Abstract for the Kant in Asia
International Conference
at Hong Kong Baptist
University
20-23 May 2009
Martin Moors, “Religious Fictionalism
in Kant's Ethics of Autonomy”
In
his doctrine of Duties of virtue, of which religion is considered to be an
integral part (see Metaphysics of Morals, General Conclusion),
Kant does appeal upon religious representations of which the epistemological
status is, to my understanding, identical to the entia imaginaria as listed in the CpR B 384 under the title of ‘Nothing’.
My paper discloses,
first, three constitutive momenta by which religious
representations are variously clutching at autonomy-based moral concepts: moral
constraint, conversion, and lastly the semantic transformation of “all our
duties as divine commands”. Interpreting, then, these three religious
representations according to their imaginary status, my contention is that Kant
is effectively creating a veresimilitude of religious
truths and practices which all do properly express artificial intelligence’s
simulations (modal fictionalism). As a moral concept,
human personhood becomes thus intrinsically designed by fictitiously conceived
religious components.