Abstract
Constitutivism holds that an account of what a thing is yields those normative standards to which that thing is by nature subject. We articulate a minimal form of constitutivism that we call formal, non-epistemological constitutivism which diverges from orthodox versions of constitutivism in two main respects. First: whereas orthodox versions of constitutivism hold that those ethical norms to which people are by nature subject are sui generis because of their special capacity to motivate action and legitimate criticism, we argue that these features are compatible with treating these norms as of a piece with those ‘formal’ natural-historical norms which can be used to assess living things. Second: unlike orthodox versions of constitutivism, our version does not seek to use a non-normative account of that kind of being which we are as a means of identifying those normative claims to which we are are by nature subject. We then indicate how our position can afford us the resources to address some of the familiar difficulties that face cognitivism in ethics.
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Notes
We here follow van Roojen (2018) in taking cognitivism to be characterized by the claims that “moral sentences are apt for truth or falsity, and that the state of mind of accepting a moral judgment is typically one of belief” (van Roojen 2018, §1.2). There is significant difficulty in precisely characterizing the distinction between cognitivism and more sophisticated forms of non-cognitivism (see Schroeder 2010, 12–13 and van Roojen 2018, §1.1 for the difficulties of characterizing non-cognitivism). Our aim is to make available a form of cognitivism that does not need to rely on deflationary or other minimal theories of truth (so our account will allow for the truth conditions of moral sentences to be ‘robust’) and does not account for the motivational power of the states of mind characteristically corresponding to normative statements by claiming that those mental states are anything other than beliefs (or even knowledge).
For these questions as the main motivations for non-cognitivism, see Schroeder (2010, ch. 1).
Constitutivism “promises to reveal not merely which norms have genuine authority, but also what their authority consists in” (Silverstein 2016, 215).
Constitutivists must also address a metaphysical question: are the relevant normative claims grounded in our status as agents, and if so, how should agency be understood? Or perhaps they are grounded in our status as human beings? Or is there some other choice available? As we explain in Sect. 2 below, we remain neutral in this paper about the correct answer to this metaphysical question.
A terminological point: as we will see in more detail in Sect. 3.1 below, some constitutivists will deny that the normative claims that interest ethicists are specific instances of a genus of normative claims (more generally, claims that express standards of evaluation) that can also be specified to include normative claims about knives. Such constitutivists will hold that only ethical normative claims express ‘true’ normativity, while claims about how knives ought to be are not really normative (see, for example, Silverstein 2016, 225 for a forthright expression of this view). Accordingly, such constitutivists will be reluctant to follow us in calling (4) ‘normative’. We disagree. As we will argue in Sect. 3, according to our formal constitutivist, there is no special form of ‘true’ or ‘robust’ normativity in the case of ethics.
This task is related to the shmagency objection (Enoch, 2006): for any particular account of agency a constitutivist might adopt, she will need to show why that notion of agency is the one which matters for the kind of beings that we all are.
That is, the authority of (1) puts us in a position to criticize and condemn (Silverstein says that constitutivists aim to “ground authoritative criticisms. They hope to earn the authority to condemn certain agents for acting wrongly or irrationally” (2016, 227)).
Some care is necessary here: if one ought not be X-ing, it may or may not be true that one ought to follow the rules of X-ing when one is X-ing. We set this complication aside here since nothing we say turns on the point.
The presentation in this paragraph is indebted to Ferrero (2019).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for this label.
Recall that what this term picks out varies depending on the answer to the metaphysical question which any specific version of constitutivism will have selected, so that we have a norm to which the Duke is by nature subject. If it is not true that the Duke belongs to this metaphysical category (for example, if some criticism applies simply in virtue of the Duke’s standing as a gentleman) then the norm will not have the kind of legitimacy which is at stake here.
This slogan of Thompson’s sounds much like Silverstein’s claim that “reasons for action just are considerations that bear on practical reasoning” (Silverstein 2016, 235). For Silverstein, this embodies a reductive meta-normative theory. That is to say, those considerations to which we attribute robust normativity just are those considerations which have to do with the ‘formal’ aim of practical reasoning. We can accept this identification, but we resist the idea that such an identification accomplishes the goal of reducing the ‘genuinely’ normative to the non-normative. As we’ll argue in Sect. 4 below, in accepting such an identity we accord no justificatory or epistemological priority to practical reasoning over practical reasons. Furthermore, as we’ve argued in this Section, we reject the idea that reasons possess a kind of ‘robust’ normativity which ‘formal’ statements about the aim of practical reasoning lack.
Thanks to two anonymous referees for urging us to clarify our position here.
We take this line of thought to be similar to that propounded in Foot (2001, ch. 4). But Foot’s argument is difficult, and we lay no claim to be faithful exegetes.
These points are emphasized in, for example, Thompson (2008).
Our claims in the last few paragraphs are similar to those made by Fix (2021, 19).
For an overview of some of the semantic theories which have been proposed, see Sterken (2017).
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Thanks to two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Lockhart, J.R., Lockhart, T. Constitutivism and cognitivism. Philos Stud 179, 3705–3727 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01866-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01866-7