Abstract This paper pursues two aims. First, it develops a novel objection to metanormative constructivism, which I term the Duality Objection . Second, it proposes a dual‐role account of practical reason and argues that it can meet this objection. Constructivists like Korsgaard and Street maintain that normativity is constructed within agents' first‐personal practical standpoints, shaped by their evaluative input. Valuing is prior to, and metaphysically grounds, value. However, a basic feature of our normative experience is that our evaluative judgements also respond to and track pre‐existing normative facts. Thus, evaluative commitments appear to play two seemingly contradictory roles – creating and responding to normative reality. This tension forms the basis of the Duality Objection. I respond in two steps. First, I show how constructivists can reconcile their metaphysical commitments with agents' normative experiences by distinguishing between first‐ and third‐personal levels of explanation. Second, I develop a Korsgaardian dual‐role account of practical reason , which elucidates the passive‐responsive and active‐creative roles that practical reason plays within our first‐personal agential standpoint. Making sense of “responsive” normative experience within a constructivist framework has a further upshot. It allows us to reject recent “arguments from first‐personal deliberation and experience” by metanormative realists (cf. Enoch 2007, 2011; Kirwin 2024).
Abstract Minimalism is the view that the mark of action is object‐causation, rather than intentionality, voluntariness or goal‐directedness. Actions, on this view, are instances of objects causing change. Despite a recent surge of interest in the view, it is still seldom regarded as a serious alternative to orthodox theories of action, according to which action is, by its nature, intentional, voluntary, or, more broadly, a psychological phenomenon. This paper argues that it should. It provides a simple argument for regarding minimalism as the default view of the nature of action.
Abstract Recognitive volitional practices are practices in which a person is recognised as having a will in a matter. Different ways of understanding the will presuppose or project different kinds of recognitive volitional practices – and vice versa. In the history of philosophical treatments of the will, it has generally been assumed that its mode of being is psychological; the will is understood to be some kind of power of the mind. An alternative would be to understand the mode of being of the will as recognitive, such that the existence of a will as a will makes essential reference to the practices in which it is recognised. These ideas are explored with reference to three recognitive volitional practices: one implicated in a 2016 atrocity in Japan; one from baptismal practices in an ancient Coptic community in Upper Egypt; one from a celebrated scene in American cinema. A conditional proof is offered in support of the hypothesis that the will enjoys a recognitive mode of being. The hypothesis is explored in connection with the ongoing struggle for more inclusive forms of legal recognition, particularly for persons living with disabilities.
Abstract In Robert Stern's Presidential Address for the Aristotelian Society he exploits some of Iris Murdoch's work to address an aporia connected to the idea of free benevolent agency: benevolence seems to preclude choice about what to do, whereas free agency seems to require it. This is related to a more general aporia connected to the idea of rational agency: if you act rationally, the sheer rationality of what you do seems not to leave any room, or at least not the room that you might have wished for, for your own distinctive contribution to what you do. Stern's resolution of this aporia is to locate your distinctive contribution to what you do, not in your actually doing it, but in your attending to the reasons for doing it. I argue that there are problems with this resolution, one of which is that it is couched in ‘realist’ terms. I present an anti‐realist alternative that draws on Bernard Williams' notion of a thick ethical concept. I explore similarities and dissimilarities between Stern's resolution and this alternative, and I counter an objection to the alternative, namely that it simply begs a critical question. I conclude that, while the alternative is not enough to refute Stern's position, it is a genuine alternative that deserves consideration.
