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The Varieties of Moral Improvement, or why Metaethical Constructivism must Explain Moral Progress

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Abstract

Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in particular moral naturalism—must explain the possibility of moral progress. We see this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views. My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally, the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they are mind-independent or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments. Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress must be explained as a form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street (2008, 2010, 2012), Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli (2002, 2013). I conclude by showing that only constructivism as a view about practical reason can fully account for moral progress qua the opportunity for moral improvement.

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Notes

  1. This description does not distinguish between those forms of constructivism that are more robustly (or perhaps “purely”) proceduralist (e.g., Rawls’ view) and those that are not (e.g., Korsgaard’s view). On this issue, see Engstrom (2013).

  2. Schafer (2014: 74-5) presents a parallel distinction regarding the source of assessment for normative truth for different types of metaethical views. This distinction is complimentary to the distinction that I make above. I suggest that while both forms of metaethical constructivism situate the source of moral truth in the agent, what Shafer describes as the assessment process of moral claims depends on respectively different aspects of agents’ rational capacities, normative sensibilities or social commitments.

  3. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to consider this point.

  4. There are some metaethical views, such as error theory, that have no such need.

  5. Note that this capacity for the motivational force can be direct or indirect and thus does not require any particular view about the cognitive or non-cognitive features of moral judgment.

  6. I owe this point to an anonymous referee.

  7. There are other versions of constructivism, such as Nietzschean constructivism (see Katsafanas 2013, 2014; Silk 2014), “Aristotelian” constructivism (LeBar 2008), and alternative forms of Kantian constructivism (e.g., Stern 2012). I set these views aside due to space constraints.

  8. I choose the constitutivist version of Kantian constructivism over those that are more robustly (or perhaps “purely”) proceduralist (e.g., Rawls’ view) because some philosophers, such as Street (2010: 368), argue that the latter are not genuinely metaethical forms of constructivism. Although I do not necessarily endorse Street’s distinction, I aim to test whether the most robustly metaethical versions of constructivism can explain moral progress and thus I take the constitutivist version of Kantian constructivism to best approximate this type of view.

  9. Although one might raise issues about whether cognitive states such as those just mentioned can directly motivate agents, I take it that the Kantian constructivist can easily answer this question by appealing to the claim that one forms desires, which serve to motivate, in light of what one believes one has reason to do. Given space constraints, I cannot fully address this issue here, but I believe it is orthogonal to the question of whether the Kantian constructivist can fully explain moral progress.

  10. Note that the “Humean” here does not refer to the Humean constructivist; rather, ‘Humean’ describes proponents of the Humean theory of motivation, or the claim that only non-cognitive states can directly motivate us to act.

  11. Although Korsgaard discusses how debates about moral motivation (specifically, the disagreement between judgment internalists and externalists) and about normative reasons (between reasons internalists and externalists) fit into this broader question for the Kantian view, I leave these issues aside. This is because nothing about explaining how a view meets the The Moral Motivation Condition requires in principle that any view take a stake in these debates, given that this condition simply stipulates that it must be possible for moral judgments to motivate agents to act. It does not require that they necessarily do so (barring the presence of any defeasibility conditions) nor does it require that they directly do so.

  12. Korsgaard makes this point in the context of her discussion of the claim that it must be possible for normative reasons to motivate us to act (or what she calls the “internalism requirement”), which is most directly associated with Bernard Williams (1981) reasons internalism.

  13. There is debate about whether this is a fair characterization of constitutivism (Ferrero 2009; Morton 2011; Tiffany 2012; Silverstein 2015).

  14. For more on this issue, see Ferrero 2009, O’Hagan 2014 and Silverstein 2015.

  15. For more on whether this is the correct view of practical reason, see Wedgewood (2002) and Cullity and Gaut (1997).

  16. Bagnoli (2013: 179) emphasizes that this is where we see the difference between procedural forms of constructivism (and their potential commitment to moral realism) and the version of constructivism that she is defending: “Furthermore, the proceduralist reading misunderstands how practical knowledge about what to do depends on moral sensibility, for it grants only an ancillary and instrumental role to moral sensibility as mediating between reason and action.”

  17. Bagnoli’s view is Kantian, but, for my purposes, I will treat her view an alternative to the more straightforwardly (Korsgaardian) Kantian view discussed earlier. This approach is further justified by the fact that Bagnoli distinguishes her view from the realist constructivist, of which Korsgaardian Kantian constructivism is arguably a version.

  18. I intend this comparison to highlight merely what it means to understand the conclusions of our process of self-legislation as justifiable to other rational persons. There may be important differences between Bagnoli’s and Darwall’s respective views of particular other-regarding attitudes, such as respect, that generate the pressure for such justification. Nothing about what I argue here hangs, however, on making this further parallel. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for emphasizing this point.

  19. Bagnoli (2013) makes a related point on pp.173–4.

  20. See footnote 16.

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  1. The University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Caroline T. Arruda

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Correspondence to Caroline T. Arruda.

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I presented an earlier version of this paper at the conference “Moral Progress: Concept, Measurement and Application” held at Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam in June 2015. I am grateful to the audience, particularly Charlie Kurth, for their questions. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for this journal

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Arruda, C.T. The Varieties of Moral Improvement, or why Metaethical Constructivism must Explain Moral Progress. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 20, 17–38 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-016-9738-1

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