By Their Own Lights: A Coincidence Problem for Constructivists

Tez Clark (NYU)

Abstract

Normative constructivists hold that normative facts are grounded in our evaluative attitudes. As a result, constructivists avoid a "coincidence problem" shared by realist theories of normativity. Whereas realists must explain how we have access to normative facts that, on their view, exist independent of us, constructivists can offer an easy explanation: our attitudes track the normative facts because the normative facts just are grounded in our attitudes. In this paper, I argue that constructivists face a different kind of coincidence problem. Constructivists hold that an agent’s evaluative attitudes are constrained by constitutive requirements. In addition, it's natural to think (as some constructivists have argued) that moral constructivists should also give a constructivist account of rational normativity— the normativity of what we should believe or intend. What's striking is that the constitutive requirements that, according to constructivism, constrain our evaluative attitudes align ever so nicely with our rational norms. In particular: as I argue, we use rational norms to come to many of our normative judgements. Additionally, lest they be skeptics about our normative reasons, constructivists must hold that our normative judgements—the judgements made by applying our rational norms—align with our actual valuing practice. But what accounts for this alignment? I consider several responses on behalf of the constructivist, but offer worries for each response. Along the way, I consider (i) differences between substantive and structural norms of rationality and (ii) whether our meta-normative commitments constrain which first-order rational norms we can adopt, and vice versa.

Biography

Tez Clark is a second-year PhD student at New York University, with interests in epistemology, metaethics, and meta-normativity.  Before starting her PhD, Tez completed an undergraduate degree in philosophy at Harvard University and an MPhil in history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. Within epistemology, Tez's interests are in inquiry, understanding, and the ethics of belief. She is also interested in meta-normative questions about how different normative categories (reasons, value, rules, fit) and normative domains (particularly the moral and the epistemic) relate to each other, and about how our first-order commitments may constrain our meta-normative commitments (and vice versa).

Lack of Character Is No Problem for Character Ethics

Thomas Lambert & Joseph Moore (Princeton)

Abstract

John Doris’s Lack of Character: Personality and Moral Behavior purports to be an empirically-informed polemic against character ethics. Its main contention is that “situationist” results in experimental psychology indicate that most people do not possess robust character traits, traits such as virtues of courage or compassion. Doris claims that these results contradict a central, descriptive psychological commitment of character ethics, namely that most people have and act on the basis of such robust character traits. We contend, against Doris, that some major historical strains of character ethics lack this supposed commitment. In fact, as we show, both Aristotle and Nietzsche, two major character ethicists working nearly at opposite ends of the history of Western philosophy, believe that character is quite rare and predict that most people lack character. We also suggest that this shared assumption of the rarity of character is not merely the result of objectionable elitism, something contemporary character ethicists would do well to avoid. Rather, this empirical assumption fits well with ordinary expectations about the prevalence of excellence in most domains of human activity. We conclude, therefore, that viable versions of character ethics are immune to Doris’s challenge of empirical psychological adequacy.

Biography

Thomas Lambert is a fifth-year PhD candidate at Princeton University.  He has an MA from Princeton and a BA from St. Olaf College.  Thomas is interested in ethics, metaethics, philosophy of action, and the history of philosophy.  His dissertation, supervised by Alexander Nehamas, explores the relationship between strength of will and freedom in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.

Joseph Moore is completing his PhD at Princeton University, specializing in ethics, political philosophy, and the history of philosophy. His thesis advances a novel form of eudaimonist ethical theory centered around a value-based conception of human flourishing, in contrast to traditional virtue-based conceptions. He also works on moral motivation, the nature of normativity, the justification of the state, and educational policy.

Belief, Credence, and the Monotonicity Principle

Tamaz Tokhadze (Sussex)

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the so-called Monotonicity Principle (Monotonicity): the view that if an agent believes a proposition, X, and if she considers another proposition Y to be at least as probable as X, then she should also believe Y. While Monotonicity seems highly plausible, I argue that it entails an overly restrictive view of rational belief. My argument is based on the following surprising result: if Monotonicity is true and given some standard normative constraints on rational belief and credence, then it is irrational to simultaneously believe proposition X, suspend judgment on Y, and assign a low probability to X given Y (a probability less than 1/2). As an alternative to Monotonicity, I put forward a new thesis, Partial Monotonicity, which avoids the restrictiveness worry and captures important plausible aspects of the original principle. According to Partial Monotonicity, an agent may violate Monotonicity, but only with respect to, what I call, an inferentially trivial disjunction: a disjunction which is probable solely because its individually improbable disjuncts are jointly probable.

Biography

Tazo Tokhadze is a PhD student at the University of Sussex. His main research interests lie at the intersection of formal and traditional epistemology. His dissertation is on the Uniqueness thesis: the view that there is always one, unique rational response to any body of evidence.  He defends a hybrid approach to doxastic rationality where Uniqueness is true if we think about belief in a coarse-grained, qualitative manner; but Uniqueness is false if we think about belief in a fine-grained, numerical manner. Before coming to Sussex, Tazo did his MA at the University of Tartu and BA at the Ilia State University, his hometown university in Tbilisi.

Ability’s Two Dimensions of Robustness

Sophie Kikkert (LSE)

Abstract

This paper individuates two dimensions along which abilities can be modally robust. Robustness along the first dimension helps distinguish the successful exercise of an ability, which requires local control, from cases of lucky success. Just as the safety condition for knowledge ensures an agent’s lucky true beliefs do not count as knowledge, robustness along this dimension secures that the agent’s lucky successful acts do not count as exercises of an ability. The second dimension of robustness concerns the global availability of the kind of acts the ability is an ability to perform. Able agents often have the option to perform these acts not just in a single scenario, but across a range of circumstances. I present a framework which captures the two dimensions and their interaction, explain how this clarifies the relation between having abilities and their exercise, and employ the framework to resolve a point of tension in the literature regarding the modal strength of the robustness ability requires.

Biography

Sophie Kikkert is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics, with research interests in metaphysics and epistemology, modal semantics and social philosophy. Her PhD thesis centres on what it means to have and exercise abilities, and questions how abilities relate to the options and opportunities people have. Her most recent research draws on insights from the philosophy of disability to learn what role social norms and context-sensitivity play when we try to determine whether someone has an ability or not. Sophie has previously completed a MA in Philosophy at King’s College London, and a BA in Liberal Arts at University College Maastricht.

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