Abstract
Miriam Schleifer McCormick delineates the
limits, or at least one limit, of the ethics of mind. Many theorists, including
McCormick herself, have argued that some states of mind are appropriate
targets of certain reactive attitudes even if they cannot be directly
controlled. McCormick now worries that the scope of agency can be
widened too far so that no area of mind is beyond the reach of appropriate
assessment and judgement. She begins with the intuition that there is,
or ought to be, a domain of the mind that is completely free of normative
assessment, where you are safe to let your thoughts and images go wherever
they take you without concern that you are doing anything wrong,
where praise and shame do not apply. McCormick begins by offering
an example of the kind of state she thinks should be beyond normative
judgment; she argues that certain kinds of wakeful fantasies are on par
with sleeping dreams. If one shares McCormick’s view that there is a
“free” domain of the wakeful mind, then what she is doing can be seen
as clarifying why such states exempt them from judgment. If one does
not share this intuition, then what McCormick is doing can be seen as
specifying what criteria would be needed for a kind of state (or domain)
to be free in this sense. And then some may argue that no wakeful fantasies
satisfy these criteria. McCormick addresses those arguments and
argues that if the fantasies as characterized are appropriate targets of
normative assessment, then it will be very difficult to exempt dreams of
sleep, as well as other exercises of imagination. Of course, some people
(like Augustine and surprisingly many others) will not mind this result.
McCormick doesn’t think then that is the end of the discussion, stalemate
and parting of intuitions, for she argues that a case can be made for the
value of having a realm of imagination that is beyond the reach of any
kind of judgment.