Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [60]
ANSWER: Freedom of the will is not the kind of thing that science can prove or disprove. Neither is morality. It’s true that human beings inhabit the realm of nature. Everything we do can be described from a physical or biological point of view. When I raise my hand to cast a vote, my action can be explained in terms of muscles, neurons, synapses, and cells. But it can also be explained in terms of ideas and beliefs. Kant says we can’t help but understand ourselves from both standpoints—the empirical realm of physics and biology, and an “intelligible” realm of free human agency.
To answer this question more fully, I need to say a bit more about these two standpoints. They are two perspectives we can take on human agency, and on the laws that govern our actions. Here is how Kant describes the two standpoints:
A rational being… has two points of view from which he can regard himself and from which he can know laws governing… all his actions. He can consider himself first—so far as he belongs to the sensible world—to be under laws of nature (heteronomy); and secondly—so far as he belongs to the intelligible world—to be under laws which, being independent of nature, are not empirical but have their ground in reason alone.”28
The contrast between these two perspectives lines up with the three contrasts we have already discussed:
Contrast 1 (morality):
duty v. inclination
Contrast 2 (freedom):
autonomy v. heteronomy
Contrast 3 (reason):
categorical v. hypothetical imperatives
Contrast 4 (standpoints):
intelligible v. sensible realms
As a natural being, I belong to the sensible world. My actions are determined by the laws of nature and the regularities of cause and effect. This is the aspect of human action that physics, biology, and neuroscience can describe. As a rational being, I inhabit an intelligible world. Here, being independent of the laws of nature, I am capable of autonomy, capable of acting according to a law I give myself.
Kant argues that only from this second (intelligible) standpoint can I regard myself as free, “for to be independent of determination by causes in the sensible world (and this is what reason must always attribute to itself) is to be free.”29
If I were only an empirical being, I would not be capable of freedom; every exercise of will would be conditioned by some interest or desire. All choice would be heteronomous choice, governed by the pursuit of some end. My will could never be a first cause, only the effect of some prior cause, the instrument of one or another impulse or inclination.
Insofar as we think of ourselves as free, we cannot think of ourselves as merely empirical beings. “When we think of ourselves as free, we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members and recognize the autonomy of the will together with its consequence—morality.”30
So—to return to the question—how are categorical imperatives possible? Only because “the idea of freedom makes me a member of the intelligible world.”31 The idea that we can act freely, take moral responsibility for our actions, and hold other people morally responsible for their actions requires that we see ourselves from this perspective—from the standpoint of an agent, not merely an object. If you really want to resist this notion, and claim that human freedom and moral responsibility are utter illusions, then Kant’s account can’t prove you wrong. But it would be difficult if not impossible to understand ourselves, to make sense of our lives, without some conception of freedom and morality. And any such conception, Kant thinks, commits us to the two standpoints—the standpoints of the agent and of the object. And once you see the force of this picture, you will see why science can never prove or disprove the possibility of freedom.
Remember, Kant admits that we aren’t only rational beings. We don’t only inhabit the intelligible world. If we were only rational beings, not subject to the laws