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Notes
Admittedly, there are some versions of constitutivism which do not face the aforementioned dilemma with regard to the authority and content questions. In particular, constitutivists influenced by Aristotle, such as Lavin (2017), Fix (2021), and Lockhart & Lockhart (2022), reject the ‘minimum conception of agency’ restriction. While their versions of constitutivism are interesting on their own, they are not relevant for the main focus of this paper, which is to answer the authority and content questions together. To begin, those constitutivists do not try to provide an answer to the content question. In addition, their versions of constitutivism do not address the authority question at least in a proper way, either. Let me explain.
Kant holds that all rational beings are bound by moral norms. On his view, if there are rational non-human beings, moral norms should apply to them as well. But since neo-Aristotelian constitutivists start with a specific form of human agency, they can hardly argue that moral norms as being grounded in our specific human nature should apply to rational non-human beings as well. For example, Lavin’s version of constitutivism starts with a specific form of human agency. As a consequence, on his view, practical normativity is grounded in our specific form of agency. What is noteworthy in this regard is that while ‘human being’ is a natural kind term, ‘rational being’ is not. For this reason, we can hardly answer why all rational beings are bound by moral norms by investigating human nature.
A similar point can be made about Lockhart and Lockhart’s version of constitutivism. They defend what they call formal, non-epistemological constitutivism. And their main goal is to show that their modest version of constitutivism is a useful framework which can be exploited by ethical cognitivists. As a consequence, they do not address the authority question at all.
Finally, let us turn to Fix’s version of nature-first constitutivism, according to which something is subject to normative standard N because it is a particular of genus G. He distinguishes between essential properties and necessary properties. On his view, an essential property of a genus is part of the nature of that genus, and a necessary property of a genus is one that every particular of a genus must possess. And he explains normativity in terms of contingent essential properties. On his view, a particular is good because it possesses certain essential properties, and bad because it lacks them. For example, having two legs is part of the answer ‘What is a human being?’, and so it can be regarded as an essential property of a human being, although it is a contingent property. Therefore, we can say that it is bad for someone to lack two legs on the grounds that having two legs is an essential property of a human being. Along this line of thought, Fix argues that we must investigate human nature in order to understand the standards to which we are subject.
But deontological normativity needs to be distinguished from propriety normativity (cf. Wolterstorff 2005, 330). If one’s failure to act in accord with an ‘ought’ implies one’s being culpable or blameworthy for it, then the ‘ought’ is the deontological ‘ought’. The representative example is the moral ‘ought’. But there is another kind of ‘ought’ which does not imply such culpability or blameworthiness. For example, if a botanist says about a trillium that it ought to have three petals, then he does not mean that the trillium is culpable or blameworthy for not having three petals; instead, what he means is just that it is appropriate or proper for the trillium to have three petals. In such a case, the ‘ought’ is the propriety ‘ought’. Now with these two different kinds of normativity in mind, consider the following two claims: (i) Human beings ought to have two legs. (ii) We ought not to kill others for no reason. Note that a person is not culpable or blameworthy for not having two legs, whereas a person is culpable or blameworthy for killing others for no reason. Accordingly, the normativity involved in (i) is propriety normativity, whereas the normativity involved in (ii) is deontological normativity. A related thing to note is that deontological normativity concerns what ought to be realized, whereas propriety normativity does not. For example, it is appropriate to say that we ought to realize that no one kills others for no reason, whereas it is not appropriate to say that we ought to realize that every human being has two legs. Along these lines, we can argue that Fix’s version of constitutivism does not explain deontological normativity in a proper way. To sum up, the above versions of constitutivism influenced by Aristotle are not relevant for the main focus of this paper, namely, answering the authority and content questions together.
For example, Kant writes: “It is pure reason that itself contains the standard for the critical examination of every use of it” (Kant 1996b, 5:16); “I assert that among all speculative cognition, transcendental philosophy has the special property that there is no question at all dealing with an object given by pure reason that is insoluble by this very same human reason” (Kant 1998, A477/B505); “In the universal principles of ethics nothing can be uncertain, because the propositions are either totally nugatory and empty, or else they have to flow merely from our conception of reason” (Kant 1998, A480/B508).
As Denis (2008) rightly points out, Kant regards our own happiness as a morally permissible end. One important reason is this. Consider the maxim of benevolence which states that everyone ought to be benevolent toward everyone else. Kant regards this as a universal maxim, which governs all rational beings. And this qualifies as a universal maxim only if you are not excluded from the rational beings which this maxim governs. Therefore, in accordance with the principle of equality, you are permitted “to be benevolent to yourself on the condition of your being benevolent to everyone else” (Kant 1996c, 6:451). In a similar vein, you may pursue your own happiness under the condition that everyone else is permitted to do the same thing.
Rawls did not provide a detailed account of how to defend the moral law along coherentist lines. However, I have further developed his coherentist interpretation in Lee 2018 to defend the moral law as a fact of reason in a non-dogmatic way.
For a more detailed defense of this claim, see Lee 2018. One more thing worth pointing out here is that Kant’s Formula of the End in Itself fits within the coherentist framework. As argued before, the denial of this formula conflicts with the Kantian conception of ourselves, which can, in turn, be defended on the basis of a Sellarsian coherence theory of justification. Therefore, on my Sellarsian social practice theory of justification, we can defend the Formula of the End in Itself in a coherentist way, until and unless it is successfully challenged.
I agree with Kahn (2022) that positive duties cannot be derived from Kant’s universalization tests alone. But if my arguments are so far successful, we can meet the demand for justifying positive duties along the lines of what I am arguing here.
See Lee 2018 for a detailed defense of this coherentist interpretation.
On the constitutivist view, it is not appropriate to request the rational justification of moral and other practical norms from outside the practice of giving and asking for reasons; in other words, it is through the practice of giving and asking for reasons that moral and other norms will be justified. For this reason, the constitutivists do not accept a kind of foundationalism which holds that there must be a foundationalist regress-stopping ground external to the practice of giving and asking for reasons to justify moral and other norms. I agree on this point. But as pointed out before, the constitutivists are taking a foundationalist approach in the sense that they want to derive substantial norms and reasons for action from the alleged constitutive features of agency. This is what I disagree with.
For a more detailed defense of this view, see Lee 2019.
One more thing worth pointing out is that my coherentist defense of the normative authority of moral norms within the social practice of justification is also different from Berdini’s (2019) hybrid account of agency’s constitutive normativity. First, Berdini defends a first-order constitutivist account of agency rather than a metanormative strategy of constitutivism. In particular, she holds that human agency is constitutively social. To put the point another way, she explains the metaphysics of agency partly in terms of social practices. In this regard, she says: “being held in interpersonal relationships and participating in practices of accountability for actions is constitutive of what make an agent an agent” (Berdini 2019, 501); “Agents constitute themselves qua social individuals, with social practices and interactions” (Berdini 2019, 509). But I do not accept any constitutivist account of agency. On my view, in order to meet any demand for justification, we have to start with our social practice of justification. But this kind of social dimension with my coherentist account has nothing to do with the metaphysics of agency. Second, Berdini’s aim is to provide an elucidation of the notion of constitutive normativity relevant for a first-order constitutivist theory of agency. In particular, she wants to show that agency is governed by more than just the norms of practical reasoning, rather than addressing the authority question. Therefore, she focuses on the practical normativity pertaining to agency, as opposed to moral normativity. By contrast, my main concern in this paper is to answer the authority and content questions together. Note that Berdini does not provide any answer to these questions. In short, my coherentist account of normativity is quite different from Berdini’s first-order constitutivist account of agency.
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Lee, B.D. The Authority and Content of Morality: A Dilemma for Constitutivism and a Coherentist Approach to Normativity. J Value Inquiry (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-023-09962-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-023-09962-5