 So we're trying to figure out what Kant means when he says that duty comes from rationality. I'm going to really understand this, we probably need to understand rationality itself. Now one way to understand rationality is in terms of belief. Whether you have good evidence, whether your beliefs are justified. That's one sense of rationality, but Kant's dealing with the will. The will is what is good, not the mind. Now don't be mistaken, Kant's not an anti-intellectual. If anything is good, it's the will. And if it wills, if it actually does its job. So it's probably good to have justified beliefs, but only because that's something that's a product of a good will, a will that's working well. So one way to understand rationality is in terms of having a justified belief that that's not what he's talking about. Another sense of rationality with belief is even in the sense of whether the belief can be true according to itself. So if I have a statement here, I say this sentence is a lie. Okay, well is that even possible? If it's true, the sentence is a lie, then the sentence is false. So then it is a lie, but if it is a lie, then it's true. So it's at once true and false at the same time, it defeats itself. So an irrational belief in this way is a belief that even just rejects itself. There is no truth. Really? Including that one? So, you know, is the sentence, there is no truth, true. And that's one way we can look at rationality, whether the belief defeats itself. And I think that's probably closer to what Kant has in mind when he's talking about rationality. He's not talking about rationality in the sense that you have justification for your beliefs or even justification for your actions. He's talking about rationality in the sense of what is not a self-defeating act. Now this is not Kant's term. I want to be very clear, right? Kant does not talk about self-defeating acts, but I think explaining what a self-defeating act is is going to help us understand what he means by rationality, a good will. A good will is that wills, or makes a decision, or acts in a way that can actually achieve its purpose. A self-defeating act is an act that defeats the purpose for which it's performed. A self-defeating action is an action that actually defeats the purpose for which it is performed. So consider my little friend here who has decided to apply for a job. And in order to maximize the chances for getting the job, my little friend here has decided to fudge a few details on the resume. Now you might think this is a good idea, but think about it a second. The whole purpose of getting a job is to have gainful employment to be able to make a living. Well, either the people can tell you faked the resume or they can't. If they can't tell that you faked the resume, which you're kind of hoping for, maybe you're working with people who are incompetent. And if they're all incompetent, that job isn't going to last very long. Or suppose that they are competent at determining whether your resume is a fake and you just somehow manage to slip by. And if you acquire a job for which you are not competent, you will either no longer have that job for very long or you won't get promoted. You'll never advance in a job for which you are not competent. Either way, you're trying to be employed in a way that means you won't be employed. Well, consider my friend over here who has had a very rough time and decided to make himself feel better by having a couple of beers. The thing is, alcohol doesn't actually make you feel any better. I mean, it makes you less worried about what you're worried about for a limited amount of time. But once that time has passed, that worry returns. In fact, later, you'll just feel worse because you spent all that time not solving your problem. So you're trying to solve your worries in a way that makes your worries worse. For my final example, let's consider the use of social media to find a date. I think the phrase today is called kitten fishing, where you provide information or a picture that is not exactly what is accurate or at least not up to date. The purpose behind kitten fishing is to attract somebody to yourself. However, the person is attracted to the picture, not to you. So you are very literally attracting somebody to you who is not attracted to you. So we're trying to understand rationality in terms of what it's not and what it is not is a self-defeating act. A self-defeating act defeats the purpose, is an act that defeats the purpose for which it was formed. In contrast, a good will is a will that decides on that course of action that can achieve the purpose. Keep in mind here, Kant's not saying that some purposes are good and some purposes are not. Purposes are neither good nor bad according to Kant. It's a good will that is either good or bad. So this brings us to a distinction between a hypothetical imperative and a categorical imperative. A hypothetical imperative is an imperative that is performed for some purpose. Not everybody needs to follow this, but if you hypothetically have this purpose, then you must follow this imperative. So, for instance, if you hypothetically have the purpose of learning how to play basketball, you should go out and practice basketball. If you hypothetically have the purpose of learning mathematics, then you should either go to school or get a really good mathematics textbook or try to find some really good online instruction. Hypothetical imperatives are imperatives that you follow on some purpose or another. In contrast, there's a categorical imperative. A categorical imperative is an imperative that you follow across all possibilities. No matter what your purpose is, no matter what your goal is, you must follow this imperative. Or another way of saying is, an imperative you follow regardless of your goals. So remember what we dealt with way back in the beginning when Kant's trying to tell us how we should live our life by telling us what our duty is. And our duty is going to be a moral absolute. He's trying to give a moral absolute in the sense that this is what you should do regardless of what you want. Morality is not a matter of purposes. It's not a matter of trying to do good. It's not a matter of intentions. These are all goal-oriented. This is unimportant for Kant. It's even important what your interests are, what your intentions are, what your hopes and dreams are. This is unimportant for Kant in terms of what you should do. The categorical imperative is what you do regardless of what you want, regardless of your dreams, regardless of your hopes. So what is the categorical imperative according to Kant? What is it that you must do regardless of what you want? Now for Kant, he's only got one categorical imperative. One thing that you must do regardless of what anybody or you wants. You must act only on that maxim that you can will into universal law. So what he's talking about here is you should only perform those actions that everybody can perform. If you do something, everybody else must be able to do it too. Everybody else must be able to do it too. If it's an action that you perform and not everybody else can, then you're willing that you can do something and other people do not. They can will contrary to you. They can make a decision contrary to what you're willing, what you decide. Okay, well if you will in a way, that means that your will can be contravened, your will can be disturbed, your will can be stopped, you are willing that your will can be stopped. That's not rational. You're willing in a way that can't achieve its purpose. So we turn into our friends here that we talked about earlier. We've got our little friend trying to apply for a job. If everyone applied for a job, but then fake their resume, then resumes would be useless. They wouldn't give any important information, any information that could be used. For what it's worth, this is actually happening. Companies have recognized that people are lying on their resumes, trying to inflate their credibility to a pretty high degree. It happens often enough where companies are now starting to figure out, okay, well, how can we determine who's a good employee without looking at the resume? What are other test and standards that we can look at? Because a resume isn't helping anymore. Kitten fishing is becoming such a thing that I see if I got its own name. And it's something that people recognize is happening. As a result, the first thing that people ask is, okay, what's inaccurate about this picture? Do you really have a full head of hair? Are you really six feet tall? Are you really a millionaire? Are you really self-employed? People are now looking at the social media profiles, wondering, okay, what part of it is the lie? And it gets so bad that people don't even look to the social media profiles anymore to figure out who this person is, because they can't be trusted. The problem with drinking is well known. And I'm not saying having a beer is a bad thing, no. But if you're using beer to solve your emotional problems, you will not solve your emotional problems. And that goes for any substance, be it alcohol or other, I would say, recreational substances. And the problem gets to be so bad if everybody tried to solve their problems with beer. And we have a large enough population that tries to. Disaster often ensues. I mean, not only are these personal problems still in place, but it causes additional social problems, drunk driving, decreased productivity at work, and increased problems and personal interactions at home. These things are irrational because they do not achieve the purpose for which they are performed. And in locks, they violate the categorical imperative because if everybody tried to do them, then nobody could accomplish what they were trying to do. So Kant's categorical imperative act only on that maxim, which you can will in the universal law. Do only that, that you would will everybody to do.