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Forms of Rational Agency
Abstract
A measure of good and bad is internal to something falling under it when that thing falls under the measure in virtue of what it is . The concept of an internal standard has broad application. Compare the external breed standards arbitrarily imposed at a dog show with the internal standards of health at work in the veterinarian's office. This paper is about practical standards, measures of acting well and badly, and so measures deployed in deliberation and choice. More specifically, it is about the attempt to explain the unconditional validity of certain norms (say, of justice and prudence) by showing them to be internal to our agency and the causality it involves. This is constitutivism . Its most prominent incarnations share a set of assumptions about the nature of agency and our knowledge of it: conceptualism , formalism and absolutism . This essay investigates the merits and viability of rejecting all of them while still seeking the ground of practical normativity in what we are, in our fundamental activity.
... 5 We do not take our version of constitutivism to be entirely novel. Kindred views are defended by Lavin (2017) and Fix (2021). For more on their views, see Sect. 2 below. ...
... bjection(Enoch, 2006): for any particular account of agency a constitutivist might adopt, she will need to show why that notion of agency is the one which matters for the kind of beings that we all are.9 The possibility of a neo-Aristotelian constitutivism is acknowledged in, for example, Silverstein (2016),Haase and Mayr (2019), andMoosavi (2020).Lavin (2017) explicitly pursues an Aristotelian constitutivism.Foot (2001) andThompson (2008) can also be read as neo-Aristotelian constitutivists. ...
Constitutivism holds that an account of what a thing is yields those normative standards to which that thing is by nature subject. We articulate a minimal form of constitutivism that we call formal, non-epistemological constitutivism which diverges from orthodox versions of constitutivism in two main respects. First: whereas orthodox versions of constitutivism hold that those ethical norms to which people are by nature subject are sui generis because of their special capacity to motivate action and legitimate criticism, we argue that these features are compatible with treating these norms as of a piece with those ‘formal’ natural-historical norms which can be used to assess living things. Second: unlike orthodox versions of constitutivism, our version does not seek to use a non-normative account of that kind of being which we are as a means of identifying those normative claims to which we are are by nature subject. We then indicate how our position can afford us the resources to address some of the familiar difficulties that face cognitivism in ethics.
... See (Cokelet 2008) for the only reply. 4 See (Lavin 2017) for his defense of a version of Aristotelian constitutivism. 5 Lavin formulates the logical interpretation in terms of a "type of action such that if the agent did it she would thereby violate the principle", but he does not specify what counts as a "type of action". ...
... 7 Something like this notion of a capacity pops up in recent Kantian and Aristotelian practical philosophy. See, among others (Quinn 1992, 210), (Thompson 2008, part 3), (McDowell 2010, 5), (Elizondo 2013, 4-5), (Lavin 2017), and (Shafer forthcoming). Although these authors tend not to thematize the contrast with other types of potentiality, the distinction is often implicit in which potentialities they do not discuss. ...
The possibility of error conditions the possibility of normative principles. I argue that extant interpretations of this condition undermine the possibility of normative principles for our action because they implicitly treat error as a perfection of an action. I then explain how a constitutivist metaphysics of capacities explains why error is an imperfection of an action. Finally, I describe and defend the interpretation of the error condition which follows.
... See in particular the first part ofThompson (2008) andFoot (2001).3 This property of constitutive norms is emphasized by such authors asKorsgaard (2009) andLavin (2017). ...
... Note that these do not have a one-to-one correspondence with the three motivations.6 This brings together in one formula the features of constitutive norms mentioned inKorsgaard (2009), Lavin (2017 andSearle (1970).7 This problem has been called the problem of "bad action" for constitutive norms of agency, originating with PeterRailton (1997). ...
Constitutivism is a family of theories of normativity, especially in metaethics, that rely on the concept of constitutive norms: norms that are grounded in constitutive features of the kind of thing to which they apply. In this paper, I present two conditions that any constitutivism must meet in its account of constitutive norms, if it is to remain true to its motivations: the constitutivity and broad normativity conditions. I argue that all extant accounts of constitutive norms fail to meet these conditions due to making constitutive norms either inviolable or in need of some external ground of normativity. I then propose a new account of constitutive norms that is better fitted to meet these conditions. This account relies on an analysis of constitutive norms in terms of a specific kind of generic generalization, the “generic proposition”. I explain how norms of this form can be constitutive of a kind, while also allowing for violability.
... SeeKant (1793); compareEngstrom (2009).21 CompareThompson (2003),Millgram (2010) andLavin (2017).22 Compare e.g.Wiggins (1975).Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
Since the 1990s, meta-ethical constructivism has established itself as a serious contender in debates about the nature and sources of practical normativity. Roughly, constructivism’s core idea is that practical normativity or normative reasons neither exist independently of what we think and do, nor in virtue of the fact that we want and intend things, but because we engage in some distinctive sort of activity. How exactly to characterize that activity, and how to distinguish constructivism from its main rivals, are, however, contested issues. In this paper, I will suggest that constructivism in meta-ethics is best understood as explaining practical reasons through the possession and habitual exercise of the capacity of practical reason. This characterization offers a neat way of understanding what is at issue between constructivism and its rivals, realism and subjectivism, as well as the differences between important varieties of constructivism. It also promises to help resolve some important problems critics have pointed out for constructivism.
... Lavin has already suggested that neo-Aristotelianism may be considered a form of constitutivism. 28 I now suggest that we might also consider things the other way around: any successful constitutivism must be a form of neo-Aristotelianism. If so, we will be able to directly weigh the relative merits of Humean, Kantian and Aristotelian theories as rival accounts of human nature. ...
... Of course, I argued that appealing to this response does not exhaust the resources for explaining why constitutive norms of agency must appear normative to agents -but these resources are redundant when the issue is how the question "Why be an agent?" can be answered outside agency. 52 See Lavin (2017) for discussion of this strategy. 53 See also Enoch (2011). ...
I offer a restatement of ‘Kantian constitutivism’ – the position articulated by Korsgaard in her Sources (1996) – and argue that it can be defended against recent challenges (e.g. Enoch 2006). Chapter One provides some motivations for pursuing this account by rejecting major competitors. I claim that ‘realist’ interpretations of practical reasons cannot explain why, insofar as we are rational, conclusive reasons will motivate us. But it is difficult, once we accept an alternative ‘desire-based’ account, to accommodate the existence of unconditional reasons (I focus particularly on moral reasons, a subset of such reasons). Chapter Two begins to develop the constitutivist view, which explains both how there are unconditional reasons and how conclusive reasons will motivate rational agents. This is a desire-based view, but one which denies that the content of our desires is entirely contingent. If we care about some things insofar as we are agents, these will ground reasons which apply, necessarily, to all. To vindicate this, I explain why the authority of considerations bearing on constitutive features of agency need not depend upon whether we want to be agents. Chapter Three demonstrates that commitment to certain attitudes is constitutive of agency. This issue is pursued via another question which confronts desire-based theories: since desiring something does not by itself make it good, what determines that we should treat certain desires as reasons? Following Korsgaard, I show that agents are committed to valuing the capacity for practical reason itself, and do not need further reasons for doing so. This provides the criterion by which other evaluative attitudes can be selected as reasons, with distinctively moral implications. Finally, I explore an apparent tension between this conclusion and my strategy in Chapter Two, where I suggested we can disvalue our agency yet this does not undermine the authority of its constitutive standards.
What is the function of morality—what is it all about? What is the basis of morality—what explains our moral agency and patiency? This essay defends a unique Kantian answer to these questions. Morality is about securing our independence from each other by giving each other equal discretion over whether and how we interact. The basis of our moral agency and patiency is practical reason. The first half addresses objections that this account cannot explain the moral patiency of beings who are not also moral agents such as infantile, elderly, and infirm human beings and the other animals. The second half argues that this account is preferable, on grounds of consistency with the basic Kantian account of the function and content of morality, to the familiar account of our moral patiency, popular especially though not exclusively with contemporary Kantians, in terms of the value of humanity.
Epistemic constitutivism (EC ) holds that the nature of believing is such that it gives rise to a standard of correctness and that other epistemic normative notions (e.g., reasons for belief) can be explained in terms of this standard. If defensible, this view promises an attractive and unifying account of epistemic normativity. However, EC faces a forceful objection: that constitutive standards of correctness are never enough for generating normative reasons. This paper aims to defend EC in the face of this objection. I do so in two steps. First, I dispute a crucial assumption underlying the case against EC: that constitutive standards of correctness in general are ‘reason‐giving’ only if and because there is also a prior reason to comply with them. Second, I outline a strategy of how EC can meet the challenge of explaining what's special about the activity of believing such that, unlike other standard‐governed activities, it is capable of generating normative reasons.
Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is the self-conscious will and that practical cognition is self-conscious volition. This essay addresses two puzzles for practical cognitivism. In akratic action, I act as I understand is illegitimate and not as I understand is legitimate. In permissible action, I act as I understand is legitimate and also do not act as I understand is legitimate. In both types of action, practical cognition seems to come apart from volition. How, then, can practical reason be our will and practical cognition be volition? Practical cognitivists can solve these puzzles because the claims that practical reason is our will and that practical cognition is volition are about the nature of a capacity, and the nature of a capacity establishes standards of correctness for its exercises. Akratic action is a type of erroneous exercise of practical reason as tripping is an erroneous exercise our capacity to walk. Permissible action is a successful exercise of practical reason as stepping first with my right foot rather than my left is a successful exercise of my capacity to walk. The puzzles of akratic and permissible action do not refute practical cognitivism.
Practical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is our will, not an intellectual capacity whose exercises can influence those of our will. If practical reason is our will, thoughts about how I am to act have an essential tie to action. They are intentions. Thoughts about how others are to act, though, lack such a tie to action. They are beliefs, not intentions. How, then, can these thoughts form a unified class? I reject two answers which deny the differences between such thoughts about myself and those about others, one of which says that all such thoughts are intentions, the other that all are beliefs. I then reject a shared assumption which says that a class of those is unified only if all its elements are all of one type of thought. I instead argue that this class is unified even though some elements are intentions, others beliefs, because such beliefs depend on those intentions in various ways.
Properly understood, the instrumental rule says to take means that actually suffice for my end, not, as is nearly universally assumed, to intend means that I believe are necessary for my end. This alternative explains everything the standard interpretation can—and more, including grounding certain correctness conditions for exercises of our will unexplained by the standard interpretation.
Moral constitutivism purports to explain moral normativity by appeal to the nature of either agency or rational powers. Ambitious constitutivism aspires to ground the categorical authority of morality and to derive the content of the basic moral norms while avoiding the problems of moral realism. As a general strategy, moral constitutivism faces three serious challenges. First, the shmagency challenge. The worry is that the authority of the norms derived from the nature of agency is only conditional on having a reason to be an agent rather than some other kind of subject, a shmagent or an alienated agent. Constitutivists usually reply by appealing to the inescapability of agency. Second, there is a worry that agency is too thin a basis for the derivation of the substantive content of moral norms. Finally, there is the worry that constitutivism might be unable to make room for bad actions. The entry considers possible responses by moral constitutivism to these concerns and whether, if these responses are unsatisfactory, moral constitutivism might still have some explanatory power but of a less ambitious sort.
Aristotelian naturalism holds that our human life-form is the source of normativity for human action. My goal in this essay is to clarify a particular kind of challenge to this claim. The challenge I have in mind arises from the suspicion that Aristotelian naturalism does not square with certain fundamental features of rational agency. Most of the essay is spent attempting to understand the challenge; at the end, I propose some ways that the naturalist might develop a response.
Constitutivism explains norms in terms of their being constitutive of agency, actions, or certain propositional attitudes. However, the shmagency objection says that if we can be shmagents – like agents, minus the norm-explaining features of agency – we can avoid the norms, so the explanation fails. This paper extends this objection, arguing that constitutivists about practical norms suffer from it despite their recent attempts to solve it. The standard response to the objection is that it is self-defeating for agents to become shmagents. I agree, but the response ignores the possibility of shmagents who consider whether to be agents while already standing outside agency. Another response says that we ought to be agents because agency is, in some sense, normatively valuable, and if so, we can explain norms in terms of this valuable form of agency. But then the norms that our constitutions are supposed to explain are underdetermined because it is unclear how much we ought to care about this value. I conclude that the shmagency objection has yet to be answered.
A common feature of all versions of constitutivism is the “simple constitutivist move” to the effect that engagement in any enterprise requires respecting the constitutive standards of the enterprise on pain of failing to engage in it. The move is both trivial and powerful in addressing skeptical challenges. I argue that this move only helps transmitting the robust authority of standards that are externally grounded, even when applied to functional items or constitutive aims. This is not a problem for modest versions of constitutivism, but more ambitious constitutivists seems to require supplementation to ground robust or authoritative normativity. Unfortunately, the usual appeal to inescapability is at best a defensive move. Ambitious constitutivism needs to look elsewhere in its search for a positive explanation of the source of robust normativity. The simple constitutivist move, even when combined with inescapability, is indeed too simple.
These thirteen new, specially written essays by a distinguished international line-up of contributors, including some leading contemporary moral philosophers, give a rich and varied view of current work on ethics and practical reason. The three main perspectives on the topic, Kantian, Humean, and Aristotelian, are all well represented. Issues covered include: the connection between reason and motivation; the source of moral reasons and their relation to reasons of self-interest; the relation of practical reason to value, to freedom, to responsibility, and to feelings. The editors' introduction provides a valuable introductory survey of the topic, putting the individual essays in context. Ethics and Practical Reason will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates working in this area.
Cambridge Core - Philosophy Texts - Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant is as daunting as he is influential: widely considered to be not only one of the most challenging thinkers of all time, but also one of the most important. His Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason takes on two of his central preoccupations - the reasoning powers of the human mind, and religion - and applies the full force of his reasoning abilities to consider the relationship between them. In critical thinking, reasoning is all about constructing arguments: arguments that are persuasive, systematic, comprehensive, and well-evidenced. And any examination involves stripping reasoning back to its barest essentials and attempting to get at the nature of the world by asking what we can know about God and morality from the power of our minds alone. Beginning from the axiom that God is, by definition, unknowable, Kant reasons that it is humans who bear the responsibility of creating the Kingdom of God. This, he suggests, we can do by acting morally in the world we experience - with a morality that can be shaped by reason alone. Dense and challenging, but closely and persuasively reasoned, Kant's case for human responsibility shows reasoning skills at their most impressive.
This book presents an account of the foundation of practical reason and moral obligation. Moral philosophy aspires to understand the fact that human actions, unlike the actions of the other animals, can be morally good or bad. Few moral philosophers, however, have exploited the idea that actions might be morally good or bad in virtue of being good or bad of their kind - good or bad as actions. Just as we need to know that it is the function of the heart to pump blood to know that a good heart is one that pumps blood successfully, so we need to know what the function of action is in order to know what counts as a good or bad action. Drawing on the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, the book proposes that the function of an action is to constitute the agency and therefore the identity of the person who does it. A good action is one that constitutes its agent as the autonomous and efficacious cause of her own movements. These properties correspond, respectively, to Kant's two imperatives of practical reason. Conformity to the categorical imperative renders us autonomous, and conformity to the hypothetical imperative renders us efficacious. And in determining what effects we will have in the world, we are at the same time determining our own identities. The principles of practical reason, especially the categorical imperative, are therefore the laws of self-constitution.
This book is a collection of ten papers on practical reason and moral psychology. Part 1 defends the view that the principles of practical reason are constitutive principles of action. By governing our actions in accordance with Kant's categorical imperative and the principle of instrumental reason we take control of our own movements and so render ourselves active, self-determining beings. Part II takes up the question of the role of our passive or receptive faculties - our emotions and responses - in constituting our agency. It offers a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics based on the idea that our emotions are perceptions of good and evil, and argues that Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view about the locus of moral value and the nature of human choice. Part III takes up the question how we come to view one another as moral agents in Hume's philosophy, and examines the possible clash between the agency of the state and that of the individual that led to Kant's paradoxical views about revolution. And finally, the book discusses methodology in an account of what it means to be a constructivist moral philosopher.
Recent Work on PluralismAction and Process ControlAcknowledgmentsReferences
Most agree that when it comes to so-called ‘first-order’ normative ethics and political philosophy, constructivist views are a powerful family of positions. When it comes to metaethics, however, there is serious disagreement about what, if anything, constructivism has to contribute. In this paper I argue that constructivist views in ethics include not just a family of substantive normative positions, but also a distinct and highly attractive metaethical view. I argue that the widely accepted ‘proceduralist characterization’ of constructivism in ethics is inadequate, and I propose what I call the ‘practical standpoint characterization’ in its place. I then offer a general taxonomy of constructivist positions in ethics. Since constructivism’s standing as a family of substantive normative positions is relatively uncontested, I devote the remainder of the paper to addressing skeptics’ worries about the distinctiveness of constructivism understood as a metaethical view. I compare and contrast constructivism with three other standard metaethical positions with which it is often confused or mistakenly thought to be compatible: realism; naturalist reductions in terms of an ideal response; and expressivism. In discussing the contrast with expressivism, I explain the sense in which, according to the constructivist, the distinction between substantive normative ethics and metaethics breaks down. I conclude by distinguishing between two importantly different debates about the mind-dependence of value. I argue that a failure to make this distinction is part of what explains why the possibility of constructivism as a metaethical view is often overlooked.
A wave of recent philosophical work on practical rationality is organized by the following implicit argument: Practical reasoning is figuring out what to do; to do is to act; so the forms of practical inference can be derived from the structure or features of action. Now it is not as though earlier work, in analytic philosophy, had failed to register the connection between action and practical rationality; in fact, practical reasoning was usually picked out as, roughly, reasoning directed toward action. But for much of the twentieth century, attention moved quickly away from this initial delineation of the subject area, to the interplay of beliefs and desires within the mind (Humean theories, including their Davidsonian and Williamsian variants), or to procedures for checking that a plan of action was supported by sufficient yet consistent reasons (Kantian theories), or to the ultrarefined sensibilities of the practically intelligent reasoner (Aristotelian theories). The hallmark of the emerging family of treatments to be surveyed here is, first, the sustained attention paid to answering the question, "What does it take to be an action (at all)?", and second, the use made of a distinction between full-fledged action and its lesser relatives. (Characterizations and terminology vary, but often the less robust alternative is called "mere activity" or "mere behavior".) Very schematically, these arguments for a theory of practical reasoning try to show that reasons brought to bear on choice must have some particular logical form, if action is not to lapse into something less than that. journal article
The Critique of Practical Reason is the second of Kant's three Critiques, one of his three major treatises on moral theory, and a seminal text in the history of moral philosophy. Originally published three years after his Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, the Critique provides further elaboration of the basic themes of Kant's moral theory, gives the most complete statement of his highly original theory of freedom of the will, and develops his practical metaphysics. This new edition of Kant's Critique of Practical Reason – prepared by an acclaimed translator and scholar of Kant's practical philosophy – presents the first new translation of this work to appear for some years. A substantial and lucid introduction by Andrews Reath places the main themes of the Critique in the context of Kant's moral theory and his critical system.
Why care about objective value or ethical reality? The sanction is that if you do not, your inner states will fail to deserve folks theoretical names. Not a threat that will strike terror into the hearts of the wicked! But whoever thought. that philosophy could replace the hangman? -David Lewis
George; citation_publication_date=1998; citation_journal_title=Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and Other Writings
- Giovanni
A Constitutivist Theory of Reasons: Its Promise and Parts
- Smith
Speculative Mistakes and Ordinary Temptations: Kant on Instrumentalist Conceptions of Practical Reason
- Tenenbaum