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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 355 relations to others. Section 4 discusses some of the causal factors that undermine our personal investment in the truth of K, and call into question its explanatory adequacy. Section 5 brings this account to bear on an analysis of imperatives - i.e. sentences containing the word "ought." I distinguish imperatives from commands in terms of the degree of confidence each implicitly ascribes to the truth of K; and argue that "ought" has the same meaning in the moral context as it has in explanatory and predictive contexts, in which it expresses a relation to an idealized descriptive theory whose empirical veracity is in question. I call this the "ought" of tentative expectation. Section 6 addresses some apparent counterexamples to this analysis, and Section 7 dissects a range of attitudes toward the truth of K - from pristine innocence to thoroughgoing moral corruption. Finally, in Section 8 I apply the foregoing analysis of "ought" to the case of the whistle-blower. I offer a justification for the whistle-blower's in-practice allegiance to K in her own behavior, even when surrounded by moral corruption; that is, even when punishment, betrayal, danger, or death is the likely alternative. In closing I enumerate some further causal factors that may weaken or strengthen our ability to meet the whistle-blower's challenge to our moral complacency. 1. The Authority of Fact Under what conditions might we develop a personal investment in at least the lower-level empirical generalizations (A.1-4.) of K delineated in Chapter V.5.2? In the beginning stages of the process of socialization in morality and etiquette, our parents or guardians do not ordinarily tell us what we ought to do. Instead, we are told, and shown, what is done - by our parents and relatives, friends, authority figures, everyone of importance to us: that one does not eat one's peas with a knife, for example; or that we are fortunate to have enough to share with those less fortunate than us; or that one says, "Thank you," upon receiving a gift; or that adults can be relied upon to keep their promises. The process of socialization includes, inter alia, elementary schooling in a culturally transmitted theory of what social reality is, not what it ought to be. Nevertheless, this theory of social reality is an ideal one. For, as we later find out, not all, or even most people meet its description in their behavior. If this theory in truth describes an ideal rather than an actual social reality, what social forces motivate us to make a personal investment in it - as descriptive of our self-conceptions, and so as regulative of our actions? Our instinctive childhood personal investment in adults on whom we depend leads us to theoretically invest in the concepts, beliefs and practices they instill in us. Those authority figures endow a theory such as K with at least three sources of epistemic and conative authority whose influence persists throughout our adult lives. First, there is the authority of fact. These conventions of morality and etiquette are represented to us as the reality, and © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
