Kant interpreters have contrasting views on what Kant takes to be the basis for human dignity. Several commentators have argued that human dignity can be traced back to some feature of human beings. Others contend that humans in themselves lack dignity, but dignity can be attributed to them because the moral law demands respect for humanity. I argue, alternatively, that human dignity in Kant’s system can be seen to be grounded in the reciprocal relationship between the dignity of the moral (...) law and the dignity inherent in the human constitution. The latter includes the dignity of personhood, construed as rational inner purposiveness, and the dignity of giving oneself the law and striving to follow it. (shrink)

In the Groundwork, Kant seems to make two paradoxical claims about the source of human dignity. First, he claims that if “rational nature exists as an end in itself” (Kant, 1998, p. 36), it is because “humanity is… dignity, insofar it is capable of morality” (Kant, 1998, p. 42). Second, he claims that although “autonomy is the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature” (Kant, 1998, p. 43), the human being can only have “dignity… insofar (...) he fulfils all his duties” (Kant, 1998, p. 46). This paper argues that neither claim is repugnant because Kant seeks to advance two kinds of dignity. Kant intends to elucidate that the human being possesses a basic ‘entitled dignity’ in virtue of his capacity for morality, but that he needs to become a moral being in order for him to realise his ‘true dignity’. This paper claims that the formal condition under which a person can be worthy of respect is identical with the condition of realising his ‘true dignity’. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that ideas give us the rule for organizing experience and ideals serve as archetypes or standards against which one can measure copies. Further, he states that ideas and ideals can be practical. Understanding how precisely these concepts should function presents a challenging and understudied philosophical puzzle. I offer a reconstruction of how ideas and ideals might be practical in order to uphold, to my mind, a conceptually worthy distinction. A practical idea, I (...) argue, is best understood as a reference to the categorical imperative (and its various formulations), which guides conduct directly as a rule. A practical ideal, by contrast, I think is a substrate that serves two functions: one that (a) helps us gauge moral deficiencies and another that (b) reveals the potential for moral improvement. In response to well-grounded sceptical concerns, I argue that ideals are indirectly practical in that they ground the possibility to recognise moral states of affairs and be moral in the first place. (shrink)