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Other wills: The second-person in ethics
Abstract
This paper is about the interest of the second-person to ethics. The focus of recent discussion has been the explanatory power of the second-person, rather than its careful description or the very possibility of what is described. This paper is something of a corrective. Its aim is to get the claim that the second-person matters to ethics into a clearer focus with a view to raising further questions and puzzles.
... A general question that is increasingly asked, both in the psychological and philosophical literature, is how the capacity to know and understand oneself and others is related to various forms of human sociality (e.g. Heal 2003;Reddy 2008;Schilbach et al. 2013;Lavin 2014;Avramides 2015;Satne and Roepstorff 2015;Satne 2021). A common theme in some recent work on knowledge of other minds is that understanding the nature of such knowledge may require discarding the traditional view that our perspective on the mental lives of others is fundamentally spectatorialgrounded on, in Reid's (1764Reid's ( /1997 terms, 'solitary operations of the mind', such as inferring the causes of observed behavior or direct observation. ...
... The bipolarist approach that I call interactional holds that A's obligation to B is bipolar in that it constitutively depends on A's and B's disposition to interact with each other using shared, distinctively bipolar concepts. This mode of interaction amounts to the adoption of a specific "posture of the mind" to one another (Thompson, 2004, p. 336; also see Haase, 2014a, 2014b, Lavin, 2014. 7 When interacting in the relevant manner, A and B think of each other as a You, another subject, who in turn thinks of them as a You, and whom they are capable of wronging or being wronged by, respectively. ...
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.
... The title of this section is partly indebted to[30]. ...
Although the importance of the psychiatric diagnostic interview is undeniable in the actual clinical practice, its peculiarities as a specific kind of interpersonal phenomenon have not attracted much attention in the literature. This chapter approaches the diagnostic interview from the perspective of research on social cognition, by drawing on discussions about the difference between second-person and third-person relations. We start by motivating a picture of the diagnostic interview according to which the clinician has to draw on multiple sources of diagnostically relevant information. This picture leads to the question of how to approach the complexity of the interview, and the role that the distinction between second-person and third-person relations might play for a better understanding of it. By elaborating on a conceptualization of second-person relations which foregrounds the roles of reciprocity and communication, we propose that second- and third-person relations are complementary methodological tools by means of which the clinician seeks to gain a better understanding of the patient.KeywordsSecond-person relationsThird-person relationsPsychiatric diagnostic interviewCommunicationSocial cognitionPhenomenology
... For second-personal approaches, seeEilan (2014),Lavin (2014),Longworth (2014) andSalje (forthcoming). For work on joint attention and mirror neurons in the perception of other minds, seeEilan et al. (2005),Stump (2010: ch. ...
Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics.
Current research on second-person relations has often overlooked that this is not a new topic. Addressed mostly under the heading of the “I–thou relation,” second-person relations were discussed by central figures of the phenomenological tradition, including Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, but also quite extensively by much lesser-known authors, such as Karl Löwith, Ludwig Binswanger, and Semyon L. Frank, whose work has been undeservedly neglected in current research. This paper starts off by arguing that, in spite of the rightly acknowledged differences between the Husserlian and the Heideggerian approaches to the investigation of the social world, both approaches converge in the claim that the I–thou relation is founded on more basic forms of sociality. In a second step, against the background of Frank’s and Binswanger’s challenges to that claim, I argue that Löwith’s proposal that the I–thou relation is a primordial form of sociality can be vindicated by conceptualizing I–thou relations as close personal relationships (paradigmatically exemplified by companion friendships and romantic partnerships). After assessing how Löwith’s approach to the I–thou relation stands vis-à-vis Heidegger’s and Husserl’s views, I conclude by suggesting how Löwith’s approach can contribute to current research on second-person relations.
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 legitimate claims or demands that persons as such have on one another. However, unlike the Second-Personal Account, the Relational Account does not regard these claims or demands as based on 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.
The first-person access to the self has been widely recognized by philosophers. But a competing idea arises, challenging the first-person givenness, from those who argue that self-interpretation and self-knowledge are acquired through the third-person perspective. I argue that these two dichotomous perspectives of the self can be mediated by the second-person perspective through dialogical semiosis of narrative. Peirce’s semiotic perspective on the self emphasizes the role of a semiotic subject that participates in sign processes as an interpreting agent. In this sense, the concept of self is acquired through semiosis of narrative and at the same time it is interpreted in narrative world, taking the role of character. It is character which makes a person identifiable as a person, since character is not substance but quality as a recognized pattern or type through time, which becomes a habit of act and thought, thus forming personal identity. Within this context, I argue that from the first-person perspective a deliberate subject of self as “subjective I” and from the third-person perspective a dynamic object of self as “objective I” are mediated by the relationship between self and other as an imaginary relation in narrative world, just like an imaginary line of identity, connecting word with thing. From the second-person perspective, oneself as another forms teridentity (co-identity) in textual world. I shall illustrate the interlock between the semiotic self and narrative identity through Peirce’s semiotic approach to the self and Ricoeur’s theory of narrative identity, analyzing the filmic narrative text of Burning (2018).
Why do we think there are other self-conscious about, other thinkers of ‘I’ thoughts, other possessors of a first-person perspective? What is the most basic manifestation of our grip on their existence? This paper develops an answer to these questions summarised under the heading: Second Person Communication Claim (SPCC), which says: Our grip on the idea that other self-conscious subjects exist is rooted in our capacity to enter into particular kinds of communicative relations with others, in which we adopt attitudes of mutual address and think of each other as ‘you’. If the SPCC is right, our grip on the existence and nature of other I’s, and on their relation to ourselves, rests essentially on a practical capacity to treat others as partners in conversation, addressors and addressees, with all that this entails. This contrasts with the traditional approach to other minds, on which our knowledge and thought of others rests on observation and is essentially third personal and theoretical.
Any complete theory of “what we owe to each other” must be able to adequately accommodate directed or bipolar obligations, that is, those obligations that are owed to a particular individual and in virtue of which another individual stands to be wronged. Bipolar obligations receive their moral importance from their intimate connection to a particular form of recognition respect that we owe to each other: respect of another as a source of valid claims to whom in particular we owe certain treatment and, at the very least, an apology if we fail to accord that treatment. While some of the most prominent accounts of interpersonal morality fail to adequately accommodate bipolar obligations, I here investigate a recent proposal that explicitly seeks to improve on these accounts—Stephen Darwall’s second-personal theory of morality. Ultimately, I object to Darwall’s theory on the grounds that his second-personal theory normatively ties bipolar obligations too closely to non-directed moral obligations or those that we are under, period. The problem for Darwall’s account is that any obligations that at first appear to be bipolar and owed to someone in particular turn out to be instances of non-directed moral obligations period that have their normative source in the representative authority of the moral community. Adequately accommodating bipolar obligations requires taking seriously a novel second-personal approach, according to which we locate the normative sources of our interpersonal obligations in the claims and demands particular persons and deliberate from what I call the pairwise or bipolar standpoint.
Reason and Value collects 15 new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the work of Joseph Raz. Raz has made major contributions in a wide range of areas, including jurisprudence, political philosophy, and the theory of practical reason; but all of his work displays a deep engagement with central themes in moral philosophy. The subtlety and power of Raz’s reflections on ethical topics make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. Especially significant are his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value, which constitute a sustained and penetrating treatment of a set of issues at the very center of moral philosophy as it is practiced today. The contributors to the volume acknowledge the importance of Raz’s contributions by engaging critically with his positions and offering independent perspectives on the topics that he has addressed. The volume aims both to honour Raz’s accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and to contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of his work for the subject. Contributors: Michael E. Bratman, John Broome, Ruth Chang, Jonathan Dancy, Harry Frankfurt, Ulrike Heuer, Philip Pettit, Peter Railton, Donald H. Regan, T. M. Scanlon, Samuel Scheffler, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Michael Smith, Michael Stocker, Michael Thompson, R. Jay Wallace.
We speak both of moral obligations we owe to specific individuals (or groups) and moral obligations simpliciter or period. When we violate the latter, we do wrong; when we violate the former, we wrong the individuals (or group) to whom we owe the obligation. The Second-Person Standpoint offers a metaethics of moral obligation period in terms of warranted impersonal reactive attitudes and argue that the latter are irreducibly second personal because, following Strawson, they implicitly hold another answerable for complying with a putatively legitimate demand. Here, this chapter extends the account to provide a metaethics of bipolar obligations that links them in the right way to moral obligation period. At the bottom is a fundamental distinction between two distinct, but nonetheless linked, authorities we have as mutually accountable persons: a representative authority as a representative person or member of the moral community, on the one hand, and an individual authority we each have as the individual person we are.
Stanley Cavell holds that in order to understand what a language is one has to investigate the grammar of the statements with which native speakers articulate their language: they are statements in the First Person Plural that don't express observational knowledge, but rather a form of self-consciousness. While Cavell's claim that the essence of language is expressed in the grammar of these statements is a deep insight, his own account of their form is fundamentally mistaken. Cavell conflates different forms of the First Person Plural and, in turn, different notions of the social. A condition for arriving at an appropriate metaphysics of language is to distinguish the generic We from the distributive and the collective We.
To later generations, much of the moral philosophy of the twentieth century will look like a struggle to escape from utilitarianism. We seem to succeed in disproving one utilitarian doctrine, only to find ourselves caught in the grip of another. I believe that this is because a basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is to bring something about . Too often, the rest of us have pitched our protests as if we were merely objecting to the utilitarian account of what the moral agent ought to bring about or how he ought to do it. Deontological considerations have been characterized as “side constraints,” as if they were essentially restrictions on ways to realize ends. More importantly, moral philosophers have persistently assumed that the primal scene of morality is a scene in which someone does something to or for someone else. This is the same mistake that children make about another primal scene. The primal scene of morality, I will argue, is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together. The subject matter of morality is not what we should bring about, but how we should relate to one another. If only Rawls has succeeded in escaping utilitarianism, it is because only Rawls has fully grasped this point. His primal scene, the original position, is one in which a group of people must make a decision together. Their task is to find the reasons they can share.
Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its influence on general virtue and happiness / William Godwin Note: The University of Adelaide Library eBooks @ Adelaide.
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