Talbot Brewer offers a new approach to ethical theory, founded on a far-reaching reconsideration of the nature and sources of human agency.

It is not clear whether to assess Robert Audi’s Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character as a collection of essays or a unified piece of theorizing. Seven of the book’s twelve essays have been published before, and at first blush they appear connected by little more than a common focus on ethics. These essays are framed, however, by an introduction and conclusion characterizing the book as the elaboration of a single, large-scale ethical theory. Perhaps a comprehensive theory can be disentangled from (...) these essays, but its contours and merits would be far clearer if Audi had presented it systematically, drawing selectively from previous essays rather than reproducing them wholesale. (shrink)

Perhaps the most fundamental and distinctive idea of Kantian moral psychology is that no behavior can count as action unless it is performed on a subjective practical principle, or a maxim of action. The maxim is supposed to provide the target of moral assessment of all actions, whether this assessment is prospective or retrospective. The presence of a maxim is also supposed to illuminate how it is that agents are active in, hence responsible for, the peculiar species of events we (...) call actions. To put the point roughly, agents are the sources of their actions in that they have in some sense affirmed or endorsed the maxims of these actions. (shrink)

Perhaps the most fundamental and distinctive idea of Kantian moral psychology is that no behavior can count as action unless it is performed on a subjective practical principle, or a maxim of action. The maxim is supposed to provide the target of moral assessment of all actions, whether this assessment is prospective or retrospective. The presence of a maxim is also supposed to illuminate how it is that agents are active in, hence responsible for, the peculiar species of events we (...) call actions. To put the point roughly, agents are the sources of their actions in that they have in some sense affirmed or endorsed the maxims of these actions. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw a distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of commitments by highlighting some previously unnoticed subtleties in the pragmatics of "commissive" utterances. I argue that theories which seek to model all commitments on promises, or to ground them all on voluntary consent, can account only for one sort of obligation and not for the other. Since social groups are most perspicuously categorized in terms of the sorts of commitments that bind their members together, this puts me (...) in a position to distinguish two importantly different kinds of social groups, which I call aggregations and associations. I try to show that this position can account for features of the normative structure of social groups that are overlooked by those theorists (e.g. Margaret Gilbert) who have attempted to offer a unitary, voluntarist account of the phenomena under investigation. (shrink)

Kant maintained that dutiful action can have the fullest measure of moral worth even if chosen in the face of powerful inclinations to act immorally, and indeed that opposing inclinations only highlight the worth of the action. I argue that this conclusion rests on an implausibly mechanistic account of desires, and that many desires are constituted by tendencies to see certain features of one’s circumstances as reasons to perform one or another action. I try to show that inclinations to violate (...) moral requirements sometimes manifest a morally objectionable half-heartedness in one’s commitment to those very requirements, and – by extension – to the values that undergird these requirements. (shrink)

It is widely affirmed that human beings have irreplaceable valuable, and that we owe it to them to treat them accordingly. Many theorists have been drawn to Kantianism because they think that it alone can capture this intuition. One aim of this paper is to show that this is a mistake, and that Kantianism cannot provide an independent rational vindication, nor even a fully illuminating articulation, of irreplaceability. A further aim is to outline a broadly Aristotelian view that provides a (...) more fitting theoretical framework for this appealing conception of human value. This critique of Kantianism extends to contemporary theorists with a broadly Kantian orientation, including Christine Korsgaard, Stephen Darwall and John Rawls. The problem with these views, at heart, is that they attempt to ground morality in respect alone. Yet it is love, not respect, that brings irreplaceability into view. The paper closes with a sketch of a virtue-theoretic theory that follows Aquinas in taking love to be a master virtue that refines the other virtues so as to ensure a continuous and practically efficacious sensitivity to the irreplaceable value of fellow human beings. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophical inquiry into individual welfare has blossomed into something of a cottage industry, and this literature has provided the conceptual foundations for an equally voluminous literature on aggregate social welfare. In this essay, I argue that substantial portions of both bodies of literature ought to be viewed as philosophical manifestations of a characteristically modern illusion—the illusion, in particular, that there is a special kind of goodness that is irreducibly person-relative. Theories that are built upon this idea suffer (...) from a recurring defect. Such theories relativize welfare to subjective states that are wholly unsuited to settling deliberative questions concerning what it would be good for us to do, because they themselves are subjective outlooks on value and their dependability is itself fair game for deliberative review. They are unstable, then, in the course of first-person deliberation, which is precisely where they are supposed to have their primary application. The idea of an irreducibly person-relative kind of goodness is of modern vintage, and its rise has distorted prevailing interpretations of pre-modern alternatives, including the appealing alternative found in Plato and Aristotle. A further objective of this essay is to recover this alternative, bring out its appeal, and answer some possible objections to it. (shrink)

It is common, in current literature on the topic at hand, to distinguish two kinds of reasons for action: justificatory reasons, which answer questions about what we ought to do, and explanatory reasons, which explain what we actually do. Internalism is a thesis about justificatory reasons—that is, the kind of reasons we are in search of when we deliberate about what to do or advise others about what they ought to do. Of course, since internalism traces justificatory reasons to the (...) subjective motivations of those to whom the reasons apply, and since these motivations play a central role in explaining actions, the doctrine implies that there is a close relation—perhaps even a relation of identity—between justificatory and explanatory reasons. Still, the main proponents of internalism have presented it, in the first instance, as a thesis about justificatory reasons. What I hope to show is that internalism cannot be accepted as a limitation on justificatory reasons because it cannot coherently be accepted in the course of first-person deliberation; and it ought not to be accepted when offering advice. To think otherwise, I will argue, is to reverse the ‘direction of gaze’ appropriate to deliberation, mistaking the psychological states that shape our view of justificatory reasons for the justificatory reasons they bring into view. The upshot of this reversal is to make justification far too easy to come by, and to render it obscure what we are doing when we pause to consider whether we really have the reasons that we are disposed to think we have. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw a distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of commitments by highlighting some previously unnoticed subtleties in the pragmatics of “commissive” utterances. I argue that theories which seek to model all commitments on promises, or to ground them all on voluntary consent, can account only for one sort of obligation and not for the other. Since social groups are most perspicuously categorized in terms of the sorts of commitments that bind their members together, this puts me (...) in a position to distinguish two importantly different kinds of social groups, which I call aggregations and associations. I try to show that this position can account for features of the normative structure of social groups that are overlooked by those theorists (e.g. Margaret Gilbert) who have attempted to offer a unitary, voluntarist account of the phenomena under investigation. (shrink)

Sarah Buss argues that if we are to rise to the challenge of standing up to justice when doing so is costly, we will have to internalise a sense of our own unimportance. That is, we will have to cultivate an attitude that is ‘the opposite of self‐love’. I try to show that what we need is not to eliminate our love of self but to give it a proper and discerning shape, so that it conduces to our goodness rather (...) than to our self‐interest narrowly construed. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, moral philosophers have been engaged in a seemingly interminable debate about the role of internal and external reasons in practical reasoning. The rough distinction between these two sorts of reasons is this: internal reasons apply to particular agents in virtue of their relation to that agent's desires, preferences, or other motivational states, while external reasons are normative for particular agents quite independently of their relation to the subjective motivational states of these agents.

Some contemporary Kantians have argued that one could not be virtuous without having internalized certain patterns of awareness that permit one to identify and respond reliably to moral reasons for action. I agree, but I argue that this insight requires unrecognized, farreaching, and thoroughly welcome changes in the traditional Kantian understanding of maxims and virtues. In particular, it implies that one''s characteristic emotions and desires will partly determine one''s maxims, and hence the praiseworthiness of one''s actions. I try to show (...) this by pointing out an instability in the Kantian understanding of maxims. On the one hand, maxims are thought of as consciously affirmed, subjective principles of action. On the other hand, Kantians claim that nothing counts as an action, nor as morally assessable, unless it has a maxim. One cannot take both thoughts seriously without implausibly constricting the range of behavior that counts as action, hence as morally assessable. This difficulty can be overcome, I suggest, by jettisoning the idea that maxims must be consciously affirmed, and by stressing the way in which maxims are grounded in the pruning and shaping of one''s emotions and desires during socialization. This opens the door to a rich Kantian theory of virtue. It also raises questions about the scope and ground of our moral responsibility, which I address at the end of the paper. (shrink)

Presents a sustained and original challenge to the orthodox understanding of the relationship between morality and voluntary choice. The two main theses of the book are that we can be morally responsible for aspects of our character that we have not chosen or otherwise authored, and that we can enter into interpersonal commitments to which we have not voluntarily consented.

I argue that desires and emotions have a cognitive element that leaves them open to direct moral assessment. I maintain that a wide range of affects enter into moral reasoning as initial mappings of practical reasons onto the world. This suggests a way of characterizing conflicts between persistent desires and all-things-considered practical judgments. Such conflicts indicate that our considered judgments lack the status of wholehearted convictions. The dissertation culminates in a distinctive account of certain interpersonal obligations that builds upon this (...) idea of wholehearted conviction. ;In Chapter 1, I examine the conception of moral worth and the companion conception of virtue at work in Kant's seminal moral writings. I argue that these conceptions leave Kant without resources to explain the critical distinction between self-interested and malicious violations of duty. ;In Chapter 2, I ask how significant a revision must be made to Kantian moral theory in order to accommodate my criticisms. I argue that there are demanding affective preconditions for the full recognition of the equal moral standing of other humans, and that these provide the core of a more plausible conception of moral virtue than is usually associated with Kant. I maintain that the Kantian who accepts this picture of virtue must give up the attractive claim that we can always voluntarily will to do whatever morality requires. Such a Kantian might still preserve the essential Kantian equation of dutiful action and autonomy--here understood as self-governance in accordance with laws we wholeheartedly accept. ;In the course of Chapters 1 and 2, I argue that when there are conflicts between our desires and our all-things considered judgments of what we have reason to do, this shows that our considered beliefs are not wholehearted convictions. In Chapters 3 and 4, I attempt to show that the obligations which bind together intimates and fellow members of certain face-to-face communities are best analyzed in terms of wholehearted convictions. I argue that this approach is truer to the phenomenology of moral deliberation than rival analyses. (shrink)

There is considerable appeal to the Aristotelian idea that taking pleasure in an activity is sometimes simply a matter of attending to it in such a way as to render it wholehearted. However, the proponents of this idea have not made adequately clear what kind of attention it is that can perform the surprising feat of transforming otherwise indifferent activities into pleasurable ones. I build upon Gilbert Ryle's suggestion that taking pleasure in an activity is tantamount to engaging in the (...) activity while fervently desiring to do it and it alone. More specifically, I draw upon insights into the sort of evaluative attention involved in having a desire to generate corollary insights into the sort of attention that makes activity pleasurable. My aim is to offer a compelling account of a certain class of pleasures, and to shed light on their relation to reasons. I argue that prospective pleasures in this class are not always reasons for action, and that even when they are reasons they have this status only derivatively, as vivid apprehensions of an independent realm of values. This does not mean that such pleasures are never good. They are good provided that they track real values, for then they constitute a proper savoring of one's activities and/or circumstances, and provide a valuable respite from the distractions and unwarranted doubts that so often leave us at odds with ourselves and alienated from our own doings. (shrink)

Talbot Brewer has argued that contemporary philosophy of action and ethics are hampered by a picture of human agency as essentially consisting in bringing about states of affairs – a “production-oriented” conception of action. From classical sources, centrally including Aristotle, Brewer retrieves a different picture – of human activity as fundamentally “dialectical”. Ritual activity, including a ritual dimension of many dialectical activities, affirms and deepens our human presence in and to the world, and to other human beings. (...) I argue that this aspect of ritual activity cannot be adequately recognised in the terms of Brewer's dialectical account of human activity. (shrink)

Short review of Talbot Brewer's excellent book "The Retrieval of Ethics".

Talbot Brewer seeks to follow Elizabeth Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, and Alasdair MacIntyre in "retrieving" philosophical ethics from the grip of bad questions and worse answers. This is an ambitious aim, and Brewer may not entirely succeed. But if he falls short it is in an intelligent, rich, and fecund way. It is what moral philosophy can be like at its best.

In The Retrieval of Ethics, Talbot Brewer defends an Aristotelian-inspired understanding of the good life, in which living the good life is conceived of in terms of engaging in a unified dialectical activity. In this essay, I explore the assumptions at work in Brewer's understanding of dialectical activity and raise some concerns about whether or not we have reason to embrace them. I argue that his conception of human nature and that towards which we are drawn stands (...) in tension with empirical research on motivation. Given this tension, I conclude that it is implausible to construe living the good life as a unified dialectical activity. (shrink)

An understanding of the ethical implications of their work is now essential for all scientists. This accessible textbook clearly explains bioethical theories and their philosophical foundations to science students, enabling them to confidently take part in the key ethical debates of biotechnology. Over 200 activities introduce topics for personal reflection and discussion points encourage students to think for themselves and build their own arguments. Highlighting the potential pitfalls for those new to bioethics, each chapter features boxes providing factual information and (...) outlining the philosophical background. Accompanying online podcasts by the author (two of whose podcasts on iTunesU have attracted over 3 million downloads) explain points that might be difficult for beginners. Detailed case studies provide an insight into real-life examples of bioethical problems. Within-chapter essay questions and quizzes, along with end-of-chapter review questions, allow students to check their understanding and encourage broader thinking about the topics discussed. (shrink)

The question how to account for illusion has had a prominent role in shaping theories of perception throughout the history of philosophy. Prevailing philosophical wisdom today has it that phenomena of illusion force us to choose between the following two options. First, reject altogether the early modern empiricist idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience. Instead we must characterize perceptual experience entirely in terms of its (...) representational content. Second, retain the early modern idea that the core subjective character of experience is simply constituted by the identity of its direct objects, but admit that these must be mind-dependent entities, distinct from the mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. I argue here that the early modern empiricists had an indispensable insight. The idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience is more fundamental than any appeal to perceptual content, and can account for illusion, and indeed hallucination, without resorting to the problematic postulation of any such mind-dependent objects. (shrink)

Boyer & Petersen lay out a compelling theory for folk-economic beliefs, focusing on beliefs about markets. However, societies also allocate resources through mechanisms involving power and group decision-making, through the political economy. We encourage future work to keep folkpoliticaleconomic beliefs in mind, and sketch an example involving pollution and climate change mitigation policy.

De Dreu and Gross's distinction between attack and defense is complicated in real-world conflicts because competing leaders construe their position as one of defense, and power imbalances place status quo challengers in a defensive position. Their account of defense as vigilant avoidance is incomplete because it avoids a reference to anger which transforms anxious avoidance into collective and unified action.

This new collection illuminates and explains the political and moral importance in justifying the exercise of judicial power.Explores enduring questionsFocusing ...

: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot (...) cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s. (shrink)

Zu seinen Lebzeiten war Kurt Gödel außerhalb der Fachwelt der Mathematiker, Philosophen und theoretischen Physiker kaum bekannt. Zu Beginn seiner Karriere schuf er beeindruckende Arbeiten zur Vollständigkeit und Beweisbarkeit formaler logischer Systeme, die zu seiner Dissertation und seiner Habilitations-schrift wurden und ihn unter Fachleuten weltberühmt machten. Seine Unvoll-ständigkeitssätze läuteten das Ende der formal-logischen Programme der Logizisten (Russell et al.) und der Formalisten (Hilbert et al.) ein. Später erzielte er auch signifikante Ergebnisse in der Mengenlehre. Nach seiner Emigration in die USA (...) (Princeton), widmete er sich mehr der Philosophie, dem Leitmotiv seines Lebens, und er fand auch eine einzigartige Lösung zu Einsteins Feld-gleichungen der Gravitation, sein "Gödel-Universum". Dieses Buch beschreibt sowohl den Gödel, der ein genialer Wissenschaftler war, und der gewagte und neuartige Hypothesen zu den Fundamenten der Mathe-matik und Physik hervorbrachte, ‒ als auch den Gödel, der ein perfekter Rationalist war, aber sein Alltagsleben nur mit Mühe meistern konnte und zeitlebens unter Depressionen, Angstneurosen und Hypochondrie litt. Ein Leben voller Paradoxen, in dem er trotz all seiner psychischen Probleme Beachtliches leistete und zu einem Vorbild für viele jüngere Wissenschaftler wurde. Das Buch liefert den Kontext zu seinen Errungenschaften, die ein verblüffend breites Spektrum intellektueller Unternehmungen darstellen, und zu seiner zunehmenden Geisteskrankheit; und es zeigt, wie er eine lange und erfolgreiche Karriere mit Hilfe seiner loyalen Ehefrau Adele und einigen seiner Freunde durchlaufen konnte. Dies ist eine faszinierende Geschichte der wissen-schaftlichen Genialität und der menschlichen Natur. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. therefore expresses a commonsense commitment to physical realism: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone.