Ethical Constructivism

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Bagnoli
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
Dynamic Dimension ◽  
Correct Reasoning ◽  
Constitutive Principles

Ethical constructivism holds that truths about the relation between rationality, morality, and agency are best understood as constructed by correct reasoning, rather than discovered or invented. Unlike other metaphors used in metaethics, construction brings to light the generative and dynamic dimension of practical reason. On the resultant picture, practical reasoning is not only productive but also self-transforming, and socially empowering. The main task of this volume is to illustrate how constructivism has substantially modified and expanded the agenda of metaethics by refocusing on rational agency and its constitutive principles. In particular, this volume identifies, compares and discusses the prospects and failures of the main strands of constructivism regarding the powers of reason in responding to the challenges of contingency. While Kantian, Humean, Aristotelian, and Hegelian theories sharply differ in their constructivist strategies, they provide compelling accounts of the rational articulation required for an inclusive and unified ethical community.

Law as Practical Reason

1989 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 436-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. J. Detmold
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
The State ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
A Priority ◽  
The Law ◽  
John Finnis ◽  
Vast Range

Law is practical. Legal reasoning is practical reasoning. We could make nothing of a judge who having listened to counsel's arguments and reflected about the law governing his case thought that the state of knowledge that he had achieved was the natural termination of his enterprise and submitted his conclusions to the editors of Halsbury's Laws of England rather than performed the action of giving judgment. The parties would be outraged, and rightly. And if the judge continued to do such a thing he would be dismissed. Legal reasoning is practical in the sense that its natural conclusion is an action (in the judge's case the action of giving judgment) rather than a state of knowledge. This is taking “practical” in a strong sense. By this definition thought is practical whose natural conclusion is an action (or decision against action): its strongest contrast is with theoretical thought whose natural conclusion is knowledge. But it also contrasts with hypothetical thought about action (say, my thinking it would be good to play cricket again). I do not call this practical because it does not conclude in an action or decision against action (others do; for example John Finnis in Fundamentals of Ethics; my reasons for differing in this matter will emerge). A judge's practical reasoning towards the action of giving judgment has priority for our understanding of law over that vast range of practically idle things that lawyers do, from the construction of digests like Halsbury to casual reflection about the rule in Shelley's case (of course there is one sort of doing involved in both these, but not legal doing). It is important here to be clear about this priority. It is a priority of practicality, not a priority of judges or lawyers.

scholarly journals Truth in Practical Reason: Practical and Assertoric Truth in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michail Pantoulias ◽  
Vasiliki Vergouli ◽  
Panagiotis Thanassas
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Nicomachean Ethics ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Practical Syllogism ◽  
The Subject ◽  
De Interpretatione

Truth has always been a controversial subject in Aristotelian scholarship. In most cases, including some well-known passages in the Categories, De Interpretatione and Metaphysics, Aristotle uses the predicate ‘true’ for assertions, although exceptions are many and impossible to ignore. One of the most complicated cases is the concept of practical truth in the sixth book of Nicomachean Ethics: its entanglement with action and desire raises doubts about the possibility of its inclusion to the propositional model of truth. Nevertheless, in one of the most extensive studies on the subject, C. Olfert has tried to show that this is not only possible but also necessary. In this paper, we explain why trying to fit practical truth into the propositional model comes with insurmount­able problems. In order to overcome these problems, we focus on multiple aspects of practical syllogism and correlate them with Aristo­tle’s account of desire, happiness and the good. Identifying the role of such concepts in the specific steps of practical reasoning, we reach the conclusion that practical truth is best explained as the culmination of a well-executed practical syllogism taken as a whole, which ultimately explains why this type of syllogism demands a different approach and a different kind of truth than the theoretical one.

Correct reasoning

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-188
Author(s):  
Andreas Müller
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Correct Reasoning

According to the account of practical reasons presented in Chapter 4, those reasons are ultimately grounded in the soundness of certain episodes of practical reasoning. This chapter addresses what it is for an episode of practical reasoning to be correct, which is a necessary condition for their soundness. It first shows that, at least when it is applied to reasoning, the notion of correctness need not itself be understood in terms of reasons, which would render the constructivist’s overall view circular. Then, it presents an account that characterizes correct reasoning as reasoning in compliance with the constitutive rules of that activity. It also discusses how those rules can be determined, and what the constructivist should say about their ontological status.

The Twilight of Utilitarianism

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-52
Author(s):  
Albert Weale
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Utility Theory ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
Separateness Of Persons

Social contract theory arose as a response to the twilight of utilitarianism. For many years utilitarianism had been seen as a political philosophy of human emancipation. Like social contract theory, utilitarianism was a critical and rationalistic morality. However, it was judged incapable of recognizing the separateness of persons, the claim by each person to be treated with justice. Utilitarianism defined the good in terms of pleasure, conceived in a naturalistic way. It regarded pleasure as the guide to choice. It promised to provide an intellectual framework within which everyday intuitive morality could be rendered consistent. And it sought to ground action in practical reasoning about the promotion of the good. However, these distinctive elements came under challenge. With the rise of modern utility theory, pleasure was no longer thought of as the guide to choice. Pleasure was no longer conceived as the sole good. Doubts were raised about the extent to which the principle of utility could explicate the principle of justice. And even utilitarianism had to concede the dualism of practical reason. One response was the rise of intuitionism in the early part of the twentieth century. Another response was the rise of social contract theory, as discussed in this book.

scholarly journals Law’s Autonomy and Moral Reason

Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Jack Clayton Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Legal Positivist ◽  
Law And Morality ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Concept Of Law

This paper intends to set out an argument to Legal Idealism and a thesis that holds law and morality as necessarily connected. My focus is on deconstructing the Positivist argument to the Autonomy Thesis and beginning to reconstruct it through the application of morality to law’s autonomous authority. My aim, ultimately, is to demonstrate how, through the concept of law, practical reason might explain the related (and overlapping) notions of legitimacy, authority, and the obligation to obey through the necessary connection of law and morality. That is, I intend to demonstrate that morality both survives and remains identifiable (transparently) following the process of metamorphosis into institutionalised practical reasoning. If this is so, the authority of and obligation to law is simultaneously a form of morally rational obligation. In the response to the Positivist argument that moral values are incommensurate, I will show that this commensurability can be determined ‘artificially’ by a system of institutionalised reasoning (i.e., the law); this is to say, if I can show that the Legal Positivist argument is left incomplete without some explanation of moral values underpinning it, I need not to show that a specific, defensible moral truth or principle is required, but that an artificial weighting of abstract moral principles is sufficient

scholarly journals Isolating Correct Reasoning

Reasoning ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 129-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Worsnip
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Positive Account ◽  
Deductive Logic ◽  
Correct Reasoning

This chapter tries to do three things. First, it argues that rules of correct reasoning do not always preserve justification: if you begin with a justified attitude, and reason correctly from it, it can nevertheless happen that you’ll arrive at an unjustified attitude. Second, it argues that rules of correct reasoning do not even correspond to permissions of “structural rationality”: it is not always structurally permissible to base an attitude on other attitudes from which it follows by correct reasoning. Third, from these observations it tries to build a somewhat positive account of correct reasoning as a more sui generis notion irreducible to either justification or structural rationality. This account vindicates an important unity of theoretical and practical reasoning as well as a qualified version of the thesis that deductive logic supplies rules of correct reasoning.

Rational Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Kosch
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Practical Deliberation ◽  
Rational Agency ◽  
The Will ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility

Chapter 2 presents Fichte’s conception of rational agency and of the psychological dispositions and capacities on which he takes it to depend. It begins with an examination of Fichte’s notion of the spontaneity of the will, and compares his account of it to Kant’s. It then explains Fichte’s account of practical deliberation and its necessary conditions. Practical deliberation is means/ends or part/whole reasoning toward the end (viz. independence) provided by practical reason. Its conditions of possibility include empirical cognition, a set of naturally given conative attitudes, embodiment, causal efficacy, social interaction, and a sense of itself as one individual among others. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the variability of rational agency among individuals and the reasons for it.

Legal reasoning and interpretation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil MacCormick
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Legal Reasoning ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
True State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Special Case

Legal reasoning is the process of devising, reflecting on, or giving reasons for legal acts and decisions or justifications for speculative opinions about the meaning of law and its relevance to action. Many contemporary writers, such as Aulis Aarnio (1987), Robert Alexy (1988), Manuel Atienza (1991) and Aleksander Peczenik (1989), propound the view that legal reasoning is a particular instance of general practical reasoning. They suppose, that is to say, that reasoning can link up with action, guiding one what to do, or showing whether or not there are good reasons for a proposed course of action or for something already done. They suppose also that in law reason links up to legal decisions in this way. Both suppositions are well founded. Law regulates what to do and how to respond to what has been done, doing so within an institutional framework of legislatures, lawcourts, enforcement agencies and the like. It is a feature of legal institutions that they are expected to have, and usually do give, good reasons for what they do, and to do this in public. Legal reasoning is therefore not only a special case of practical reasoning, but a specially public one. Rationality in action has at least two requirements: first, attention to facts, to the true state of affairs in relation to which one acts; second, attention to reasons for action relevant to the facts ascertained. The former aspect concerns reasoning about evidence; the latter, reasoning about rules or norms as reasons for action. In law, such rules and other norms have an institutional character. But how are these applied – by some kind of deductive reasoning, or nondeductively? Behind the rules of the law, there presumably lie other reasons, reasons for having these rules. What kind of reasons are these, developed through what modes of discourse? A discourse of principles, perhaps – but then how do reasons of principle themselves differ from rules? Reasoning from either rules or principles must always involve some process of interpretation, so how does interpretive reasoning enter into the practical reason of law? Answering such questions is the business of a theory of legal reasoning. Legal reasoning is to be understood as a form of practical reasoning concerning these very issues.

Practical reason and ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Onora O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Ethical Judgment ◽  
Direct Methods ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Plausible Account ◽  
Instrumental Reasoning ◽  
Working Out

Practical reason is reasoning which is used to guide action, and is contrasted with theoretical reason, which is used to guide thinking. Sometimes ‘practical reason’ refers to any way of working out what to do; more usually it refers to proper or authoritative, hence reasoned, ways of working out what to do. On many accounts practical reasoning is solely instrumental: it identifies ways of reaching certain results or ends, but has nothing to say about which ends should be pursued or which types of action are good or bad, obligatory or forbidden. Instrumental reasoning is important not only for ethics and politics, but for all activities, for example, in working out how to travel to a given destination. Other accounts of practical reason insist that it is more than instrumental reasoning: it is concerned not only with working out how to achieve given ends, but with identifying the ethically important ends of human activity, or the ethically important norms or principles for human lives, and provides the basis for all ethical judgment. No account of objective ethical values can be established without showing how we can come to know them, that is, without showing that some form of ethical cognitivism is true. However, ethical cognitivism is not easy to establish. Either we must show that some sort of intuition or perception provides direct access to a realm of values; or we must show that practical reasoning provides less direct methods by which objective ethical claims can be established. So anybody who thinks that there are directly objective values, but doubts whether we can intuit them directly, must view a plausible account of practical reason as fundamental to philosophical ethics.

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