There are two alternative approaches to accommodating an agent-centered restriction against, say, φ-ing. One approach is to prohibit agents from ever φ-ing. For instance, there could be an absolute prohibition against breaking a promise. The other approach is to require agents both to adopt an end that can be achieved only by their not φ-ing and to give this end priority over that of minimizing overall instances of φ-ing. For instance, each agent could be required both to (...) adopt the end of minimizing their own promise-breakings and to give this end priority over that of minimizing promise-breakings overall. The former is what I’ll call the side-constraint approach, and the latter is what I’ll call the teleological approach. In this chapter, I argue that, when it comes to accommodating restrictions, we should (1) favor the teleological approach over the side-constraint approach, (2) favor an act-consequentialist approach over a non-consequentialist, teleological approach (such as Rossian pluralism), and (3) favor a Kantsequentialist approach over other act-consequentialist approaches, where Kantsequentialism is a version of act-consequentialism that holds that persons are ends-in-themselves who are inherently and unconditionally valuable and are, thus, owed our respect. (shrink)

There is, on a given moral view, an agent-centered restriction against performing acts of a certain type if that view prohibits agents from performing an instance of that act-type even to prevent two or more others from each performing a morally comparable instance of that act-type. The fact that commonsense morality includes many such agent-centered restrictions has been seen by several philosophers as a decisive objection against consequentialism. Despite this, I argue that agent-centered restrictions (...) are more plausibly accommodated within a consequentialist framework than within the more standard side-constraint framework. For I argue that when we combine agent-relative consequentialism with a Kantian theory of value, we arrive at a version of consequentialism, which I call 'Kantsequentialism', that has several advantages over the standard side-constraint approach to accommodating constraints. What’s more, I argue that Kantsequentialism doesn’t have any of the disadvantages that critics of consequentializing have presumed that such a theory must have. (shrink)

The concept of feasibility has received a significant amount of scrutiny in recent years. Despite the diversity of accounts, all agree on the assumption that feasibility considerations have a practical function in guiding action. However, the two most important accounts (by Gilabert and Lawford-Smith, and by Wiens) seem to scarcely speak to this practical function because they provide a third-personal reconstruction of feasibility constraints. In this paper, I argue that, to understand feasibility constraints in a way that matters (...) for guiding action, we should switch from a third-personal to an agent-centered perspective. I show that relevant constraints can be Barriers, Limitations, Boundaries, and Rubber Walls to the extent that they concern nomic impossibilities (Barriers), resources (Limitations), agents’ abilities (Boundaries) or other people’s unwillingness (Rubber Walls). Understanding constraints through the lens of their qualitatively different natures opens the way for addressing the problem of how to respond to them. (shrink)

The dissertation puts forwards the theoretical foundations for an alternative to the traditional egoist interpretation of eudaimonism, the ethical theory associated with ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle. The first section builds a case for looking for such an alternative by arguing that the connection between egoism and eudaimonism posited by the traditional view is more complex than usually thought, and so requires more defense than usually thought. The second section suggests a way of generating a nonegoistic account. Characteristic claims (...) the eudaimonist makes about there being a single ultimate end to human action make sense if they are understood in light of what I call our `basic metaphysical position'. This position constitutes the framework within which action occurs for us, and generates rational constraints on the kinds of action we should perform. In particular, it captures a sense in which our position is fundamentally agent-centered. The final section discusses a dilemma faced by this agent-centered eudaimonism which makes its requirements seem excessively demanding. It is suggested that one way to overcome this dilemma emerges from a new reading of Aristotle's theory of the virtues. This strengthens the eudaimonist credentials of agent-centered eudaimonism. (shrink)

Common-sense morality includes various agent-centred constraints, including ones against killing unnecessarily and breaking a promise. However, it's not always clear whether, had an agent ϕ-ed, she would have violated a constraint. And sometimes the reason for this is not that we lack knowledge of the relevant facts, but that there is no fact about whether her ϕ-ing would have constituted a constraint-violation. What, then, is a constraint-accepting theory to say about whether it would have been permissible for (...) her to have ϕ-ed? In this paper, I canvass various possible approaches to answering this question and I argue that teleology offers the most plausible approach—teleology being the view that every act has its deontic status in virtue of how its outcome ranks, relative to those of its alternatives. So although, until recently, it had been thought that only deontological theories can accommodate constraints, it turns out that teleological theories not only can accommodate constraints, but can do so more plausibly than deontological theories can. (shrink)

Agent-centered constraints on harming hold that some harmful upshots of our conduct cannot be justified by its generating equal or somewhat greater benefits. In this paper I argue that all plausible theories of agent-centered constraints on harming are undermined by the likelihood that our actions will have butterfly effects, or cause cascades of changes that make the world dramatically different than it would have been. Theories that impose constraints against only intended harming or (...) proximally caused harm have unacceptable implications for choices between more and less harmful ways of securing greater goods. This leaves as plausible only theories that impose constraints against causing some unintended distal harms. But, I argue, given the distal harms our actions are likely to cause through their butterfly effects, these theories entail that any way of sustaining our lives is overwhelmingly likely to involve unjustified killing, and that we are therefore morally required either to allow ourselves to waste away or kill ourselves. (shrink)

Deontic constraints prohibit an agent performing acts of a certain type even when doing so will prevent more instances of that act being performed by others. In this article I show how deontic constraints can be interpreted as either maximizing or non-maximizing rules. I then argue that they should be interpreted as maximizing rules because interpreting them as non-maximizing rules results in a problem with moral advice. Given this conclusion, a strong case can be made that consequentialism (...) provides the best account of deontic constraints. (shrink)

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. (...) Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints through the very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

Deontologists often assume that ethical constraints hold ‘come what may’ but that violations of the constraints can be excused or pardoned. Vinit Haksar has argued for pardon as deontologically appropriate mitigation for the violation of deontological constraints. However, the reasons he adduces against excuse are inconclusive. In this paper, I show how complex the question of excuse versus pardon for deontological transgressions is. Liability for the development of character traits and the assumption of agent-centered responsibility (...) have to be taken into account before the possibility of pardon can be identified as appropriate deontological softener for strict constraints. (shrink)

It is a plausible and compelling theoretical assumption that epistemic rationality is just a matter of having doxastic attitudes that are the correct responses to one’s epistemic reasons, or that all requirements of epistemic rationality reduce to requirements on doxastic attitudes. According to this idea, all instances of epistemic rationality are instances of rational belief. Call this assumption, and any theory working under it, _belief-centered_. In what follows, I argue that we should not accept belief-centered theories of epistemic rationality. (...) This is an argument in three acts. In the first, I present counterexamples that problematize the belief-centered assumption: cases whose protagonists (i) fail to meet any plausible requirements on belief but (ii) nevertheless appear epistemically rational. In the second act, I consider alternative explanations of the counterexamples, friendly to the belief-centered theorist, and find them wanting. In the third and final act, I show that there are significant theoretical benefits to acknowledging a distinct agent-centered dimension of epistemic rationality and sketch a candidate agent-centered approach: a view that grounds an agent’s epistemic rationality in the possession of _good epistemic policies_. In the end, we see that a complete theory of epistemic rationality is as much of a theory of rational _agents_ as it is of rational _belief_. (shrink)

This paper provides a sketch of an agent-centered way of understanding and answering the question, “What’s wrong with that?” On this view, what lies at the bottom of judgments of wrongness is a bad attitude; when someone does something wrong, she does something that expresses a bad, or inappropriate, attitude . In order to motivate this account, a general Kantian agent-centered ethics is discussed, as well as Michael Slote’s agent-based ethics, in light of analysis of (...) the grounding role of attitudes in the evaluation of two core cases. In light of these discussions, it is argued that there are advantages to preserving the grounding of the appropriateness of attitudes in facts about their objects , while cutting such an agent-centered ethics away from a Kantian grounding. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian InternalismDaniel E. PalmerGeorge W. Harris. Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian Internalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 434. Cloth, $60.00.Contemporary philosophers have found substantial resources in the ethical writings of both Aristotle and Kant. Together Aristotelian-inspired virtue ethics and Kantian constructivism have not only contributed greatly to the resurgence of interest in (...) normative theory in recent decades, but have also provided the most prominent alternatives to the utilitarianism that has dominated Anglo-American ethics for so long. However, the development of these ethical projects has been carried out largely independently of one another. In Agent-Centered Morality, George Harris helps to overcome this lacuna by comparing and contrasting these two competing versions of [End Page 449] morality. As such, this work is a welcome addition to the literature both as a survey of recent work in Aristotelian and Kantian ethics as well as an account of the many ways in which they converge and diverge in their corresponding treatments of practical rationality.Harris begins by noting that the appeal of both the Aristotelian and Kantian models is that they attempt to generate a foundation for ethics within an account of practical reason, and thus to ground morality within a deliberative perspective that connects the demands of morality with an agent's own meaningful commitments. As such, Harris correctly argues that these projects have much more in common than has sometimes been supposed. The central question that Harris raises in this book is which account of practical reason is best suited for this task. His thesis is that the Aristotelian model gives us a more plausible picture of the role of norms within practical rationality.The major distinction between the Aristotelian and the Kantian models according to Harris is that while on the Aristotelian model the norms made use of in practical judgments are symmetric in their regulative function, the Kantian model provides an asymmetrical account of norms. To arbitrate between these two views, Harris proposes an integration test. The point of the integration test is to assure that our account of practical rationality and the function of regulative norms that it provides can support the integrity of rational agents. Minimally then, the test will favor the account of practical rationality that best "integrates the various concerns of rational human agents in a way that preserves integrity" (32).While the above vastly simplifies Harris's rich treatment of this issue, it nonetheless allows us to see how Harris goes about arguing for the superiority of the Aristotelian view. For Harris maintains that the Aristotelian symmetrical model integrates regulative norms better than the Kantian model. To show why, Harris makes use of a number of examples to demonstrate that regulative norms function in a symmetrical fashion in regards to one another for the agent of integrity. For instance, to show that the norm of impartial respect is sometimes regulated by the norm of impartial sympathy, Harris gives an example of someone who breaks a lunch date in order to help a dog that is being mistreated. Likewise, Harris uses examples to argue that sometimes even partial norms, like that of parental concern, regulate the impartial norm of respect. Harris believes that these cases demonstrate that the regulative norms made use of in practical deliberation must function in a symmetrical fashion. Thus, Harris thinks we have good reason to reject the Kantian view "that the integrative function of practical reason is achieved by an impartial norm that is asymmetrical in its regulative function" (127).Though interesting and worthy of attention, I am not convinced that Harris makes use of the most plausible understanding of the Kantian model of practical rationality in his central argument. By focusing almost exclusively upon the idea of respect, Harris assumes that the best reading of the Kantian project will be founded primarily in the idea of impartial respect. However, if we adopt a procedural understanding of the Categorical Imperative, a plausible case could be made that a Kantian account of practical rationality can account for the examples that Harris makes use of just as well as the Aristotelian... (shrink)

I argue that agent-centered options to favor and sacrifice one’s own interests are grounded in a particular aspect of self-ownership. Because you own your interests, you are entitled to a say over how they are used. That is, whether those interests count for or against some action is, at least in part, to be determined by your choice. This is not the only plausible argument for agent-centered options. But it has some virtues that other arguments lack.

This paper takes up a neglected problem for metaethical noncognitivism: the characterization of the acceptance states for agent-centered normative theories like Rational Egoism. If Egoism is a coherent view, the non-cognitivist needs a coherent acceptance state for it. This can be provided, as Dreier and Gibbard have shown. But those accounts fail when generalized, assigning the same acceptance state to normative theories that are clearly distinct, or assigning no acceptance state to theories that look to be intelligible. The (...) paper makes the case for this and then asks: What should we conclude if the problem cannot be solved? We might conclude that since Egoism is clearly a coherent view, the argument amounts to a refutation of noncognitivism. But we suggest another possibility. There is, on reflection, something incoherent, or at least odd, in standard formulations of Egoism; noncognitivism predicts this and so provides an intriguing explanation for this fact. (shrink)

Deontologists have long been upbraided for lacking an account of justified decision- making under risk and uncertainty. One response is to develop a deontological decision theory—a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an act’s being permissible given an agent’s imperfect information. In this article, I show that deontologists can make more use of regular decision theory than some might have thought, but that we must adapt decision theory to accommodate agent- centered options—permissions to favor or sacrifice (...) our own interests, when doing so is overall morally worse. Accommodating options requires more than just amend- ing the decision-theoretic ‘value function’. We must change the decision rule as well. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that maximizing act-consequentialism (MAC)—the theory that holds that agents ought always to act so as to produce the best available state of affairs—can accommodate both agent-centered options and supererogatory acts. Thus I will show that MAC can accommodate the view that agents often have the moral option of either pursuing their own personal interests or sacrificing those interests for the sake of the impersonal good. And I will show that MAC can accommodate the (...) idea that certain acts are supererogatory in the sense of not being morally required even though they are what the agent has most moral reason to do. These two theses are surprising in themselves, but even more surprising is how I arrive at them. I argue that anyone generally concerned to accommodate, in some coherent fashion, our pre-theoretical moral intuitions at both the normative and meta-ethical levels will have to give a certain account of agent-centered options and supererogatory acts and that this account is the very one that allows for the maximizing act-consequentialist to accommodate both. So my paper will not only be of interest to those concerned with the tenability of consequentialism, but also to anyone interested in giving a coherent account of our pre-theoretical moral intuitions. (shrink)

In Agent-Centered Morality, George W. Harris constructs a broadly Aristotelian conception of morality and argues for its superiority over Kantian conceptions. Harris approaches morality through human practical reason. He is committed to articulating a plausible account of how human beings think, value, and choose based on their conceptions of their own good. Harris’s ethics is “agent-centered” in that it takes moral obligations to be grounded in what makes life meaningful from the agent’s point of view. (...) The ethical system that emerges from Harris’s approach rejects the impartiality, universality, and overriding rationality that Enlightenment philosophers attributed to morality. (shrink)

Agent-centered epistemic norms direct thinkers to attach different significance to their own epistemically relevant states than they attach to the similar states of others. Thus, if S and T both know, for certain, that S has the intuition that P, this might justify S in believing that P, yet fail to justify T in believing that P. I defend agent-centeredness and explain how an agent-centered theory can accommodate intuitions that seem to favor agent-neutrality.

"A very fine piece of work, essential reading for anyone concerned with Kant, Aristotelian ethics, practical reason, and more generally, the foundations of moral value and justification.... The examples are a real strength, insightful and very well-chosen."--Anthony Cunningham, St. John's University "The issues Harris has taken on are among the most important in contemporary moral thinking, and he has handled them systematically, innovatively, wisely, with wit and good sense."--J. K. Swindler, Wittenberg University.

In this book Harris intends to construct an agent-centered conception of morality grounded on a naturalistic understanding of practical reason. In order to achieve this goal, he contrasts his Aristotelian revisionist perspective with the traditional and internalist Kantian proposals, focusing on two specific matters: the opposition between agent-centered and agent-neutral norms, and the newer and very interesting discussion of symmetrical versus asymmetrical regulative norms. The first topic will be especially relevant for the rejection of traditional (...) Kantianism, while the second will be the main argument against Kantian internalism. The author defends the thesis that some nouns have priority in some contexts and not in others against the context-insensibility of Kantian theories. In particular, giving a fair account of them and plenty of detailed argument to refute some of their aspects, he discusses Barbara Herman’s, Marcia Baron’s, Nancy Sherman’s, David Cummiskey’s, Christine Kosgaard’s, and John Rawls’s proposals. (shrink)

13. The Normative Thoughts of Neighborly Love, Part 1.

The consequentializing project relies on agentcentered value (aka agent-relative value), but many philosophers find the idea incomprehensible or incoherent. Discussions of agent-centered value often model it with a theory that assigns distinct better-than rankings of states of affairs to each agent, rather than assigning a single ranking common to all. A less popular kind of model uses a single ranking, but takes the value-bearing objects to be properties (sets of centered worlds) rather than states of (...) affairs (sets of worlds). There are rhetorical, presentational differences between these kinds of models, but are there also structural differences? Do the two kinds of models differ in their capacity to represent normative theories? Despite an initial appearance of equivalence, the two kinds of models are different. The single ranking of properties has greater representational power; its representations contain more information. The main question I address in this article is whether this extra information is useful, in the sense that it distinguishes between normative views that we think are really different, or whether it is just junk information. (shrink)

Harris develops a neo-Aristotelian account of practical and moral reasoning that does account for such decisions of good people. On this account moral reasoning is part of a larger practice of practical reasoning and is viable only if it integrates smoothly into this larger practice. Good people, on Harris’s view of them, have a number of kinds of concerns that are integrated in their practical reasoning dispositions. Persons with “integrity in the thick sense” care about their family members, their friends, (...) about less intimate members of their communities and about “respectable” strangers from outside the community; they also care about having interesting things to do and meaningful work, and about doing some things in an excellent way. Insofar as people really care about any of these things, the satisfaction of the concerns produces a satisfying and meaningful life for the agent. So Harris’s theory is a kind of eudaimonism, though he points out that what people are seeking in pursuing these ends is the ends themselves—say, the well-being of friends or of respectable strangers or the well-turned musical phrase—and not something in addition called “happiness” to which these ends are means. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the nature of the claim that agent-centered restrictions render deontology inconsistent and address three seemingly promising responses available to the deontologist. The first response is inspired by Kant’s essay “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns.” The latter two responses appeal to the importance of personal moral integrity and the moral worth of actions, respectively. I conclude that neither response will allow the deontologist to refute the charge of inconsistency.

As one of the most important ethicists to emerge since the Second World War, Alan Gewirth continues to influence philosophical debates concerning morality. In this ground-breaking book, Gewirth's neo-Kantianism, and the communitarian problems discussed, form a dialogue on the foundation of moral theory. Themes of agent-centered constraints, the formal structure of theories, and the relationship between freedom and duty are examined along with such new perspectives as feminism, the Stoics, and Sartre. Gewirth offers a picture of the (...) philosopher's theory and its applications, providing a richer, more complete critical assessement than any which has occurred to date. (shrink)

Agent-centered morality has been a serious challenge to ethical theories based on agent-neutral morality in defining what is the moral point of view. In this paper, my concern is to examine whether arguments for agent-centered morality, in particular, arguments for agent-centered option, can be justified. -/- After critically examining three main arguments for agent-centered morality, I will contend that although there is a ring of truth in the demands of agent- (...) class='Hi'>centered morality, agent-centered morality is more problematic than agent-neutral morality. Nevertheless, we need to take seriously the challenges to agent-neutral morality by finding a way to reflect the insight of agent-centered morality within the framework of agent-neutral morality without collapsing it into agent-centered morality. As a way of doing so, I suggest that we need to integrate the situated, rather than transcendental, nonideal, rather than idealized, and dialogical, rather than monological, perspectives developed in feminist ethics, into agent-neutral morality. (shrink)

Absolutism—the idea that some kinds of acts are absolutely wrong and must never be done—plays an important role in medical ethics. Nicholas Denyer has defended it from some influential consequentialist critics who have alleged that absolutism is committed to “agent-relative constraints” and therefore intolerably complex and messy. Denyer ingeniously argues that, if there are problems with agent-relative constraints, then they are problems for consequentialism, since it contains agent-relative constraints, too. I show that, despite its (...) ingenuity, Denyer’s argument does not succeed. The defense of absolutism must move to other grounds. (shrink)

Recent work on consequentialism has revealed it to be more flexible than previously thought. Consequentialists have shown how their theory can accommodate certain features with which it has long been considered incompatible, such as agent-centered constraints. This flexibility is usually thought to work in consequentialism’s favor. I want to cast doubt on this assumption. I begin by putting forward the strongest statement of consequentialism’s flexibility: the claim that, whatever set of intuitions the best nonconsequentialist theory accommodates, we (...) can construct a consequentialist theory that can do the same while still retaining whatever is compelling about consequentialism. I argue that if this is true then most likely the non-consequentialist theory with which we started will turn out to have that same compelling feature. So while this extreme flexibility, if indeed consequentialism has it (a question I leave to the side), makes consequentialism more appealing, it makes non-consequentialism more appealing too. (shrink)

Rule consequentialism (RC) is the view that it is right for A to do F in C if and only if A's doing F in C is in accordance with the the set of rules which, if accepted by all, would have consequences which are better than any alternative set of rules (i.e., the ideal code). I defend RC from two related objections. The first objection claims that RC requires obedience to the ideal code even if doing so has disastrous (...) results. Though some rule consequentialists embrace a disaster-clause which permits agents to disregard some of the rules in the ideal code as a necessary means of avoiding disasters, they have not adequately explained how this clause works. I offer such an explanation and show how it fits naturally with the rest of RC. The second disaster objection asserts that even if RC can legitimately invoke a disaster-clause, it lacks principled grounds from distinguishing disasters from non-disasters. In response, I explore Hooker's suggestion that “disaster” is vague. I contend that every plausible ethical theory must invoke something similar to a disaster clause. So if “disaster” is vague, then every plausible ethical theory faces a difficulty with it. As a result, this vagueness is not a reason to prefer other theories to RC. However, I argue, contra Hooker, that the sense of “disaster” relevant to RC is not vague, and RC does indeed have principled grounds to distinguish disasters from nondisasters. (shrink)

The paradox of deontology, as the name suggests, is generally thought to pose a problem for deontological theory, particularly for agent-centered restrictions. I argue that it is neither a paradox nor a problem for restrictions. On the contrary, the cases that are alleged to generate the paradox presuppose restrictions, which shifts the burden to the opponent of restrictions.