MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW

Many schemas of the relation underlying normative reasons include a place for agents, as in ‘p is a reason for an agent, x, to a’. What makes this agent-place necessary? I answer that the role of the agent-place is to enable explanations of action in terms of normative reasons.

Metanormative non-reductionism is at times mistaken for the view, which I call ‘austerity’, according to which no elucidation is possible for normativity. I offer three explanations of this mistake, the first of which relies on a radical conception of reduction, the second of which relies on semantic atomism, and the third of which relies on the notion that it belongs to the nature of normativity that it is inarticulable.

Conceptions of normative reason are answerable to a constraint deriving from the essential relation of normative reasons for action to the agents who are to carry those actions out. I argue that this constraint takes the shape of a demand that normative reasons be depicted as practically thinkable on the grounds that the possibility of practical thought is the best elucidation of this relation between reasons and agents.


MANUSCRIPTS IN PROGRESS

Many contemporary theories of practical reason operate within largely unarticulated conceptions of agency.  These come in two varieties: one is roughly Humean, and reduces agency to the satisfaction of psychologically basic drives, like a hedonic drive, or a desire-satisfaction drive; the other is roughly Aristotelian, and reduces agency to participation in practices that are in some way underpinned by human flourishing.  I articulate a very simple alternative: agents intervene in the non-normative domain as directed by entities belonging to the normative domain.

On the Kantian conception of the relation whereby agents come under the authority of deontic entities, the jurisdiction of deontic authority is confined to fallible wills.  Given then, that, on this conception, the agency that encounters deontic authority is necessarily fallible, I propose that a theory of agency take its start from the presumption that agents make mistakes.  On such a theory, mistakes provide an archetype for a distinctly agential species of entity, which we might use to elucidate the nature of other agential entities, like attitudes, actions, projects and relationships. 

Causalism conceives of action-explanation in terms of causal connections between attitudes and actions.  On the version I favour, it also represents the relevant attitudes as ultimately caused by real normative entities.  Since causal explanations are such that the explanantia and explananda are ontologically distinct, one merit of this causalism is that its ontological structure captures normative authority, at least with respect to the fact that reasons are independent from both attitudes and actions.  In this regard, it’s to be preferred to formalist conceptions of action-explanation, like Thompson’s naïve theory, according to which explanantia and explananda aren’t ontologically distinct.

Both Korsgaard and Dancy agree that it must be possible for normative reasons to be identical to the reasons from which we act.  Korsgaard establishes this possibility by reconceiving normativity as an aspect of agency, while Dancy establishes it by reconceiving actions as the effects of normative, rather than agential, causes.  I trace a middle path by representing agential entities as belonging to a sui generis ontological category, such that no gap is opened between explanations from normative facts and explanations from agential representations of those facts.

Operative reasons are attitudes with prima facie normative reasons as contents.  While we act from operative reasons, we do so in such a way as to permit explanations of our actions in terms of their contents.  This reflects a special relationship with content, according to which the attitude self-effaces where possible.  But in the context of a mistake, self-effacement isn’t possible; the operative reason must explain the mistake by itself.  This suggests an analogy with the features of beliefs explored by discussions of Moore’s Paradox.

For a time, it was presumed that a non-revisionary moral realism favours consequentialism over the agent-centered moral theories, like contractualism.  But this presumption ignores consequentialism’s utilitarian history, which is thoroughly subjectivist, focusing either on individual or group well-being.  Moreover, the presumption relies, I argue, on a misreading of Thomas Nagel’s reasons-realism.  But more to the point, if realism is to recommend consequentialism, it must depict the normative domain as more uniform than first-order theories of normative entities reveal it to be.  But such a realism is deferential to those first-order theories, so that it must accept their verdict that the normative domain is multiform.


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