According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

When do people say that they are moved, and does this experience constitute a unique emotion? We review theory and empirical research on being moved across psychology and philosophy. We examine feeling labels, elicitors, valence, bodily sensations, and motivations. We find that the English lexeme being moved typically (but not always) refers to a distinct and potent emotion that results in social bonding; often includes tears, piloerection, chills, or a warm feeling in the chest; and is often described as pleasurable, (...) though sometimes as a mixed emotion. While we conclude that it is a distinct emotion, we also recommend studying it in a more comprehensive emotion framework, instead of using the ambiguous vernacular term being moved as a scientific term. (shrink)

Asbestos-related illnesses contribute to the deaths of more than 100,000 people worldwide (ILO 2006) and the plight of sufferers of these illnesses has become a global ethical issue. A leading, Australian building products corporation, James Hardie, created a complex corporate structure that included the establishment of a “Victims Compensation Fund”, and moved its corporate headquarters to the Netherlands to reduce its liabilities. Hardie claimed that this move was tax minimization (Haigh 2006). In this study case, a number of ethical issues (...) provides the opportunity to discuss many business-society questions. These include the duties of the company towards a wide range of stakeholders affected in some way by Hardie’s earlier production of asbestos-related products and its subsequent responses to the question of compensation. (shrink)

In “Obligations of the ‘Gift’: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Precision Medicine,” Lee rightly points out that disparities in health care access also lead to disparities in precision medi...

Organizations interested in employee ethics compliance face the problem of conflict between employee and organizational ethical standards. Socializing new employees is one way of assuring compliance. Important for longer term employees as well as new ones, however, is making those standards visible and then operable in the daily life of an organization. This study, conducted in one large organization, found that, depending on organizational level, awareness of an organization's ethical standards is predicted by managerial adherence to and organizational compliance with (...) those standards and/or discussions with peers. Regardless of level, organizational commitment was predicted most strongly by managerial adherence to organizational standards. These findings have theoretical implications for the fields of business ethics, organizational identity and organizational socialization and practical implications for the implementation of ethics policies. (shrink)

This paper develops a new kind of approach to conspiracy theories – a procedural approach. This approach promises to establish that belief in conspiracy theories is rationally criticisable in general. Unlike most philosophical approaches, a procedural approach does not purport to condemn conspiracy theorists directly on the basis of features of their theories. Instead, it focuses on the patterns of thought involved in forming and sustaining belief in such theories. Yet, unlike psychological approaches, a procedural approach provides a rational critique (...) of conspiracist thought patterns. In particular, it criticises these thought patterns for failing to conform to procedures prescribed by reason. The specific procedural approach that I develop takes its cue from the Kantian notion that reason must be used self-critically. I tentatively suggest that conspiracy theorists fail to engage in the relevant sort of self-critique in at least three ways: they do not critically examine their own motivations, they avoid looking at matters from the point of view of others, and they fail to reflect on the limits of human knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself from an obligation, it would be impossible (...) to violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their coherence, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

The Problem of Obligation is the problem of how to explain the features of moral obligations that distinguish them from other normative phenomena. Two recent accounts, the Second-Personal Account and the Relational Account, propose superficially similar solutions to this problem. Both regard obligations as based on the claims or legitimate demands that persons as such have on one another. However, unlike the Second-Personal Account, the Relational Account does not regard these claims as based in persons’ authority to address them. Advocates (...) of the Relational Account accuse the Second-Personal Account of falling prey to the Problem of Antecedence. According to this objection, the Second-Personal Account is committed to the implausible claim that we have an obligation to φ only if, and because, others demand that we φ. Since the Relational Account’s proposed solution to the Problem of Obligation does not face the Problem of Antecedence, its advocates argue that it is dialectically superior to the Second-Personal Account. In this paper, I defend the Second-Personal Account by arguing that, first, the Relational Account does not actually solve the Problem of Obligation and, second, the Second-Personal Account does not fall prey to the Problem of Antecedence. (shrink)

Although mindfulness research has burgeoned, questions regarding the development of mindfulness remain largely unanswered. Mindfulness correlates negatively with the anxiety and avoidance dimensions of adult attachment and positively with autonomy, competence, and relatedness, the three primary psychological needs postulated by self-determination theory. It was hypothesized that secure attachment style and autonomy orientation would predict higher levels of self-reported mindfulness. After accounting for age, state self-esteem, and meditation practice, autonomy orientation predicted higher levels of self-reported mindfulness whereas secure attachment was no (...) longer related to mindfulness. State self-esteem was found to be an important variable in understanding mindfulness. Results suggest mindfulness might be an innate construct that can be developed over time and enhanced by practice. Further, autonomy orientation and high self-esteem may foster the development of mindfulness in those with little to no meditation/mindfulness practice. Additional research is needed to clarify the roles of autonomy, attachment style, and self-esteem in the development of mindfulness. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop ideas about robustness analyses. I introduce a form of robustness analysis that I call sufficient parameter robustness, which has been neglected in the literature. I claim that sufficient parameter robustness is different from derivational robustness, the focus of previous research. My purpose is not only to suggest a new taxonomy of robustness, but also to argue that previous authors have concentrated on a narrow sense of robustness analysis, which they have inadequately distinguished (...) from other investigations of models such as sensitivity analysis. (shrink)

We examined cynicism as a mediator of the influence of managers’ mission-congruent communication and behavior about ethical standards (a form of supervisory behavioral integrity) on employee attitudes and intended behavior. Results indicated that cynicism partially mediates the relationship between supervisory behavioral integrity and organizational commitment, but not the relationship between supervisory behavioral integrity and intent to comply with organizational expectations for employee conduct.

There appear to be no biological regularities that have the properties traditionally associated with laws, such as an unlimited scope or holding in all or many possible background conditions. Mitchell, Lange, and others have therefore suggested redefining laws to redeem the lawlike status of biological regularities. These authors suggest that biological regularities are lawlike because they are pragmatically or paradigmatically similar to laws or stable regularities. I will review these re-definitions by arguing both that there are difficulties in applying their (...) accounts to biology and difficulties in the accounts themselves, which suggests that the accounts are not adequate to redeem the lawlike status of biological regularities. Finally, I will suggest a new account of laws that also shows how non-laws might function in some of the roles of laws. (shrink)

According to Darwall’s Second-Personal Account, moral obligations constitutively involve relations of authority and accountability between persons. Darwall takes this account to lend support to Kant’s moral theory. Critics object that the Second-Personal Account abandons central tenets of Kant’s system. I respond to these critics’ three main challenges by showing that they rest on misunderstandings of the Second-Personal Account. Properly understood, this account is not only congenial to Kant’s moral theory, but also illuminates aspects of that theory which have hitherto received (...) scant attention. In particular, it motivates a fresh perspective on the relationship between respect, persons, and the law. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRecent work investigated the inter-individual functions of emotional tears in depth. In one study. What emotional tears convey: Tearful individuals are seen as warmer, but also as less competent. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 146–160. Https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12162) tearful individuals were rated as warmer, and participants expressed more intentions to approach and help such individuals. Simultaneously, tearful individuals were rated as less competent, and participants expressed less intention to work with the depicted targets. While tearful individuals were perceived as sadder, perceived (...) sadness mediated only the effect on competence, but not on warmth. We argue that tearful individuals might be perceived as warm because they are perceived as feeling moved and touched. We ran a pre-registered extended replication of Van de Ven et al. Results replicate the warmth and helping findings, but not the competence and work effe... (shrink)

A questionnaire was used to assess people's attitudes toward 33 species of animals on six dimensions . A cluster analysis resulted in five groups of animals with similar ratings on these dimensions. Respondents were also asked about their attitudes toward hunting, fishing, and medical, scientific and product-testing research using animals.

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have sufficient conceptual resources to reconcile the normative significance of commitments with their alleged fundamentally volitional character. I suggest an alternative, second-personal account of commitment, which avoids this problem. On this account, the volitional act involved in committing is (...) one of holding ourselves accountable, thus putting us under to a pro tanto obligation to ourselves. The second-personal account implies that there is an interesting link between commitment and morality. (shrink)

With the emergence of large digitized collections of historical texts, scholarship in the humanities has increasingly turned to studying texts as data. This article argues that seeing text as data is particularly apt for the study of conceptual history. The quantitative perspective allows for rethinking the analytical terminology used to study the transformation of political and social terminology. Further, quantitative conceptual history requires re-evaluation on four levels. First, it forces scholars of conceptual history to reconsider the role of reception in (...) the spread and lexicalization of linguistic innovations. Second, it forces them to assess how to interpret quantitative analyses of linguistic change. Third, the use of quantitative methods calls for clarity in describing what is being measured and what is being interpreted based on quantitative analyses. Fourth, the use of machine-learning methods for conceptual history should remain careful. They can be very useful for exploration, but should be combined with count-based methods to provide concrete proof. (shrink)

Kant takes the idea of autonomy of the will to be his distinctive contribution to moral philosophy. However, this idea is more nuanced and complicated than one might think. In this chapter, I sketch the rough outlines of Kant’s idea of autonomy of the will while also highlighting contentious exegetical issues that give rise to various possible interpretations. I tentatively defend four basic claims. First, autonomy primarily features in Kant’s account of moral agency, as the condition of the possibility of (...) moral obligation. Second, autonomy amounts to a metaphysical property as well as a normative principle and a psychological capacity. Third, although there is legitimate scholarly disagreement about whether or not autonomy involves self-legislation of the moral law, there is good reason to believe it underwrites an ‘inside-out’ (as opposed to ‘outside-in’) conception of the relationship between the will and moral requirements. Fourth, persons have dignity because their autonomy makes them members in the set of beings over whom the categorical imperative requires us to universalise our maxims, not because autonomy is an independently important property. (shrink)

Nursing Ethics is a comprehensive, well-written text that provides pre-licensure nursing students with an understanding of ethical issues in the current healthcare climate and underscores the many ways in which ethics affects all levels of nursing care. Divided into three sections - Foundational Theories, Concepts and Professional Issues; Moving into Ethics Across the Lifespan; and Ethics Related to Special Issues - the current edition seamlessly aligns with the cornerstones of the nursing curriculum, providing a solid ethical foundation for pre-licensure nursing (...) students and making it a perfect fit for almost any course. (shrink)

We critically analyze Alexander Rosenberg’s argument based on the multiple realizability of biological properties that there are no biological laws. The argument is intuitive and suggestive. Nevertheless, a closer analysis reveals that the argument rests on dubious assumptions about the nature of natural selection, laws of nature, and multiple realizability. We also argue that the argument is limited in scope, since it applies to an outmoded account of laws and the applicability of the argument to other more promising accounts of (...) laws is questionable. Another concern of ours is that the relation between multiple realizability and natural selection is more complex than Rosenberg acknowledges. Finally, we claim that an explanation for why Rosenberg’s argument appears persuasive and appealing is that the argument is based on an inflated concept of multiple realizability that rests on unreliable intuitions concerning what counts as a different realization of the same property. Consequently, we argue that the argument is at best inconclusive and at worst false insofar as its implications for the existence of biological laws are concerned. (shrink)

BackgroundDeveloping a comprehensive, reproducible literature search is the basis for a high-quality systematic review (SR). Librarians and information professionals, as expert searchers, can improve the quality of systematic review searches, methodology, and reporting. Likewise, journal editors and authors often seek to improve the quality of published SRs and other evidence syntheses through peer review. Health sciences librarians contribute to systematic review production but little is known about their involvement in peer reviewing SR manuscripts.MethodsThis survey aimed to assess how frequently librarians (...) are asked to peer review systematic review manuscripts and to determine characteristics associated with those invited to review. The survey was distributed to a purposive sample through three health sciences information professional listservs.ResultsThere were 291 complete survey responses. Results indicated that 22% (n = 63) of respondents had been asked by journal editors to peer review systematic review or meta-analysis manuscripts. Of the 78% (n = 228) of respondents who had not already been asked, 54% (n = 122) would peer review, and 41% (n = 93) might peer review. Only 4% (n = 9) would not review a manuscript. Respondents had peer reviewed manuscripts for 38 unique journals and believed they were asked because of their professional expertise. Of respondents who had declined to peer review (32%, n = 20), the most common explanation was “not enough time” (60%, n = 12) followed by “lack of expertise” (50%, n = 10).The vast majority of respondents (95%, n = 40) had “rejected or recommended a revision of a manuscript| after peer review. They based their decision on the “search methodology” (57%, n = 36), “search write-up” (46%, n = 29), or “entire article” (54%, n = 34). Those who selected “other” (37%, n = 23) listed a variety of reasons for rejection, including problems or errors in the PRISMA flow diagram; tables of included, excluded, and ongoing studies; data extraction; reporting; and pooling methods.ConclusionsDespite being experts in conducting literature searches and supporting SR teams through the review process, few librarians have been asked to review SR manuscripts, or even just search strategies; yet many are willing to provide this service. Editors should involve experienced librarians with peer review and we suggest some strategies to consider. (shrink)

This article traces the moral economy of provincial elites who contributed to economic societies that were active in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Northern Europe. Such societies aimed at improving economic conditions in their respective cities, regions, or countries by advocating progressive methods of agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce. The commitment of members of these societies was not explicitly motivated by economic gains, but by a more complex system of beliefs fueled by the love of their country and the promotion of the (...) common good. The unselfish exploration of new means of production and commercial activity was at the heart of forming a moral economy of trust that guided cooperation within the societies. This moral economy was not subordinate to market rationality, but served as a foundation upon which trust between members was based. Especially in times of crises, as illustrated by the case of Carl Christian Böcker, secretary of the Finnish Economic Society, members could fall.. (shrink)

The most prominent theories of rights, the Will Theory and the Interest Theory, notoriously fail to accommodate all and only rights-attributions that make sense to ordinary speakers. The Kind-Desire Theory, Leif Wenar’s recent contribution to the field, appears to fare better in this respect than any of its predecessors. The theory states that we attribute a right to an individual if she has a kind-based desire that a certain enforceable duty be fulfilled. A kind-based desire is a reason to want (...) something which one has simply in virtue of being a member of a certain kind. Rowan Cruft objects that this theory creates a puzzle about the relation between rights and respect. In particular, if rights are not grounded in aspects of the particular individuals whose rights they are, how can we sustain the intuitive notion that to violate a right is to disrespect the right-holder? I present a contractualist account of respect which reconciles the Kind-Desire Theory with the intuition that rights-violations are disrespectful. On this account, respect for a person is a matter of acknowledging her legitimate authority to make demands on the will and conduct of others. And I argue that kind-based desires authorize a person to make demands even if they do not correspond to that person’s well-being or other non-relational features. (shrink)

_Nietzsche and Philosophy_ has long been recognized as one of the most important accounts of Nietzsche's philosophy, acclaimed for its rare combination of scholarly rigour and imaginative interpretation. Yet this is more than a major work on Nietzsche: the book opened a whole new avenue in post-war thought. Here Deleuze shows how Nietzsche began a new way of thinking which breaks with the dialectic as a method and escapes the confines of philosophy itself.

Called by many France's foremost philosopher, Gilles Deleuze is one of the leading thinkers in the Western World. His acclaimed works and celebrated collaborations with Félix Guattari have established him as a seminal figure in the fields of literary criticism and philosophy. The long-awaited publication of _What is Philosophy?_ in English marks the culmination of Deleuze's career. Deleuze and Guattari differentiate between philosophy, science, and the arts, seeing as means of confronting chaos, and challenge the common view that philosophy is (...) an extension of logic. The authors also discuss the similarities and distinctions between creative and philosophical writing. Fresh anecdotes from the history of philosophy illuminate the book, along with engaging discussions of composers, painters, writers, and architects. A milestone in Deleuze's collaboration with Guattari, _What is Philosophy?_ brings a new perspective to Deleuze's studies of cinema, painting, and music, while setting a brilliant capstone upon his work. (shrink)

Well known is the fact that Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy I, published in 1913, made a strong disappointment in the phenomenological circle around Husserl, and started a reinterpretation of the husserlian phenomenology. The problem of the constitution was a real dilemma for the studentship of Munich — Göttingen. More of Husserl’s students from his Göttingen years reflected in the 1930th on the transcendental idealism, which they originated from the Ideas and found fulfilled in Husserl’s (...) Cartesian Meditations and Formal and transzendental Logic. The remarkable similarity between these papers is the questioning on being incorporated in the problematic of the method in the husserlian phenomenology. But this parallelism in the problem reveals the origin of the religious phenomenon in the husserlian phenomenology as well. Adolf Reinach’s religious terms as gratitude, charity, etc. in his religious Notes, Heidegger’s notion of being as finiteness in Being and Time, Edith Stein’s concept about the finite and eternal being in Finite and Eternal Being are originating in the problem of constitution in the transcendental phenomenology on the one hand, but these phenomenon point at the constitution theologically. In my paper I would like to show the relationship between the critique on the husserlian transcendental idealism and the roots of the experience of religious life by the phenomenological problem of being especially at Edith Stein. (shrink)

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being (...) in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity. (shrink)

The exceptional intellectual richness of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran is epitomised by the philosophical school of Isfahan, and in particular by its ostensible founder, Mir Damad (d. 1631), and his great student Mulla Sadra (aka Sadr al-Din Shirazi, d. 1636). Equally important to the school is the apophatic wisdom of Rajab 'Ali Tabrizi that followed later (d. 1669/70). However, despite these philosophers' renown, the identification of the 'philosophical school of Isfahan' was only proposed in 1956, by the celebrated French Iranologist Henry (...) Corbin, who noted the unifying Islamic Neoplatonist character of some 20 thinkers and spiritual figures; this grouping has subsequently remained unchallenged for some fifty years. In this highly original work, Janis Esots investigates the legitimacy of the term 'school', delving into the complex philosophies of these three major Shi'i figures and drawing comparisons between them. The author makes the case that Mulla Sadra's thought is independent and actually incompatible with the thoughts of Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi. This not only presents a new way of thinking about how we understand the 'school of Isfahan', it also identifies Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi as pioneers in their own right. (shrink)

This short thesis contains many philosophical and mystical views of Mulla Sadra. He has divided this book into forty chapters and presented the basis of his philosophical views in it. Among these views are Divine Essence and Attributes, the Reality of "being", creation and its stages, the spiritual journey and a discussion of the effects of love.In the first chapter, Mulla Sadra explicated the meaning and the definition of "being". He asserted that being is an external reality which has true (...) existence. All other things except for attributes and their relations do not have true existence. Mulla Sadra based this view on the "principality of being" and the "unity of being". Before reaching this conclusion, Mulla Sadra takes into account the views of Ibn Sina and Aristotle, but his true inspiration and teachings are rooted in the great gnostic, Ibn Arabi.Mulla Sadra agreed with the Peripatetic and the Illuminationist Philosophers on the order of creation and creation itself. He believed that God Almighty first created a divine "united essence" and out of it came "Intelligible substances" which are the cause for the celestial soul and the noble bodies. Sheikh al- Ishraq pays a lot of attention to the issue of celestial bodies and soul. The other mystical issue of this thesis is the spiritual journey. The thing that Mulla Sadra is most concerned with is the first of the four journeys in his celebrated book,AL-Asfar The journeys of the servant to the Creator and the journey of the devoted to the One who is worthy of love. (shrink)

Mullā ‘Alī Nūrī was an indispensable link in the transmission ofMullā Sadrā’s teachings and an important commentator of his works.In my article, I’ll focus on one of them – a short treatise, entitled“Basīt al-haqīqa wa wahdat al-wujūd,” which deals with the modes ofthingness and existence in general, and the socalled“illuminative relation” in particular.The most significant statements Nūrī makes in this brief work consistin the identification of thingness with existence and the “breath of theMerciful” with the “illuminative relation”. I intendto examine (...) these two important points and the employedargumentation in detail, showing how Nūrī exploited some ideas,current in the Kalām and theoretical Sufism, to the benefit of thedoctrine of Mullā Sadrā. (shrink)

Ahmad S. Dallal’s book is an informative and easily readable study of the thought of six leading twelfth/eighteenth century Muslim scholars. The author treats these scholars as the representatives of distinct intellectual trends of Islamic thought in the premodern period, while asserting that they belonged to the same thought-world and focused on the value of the present and the study of the ḥadīth. The monograph is a valuable contribution to the subject that is likely to cater to the needs of (...) graduate students. (shrink)

While offering a public welcome of communicative participation, a communicative dark side of the moderate Enlightenment project emerged. Moderate Enlightenmentrsquo;s corollary companion to wresting power from a limited few is the staggering sense of confidence in the universal ground of assurance that is ldquo;bad faithrdquo; mdash;we fib to ourselves that we can stand above history and affect the future. Absolute conviction of universal access to truth propels through methodological confidence, undergirding the era of ldquo;the rationalrdquo; pursuit of truth, transporting the (...) individual into an ethereal delusionmdash;that one can stand above the historical moment of engagement and cast judgment. This essay calls into question the common assumption that communication begins with the individual. We offer a critique of this assumption in accordance with radical enlightenment scholarship, calling forth a return to Otherness that renders the construct of individual secondary to that which is met.br /. (shrink)

This thesis provides a restatement of Kantian constructivism, with the aim of avoiding some of the objections and clearing up some of the ambiguities that have haunted previous versions of the view. I restate Kantian constructivism as the view that morality’s normativity has its source in the form of second-personal reasoning, a mode of practical reasoning in which we engage when we address demands person-to-person. By advancing a position about the source of moral normativity, Kantian constructivism addresses a metaethical question, (...) albeit one that is distinct from the questions that many traditional metaethical positions, such as moral realism, focus on. Kantian constructivism has an advantage over competing views of the source of moral normativity when it comes to answering the so-called Normative Question, which I interpret as the question of why we are rationally required to do what we take to be our moral obligation. Kantian constructivism can answer this question because, unlike its competitors, it does not conceive of practical reason as a receptive faculty that is determined by external inputs. Instead, it regards the very form of second-personal reasoning as grounding the fact that morality is normative, thus explaining morality’s rational authority. Although second-personal reasoning is fundamentally distinct from the merely first-personal mode of reasoning that we must engage in insofar as we are agents, all those agents whom we would ordinarily consider bound by moral obligations seem to engage in it. Indeed, although it involves irreducibly second-personal notions, such as accountability and the authority to address legitimate demands, second-personal reasoning is not to be mistaken for a social practice. Instead, it can be applied to purely self-regarding contexts, such as that of committing oneself to a personal project and thereby holding oneself accountable for pursuing it, as well as to interactions with others. (shrink)