Abstract

Two fundamental assumptions of Kant’s procedure for testing a maxim’s morality via the Formula of Universal Law are that a contradiction in will is 1) generated by the universal practice of immoral maxims, and 2) constituted by the impossibility of an agent’s therein satisfying certain ends. These features are the source of two types of false positive counter-examples, involving maxims where 1) the harmful effects of the maxims are non-linear and hence vanish when universalized, and 2) even the universal practice of a harmful maxim makes it less likely that certain ends can be satisfied, but not impossible. The test can be fixed by replacing these two features with the criteria of moral supervenience and requiring that agents will end-satisfaction probability maximization respectively.