Constitutivism and the Authority of Morality

宪政主义与道德权威

• 批准号: 2239338
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2239338
• 关键词: Constitutivism; Authority; Morality

Constitutivism - the view that practical reasons are grounded in constitutive standards of action - is one of the leading theories in the explanation of practical normativity. But there is also disagreement about its motivations and ambitions, and challenges to its basic commitments. In view of this, I will argue that constitutivism is both a coherent position, and that it is preferable to competitors - especially realism - because it provides a compelling explanation of the authority of morality. Notice, we may find it unintelligible when someone admits that torturing animals (say) is immoral but engages in this activity uninhibited. Examples like this support the view that that part of what it means for an action to be immoral is that we always have a reason not to do it - and often an overriding one. Reasons are considerations that can guide and therefore motivate us. The agent's failure to be affected at all by a consideration which she acknowledges to be her reason is what we find strange in the example above. She is either being insincere, or she does not possess moral concepts. Why expect the mere recognition that an action is immoral to be capable of moving us not to do it? I argue that we cannot make progress with this question if we assume, with realists, that our reasons are conceptually independent of our desires. But now we have a new worry. Moral reasons seem to apply to all agents. How can that be the case if our reasons are always grounded in some antecedent concern of ours? Korsgaard's "Kantian" constitutivism (for example, 1996) is promising here. She argues that distinctively moral standards (indeed, all standards of practical reason) just are constitutive standards of action. This explains why we always care about acting morally, and so why the immorality of an action is always a reason not to do it: having moral aims is a condition of practical deliberation and hence acting for reasons at all.I will develop this framework in two ways. First, I will defend the claim that constitutive features of action - whatever they are - can be normative. Enoch argues that within the constitutivist framework even if we cannot understand the question "Why be moral?" when asked by someone who wants to be an agent, we can understand the question "Why be an agent?". So, the question of whether we have reason to be agents remains - and with it, the question of how we have moral reasons, since Enoch thinks we only have these if we have reason to be agents. I will show that, properly understood, constitutivism has resources to respond to this objection. Second, I will address recent attempts to show that action has some set of constitutive standards in particular - and importantly, standards that have distinctively moral content. I will give particular attention to Korsgaard's (1996) widely criticized argument that we must care about not only our own "humanity", but the the humanity of all, as a condition of our agency. I will examine which, if any, of Korsgaard's main insights can be preserved and extended as part of a new argument for her original conclusion.

构成主义认为实践理性是以行为的构成标准为基础的，是解释实践规范性的主要理论之一。但人们对它的动机和雄心也存在分歧，对它的基本承诺也存在挑战。有鉴于此，我认为宪政主义既是一个连贯的立场，也是比竞争对手--尤其是现实主义--更可取的立场，因为它为道德的权威提供了一个令人信服的解释。请注意，当有人承认虐待动物是不道德的，但却不受约束地从事这种活动时，我们可能会觉得难以理解。像这样的例子支持了这样一种观点，即一个行为是不道德的部分原因是我们总是有理由不去做它--而且往往是压倒一切的理由。原因是可以引导并激励我们的考虑因素。在上面的例子中，我们觉得奇怪的是，行动者根本没有受到她承认是她的理由的考虑的影响。她要么不真诚，要么没有道德观念。为什么仅仅认识到一种行为是不道德的就能促使我们不去做呢？我认为，如果我们和现实主义者一样假设我们的理性在概念上独立于我们的欲望，那么我们就无法在这个问题上取得进展。但现在我们有了新的担忧。道德理由似乎适用于所有的代理人。如果我们的理性总是基于我们先前的某种关切，那么情况又怎么会如此呢？科斯加德的“康德”宪法主义（例如，1996年）在这里是有希望的。她认为，独特的道德标准（实际上，实践理性的所有标准）只是行为的构成标准。这就解释了为什么我们总是关心道德行为，也解释了为什么行为的不道德性总是不去做的理由：有道德目标是实际考虑的条件，因此是出于理性而行动的条件。首先，我将为这样一种主张辩护，即行动的构成性特征--无论它们是什么--都可以是规范性的。以诺认为，在宪政主义的框架内，即使我们不能理解的问题“为什么是道德的？当有人问想当经纪人的时候，我们可以理解这个问题“为什么要当经纪人？”".因此，我们是否有理由成为代理人的问题仍然存在--随之而来的是，我们如何拥有道德理由的问题，因为以诺认为，只有当我们有理由成为代理人时，我们才有道德理由。我将表明，如果正确理解，宪政主义有资源来回应这种反对。第二，我将讨论最近的一些尝试，这些尝试旨在表明行动有一些特定的构成标准--而且重要的是，这些标准具有独特的道德内容。我将特别关注Korsgaard（1996）广受批评的论点，即我们不仅必须关心我们自己的“人性”，而且必须关心所有人的人性，作为我们机构的条件。我将研究哪些，如果有的话，Korsgaard的主要见解可以被保留和扩展，作为她最初结论的新论点的一部分。