PHIL250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Dogma, Transcendental Idealism, Deontological Ethics
5 Jan 2016
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Kant is a deontologist, deon= duty, duty based ethics. Only good will is unconditionally good because it will be self-determinate, determined nothing outside of itself. Kant doesn"t think that the principle of teleology (the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes) is objective. He thinks that we could, in principle, understand the entire world purely in mechanical cause of terms but not ourselves just what"s out there. We could not experience the world if we did not have forms of intuition and categories of understanding. The objects conform to our knowledge, if they didn"t then we wouldn"t know anything. What follows what, what causes what is what you know by means of experience but we can organize objects based on categories of understanding without prior knowledge. These concepts are why we have experience: connections between things. We don"t create things, we don"t know things in themselves (without relating them to other things).
