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An analysis on Reason and Will in relation to moral

A paper submitted
in partial fulfillment of the requirement in
Ethics (ETIC 211)

Submitted by:

Cayme, Clariza Denice A.

de Leon, Iyanna

Gapultos, Nikkie

Estoquia. Giselle

Submitted to:

Ms. KATYA E. MANALASTAS

ABSTRACT

In this study, we intended to expose the in depth meaning of reason and

will using man as the major point on this discussion and moral. People do
actions every day in living this world mainly to get through, they do the action
what they known to be good or bad to them. The question is what drives them
to do the action? Reason and will can be used interchangeably, but moral gets
along the way. A philosopher said that means by a good will, he says that a “a
good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, it is good
through its will alone. That is his definition of reason, another philosopher
defined will and said that "Will is the ability of conscious choice, decision and
intention." The study aims to interchangeably use and analyze not just reason
and will but also moral in human action.
This study going to be based mostly on defining and analyzing the different
perspective of philosophers in will, reason and moral.

Key words: reason, will, and moral

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The study purpose of the study is to interchangeably use and analyze not
just reason and will but also moral in human action.
This study going to be based mostly on defining and analyzing the different
perspective of philosophers in will, reason and moral.

Specifically, this study seeks to answer the following questions:

Main: What will happen if every action and decision do is pure reason/ pure
will?

 What is reason and will?

 What is the origin of the reason and the will?
 Does all action require reason or will?
 What is the importance of will and reason?
 How does people affect the person’s will and reason?
Review of Related Literature
This chapter includes the ideas, generalization or conclusions and
opinions etc. Those that were included in this chapter helps to familiarizing
information that are relevant and similar to the present study.

Critical Analysis of Kant’s concept

According to Immanuel Kant, Will is generally and usually understood as

an active attitude of human beings towards the surrounding world or towards
the ends of their desires or aspirations that active attitude is interpreted as an
attitude and indeed we say “willingness implying already the presence of will to
do something, to interfere or intervene in the surrounding world or to
accomplish a dead or a series of deeds in order to achieve the end. Once the
aspect of an end is implied in the attitude of will, we bring in a additional
component, that is to say that of a conscious intentional action brought about
by will. In this sense will is not only a power or an active intention; inherent in.
It is the aspect of decision or resolving decision and the component is already
imbued with a certain direction.

Kant’s means by a good will. He says that a “a good will is not good
because of what it effects or accomplishes, it is good through its willing alone.
That is good in itself. Thus a good will is good not because it wills the good. As
that would tie it to a possible outcome of an action but it is good simply by
virtue of its willing alone and it remains good irrespective of the outcome of an
action. In this context Kant also argues that the only proper function with
respect to moral actions is not to guide us towards happiness or another end of
human action since “he end in question could have been maintained one more
surely by instinct that can ever can be by reason.” Instead he claims that “the
only true function of reason must be to produce a will which is good, not as a
means to some further end, but in itself”. Effectively Kant completely divorces
good will, that is will is in its moral function, from anything that usually
motivates human action, be it happiness, pleasure, or glory. In fact he severs it
from end of a human action.

According to Anna M. Rowan, Kant definitely believes in the existence of

will but, like in the rest of his philosophy, he divides will into a purely moral
will and a flawed will. As flawed, will is influenced by inclinations and
tendencies of human nature, that is, it is still tried to the phenomenal world. In
this sense the will has not discovered its absolute freedom as when it it moral
will. Pure reason is reason that organizes the phenomenal world according to
certain categories of understanding. Pure reason is not a part of the
phenomenal world, it belongs exclusively to the noumenal world but it makes
the phenomenal world intelligible. Pure reason provides condition that make
morality possible, and freedom of will is one of these necessary conditions
which Kant calls that make morality possible, and freedom of will is one of the
necessary conditions which Kant calls postulates of reason

Kant’s notion of reason is more than the ‘switchboard’ because by

providing universal (inherent to all human) forms of interpreting sensory data,
it is not purely subjective. For Kant, pure reason provides the transcendental
ground of all human experience. We cannot ever touch the world of things in
themselves. The noumena will always be outside of our reach but we can still
have knowledge of the material objects in the world, not as they are in
themselves but as we experience them

Reason

Reason is a statement that is offered in justification also is a sufficient

ground of explanation or logical defense. This makes the fact intelligible and
also it is the basis/ motive for a decision, action or conviction.

The etymology of reason is derived from the French word "raison" and Latin
word "rationem" meaning reckoning, understanding, motive and cause.

The concept of reason and concept of language are connected, that is

reflected in the meanings of the Greek word, "logos." The reason, rationality,
and logic are all related with the ability of the human mind to predict effects as
based upon presumed causes, also the word "reason" denotes a ground or
basis for a particular argument, and hence is used synonymously with the
word "cause."

According to Hegel, reason is the fundamental principle that explains

the reality. As he understands it is not some quality which is attributed to
some human subject; it is, by contrast, the sum of all reality. In accordance
with this belief, Hegel claims that reason and reality are strictly identical: only
reason is real and only reality is reasonable.

Reason is rather to be thought of as a process which has as its goal the

recognition of reason through itself. Since reason is the whole of reality, this
goal will be achieved when reason recognizes itself as total reality. It is the task
of philosophy to give a coherent account of this process which leads to self-
knowledge of reason.

Will

In philosophy and psychology, the term “will” is used to define the faculty
of mind that is alleged to stimulate motivation of a purposeful activity. Also, it
is the ability of conscious choice, decision and intention. Will is the power of
mind that is decided if you want to do or not. Also, it is used to express desire,
choice, willingness, consent, or in negative constructions refusal.

The etymology of will is derived from the Old English “willan,wyllan”

meaning to wish, or desire and Gothic “waljan “ meaning to choose.

According to Thomas Aquinas, will is a power of desire/ wanting of a

specifically of a human kind; but it is not the only such power, for there are
other forms of wanting, such as the appetites which humans share with
animals, like hunger and thirst.

Will is the power to have wants which only the intellect can frame. It
does not take any intellectual ability to desire a plate of meat in front of one;
but only an intellectual being can want to worship God or square the circle.
Aquinas thinks that the will is a natural inclination toward the good as it is
conceived by intellect. Thus, for a human being to will to act it is necessary
that the will be presented with an object conceived by the intellect as good.

Will is an intellectual tendency, or a tendency toward an intellectually

known good, it is different form sense an appetite in that us not “chained down
“by the immediacy of the senses object.

.
Research Design
These are the articles and research that puts on evidence that pertains to
the different analysis of philosophers, researchers, and analyst about reason
and will. The researchers have reviewed the different analysis and combined all
together to answer the question of:

The reason

Is associated with thinking, cognitive, and intellect. The philosophical

field of logic studies ways in which human reason formally through argument.
The reason is a declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or
conviction. (Hintikka, 2013).

The Will

The will can be derived from philosophically and confirmed by data

derived from everyday experience to prove it's existence. (Cadeño, 2003) As for
example, when a person have to choose to different things, that person will
100% surely choose the one s/he prefers or the one with experience. But free
will gives that person second chance to choose that another thing that person
didn't choose. Free will means that when you choose two different things, you
choose the one that you have an experience with, but then after choosing that
you think about the other thing you left. Free will makes you choose the
another one with another time.(Cruz, 2012).

Does all action require reason or will?

Is the will, or willing, properly understood as a cause of action? By a

“cause,” It means a cognized will effecting action, that is, action-directing via
reason or cognition. Here, action is understood as an effect of a cognized will.
By “a cognized will,” It means a will effecting action by deliberation and
intention, guided by reason (cognition). For this, the researchers examine
Kant’s concept of free will and practical reason. The researchers, then,
Schopenhauer’s critique of Kant in this regard. Though Schopenhauer is partly
in error in his critique of Kant and Kantian ethics, the critique, we, the
researchers, argue, shows that Kant’s idea of causality, in terms of practical
reason and transcendental freedom, suffers fundamental problems.

What is the importance of will and reason?

 Will is important as one of the parts of the mind, along with reason and
understanding. It is considered central to the field of ethics because of its role
in enabling deliberate action. Reason is a suitable way of knowing for ethical
decisions when one does not wish to question their perception of an issue. It
proves useful when consequences are considered while understanding an
issue. Reason lacks the attachment that emotion carries, it has the ability to
remain detached from a situation. How does people affect the person’s will and
reason?

Under the influence of Bacon and Descartes, Thomas Hobbes made one
of the first attempts systematically analyze ethical and political matters, in a
modern way. He defines will in his Levithian Chapter VI, in words which
explicitly criticize the medieval scholastic definitions:

A deliberation the last appetite or aversion, immediately adhering to the

action, or to the omission thereof, is that what we call the will; the act not the
faculty, of willing, and beasts that have deliberation, must necessarily also
have we will. The definition of the will, given commonly by the schools, that it is
a rational appetite, is not good. For if it were, then could be there be no
voluntary act against reason. For a voluntary act is that, which proceed from
the will, and no other. But if instead of a rational appetite, we shall say an
appetite resulting from a precedent deliberation then the definition is the same
that I have given here. Will therefore is the last appetite in deliberating. And
though we say in common discourse, a man had a will once to do a thing, that
nevertheless he forbore to do; yet that is properly but an inclination, which
makes no action voluntary: then by the same reason all intervenient appetites,
make any action voluntary; then by the same reason all intervenient aversions,
should make the same action involuntary; and so one and the same action,
should be both voluntary and involuntary.

By this it is manifest, that not only actions that have their beginning
from covetousness, ambition, lust or other appetites to the thing propounded;
but also those that have their beginning from aversion, or fear of those
consequences that follow the omission, are voluntary actions.

Concerning “free will”, most early modern philosophers, including

Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Hume believed that the term was frequently used
in a wrong or illogical sense, and that the philosophical problems concerning
any difference between “will” and “free will” are due to verbal confusion
(because all will is free):
 A freeman, is he that in those things, which his strength and with he is
able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to. But when the words free
and liberty, are applied to any thing but bodies, they are abused; for that
which is not subject to motion, is not subject to impediment: and therefore,
when it is said, for example, the way is free, no liberty of the way is signified,
but of those that walk in it without stop. And when we say a gift is free, there is
not meant any liberty of the gift, but of the giver, that was not bound by any
law or covenant to give it. So when we speak freely, it is not the liberty of voice,
or pronunciation, but of the man, whom no law hath obliged to speak
otherwise than he did. Lastly, from the use of the word free-will, no liberty can
be inferred of the will, desire or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which
consist in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or
inclination to do.
Reference
reason (n.). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.etymonline.com/word/reason.

Cave, Stephen. “There's No Such Thing as Free Will.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 10
June 2016, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/theres-no-such-thing-as-free-
will/480750/.

J. Colin McQuillan, Immanuel Kant: The Very Idea of a Critique of Pure Reason, Northwestern
University Press, 2016, 176pp., $34.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780810132481.

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iep.utm.edu/faith-re/.(“Hume, David: Causation | Internet

Encyclopedia of Philosophy”)

Klein, Daniel B., and Erik Matson. “David Hume on Reason as a Passion.” SSRN Electronic
Journal, 2015, papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2573995, 10.2139/ssrn.2573995.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/