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PhilGoetz comments on Quantifying ethicality of human actions - Less Wrong
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Comments (58)
That's not entirely fair. Kant said that morality was not determined by consequences; but that statement may be incoherent. Attempts to use the categorical imperative result in looking at consequences in one way or another - even if the user is unaware they are doing so, because they are referencing values evolved into them by their consequences to the user's ancestors (and selected-against non-ancestors).
Again agreeing with Jack; it's true that much of Kant's argument about the CI is based on consequences. Conceptually, however, the CI and its association with objective morality do require it to be purely non-consequence-based. If it were consequence based, then if the consequences were different, it wouldn't necessarily hold, so it would not be "categorical."
I agree that, fundamentally, any intelligible concept of ethics will rest on consequences. But the idea behind the CI is that it is a priori, which is why it's such a terrible and convoluted idea.
Thats a really interesting notion. However, it is more of an objection to Kant's position than it is an objection to Psychohistorian and my interpretation of Kant. It might be the case that you can never get away from the impacts but Kant didn't think that and what Kant thought was what was at issue.