Jeremy David Fix’s research while affiliated with University of Oxford and other places

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Publications (7)


The Unity of the Moral Domain
  • Article

August 2024

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1 Read

European Journal of Philosophy

Jeremy David Fix

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.


Practical cognition as volition

September 2021

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24 Reads

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1 Citation

European Journal of Philosophy

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.


The Unity of Normative Thought

June 2021

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13 Reads

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2 Citations

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

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.


The Instrumental Rule

August 2020

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38 Reads

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4 Citations

Journal of the American Philosophical Association

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.


The Error Condition

October 2019

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4 Reads

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8 Citations

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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.



Intellectual Isolation

April 2018

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600 Reads

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11 Citations

Mind

Intellectualism is the widespread view that practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, distinguished from others by its objects: reasons to act. I argue that if practical reason is a species of theoretical reason, practical judgments by nature have nothing to do with action. If they have nothing to do with action, I cannot act from my representation of reasons for me to act. If I cannot act from those representations, those reasons cannot exist. If they cannot exist, neither can a species of theoretical reason about them. Intellectualism is thus self-undermining.

Citations (1)


... In particular, I will argue that these two questions can be best answered by taking a 1 Admittedly, there are some versions of constitutivism which do not face the aforementioned dilemma with regard to the authority and content questions. In particular, constitutivists influenced by Aristotle, such as Lavin (2017), Fix (2021), and Lockhart & Lockhart (2022), reject the 'minimum conception of agency' restriction. While their versions of constitutivism are interesting on their own, they are not relevant for the main focus of this paper, which is to answer the authority and content questions together. ...

Reference:

The Authority and Content of Morality: A Dilemma for Constitutivism and a Coherentist Approach to Normativity
Two Sorts of Constitutivism
  • Citing Article
  • October 2019

Analytic Philosophy