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Constitutivism and the Self-Reflection Requirement

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Abstract

Constitutivists explicitly emphasize the importance of self-reflection for rational agency. Interestingly enough, there is no clear account of how and why self-reflection plays such an important role for these views. My aim in this paper is to address this underappreciated problem for constitutivist views and to determine whether constitutivist self-reflection is normatively oriented. Understanding its normative features will allow us to evaluate a potential way that constitutivism may meet its purported metaethical promise. I begin by showing why constitutivism, as exemplified by Korsgaard’s and Velleman’s respective views, takes self-reflection to be a constitutive feature of rational agency. Closer examination of this claim suggests three underappreciated problems for the constitutivist’s apparent reliance on self-reflection. First, we have no picture of the specific role that self-reflection plays. Second, it is unclear in what sense it is a requirement for full-fledged agency and, thereby, for self-constitution. Third, it is not clear whether it has any necessary normative features, even given the often cited moral normativity associated with constitutivism. In §1, I will address the first and second questions. §2 will be dedicated to considering the third question.

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Notes

  1. Rosati (2016) has recently argued that she does not take her view to be constitutivist.

  2. For extensive discussions of the complexities of the various versions of constitutivism, see O’Hagan (2014) and Silverstein (2015).

  3. Compare, for example, Velleman’s (1989, 2000a, b, 2006a, b, 2009) version, which emphasizes self-knowledge, with Katsafanas’ (2011, 2013, 2014) version, which emphasizes the unification of our active and passive inclinations.

  4. Note that Velleman (2006a: 209) later modifies his view by identifying the constitutive aim of action to be “narrative coherence”, which requires that our actions and our reasons are intelligible qua a narrative we tell ourselves about ourselves. Here the difference between these two versions of his view does not amount to much for the theory of self-reflection on which his view relies.

  5. It is not the case that all constitutivists, or even Kantian constitutivists, share this view. Compare with Katsafanas (2011).

  6. Such as Katsafanas’ (2011; 2014) mix of Nietzschean and Kantian accounts of the will.

  7. I answer this question in “Constitutivist Self-Reflection and Metaethical Constructivism” (ms).

  8. As I note later, there is a great deal of debate about whether this is a fair characterization of constitutivism (Ferrero 2009; Morton 2011; Tiffany 2012; Silverstein 2015).

  9. Enoch notes that it is worth considering whether it changes anything to hitch normativity to what is constitutive of agency as opposed to hitching it to what is constitutive of action (2006:ftnt 1).

  10. One might be tempted to interpret constitutivism’s constructivism in procedural terms. Street (2010: 364–5) notes that Rawlsian proceduralism is a less interesting form of constructivism, given that it makes no clear claims about the standpoint from which moral claims are made. In this sense, she sets it aside. In this regard, if constitutivism is to underwrite constructivism by way of its view of self-reflection, it will be closer to the kind of constructivism described above. This is consistent with Street’s (2008) claim that constructivists views are defined by their claim that the results of a reasoning process are right just in case they issue from a certain kind of rational procedure, not just that they are the product of reasoning.

  11. I do not claim that indeed constitutivism successfully underwrites metaethical constructivism. My purpose in the remaining sections of the paper is to determine whether, if constitutivism were to underwrite metaethical constructivism, self-reflection plays a necessary role in this process.

  12. Note, however, that Katsafanas (2011) denies that agents must explicitly aim at self-reflection when they engage in full-fledged action and, thereby, to constitute themselves. Katsafanas (2011) equates self-reflection with deliberative agency, which, I think, limits self-reflection to those moments before one acts. Nothing about either Korsgaard’s or Velleman’s view requires that self-reflection precedes action in order for it to play an important role in self-constitution.

  13. See Bagnoli (2007) and Moran (2001) for a discussion of this possibility.

  14. See Wallace (2006a, 2006b).

  15. See Korsgaard (2009: 25).

  16. See Moran (2001) and Velleman (1989; Velleman 2000a, b).

  17. See Campbell (2014) and Korsgaard (2009: 25)

  18. It is worth noting that Korsgaard (1986) takes reasons internalism to be a relatively empty thesis. Korsgaard (1986: 23) writes, “[t]he force of the internalism requirement is psychological: what it does is not to refute ethical theories, but to make a psychological demand on them.”

  19. See Dancy (1993, 2002); Darwall (1983: 92–8); Hubin (2000); Korsgaard (1986: esp. 15–17); Nagel (1970: 30); Scanlon (1998 : 95–100); Schroeder (2007: especially chpt. 7); Shafer-Landau (2003: 119-ff.) Sinhababu (2009); Smith (1994); Tiberius (2000); Williams (1981: 102–05), among others.

  20. I take up this issue in my (ms) “Endorsements and Practical Reason.”

  21. Without barring the possibility of weakness of will.

  22. I owe this point to Sorin Baiasu.

  23. More important, it can do so without appealing to the aim of self-constitution. As a result, constitutivists can agree with Enoch’s shmagency challenge without undercutting their attempts to work toward a coherent form of metaethical constructivism.

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Correspondence to Caroline T. Arruda.

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I presented an earlier version of this paper at the European Consortium for Political Research in Glasgow in September 2014. I am grateful for the comments I received on various versions of this paper, especially from Carla Bagnoli, Sorin Baiasu, Christine Bratu and Christoph Hanisch.

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Arruda, C.T. Constitutivism and the Self-Reflection Requirement. Philosophia 44, 1165–1183 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9744-5

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