According to the standard objection, Kantian constructivism implicitly commits to value realism or fails to warrant objective validity of normative propositions. This paper argues that this objection gains some force from the special case of moral obligations. The case largely rests on the assumption that the moral domain is an eminent domain of special objects. But for constructivism there is no moral domain of objects prior to and independently of reasoning. The argument attempts to make some progress in the debate (...) by defending a robust conception of construction, which names a distinctive view of practical reasoning as transformative. (shrink)

According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is the recognition of others, and this is the experience of loving attention. Love is an independent source of moral authority, distinct from the authority of reason. It is independent because it can be attained through moral experiences that are not certified by reason and cannot be achieved by rational deliberation. This view of love calls into question a cluster of concepts, such as rational agency and principled action, which figure prominently (...) in the Kantian characterization of the moral experience and resound through Kant’s account of virtue as an endured but never-ending struggle. But it would be a mistake to conclude that Murdoch’s philosophical project opposes Kant’s without further qualifications. In this chapter, I illustrate some convergence between Kant and Murdoch at the methodological level, in their polemic against reductivism. They both oppose reductivist empiricism on epistemological and moral grounds, because they define the standard of proof in relation to the experience of morality. In Murdoch’s words, the philosophical proof, if there is one, is the same as the moral proof (Murdoch 1997: 361). This is where Kant and Murdoch part ways. While Kant argues that the moral experience is the experience of the impact of reason, which provides self-discipline by constraint, Murdoch holds that the moral standard of proof is love. The transformative power of love allows us to engage with reality and recognize others for what they are, that in which consists the primal moral experience. Murdoch’s argument against Kant’s appeal to principles brings to the fore a crucial issue, which concerns the source of moral authority and the possibility of practical reason. Some of her most popular arguments against Kant are based on an oversimplified view of the impact of reason in moral life, and perhaps they owe part of their fortune to this oversimplification. I shall argue that such arguments miss their intended target, but I also hope to show that Murdoch sketches a distinctive model of the moral proof, which establishes a genuine alternative both to theories of practical reason and to reductivist accounts of the mind and its activities. (shrink)

According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is loving attention. Her view calls into question the Kantian account of the standard of moral authority, and ultimately denies that reason might provide moral discernment, validate moral experience or drive us toward moral progress. Like Kant, Murdoch defines the moral experience as the subjective experience of freedom, which resists any reductivist approach. Unlike Kant, she thinks that this free agency is unprincipled. Some of her arguments are based on an oversimplified (...) account of Kant’s theory of reflective agency and discount the discipline of reason, thereby nullifying its practical import. However, Murdoch’s work offers a distinctive view of the standard of proof as a ‘moral proof’, which rehabilitates the transformative power of love and represents a genuine alternative to theories of practical reason as well as to reductivist empiricist views of the mind. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 646-663, September 2021.

On Kant's view, the feeling of respect is the mark of moral agency, and is peculiar to us, animals endowed with reason. Unlike any other feeling, respect originates in the contemplation of the moral law, that is, the idea of lawful activity. This idea works as a constraint on our deliberation by discounting the pretenses of our natural desires and demoting our selfish maxims. We experience its workings in the guise of respect. Respect shows that from the agent's subjective perspective, (...) morality is the experience of being bound and necessitated, but also of being free and emancipated from inclinations. (shrink)

According to a widely accepted philosophical model, agent-regret is practically significant and appropriate when the agent committed a mistake, or she faced a conflict of obligations. I argue that this account misunderstands moral phenomenology because it does not adequately characterize the object of agent-regret. I suggest that the object of agent-regret should be defined in terms of valuable unchosen alternatives supported by reasons. This model captures the phenomenological varieties of regret and explains its practical significance for the agent. My contention (...) is that agent-regret is a mode of valuing: a way in which the agent expresses and confers value. (shrink)

According to a traditional account, moral cognition is an achievement gained over time by sharing a practice under the guidance and the example of the wise, in analogy with craft and apprenticeship. This model captures an important feature of practical reason, that is, its incompleteness, and highlights our dependence on others in obtaining moral knowledge, coherently with the socially extended mind agenda and recent findings in empirical psychology. However, insofar as it accords to exemplars’ decisive authority to determine the standard (...) of correctness for moral cognition, the model does not offer protection against arbitrariness and discrimination. The article argues that to understand the socially distributed nature of practical knowledge, we have to discard the notion of exemplars and reconceive of others as having equal normative standing. This claim allows us to revisit the conception of autonomy as key to distributed practical knowledge. While autonomy does not amount to selfsufficiency and self-reliance, it does demand independence of judgement and stands in contrast to servility, submission, and other sorts of defective ways of relying on others. The requirement of equal standing provides the basis for distinguishing between proper and improper reliance on others. Keywords: autonomy, Aristotle, exemplarism, extended mind, constructivism, practical knowledge, equal standing. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen and J. Raz object that Constructivism is incoherent because it crucially deploys unconstructed elements in the structure of justification. This paper offers a response on behalf of constructivism, by reassessing the role of such unconstructed elements. First, it argues that a shared conception of rational agency works as a starting point for the justification, but it does not play a foundational role. Second, it accounts for the unconstructed norms that constrains the activity of construction as constitutive norms. (...) Finally, on this basis, it draws a contrast between constructivist and foundational methods of ethics, such as deontology and teleology. (shrink)

Some philosophers object that Kant's respect cannot express mutual recognition because it is an attitude owed to persons in virtue of an abstract notion of autonomy and invite us to integrate the vocabulary of respect with other persons-concepts or to replace it with a social conception of recognition. This paper argues for a dialogical interpretation of respect as the key-mode of recognition of membership in the moral community. This interpretation highlights the relational and practical nature of respect, and accounts for (...) its governing role over other persons-regarding concepts. (shrink)

On Kant's view, the feeling of respect is the mark of moral agency, and is peculiar to us, animals endowed with reason. Unlike any other feeling, respect originates in the contemplation of the moral law, that is, the idea of lawful activity. This idea works as a constraint on our deliberation by discounting the pretenses of our natural desires and demoting our selfish maxims. We experience its workings in the guise of respect. Respect shows that from the agent's subjective perspective, (...) morality is the experience of being bound and necessitated, but also of being free and emancipated from inclinations.Respect is a feeling that is generated by the agent's reflection on the nature of her own agency. It is not directed to anybody in particular, but to the very idea of rational agency, which is characterized by self-mastery and self-legislation. Contrary to animals, we do not derive our ends from nature, but we are capable of setting ends of our own, by exercising practical reason, that is, by engaging in the activity of law making. (shrink)

Some moral claims strike us as objective. It is often argued that this shows morality to be objective. Moral experience – broadly construed – is invoked as the strongest argument for moral realism, the thesis that there are moral facts or properties.See e.g. Jonathan Dancy, “Two conceptions of Moral Realism,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 60 : 167–187. Realists, however, cannot appropriate the argument from moral experience. In fact, constructivists argue that to validate the ways we experience the objectivity of (...) moral claims, realism must be rejected.Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity . There is a general agreement that ethical theory bears the burden of proof of explaining the objective-seeming features of our moral experience.While disputing objectivity, antirealists commit themselves to account for the objectivist pretensions of moral claims. Anti-realists agree with the traditional view that moral experie .. (shrink)

Should officeholders be held individually responsible for submitting to systemically corrupt institutional practices? We draw a structural analogy between individual action under coercive threat and individual participation in systemic corruption, and we argue that officeholders who submit to corrupt institutional practices are not excused by the existence of a systemic coercive threat. Even when they have good personal reasons to accept the threat, they remain individually morally assessable and, in the circumstances, they are also individually blameworthy for actions performed in (...) their institutional capacity. (shrink)

This article argues that immoralists do not fully enjoy autonomous agency because they are not capable of engaging in the proper form of practical reflection, which requires relating to others as having equal standing. An adequate diagnosis of the immoralist’s failure of agential authority requires a relational account of reflexivity and autonomy. This account has the distinctive merit of identifying the cost of disregarding moral obligations and of showing how immoralists may become susceptible to practical reason. The compelling quality of (...) reason should not be represented as the capacity to force them to abide by morality on pain of incoherence. Rather, its authority (and objectivity) is shown when it presents them with the prospect of a transition that makes sense for them to undertake. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, they are not fixed by normative facts that are independent of what rational agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. The appeal of this view lies in the promise to explain how normative truths are objective and independent of our actual judgments, while also binding and authoritative for us. -/- Constructivism comes in several varieties, some of which claim a place within metaethics while others claim (...) no place within it at all. In fact, constructivism is sometimes defended as a normative theory about the justification of moral principles. Normative constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical or idealized process of rational deliberation. -/- Metaethical constructivist theories aim to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. They bear a problematic relation to traditional classifications of metaethical theories. In particular, there are disagreements about how to situate constructivism in the realism/antirealism debate. These disagreements are rooted in further differences about the definition of metaethics, the relation between normative and metaethical claims, and the purported methods pertinent and specific to metaethical inquiry. The question of how to classify metaethical constructivism will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories have been designed to answer. Section 1 explains the origin and motivation of constructivism. Sections 2–4 examine the main varieties of metaethical constructivism. Section 5 illustrates related constructivist views, some of which are not proposed as metaethical accounts of all normative truths, but only of moral truths. Sections 6 and 7 review several debates about the problems, promise and prospects of metaethical constructivism. (shrink)

Humean constructivists object to Kantian constructivism that by endorsing the constitutivist strategy, which grounds moral obligations in rational agency, this position discounts the impact of cont...

This paper argues that to understand the varieties of wrongs done in coercion, we should examine the dynamic normative relation that the coercer establishes with the coerced. The case rests on a critical examination of coercion by threat, which is proved irreducible to psychological inducement by overwhelming motives, obstruction of agency by impaired consent or deprivation of genuine choice. In contrast to physical coercion, coercion by threat requires the coercee’s participation in deliberation to succeed. For this kind of coercion to (...) be successful, there must be a normative relation established by the coercer and the coercee, in which they recognize each other as rational agents. In such cases, the coercee is wronged in the exercise of her deliberative powers. As a consequence, this form of coercion does not cancel the coercee’s moral responsibility for coerced action. Reclaiming the coercee’s responsibility for action under threat does not diminish the visibility and gravity of the coercer’s wrongdoing. On the contrary, it allows us to capture some features of the coercive relation that otherwise remain unfocused and thus identify the distinctive ways in which the coercee is wronged. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral distress is a distinctive category of reactive attitudes that are taken to be part and parcel of the social dynamics for recognition. While moral distress does not demonstrate evidence of wrongdoing, it does emotionally articulate a demand for normative attention that is addressed to others as moral providers. The argument for this characterization of the deontic power of moral distress builds upon two examples in which the cognitive value of the victim’s emotional experience is controversial: (...) the case of micro-aggression, and the case of misplaced distress. In contrast to appraisal and perceptual models of distress, it is argued that its epistemic and normative value is dialogical rather than evidential, in that it presses claims that engage the audience in a normative discussion about the normative standing of the claimant, the proper grounds of the attitude, and the normative standards used to assess them. (shrink)

In his original essay, The Form of Practical Knowledge, Stephen Engstrom argues for placing Kant’s ethics in the tradition of practical cognitivism. My remarks are intended to highlight the merits of his interpretation in contrast to intuitionism and constructivism, understood as ways of appropriating Kant’s legacy. In particular, I will focus on two issues: first, the special character of practical knowledge—as opposed to theoretical knowledge and craft expertise; and second, the apparent tension between the demands of morality and the requirements (...) of instrumental reason, when this is understood as driven by concerns for happiness, prudence, and personal integrity. (shrink)

Constructivism in ethics is the view that insofar as there are normative truths, for example, truths about what we ought to do, they are in some sense determined by an idealized process of rational deliberation, choice, or agreement. As a “first-order moral account”--an account of which moral principles are correct-- constructivism is the view that the moral principles we ought to accept or follow are the ones that agents would agree to or endorse were they to engage in a hypothetical (...) or idealized process of rational deliberation. As a “metaethical account” – an account of whether there are any normative truths and, if so, what they are like – constructivism holds that there are normative truths. These truths are not fixed by facts that are independent of the practical standpoint, however characterized; rather, they are constituted by what agents would agree to under some specified conditions of choice. In working to provide a more precise definition of constructivism in metaethics, the focus of this entry, one faces two main difficulties. The first difficulty is that constructivism comes in several varieties, each of which claims a different niche within metaethics, and some claim no space at all. The second difficulty concerns where to place constructivism on the metaethical map in relation to realism and anti-realism. These are terms of art, and it is highly contested which views count as realist and which as antirealist. These two difficulties will be addressed in what follows by focusing on the distinctive questions that constructivist theories are designed to answer. Section §1 defines the scope of constructivism in ethics, in contrast to constructivism in political theory. Sections §§2-5 illustrate the main varieties of metaethical constructivism, which are designed to account for the nature of normative truths and practical reasons. Section §6 presents the main varieties of constructivist accounts of the justification of moral judgments of right and wrong. Section §7 discusses the metaethical status of constructivism, and its distinctive import. (shrink)

This paper examines Moran’s argument for the special authority of the first-person, which revolves around the Self/Other asymmetry and grounds dichotomies such as the practical vs. theoretical, activity vs. passivity, and justificatory vs. explanatory reasons. These dichotomies qualify the self-reflective person as an agent, interested in justifying her actions from a deliberative stance. The Other is pictured as a spectator interested in explaining action from a theoretical stance. The self-reflective knower has authority over her own mental states, while the Spectator (...) does not. I highlight the implications of this construal for a theory of action, and call attention onto some other interesting normative relations between the self-reflective agent and the Other that escape both the first-person and the third-person approach. My contention is that the authority of self-reflection (and of reason) is best understood as a relation of mutual recognition between self and others, hence from a second-person stance. (shrink)

Are the emotions relevant for the theory of value and normativity? Is there a set of morally correct arrangements of emotions? Current debates are often structured as though there were only two theoretical options to approach these questions, a sentimentalist theory of some sort, which emphasizes the role of emotions in forming ethical behaviour and practical thought, and intellectualist rationalism, which denies that emotions can help at all in generating normativity and contributing to moral value, hence also denying that they (...) may have any role to play in moral agency and moral thinking. In what follows, I will offer a Kantian account of ‘practical reason’ as the seat of moral agency, which recognizes a diversified and complex relation between reason and sensibility. (shrink)

It is largely agreed that if constructivism contributes anything to meta-ethics it is by proposing that we understand ethical objectivity “in terms of a suitably constructed point of view that all can accept” (Rawls 1980/1999: 307). Constructivists defend this “practical” conception of objectivity in contrast to the realist or “ontological” conception of objectivity, understood as an accurate representation of an independent metaphysical order. Because of their objectivist but not realist commitments, Kantian constructivists place their theory “somewhere in the space between (...) realist and relativist accounts of ethics” (O’Neill 1988: 1). Furthermore, they argue that their practical conception of objectivity succeeds in making sense of certain features of morality, such as its categorical authority and its relation to rational agency, which escape rival theories (Korsgaard 1996b, Korsgaard 2003b). To this extent, constructivism claims a privileged place in meta-ethics. The legitimacy of this claim is widely challenged. Precisely because of its practical conception of objectivity, many – including some constructivists — regard constructivism as a first-order normative theory, rather than as a meta-ethical position, hence not on a par with realism. Some critics object that constructivism fails to offer a distinct meta-ethics because it is structurally incomplete and thus must be combined with a fully-fledged meta-ethics (Hussain and Shah 2006); others argue that it tacitly relies on realism (Timmons 2003; Shafer-Landau 2003; Larmore 2008). Thus far, the debate about the prospects of constructivism as a meta-ethical theory has been driven by the conviction that the case for or against constructivism depends on its ontological commitments. In this chapter, I propose a change in perspective. My aim is to defend constructivism as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. Its defining feature is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. By focusing on the issue of practical knowledge I hope to show that the difficulty in situating Kantian constructivism firmly on the meta-ethical map, along with other meta-ethical theories, reflects ambiguities and oscillations about the practical significance of ethics. Even though the term is ambiguous, I retain the qualification “Kantian” for the constructivist theory I outline, and for two reasons. First, while the theory I outline differs from current agnostic or anti-realist variants, it is closer to its origins, since Kant treats practical reason as a cognitive capacity and takes moral judgments to be objective moral cognitions, which importantly differ from other sorts of rational cognitions because they bind us in the first person. Practical cognitions are common knowledge because they are such that all subjects endowed with rationality can arrive at them by reasoning and find them authoritative. Thus understood, Kantian constructivism carves a distinct logical space in the meta-ethical debate that other sorts of constructivism fail to identify. This is the second reason for keeping the qualification “Kantian”. On this formulation, constructivism is antagonistic to non-cognitivist theories denying that moral judgments have cognitive contents, because they deny that there is something to be known; but it is also a rival to cognitivist theories denying that knowledge can be practical in itself. How constructivism differs over the realist theories of practical reason is the least understood aspect of this debate. This essay aims to make the case that practical reason is both discursive and emotional. In contrast to foundational and anti-realist accounts of practical reasoning, it attempts to show that the moral feeling of respect plays a cognitive but non-evidential role in the account of the cognitive and practical powers of reason. The argument proceeds as follows. In section 1, I consider some prominent constructivist arguments against the model of applied knowledge and show that they are driven by non-cognitivist assumptions about the practicality of ethics and the legitimacy of epistemological claims. In section 2, I argue that these arguments do not succeed in disposing of the idea of practical knowledge as incoherent, because they trade on an ambiguity regarding the proper object of practical knowledge. To solve this ambiguity, I turn to Anscombe’s contrast between “practical” and “speculative” knowledge as models for understanding action. I thus suggest that Anscombe’s account of practical knowledge as knowledge of oneself as an agent is an important resource for Kantian constructivism. This finding prompts us to reset the current dispute about the ontological and epistemological commitments of Kantian constructivism, as illustrated in section 3. While constructivism does not postulate any moral ontology prior to reasoning, it attributes to reasoning the cognitive powers to establish a distinctive relation between the agent and her action. The task of sections 4-7 is to account for the distinctive features of Kantian constructivism understood as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. In section 4, I argue that in order for reasoning to accomplish its normative tasks, it should be conceived as a self-legislating activity. I respond to some objections to the idea of self-legislation as the form of rational willing by offering a dialogical view of practical reason. In section 5, I propose a non-standard interpretation of Kant’s argument of “the fact of reason” to show that the constructivist account of self-legislation does not build on realism about value, as its detractors claim. The “basis of construction” is the subjective experience of respect for the self-legislative capacity itself. This moral feeling conveys our awareness of rational agency and shows our responsiveness to the demands of practical reason. It is an emotional mode of practical knowledge of oneself as an agent (in the sense specified in section 2), but not as a mode of moral discernment. In section 6, I show how practical knowledge of oneself as an agent relates to practical knowledge about what one ought to do. I thus account for the relation between respect as emotional moral consciousness and respect as a deliberative constraint. Finally, in section 7, I reply to the objection of subjectivism. I explain how the complex sort of objectivity that Kantian constructivism affords is at the same time more ambitious and more modest than is generally assumed. (shrink)

Ethical constructivism holds that truths about the relation between rationality, morality, and agency are best understood as constructed by correct reasoning, rather than discovered or invented. Unlike other metaphors used in metaethics, construction brings to light the generative and dynamic dimension of practical reason. On the resultant picture, practical reasoning is not only productive but also self-transforming, and socially empowering. The main task of this volume is to illustrate how constructivism has substantially modified and expanded the agenda of metaethics by (...) refocusing on rational agency and its constitutive principles. In particular, this volume identifies, compares and discusses the prospects and failures of the main strands of constructivism regarding the powers of reason in responding to the challenges of contingency. While Kantian, Humean, Aristotelian, and Hegelian theories sharply differ in their constructivist strategies, they provide compelling accounts of the rational articulation required for an inclusive and unified ethical community. (shrink)

According to Iris Murdoch, the chief experience in morality is loving attention. Her view calls into question the Kantian account of the standard of moral authority, and ultimately denies that reason might provide moral discernment, validate moral experience, or drive us toward moral progress. Like Kant, Murdoch defines the moral experience as the subjective experience of freedom, which resists any reductivist approach. Unlike Kant, she thinks that this free agency is unprincipled. Some of her arguments are based on an oversimplified (...) account of Kant’s theory of reflective agency and discount the discipline of reason, thereby nullifying its practical import. However, Murdoch’s work offers a distinctive view of the standard of proof as a “moral proof”, which rehabilitates the transformative power of love and represents a genuine alternative to theories of practical reason as well as to reductivist empiricist views of the mind. (shrink)

In symmetrical moral dilemmas, the agent faces a choice between two incompatible actions, which are equally justified on the basis of the same value. These cases are generally discounted as spurious or irrelevant on the assumption that, when there is no failure of commensurability, choice between symmetrical requirements is indifferent and can be determined by randomization. Alternatively, this article argues that the appeal to randomization allows the agent to overcome a deliberative impasse, but it does not really resolve the moral (...) dilemma. This is because randomization fails to provide the agent with a genuine reason for action. The argument is based on an account of arbitrariness as a threat to the agent’s authorship on action. By focusing on lack of authorship, rather than on failure of commensurability, we gain the adequate perspective to assess the philosophical significance of moral dilemmas, their impact on the agential integrity, and their consequences for ethical theory. (shrink)

In symmetrical moral dilemmas, the agent faces a choice between two incompatible actions, which are equally justified on the basis of the same value. These cases are generally discounted as spurious or irrelevant on the assumption that, when there is no failure of commensurability, choice between symmetrical requirements is indifferent and can be determined by randomization. Alternatively, this article argues that the appeal to randomization allows the agent to overcome a deliberative impasse, but it does not really resolve the moral (...) dilemma. This is because randomization fails to provide the agent with a genuine reason for action. The argument is based on an account of arbitrariness as a threat to the agent’s authorship on action. By focusing on lack of authorship, rather than on failure of commensurability, we gain the adequate perspective to assess the philosophical significance of moral dilemmas, their impact on the agential integrity, and their consequences for ethical theory. (shrink)

Gaslighting is a form of domination which builds upon multiple and mutually reinforcing strategies that induce rational acquiescence. Such abusive strategies progressively insulate the victims and inflict a loss in self-respect, with powerful alienating effects. In arguing for these claims, I reject the views that gaslighting is an epistemic or structural wrong, or a moral wrong of instrumentalization. In contrast, I refocus on personal addresses that use, affect, and distort the very practice of rational justification. Further, I argue that the (...) social dimension of gaslighting cannot be fully explained by reference to bare social structures because this compound wrong succeeds via emotional person-to-person addresses. Rational justification becomes, then, the locus where the struggle for power takes place. This struggle involves and is operated by not only victims and wrongdoers but also third parties. They are crucial actors in wrongdoing as well as in rescuing the victims and restoring their normative status. Ultimately, this study shows that the deontic structure of wrong is multifocal, and its relationality points to modes of epistemic and moral rehabilitation that are also modes of social empowerment. (shrink)

Are there such things as moral truths? How do we know what we should do? And does it matter? Constructivism states that moral truths are neither invented nor discovered, but rather are constructed by rational agents in order to solve practical problems. While constructivism has become the focus of many philosophical debates in normative ethics, meta-ethics and action theory, its importance is still to be fully appreciated. These new essays written by leading scholars define and assess this new approach in (...) ethics, addressing such questions as the nature of constructivism, how constructivism improves our understanding of moral obligations, how it accounts for the development of normative practices, whether moral truths change over time, and many other topics. The volume will be valuable for advanced students and scholars of ethics and all who are interested in questions about the foundation of morality. (shrink)

This chapter aims to situate Kant’s account of practical reason in metaethical debates. First, it explains the reasons why it is legitimate and instructive to discuss Kant’s relevance in contemporary metaethics, hence addressing some issues about the intended scope of metaethics and its relation to practical reason and psychology. Second, it defends an interpretation of Kant’s conception of autonomy, which avoids some paradoxes traditionally associated with self-legislation. Third, it shows that constructivism best captures Kant’s conception of practical reason and of (...) its authority. Kantian constructivism is defended as a self-standing metaethical theory, which is designed to account for the objectivity and unconditional authority of practical knowledge, on the basis of standards congruent with shared subjective experience. This version of constructivism, adopting a “dialogical” interpretation of the autonomy of rational will, explains how finite rational agents are obligated and bound by the moral law. (shrink)

What is their relation to practical rationality? Are they roots of our identity or threats to our autonomy? This volume is born out of the conviction that philosophy provides a distinctive approach to these problems.

The most distinctive feature of Murdoch's philosophical project is her attempt to reclaim the exploration of moral life as a legitimate topic of philosophical investigation. In contrast to the predominant focus on action and decision, she argues that “what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being” (AD 293).1 I shall argue that to (...) fully appreciate the novelty of this proposal we need to recognize some elements of continuity with analytic methods of philosophical inquiry and themes that belong to continental traditions. On Murdoch's view, the most important question facing moral philosophy is that of whether and how we can become better. In order to describe moral progress and failure, struggle and ascent, we need ethical concepts capable of capturing mental events such as change in mind, self-examination, and redescription. These concepts are presently unavailable, and this lack seriously undermines our attempts to understand the phenomena of morality. Because of this conceptual loss, we succumb to the mistaken idea that moral life coincides with its scattered outer manifestations, i.e. public acts. Instead, Murdoch urges us “the moral life […] is something that goes on continually, not something that is switched off in between the occurrence of explicit moral choices” (SG 37).2 Murdoch's point is that we need to conceive the locus of agency more broadly if we want to understand the complicated machinery of action. But perhaps more importantly, she points out that we may be morally active while entertaining a contemplative attitude, which does not issue in action. The grain of moral life, she argues, is constituted by the.. (shrink)

A constructivist defense of ethical objectivity in contrast to debunking arguments.

This article investigates the relation between complicity and moral responsibility.

: The purpose of this paper is to highlight some difficulties of Neil Sinhababu’s Humean theory of agency, which depend on his radically reductivist approach, rather than to his Humean sympathies. The argument is that Sinhababu’s theory builds upon a critique of reflective agency which is based on equivocation and misunderstandings of the Kantian approach. Ultimately, the objection is that his reductivist view is unequipped to address the rclassical problems of rational deliberation and agential authority. Keywords: Humean Theory; Rational Deliberation; (...) Agency; Authority; Christine Korsgaard Efficacia riflessiva Riassunto: Questo articolo mette in luce alcune difficoltà della teoria proposta da Neil Sinhababu, che dipendono daun approccio radicalmente riduttivista. Si argomenta che la teoria di Sinhababu è basata su alcuni fraintendimenti a proposito dell'approccio kantiano alla teoria dell'azione. L'obiezione fondamentale è che questa posizione riduttivista non riesce a rendere conto adeguatamente della deliberazione razionale e dell'autorità dell'agente. Parole chiave: Teoria humeana; Deliberazione razionale; Agentività; Autorità; Christine Korsgaard. (shrink)

The concept of reason is pervasive in our ordinary practices, but there is a large and divisive disagreement about their role in the foundation and explanation of morality. Such disagreement depends on three related issues, which concern the definition of “moral reasons,” their sources and functions. This chapter first takes into account material and formal definitions of moral reasons and clarifies the role of reasons in the explanation and justification of intentional action. Second, it addresses the source of reasons and (...) considers whether reasons are subjective or objective, personal or impersonal, and how they are related to the agent’s values, integrity, and authenticity. Moral theories differ in their account of the contents of moral reasons, but also in their epistemological account of how moral reasons are produced or recognized. Third, the chapter discusses the claim that morality is a cooperative enterprise, proposing an analysis of internalist and externalist accounts of reasons, and their prospects in addressing the phenomena of coordination and moral compliance. (shrink)

The perspective of deliberative choice is constitutively from here. This simple truth carries significant implications for our agency and integrity, some of which are the focus of Wallace's thought-provoking essay. Wallace is concerned with the discrepancy between our present attachments and the rational justification of past decisions, which threatens our personal and moral integrity. In what follows, I raise some questions about Wallace's claim that attachments make us immune to regret and, ultimately, about his account of the impact of contingency (...) in our practical thought. My argument revolves around two cases of immunity to regret, due to the agent's attachment to a ground project. Contrary to Wallace, I argue that in these cases the agent's inability to regret that things had not gone otherwise is neither unreasonable nor morally objectionable. (shrink)

This book explores the role of time in rational agency and practical reasoning. Agents are finite and often operate under severe time constraints. Action takes time and unfolds in time. While time is an ineliminable constituent of our experience of agency, it is both a theoretical and practical problem to explain whether and how time shapes rational agency and practical thought. The essays in this book are divided in three parts. Part I is devoted to the temporal structure of action (...) and agency, from metaphysical and metaethical perspectives. Part II features essays about the temporal structure of rational deliberation, from the perspective of action theory and theories of practical reasoning. Finally, Part III includes essays about to the temporal aspects of failures of rationality. Taken together, the essays in this book sheds new light on our understanding of the temporality of agency that coheres with our subjective sense of finitude and explains rational agency both in time and over time. Time in Action will be of interest to advanced students and researchers working on the philosophy of time, metaphysics of action, action, theory, practical reasoning, ethical theory, moral psychology, and rational justification. (shrink)

ValuingValuing is an important and ordinary endeavor, which pervades all our practices, activities, and institutions. The nature and criteria for valuing decisively depend on the alleged nature of values. First of all, are there values? If so, how to access them, and how do they inform our choices? Second, what kinds of value are there, and how do we identify them conceptually? Sections 1–2 identify these problems, which are the core of debates in meta-ethics and substantive theory, respectively. The criteria (...) for judging the adequacy of a theory ofValuetheory of value including the capacity for explaining phenomena, and the normative capacity to guide action, are highlighted in Sect. 3. Theories of values offer large varieties of answers to these questions, as we shall see in Sect. 4. Such theories are also supposed to account for phenomena such as the possibility of ineradicable disagreements of valueValuedisagreement, and explain their implications, which are addressed in Sect. 5. Some disagreements seem to depend on the incommensurabilityIncommensurability of valueValueincommensurability, which can be defined in different ways. The implications of such claim are examined in Sect. 6. In Sect. 7, we consider whether and how the incommensurability of values affects the rationality of choice. Section 8 deals with some crucial receptive modalities of relating to values: the emotionsEmotion. Section 9 concerns personsPerson as both bearers and sources of value. Finally, in Sect. 10, we consider various modes of valuing. (shrink)

This paper situates the problem of defeaters in a larger debate about the source of normative authority. It argues in favour of a constructivist account of defeasibility, which appeals to the justificatory role of normative principles. The argument builds upon the critique of two recent attempts to deal with defeasibility: first, a particularist account, which disposes of moral principles on the ground that reasons are holistic; and second, a proceduralist view, which addresses the problem of defeaters by distinguishing between provisional (...) and strictly universal principles. The particularist view fails to establish that moral principles have no epistemological import, but it raises important questions about their role in practical reasoning. The proceduralist view fails to distinguish between reasoning by default and reasoning by principles, but it shows that normative principles have a structural justificatory role. The constructivist view recognizes that the moral valence of normative claims vary across contexts, but denies that this is because of holism about reasons. Rather, it defends defeasibility within a constructivist account of reasoning where universality serves as the matrix of judgment. The constructivist view vindicates the justificatory role of universal normative principles, and makes room for some ordinary sources of defeasibility, which are left unaccounted by competing views, and which depend on the agent’s own progress. (shrink)

The articles of this volume address only some aspects of Nozick's philosophy: his conception of argument, knowledge, rationality, and identity. In examining Nozick's approach to these topics, one has to take issue, ultimately, with his peculiar conception of philosophy whose manifesto appears at the outset of Philosophical Explanations and is echoed in the introduction to philosophical method of Invariances . To transform philosophy into a science or build an impeccable deductive system was not Nozick's dream. He thought of philosophy as (...) aiming at explanation rather than proof. The goal in pursuing philosophy is not to establish one view, but to elaborate theories that can make us understand some phenomena better. (shrink)

A constructivist account of moral dilemmas and integrity.