The Normative Significance of Self

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 10 (1):1-25 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A number of recent works in the metaethics of practical rationality have suggested that features of a person’s character, commitments, projects, practical identities and social roles have important normative consequences. For instance, I might commit to caring for a loved one, or I might become an artist, or take on the role of father to a child. In each case, it seems right to say that the normative landscape I face has been altered by this new fact – to put them under one general heading, the new fact about my self. In this paper, I explore the normative significance of self and how best it is to be understood. Typically, views that posit the normative significance of self hold that the content of one’s self can create practical reasons to behave in particular ways. For instance, if I become a father, this means that there are additional reasons to care for my child than there were prior to this fact of self. I argue, however, that this suggestion cannot be plausibly sustained – facts of self do not give rise to practical reasons. I show that, while there are two ways that facts of self might give rise to or create new practical reasons, both succumb to very serious problems. However, or so I also argue, we can salvage the normative significance of self via an alternative mechanism. Facts of self, such as the fact that one is an artist or a father, do not create new reasons. Rather, they strengthen certain pre-existing reasons, viz., those reasons to which I am especially susceptible given this fact of self.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Motivating Reason to Slow the Factive Turn in Epistemology.J. Drake - forthcoming - In Veli Mitova (ed.), The Factive Turn in Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-22.
Rational Internalism.Samuel Asarnow - 2016 - Ethics 127 (1):147-178.
Desires, reasons, and causes. [REVIEW]Stephen Darwall - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2):436–443.
Normative requirements.John Broome - 1999 - Ratio 12 (4):398–419.
Reasons why in normative explanation.Pekka Väyrynen - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (6):607-623.
Reasons with rationalism after all.Michael Smith - 2009 - Analysis 69 (3):521-530.
Intention rationality.Michael E. Bratman - 2009 - Philosophical Explorations 12 (3):227-241.
Sources, reasons, and requirements.Bruno Guindon - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (5):1253-1268.
Unity of Reasons.Adam Cureton - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (4):877-895.
Revisionary dispositionalism and practical reason.H. Lillehammer - 2000 - The Journal of Ethics 4 (3):173-190.
Against Second‐Order Reasons.Daniel Whiting - 2017 - Noûs 51 (2):398-420.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-11-03

Downloads
74 (#203,119)

6 months
5 (#247,092)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Dale Dorsey
University of Kansas

Citations of this work

Add more citations

References found in this work

Ethics without principles.Jonathan Dancy - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Grounding practical normativity: going hybrid.Ruth Chang - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (1):163-187.
Existentialism Is a Humanism.Jean Paul Sartre - 2007 - Yale University Press.
Time, rationality and self-governance.Michael E. Bratman - 2012 - Philosophical Issues 22 (1):73-88.
Commitments, Reasons, and the Will.Ruth Chang - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 8.

View all 9 references / Add more references