Sorry. I cannot fathom your point.

What about other “commandments”? Can’t a commandment like “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day, no exceptions” exist? What about “Thou shalt not commit adultery, no exceptions”?

Sure, we can imagine exceptions to those original rules, but the exceptionless versions of these imperatives are viable (unlike “Thou shalt not kill”, which you chose as an example). “Thou” in each commandment certainly excludes non-sapient beings, but we never expect trees or clouds to follow any moral imperative, so I don’t see that as a meaningful exception — we interpret “thou” as “any recipient of this message”. Or (to be a bit facetious) we could do away with the non-sapient exception and just conclude that all clouds and trees are going to Hell for not observing the Sabbath.

I’m afraid you’ve definitely misunderstood Kant here.

None of the four philosophy professors who peer reviewed my chapter said so. Including an expert on Kant (Erik Wielenberg).

I think I’ll trust their judgment over yours.

In my chapter, I point out that merely not being contradictory is not a truth condition for moral propositions.

But at any rate, Kant was clear that the consequences that motivate agreeing to abide by such dictums was the desire of the agent. I have a direct quote in TEC. That ends the argument.

This is true even at the meta-ethical level (the reason Kant gave for all categorical imperatives to be regarded as true for any agent). But it’s also true at the ethical level (how you decide which outcomes are to be preferred over others requires desiring them, e.g. a coherent evil moral system is possible, if you do not regard human suffering as a negative outcome; Kant was thus sneaking desires in even at that stage as well). And even within the system apart from that, you can have a non-contradictory dictum “kill only those attempting to kill you” (fully realizable without practical contradiction), and yet why prefer that over “kill no one”? The latter has more practical contradictory outcomes (e.g. it entails suicidal behavior and thus suicide, which Kant deemed immoral). But how you choose which outcomes “contradict” the dictum always relate to agent desires (e.g. how else could Kant say suicide is bad, or even any kind of killing or being killed at all for that matter?).

For example, as you yourself note:

For if everyone accepted the maxim, ‘lie to receive money when you need it’, no one would lend money…

That’s literally false. Some people would lend money anyway. Others would just vet you first. Which is exactly the system we have (banks and lending agencies always assume you are lying—they check facts instead; or else they charge exorbitant interest to compensate them for the risk, and take steps to increase the likelihood of recovery if you default).

So it isn’t even true that a maxim “lie to receive money” results in any contradiction. The system that results is perfectly coherent.

The only way you can gainsay this is to appeal to agent desires, e.g. if the agent wants a system whereby borrowing money is cheaper and easier, they shouldn’t lie to borrow money. But if the agent is perfectly happy with a lending system that expects lying (and thus compensates for it), in what way is the maxim “wrong”?

And you even realize this but don’t notice it. See your own words…

…by willing the universalization of the maxim, you will the causal inefficaciousness of the maxim’s action, but by willing the maxim, you will the action’s efficaciousness. Hence, the maxim fails the categorical imperative, and your acting on it is impermissible.

“Efficaciousness” is a consequence (indeed it’s a synonym).

That’s exactly my point.

You have to desire that the lending system be “efficacious” to even get a reason to disapprove of the maxim.

But that then gets us all the way back around again to the first point: Even assuming you correctly describe a maxim that is devoid of “practical contradiction,” why care? What reason does anyone have to believe that that maxim is moral, or at all anything they should adhere to? The answer always ends up appealing to agent desires: what the agent would or would not want as the outcome. And Kant fully admitted so. Again, I quote him directly saying so.

Rather, it’s that *you* cannot both will the maxim and its universalization without contradiction.

Note that that is a consequence.

Why prefer that consequence over any other?

The answer is always an appeal to agent desires.

I’m afraid you’ve definitely misunderstood Kant here. You wrote:

“Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative remains the most familiar: ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.’…In short, the morally right act is that act you would gladly wish everyone perform. But on what basis do you decide what behaviors you would wish to be universal? Well, guess what. Consequences.”

You’re ‘in short’ explanation is highly misleading, for the universalization of a maxim has nothing whatsoever to do with what you’d ‘gladly wish’. Rather, it concerns whether universalizing a maxim results in what Korsgaard calls a practical contradiction (or, if no practical contradiction results, a contradiction in the will).

What is a practical contradiction? Suppose you will the end of receiving money as a result of a false promise. If you will the end, you necessarily will the means. Hence, you will the causal efficacy of the means vis-à-vis your end. The question raised by the universalization procedure is, would my means retain their causal efficacy if my maxim were universalized? Here we can easily see the answer is ‘no’. For if everyone accepted the maxim, ‘lie to receive money when you need it’, no one would lend money, since a promise to repay would not be trusted. But then you cannot *both* will your maxim *and* its universalization. For that results in a contradiction: by willing the universalization of the maxim, you will the causal inefficaciousness of the maxim’s action, but by willing the maxim, you will the action’s efficaciousness. Hence, the maxim fails the categorical imperative, and your acting on it is impermissible.

Note that nowhere does this explanation appeal to the consequences of acting on your maxim. For the problem is not that if the maxim were universalized, then such and such would result. Rather, it’s that *you* cannot both will the maxim and its universalization without contradiction. (In other words, in principle another maxim with precisely the same universalization consequences could be permissible to act upon *if it does not result in a contradiction with the original maxim*).

Note that this isn’t some idiosyncratic take on Kant. Rather, Korsgaard’s practical contradiction understanding of the practical contradiction (in conception!) that results when a maxim fails the categorical imperative is widely accepted among Kant scholars.

However, since the very first step of your argument relies on the reduction of deontology to consequentialism (a decidedly suspect move, given the sundry varieties of both deontological and consequentialist ethics!), the rest of the argument necessarily fails.

Which doesn’t entail they’re untrue.

If you want to say there is a true morality that isn’t consequentialist, you have to present one. Failing to do so, fails to establish the proposition. That’s how this works.

Consequentialism has no rigourous formal definition, so any claims of falsehood are merely wishful thinking.

If I make decisions according to what the outcome will be, Brown’s definition entails I am not making consequentialist decisions.

So either you choose to speak English, or you play his dishonest shell game that tries to change what things are, by changing what they are called.

I prefer speaking honest English, over games that hide the truth.

Brown provides a formal definition while being quite charitable to the consequentialist’s position. If you disagree with the specific properties Brown describes, namely agent neutrality, no moral dilemmas and dominance, then describe which ones are false and why, and provide your own properties formalizing consequentialism.

I did. They are all either consequentialist, as in, they all base the morally true on some outcome measure (some consequence), or they are not demonstrably true and therefore irrelevant.

This is even admitted in the paper—he just avoids using the word “consequence” to describe the outcome measures, the consequences, that define moral rightness in agent neutrality, for example.

Brown is playing semantic games that hide the consequentialism in his proposed moral systems.

I am speaking English.

Any philosopher who says ethical egoism is not a consequentialist theory is being dishonest.

And only honesty produces truth.

Because that’s not the point of the paper. The point is to test the claim that any moral theory can be consequentialized, and it answers that question in the negative.

But if that’s only true of false moral systems, it’s moot. That’s my point. So to show there is a true moral system that is not consequentialist, you have to actually provide one. You can’t claim gremlins exist, and expect not to ever have to prove any exist.

That paper fails for one simple reason: none of the non-consequentialist examples he gives can be shown to be true.

Which doesn’t entail they’re untrue, nor does it entail that *all* non-consequentialist more theories are untrue as you’ve claimed elsewhere. You’ve frequently charged Harris with making this exact mistake against criticisms leveled by other philosophers.

He also commits other logical errors in that paper; e.g. he falsely claims consequentialism entails only one maximization output, when in fact that’s exactly what Harris’s landscape theory disproves

Firstly, Brown doesn’t falsely claim anything. Consequentialism has no rigourous formal definition, so any claims of falsehood are merely wishful thinking.

Brown provides a formal definition while being quite charitable to the consequentialist’s position. If you disagree with the specific properties Brown describes, namely agent neutrality, no moral dilemmas and dominance, then describe which ones are false and why, and provide your own properties formalizing consequentialism.

If instead you just axiomatically assume that anything of interest can be consequentialized, then consequentialism becomes vacuous and of no interest.

Finally, I suggest you read the paper more carefully because Brown already covers traffic rules and such in his derivation of consequentialism, and his justifications for arriving at the definition he does is perfectly reasonable. You have raised no serious objection to this derivation beyond claims that you simply don’t like the outcome.

Because he generates no true propositions about morality. Indeed, he never even asks what the truth conditions for a moral system are, much less ever applies them

Because that’s not the point of the paper. The point is to test the claim that any moral theory can be consequentialized, and it answers that question in the negative.

That paper fails for one simple reason: he demonstrates no actually non-consequentialist moral system to be true. As in, a system of imperatives anyone actually has sufficient reason to obey over all other imperatives.

Since we are only interested in true moral imperatives, the result of that paper is of no use.

He also commits other logical errors in that paper; e.g. he falsely claims consequentialism entails only one maximization output, when in fact that’s exactly what Harris’s landscape theory disproves; my traffic systems example also disproves its underlying assumptions. Similarly, his definition of consequentialism is inadequate, excluding many other forms of consequence to consider—in fact, he arbitrarily plays a semantic game by ruling moral relativism and ethical egoism non-consequentialist, which is a perversion of the English language and an insult to philosophy. But all that is moot anyway. Because he generates no true propositions about morality. Indeed, he never even asks what the truth conditions for a moral system are, much less ever applies them. This is a common folly in academic moral philosophy.

[1] Consequentialize This, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660696

This is the last entry by Alex. He still does not seem to understand what my article is arguing.

Alex: The distinction between ‘the effects of an action in the world’ and ‘the universalization of a maxim’ is relevant because it shows the difference between the two theories, which is what is being discussed. It could hardly be more relevant.

Richard: “This is not relevant to my point. Because my point is that those differences exist only because each system is ignoring consequences the other is calling attention to.”

Alex: That’s exactly right. You have an ‘uber-word’ which covers both. It would be like saying that ‘love’ and ‘hate’ are both types of intense emotion, and that since they are both intense emotions they are both the same. It’s an accident of language that the two different types of consequences are both called ‘consequences’.

That is not an “accident” of language. That’s deliberately what the word means. Consequences are consequences. You can ignore some consequences and pretend you aren’t basing your conclusions on consequences. But that is untrue. Kantians are still adding up consequences. They are just adding up different ones, ones the utilitarians ignore, while largely ignoring the consequences the utilitarians focus on.

Meanwhile, when we try to get Kant’s imperatives to be true, by his own reasoning as to what motivates them (egoist consequences, a fact which you still keep ignoring), we end up discovering we have to include even the consequences that utilitarians concern themselves with.

So you have a choice: either Kantian ethics collapses into and completes standard consequentialist ethics, or Kantian ethics is false.

That’s the argument of my article here, and likewise my article in TEC. You simply aren’t responding to my actual argument.

Alex: In French there is no single word for ‘owl’ they distinguish between two types, and have one word for each type. It’s an accident of language that we call both types ‘owls’ but that doesn’t mean that we can’t usefully distinguish between the two varieties. You’re allowing an accident of language to draw conclusions for you.

Richard: “When we unify all consequences, the differences vanish.”

Alex: Absolutely! If you unify all of anything the differences vanish. But the point is that advocates of the two (or more) types of moral thinking you’re discussing don’t unify all consequences.

And my article argues that when you try to get their propositions to be true, they end up having to unify all the consequences.

So, again, take your pick: do you want to talk about false theories of morality, or true ones? I’m only interested in (and only talking about) the latter.

Alex: And so the differences don’t vanish. It is you who is adjusting the theories to make them seem the same. You describe this as ‘correcting’ the theories, but the fact remains, the original theories are not the same. I can change any two things to make them the same, but that doesn’t mean that the things I started with are the same.

Richard: “Kant is ignoring a whole set of consequences; the Utilitarians are ignoring a whole set of consequences. When we stop ignoring consequences, the difference vanishes.”

Alex: But they don’t. They don’t stop ignoring consequences. That might be an objection to their theories (I don’t think it is, but that’s not relevant here) but showing that two theories are both unsatisfactory is not a way of showing that they are the same.

It is, when what you are looking for is the truth. When we fix what is “unsatisfactory” we discover they were both looking at the same system from different angles. That’s what my article shows. You don’t seem interested in addressing the actual argument of my article. You seem obsessed with a tautology that if we only look at what, historically, particular people said, and ignore their failure to actually follow their own logic or use correct facts, and thus ignore any concern for what is actually true, then differences “remain.” Well, duh. That’s why no one has noticed they were talking about the same thing.

This is like saying that when a blind man touches the trunk of an elephant and reports a snake and another touches a leg of that same elephant and reports a tree we should conclude they are not talking about the same one elephant. I’m the guy pointing out that they are talking about the same one elephant and just touching different parts of it, and that if we follow the procedure through—their own procedure (in the analogy: touching through)—we will discover that that’s the case. It makes no sense to respond to this argument by insisting that snakes and trees are different and therefore we have no right to say it’s an elephant, because these dead guys hundreds of years ago said so.

Richard: “A consequentialist who ignores consequences, isn’t getting correct conclusions even on their own hypothesis.”

Alex: You’ve made the same mistake again. You’ve substituted your own ‘uber-word’ ‘consequences’ into their arguments, when in fact they weren’t (really) using that word at all. It’s very clear that Mill and Kant thought about consequences in very different ways, to the point that Kant didn’t use that word to describe the results of (or inputs into) his categorical imperative calculations. Neither is ignoring their own kind of consequences. They are ignoring the other type, which they specifically say are not relevant to their calculations. You say that it’s a fallacy to ignore evidence, but that is patently false. It’s only a fallacy to ignore relevant evidence, and Utilitarians and Kantians have very different ideas about what counts as evidence. If we had a court case and were discussing whether George had killed three people in London, we should hardly be criticized for ignoring evidence presented which showed that seventeen years previously George had eaten potatoes for his lunch. ‘Evidence’ can be of anything, but it’s only important for us to examine evidence that is relevant. The same applies to ‘consequences’. It’s only important for the theorists to examine relevant consequences. You may disagree with them about which consequences are relevant, but that’s an objection to the theory, not a reason why the theory is the same as some other theory.

Nothing here addresses the actual argument of my article.

This is again like insisting that the “snake” and the “tree” are not connected therefore it’s not an elephant, because the two blind men insist it’s not connected and refused to explore their own procedure beyond their single effort. The premise is false (they are connected, even if the two reporting the tree and snake do not see this) and the conclusion is false (it is an elephant). That’s the argument of my article.

Richard: “Note the difference: you are talking about what Kant said, which my article explains was often fallacious; I am talking about the logically necessary consequences of what he said (i.e. what happens when we remove his fallacies).” You are confusing historical statements about what Kant said, with the actually logically entailed truths of what Kant said. Those are not the same thing. I am talking about what’s true. Not what Kant said was true.

Alex: No, you’re not talking about what’s true. You are discussing actual ethical theories.

I’m discussing what those theories logically entail, that their founders did not think through or realize.

That’s what it means to be concerned with what is true, and not with what certain persons historically and mistakenly said.

Alex: You are saying that the actual ethical theories held by deontologists and consequentialists are the same. If you are not talking about the actual ethical theories held by deontologists and consequentialists then you should have chosen a different title for your article.

This is an example of what I mean: you are confusing history of philosophy with philosophy.

I will repeat this one more time:

I am not writing an article about the history of philosophy.

I will repeat it again so that you know I’m really really serious that this is a really really important and crucial point and you won’t understand any of this conversation until you understand why this point is important:

I am not writing an article about the history of philosophy.

I am writing an article about philosophy. As in, the actual quest for the truth. I am asking what is actually true. Not true about history. True about morality.

Moral theorists have been trying to explain a fact of the world (moral reasoning). They propose theories. Those theories are attempting to explain an actual thing. I am interested in what the actual thing is. Each of these theories, when carried to its actual logical conclusion with correct facts, ends up describing the same actual thing. That’s not what the theorists noticed or said. It’s what is actually the case.

Alex: You entitled your article “Open Letter to Academic Philosophy: All Your Moral Theories Are the Same.” Notice the word ‘Your’ in the title. You article is not aimed at discussing truths; it is aimed at discussing actual moral theories.

…of the truth about moral facts.

When we correct errors of fact and logic, all these theories collapse into one.

QED.

That’s the argument of the article. You have yet to ever respond to the actual argument of the article.

Your argument seems to be “I am upset that this wasn’t an article about the history of philosophy.” Sorry. Like these theorists were, I’m interested in what the true moral theory is. I’m not interested in the historical contingencies of how these old dead guys missed it. Nor should philosophy as an academic field. Leave history of philosophy to the history department. Philosophy departments should be looking for the true moral theory. Not endlessly repeating past failures to find it.

Alex: If you change the theories – or ‘correct’ them as you put it – then you are no long discussing the theories belonging to the people you supposedly are aiming your open letter at. And if that’s the case, then they won’t be interested, because what you will have done is created some new moral theories that they don’t accept, and then said “look, these theories that you don’t accept are all the same”.

Richard: “I’m getting at what imperative system is true, not which ones different people just happened to have proposed.”

Alex: No, that’s not what the title of your article says you are doing. Your article says to the ethical theorists “All your moral theories are the same”. So you are specifically discussing the ones different people just happened to have proposed.

Alex: “Kant specifically considered the ‘murderer at the door’ example and did not condone lying to save the person hiding within. Therefore what you have said is absolutely untrue.”

Richard: “You are confusing what Kant said with what is logically entailed by what he said.”

Alex: Kant said you shouldn’t lie to save a life. This is something he said. There are things which are logically entailed by this. One of the things logically entailed by this thing that he said is that lying is never acceptable as a means of saving a life. What you appear to be doing here is picking and choosing which bits of Kant you want to discuss, and examine the implications of, and ignoring other bits of what Kant said that don’t suit your argument. What you should have done is examined what was logically entailed by everything that Kant said.

That’s absurd.

One does not need to time the fall of every apple on earth to conclude the value of g.

Richard: “I can’t fathom what you are trying to say.”

Alex: Then I suppose our discussion is over. I have no simpler way of putting it. Thank you for an interesting and engaging conversation.

So, evidently, even you couldn’t fathom what you were trying to say about set theory. Noted.

You never responded to, or even described, my argument about set theory eliminating your claim about exceptions. I have to conclude you never read it or never understood it.

Followup:

Richard: “I do not see this as a relevant distinction.”

Alex: The distinction between ‘the effects of an action in the world’ and ‘the universalization of a maxim’ is relevant because it shows the difference between the two theories, which is what is being discussed. It could hardly be more relevant.

This is not relevant to my point. Because my point is that those differences exist only because each system is ignoring consequences the other is calling attention to. When we unify all consequences, the differences vanish. They become the same system. And since it is a fallacy to ignore evidence, and consequences are evidence (that pertain to Kant’s claimed motive for us to obey his imperatives), it is a fallacy to ignore consequences. Unless your objective is to develop a system of Kantian imperatives that has no claim to being true. But that would not be a worthwhile endeavor. We want to know which imperatives are true.

Richard: “Consequences are consequences, and deciding on consequences is consequentialism.”

Alex: No, that’s false, because you’re using the word ‘consequences’ in two ways again.

See above: this is not relevant to my point. “Using it two ways” is just saying what I am saying: Kant is ignoring a whole set of consequences; the utilitarians are ignoring a whole set of consequences. When we stop ignoring consequences, the difference vanishes.

Alex: This equivocality is at the heart of your confusion. Consequentialism states that the morally right action is the one with the best consequences.

Indeed. All consequences. Therefore, a consequentialist who ignores consequences, isn’t getting correct conclusions even on their own hypothesis. When we add the consequences Kantians are talking about (including those you are pointing to as their concern), we get a different—and more correct—result. But this goes both ways: Kantians can’t ignore evidence either. That’s a violation of basic epistemic logic. When the Kantians do what they are supposed to and take into account all the consequences that actually determine whether it is true that we should obey those imperatives (by Kant’s own reasoning as to why we should: his covert declaration of an egoist consequentialism to the agent), we get a different result than Kant claimed.

So, when you don’t violate logic (e.g. by ignoring evidence; by not respecting the requirements for a proposition to be true and not merely coherent; etc.), the two systems become the same system.

Alex: It would be false to claim that “Kantian ethics states that the morally right action is the one with the best consequences.”

Not if we follow the first formulation of the categorical imperative. Certainly, Kant did not do that, so his error resulted in incorrect results. But I am not talking about his mistaken system. I am talking about what happens when you follow his own rule correctly. As in, without logical fallacy, and as stated. When you do that, the categorical imperative logically entails “the morally right action is the one with the best consequences.”

Note the difference: you are talking about what Kant said, which my article explains was often fallacious; I am talking about the logically necessary consequences of what he said (i.e. what happens when we remove his fallacies).

Alex: In the groundwork Kant explicitly states that morality “isn’t concerned with what is to result from conduct”. Your implicit claim that ‘type (a) consequences are the same as type (b) consequences’ is false.

You are confusing historical statements about what Kant said, with the actually logically entailed truths of what Kant said. Those are not the same thing. I am talking about what’s true. Not what Kant said was true.

In the same way I point out that the utilitarians said one thing, but what they said is false, because when you follow their own reasoning, you get a different result than they claimed, e.g. when you take consequences into account, you must include the consequences Kant was talking about, including consequences to the agent (his consequentialist motive for following his imperatives, the only thing capable of making his imperatives true) and consequences of the sort you describe (regarding the way the consequences of adopting rules are assessed).

When you avoid the errors of both Kant and Mill and correctly follow their own reasoning, you end up in the same place: both Kant and Mill were looking at the same moral system, each from a different angle, and neither complete. And thus, neither, alone, correct.

Richard: “That the predicted effects are imaginary and only hoped for is also a property of utilitarianism.”

Alex: Now you’re using the word ‘imaginary’ equivocally. This seems to be an area for development in your thinking. Your use of the word ‘also’ here is a cheap trick, because they are not ‘hoped for’ in Kantian ethics: whether they transpire or not is irrelevant to the Kantian ethicist.

If that were true, then Kantian ethics is false when applied to the real world. And we only live in the real world. Our only interest should therefore be in imperative statements that are true in the real world.

So either you are not concerned with what’s true (in which case, you are missing entirely the point of my article: I’m getting at what imperative system is true, not which ones different people just happened to have proposed), or you aren’t aware of how Kant argued his system to be true. If the latter, read my article more carefully, as I explain what Kant said about that, and why it is crucial, and why it changes everything.

Alex: Kant says that our motivation must be our good will. ‘Real-world motivation’ implies extrinsic motivation, which of course is anathema to Kant.

That doesn’t change the fact that he cited an intrinsic motivation that entails concern for extrinsic motivation. He cannot avoid the facts of reality. His attempts to do so were fallacious and produced false results. When we don’t use his fallacies but stick to valid logic, and take correctly into account the actual facts of the world (such as what actually makes people feel the way Kant claimed, or actually can do so), we get different results. This is the whole point of my article. Likewise with his categorical imperative as first stated. Which is, as I just noted and as I explained in the article, a hypothetical imperative after all. There is no such thing as a true, non-hypothetical, categorical imperative. Kant would scoff. But alas. His own attempt to prove otherwise ended up proving the reverse. As even he had to appeal to a hypothetical in the end. He just didn’t notice.

Kant is stuck with two options: admit his categorical imperatives are all false; or admit they are all hypothetical imperatives that reduce to egoist consequentialism (by his own words, as I quoted).

It just so happens that when we follow that egoist consequentialism in applying his first categorical formula, we end up with full consequentialism. Kant did not know that. But alas, it’s what is logically entailed. It cannot be escaped. As my article explains. You do not seem to have paid attention to the article’s actual arguments here.

Richard: “Notice how this is untrue: the informed Kantian most certainly will approve of lying in all circumstances that save an innocent from being murdered.”

Alex: Who could be a more informed Kantian than Kant?

All of us. We know vastly more now about human psychology and social systems than Kant did. And we also can see his fallacies and thus correct those logical mistakes and restore logical consistency between his claimed motive for his imperatives being true and what is then entailed by his first formulation of the categorical imperative.

By the same token, we know vastly more now about everything than Mill did when he formalized his consequentialist system. We know more facts. We know more about the logical entailments.

Alex: Kant specifically considered the ‘murderer at the door’ example and did not condone lying to save the person hiding within. Therefore what you have said is absolutely untrue.

You are confusing what Kant said with what is logically entailed by what he said.

I think you seem to think I am writing a piece in history of philosophy. I am not. My article is not about what Kant thought historically long ago. My article is about what is morally true.

Alex: Paraphrasing for clarity: “The distinction between type (a) exceptions where we allow an individual to go against a ‘law’ for a particular benefit and type (b) exceptions which are built into the law is a false distinction because they reduce to the same thing in set theory.” They absolutely don’t reduce to the same thing in set theory.

Yes, they do. They all become f{x}, a function on a set. As I showed in the linked comment.

Alex: Type (a) exceptions would fall outside the specified set whereas type (b) exceptions would fall inside the specified set.

No. There is only what is in the set. Period.

Every imperative can be stated as f{x}. Period.

There is no way you can avoid reducing every imperative to some f{x} form.

It does not seem you understand how language works. Or set theory.

Alex: Let me offer a very simple mathematical example. Suppose x=11. If the set of possible values were (1

I can’t fathom what you are trying to say. If “the set of possible values were (1words are exception based.

You can’t avoid this.

And, more importantly, neither could Kant. That Kant did not realize his logical mistake is moot now. We do realize it. And when we include the correction, we end up with my result: Kant was looking at consequentialism all along, just from a different angle.