Groundwork vii-viii

23 Mar, 2026

In (viii), Kant states that moral action must be done "for the sake of the moral law". But how would anyone know what their true motivation is? Kant says that if it isn't truly for the sake of moral law, transgressions will occur. This fact makes sense—if your motivation isn't "pure" then there will be cases where you err. If there are no cases where you transgress, then your motivation is pure. A pure, honest motivation (out of moral duty) operates in the world through consistent moral action.

Let's go back to the question about knowledge of the true motivation. At the decision time, determinism demands that the inputs are run through the neural architecture and the action is decided. It's too late to have motivation at that point. Distributed authorship says that present action is made from the current neural architecture that came about from all the past decisions—the accumulation of all the past choices you've authored.

Here's where it gets interesting. If you make all the appropriate decisions in the past that constrain your present behavior towards moral action, then you have the proper motivation. Therefore motivation is a function of past behavior!

Your past behavior is what constitutes your present motivation. They're the same thing. Motivation isn't something you just "have" in the present as if you are some dualist entity. Motivation itself is the accumulation of all past decisions. Under determinism, this is sensible, because decisions can't be affected in real-time, just as the concept of willpower doesn't operate in real-time like people think.

Distributed authorship requires that past decisions be made to ensure the proper moral machinery is in place for deciding the tough actions: the actions where you need lots of willpower to fight desires or external pressures. I think this is why Kant makes a big deal about doing things "for the sake of the moral law," because it's hard to do. This project spells out why this is difficult by demanding the proper moral setup through past actions. No one will be perfect, but enough good decisions will be necessary to properly constrain the present decision-making process to result in moral action.