Abstract
A central claim in the Kantian account of practical knowledge is that the logical form of practical reasoning is universal. This chapter argues for a constructivist interpretation of this claim, which has a decisive comparative advantage over its competitors in contemporary meta-ethics in that it explains the validity and authority of practical reasoning by exploiting the interdependence of mutually vulnerable and mutually accountable rational agents. The authority of practical reasoning does not depend on subjective endorsement or assent but it is anchored on features that are constitutive of human agency. While deductive, inductive, and transductive models of practical reasoning focus on validity, they leave the issue of the authority untreated. By contrast, constructivism approaches the problem upfront by distinguishing between ideal and non-ideal conditions of rationality. Human agents do not operate under ideal conditions, and hence the question arises for them whether valid norms of rationality are subjectively authoritative.
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Notes
- 1.
Sidgwick (1907, p. 5).
- 2.
Mackie (1977, pp. 38–44).
- 3.
Hume, Treatise, 3.1.1.11.
- 4.
It is questionable that the notion of cognition and belief deployed in this debate are akin to Hume’s conception of them. Thus, it is a telling fact that this debate borrows from Hume only the narrow conception of reason and the simple view of the motivating function of moral judgments.
- 5.
Smith summarizes the predicament, here: “The problem is that ordinary moral practice suggests that moral judgments have two features that pull in quite opposite directions from each other. The objectivity of moral judgment suggests that there are moral facts (…) but it leaves totally mysterious how or why having a moral view is supposed to have special links with what we are motivated to do. And the practicality of moral judgments suggests just the opposite that our moral judgments express our desires. While this enables us to make good sense of the link between having a moral view and being motivated, it leaves mysterious (…) the sense in which morality is supposed to be objective”, Smith 1994, p. 5.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
In a Kantian perspective, “some actions are more thoroughly actions than others”, and a morally good agent’s “actions are more truly active, more authentically her own, than those of agents who fall short of moral goodness”, Korsgaard (2008, p. 2).
- 9.
This claim does not preclude that there will be an object on which such rational minds converge, but the idea is that such an object is yet to be built, and the ground for such convergence is the agreement of agents endowed with rationality, see e.g. Kant DV 6: 357.
- 10.
- 11.
Kant G 4: 421.
- 12.
Kant’s formula of humanity directs agents to “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means”, Kant G 4: 429. The formula of humanity is crucial completion, not so much because it helps derive the contents of moral obligations as because it identifies the basis of rational justification. See Korsgaard (1996, p. 123).
- 13.
See Timmons (2018), chapters 3 and 4.
- 14.
See Timmons (2015), Wood (2017) and Bagnoli (2021).
- 15.
Hare (1952) and Donagan (1977).
- 16.
On practical induction, see Millgram (1997), and on moral perception Dancy (1984). The remaining part of the chapter will be devoted to transductive inference, as illustrated by Harman (2005).
- 17.
In this paragraph, I switch to the generalism/particularism dichotomy in order to keep a broader scope and include also theories that apply to general though not universal principles, as discussed in Sects. 3 and 4. The objections that hold against generalism hold a fortiori against universalism.
- 18.
Richard M. Hare’s treatment of practical inferences is paradigmatic: see Hare (1952, pp. 32–77). Interestingly, however, Hare attempts to attack the Cartesian view of inference as deduction from self-evident first principles by endorsing a Kantian route, see Hare (1952, p. 37).
- 19.
This would be a theoretical reconstruction of what practical knowledge is. Similarly, on this interpretation, this is the basis of Kant’s attack to Leibniz on the one hand, and Hume on the other hand: they both think of reason as lacking productive powers: “Reason has no power to produce anything outside its representations, but serves merely to achieve a true representation of things that are there anyway. It simply tracks reality. Sharing this assumption about reason, dogmatic rationalism and skeptical empiricism confront each other as opposing positions”, Engstrom (2013, p. 138). By contrast, Guyer takes a realist approach to Kant, when he talks about the “immediate recognition” of “the fundamental normative fact... that freedom has an ‘inner value, i.e. dignity’” or “the normative recognition that this free will has an incomparable value,” which sounds realist rather than constructivist in Korsgaard’s sense, see Guyer (1998).
- 20.
On this analogy, cfr. O’Neill (1989).
- 21.
On the varieties of constitutivism, see Haase and Mayr (2019). A crisp formulation of the Kantian constitutivist claim is the following: “The principles of practical reason serve to unify and constitute us as agents, and that is why they are normative”: for “the necessity of conforming to the principles of practical reason comes down to the necessity of being a unified agent... [which] comes down to the necessity of being an agent... [which in turn] comes down to the necessity of acting... [which] is our plight. The principles of practical reason are normative for us, then, simply because we must act,” Korsgaard (2008, p. 19).
- 22.
Humean constructivists such as Sharon Street and Julia Driver argue that Kantian constructivism fails to make room for contingency. This charge underestimates the theoretical resources of Kantian constructivism in account for the predicaments of contingency, and that Humeans themselves ultimately do not meet this challenge, see Bagnoli 2022, chapter 3, (2019), cfr. Haase and Mayr (2019).
- 23.
See, e.g., Haidt (2001).
- 24.
Hare (1952).
- 25.
Hare writes that universalization is a two-step process. The first step is to find a universal principle and the second “to actually hold it”, Hare (1963, p. 219). Hare calls Kant into play: “It is necessary not merely to quote a maxim, but (in Kantian language) to will it to be a universal law”, ibidem. But his formulation of the second step indicates a psychological mechanism of sincere assent akin to personal endorsement, a term that is now current in action theory.
- 26.
Vapnik (1998); (2000, p. 293).
- 27.
Vapnik (2000, p. 293).
- 28.
By contrast, see Korsgaard (1996, pp. 16–18).
- 29.
- 30.
GMS 4:441–43; KpV 5:35–41, 153, 157.
- 31.
“Free persons conceive of themselves as beings who can revise and alter their final ends and who give first priority to preserving their liberty in these matters”, Rawls 1974, p. 641, and Scanlon 1975, p. 178. In this respect, Kantian constructivism entails a richer conception of rational agency than standard formal decision theories, namely, a conception of oneself and others as free and equal.
- 32.
For this definition of practical and moral reasoning, see Harman (1976), and Harman (2010). This definition differentiates between practical reasoning and a decision procedure. One has to define intentions appropriately in order to guarantee the practical significance of decisions. In fact, one may object that decisions are the appropriate conclusions of practical reasoning and differ from intentions.
- 33.
For an alternative account of the role of coherence in ethics, see Thagard (1999), and compare Millgram (2002).
- 34.
Ironically, this misreading is often imputed to John Rawls, see Wood 2017, Timmons 2015, chapters 4–5. Rawls offers a procedural representation of the requirements of practical reason as useful heuristic device, which has the advantage of avoiding the complications of Kant’s transcendental idealism, while highlighting the key Kantian claim that the objective status of obligations depends on the nature of rational agents. However, Rawls also insists that it is misleading to think of it as a mere decision procedure, see Rawls 1989. For a critical assessment of this debate, see Bagnoli (2021).
- 35.
Kant uses the notion of construction (as in the building trade) when trying to explicate the activity of reason and its authority. Interestingly, the appeal to material construction parallel and complement the notion of trial and other forensic figures, also in the attempt to explicate the authority and autonomy of reason. Differently than other constructivists, I think “construction” or “trial” should be understood in strict analogy with the building trade in the former case, and forensic decision making in the latter, see Bagnoli (2017), compare O’Neill (2015).
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Bagnoli, C. (2022). The Form of Practical Reasoning. In: Ademollo, F., Amerini, F., De Risi, V. (eds) Thinking and Calculating. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97303-2_22
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