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Constructivism and the Problem of Normative Indeterminacy

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Notes

  1. For discussion, see e.g. David Enoch, “Can there be a Global, Interesting, Coherent Constructivism about Practical Reason?”, Philosophical Explorations 12 (2009): 319-339, and Karl Schafer, “Realism and Constructivism in Kantian Metaethics”, Philosophy Compass 10 (2015): 690-701.

  2. See Allan Gibbard, “Morality as Consistency in Living: Korsgaard’s Kantian Lectures”, Ethics 110 (1999): 140–164, among several others. The labels ‘too few reasons’ and ‘too many reasons’ are borrowed from Mark Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University Press, 2007), chs. 5-6, although Schroeder discusses very different problems.

  3. For Korsgaard’s view, see Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution (Oxford University Press, 2009).

  4. The main difference between Street’s view and Korsgaard’s consists in the fact that, whereas for Street it is normative judgments that construct reasons, for Korsgaard it is acts of ‘willing’ (cf. Street 2008: 228 n. 38). And since Korsgaard’s willing, just like Street’s judgment, is subject to certain constitutive standards of coherence and consistency, a very close version of the problem described here will arise equally for Korsgaard’s view, as should become clear later.

  5. Sharon Street, “What is Constructivism in Ethics and Metaethics?”, Philosophy Compass 5 (2010): 363-384, p. 366.

  6. Sharon Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, Oxford Studies in Metaethics 3 (2008): 207-245, p. 227.

  7. Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, op. cit., p. 229. Emphases in the original. Street gives a parallel verdict about agent who do recognize that Z-ing is necessary to Y-ing.

  8. Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, op. cit., and Sharon Street, “In Defense of Future Tuesday Indifference: Ideally Coherent Eccentrics and the Contingency of What Matters”, Philosophical Issues 19 (2009): 273-298, p. 274.

  9. Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, op. cit., p. 228. In the passage quoted above, Street frames her view in terms of judgments concerning what the agent has conclusive reason to do rather than what she ought to do. However, here and throughout, I am using ‘ought’ as equivalent to ‘has conclusive reason’. I have opted for the former purely to save words.

  10. How common are cases of this sort? I return to this question later. As I explain there, even if these cases are merely possible, they should not for this reason be dismissed out of hand, even by Street’s own lights. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.

  11. Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, op. cit., p. 235.

  12. Street could, however, invoke Ought Necessity to derive a reason to (have the soup or the salad); more on this below.

  13. John Broome, “Have We Reason to Do as Rationality Requires? — A Comment on Raz,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Symposium 1 (2005): 1–8.

  14. See Schroeder, Slaves of the Passions, op. cit., and Joseph Raz, “Instrumental Rationality: A Reprise,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Symposium 1 (2005): 1–19.

  15. The point in the text does not depend on the agent in question being sufficiently sophisticated and opinionated to reject Ought Sufficiency, as John Broome is. Any agent who does not subscribe to Ought Sufficiency, for whatever reason, and for whom there is no other cause to attribute to her a judgment that she has some reason to kill herself, will serve equally to illustrate the failure of the pragmatic defense.

  16. I’m indebted to an anonymous referee for getting me to consider this response to the problem.

  17. Street, “Constructivism about Reasons”, op. cit., pp. 227-228.

  18. I’m grateful to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this response to the case.

  19. See Street, “In Defense”, op. cit.

  20. Ibid, p. 280.

  21. It might be thought that a closer examination of your case is likely to reveal that it is purely hypothetical and not one that is ever likely to materialize in real life. But even that, as Street acknowledges with respect to ICEs, would not prevent the case from counting as a counterexample, for ‘the best overall theory of value must prove itself in its handling of hypothetical cases’. Indeed, according to Street, even if they are purely hypothetical, ‘[ICEs] haven’t gotten anywhere near enough philosophical attention’ (Ibid, p. 279).

  22. Many thanks to Alex Gregory, Jonathan Way, and an anonymous reviewer for their detailed and extremely helpful written comments on previous drafts. I’m grateful also to an audience at the 2015 meeting of the European Normativity Network for discussion of material from this paper. Work on this paper was funded by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1120/17).

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Correspondence to Yair Levy.

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Levy, Y. Constructivism and the Problem of Normative Indeterminacy. J Value Inquiry 53, 243–253 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-018-9664-7

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