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Abstract
Constitutivists have tried to answer Enoch’s “schmagency” objection by arguing that Enoch fails to appreciate the inescapability of agency. Although these arguments are effective against some versions of the objection, I argue that they leave constitutivism vulnerable to an important worry; namely, that constitutivism leaves us alienated from the moral norms that it claims we must follow. In the first part of the paper, I try to make this vague concern more precise: in a nutshell, it seems that constitutivism cannot provide an adequate account of the relation between the constitutive norms of agency and the particular ends the agent pursues. I then provide a broad outline of an interpretation of Kant’s formalism that is immune to this objection. I conclude that constitutivism is best understood as the upshot of a formalist view of categorical practical principles.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Sergio Tenenbaum is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Appearances of the Good: An Essay on the Nature of Practical Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Rational Powers in Action: Extend Action and Instrumental Rationality (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), as well as numerous articles in various areas of practical philosophy.
Notes
1 Not all constitutivists share in this ambition. See Velleman (Citation2009), and Street (Citation2012).
2 See Ferrero (Citation2009) for a similar description of the task.
3 Ferrero (Citation2009) calls it the “alienation” objection. I’ll depart somewhat from Ferrero in my characterization of the objection.
4 For a similar protest with respect to the chess case, see Enoch (Citation2011).
5 I discuss Korsgaard’s view in Tenenbaum (Citation2011).
6 See Tenenbaum (Citation2015) and Tenenbaum (CitationForthcoming) for more details on how to understand the internal structure of a certain end.
7 Herman (Citation1981). I am departing somewhat from Herman’s presentation.
8 See on this issue, Clark (Citation2001). See also Lavin (Citation2004) and Katsafanas (Citation2013).
9 See Korsgaard (Citation2009, ch. 8).
10 For a classic skeptic view, see Foot (Citation1978).
11 Schafer (Citation2017) suggests a similar problem with constitutivism.
12 Katsafanas (Citation2013) takes power to be constitutive aim of agency, but he clearly distinguishes his understanding of this end from the crude reading of the end I have here.
13 See Ferrero (Citation2009) for direct engagement with Enoch’s version of the objection.
14 For more details, see Tenenbaum (CitationForthcoming).
15 Or, under some views, the weight of our reasons.
16 The example is taken from Cocking and Kennett (Citation2000).
17 See Tenenbaum (manuscript).
18 See, for instance, Kant (Citation1998a, B 141-2).
19 “The good [is] … a necessary object of the faculty of desire” (Kant Citation1996, 5:58). And also “What we call good must be an object of the faculty of desire in the judgment of every reasonable being” (Kant Citation1996, 5:61).
20 See Schafer (Citation2017) for the connection between understanding and rationality.
21 Of course, for Kant, mathematical knowledge depends on formal intuitions. I am ignoring these complications here.
22 See Tenenbaum (manuscript) for more detailed discussion. This is in a nutshell a way of presenting Kant’s claim that “all practical principles that presuppose an object of the faculty desire as the determining ground of the will are … empirical and can furnish no practical laws” (Kant Citation1996, 5:21). See also the discussion of heteronomy of the will in the Groundwork (Kant Citation1996, 4:441–445). Korsgaard has similarly emphasized in many places that realists cannot explain moral motivation. See, for instance, Korsgaard (Citation1996).
23 For more detail, see Tenenbaum (CitationForthcoming).
24 I am assuming here a version of the “guise of the good” thesis, but the basic point doesn’t depend on it.
25 I give some more details in Tenenbaum (CitationForthcoming).
26 Compare the Groundwork II: “the will is nothing but practical reason” (Kant Citation1996, 4: 412).
27 And as confirmed by the famous distinction between humanity and personality in the Religion (Kant Citation1998b, 6:26).
28 One might think that the moral realist is committed to such a view. But insofar as the moral realist postulates an extra desire or special constitution, as explained above, the moral realist is still committed to the Humean view of agency. Some neo-Aristotelian versions of moral realism, such as McDowell (Citation1978), are exceptions as they accept that moral actions must be fully explained by the agent’s practical cognition. Scanlon (Citation2014) rejects the Humean theory of motivation; I argue that this kind of moral realism collapses into the Humean view in Tenenbaum (manuscript).
29 Kant’s commitment here is apparent, among other places, in his discussion of the fact of reason. There are questions about whether this is the view he holds in the third section of the Groundwork. I defend the view that it is in Tenenbaum (Citation2012).