of a being whose reason does not by its nature necessarily conform with the objective law." (17) Incentives figure into the explanation of intentional actions in that they help account for why we adopt the ends that we do. To cite an agent's incentive is to cite what moves her to treat something as her end. But it is essential to Kant's theory of agency that we are not merely pushed and pulled by our incentives. They move us in a particular sort of way. This theoretical commitment is expressed most clearly in what Henry Allison calls the "Incorporation Thesis," which Kant presents in the first part of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: (18)

   Freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely
   peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any
   incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated it into
   his maxim (has made it into a universal rule for himself, according
   to which he wills to conduct himself. (19)

There are more and less plausible ways of reading this claim. The least plausible version has Kant committed to the idea that human beings cannot be "determined to act" by incentives unless they incorporate them into their maxims. This is obviously false. Say I hear a scary noise in the woods and am moved by my desire (or "instinct") for self-preservation to run as fast as I can back to camp. This desire can obviously function as an incentive without me having to first incorporate it into a maxim. It is a good thing we do not have to incorporate our incentives into maxims in order to act. We would not survive for long if we did. Surely it must be the case that the vast majority of our actions do not require the incorporation of incentives.

But this leaves room for a more modest and plausible version of Kant's claim. While it must be true that we do not have to incorporate our incentives into our maxims, it also seems true that we can do this. An important range of our behaviors is based on deliberation. That is, many of our actions are the outcome of the process of considering reasons and drawing practical (and sometimes moral) conclusions about how we should conduct ourselves. If we accept this much about human agency, I think we can see that Kant's point is simply that our desires and other sensible impulses do not come prepackaged as reasons. They enjoy this status only by being treated as reasons, that is, only by being taken up and considered to count in favor of or against doing one thing rather than another. As rational beings capable of reflection, we are capable of asking whether a given incentive should move us to pursue a particular end. This is not to deny that sensible impulses of various kinds can also overwhelm us, sometimes to the point where the distance required for reflection is impossible. The point is only that it is in principle always possible for us to respond to a given incentive by asking whether we ought to or should act on it--what Christine Korsgaard calls "the normative question." (20) And it is not until we pose this question that we confer the status of "reason for action" on these incentives. In other words, an incentive becomes for an individual agent a reason for action only when she poses and then answers the normative question. An incentive can certainly force its way in and overwhelm us; this happens frequently, but in such a case it is moving us to act without functioning as a reason. Kant does not have to deny this for his Incorporation Thesis to make sense. In fact, any plausible reading of the Thesis accommodates the point quite easily.