Ethical Constructivism

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.

Realizing Who I Am

In this paper, the old view of self-knowledge as a practical achievement is vindicated. Constitutivism, the view that connects self-knowledge to the rational agency, thus taking a step towards this practical dimension, is discussed first. But their assumption of an epistemic asymmetry that privileges self-knowledge is found mistaken. The practical dimension of self-knowledge, its potential transformative power, is accounted in terms of the interiorization of the concepts acquired in intersubjective interaction.

Killing Ourselves

This essay notes varying definitions of suicide, reviews different perspectives on the morality of suicide, and describes a modified Kantian alternative that emphasizes human dignity. Then a relevant ideal of appreciation is introduced, going beyond the Kantian value of functioning as a rational agent. Appreciation of the good things in life is an ideal attitude that may give reasons for self-preservation even as rational agency diminishes, and it is not the same as wanting pleasure or comfort. The essay comments briefly on the special concerns relevant to public policies permitting assisted suicide.

E. J. Lowe and Divine Causal Agency

In this essay, I apply Lowe’s theory of rational agency to God’s causal activity. I argue that Lowe’s account fits well the traditional notions that God acts in the world for reasons. In contrast to Lowe’s analysis of human causal agency, I argue that in the divine case, reasons for acting are not constituted by needs. They are constituted by God’s desires or plans. The fit between Lowe’s account of causal agency and the contours of divine causal agency motivate an argument in favor of Lowe’s theory. Any philosopher who is a theist ought to think Lowe’s account is likely to be true.

Rational Agency and the Struggle to Believe What Your Reasons Dictate

According to an influential view known as agentialism, our capacity to believe and intend directly on the basis of reasons—our rational agency—has a normative significance that distinguishes it from other kinds of agency. Agentialists maintain that insofar as we exercise rational agency, we bear a special kind of responsibility for our beliefs and intentions, and those attitudes are truly our own. This chapter will challenge these agentialist claims. The argument centers on a case in which a thinker struggles to align her belief to her reasons and succeeds only by resorting to non-rational methods. The chapter argues that she is responsible for the attitude generated by this struggle, that this process expresses her capacities for rationality and agency, and that the belief she eventually arrives at is truly her own. So rational agency is not distinctive in the ways that agentialists contend.

Don’t Even Think of It

This chapter examines the claim that there are certain beliefs, attitudes, and fantasies that are impermissible simply in virtue of their content. Although this claim has a recognizably deontological flavor, it has not received much sustained attention from deontologists. However, interesting arguments for it can be extracted from Thomas Scanlon’s contractualism and from Kant’s own theory, and the chapter examines these in some detail. Where Kant’s theory is concerned, the doctrines discussed include the universalizability test, the idea that each rational agent is an end in himself, the idea that all rational agency commands our respect, and the idea that we all have duties of self-perfection. Although there is obviously room for further discussion, the chapter’s conclusion is that no convincing deontological argument for putting any thoughts off limits is yet in sight.

A Commonsense Resolution to the Issue of Determinism versus Rational Agency (aka, free-will)

This brief is an essay providing newer perspectives than the traditional (often religiously oriented) and modern scholarship on free-will versus determinism. The essay’s scope is confined to biological life on Earth and does not address how the chaos and randomness of the universe had come to have organized planets and suns. Among the issues raised is that willfulness is not free, rather a cost. The assertion is made that the agency allowing humanity to make changes deviating from what the past had wrought is the evolved linguistic skills to communicate first with words, then signs, then with sentences and then exchanging information in paragraphs allowing discussions about how to modify the way being lived which, in turn, led to actions and feedback on the value of their actions, hence progress.