what i was resisting was what sounded to me like a kind of riff on pascal's wager, which i don't see in kant. but if that's not what you meant, that's cool with me . . . as long as the meaning of the term "knowledge" is properly specified. that's really tricky, here, because of kant's terminology. don't you think?
<snip>
> Kant's response to this predicament is to appeal to
> the unconditioned character of the moral demand, i.e.,
> the categorical imperative, that we place upon
> ourselves in exercising our freedom. Since our reason
> demands that we will our actions solely on the basis
> of their rightness, and since we acknowledge that we
> can do what reason demands, i.e., that we are free,
> then we have a basis in reason for affirming the
> possibility of meeting reason's correlative demand
> regarding the highest good. We can make the
> achievement of the highest good the object of our
> willing, even if it remains obscure to us exactly how
> this will eventually come about. Thus the immortality
> and the God that are postulated as necessary for
> bringing about, in concert with our own moral
> endeavors, the highest good are both objects of "moral
> faith." Kant is insistent that the affirmation of God
> and immortality that is made on the basis of moral
> faith does not make them objects of theoretical
> knowledge. They are objects of moral faith inasmuch as
> their acknowledgment is a matter of a free assent that
> is legitimated, but not thereby coerced, by reason. In
> some measure, his account of moral faith
> complements his arguments against the traditional
> proofs for the existence of God inasmuch as Kant
> thinks that such proofs seek to coerce us
> intellectually into an acknowledgment of that which
> can only be appropriately affirmed by a response of
> our human freedom.
i'll respond by quoting the next paragraph of this article:
--- Kant's moral argument and his notion of moral faith have both been subject to different interpretations and evaluations by commentators on Kant's work. Some of these disputes, e.g., about the structure and validity of the moral argument, arise because Kant's own articulation of the argument varies in the writings in which he proposes it. Some of the more important objections to the moral argument center upon the coherence and adequacy of the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible perspectives that are central to both his statement and resolution of the antinomy of practical reason. The moral argument has also been criticized as an effort on Kant's part to transgress, in the name of the moral use of reason, the very limits he had set to the theoretical use of reason in the first Critique. ---
in the end, a dispute over my use of the term "must" sidesteps the basic question of the force of the argument. no, the will cannot be coerced by the intellect. but clearly kant thinks this argument has force -- and i use the term "force" advisedly.
j
-- http://www.brainmortgage.com/ Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.
- Alfred North Whitehead