Categorical imperative

8 hours of research later and sooner than I thought I am getting closer to the solution. Turns out that Immanuel Kant had some deep insights into morality in his time. Consider his rather famous categorical imperative:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

That is what a rational morality would have to be grounded in. Unfortunately however, Kant did not provide such a maxim that would satisfy his imperative. Intuitively and based on previous rational analysis I shall assume the following maxim as basis for rational morality:

Ensure continued co-existence

Exploring the concept of rational morality further would clearly break the intended scope of Jame5 and thus I will continue my exploration of the issue on rationalmorality.info

Hope to see you there. This blog will remain active for Jame5 related updates.

5 Comments »

  1. Rational Morality » Blog Archive » Purpose of rationalmorality.info said,

    November 15, 2007 @ 3:35 am

    […] the development and communication of a morality grounded in rationality. As basis the maxim ‘ensure continued co-existence‘ is applied, assuming it satisfies Kant’s categorical imperative. The stated end goal […]

  2. Rational Morality » Trust as an emergent phenomenon among rational agents said,

    November 15, 2007 @ 8:20 pm

    […] rational. In such a reality all agents will adopt the rationally implicit utility function ‘ensure continued co-existence‘ as their explicit utility function Fe(i). All agents would use the resources at their […]

  3. Rational Morality » Reconciling Kant and Schopenhauer said,

    January 17, 2009 @ 6:58 pm

    […] however the maxim of ensure continued co-existence for Kant’s categorical imperative, Kant and Schopenhauer can be reconciled quite beautifully […]

  4. Rational Morality » Ayn Rand Contra Existence said,

    June 21, 2009 @ 5:59 pm

    […] exact spot where Rand looses me. It is not surprising that since the second postulate contradicts my own concepts of morality as well as the centrality of compassion in it, I was keen to disprove selfishness as virtue, and […]

  5. Rational Morality » The unfortunate etymology of ’selfishness’ in objectivist ethics said,

    November 24, 2009 @ 12:38 am

    […] Rand fails to realize, is that Kant’s categorical imperative effectively forces oneself to be non self contradicting in ones moral action and as a result being perfectly in line with her ideal of reason. At the same time, Kant’s […]

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