In The Sources of Normativity and elsewhere, Korsgaard defends a Kantian ethical theory by arguing that valuing anything commits one to valuing humanity as the source of all value. I reconstruct Korsgaard’s influential argument to show how she can resist many of the objections that critics have raised. I also show how the argument fails because, at a crucial point, it begs the question in favor of the value of humanity. It thus fails for internal reasons that do not depend (...) on rejecting Korsgaard’s metaethical constructivism or her conception of rational agency. (shrink)

Kantians often talk about the capacity to set ends for oneself through reason and those who do assume that Kant regarded the capacity to set ends as a rational power or a component of practical reason. ‘Natural perfection’, Kant says, ‘is the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends set forth by reason’, and he refers to ‘humanity’ as the ‘capacity to set oneself any end at all’ or ‘the capacity to realize all sorts of possible ends’.¹ ‘Humanity’ comprises (...) the full range of human rational capacities, one of which is the capacity to adopt a wide variety of ends, including ends that are not morally required by pure practical reason.² Likewise Kant refers to ‘culture’ as ‘the aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which he can use nature (internal and external)’, or as ‘the production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom).’³ Christine Korsgaard characterizes ‘humanity’ as follows. (shrink)

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 who are not moral agents. 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. (shrink)

This paper addresses a question about the moral status of Artificial Intelligence (AI): will AIs ever become moral patients? I argue that, while it is in principle possible for an intelligent machine to be a moral patient, there is no good reason to believe this will in fact happen. I start from the plausible assumption that traditional artifacts do not meet a minimal necessary condition of moral patiency: having a good of one's own. I then argue that intelligent machines are (...) no different from traditional artifacts in this respect. To make this argument, I examine the feature of AIs that enables them to improve their intelligence, i.e., machine learning. I argue that there is no reason to believe that future advances in machine learning will take AIs closer to having a good of their own. I thus argue that concerns about the moral status of future AIs are unwarranted. Nothing about the nature of intelligent machines makes them a better candidate for acquiring moral patiency than the traditional artifacts whose moral status does not concern us. (shrink)

As persons, beings with a capacity for autonomy, we face a certain practical task in living out our lives. At any given period we find ourselves with many desires or preferences, yet we have limited resources, and so we cannot satisfy them all. Our limited resources include insufficient economic means, of course; few of us have either the funds or the material provisions to obtain or pursue all that we might like. More significantly, though, we are limited to a single (...) life and one of finite duration. We also age, and pursuits that were possible at earlier points within a life may become impossible at later stages; we thus encounter not only an ultimate time limit but episodic limits as well. Because we must live our lives with limited resources—material and temporal—we are pressed to choose among and to order our preferences. Without some selection and ordering, few if any of them would be satisfied, and we would be unable to live lives that are recognizably good at all. Moreover, we would be unable to function well as the autonomous beings that we are. Our practical task then is to form a coherent, stable, and attractive ordering of aims—to develop a conception of our good. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard’s argument for the claim that one should not only value one’s own humanity but also the humanity of all other persons, ‘the publicity of reasons argument’, has been heavily criticized and I believe rightly so. However, both in an early paper and in her most recent work, Korsgaard does not rely on controversial, Wittgensteinian ideas regarding the publicity of reasons, but instead she uses a different argument to justify interpersonal morality, which I will refer to as ‘the argument (...) from the sufficiency of agency’. The goal of this paper is to evaluate whether the argument from the sufficiency of agency can succeed where the publicity of reasons argument fails. I will argue that although the argument from the sufficiency of agency is potentially more promising, it fails to justify a categorical and universal principle of interpersonal morality. I argue, however, that this failure has less to do with the argument from the sufficiency of agency itself and more with Korsgaard’s specific version of it. This leaves open the possibility that other Kantian constructivist arguments from the sufficiency of agency might be more successful. (shrink)

According to Korsgaard’s very influential interpretation, moral normativity follows from a commonly accepted conception of rational agency, namely, the capacity to set ends and pursue them or humanity. The paper argues that humanity is not the source of moral normativity. Taking the exercise of your freedom in pursuit of your ends to be justified commits you to acknowledging the equal claim of others to see themselves as justified in the pursuit of their ends. This entails the equal restriction of the (...) freedom of each to ensure maximal freedom for all. But this is precisely what Kant thinks of as the state of right. In contrast, the paper claims that the second formula of the categorical imperative commands making the humanity of rational beings who are assumed to possess the capacity to act morally or personality, into our end, precisely because they are assumed to possess this distinct rational capacity. (shrink)

In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be someone. Donald Regan has recently revived and developed the Moorean challenge, making explicit its implications for the very idea of individual welfare. If the Moorean is right, there is no distinct, normative property good for, and so no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist. In this essay, I undertake to address the Moorean challenge, clarifying our theoretical alternatives so (...) that we may better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treat good or good for (or neither) as fundamental. I compare the Moorean and welfarist pictures of value, providing an account of the form and function of good for. According to this account expresses a distinct relational value that has its source in the value of persons. Good for value is thus a form of extrinsic value that provides agent-neutral reasons for action, and it plays a pervasive normative role in regulating child rearing, guiding individual life choices, and shaping social policy formation. (shrink)