Groundwork iii

21 Mar, 2026

For completeness, I'm wrapping up a thought. I think it's surprising Kant viewed the rational principles of ethics such they must support both the moral system (of rules, from reason and not from experience) and why people fail to be moral. I would assume philosophers stop after defining the moral system. If people don't follow the system, their anomalous behavior is their problem, not the system's. But Kant insists that the rational principles "also take into account the conditions under which what ought to happen very often does not happen."

The principles required for physics differ from ethics. There aren't anomalies in the physical world; everything follows the laws of physics. But people go against morality, and it's as if Kant envisions the same structure for ethics and for physics: there is a single set of rational principles governing ethics. But because people don't have to follow the laws of ethics, these principles must do a lot of work: first they define morality; second, they explain the conditions under which human don't act in accordance with morality. There is still an "in accordance with" relationship here, in that the conditions where humans err are in accordance with these principles. The principles of ethics Kant seeks should govern the laws of morality along with the conditions where people go against morality.

I find it significant that Kant requires these principles to cover both moral law and its human irregularities. Kant's use of "practical anthropology" means the empirical study of how people act. This evidence can't be used to form the conditions where people act contrary to the moral principles. What I find very demanding is for these principles to come from reason, not experience.

This requirement is where Conscious Permanence can contribute. Distributed authorship under determinism may explain both agency and how moral failure occurs, and doing so within a single rational framework. The accumulated constraints of past choices govern both moral action and its deviation.