Abstract
In John McDowell's recent Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University, he characterizes Wilfrid Sellars's ‘master thought’, in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, as drawing a line between two types of characterizations of states that occur in people's mental lives: “Above the line are placings in the logical space of reasons, and below it are characterizations that do not do that” (McDowell, 1998, p. 433). In this essay, I ask what would be required for ethics to be “above the line.” More precisely, what would be necessary to characterize episodes as actions, and persons as agents, so as for them to be answerable to moral criticism in light of rationally relevant considerations. The requirements are twofold: that practical reason motivate in virtue of the content of its deliverances; and that there be a will which is sensitive to those deliverances, and which chooses freely. A widespread procedural account of practical reason is examined and found insufficient to place ethics above the line; and a suspicion is raised that McDowell himself, and Jonathan Dancy, do not have a robust enough conception of will to avoid the below the line ethics they accuse their opponents of defending.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics. T. Irwin (trans.), Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1985.
Boyle, J.M., Grisez, G., and Tollefsen, O., Free Choice: A Self-Referential Argument. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976.
Boyle, J.M., Toward Understanding the Principle of Double Effect, Ethics 90 (1980), pp. 527–538.
Braine, D., The Human Person: Animal and Spirit. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
Dancy, J., Moral Reasons. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
Donagan, A., The Theory of Morality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.
Frankfurt, H., Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person, Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), pp. 5–20.
Kant, I., Critique of Practical Reason. L.W. Beck (trans.), New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985.
McDowell, J., Virtue and Reason, The Monist 62 (1979), pp. 331–350.
McDowell, J., Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
McDowell, J., Might There be External Reasons? in J.E.J. Altham, and R. Harrison (eds.), World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. 68–85.
McDowell, J., Having the World in View: Sellars, Kant, and Intentionality, The Journal of Philosophy 95 (1998), pp. 431–491.
McDowell, J., Values and Secondary Qualities, in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 110–129.
Platts, M., Ways of Meaning. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.
Sayre-McCord, G., The Metaethical Problem, Ethics 108 (1997), pp. 55–83.
Smith, M., The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.
Williams, B., Internal and External Reasons, in Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 101–113.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tollefsen, C. Practical Reason and Ethics Above the Line. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5, 67–87 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014427227836
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014427227836