Morally Dutiful Action Analysis

Overdetermination of dutiful actions occurs when dutiful actions are done from the motive of duty where the agent also has nonmoral interests in the action (Herman: 6) and according to Kant although this action might be dutiful and amiable it is still of no moral worth. For example a man who does acts of good will and gets a feeling of satisfaction from doing them is not acting morally. In the same way that a soldier saves another soldiers with only an inclination that he will get a medal is also not morally dutiful.

So how can we have Overdetermined dutiful moral actions?

Henson attempts to get around Kant's rather stark doctrine by saying that a dutiful act would have moral worth provided that respect for duty was present and would
This then can be interpreted in two ways; either it is strong enough by itself to cause the action and does not require any other inclinations to carry it out i.e.GI Jane is a friend. Or it could be that it is strong enough to prevail over a clashing motive so that the morally dutiful action can occur i.e. I'm going to get myself shot if I save her. (Herman:
Why is it that only the moral motive works and not the immoral one as well? It is at this point that we should understand the difference between motive and an incentive.

• Incentive: The things that prompt us to act in certain ways. When we take one of these as a reason to act it becomes a motive.

• Motive: the reason for our action. When this motive becomes a rule we call it a Maxim i.e. when this happens we do this.

Thus in actual fact it is when we decide on a moral incentive to be our motive that we can say that our action was morally good and so we can choose not to act on the other motive as it is not yet a motive but rather an incentive.

We can still say that it is a matter of luck that the agent acted in a moral way as different circumstances could cause the inclinations to compete and maybe make the non-moral inclinations stronger or even diminish the strength of the moral