independent of the attitudes of the agents whose reflections they govern

Constructivism in moral philosophy can be understood as a response to this problem.

On the constructivist view, practical attitudes are subject to scrutiny by reference to

critical standards.

But those standards are not independent of the attitudes to which they apply;

rather, they appropriately govern the subject’s deliberation precisely because the subject

is already committed to complying with them[14].

Consider the instrumental principle, which tells us to choose the means that are

necessary to achieve our ends.

If you intend to go to medical school, for instance, and “Intro to Organic Chemist

ry” is a prerequisite for admission to medical school, then the instrumental principle

says that you should take the class; your intentions are subject to criticism if you fail to act in this way.

But this is because your intention to go to medical school already involves a commitment to take the means that are necessary for the attainment of that end. Indeed, the intention to

realize the end just is (in part) a commitment to take the necessary means, and hence to comply with the instrumental principle[15].

Constructivists generalize from this example, holding that all of the standards that govern

our practical reflections are likewise standards that we are committed to complying with, in virtue of practical attitudes that we have already adopted.

The constructivist approach can be thought of as combining elements of expressivism and dispositionalism.

It shares with the former an emphasis on the essential involvement of practical attitudes in the processes of normative and moral reflection.

Such reflection takes as its starting point the intentions and desires that we already have, and it attempts to adjust and to refine them through critical thought.

We go astray, on this approach, when we fail to live up to our own commitments —

as the signers of the Declaration of Independence arguably did, for example, when they

condoned practices of slavery while endorsing the principle that “all men are created

equal”.

Normative reflection can accordingly be understood as a process of figuring out

what our commitments really entail, a process that can lead to normative discoveries, of

the kind the dispositionalist was concerned to make room for.

It might take some time for people to come to see that their own commitments (say, about human equality) have the consequence that some of their other attitudes and practices should be rejected or revised. The normative standards that govern the process of critical reflection

are thus not restricted to standards whose consequences the agent already explicitly

acknowledges.

At the same time, the fact that those standards are anchored in the agent’s own commitments

sheds light on the practical effects of moral thought. For it is in the nature of commitments that they involve an orientation of the will, which moves us to act once we become clear about what the commitments really entail.

People who are genuinely committed to the fundamental equality of all people will be moved to abandon and even to fight against practices such as slavery, once they

finally face up to the fact that those practices cannot be reconciled with their own moral principles.

This approach represents a promising way of understanding the critical

dimension of practical thought, if we accept the subjectivist idea that normative standards are

never prior to and independent of the agents whose attitudes they regulate.

But the resulting position shares with other forms of subjectivism some consequences that

are difficult to accept.

Most basically, the constructivist approach makes morality itself hostage to the commitments of the agents whose actions and attitudes are up for assessment.

Whether or not it is wrong for me to break a promise or to keep the wallet I have found

is ultimately a question of whether, like the founding fathers in the case of slavery, I

am already committed to moral principles that would prohibit conduct of these kinds.

Kantians in ethics often accept this framework for thinking about moral standards, affirming a generalized constructivism about normativity. They contend that the most basic moral requirements — the moral law or the “categorical imperative”[16] — are universal principles

of willing, insofar as they are ones that every agent is necessarily committed to complying with.

If this claim could be defended, then morality would turn out to represent a set of universal normative constraints on rational agents.

But the Kantian claim is exceptionally ambitious, and it has proven very difficult to give a clear

and compelling account of idea that rational agency involves an essential, built-in

commitment to follow the moral law.

If the Kantian is correct, then it ought to be possible to identify the concrete commitments that villains and scoundrels are betraying when they pursue their reprehensible ends.

But does this seem plausible to you? (What is it in the attitudes of the fraudster or the terrorist

people like Bernie Madoff or Timothy McVeigh, say — that would commit them to the basic

moral standards that they flout in their actual behavior?)

Those who wish to make sense of morality as a set of nonnegotiable critical standards may therefore need to question the subjectivist framework within which constructivism operates.

Perhaps our practical attitudes are answerable to standards that are more robustly

independent of the subjects of those attitudes.

Before we can accept this objectivist approach, however, we will need to come up with

Convincing responses to the arguments from metaphysics and motivation canvassed above.

Can we make sense of the idea that reality includes irreducibly normative facts and truths, about e.g. the wrongness of deceptive promises or the impermissibility of exploitation and fraud?

How can reflection about such facts and truths reliably give rise to new motivations to

action, in the way that we have seen to be characteristic of practical deliberation?

These questions continue to push some philosophers back to subjectivist ways of

understanding morality, despite the serious difficulties that subjectivism faces in

accounting for the critical dimension of normative thought.

[1] The term “subjectivism” is sometimes used more narrowly in philosophical discussion, to refer to the view that moral judgments are about an agent’s subjective states; the dispositionalist position discussed below is a subjectivist view in this more narrow sense.

[2] A third aspect of moral thought that is sometimes cited in this connection is the fact of disagreement about what it is right or wrong to do. But this consideration strikes me as less significant than the other two, so I shall set it aside in what follow.

[3] Normative concepts are concepts that involve the ideas of a reason or a requirement, whereas evaluative concepts involve ideas of the good. I gloss over here large issues about the relation between reasons and values. I also simply assume, throughout my discussion, that moral thought is a species of normative thought, concerning a special class of reasons or requirements.

[4] Note that this argument apparently also to applies to mathematical thought, which similarly does not seem to be about objects and properties that we interact with causally. And yet, mathematical thought seems to be a paradigm of objectivity. Do you think this undermines the argument from metaphysics?

[5] Another important context in which normative thought figures is that of advice, where we reflect on the options that other people face, and try to arrive at conclusions about what they ought to do. In what follows I shall focus primarily on contexts of deliberation, in which agents reflect on their own options for action. But you should consider how the subjectivist approaches I sketch might be extended to apply to contexts of advice.

[6] Of course, you might have promised a friend that you would pick up some beets for them in the store. But then you will be led to act by the moral thought that you will wrong your friend if you fail to do what you promised, a thought that is also extraneous to your factual belief about the availability of the beets.

[7] David Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978): 470

[8] See, for example, Allan Gibbard. Thinking How to Live (Harvard University Press, 2003)

[9] The phenomenon of action against one’s better judgment is often referred to as “akrasia” (from the ancient Greek) or “weakness of will”.

[10]

[11]

[12] See, for example, Michael Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).

[13] Thus, weakness of will is generally understood to be the most flagrant form of irrationality in action.

[14] An example of this kind of constructivist view is Christine M. Korsgaard. The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

[15] Thus, if you realize that “Intro to Organic Chemistry” is necessary to get into medical school, but you have resolved never to take the course, then it seems you have effectively abandoned your original intention to become a doctor.

[16] The categorical imperative is Kant’s candidate for the supreme principle of morality, the abstract principle from which our more specific moral duties can be derived. For different formulations of this principle, and Kant’s argument that it represents a universal principle of rational willing, see Immanuel Kant. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Mary Gregor, ed. and trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997