Abstract
Stephen Darwall’s1 approach to practical rationality exemplifies what in the Introduction I called the second familiar approach, to which I contrasted my own two-pronged approach. Darwall provides a complex and powerful positive argument in which he attempts to derive the key principle of a Reasons Theory from meta-level criteria that are seen as specifying necessary conditions of any normative principles. If sound, the argument would strongly support his Reasons Theory, which constitutes a rival to the Inclusive Data View. It would also validate Darwall’s approach and deprive my own approach of much of its motivation. In this chapter I shall try to show that Darwall’s argument is unsound. Now of course a refutation of his argument will not prove that his general approach always fails, but it may undermine confidence in that approach, thereby winning a more sympathetic hearing for my project.
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Notes
Darwall’s views appear in Stephen L. Darwall, Impartial Reason ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983 ).
With respect to the second point, see Darwall’s support for premise (4B) below.
Directly preceding the quoted passage are the words “an objective reason is one that rationally motivates a person from an impersonal standpoint.” It would muddy the waters, however, to make that statement part of the definition of an objective reason, for (as we shall see) it is very important to determine whether a consideration that makes no essential reference to oneself can only be appreciated from the objective standpoint.
Note that this definition of impersonal interest does not capture the usual notion of impartiality. If I root for the New York Yankees, then I am not impartial. Yet my preference that the Yankees win is an impersonal preference in Darwall’s sense because its object contains no free agent variables. Roderick Firth better captures the notion of impartiality with his definition of disinterestedness. One is disinterested in Firth’s sense only if one lacks interests in properties that cannot be defined without the use of proper names (understood to include egocentric particulars.) See Roderick Firth, “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317–345 @ 337–338. My preference that the New York Yankees win is not disinterested on Firth’s usage, since ‘New York Yankees’ is a proper name.
There follows here the sentence, “Moreover, appraisals of himself that he makes from the intersubjective standpoint of a subject of rational norms figure prominently in his own self-esteem.” (p. 214) It would beg an important question, however, to include this as part of the definition of an ISIS, for (as we shall see) Darwall needs to establish that an ISIS must take the intersubjective standpoint.
The particular principle referred to in this passage is the principle “that anyone ought (rationally) to act, other things equal, as he or she would be motivated to act on making himself or herself vividly aware of relevant facts,” but Darwall’s point is meant to apply generally to the affirmation of any principle as a rational principle, as can be seen from page 210 et passim.
This premise was suggested by Professor Darwall in correspondence. The ‘also’ leaves open the possibility that the judgment can also be made from the personal standpoint.
Professor Darwall has written in correspondence that “as stated [(4A)] may well be too strong.” I have included the (4A) version of the argument anyway because Darwall does supply some apparent support for (4A), and because it is of great interest to see whether premise (5), which is a significant conclusion in its own right, can be established without relying on premise (6).
The preceding is my own reconstruction of the general intuitive line of thought supporting (4A). Perhaps the closest Darwall comes to an explicit presentation of this general line of thought is in the following: Because rational appraisals are based on norms applying to all rational agents, they are fundamentally impersonal and purport to have intersubjective validity. When we appraise an act as rational, even if it is our own act, we consider it from an impersonal standpoint—from the intersubjective standpoint available to subjects of the system of rational norms. (p. 210)
In the course of criticizing an argument by a rival theorist, Darwall states that “the person who makes subjective practical judgments [i.e. judgments about subjective reasons] makes the very same judgment of himself from the personal and the impersonal standpoints.” (p. 126)
Darwall seems to deny that fact in the following sentence: “In supposing… that the elimination of racism has intersubjective value, we suppose that racists do not simply differ with us in taste but that they are blinded to the impersonally apprehensible evils of racism, either by a refusal to consider them impersonally or by an incapacity to appreciate what they apprehend.” (p. 141)
Darwall objects that “the commitment that an ISIS has to principles she regards as ultimately rational is motivated and justified by something (their being rational principles) that can be appreciated and motivating from the impersonal standpoint.” (Correspondence) I reply that the statement that the ISIS can, from the impersonal standpoint, understand and appreciate the fact that a given act is required by an ultimate principle is logically consistent with the statement that this fact would be incapable of motivating the ISIS who lacks a particular personal history. Thus it still seems to me that his having the unconditional commitment may be contingent on his personal history. If so, it has not been established that the ISIS’s commitment to obey rational principles is impersonally basable.
These words of Darwall’s are quoted above in the definition of an impersonal preference that is not impersonally basable.
For example, these may be facts that would motivate me under full and vivid awareness.
The basic commitments of practical rationality introduced by the Agent-Defined Reasons View in Chapter 1 could be PCPs.
If this principle is supposed not even to be assessable from this standpoint, then Darwall’s subsidiary premise begins to look arbitrary. It says that “nothing assessable only from the personal standpoint is relevant to the judgment that a principle is… an ultimate rational principle.” But without further argument it seems arbitrary (if not paradoxical) to declare that the principle in question is itself irrelevant to the judgment that it is an ultimate rational principle.
The objection that this results in unacceptable relativism is addressed below in the discussion of premise (6).
Gauthier has advanced a position that is almost the mirror image of Darwall’s in the dispute over which is fundamental—reasons for action or ultimate practical principles. He contends that principles, which are expressed as ought’ statements, can only be justified by arguments that presuppose that certain considerations are reasons for action. (David P. Gauthier, Practical Reasoning: the Structure and Foundations of Prudential and Moral Arguments and Their Exemplification in Discourse [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963 ], p. 97 ).
Although I have supposed that MIA holds that principles are not more basic than reasons, it is also possible to hold that principles are more basic than reasons and still agree with MIA that principles need not be universal.
Darwall, correspondence
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Postow, B.C. (1999). A Rival Approach: Darwall’s Argument. In: Reasons for Action. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2850-8_4
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