It is often observed in metaethics that moral language displays a certain duality in as much as it seems to concern both objective facts in the world and subjective attitudes that move to action. In this paper, I defend The Dual Aspect Account which is intended to capture this duality: A person’s utterance of a sentence according to which φing has a moral characteristic, such as “φing is wrong,” conveys two things: The sentence expresses, in virtue of its conventional meaning, (...) the belief that φing has a moral property, and the utterance of the sentence carries a generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the person in question has an action-guiding attitude in relation to φing. This account has significant advantages over competing views: (i) As it is purely cognitivist, it does not have the difficulties of expressivism and various ecumenical positions. (ii) Yet, in spite of this, it can explain the close, “meaning-like,” connection between moral language and attitudes. (iii) In contrast to other pragmatic accounts, it is compatible with any relevant cognitivist view. (iv) It does not rest on a contentious pragmatic notion, such as conventional implicature. (v) It does not imply that utterances of complex moral sentences, such as conditionals, convey attitudes. In addition, the generalized implicature in question is fully calculable and cancellable. (shrink)

This article presents a new proposal for understanding the establishment and maintenance of cooperation: the cooperation afforder with framing hypothesis, producing what can be called cooperation from afforder-framing . Three key moves are present. First, a special variety of the Stag Hunt game, the Cooperation Afforder game, will reliably produce mutualistic cooperation through an evolutionary process. Second, cognitive framing is a credible candidate mechanism to meet the special conditions and requirements of the Cooperation Afforder game. Third, once mutualistic cooperation is (...) established in this way, it will plausibly lead to broader forms of cooperation, even to limited forms of altruism. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian and others, inference is subject to the taking condition: it necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion, and drawing the conclusion because of that fact. Boghossian argues that this condition vindicates the idea that inference is an expression of agency, and that it has several other important implications too. However, we argue in this paper that the taking condition should be rejected. The condition gives rise to several serious prima facie problems and (...) the reasons which have been offered in favour of it fail to convince. (shrink)

Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism (...) goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position. (shrink)

I argue for a soft compatibilist theory of free will, i.e., such that free will is compatible with both determinism and indeterminism, directly opposite hard incompatibilism, which holds free will incompatible both with determinism and indeterminism. My intuitions in this book are primarily based on an analysis of meditation, but my arguments are highly syncretic, deriving from many fields, including behaviorism, psychology, conditioning and deconditioning theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, simulation theory, etc. I offer a causal/functional analysis of (...) meta-mental control, or 'metacausality', cashed out in counterfactual terms, to solve what I call the easy problem of free will. (shrink)

My title refers to three accounts of interpersonal love: the rationalist account that Terence Irwin ascribes to Plato; the anti-rationalist but strikingly similar account that Harry Frankfurt endorses in his own voice; and the ‘ekstatic’ account that I – following the lead of Martha Nussbaum – find in Plato's Phaedrus. My claim is that the ekstatic account points to important features of interpersonal love to which the other accounts fail to do justice, especially reciprocity and a regulative ideal of equality.

Philosophical discussions of psychopathy have been framed primarily in terms of psychopaths' conspicuous moral shortcomings. But despite their vaunted ‘egocentricity’, another prominent trait in the standard psychopathic profile is a characteristic failure to look after themselves; in an important way, psychopaths appear to be as careless of themselves as they are of others. Assuming that the standard profile is largely correct, the question is how these moral and prudential deficits are related. Are they linked in some non‐accidental way? This paper (...) is a sympathetic exploration and articulation of the hypothesis that psychopathy involves an incapacity for critical distance from from one's own impulses and inclinations, an incapacity that would explain the lack of both prudential and moral regard. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant ventured to derive morality from freedom in Groundwork III. It is also believed that he reversed this strategy in the second Critique, attempting to derive freedom from morality instead. In this paper, I set out to challenge these familiar assumptions: Kant’s argument in Groundwork III rests on a moral conception of the intelligible world, one that plays a similar role as the ‘fact of reason’ in the second Critique. Accordingly, I argue, there is no (...) reversal in the proof-structure of Kant’s two works. (shrink)

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, EarlyView.

Moral platonism, the claim that moral entities are both objective and prescriptive, is generally thought to be a dead end. In an attempt to defend a moderate form of moral platonism or more precisely platonism about values, I first argue that several of the many versions of this doctrine are not committed to ontological extravagances. I then discuss an important objection due to John McDowell and developed by Michael Smith, according to which moral platonism is incoherent. I argue that objectivism (...) is compatible with the claim that certain ways of being aware of values, namely those involving emotions, are motivating. (shrink)

The article begins with Jonathan Dancy’s attempt to refute the Humean Theory of Motivation. It first spells out Dancy’s argument for his alternative position, the view he labels ‘Pure Cognitivism’, according to which what motivate are always beliefs, never desires. The article next argues that Dancy’s argument for his position is flawed. On the one hand, it is not true that desire always comes with motivation in the agent; on the other, even if this was the case, it would still (...) not follow that desire is identical with the state of being motivated. When this negative work is done, the article turns to some positive, albeit admittedly tentative remarks about what sort of cognitivist theory of motivation one should endorse. The aim at this point is not to present a brand new theory, but rather to sketch an alternative that stems from what Dancy himself says and is in line with many of his endorsed commitments in other areas. In this way, by moving beyond Pure Cognitivism, the paper sketches a different, but still ‘Dancyesque’ theory of motivation. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that there are two kinds of reasoning: inferential reasoning and non-inferential reasoning. However, it is not entirely clear what the difference between these two kinds of reasoning is. In this paper, I try to answer the question what this difference is. I first discuss three answers to this question that I argue are unsatisfactory. I then give a different answer to this question, and I argue that this answer is satisfactory. I end by showing that this (...) answer can help to resolve some disagreements in which the difference between inferential and noninferential reasoning plays a role. (shrink)

Derek Parfit famously argued that personal identity is not what matters for prudential concern about the future. Instead, he argues what matters is Relation R, a combination of psychological connectedness and continuity with any cause. This revisionary conclusion, Parfit argued, has profound implications for moral theory. It should lead us, among other things, to deny the importance of the separateness of persons as an important fact of morality. Instead, we should adopt impersonal consequentialism. In this paper, I argue that Parfit (...) is mistaken about this last step. His revisionary arguments about personal identity and rationality have no implications for moral theory. We need not decide whether Relation R or personal identity contain what matters if we want to retain the importance of the separateness of persons. (shrink)

What is the relation between norms (in the sense of ?socially accepted rules?) and conventions? A number of philosophers have suggested that there is some kind of conceptual or constitutive relation between them. Some hold that conventions are or entail special kinds of norms (the ?conventions-as-norms thesis?). Others hold that at least some norms are or entail special kinds of conventions (the ?norms-as-conventions thesis?). We argue that both theses are false. Norms and conventions are crucially different conceptually and functionally in (...) ways that make it the case that it is a serious mistake to try to assimilate them. They are crucially different conceptually in that whereas conventions are not normative and are behaviour dependent and desire dependent, norms are normative, behaviour independent, and desire independent. They are crucially different functionally in that whereas conventions principally serve the function of facilitating coordination, norms principally serve the function of making us accountable to one another. (shrink)

What is the role of affective experience in explaining how our desires provide us with reasons for action? When we desire that p, we are thereby disposed to feel attracted to the prospect that p, or to feel averse to the prospect that not-p. In this paper, we argue that affective experiences – including feelings of attraction and aversion – provide us with reasons for action in virtue of their phenomenal character. Moreover, we argue that desires provide us with reasons (...) for action only insofar as they are dispositions to have affective experiences. On this account, affective experience has a central role to play in explaining how desires provide reasons for action. (shrink)

Sustainable Development Goals, which serve as the primary feature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and Nationally Determined Contributions, which serve as a vital instrumental of the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement, have clear synergies. Both are focused, in part, on responding to challenges presented to human well-being. There are good practical reasons to integrate development efforts with a comprehensive response to climate change. However, at least in their current form, these two policy instruments are ill-suited to this task. Where SDGs (...) are focused on supporting considerations of human flourishing to which policy needs to respond, NDCs, in their current form, are dependent on the determinations of the nations that generate them. I conclude that the best means of integrating these two policy initiatives require moving past the subjective foundations of NDCs. (shrink)

It is often held that Plato did not have a viable account of interpersonal love. The account of eros—roughly, desire—in the Symposium appears to fail, and, though the Lysis contains much suggestive material for an account of philia—roughly, friendship—this is an aporetic dialogue, which fails, ultimately, to provide an account of friendship. This paper argues that Plato's account of friendship is in the Phaedrus. This dialogue outlines three kinds of philia relationship, the highest of which compares favourably to the Aristotelian (...) notion of love for another ‘for their own sake’. In contrast to the account of eros in the Symposium, this gives Plato an account of interpersonal love that meets some of the requirements laid down by Gregory Vlastos for a satisfactory account of interpersonal love. (shrink)

The main focus of this essay is to closely engage with the role of scientist-subjectivity in the making of objectivity in Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book Objectivity, and Daston’s later and earlier works On Scientific Observation and The Moral Economy of Science. I have posited four challenges to the neo-Kantian and Foucauldian constructions of the co-implication of psychology and epistemology presented in these texts. Firstly, following Jacques Lacan’s work, I have argued that the subject of science constituted by the (...) mode of modern science suffers from paranoia. It is not the fear of subjectivity interfering with objectivity but the impossibility of knowing the truth of the real that causes paranoia. Here, I have argued that it is not the ethos of objectivity that drives epistemology as Daston and Galison suggest, but the pathos of paranoia. The second challenge builds upon Kant’s own denial that the perfect correspondence between the human will and the moral law is possible. Kant himself thought that an ethical human act is impossible without the component of “pathology.” This questions Daston and Galison’s argument that there is always ethical imperative at the core of epistemic virtue. The third challenge contests the way Daston and Galison take appearance for being in their application of the Foucauldian concept of technologies of the self in modeling the master scientist-self. The fourth challenge questions the notion of the psychological and unconscious in the making of epistemology in Daston’s later and earlier work. Against this background, I aim to make a claim that understanding and disclosing “entities” in the scientific domain presupposes an understanding of “being” in general. My goal is to open up the discussion for an alternative conception of the scientist-subject and thereby an affective and existential formulation of science. (shrink)

Desire satisfaction has not received detailed philosophical examination. Yet intuitive judgments about the satisfaction of desires have been used as data points guiding theories of desire, desire content, and the semantics of ‘desire’. This paper examines desire satisfaction and the standard propositional view of desire. Firstly, I argue that there are several distinct concepts of satisfaction. Secondly, I argue that separating them defuses a difficulty for the standard view in accommodating desires that Derek Parfit described as ‘implicitly conditional on their (...) own persistence’, a problem posed by Shieva Kleinschmidt, Kris McDaniel, and Ben Bradley. The solution undercuts a key motivation for rejecting the standard view in favour of more radical accounts proposed in the literature. (shrink)

Humean Nature: How Desire Explains Action, Thought, and Feeling, by Neil Sinhababu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 224.

In this paper, I argue that an externalist theory of thought content provides the means to resolve two debates in moral philosophy. The first—that between judgement internalism and judgement externalism—concerns the question of whether there is a conceptual connection between moral judgement and motivation. The second—that between reasons internalism and reasons externalism—concerns the relationship between moral reasons and an agent's subjective motivational set. The resolutions essentially stem from the externalist claim that concepts can be grasped partially, and a new moral (...) theory, which I call ‘moral externalism’, emerges. (shrink)

The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...) focuses on normative theories (and the aims they provide to agents), David McNaughton and Piers Rawling focus on rules and reasons, Skorupski on predicates, and there are other suggestions too. Some writers suspect that we fundamentally talk about one and the same distinction. This work is about practical reasons for action rather than theoretical reasons for belief. Moreover, focus is on whether reasons do or do not essentially refer to particular agents. A challenge that undermines the dichotomy in this sense is posed. After having rejected different attempts to defend the distinction, it is argued that there is a possible defence that sets out from Jonathan Dancy’s recent distinction between enablers and favourers. (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)

Is there a sense in which we exercise direct volitional control over our beliefs? Most agree that there is not, but discussions tend to focus on control in forming a belief. The focus here is on sustaining a belief over time in the face of ‘epistemic temptation’ to abandon it. It is argued that we do have a capacity for ‘doxastic self-control’ over time that is partly volitional in nature, and that its exercise is rationally permissible.

According to explanatory individualism, every action must be explained in terms of an agent's desire. According to explanatory nonindividualism, we sometimes act on our desires, but it is also possible for us to act on others' desires without acting on desires of our own. While explanatory nonindividualism has guided the thinking of many social scientists, it is considered to be incoherent by most philosophers of mind who insist that actions must be explained ultimately in terms of some desire of the (...) agent. In the first part of the paper, I show that some powerful arguments designed to demonstrate the incoherence of explanatory nonindividualism fail. In the second part of the paper, I offer a nonindividualist explanation of the apparent obviousness of belief-desire psychology. I argue that there are two levels of the intelligibility of our actions. On the more fundamental (explanatory) level, the question "Why did the agent do something?" admits a variety of folk-psychological categories. But there is another (formation-of-self) level, at which the same question admits only of answers that ultimately appeal only to the agent's own desires. Explanatory individualism results from the confusion of the two levels. (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)

Moral requirements apply to rational agents as such. But it is a conceptual truth that if agents are morally required to act in a certain way then we expect them to act in that way. Being rational, as such, must therefore suffice to ground our expectation that rational agents will do what they are morally required to do. But how could this be so? It could only be so if we think of the moral requirements that apply to agents as (...) themselves categorical requirements of rationality or reason. For the only thing we can legitimately expect of rational agents as such is that they do what they are rationally required to do (Smith 1994: 85). (shrink)

We interact with value in two ways: we recognize objects as valuable and we take objects up as significant for our lives by valuing them. These two modes of interaction involve different kinds of reasons. Recognizing an object as valuable involves recognizing reasons that everyone shares, but agents can differ with respect to their reasons to value the object, and the reasons which are then involved in valuing. Using this observation, I argue that our relations to value and reasons are (...) irreducible to each other by rejecting two views that attempt to interpret value in terms of reasons and vice versa. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that I argue that motivational internalism should not be driving metaethics. I first show that many arguments for motivational internalism beg the question by resting on an illicit appeal to internalist assumptions about the nature of reasons. Then I make a distinction between weak internalism and the weakest form of internalism. Weak internalism allows that agents fail to act according to their normative judgments when they are practically irrational. I show that when we clarify the (...) notion of practical irrationality it does not support motivational internalism. Weakest internalism only claims that agents are irrational if they entirely lack motiv- ation to do what they judge they ought to. I do not argue against weakest internalism, but I argue that it is not an important view. (shrink)

Intergenerational justice not only requires the adoption of best practices and policies; but also the prevention and repression of deleterious and morally blameworthy human behaviour which have severe impacts on the long-term health; safety and means of survival of groups of individuals. While many international crimes have indirect consequences on the well-being of present and future generations; it cannot be said that existing international criminal law is currently well-placed to directly and clearly protect intergenerational rights. As such; the development of (...) a new type of international crime; crimes against future generations; may be a promising avenue for implementing intergenerational justice. Such a crime would penalise acts or conduct that amount to serious violations of existing international law regarding economic; social and cultural rights or the environment. (shrink)

Other wills: the second-person in ethics. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2014.941907.

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)

The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics interviewed Kagan about his formative years; his work on death, the moral status of animals, and desert; his views on changing one’s mind and convergence in philosophy; and his advice for graduate students in moral philosophy.

In his book The Ego and Its Own Max Stirner describes what happens when individuals subordinate themselves to an absolute or a universal idea in order to reap the associated ‘rewards’. What he calls ‘involuntary’ or ‘unconscious’ egoism are faulty versions of practical reason because they involve alienation, the pursuit of something that can never be attained by the individual. These forms of egoism characterise the rationality of agents who submit themselves to an absolute. However, proper egoism, as understood by (...) Stirner, implies that the self-interested agent is acting in accord with reality, with how the world and the self actually are. Alienation is thereby avoided. In what follows I want to examine whether the proper egoist can remain authentic in this way and still effectively pursue her interests. Given the Stirnerian ontology, with its distinction between proper and other forms of egoism, can the Stirnerian agent engage in a meaningful form of individualism? (shrink)

According to the view we may term “strong cognitivism”, all reasons for action are rooted in normative features that the motivated subject takes objects to have independently of her attitudes towards these objects. The main concern of this paper is to argue against strong cognitivism, that is, to establish the view that conative attitudes do provide subjects with reasons for action. The central argument to this effect is a top-down argument: it proceeds by an analysis of the complex phenomenon of (...) love and derives a conclusion regarding the nature of more basic mental phenomena—particular desires. More specifically, its starting point is the crude intuition that the significance conferred by love upon its objects is of a distinctively personal kind—an intuition that is expressed by the apparent non-substitutability of two similar subjects only one of whom is loved with respect to their importance for the lover. I argue that the initial notion of non-substitutability can be refined and modified so as to form a real challenge to all versions of strong cognitivism and to establish the existence of attitude-dependent reasons. (shrink)

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, EarlyView.

Several authors, including Thomas Nagel and David Gauthier, have defended the view that reasons of self-interest (prudential reasons) are rationally binding. That is, there is always a reason, bearing on the rational advisability, based on one's self-interest and, as a result, a person may act irrationally by knowingly acting against such reasons regardless of the person's desires or values. Both Nagel and Gauthier argue from the rationally mandatory nature of prudential reasons to the conclusion that moral reasons can be rationally (...) mandatory, challenging the neo-Humean position that practical reasons that bear on an agent's rationality are essentially grounded on the agent's subjective, contingent, conative states. I argue, pace Nagel and Gauthier, that prudential reasons are not rationally mandatory--that the rational requirement to act in one's own interest, when it exists, is, as the neo-Humean insists, grounded on one's subjective, contingent, conative states. Prudential reasons are not reasons for every (conceivable) agent--not in the sense that bears on the rational advisability of action. (shrink)

This chapter surveys the debate between philosophers who claim that all practical rationality is procedural and philosophers who claim that some practical rationality is substantive.

The desire-satisfaction theory of well-being says, in its simplest form, that a person’s level of welfare is determined by the extent to which their desires are satisfied. A question faced by anyone attracted to such a view is, *Which desires*? This paper proposes a new answer to this question by characterizing a distinction among desires that isn’t much discussed in the well-being literature. This is the distinction between what a person wants in a merely behavioral sense, in that the person (...) is, for some reason or other, disposed to act so as to try to get it, and what a person wants in a more robust sense, the sense of being *genuinely attracted* to the thing. I try to make this distinction more clear, and I argue for its axiological relevance by putting it to work in solving four problem cases for desire satisfactionism. The theory defended holds that only desires in the latter, genuine-attraction sense are relevant to welfare. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Humean theories of moral motivation appear preferable to Kantian approaches only if one assumes a broadly foundationalist conception of rational justification. Like foundationalist approaches to justification generally, Humean psychology aims to counter the regress-of-justification argument by positing a set of ultimate regress-stoppers-in this case, unmotivated desires. If the need for regress-stoppers of this type in the realm of practical deliberation is accepted, desires do indeed appear to be the most likely candidate. But if this (...) foundationalist strategy is rejected, there is no longer any reason to suppose that all motivation must be traceable to some extra-rational incentive. This clears the way for a rehabilitation of the Kantian claim that reasons for action can take the form of categorical imperatives. To illustrate this thesis, I show how a conception of practical rationality that incorporates a contextualist model of justification can be developed that treats social norms as reasons for action, without assigning any mediating role to agent desires. a theory of action of this type eliminates the gap between moral obligation and action, and so articulates the fundamental Kantian intuition that acting on the basis of moral principle-and with disregard for self-interest-is just one way of acting rationally. (shrink)

According to the guise of the good thesis, we desire things under the ‘guise of the good.’ Here I sympathetically articulate a generic formulation of the guise of the good thesis, and addre...

This paper develops a way of understanding G. E. M. Anscombe's essay “The First Person” at the heart of which are the following two ideas: first, that the point of her essay is to show that it is not possible for anyone to understand what they express with “I” as an Art des Gegebenseins—a way of thinking of an object that constitutes identifying knowledge of which object is being thought of; and second, that the argument through which her essay seeks (...) to show this is itself first personal in character. Understanding Anscombe's essay in this light has the merit of showing much of what it says to be correct. But it sets us the task of saying what it is that we understand ourselves to express with “I” if not an Art des Gegebenseins, and in particular what it is that we understand ourselves to express with sentences with “I” as subject that might seem to express identity judgments, such as “I am NN”, and “I am this body”. (shrink)

Psychopaths are agents who lack the normal capacity to feel moral emotions (e.g. guilt based on empathy with the victims of their actions). Evidence for attributing psychopathy at least in some cases to genetic or early childhood causes suggests that psychopaths lack free will. However, the paper defends a sense in which psychopaths still may be construed as responsible for their actions, even if their degree of responsibility is less than that of normal agents. Responsibility is understood in Strawsonian terms, (...) as a question of our appropriate reactive attitudes toward an agent for what she does, and as distinct from the question of the agent's own motivating attitudes, which lead him to do what he does. The latter is the question more directly relevant to free will, though moral motivation normally depends on the capacity in early childhood to pick up motivating attitudes from others' reactive attitudes. Reactive attitudes based on hatred rather than anger (e.g. disgust or contempt) count as alternative forms of blame that may be appropriately directed toward agents manifesting bad qualities of will, even as a matter of motivational impairment. So psychopaths may still be said to deserve blame, even if they are incapable of modifying their behavior in response to blame. (shrink)

It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...) minimalist approach to the relevant metaphysical and semantic notions, expressivism is compatible with any explanation that would be acceptable as a general criterion for realism. (shrink)