Enkratic Agency

An enkratic agent is someone who intends to do A because she believes she should do A. Being enkratic is usually understood as something rationality requires of you. However, we must distinguish between different conceptions of enkratic rationality. According to a fairly common view, enkratic rationality is solely a normative requirement on agency: it tells us how agents should think and act. However, I shall argue that this normativist conception of enkratic rationality faces serious difficulties: it makes it a mystery how an agent's thinking and acting can be guided by the enkratic requirement, which, as I shall further argue, is something that an adequate conception of enkratic rationality must be able to explain. This, I suggest, motivates exploring a different account of enkratic rationality. On this view, enkratic rationality is primarily a constitutive requirement on agency: it is a standard internal to agency, i.e., a standard that partly spells out what it is to exercise one's agential powers well.     

Objectivity and reliability

Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons is a beautiful book – sleek, sophisticated, and programmatic. One of its key aims is to demystify knowledge of normative and mathematical truths, realistically construed – i.e. construed, roughly, as being true relevantly independent of minds and languages, when interpreted at face-value. In this article, I develop an epistemological problem that Scanlon fails to explicitly address. I argue that his ‘metaphysical pluralism’ can be understood as a response to that problem. However, it resolves the problem only if it undercuts the objectivity of normative and mathematical inquiry.     

The Origins of Walter Benjamin's Concept of Philosophical Critique

Focusing on Walter Benjamin's earliest pieces dedicated to school reform and the student movement, this article traces the basic critical approaches informing his mature thought back to his struggle to critically implement and transform the theory of concept formation and value presentation developed by his Freiburg teacher, Heinrich Rickert. It begins with an account of Rickert's work, specifically of the concept of Darstellung (presentation) and its central role in Rickert's postmetaphysical theory of historical research (which he characterizes as exclusively concerned with the Kantian quid juris). It shows that Rickert develops a speculative but practical theory of value recognition, which nevertheless leaves the status of value itself undetermined. Contra Rickert, Benjamin returns to the ignored quid facti, or origin of value, and shows that a metacritical, postmetaphysical approach such as Rickert's ultimately limits possible experience rather than grounding it. This basic insight, it is argued, is the cornerstone of Benjamin's concept of critique.     

Naturalizing the space of reasons

Given the Sellarsian distinction between the space of causes and the space of reasons, the naturalist seeks to articulate how these two spaces are unproblematically related. In Mind and World () John McDowell suggests that such a naturalism can be achieved by pointing out that we work our way into the space of reasons by the process of upbringing he calls Bildung. ‘The resulting habits of thought and action’, writes McDowell, ‘are second nature’ (p. 84). In this paper I expose one implication of this remark, namely, that Bildung naturalism requires a conception of a type of action which is at once rational and habitual. Current orthodoxies in the philosophy of action prevent these two features from easily co‐existing. Whilst various reconciliations are possible, I argue that only one keeps Bildung naturalism intact. This, however, commits the naturalist to a conception of reasons more radically external than any to be found in current literature, according to which the agent need have no conception of what her reasons are at the time of acting. This is what I call acting in the dark of reasons. One upshot for McDowell is that this conception of reasons may be in tension with some of his other claims.     

Reasons of love: an introduction

One of the main reasons for philosophers to have embraced Humean constructivism rather than Kantian constructivism is a negative one: they believe that in the end Kantian constructivism is an unstable position. Their idea is that the Kantian constructivist can either choose to hold on to the idea of categorical reasons for action but in that case she has to be prepared to commit to (robust) moral realism (which both Humean and Kantian constructivists reject) or alternatively, she might reject (robust) moral realism but in that case she has to give up on the idea of categoricity. The aim of this paper is to defend Kantian constructivism against Humean constructivism and more specifically against recent objections raised by Sharon Street. I will do so by arguing that Kantian constructivism follows from formal, normative commitments that pertain to instrumental reasoning that Humean constructivists like Sharon Street themselves accept. More specifically I will argue that categorical reasons for action follow from applying the principle of instrumental rationality to the first-person perspective of an agent, provided that there are certain necessary means for action in general. From this follows, I will argue, that Humean constructivists should either become Kantian constructivists or that they have to become sceptics about normativity.     

Criticisms of the Ethical Principles for Psychologists and Code of Conduct

ABSTRACT

Beginning in 1953 the American Psychological Association (APA) has advanced twelve iterations of a professional ethical code. In recent years the adequacy of the Ethics Code as well as APA’s ethics enforcement has come under increased scrutiny. In 2015 the APA empaneled an Ethics Commission which made a series of recommendations; however, the Commission itself as well as its recommendations are also controversial. This paper presents criticisms of the Ethics Code that have generally not been discussed in the previous literature.     

Ardent realism without referential normativity

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can address Eklund’s leading challenge without appeal to distinctively metasemantic commitments.     

Objective and epistemic gradability: Is the new angle on the Knobe effect empirically grounded?

According to the New Angle, any explanation of the Knobe effect must be gradable and asymmetric. It has been argued that only Hindriks’ approach meets both criteria. First, we argue that Holton’s hypothesis also meets the criteria. Second, we show that the authors are not justified in taking the criteria to be empirically justified. We have failed to replicate the asymmetry result in two experiments. Moreover, gradability can be objective or epistemic. We show that the New Angle presupposes objective gradability. In our experiments, the patterns of responses to questions about epistemic and objective gradability are the same, irrespective of whether the feature is objectively gradable (e.g., blameworthiness) or not (e.g., intentionality). Our results thus question the extent to which the New Angle is empirically grounded. Moreover, they raise doubt whether the answers to questions about epistemic and objective gradability can be taken at face value at all.

Abbreviations: NRH - normative reasons hypothesis; NVH - norm violation hypothesis; DQ - degree question; DAQ - degree of agreement question     

The “Ought-Is” Problem: An Implementation Science Framework for Translating Ethical Norms Into Practice

Abstract

We argue that once a normative claim is developed, there is an imperative to effect changes based on this norm. As such, ethicists should adopt an “implementation mindset” when formulating norms, and collaborate with others who have the expertise needed to implement policies and practices. To guide this translation of norms into practice, we propose a framework that incorporates implementation science into ethics. Implementation science is a discipline dedicated to supporting the sustained enactment of interventions. We further argue that implementation principles should be integrated into the development of specific normative claims as well as the enactment of these norms. Ethicists formulating a specific norm should consider whether that norm can feasibly be enacted because the resultant specific norm will directly affect the types of interventions subsequently developed. To inform this argument, we will describe the fundamental principles of implementation science, using informed consent to research participation as an illustration.     

Introduction: symposium on Brooke Ackerly’s Just Responsibility: A Human Rights Theory of Global Justice

ABSTRACT

This symposium brings together normative and empirical scholars in dialogue on Brooke Ackerly’s innovative and compelling recent monograph, Just Responsibility. Contributors discuss the book’s distinctive grounded normative theory methodology, its arguments for how individuals can take appropriate responsibility for global structural injustices, and its potential for practical impact.