nm0146: okay before we start er brief announcement which is this er advertising 
er Philosophy Society weekend away that's not quite right is it a philosophy 
weekend away day still not right never mind er right er you may or may not have 
know about this but every year we have a weekend away in Wantage er it's in the 
sort of er Oxfordshire countryside er and right there'll be three presentations 
by students and i think you're let off some essay if you do this er but we 
already have do we already have papers don't know but anyway there's three 
there's er three presentations er and a discussion of those on the the topic 
for this year is er personal identity er and then there's er a long walk along 
this very nice countryside and some modest drinking which gets a bit immodest 
towards late Friday evening er so that's all good fun er if anybody's 
interested er some leaflets up here namex's organizing it so further details 
can be got from her and i'll leave these with the handouts at the 
end of the lecture okay so any questions on that just yet er it's in June the 
twenty-second to the twenty-third any queries going okay okay last week let me 
just close the door okay last week er i laid out various attempts to defend 
Kant's claim that the only morally good motive is the motive of duty it's the 
positive claim er and also to defend the negative claim that no motive of 
inclination can have any moral worth and we saw that there were problems with 
all of those arguments although one came out better than the others just had an 
unfortunate er implication which Kant wouldn't want to accept i don't want to 
go carry on trying to justify Kant's claims rather what i want to do now is 
assume that some sort of a case has been made and deal with some objections 
that are raised against this conception of what it is to be a morally good 
person or what it is for an action to be a morally good action right there's a 
number of sort of worries 
that people have which can be found expressed in writers like Bernard Williams 
who i'll come onto later and er Michael Stocker who i'll also cover later er 
first of all a couple of preliminaries right a morally good action for Kant is 
one that's done solely from duty er now one question one might ask is if you're 
acting solely from duty if you're helping somebody just from a sense of duty 
and then whenever you ought to help them you only ever help them from a sense 
of duty does this mean that you don't really care about them a sort of worry 
here is that er the very notion of duty suggests or implies conversationally at 
least the idea that you don't really want to do it right if you do some action 
out of duty that kind of suggests that you don't want to do it right so you 
might feel yeah you might want to go and visit your elderly grandfather and do 
so quite happily then you think about the cases where you do it from duty from 
a sense of duty go and visit your 
elderly grandfather well those'd be the cases where you don't really want to do 
it but you know you think oh i really should this er up off you go and go and 
get the visit out of the way well does someone do-, does the con-, very concept 
of duty and acting from duty imply that people really don't want to do what it 
is they ought to do and hence don't care about you know the cons-, er the needs 
of others or other people in particular that's one wo-, worry one might have i 
don't know what do you think i mean given what you know about or what i said 
last week about what it is to act from duty do you think that if you do act 
from duty that suggests that you can't really want to do what you ought to do 
and hence you can't care about say the needs of the other person or the other 
person well what is it to act from duty anybody what are you what are you what 
is it to act from duty 
sf0147: is it when duty is the the solely is the only er motivation for it 
nm0146: er that that that's true but er is there another way of 
expressing the thought that your motive is duty you know that you're acting 
solely from duty which make you know well what i'm looking for is another way 
of expressing that sort of motivational structure which doesn't carry with it 
the sort of negative connotations that duty does duty n-, it sounds sort of 
burdensome yeah like a nuisance you talk about the sort of duties one has in a 
certain job and the sort of always the implication is that this is rather 
burdensome something that er you may take on but it only because it's part of 
your job or you know 'cause morality requires it so what we're looking for is 
some sort of construal of duty acting from duty which doesn't carry those 
negative connotations with it 
sf0148: er perhaps instinct 
nm0146: er 
sf0148: rather than them actually thinking about it 
nm0146: yeah well should yeah the notion of should i mean it s-, it captures 
the same sort of er feelers' er duty but already it's starting to lose some of 
its 
negative connotrations connotations doesn't sound quite so contractual you know 
duty sounds very contractual sounds like the sort of things that you know 
you're bound by some sort of contract to do they're your duties your duties as 
a lecturer or whatever 
sm0149: can we know that the that the word duty was used in the same way the 
same context as it is today than than when say Kant was writing 
nm0146: right er well i can't tell you the answer to that as a ju-, sort of 
general thesis er about sort of nineteenth s-, or eighteenth century Prussia 
but it is true that Kant didn't for Kant it didn't have this implication so it 
was a good one point to make but the notion of duty as Kant understood it 
didn't carry these negative connotations it didn't as we saw i mean i quoted 
something e-, er from Kant er it was either last lecture or the lecture before 
where he says that actually if you're unhappy in the performance of your duty 
that rather casts doubt on your virtue 
you know so acting from duty from him mean a virtuous person is one who acts 
from duty clearly if that's right then somebody who acts from duty er mean the 
concept of duty as it's being used there can't carry these negative 
connotations of disinclination or burdensomeness and it certainly didn't have 
that connotation for Kant right so if you can't shed those modern connotations 
those negative connotations then use some other concept right don't talk about 
acting from duty but talk about say doing the right thing just because it's 
right and rightness doesn't carry those strong negative connotations that duty 
does even though these concepts are close to being synonyms 
sm0150: did Kant was your best possible will 
nm0146: your best possible what 
sm0150: yes the best possible will i mean good will 
nm0146: well this is what it is to have a good will is to be disposed to act 
from duty 
sm0150: is that about duty what is duty under your eyes under in the 
circumstances you don't know what your best possible will is 
nm0146: er i don't i don't think you have to have thoughts about your will when 
you act from duty you've got to have thoughts about what you 
should do 
sm0150: so d-, i thought Kant said it was good will 
nm0146: no it's the other way round a good will is one that acts from duty 
acting from duty is not acting with explicit thoughts about what a good per-, 
willed person would do 
sm0150: yes 
nm0146: er you know it's just to do the right thing because it's the right 
thing to do okay so that's one word of warning just a preliminary point er what 
makes it seem as though you can't really care about others when you act from 
duty is the idea that ac-, er duty carries with it that what you're doing is in 
some way burdensome yeah or a nuisance or the implication you don't really want 
to do it and if that were true if that implication were true er then whenever 
you help somebody from duty it couldn't be because you cared about them right 
'cause the duty would carry with it that negative connotation which meant you 
didn't really but you've got to do it anyway right it doesn't have that 
negative connotation for Kant so don't let this the sort of the those modern 
connotations influence the way in which you understand this notion another 
worry some people have is a worry about spontaneity think somebody who always 
acts from duty will lack a certain spontaneity do you think you know every 
situation they come to they got to think mm right now what should i do here on 
the one hand i've got these considerations weighing in favour of this action mm 
not sure i want to do that and then all things considered well perhaps i should 
do that and eventually you get round to doing something right 
and if you're concerned about the morality of your action does this mean that 
your actions will lack a certain spontaneity 'cause you'll always be worrying 
about whether you're going to be doing the right thing or not mm well any 
thoughts got a fifty per cent chance of getting this right 
sm0150: some action which seem to attract more worth can be and spontaneous 
like the man who jumps on the hand grenade to save his comrades it's a 
spontaneous act 
nm0146: right but does it s-, been suppose he 
did that from a sense of duty t-, th-, would that prevent its being spon-, 
sm0150: well no i think it does i think he does it 
nm0146: i know but the point is not whether he does or not it's point is 
whether if he did whether that would stop him from spontaneously reacting in 
that way when he first of all got to think well you know is it really what i 
should do leap on i mean on the one hand i'm going to save those other people 
other pe-, i'm going to be scattered all over 
sm0150: 
nm0146: [laughter] is this really what morality requires of me perhaps i'll try 
and persuade him to jump on it you know and then get the same effect but i end 
up in one piece 
sm0150: but we can have s-, have spontaneous acts don't know whether that's 
another thing 
nm0146: yeah sure sure nobody's arguing that we don't have spontaneous acts the 
question is if you're motivating the way that Kant thinks is a good way to be 
motivated could your actions still be spontaneous 
sm0150: no 
nm0146: why not actually i was fibbing when i said you 
had a fifty-fifty chance as soon as you gave me an answer i was going to ask 
you why [laughter] yeah 
sm0151: yeah i think you c-, er can be so closely and act not directly from the 
motive of duty just this maxim is derived from therefore felt a general maxim 
to act in certain circumstances in a certain way you can act could act 
spontaneously like that 
nm0146: yeah i'm not sure that really i mean that all of that's right i'm not 
sure if it helps because in many situations more than one of your principles is 
going to be appli-, er going to be applicable er so you've still got er instead 
of weighing up particular considerations you're going to be weighing up which 
principles over wh-, override which other principles 'cause it you know might 
be that you can only help somebody by breaking a promise and you got a prin-, 
er er a principle of promise keeping and a pro-, a principle of benevolence 
well which one are you going to act you can't act wi-, in accordance with both 
of them so you then got to think well which one overrides the other so i'm not 
sure that that helps i mean one thing one might i mean i don't think he that 
someone who acts from duty does lack spontaneity or need lack spontaneity er 
the thought 
that they do is driven by the idea that in order to decide whether what you're 
doing is permissible you've got to make various complex judgements and 
typically that will take time er but if you think about other areas of our 
lives where we're constantly having to make very complex judgements er but have 
no problem acting spontaneously on the basis of those judgements er we can see 
that there's no conflict here and what i'm thinking of is you know driving a 
car right right when you're driving in a car you're making hundreds of 
judgements about how you should sort of respond you know and whether so and 
so's going to pull out on you whether some pedestrian might run out whether 
there's a dog up there not on the lead whether he's going to pull out whether 
the person's braking in front of you how hard you should brake you know traffic 
coming at you from all directions traffic lights signs all these things you've 
got to make judgements all various very complex judgements about er and 
you've got to re-, react very quickly right so it's a complex business any of 
you er who's learning to drive at the moment anybody here learning to drive 
guess you're already drivers anybody who's learning to drive know how horrible 
it is er so when you start out you got to think explicitly about these things 
and of course you can't react very quickly because you're you know you're 
having to think about everything you know in a very mechanical way but the 
point is that the better you are you become at this the more skilled you become 
at driving the more internalized these judgements are the more spontaneous they 
are you're still making those very complex judgements but it's kind of like 
second nature to you it only slows you down it only means that you can lack 
spontaneity when you're a sort of novice but the more skilled you are at 
driving the quicker you internalize those judgements er they're still going on 
they're still being made but when 
you see somebody's brake lights come on in front of you you've not got to think 
to yourself er ah you know is he braking or has he just turned his lights on ah 
hang on if he's both lights go on i've got to push this middle pedal down you 
know if you had all those thoughts you already hit him before you do anything 
er you just react straight away but all of those judgements are going on all 
those complex judgements are going on now i see no reason why it couldn't be 
just like that in the moral case when you're a moral novice right er right you 
got your moral L-plates on right and you're struggling away you think oh well 
this consideration pulls me that way and that consideration and er you know 
this this this this and er okay i think i should do that right when you're 
having mechanically to go through some process of moral deliberation in that 
way then sure as a moral novice you're going to your action's going to lack 
spontaneity just like the reactions of a learner driver are 
going to be very slow because of the complex judgements that have to be gone 
through in a very mechanical way we're just like the driver who eventually 
masters these skills can react spontaneously once they're mastered so in the 
moral case once you actually you know come good at making these sorts of 
judgements or at least think you are then you can make very there's nothing to 
stop you er responding very spontaneously even though your actions are informed 
by these very complex judgements er 
sm0152: er sometimes though er w-, it's easy to decide what you want to do when 
you're in a car 'cause if you're going to hit something you know you want to 
stop and you don't want to run into it whereas if you're making a moral 
decision it sometimes you might er you know it might be difficult to choose 
what you want to do 
nm0146: oh yeah sure i mean this is not to say i mean sometimes in a car ma-, 
how skilled you are you might not be sure what to do 'cause or it's an 
unusual situation er so you may not be sure what the best thing to do the what 
the way you'll react in a car is not just 'cause you don't want to kill 
yourself yeah if you wanted to then you ought not to drive in this i-, you 
might drive in some completely different way er yeah you just sort of th-, it's 
a s-, just the idea that i mean it do-, doesn't depend upon that the sort of 
judgements that are made are judgements about you know just what's going on 
around you and your own desires and preferences don't really come into it apart 
from you know your desire to get somewhere or other and of course in many moral 
situations where they're complex you really have to stop and think about it but 
then clearly you know it'd be inappropriate to try and make a snap judgement 
the real worry is is not that somebody who acts from duty is never spontaneous 
sorry the criticism is that they're never spontaneous not that they must always 
be spontaneous er but they'd lack a certain 
sort of immediacy in their responses and that would be a bit peculiar if we 
were like that er well once you think about what it is to master other skills 
and master other complex judgements in other areas you realize that it only 
slows you down when you're a novice once you get good at it you can make snap 
decisions and that there's no reason to think why that just couldn't be the 
case in morality actually morality is no more complex seems to me than driving 
a car 
sm0153: when you're driving a car you're try-, trained to make a reaction 
certain stimulations 
nm0146: well it's not just stimulus-reflex 
sm0153: 
nm0146: i mean there's all sorts of judgements going on 
sm0153: i mean child in the road you don't think do you because you've been 
trained child 
nm0146: yeah i know but if you're a novice you'll be thinking oh right er child 
right clutch down brake hard splat [laughter] 
sm0153: 
nm0146: dead child [laughter] yes [laughter] 
sm0153: 
nm0146: yeah but the thing is you're 
making snap judgements they're not just i-, it's not like tapping your knee and 
the foot sticks out it's just that you know you're not you don't go through 
those judgements you know and your reason doesn't go through some slow 
mechanical process er 
sm0153: but i told you the prior training was there 
nm0146: well that's right 
sm0153: yes 
nm0146: but there's no reason why moral training couldn't be just like that 
sm0153: of duty 
nm0146: well as i say there's no reason why moral training coul-, you know er 
if you're going to say that it there's something very different then you have 
to point out what the differences are why being trained to to drive a car works 
but being trained to be a sort of moral agent must always fail so you always 
got to have your L-plates on okay don't want to labour this point so i'm going 
to move on the rule cri-, so there's a couple of preliminary points a worry 
about er you know a sort of lack of concern for others and a lack of 
spontaneity i think they should they should be quickly put aside 
really 'cause they're not the main worries er with the notion of acting from 
duty the main worry that comes from this has been put forward by Michael 
Stocker and Bernard Williams i'll start with Michael Stocker and it's the the 
worry that the motive of duty's in some way alienating okay so this is what i'm 
going to focus on in the rest rest of the lecture er i'll just give you a quote 
er as to why Michael Stocker thinks that acting from duty might be er 
alienating what he thinks it might alienate you from is your friends and loved 
ones right so the worry here is that morality as Kant conceives it seems to 
stop you entering fully into relations of friendship and love I-E these 
valuable but non-moral relationships and he gives the example of a guy who's 
hospitalized and his well he somebody he thinks is his friend Smith they're 
always Smith er comes and visits him right so i'll just quote from Stocker here 
right you're very bored and restless and at loose ends 
when Smith comes in once again you're now convinced more than ever that he's a 
fine fellow and a real friend taking so much time to cheer you up travelling 
all the way across town and so on you're so effusive with your praise and 
thanks he protests he always tries to do what he thinks is his duty what he 
thinks will be best you at first thinks he think he's engaging in a polite form 
of self-deprecation relieving a moral burden but the more you two speak the 
more clear it becomes he was telling the literal truth but it's not essentially 
because of you that he came to see you not because you're friends but because 
it was his duty perhaps as a fellow Christian or Communist or whatever or 
simply because he knows of no one a-, more in need of cheering up and no one 
easier to cheer up unquote that's from Michael Stocker The Schizophrenia of 
model Modern Ethical Theories right so you imagine somebody who thinks doing 
something out of friendship and you 
discover that he's not actually doing it out of friendship he's just saying 
well look you know this is what i think i ought to do and i really strive to do 
what i ought to do er it just happens that visiting you in hospital is 
something i think morality requires and it's because of that that i'm coming to 
visit you not because you're my friend or because i'm worried about you right 
but because morality requires this of me 
right now if you i mean if Kant's account of moral worth meant that you got to 
be like this person like Smith then it does seem as though you're not going to 
be able to at least fully engage with non-moral relations of friendship and 
love loving relations 'cause morality you know you'll be always be doing things 
for the wrong reasons you'll be doing it because morality requires you to not 
because you know this person's your mate and he's bored er 
sm0154: er i don't know just surely in er maybe he's deciding that morality i 
don't know your it's your duty to go see this person you still have to choose 
which person you're going to see and you choose that person because he's your 
friend 
nm0146: er 
sm0154: as as opposed to 
nm0146: yes 
sm0154: the person lying next to him that you don't know 
nm0146: yeah yes but suppose 
er you did it not because he's your friend but because you feel you ought ought 
you know morally r-, morality requires you to help someone and you might yeah 
it's much easier to you know to help your friends than it is some stranger who 
doesn't know you you know going to cheer him up much more you know er than if i 
impose myself myself on some stranger okay who may not like me er er yeah some 
of the example-, i mean part of the quote says that er you know he chooses to 
go and visit you know his friend not 'cause he's his friend but because he's a 
fellow Christian or a fellow Communist or something like that not because he's 
in er his friend but it may be because he's his friend he knows that he needs 
cheering up and he's very easy to cheer up so you go for something you're 
pretty sure is going to work but that seems to be the wrong sort of reason to 
go and visit your friend in hospital right so i'm just sort of but i think 
you're right that there's something 
fishy about this and it stems partly from the first point i raised at the 
beginning of the lecture that it's making it look as if you're concerned with 
the morality of your action that will sort of take over and push out all other 
concerns but that's just the worry that Stocker's has thinks it's sort of er 
has this sort of dominating influence that once morality as Kant conceives of 
it gets in on the picture all other values are going to be pushed out right now 
the the way to respond to this er and i here follow er Marcia Baron er on this 
i mean all of the reading for this is in the er the reading list for the the 
lecture on the course handout the way to deal with this is actually to locate 
what it is that's disturbing about this particular case and once you've located 
where it is what you want to do is you know if the le-, if you find in locating 
what's disturbing about this it turns out that what's disturbing is his 
motivation Smith's motivation then 
you know that will cast doubt on Kant's picture of a morally good person but if 
it turns out to be somewhere else then it may not be that he's acting in this 
way 'cause he's a Kantian good-willed individual may just be because he's 
insensitive cold or something else but that's not Kant's fault right and the 
two things that Marcia Baron locates is wrong with him his A his b-, er his 
behaviour right the fact that he's so cold and uncaring he must realize that 
saying well i i'm not coming here to see you because i care about you i'm 
coming here just because i feel morally required to he must realize that's 
going to upset his friend [laughter] or if he doesn't then he's er he's 
suffering from some other vice namely complete and sort of er complete er 
insensitivity to others even even er people who seem to be his close friends 
what's wrong with what he do-, er with this situation is his actual behaviour 
his coldness his insensitivity his thoughtlessness okay but this 
is focusing on the way the things he says and his thoughtlessness and his 
insensitivity and none of those things are focusing on motivation i mean if i 
mean morali-, if his motivation is a concern for the morality of his actions 
it'd be very peculiar if he thought that morality required him to be cold 
insensitive indifferent er distant and all of these other things surely he 
doesn't think that so in acting in this co-, even if he does have no feelings 
for his friend at all it seems that morality would require him not to show that 
right you don't wear a great big placard saying i don't really care about you 
but you know i've got to come so here i am trying to cheer you up right so that 
the first thing that we locate is a-, what he actually does and says and 
certain vices that these his actions er express it doesn't seem to cast er for 
come to focus on the motive of duty the motive of duty's just doing the right 
thing because you think it's right but morality in no way 
requires him to be cold and indifferent in this very peculiar way another thing 
that's disturbing here is his lack of genuine concern for his friend there's 
well i'm not coming here because i care about you i'm coming here just because 
morality requires me to come here er and i know that you're a bit miserable and 
are pretty easy to cheer up so here i am trying to cheer you up there's nothing 
as i said at the beginning there's nothing about duty as such or the thought or 
a concern for the morality of one's action the means w-, that one must lack a 
genuine concern for other people or for one's friends or for one's loved ones 
mm now since the motive of duty doesn't make Smith act as he does in fact the 
motive of duty should make him act in quite a different way even if he doesn't 
care about his friend especially if he doesn't care about his friend and since 
it's not responsible that sort of motivation is not responsible for the 
apparent lack of concern he has for his friend 
it's not clear that the call although this is a very disturbing case it's one 
where you know you won't if that's what a friend is you don't want friends like 
that er the problem is not located in his motivation it's located elsewhere er 
does anybody want to come back on that yeah 
sm0155: what if his er morality er said that he couldn't lie and so he wouldn't 
be untruthful when his friend so thankful and like didn't want to claim praise 
where it wasn't due 
nm0146: yeah yeah well there's i mean there's going to be cases where what 
morality requires of you is going to conflict and one thing it requires you not 
to do is not to to to lie er but also tells you not to hurt people 
unnecessarily and so this is one of those conflict cases and it may be that er 
you know you think that the requirement not to lie outweighs the requirement 
not to upset people but even so and you sh-, that still doesn't mean that you 
should sort of tell the truth in this cold way 
sm0156: not totally i mean from the suggestion i got from the the example was 
that was so [laughter] overtly thanking him he was like saying thank you every 
se-, every couple of you know words 
nm0146: right 
sm0156: the other person would be like oh well you know he wouldn't have up to 
that point had he not be so over the top in his 
thanks 
nm0146: yeah yeah 
sm0156: it and say well it was my duty 
nm0146: yes well er that's one construal of it perhaps sort of gets the blame 
somewhere else er seems to me that er well you can imagine a similar situation 
where somebody's just all too willing to reveal their true feelings of 
indifference and coldness and so at every opportunity it will pop up even 
though they're not being you know praised for something er you they don't think 
they deserve praise for er so you can think of a sort of a a very close 
situation where no blame can be put on er his hospitalized friend er well you 
know praising him too much er where all the blame would land on this 
individiual and then all the same questions would pop up okay well er let's 
move on that's Michael Stocker's criticism if er move on to Bernard Williams' 
criticism and these are all very closely er aligned these are all really 
driving at the same sort of worry but from slightly different angles now 
Bernard Williams has two worries the first 
is that the motive of duty rules out other motives that if you act from duty 
you can't act from friendship or love right so the worry here is that other 
other motivations get pushed out and since those other motivations are 
constitutive of what it is to enter into these valuable non-moral relationships 
if they're pushed off the scene by the motive of duty then it means then being 
moral will stop you fully engaging in non-moral but nonetheless valuable 
relationships that's the first worry the second is er that the moti-, that if 
you always act from duty then you'll be motivated by explicitly moral thoughts 
about what you should and shouldn't do about what's permissible w-, about 
what's not permissible in situations when that's quite inappropriate er and the 
example very famous example Bernard Williams gives is of a situation where you 
know your ship sunk you're on the lifeboat and you've got a choice between 
saving your wife and saving some stranger er and he 
has this example of a Kantian good-willed agent who's er motivated to save his 
wife not just because she's his wife but because she's his wife and because 
it's permissible to save your wife in preference to a stranger so you know the 
sort of motivation there is partly moral it's a a thought about the moral 
permissibility of his action and he says that you know some for example his 
wife may have thought that the thought that she is his wife would be sufficient 
to get him to save her er the moral thought seems to be as er Bernard Williams 
famously put it one thought too many it's not clear what's quite so disturbing 
there but er i'll deal with these points er in order now once again er Barbara 
Herman er well it's the first time i've menti-, Barbara Herman and Marcia Baron 
tried to deal with this and they tried to deal with this first objection by 
distinguishing between primary and secondary motives they say that duty can 
function both as a primary motive and as a secondary 
motive and that once you distinguish these and realize that a mo-, a Kantian 
morally good person doesn't always have to have duty as a primary motive then 
sometimes other primary motives can come in and that's perfectly okay other 
motives could be friendship or love or whatever what is the primary secondary 
motive distinction well a primary motive is what you and i ordinarily think of 
as somebody's motives it's to act from some primary motive is to act from a 
consideration that you would cite if somebody asked you why did you do that 
right and your answer might be quite simple mightn't you why did you pull that 
woman out of the water the answer might just be well because she's my wife and 
er that might be it right in that case your primary motive is just the thought 
that she's my wife or it might be more complicated might be what motivates you 
might be a thought she's my wife and the thought that it's permissible to save 
my wife in preference to a stranger in 
such situations right so primary motives are just the specific reason you'd 
cite in support of your action er in a specific er situation it's the reason 
why you did what you did the specific reason for doing that specific s-, action 
now secondary motives or are are more like regulative principles which needn't 
always function as primary motives though sometimes they might for duty to 
function as a secondary motive is just for y-, er certain counterfactuals to be 
true right for example for duty to function as a secondary motive er would just 
entail that if you thought your action was wrong you wouldn't do it right so 
your actions are regulated by a concern for the morality of your action and 
that may just imply er that if you thought that your action was wrong you 
wouldn't do it or alternatively a subjunctive conditional you'll er you'll only 
well it's the conditional statement that if you'll only do some act if you 
think it's permissible now if to have duty as a secondary motive just means 
that if you only just means that if you thought your action were wrong you 
wouldn't do it as long as you don't think it's wrong duty needn't not figure as 
a primary motive it need not figure amongst the reasons you would cite for 
doing a particular action you presumably you've got all sorts of regulative 
principles all sorts of secondary motives right you might have a s-, a sort of 
self-interested regulative motive er principle namely if some action's going to 
kill you you won't do it right but does that mean that thoughts about your own 
you know death are always going to figure in your motivations well no you know 
if he asked you well why did you come in here today you might say well to hear 
the lecture it wouldn't be to hear the lecture and because you were sure that 
you weren't going to die if you came in here right even though if you thought 
you were going to die if 
you came in here you wouldn't come i take it you're not that keen to learn Kant 
right learning Kant were fatal then you'd i take it be happy to be ignorant 
right so even if you've got these regulative second order not second order 
secondary motives it doesn't mean that they're always going to be f-, er figure 
in your in the thoughts that act as your primary motives it just means that 
your action is regulated in a certain way and that'd mean you'd have no 
implication that you have thoughts with a certain content about your own 
eventual death or you know in the Kantian case about duty okay so is that is 
you get a a sort of basic idea of the primary-secondary motive distinction one 
is a particular consideration for doing or reason you have for doing a 
particular action the other is more of a general principle regulating the sorts 
of actions you're going to do you might have a regula-, you know i'll do this 
as long as it's not self-destructive 
right that might be it but in doing some particular action one of the reasons 
you would cite for why you did it would not be 'cause you didn't think it was 
going to destroy you you wouldn't have thoughts about your own destruction for 
the most part unless you thought there was some very good reason for thinking 
something's going to be dangerous similarly if your secondary motive is duty 
that just means so long as you don't think the action is wrong sorry you just 
means that you wouldn't do some action if you thought it was morally wrong that 
needn't imply that every time you act you've got a th-, a moral thought as a 
primary motive it need not actually impinge on your moral deliberatio-, er in 
your deliberation about why you should do particular actions that o-, is that 
okay questions on that 
sm0153: probably draw that out from the meaning 
nm0146: er 
sm0153: 
nm0146: oh i don't see why well actually Kant doesn't talk about motives very 
much 
sm0153: no 
nm0146: he talks about inclinations incentives well 
actually inclination's just a particular sort of incentive talks about 
triebfedern er which gets translated as er incentives and he talks about maxims 
so he actually very seldom talks about motives he say-, a-, one place he 
distinguishes motives from er incentives but it's just one of these many places 
where Kant makes a distinction just forgets about it straight away er and what 
does most of the work in Kant actually is maxims principles of action and 
they're not primary motives although they'll be picking out the sorts of things 
which er would count as motives for you counts as reasons for you so i think 
mean you're right Kant doesn't actually make this distinction himself but it's 
a a distinction that fits very neatly into the Kantian framework of practical 
rationality but er no y-, there is nowhere where he makes this distinction er 
that's not a problem i mean there's two ways you can go you i mean as long as 
it fits neatly into the Kantian framework then this could be a 
way he er this would be a w-, er a legitimate way for Kant to respond the fact 
that he doesn't respond in this way or s say these things is not really the 
point with all of these figures historical figures we're really considering how 
defensible their position is and even if they don't have a response to a 
particular criticism 'cause it wasn't made at that time or they just didn't 
think of it the real issue's whether they could respond er so i don't mean i 
don't think you need get too worried about that this is a perfectly decent way 
for somebody who's sympathetic to Kant to respond to the Williams style 
objection okay well once we've got this distinction up and running it's easy to 
see how you can apply it to Williams' objection about how duty seems to push 
out other motives remember the first worry you had was that once duty gets on 
the scene it pu-, it all i mean you can't act from friendship or 
from love and hence can't fully engage in those non-moral relations well once 
you've got duty as a primary and secondary motive on er established then you 
can see that there's plenty of room for non-moral motives to get in at the 
primary level at primary as primary motives for a a Kantian good-willed agent 
right to do something from friendship from a a for a Kantian er good-willed 
individual would just be for friendship to be their primary motive er and 
although they're they'll have duty still as a secondary motive that just means 
that they'll do they'll act from the primary motive so long as it doesn't 
prompt them to do something they believe is wrong right so any sort of non-
moral rela-, er motive can get in at the primary level and the agent may act 
just from that motive all it means i-, for duty to act as a secondary motive is 
for them to regulate the sorts of actions they'll do from those non-moral 
motives at the primary level er in a certain way namely they won't 
act from those motives if those motives point them towards doing something 
wrong okay so is it clear how that works have to mo-, get a bit of a move on 
'cause i'm running out of time here okay let me move on quickly to the final 
point i wanted to make which is the second part of Williams' objection this is 
about whether a Kantian good-willed agent can would would have too many moral 
thoughts explicitly moral thoughts and exactly the same point could be made 
with the primary-secondary motive distinction i mean a Kantian good-willed 
agent doesn't have to have an explicit thought at the primary motivating level 
about duty er in saving his wife in preference to a stranger he doesn't his 
motive his first his primary motives don't have to be A well because she's my 
wife and B 'cause it's morally permissible to save my wife in preference to a 
stranger in situations like this at the primary level the motivating thought 
could be solely a thought about 
his wife and his concern for her nonetheless he's still a Kantian good-willed 
agent 'cause his action is regulated by duty at the second as a secondary 
motive what that means is he'll save his wife just 'cause she's his wife unless 
saving her would involve doing something he takes to be wrong okay that this is 
morally permissible to save my wife now you make think even that's too er 
restrictive or sort of inappropriate having duty at the the as a regulative 
principle it's still there's something inappropriate about that but at that 
point i think the Kantian just dig their heels in and say well er that there's 
nothing objectionable about duty as a secondary motive and to make that clear 
you know just consider somebody who d-, who is whose actions aren't regulated 
by duty as a secondary motive er they're just motivated at the primary level by 
a concern for their wife that means that no matter w-, whether this action is 
right or wrong or whether they 
think it's right or wrong they're going to save their wives so you know just 
imagine a situation in which the only way you can save your wife is by throwing 
two kids off the lifeboat so you think oh great out they go wife in right 
well in such a situation like that as er Barbara Herman clearly points out this 
seems like a case where the the the individual has one thought too few right 
rather than one thought too many it seems if saving a wife involves doing 
something like that then you should pause to think well you know is this really 
sh-, okay to do this right er right and but you know being willing to pause to 
think about whether you should do this action in situation where it looks as 
though the only way you can do what a motive of love or friendship prompts you 
to do is by doing something that looks like it's wrong i mean that sort of 
moral regulatively regulative function doesn't seem at all 
objectionable it doesn't stop you spontaneously reacting to the c-, er the 
needs of your loved one or the concerns of your friend doesn't mean you've got 
to in some way not care about them all it means is that you won't do anything 
for them no matter what it is right there'll be a limit to the s-, er to what 
frien-, you'll think that friendship will permit you or will allow you to do 
okay right i'll stop there handouts at the front anybody who wants the leaflets 
on the philosophy weekend they'll be here as well