This chapter develops and defends an account of reason: to reason is to scrutinize one’s attitudes by consulting the perspectives of other persons. The principal attraction of this account is its ability to vindicate the unique of authority of reason. The chapter argues that this conception entails that reasoning is a robustly social endeavor—that it is, in the first instance, something we do with other people. It is further argued that such social endeavors presuppose mutual respect on the part of (...) those participating in them. The account therefore yields a form of Kantian constructivism: we have an unconditional duty of respect for persons because such a duty is implicit in the very nature of reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn this article, I defend a version of moral constitutivism that is based on a theory of goods. It is inspired by ancient philosophy both in claiming that action theory should be formulated in teleological terms and in the idea that a sound theory of goods should be a eudaemonist one. Additionally I argue that morality can be understood on the basis of such an approach.

To integrate social robots in real-life contexts, it is crucial that they are accepted by the users. Acceptance is not only related to the functionality of the robot but also strongly depends on how the user experiences the interaction. Established design principles from usability and user experience research can be applied to the realm of human–robot interaction, to design robot behavior for the comfort and well-being of the user. Focusing the design on these aspects alone, however, comes with certain ethical (...) challenges, especially regarding the user’s privacy and autonomy. Based on an example scenario of human–robot interaction in elder care, this paper discusses how established design principles can be used in social robotic design. It then juxtaposes these with ethical considerations such as privacy and user autonomy. Combining user experience and ethical perspectives, we propose adjustments to the original design principles and canvass our own design recommendations for a positive and ethically acceptable social human–robot interaction design. In doing so, we show that positive user experience and ethical design may be sometimes at odds, but can be reconciled in many cases, if designers are willing to adjust and amend time-tested design principles. (shrink)

The phenomenon of technological hazards, whose existence is only revealed many years after they were initially produced, shows that the question of our responsibilities toward future generations is of urgent importance. However, the nature of technological societies means that they are caught in a condition of structural irresponsibility: the tools they use to know the future cannot encompass the temporal reach of their actions. This article explores how dominant legal and moral concepts are equally deficient for helping us understand what (...) future-oriented responsibility requires. An alternative understanding of responsibility is needed, one which can be developed from phenomenological and feminist concepts of care. Care, by opening up for us an understanding of the diversity of values that are constitutive of a worthwhile life, also connects us to the future as the future of care. As such, it provides us with ethical resources that can guide us in the face of uncertainty. (shrink)

Biocentric and ecocentric ethics offer a rich discourse on protecting biotic communities – defending conservation with inherent value tied to life. A problem ar...

The article presents the conceptual groundwork for an understanding of the essentially improvisational dimension of human rationality. It aims to clarify how we should think about important concepts pertinent to central aspects of human practices, namely, the concepts of improvisation, normativity, habit, and freedom. In order to understand the sense in which human practices are essentially improvisational, it is first necessary to criticize misconceptions about improvisation as lack of preparation and creatio ex nihilo. Second, it is necessary to solve the (...) theoretical problems that derive from misunderstandings concerning the notions of normativity, habit, and freedom – misunderstandings that revolve around the idea that rationality is a form that is developed out of itself and thus works in a way similar to algorithms. One can only make sense of normativity, habit, and freedom if one understands that they all involve conflictual relationships with the world and with others, which in turn enables one to adequately take into account their constitutive connection to improvisation, properly understood. In outlining these conceptual connections, we want to prepare the foundations for an explanation of rational practices as improvisational practices. The article concludes by stating that human rational life is improvisatory because the conditions of human practice arise out of practice itself. (shrink)

I offer new arguments for an unorthodox reading of J. L. Mackie’s Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, one on which Mackie does not think all substantive moral claims are false, but allows that a proper subset of them are true. Further, those that are true should be understood in terms of a “hybrid theory”. The proposed reading is one on which Mackie is a conceptual pruner, arguing that we should prune away error-ridden moral claims but hold onto those already free (...) of error. This reading is very different from the standard ones found in the literature. I build on recent work by Moberger and argue that this reading is better corroborated by close attention to the way in which Mackie argues at length that terms like “good” and “ought” are systematically context-sensitive, as well as by considerable additional textual evidence. This reading, however, faces an important challenge—to explain in what sense, if any, morality retains its “normativity” on the proposed reading. I argue that this challenge can be met, at least given some of Mackie’s further assumptions about the nature of rationality. (shrink)

The central question for this dissertation is, how do we do moral philosophy well from within a broadly naturalist framework? Its main goal is to lay the groundwork for a methodological approach to moral philosophy that integrates traditional, intuition-driven approaches to ethics with empirical approaches that employ empirical data from biology and cognitive science. Specifically, it explores what restrictions are placed on our moral theorizing by findings in evolutionary biology, psychology, neuroscience, and other fields, and how we can integrate this (...) data while still offering a fully normative account of ethics. To that end, the dissertation explores the methodological assumptions behind both traditional and more empirical or experimental approaches to ethics, to find where these assumptions cannot be properly supported and need to be re-examined. Chapter 1 explores the science-based objections that have been raised to traditional approaches, with a particular focus on questions concerning the reliability of moral intuitions. Chapter 2 examines three fundamental assumptions supporting the empirical approach to moral philosophy, and how those assumptions ultimately do not fit with how we ought to understand the project of ethics. In chapter 3, I discuss the fact/value distinction, and the restrictions that are placed on our moral theorizing by our commitment to this distinction. Chapter 4 offers a defense of ‘companions in guilt’ arguments, and uses these arguments to draw an analogy between moral philosophy and epistemology that will be used to help defend moral philosophy against empirical debunking arguments. Chapter 5 explores the ways in which epistemologists’ methods of incorporating empirical data into their research while maintaining the normativity of their accounts can be adapted to allow moral philosophers to do the same, and brings together the various methodological concerns addressed up to this point to lay out a methodological approach I call empirically-informed moral philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I defend Kant’s Incorporation Thesis, which holds that we must “incorporate” our incentives into our maxims if we are to act on them. I see this as a thesis about what is necessary for a human being to make the transition from ‘having a desire’ to ‘acting on it’. As such, I consider the widely held view that ‘having a desire’ involves being focused on the world, and not on ourselves or on the desire. I try to (...) show how this view is connected with a denial of any deep distinction between reason and inclination. I then argue for an alternative view of what ‘having a desire’ involves, one according to which it involves being focused both on the world and on ourselves. I show how this view fits naturally with the Kantian distinction between reason and inclination, accounts for independent intuitions about ‘having a desire’, and supports the Incorporation Thesis. I then make some further suggestions about how we might conceive of the object of incorporation. (shrink)

Appealing to self-interest is a common way of justifying the rationality of religious faith. For instance, Pascal’s wager relies upon the expected value of choosing the life of faith being infinite. Similarly, many contemporary arguments for the rationality of faith turn on whether it is better for an agent to have faith rather than lack it. In this paper, I argue, contra Pascal, that considerations of self-interest do not make choosing faith rational because they fail to take into account the (...) way the self is transformed by faith. (shrink)

William King's De Origine Mali contains an interesting, sophisticated, and original account of free will. King finds 'necessitarian' theories of freedom, such as those advocated by Hobbes and Locke, inadequate, but argues that standard versions of libertarianism commit one to the claim that free will is a faculty for going wrong. On such views, free will is something we would be better off without. King argues that both problems can be avoided by holding that we confer value on objects by (...) valuing them. Such a view secures sourcehood and alternative possibilities while denying that free will is simply a capacity to choose contrary to our best judgment. This theory escapes all of the objections levelled against it by Leibniz and also has interesting consequences for ethics: although constructed within a eudaimonist framework, King's theory gives rise to a very strong moral requirement of respect for individual self-determination. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the possibility of explaining why there is such a thing as the good in naturalistic terms. More specifically, I seek an explanation of the fact that some things are good-for human beings and the other animals in the final sense of good: worth aiming at. I trace the existence of the final good to the existence of conscious agents. I propose that the final good for an animal is her own well-functioning as the kind of (...) creature she is, taken as an end of action, and that having this as her final good makes her better at the activity she is necessarily engaged in, namely, living. (shrink)

This essay explores the contractual dimension in Confucianism. It demonstrates that essential to Confucianism is the concept of three contracts: the contract of mind with oneself, the cultural contract with society and community; and the moral contract with humanity and the universe at large. Confucianism may not be labelled as contractualism. Nonetheless one would not have an adequate understanding of Confucianism without a view of the contractual dimension of Confucianism. Confucianism may not be labelled as realism. However, essential to Confucianism (...) is the idea of the total unity of the self, society, and the world, and the total harmony of heaven, earth, and humankind. (shrink)

Proponents of semiotic arguments against the commodification of certain goods face the following challenge: formulate your argument such that it does not appeal to immoral consequences, nor is really an argument showing that we ought to reform the meaning we give to commodification. I here attempt to meet this challenge via appeal to the notion of what I call proto-on-a-par value. Under this construal, the semiotic argument yields that the commodification of certain goods necessarily signals value choice, where value choice (...) ought not to be signaled. (shrink)

En este trabajo, me propongo reconstruir dos tesis de importancia metaética, jurídica y política que Kant expone en Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloβen Vernunft. Se trata de dos tesis que mantienen una sólida consistencia con dos de los núcleos temáticos de la Rechstlehre, lo que nos permite proponer que el texto de 1793 puede ser considerado una suerte de crítica propedéutica para la metafísica jurídico-política de Kant. La primera de estas tesis será analizada en la sección I y (...) atañe a la concepción metaética de la libertad que Kant presenta en Religion a propósito del análisis del mal radical. La segunda, analizada en la sección II, a la serie de diferencias trazadas entre el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad éticos, por un lado, y el estado de naturaleza y la comunidad jurídico-políticos, por el otro. En una sección III, presentaré el sentido que estas tesis obtienen respecto de la recepción crítica que Kant hace de las teorías modernas iusnaturales. (shrink)

Deontological evidentialism is the claim that S ought to form or maintain S’s beliefs in accordance with S’s evidence. A promising argument for this view turns on the premise that consideration c is a normative reason for S to form or maintain a belief that p only if c is evidence that p is true. In this paper, I discuss the surprising relation between a recently influential argument for this key premise and the principle that ought implies can. I argue (...) that anyone who antecedently accepts or rejects this principle already has a reason to resist either this argument’s premises or its role in support of deontological evidentialism. (shrink)

In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant claims that all human beings are originally and radically evil: they choose to adopt a ‘supreme maxim’ that gives preference to sensibility over the moral law. Because Kant thinks that all agents have a duty to develop good character, part of his task in the Religion is to explain how moral conversion is possible. Four years after Kant publishes the Religion, J. G. Fichte takes up the issue of conversion in slightly (...) different terms: he is interested in how people he characterizes as ‘dogmatists’ become ‘idealist’. Against recent interpreters, I argue that Fichte characterizes the choice to convert from dogmatism to idealism as one that is grounded in a non-rational choice. Along the way, I consider Daniel Breazeale and Allen Wood’s recent arguments to the contrary, alternative accounts of what it might mean for a conversion to count as ‘rational’, and how well my conclusion harmonizes with Fichte’s views on education. (shrink)

Discusses how to develop the idea that the normative truth is perspective-dependent with a broadly constructivist approach to metaethics - arguing in favor of developing this idea in terms of the idea that the normative truth is dependent upon the perspective of the assessor.

Metaethical constitutivists explain reasons or normativity in terms of what is constitutive of agency. In Velleman’s paradigmatic constitutivist theory, that is the aim of self-understanding. The best-known objection to constitutivism is Enoch’s shmagency objection: constitutivism cannot explain normativity because a constitutive aim of agency lacks normative significance unless one has reason to be an agent rather than a “shmagent”. In response, Velleman argues that the constitutive aim is self-validating. I argue that this claim is false. If the constitutive aim of (...) self-understanding structures an agent’s practical deliberation as Velleman describes, then some correctly deliberating agents will regard that aim as normatively arbitrary or unjustified. Moreover, I argue that the self-invalidation of the constitutive aim undermines or significantly qualifies Velleman’s claim that his constitutivism reconciles internalism with a kind of objectivity about reasons. Internalists typically hold that motives from which an agent is alienated do not generate reasons, but in cases of self-invalidation, agents are alienated from the aim of self-understanding in just this way. Thus, the larger cost of the constitutive aim’s possible self-invalidation is that Velleman’s constitutivism does not satisfy a plausible and widely accepted constraint on an internalist account of reasons. (shrink)

RESUMEN: En su Teoría de los Sentimientos Morales Adam Smith propone una ética que concilia dos paradigmas habitualmente considerados como incompatibles: una ética de virtudes, con normas orientativas e ideales de excelencia, y una ética con reglas universales que se aplican en todos los casos sin excepción. Smith lo hace cambiando el punto de vista desde el que se realiza el juicio moral, a una perspectiva que llamaré "simpatético-imparcial", y que corresponde a "los sentimientos simpatéticos de un espectador imparcial y (...) bien informado". Este novedoso punto de vista le permite introducir características modernas a la ética clásica de la virtud para dar una nueva justificación a las virtudes positivas, así como cambiar el modo de entender las "reglas o principios universales". De este modo, Smith construye una ética capaz de dar cuenta, dentro del mismo marco teórico, tanto de los ideales de excelencia propios de la virtud, como de los imperativos universales modernos. ABSTRACT: In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith reconciles two moral paradigms that are usually considered incompatible: an ethics of virtue, with general guidelines and ideals of excellence, and an ethics with universal rules, which must be applied to all cases without exceptions. Smith makes this possible by shifting the perspective from which moral judgments are assessed to what I call the 'sympathetic-impartial' perspective, which stands for "the sympathetic feelings of an impartial and well-informed spectator". From this new standpoint, Smith is able to introduce some modern features into classic virtue ethics and provide a different justification for positive virtues, as well as to change the way 'universal norms or principles' are understood. Accordingly, Smith's theory accounts simultaneously, and within the same theoretical framework, for both ancient-like virtues and their ideals of excellence and for modern-like universal imperatives. (shrink)

This paper argues for a novel sentimentalist realist metaethical theory, according to which moral wrongness is analyzed in terms of the sentiments one has most reason to have. As opposed to standard sentimentalist views, the theory does not employ sentiments that are had in response to morally wrong action, but rather sentiments that antecedently dispose people to refrain from immoral behavior, specifically the sentiments of compassion and respect.

In this paper, we advance a novel conception of normative ethics and draw out its implications within the domain of professional ethics. We argue that all moral agents, and thus professionals, share a fundamental and constitutive normative interest in correctly conceiving of their ends. All professionals, we claim, by virtue of their positions of social power, have special role responsibilities in cultivating and sustaining societies oriented by this shared ideal of practically oriented ethical understanding. We defend this conception against a (...) familiar opponent of a philosophical approach to professional ethics: the morally skeptical student. By taking the skeptic’s challenge seriously, we clarify the conditions for a sound account of normative ethics and then provide a response that meets this test. Against this type of skeptic, we claim that a fundamental commitment to the ideal of understanding our ends ought to be included within any curriculum of professional et... (shrink)

I discuss Bernard Williams’ ‘integrity objection’ – his version of the demandingness objection to unreasonably demanding ‘extremist’ moral theories such as consequentialism – and argue that it is best understood as presupposing the internal reasons thesis. However, since the internal reasons thesis is questionable, so is Williams’ integrity objection. I propose an alternative way of bringing out the unreasonableness of extremism, based on the notion of the agent’s autonomy, and show how an objection to this proposal can be outflanked by (...) a strategy that also outflanks the ‘paradox of deontology.’. (shrink)

After decades of vigorous debate, many contemporary philosophers in the Kantian tradition continue to believe, or at least hope, that morality can be given a firm grounding by showing that rational agents cannot consistently reject moral requirements. In the present paper, I do not take a stand on the possibility of bringing out the alleged inconsistency. Instead I argue that, even if a successful argument could be given for this inconsistency, this would not provide an adequate answer to “the normative (...) question” (i.e., “why should I be moral?”). My defense of this claim emerges from a defense of a claim about Kant, namely, that he did not attempt to answer the normative question in this way. After carefully articulating Kant’s answer to the normative question, I argue that his answer to this question contains a lesson about why we should not embrace the approach that is popular among many contemporary Kantians. (shrink)

When a person gives up an end of crucial importance to her in order to promote a moral aim, we regard her as having made a moral sacrifice. The paper analyzes these sacrifices in light of some of Bernard Williams’ objections to Kantian and Utilitarian accounts of them. Williams argues that an implausible consequence of these theories is that that we are expected to sacrifice projects that make our lives worth living and contribute to our integrity. Williams’ arguments about integrity (...) and meaning are shown to be unconvincing when the content of projects is left open. However, a look at his later arguments suggests a reason to be concerned about defensible ethical projects as understood through what he refers to as “the morality system”. The problem for theories of this type turns out to be not merely conflicts between ethical projects and moral demands but making sense of some of the ethically relevant features of these projects. Accommodations to moral theories that leave room for ethical projects may be insufficient to explain such features, for example in cases where agents demand more of themselves than the theories require. Making the theories more demanding is also problematic. Williams’ view about the role ethics plays in our conception of the life we want to lead provides a better account of these cases. (shrink)

I argue that rationalists need not adopt Kant’s method for determining what one has reason to do, where by “Kant’s method” I mean the view that normative guidance comes only from directives imposed on the agent by the agent’s own will. I focus on Kant’s argument for “imperatives of skill,” one sort of hypothetical imperative. I argue, against Korsgaard, that Kant’s argument is neither better nor significantly different than the sort of argument non-Kantian rationalists offer. I close by arguing that (...) Korsgaard is wrong to think that her question “why should I care about performing the means to my ends?” is a serious worry. (shrink)

A prevailing conceptualization of values in organizations regards values as preferable modes of conduct or end-states of existence. Accordingly, values are pursued through prescriptions, actions of implementation and evaluation, based on the presumption that values inform actions. Thus, holding the ‘right’ values leads to desired practice. However, this is a problematic stance, suppressing the fact that correlation between value and action is highly questioned. The article claims that proliferation of values in organizations is more plausible and influential turning the process (...) around, utilizing the ideas of sensemaking, tacit knowledge and virtue in a critical reflection-upon-action model, engaging organizational members as co-researchers of their own value constructions in context. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan argues that it doesn’t matter whether a state has authority in the sense of being able to create binding obligations for its citizens, so long as it is morally justified in wielding political power. In this paper, I look at this issue from a slightly different angle. I argue that it matters a great deal whether citizens relate to their state in an obligatory fashion. This is for two reasons. First, a fully morally justified state must be an (...) efficacious state; it must be able to realise its values and make its rules stick. My contention will be that enduring stability can only be secured when citizens, or at least a significant proportion of citizens, are tangibly bound to regulate their conduct in accordance with a principle of obedience to just states. Second, it is only when individuals interact in the right way with the justification for state power that the state itself as a pervasive and coercive entity does not pose a problem for them as reason-responsive agents. In fac.. (shrink)

Promising ourselves is familiar, yet some find it philosophically troubling. Though most of us take the promises we make ourselves seriously, it can seem mysterious how a promise made only to oneself could genuinely bind. Moreover, the desire to be bound by a promise to oneself may seem to expose an unflattering lack of trust in oneself. In this paper I aim to vindicate self-promising from these broadly skeptical concerns. Borrowing Nietzsche’s idea of a memory of the will, I suggest (...) that self-promising involves an activity of the will, aimed at the preservation and protection of one’s values. I explain how, understood in this way, these promises can indeed bind, and show that the motivation for making them need not involve mistrust or other alienated attitudes. I then turn to interpersonal promising, arguing that this same activity of the will is required for sincerely promising others: in effect, making a sincere promise to another requires making a promise to oneself. Attention to this under-appreciated aspect of interpersonal promising enriches our understanding of all promises, and helps to correct a narrow and distorted picture of what it means to be bound. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen and David Estlund claim that, because of their fact-dependent nature, constructivist theories of justice do not qualify as moral theories about fundamental values such as justice. In this paper, I defend fact-dependent, constructivist theories of justice against this fact-independency critique. I argue that constructivists can invoke facts among the grounds for accepting fundamental principles of justice while maintaining that the foundation of morality has to be non-empirical. My claim is that constructivists ultimately account for the normativity of fact-dependent (...) principles by referring to a fact-independent, moral conception of the person, which is not a principle of justice.1. (shrink)

In this article the importance of the representational character of politics is illustrated on the basis of the philosophy of Kant. The vanishing of the noumenal in post-modern thinking seems to imply fundamental changes in the sensitive response – aesthetics of the beautiful and the sublime – to politics. In the Kantian paradigm the meaning of our affective response to the violence of (human) nature is ruled by a moral perspective of practical reason. Although the representation of practical reason in (...) the empirical is only possible in an indirect way by means of a schematism of analogy, the corresponding – subjectively teleological – aesthetic feelings both of harmony in the beautiful and of resistance in the sublime do symbolize in a reflective judgement the morally determined character and the objectively conceived teleology of nature in the system of rights of a single state as well as of the cosmopolitan world order. (shrink)

Elqayam & Evans' (E&E's) critique of normativism is related to an inherently philosophical question: Is thinking a normative affair? Should thinking be held accountable towards certain norms? I present the historical and philosophical origins of the view that thinking belongs to the realm of normativity and has a tight connection with logic, stressing the pivotal role of Kant in these developments.

The debate between proponents and opponents of a role for empirical psychology in ethical theory seems to be deadlocked. This paper aims to clarify the terms of that debate, and to defend a principled middle position. I argue against extreme views, which see empirical psychology either as irrelevant to, or as wholly displacing, reflective moral inquiry. Instead, I argue that moral theorists of all stripes are committed to a certain conception of moral thought—as aimed at abstracting away from individual inclinations (...) and toward interpersonal norms—and that this conception tells against both extremes. Since we cannot always know introspectively whether our particular moral judgments achieve this interpersonal standard, we must seek the sort of self-knowledge offered by empirical psychology. Yet reflective assessment of this new information remains a matter of substantive normative theorizing, rather than an immediate consequence of empirical findings themselves. (shrink)

The idea that impartial moral theories – consequentialism and Kantian ethics in particular – were objectionably hostile to a person’s integrity was famously championed by Bernard Williams nearly 40 years ago. That Williams’‘integrity objection’ has significantly shaped subsequent moral theorizing is widely acknowledged. It is less widely appreciated how this objection has helped shape recent thinking about the nature and value of integrity itself. This paper offers a critical survey of main lines of response to this objection.

The traditional problem of incontinence raises the question of whether there is any way to account for action contrary to judgment. When one acts, rather than only being acted upon by circumstances, the action is explained in terms of the reasons for action one judges oneself to have. It therefore seems impossible to explain action that iscontrary to such judgment. This paper examines the question of how such explanation would be possible. After excluding accounts that either eliminate incontinence or render (...) it inexplicable, I argue that genuine incontinence would require three components: first, a distinction between the types of judgments simultaneously present in the agent; second, the Aristotelian idea that not all of those types of judgments can be directly action-guiding; and third, that the judgments that are action-guiding can be pre-conceptual perceptions. I then use elements of Collingwood's aesthetics to make the case that although such pre-conceptual perceptions would not be propositional judgments and the relationship between them and the behaviors of the agent could not be causal, those behaviors could still qualify as incontinent actions. (shrink)

It is a common idea that morality, or moral truths, if there are any, must have some sort of source, or grounding. It has also been claimed that constructivist theories in metaethics have an advantage over realist theories in that the former but not the latter can provide such a grounding. This paper has two goals. First, it attempts to show that constructivism does not in fact provide a complete grounding for morality, and so is on a par with realism (...) in this respect. Second, it explains why it seems that morality in fact couldn't have a source. (shrink)

Why is pain the opposite of pleasure? Several theories of pleasure and pain have substantial difficulty explaining this basic feature. Theories according to which pleasure and pain are individual sensations or features of sensations have particular difficulty, since it is difficult to understand how pairs of sensations could be opposites. Some philosophers argue that the pain is the opposite of pleasure because pain and pleasure are fundamentally a matter of desire and aversion, and desire and aversion are clear opposites. I (...) argue that the structure of desire and aversion does not correspond to that of pleasure and pain. I propose that pleasure and pain are opposites because pleasure is good and pain is bad, and good and bad are clear opposites. I show that this view explains the structure of opposition of pleasure and pain, and I answer several objections. (shrink)

Abstract: In response to Arroyo, I explain my position on the concept of “natural goodness” and how my use of that concept compares to that of Geach and Foot. An Aristotelian or functional notion of goodness provides the material for Kantian endorsement in a theory of value that avoids a metaphysical commitment to intrinsic values. In response to Cummiskey, I review reasons for thinking Kantianism and consequentialism incompatible, especially those objections to aggregation that arise from the notion of the natural (...) good previously described. In response to Moland, I explain why I think Hegelian worries about the supposed emptiness of the Kantian self do not apply to my account. And in response to both Moland and Bird-Pollan, I argue that, contrary to the view of some Hegelians, the intersubjective normativity of reason is not something developed through actual social relations; rather, it is something essential to an individual's relations with himself or herself. (shrink)

Abstract: This article argues that Christine Korsgaard's stimulating claim that practical identity is at the foundation of agency is weakened by her reliance on a Kantian conception of freedom. The commitments that make up our practical identity are, the article suggests, better described through a system like Hegel's that attends to the nature of and connection among different kinds of commitments. Beginning with such an analysis allows us better to describe human agency; it also enables us to reflect the place (...) commitments have in our lives more accurately. Hegel offers a description of ethical life in which commitments are central but still subject to norms that themselves better allow humans to achieve concrete freedom. (shrink)

It is by now a well-supported hypothesis in cognitive neuroscience that there exists a functional network for the moral appraisal of situations. However, there is a surprising disagreement amongst researchers about the significance of this network for moral actions, decisions, and behavior. Some researchers suggest that we should uncover those ethics [that are built into our brains ], identify them, and live more fully by them, while others claim that we should often do the opposite, viewing the cognitive neuroscience of (...) morality more like a science of pathology. To analyze and evaluate the disagreement, this paper will investigate some of its possible sources. These may include theoretical confusions about levels of explanation in cognitive science, or different senses of ‘morality’ that researchers are looking to explain. Other causes of the debate may come from empirical assumptions about how possible or preferable it is to separate intuitive moral appraisal from moral decisions. Although we will tentatively favor the ‘Set Aside’ approach, the questions outlined here are open areas of ongoing research, and this paper will be confined to outlining the position space of the debate rather than definitively resolving it. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the metaphysical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas captures some essential moral intuitions that are central to health care. However, there is an ongoing discussion about the relevance of ethical metaphysics for normative ethics and in particular on the question of the relationship between justice and individualized care. In this paper I take part in this debate and I argue that Levinas' idea of an ethics of the Other that guides politics and justice can shed important (...) light on issues that are central to priorities in health care. In fact, the ethics of Levinas in seeking the foundation of normativity itself, captures the ethical coreand central values of health care. (shrink)

Actions expressing emotions (such as caressing the clothes of one's dead friend in grief, or tearing apart a photograph out of jealousy) pose a notorious challenge to action theorists. They are thought to be intentional in that they are in some sense under the agent's control. They are not thought to be done for a reason, however, because they cannot be explained by considerations that favor them from the agent's point of view. This seems to be the case, at least, (...) if one subscribes to the Davidsonian standard model of action explanation. So far, philosophers have had three different reactions to this challenge. Rationalists insist that such actions can be rationalized by re-interpreting them. Arationalists insist that there simply is no reasoning process moving agents in emotional states to act. A third reaction questions the intentionality of such actions altogether. All three reactions, however, share the assumption underlying the standard account: if an agent is thought to act for a reason - and hence acts intentionally - he must entertain a desire and some means-end belief reflecting his reasoning process about how to attain what he desires by acting. In this paper, I try to show that this reflective reasoning mechanism is only one way to rationalize an action. Another way is by tracing an action to an unreflective valuing stance respresenting reasons the agent has from his point of view. Emotions are attitudes that help to grasp reasons the agent has. Since emotions come with a strong motivational potential they move the agent to act expressively. But the agent typically allows himself to do so, thereby monitoring the way in which he does it. To the extent that the agent unreflectively acts on a motive that is itself representative of his point of view, his expressive actions can be regarded as rationalizable. (shrink)

Morality is commonly thought to be normative in a robust and important way. This is commonly cashed out in terms of normative reasons. It is also commonly thought that morality is necessarily and universally normative, i.e., that moral reasons are reasons for any possible moral agent. Taking these commonplaces for granted, I argue for a novel view of moral normativity. I challenge the standard view that moral reasons are reasons to act. I suggest that moral reasons are reasons for having (...) sentiments—in particular, compassion and respect—and I argue that this view has important advantages over the standard view of moral normativity. (shrink)