Kant's Categorical Imperatives

[Mudhammam]

Harris is just flatly wrong. Kant's deontological moral theory isn't consequentialistic at all. The basis for the Categorical Imperative mattering is in terms of it providing a consistent ethical axiom. The futility of that question is like asking a consequentialist (like myself) "why should the consequences of an action matter ethically?" It's a moral axiom, but it is not one that forms the basis of any strictly deontological moral theory.

You're not the first I've read who says Harris grossly misstates Kant's view, so until I get around to reading Kant myself I'll take your word for it. But in the meantime, I still don't understand how consistency is arrived at as the end-all-be-all measurement for absolute moral statements, especially considering that we wouldn't actually consider an honest person inconsistent with his values if he lies to save a potential murder victim. We'd view that person as more noble, for putting themselves at risk. Different sets of situations cannot be adequately judged by a generalized principle such as "Lying is always wrong." I think an argument could be made that the world wouldn't be better off if everyone thought that way.

But again, Kant has this covered. If everyone committed suicide, then there wouldn't be anyone left to commit suicide, which vitiates any morality since it eliminates all moral agents. It's a sort of reductio ad absurdum of objections like that.
The world is "better off" because morality is actually possible in a world with moral agents, making it "better" by definition.

"Better" by definition, divorced from any correlate to actually experienced reality (since we don't experience being dead or non-existent before infancy), sounds awfully superfluous and question-begging. Why not just cut to the chase and describe Kant's moral philosophy as "true" by definition if that's what it ultimately boils down to? I think that's where consequentialism succeeds in restricting the possibility for ostensibly arbitrary claims made under the guise of moral ingenuity. Unless it pertains to the actual experiences of feeling subjects, it's not a moral question, at least not immediately so (e.g. perhaps the object of our behavior is not a feeling subject but the effects said behavior has on the feeling subjects committing said behavior can be linked to a diminished sense of their actual or perceived overall well-being in some way). Hence, the ultimate standard is ourselves as individuals in a larger collective.

Yes but for Kant, the mere fact that we would want for there to be an exception to the rule is not enough for it to override the CI. After all, we want to do all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean we should allow ourselves to.

If all available reasons to us are exhausted and the only rational conclusion is that our pleasure is attained and no one else's is diminished, or perhaps even theirs is also positively effected, then I would disagree with that last statement.