Abstract
Recently, Christine Bratu and Mortiz Dittmeyer have argued that Christine Korsgaard’s constitutive project fails to establish the normativity of practical principles (such as the fundamental principle of morality) because it fails to show why a principle’s being constitutive of a practice shows that one ought to conform to that principle. They argue that in many cases a principle’s being constitutive of a practice has no bearing on whether one ought to conform to it. In this paper I argue that Bratu and Dittmeyer’s argument fails in three important respects. First, they fail to recognize the ways in which Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian view departs from more orthodox Kantian views. Second, they fail to recognize the respect in which Korsgaard’s view is a version of moral rationalism. Third, they overlook an important scope ambiguity in an important premise of their argument. A sensible way of resolving this ambiguity gives the constitutivist a reasonable response.
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Notes
Bratu and Dittmeyer (2016).
I use the phrase “ordinary, everyday activities” as a catch-all category to include any norm governed activity we might engage in with the exception of agency, which as Fererro (2009) points out, is the “enterprise with the largest jurisdiction” (p. 308).
See SC, p. 12
Korsgaard argues that the object of choice is the action as a whole, hence why I use the hyphenated ‘act-type-to-achieve-an-end’.
Is unification only achieved when we reflect and actively endorse a principle? Korsgaard’s considered answer to this question should be no. Principles remain in place, ready to act on, so to speak, until reflection leads us to revise them. Unification, then, is achieved whenever we act on a principle, regardless of whether we reflected in any given case.
Remember, these three theses may be false, but the truth or falsity of them is not what is presently at issue.
See SN, p. 98 and SC, p. 80.
See Korsgaard (2008a, p. 225).
See Korsgaard (2008b, p. 322).
The clearest example of Korsgaard using this sort of strategy is her famous “value of humanity” argument in SN. That argument starts from the premise that we must be “committed to some conception of [our] practical identity” if we are to act at all (pp. 120–121, emphasis added). She then goes on to argue that this fundamental commitment to a practical identity – whatever it happens to be – commits us to valuing our own humanity. And if we are committed to valuing our own humanity, we are also committed to valuing the humanity of others.
Why is it common to make this mistake when reading Korsgaard? The most obvious diagnosis is that this is one area in which she diverges from Kant. In the Groundwork, which Korsgaard draws heavily from in developing her view, Kant suggests that the three formulations of the CI – the Formula of Universal Law, the Formula of Humanity, and the formula of the Kingdom of Ends – are all equivalent (GMS: 436). Korsgaard notes, just prior to distinguishing the CI from the ML, that she’s “going to make a distinction that Kant doesn’t make” (SN 98).
Andrews Reath (2006) points out that Kant’s notion of universalizability is much narrower than Korsgaard’s. For Kant, a principle is universalizable only if it has “normative force for all rational beings” (p. 164, n. 16), while for Korsgaard, a universal principle is a principle that has “universal normative force”, which means that it can be acted on “over a range of possible different cases” [SC 80]). Examples of universal principles include the principle of desire satisfaction (act on whatever maxim satisfies the strongest present desire), the egoistic principle (act on whatever maxim maximizes desire satisfaction over the course of my life), and the moral law (act only on those maxims that all rational beings would will in a “workable cooperative system” [SC, p. 80]). The contrast to a universal principle is a principle that is particularistic. The universal principles just cited are all very different in terms of their content, but they are all principles that can be used in a variety of cases. A particularistic principle, by contrast, is one that applies only to a single, particular case; for example, here and now, I shall eat this. Particularistic principles are not ones that another agent, or even the same agent, could act on in suitably similar circumstances. (See SC 72–76 for Korsgaard’s discussion of particularistic willing.)
My suggestion, then, for why many critics of Korsgaard misconstrue what she means by “categorical imperative” is that it is natural to understand the phase as referring to the moral law, as this is certainly how most Kantians use the phrase. The misunderstandings of Korsgaard on this point likely arise from what some might see as an unfortunate terminological choice. (I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting that I address this point and several helpful exchanges with Andrews Reath.)
One might think that, contrary to what I say in this sentence, my arguments to this point suggest that Korsgaard does in fact accept C1. After all C1 refers only to ‘P’, not to any particular principle; and, as I’ve shown, Korsgaard does think that there is a practical principle one must conform to in order to perform an action, namely the CI. However, it is important to keep in mind that B&D explicitly state that “P” is to be understood as the fundamental principle of morality. They do not attempt to argue that there is no principle conformity to which is constitutive of action, just that the moral law is no such principle. It’s also important to keep in mind that B&D’s argument is that Korsgaard fails to adequately defend these claims. I’ve been arguing that B&D think this because they misconstrue important elements of Korsgaard’s view. If we weaken the claims to ones I believe she actually defends – that is, if we interpret P as standing for, not the fundamental principle of morality, but some weaker principle – this won’t vindicate their argument, for B&D will have to provide a different argument showing that Korsgaard fails to adequately defend these weaker claims.
In making this claim I am not saying that Korsgaard herself draws this parallel. Rather, I am suggesting that it is fruitful to read Korsgaard, and constitutivists in general, in this way.
Strictly speaking, the constitutivist is only half way out of the forest. This way of responding to the normative question is to just push the lump elsewhere under the rug. A full response requires answering the further question: why be rational? I am working under the assumption that this question is less intelligible, or at least has less intuitive pull than the normative question as applied to morality. Not all philosophers agree; see, for example, Kolodny (2005), (2007), (2008).
I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting I consider this interpretive issue.
One might want to point out that (2) mentions “must follow”, which on its face leaves room for the possibility that one can act without conforming to the moral law if one at least tries but fails. This is also problematic on its face, for it would seem to suggest that every bad action results from someone trying but failing to act morally. This is also textually problematic, for there are many points in the text where Korsgaard says that conformity to the constitutive principles is required (e.g., p. 25, 69, 70, 72). However there are places where she says trying to conform is what is necessary (p. xii, 81, 83, 93). In each of these pages, the scope of her discussion is either the hypothetical or categorical imperative. But given that on her view an action must necessarily be organized by a principle, it would seem that, with respect to the CI at least, performing an action does require conforming to the principle. Whatever the case, adding “trying to conform” in (4) will reintroduce the same problem.
A more accurate way of articulating the central claim in question would be as follows:
(C2*) If A is committed to acting, and P is a constitutive principle of action, then A must conform to P if A is to perform an action at all.
ACP’s analogue of C2* would be as follows:
(ACP*) If observance of principle Q is constitutive of practice Y, then in order for S to engage in Y, S must comply with Q.
In the discussion that follows I am veering from Korsgaard’s text. But I take it that the suggestions I offer are of the friendly variety.
For example, Bratman (1987, pp. 24–27) (in a slightly different context), Broome (2003a), (2003b), Shpall (2013). The bootstrapping worry sometimes goes by the name “the detaching problem”; see Way (2010a). Not everyone finds bootstrapping pernicious, particularly so-called ‘Humeans’ about practical reasons, such as Schroeder (2004). Kolodny (2005) doesn’t think bootstrapping follows directly from a narrow-scope reading of rational requirements, for he thinks that rational requirements are not genuinely normative. The narrow-scope approach has also been defended by Lord (2011), (2014).
It would be irrational because it would make her commitments incoherent. Claudia would be committed to engaging in a practice but also committed to refraining from complying with a principle she would need to comply with if she is to engage in that practice at all. This is perhaps a species of means-end incoherence.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pushing me to address this objection.
Consider the following state of affairs, which I presumably ought to bring about: that my children be fed a nutritious dinner. If it is true that I ought to bring about this state of affairs, then it is also true that I ought to (feed my children a nutritious dinner or gamble away my life savings in Las Vegas). (The rule here is Op → O(p ∨ q), where ‘O’ is the ought operator. If p is true in all “ought” accessible worlds, then (p or q) is true in all “ought” accessible worlds.) We obviously cannot now distribute the ought across this disjunction to reach the conclusion that I ought (or even have a reason) to gamble away my life savings. (In other words, the following is not a valid inference: O(p ∨ q) → Oq.) This would be pernicious bootstrapping if anything is.
See for instance Brunero (2007).
A practical identity is a “description under which we value ourselves” (SN, p. 101).
In this respect, B&D are close to being right when they say, “The fact that observing some principle is constitutive of a practice does not, in itself, speak in favor of anything, as can be shown by counter-examples such as Claudia’s. Whenever it appears to be otherwise, there are always additional reasons in the offing – reasons for taking part in the practice in question–that do the real argumentative work and for which ACP acts as a mere placeholder” (p. 1140). However, as I’ve tried to show, this claim is not inconsistent with Korsgaard’s view, and as I will shortly suggest, there is an important difference between principles constitutive of ordinary activities and principles constitutive of agency.
McDowell, (1996, p. 11).
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Acknowledgements
This paper benefitted from many helpful comments from and conversations with David Beglin, Taylor Cyr, Peter Graham, Patrick London, Meredith McFadden, Jonah Nagashima, Michael Nelson, Andrews Reath, as well as many insightful comments from an anonymous reviewer for Philosophia.
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Bachman, Z. Moral Rationalism and the Normativity of Constitutive Principles. Philosophia 46, 1–19 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9893-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9893-1