A wide range of more objectivist norms appear to leave uncharted an important part of normative space. In the beginning of this paper I briefly outline two broad ways of seeking more subject-directed norms: perspectivism and feasibilism. According to feasibilism, the ultimate reason why more objectivist norms are inadequate on their own is not that they fail to take into account the limits of an agent’s perspective, but that they are not sensitive to limits on what ways of (...) choosing, acting, and believing are feasible in a given situation. I think of these ways of choosing, acting, and believing in terms of an agent's dispositions. In this paper I focus on a knowledge-first implementation of feasibilism, a view in epistemology that supplements a knowledge norm with a norm urging one to manifest dispositions that are among the most knowledge-conducive feasible ones. A view with different norms that sometimes cannot be jointly satisfied raises questions about the status of these norms. By drawing on two general hypotheses about the relationship between succeeding (e.g. knowing) and manifesting dispositions conducive to success, I argue for a view on which the prescriptive and the hypological come radically apart. The result is that an epistemic analogue of a thesis that many have assumed to hold in the moral realm should be rejected. This thesis is Only Blameworthy for Wrongs: we can only ever be blameworthy for acts that are morally wrong. I argue that on the picture presented, we can be epistemically blameworthy for doxastic states that do not violate any prescriptive epistemic norms. I then generalise the considerations to the moral realm, arguing against Only Blameworthy for Wrongs. (shrink)

A CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF PHILOSOPHY: Abstract of the Ph.D. Dissertation By Ramesh N. Patel June, 1970 -/- Philosophy pursues a rational explication of our understanding, experiences, and values in terms of objective truth and reality. Conspicuously, its view of rationality has been rigid and preconceived. Application of the preconceived reason in the explication of the essential features of our world fails and issues in a network of dialectical tangles. These artificially created tangles pose a unique intellectual challenge, (...) but the perennial failure to resolve them limits the intellectual response of philosophers to remaining caught in the tangles, or to taking intuitively favorable sides, or to simply denouncing the tangles as meaningless. Each is understandable. -/- Superficially, traditional philosophical reason looks like a correct tool for the explication of our world of common sense, but its applications to the world result in logical tangles showing its inadequacy. The philosopher’s faith in such reason ends up in one of two positions: abandoning our world in the interests of such reason, or embodying itself in the world through a special form of reason. Plato took the first and Aristotle took the second position. My analysis shows that Plato failed to explicate the relation between his world of Forms and our world of particulars, and, more importantly, between the Forms and the intuitive reason which grasps them. Aristotle, in my analysis, cannot conceal that the law of noncontradiction is a mere exhortation and has no descriptive necessity with respect to thought, things, or meaning. We also find such dialectical difficulties in Augustine, Hume and Strawson. -/- “Microphilosophical feasibilism” is our proposal for the best treatment, if not the definitive solution, of these problems. Instead of separating philosophical method into logic, epistemology, axiology, and metaphysics on the one side, and partitioning the projected results of philosophizing into validity, truth, valuation, and reality on the other, we need to start philosophizing with a general distinction between “method employed” and “intended result.” This distinction is not pre-colored by claims to ultimate verities. It is a direct aid to understanding. I consider the basic inevitable paradox that a philosopher should explain not only our understanding of experience but also his philosophizing itself. The circularity between “method employed” and “intended result” needs to be admitted as an initial fact about reason rather than circumvented by an implausibly claimed capacity of philosophical reason to formally transcend everything including this circularity. -/- Presuppositions are reduced to a minimum inevitable number. Being our primary microphilosophical criteria, they are reason, experience, and value in their minimal sense. They cannot be plausibly substituted or further reduced. They cannot be preferred one or more to others arbitrarily. We show how, in microphilosophy they coincide or synchronize. Jointly and basically, they form the minimum method employed. The initial, basic, intended result is called minimum feasibility. The fundamental circularity between method and result leaves no way out but to ground self-reference in such a manner that method and result “logico-genetically” coincide. Two extreme situations are avoided: “the logical zero-situation” where nothing is true or real, and “the credulous open situation” where everything is true or real. Finding a mean manifests a basic value. If the meaning of truth and reality is to be preserved, the basic value must have a clear impact and express descriptive rather than revisionary reason. -/- Several other stringent demands are raised as conditions which microphilosophy should fulfil to achieve feasibility. The final, joint, outcome of both “method” and “result,” in the thesis of microphilosophical feasibilism, is formulated thus: Self refers freely and symbolically to itself, own person, own body, material bodies, other persons’ bodies, other persons, and other selves. -/- Ramesh N. Patel Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy conferred in June, 1970 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M. (shrink)

I begin with by discussing cases that seem to show that a range of norms – norms like Choose the best!, Believe the truth!, and even Keep your promises! – fail to map out an important part of normative space. At the core of the problem is the observation that in some cases we can only conform to these norms by luck, in a way that is not creditable to us. I outline a prevalent diagnosis of the problem of luck, (...) which I label perspectivist. According to this diagnosis, the problem with a range of objectivist norms is that they make reference to facts that may lie outside our perspectives, not being present to our minds. An agent’s perspective is a kind of representation of the world: her evidence, knowledge, beliefs, experiences, etc. The first aim of this paper is to argue that the perspectivist diagnosis of the problem of luck is not ultimately correct. The correct diagnosis, I argue, is feasibilist: in some situations it is not feasible to choose, act, or believe in ways that conformity to objectivist norms robustly depends on. That is, it is sometimes not feasible to manifest dispositions that robustly enough track what one ought to do or believe, according to norms like those listed above. The same, I argue, is true of perspectivist norms: sometimes it is not feasible to track facts about our own perspectives. This shift in focus from the limits of our perspectives to limits on what dispositions it is feasible to manifest has, I argue, deep ramifications for normative theory. My second aim is to sketch an alternative, feasibilist way of thinking about a more subject-directed kind of normativity, one that takes into account our limitations as human agents. The result is a normative picture that unifies the practical and theoretical domains. (shrink)