Agency and Action in Aristotle
Introduction
Recent literature in ethics has seen an emergence in a position now labeled
‘constitutivism’. Various forms of this, most notably Kantian and Nietzschean1, have
been advanced as viable candidates to answer several challenges previously raised.
Alongside this, but seemingly previously un-noted, there appears to be a significant area
of convergence between the Aristotelian ‘Virtue Ethic’ model (both ancient, and revised),
and the (modern) constitutivist model. This paper will aim to explore the nature of this
convergence and establish whether an Aristotelian ‘stripe’ of constitutivism might
provide the means for a useful synthesis and lay the foundation for a fruitful
investigation. I will begin the paper by outlining the (controversial) story concerned with
the ‘basis’ of norms and discuss how the Aristotelian ‘model’2 might successfully ‘map
onto’ this, constitutivist, account. I will then go on to look at some objections to
constitutivism and show how this new version can provide good answers to the
problems raised.
Section One: Three Challenges and the Constitutivist/Aristotelian Response
In his book Agency and the Foundation of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism (Katsafanas, 2013)
Paul Katsafanas proposes three criteria (challenges) an ethical theory must meet if it is to
be viable. These challenges are as follows:
1. The Epistemological Challenge:
A theory has to be able to account for
discontinuities in the evaluations moral agents hold and should also be able to
provide the tools to privilege one ‘evaluative schema’ over another. An ethical
1
For exemplars of recent work on constitutivism see Katsafanas (2013), Korsgaard
(2009, 2011), and Velleman (2009).
2 Christine Korsgaard, of course, claims that her version of constitutivism is a KantianPlatonic-Aristotelian model. It would appear, however, that there is serious reason to
doubt that Korsgaard’s Aristotle is compatible with Aristotle proper (and not just
another Kant in disguise). Much has been written on this topic, and a good place to
begin might be The Concept of Moral Obligation: Anscombe contra Korsgaard (Alvarez and
Ridley, 2007).
theory must give us an account as to why we should have confidence in our
[current] moral judgments/beliefs.
2. The Metaphysical Challenge: A theory should not rely on mysterious entities to
provide the authority for our judgments – we should not have to accept the
existence of/place trust in weird and mysterious properties to ground our ethical
theory. An ethical theory must be robust in the sense of ‘completeness’.
3. The Practical Challenge: An ethical theory should be motivating. When there
are competing inclinations (self-interest, greed, altruism, sex, glory &c.) our moral
theory should be able to tell us why we should Φ and not ψ – that is, a moral
theory must be able to “explain why and how morality has this grip on us”
(2013:19)
Constitutivists believe that they can meet the three challenges by making a plea to the
nature of agency and (by extension) action. They claim that examination into the nature
of action will reveal a necessarily present component all actions share. This component, or
‘constitutive principle’/‘constitutive aim’ is, according to constitutivism, sufficiently
determinate to be norm generating.
The strategy usually adopted by the constitutivist is to provide a clear account of what
they are trying to describe, that is, the constitutivist must define the limit on what counts
as an action and offer good reasons for accepting the limitation as set.
Constitutivists, perhaps un-controversially, argue that we must accept a distinction
between ‘actions’ and ‘events’ (or ‘actions’ and ‘mere behaviours’). Korsgaard provides a
helpful outline:
To regard some movement of my mind or my body as my action, I must see it as an
expression of my self as a whole, rather than as a product of some force that is at
work on me or in me. Movements that result from forces working on me or in me
constitute things that happen to me. To call a movement a twitch, or a slip, is at
once to deny that it is an action and to assign it to some part of you that is less
than whole.
(Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, Pg. 18)
Actions are those ‘happenings’ we ‘will’. Behaviours are those ‘happenings’ we do not
will - the constitutivist is only intending to provide an account of those happenings you
have brought about, the constitutivist is only aiming to give an account of intentional or
willed action, and, therefore, only those things you can be held accountable for. Some
argue for the stronger claim that one can be held accountable for instances of quasiwilled actions – these are actions where the agent is not acting habitually/unreflectively,
but has instead simply acted on a ‘rule’ or the dictates/demands of some external
authority, presumably under the illusion that the responsibility is no-longer their own.
One can be held accountable in virtue of the fact that the agent should have known
better than (attempt) to parcel-off the ownership of their act. Indeed, this attempt is
itself blameworthy in some (perhaps all) cases. Doing something because a religious
leader/therapist/politician told you to is no less absurd than driving into the sea because
the ‘sat-nav’ told you to ‘keep going straight’. John McDowell (2009), discussing a theme
analogous to ours, notes that Aristotle’s ‘character-based’ ethics might be a conscious
attempt to remove the temptation for ‘rule-following’:
Doing well is acting in the sort of way that is characteristic of people such as he
[Aristotle] describes. This indirection is just what we ought to expect, if he thinks
the content of a correct conception of doing well cannot be captured in a
deductively applicable blueprint for a life.
(The Engaged Intellect, Pg. 46)
This stronger ‘no moral sat-nav’ (or, ‘no moral blueprint’) claim is held implicitly and
explicitly by many constitutivists under the term ‘inescapability’, again, Korsgaard is very
clear that constitutivism will be concerned with denying certain sorts of ‘buck-passing’
morality:
Human beings are condemned to choice and action. Maybe you think you can avoid
it, by resolutely standing still, refusing to act, refusing to move. But it’s no use, for
that will be something you have chosen to do, and then you will have acted after
all. Choosing not to act makes not acting a kind of action, makes it something that
you do.
This is not to say that you cannot fail to act. Of course you can. You can fall
asleep at the wheel, you can faint dead away, you can be paralyzed with terror, you
can be helpless with pain, or grief can turn you to stone. And then you will fail to
act. But you can’t undertake to be in those conditions – if you did, you’d be faking,
and what’s more, you’d be acting in a wonderfully double sense of that word. So
as long as you’re in charge, so long as nothing happens to derail you, you must act.
You have no choice but to choose, and to act on your choice.
(Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity, Pg. 1)
One cannot, by definition, intentionally fail to act.
Nor can one absolve oneself of
responsibility. If we grant the inescapability of action, the constitutivist’s next move is to
couple this with the idea that each action has a constitutive aim – with this development
the constitutivist project begins to take a more determinate shape:
(Constitutive Aim) Let A be a type of attitude or event. Let G be a goal. A
constitutively aims at G iff
(i)
each token of A aims at G, and
(ii)
aiming at G is part of what constitutes an attitude or event as a token of A.
(AFE, Pg. 39)
Katsafanas provides a clear definition of a constitutive aim (above), the application of
which is easily drawn out: for example each token of chess aims at checkmate (if you are
not aiming to checkmate, or perhaps force a draw/stalemate, you are simply not playing
chess) and aiming at checkmate is what characterizes an instance of chess playing. Using
this ‘constitutive aim’, Katsafanas goes on to specify an outline of how we can evaluate
the competence, or ‘success’ of an instance:
(Success) If X aims at G, then G is a standard of success for X, such that G
generates normative reasons for action.
(AFE, Pg. 39)
If you are aiming to checkmate your opponent, then your ability to attain checkmate is
the standard of success. Further, if moving my knight to c4 is conducive to my end of
achieving checkmate, then moving my knight to c4 is something I should to do. Given
(Success) we are now in a position to evaluate actions – an action is good iff it
attains/aides in the attainment of the goal, bad if it fails to attain/hampers the attainment
of the goal. Constitutivists transfer the ‘game model’ to agency: All actions aim at G,
aiming at G is what characterizes an event as an action. An agent is successful (qua
agent) if he/she is successful at achieving G/achieves G sufficiently frequently,
unsuccessful if he/she does not achieve G/achieves G sufficiently infrequently.
Compare this to what Aristotle says in the Eudemian Ethics:
[…] a shoe is the work of the shoemaker’s art and also of his shoemaking; and if
there is such a thing as the virtue of the shoemaker’s art, then the work of a good
shoemaker is a good shoe. So too in other cases.
(Eudemian Ethics, Bk II.1.20)
Presumably, a good (good) shoemaker is one who produces good shoes more frequently
than not. Discussions of the success shoemaker qua shoemaker can be expanded to a
discussion of an agent qua agent (and indeed, Aristotle does develop his discussion in this
way) – this discussion seems to not only resonate well with discussions of ‘flourishing’
(eudaimonia) and ‘function’ (ergon) in Aristotle, but seems to be actually the same
discussion. To establish the goodness or ‘success’ of an object, a detailed study will –
according to Aristotle – have to be undertaken to establish the relevant measure of
excellence for that object. Just so for the constitutivist who wants to measure the
excellence (success) of action in relation to the nature of action itself.
Man (or ‘human agents’, henceforth ‘agents’), Aristotle claims, can be assessed in a way
similar to our chess player above – that is, through an investigation of how well he
performs his function. We can, according to Aristotle, ascertain what standard to hold a
thing to by looking at what [unique] function it performs. Agents, Aristotle argues, have
the unique function of engaging in rational activity:
Now if the function of man is an activity of soul which follows or implies a
rational principle, and if we say ‘a so-and-so’ and ‘a good so-and-so’ have a
function which is the same in kind […] human good turns out to be activity of soul
exhibiting excellence […].
(Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I.7, 1098a15)
This seems to hold against the epistemological challenge: our moral facts are given
authority in virtue of our capacity to assess a thing’s excellence in relation to a defined
function – we do not rely on the moral sensitivities of an agent, or the cultural ‘fashions’
of a society, to offer us an authoritative foundation. Further, Aristotle is able to satisfy
the metaphysical requirement – moral facts can be accounted for in a naturalistic fashion.
Normative ‘facts’ are derived from facts about the function of objects, not supernatural
entities.
Thus, to use Rosalind Hursthouse’s overview: “Virtue ethics […] [is the]
enterprise of basing ethics in some way on considerations of human nature, on what is
involved in being good qua human being […].” (Hursthouse 1999, Pg. 192.) This leads
us to the practical challenge, which Katsafanas argues is problematic for the Aristotelian:
Suppose I accept that human beings have a function, or that “human being” is a
normative kind. Why should this matter to me? Why should I care whether I am a
defective instance of my kind?
(AFE, Pg. 31)
This is a version of the psychopath challenge to be discussed later, but for now the
charge is clear: ‘agent-centred’ virtue ethics (which I shall take to be synonymous with
Aristotelianism when broadly conceived) is unable to give an account of why we should
aim to be the sort of thing Aristotle claims we ought to be. We can, perhaps, accept a
complete list of excellences ‘to cultivate’ in order to be a virtuous person – but why be a
virtuous person3? But the term ‘put simply’ betrays an oversimplification predicated on a
misunderstanding of a very sophisticated and subtle model of normative ethics.
Aristotle’s ‘ergon’ (function) argument is far from being exhaustive. Indeed, Aristotle will
go on to argue that a ‘virtuous’ character (that is, a character which displays the relevant
excellences) is necessary for one to ‘live well’, or achieve eudaimonia. Some may argue, ‘well,
why care about achieving eudaimonia?’ – but this is to misunderstand the role Aristotle’s
eudaimonia is playing; it could be at least plausible to suggest that eudaimonia is the goal at
3
Katsafanas’s argument against Aristotle (that one has no reason to aim at being the
‘best token of one’s type’), is remarkably similar to his argument against Korsgaard’s
version of constitutivism (to be discussed below), indeed, I see no difference. So if
Katsafanas is prepared to accept Korsgaard as a constitutivist, it is not obvious that he
can hold these grounds against accepting Aristotle as a constitutivist.
which all actions aim. So, to answer Katsafanas’s criticism – one should care if one is
‘defective’ because one cannot escape aiming for one’s eudaimonia – which is attained,
according to Aristotle, by acting in accordance with excellences conducive to your
functional type, and which, hopefully, you have developed. It could be argued, along
constitutivist lines (to be outlined shortly), that if one does not care about ‘acting
excellently’ – one is not an agent at all (I will return to this charge later, alongside the
psychopath challenge). The argument, expressed briefly, would run thus:
P1. All agents aim for eudaimonia
P2. The virtues are the excellences required to achieve eudaimonia
C. One should cultivate (develop) one’s virtue.
The following offers an argument for premises one and two.
Aristotle categorizes the various forms of life in De Anima (indeed, this is a recurring
feature of several works, most notably including De Partibus Animalium and the Parva
Naturalia generally) along the principle of necessary and sufficient conditions; each ‘mode
of being’ (‘soul) on the ‘hierarchy’ contains all the properties of the preceding stage.
What is necessary for man is that he is able to ‘feed’ (nutrition), move, and grow (the
necessary and sufficient criteria for vegetation), experience sensation (combined with
‘nutrition’ (&c.) constitutes the necessary and sufficient condition to be classified as an
animal). However, movement, nutrition, growth and sensory experiences do not make a
man – for this we need ‘reason’. Aristotle summarizes this argument in the Nicomachean
Ethics:
Life seems to belong even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man.
Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a
life of perception, but it also seems to be shared even by the horse, the ox, and
every animal. There remains, then, an active life of the element that has a rational
principle; of this, one part has such a principle in the sense of being obedient to
one, the other in the sense of possessing one and exercising thought. And, as ‘life
of the rational element’ also has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense
of activity is what we mean; for this seems to be the more proper sense of the
term.
(Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I.7, 1098a15)
If a ‘soul’ hasn’t reason, it isn’t a person.
That is to say, possessing reason is a
constitutive element of being human. Using our reason, Aristotle could claim, is a
constitutive element of what we are as human agents. If we are not ‘reasoning’ 4 or
‘acting in accordance with some organizing, rational principle’ we are not agents. So,
Katsafanas’s charge that one has no reason to care if one is a ‘defective instance of one’s
kind’ is a non-starter: if ‘defective’ is taken to mean something like:
Defective: ‘a defective instance [of agent] is one who is unable to act in accordance
with a rational principle’
then defective ‘people’ are not people (for Aristotle) – which is clearly a nonsense. If,
however, ‘defective’ is taken to mean something like:
Defective*: ‘a defective instance [of agent] always aims to act in accordance with a
rational principle, but attains this goal to varying (sometimes negligible) degrees
(e.g. because of the akrasia problem)’
then this is a non-starter as a criticism from Katsafanas of Aristotle’s position (on both
defective and non-defective agents) as it seems to cohere completely with Katsafanas’s
outline of constitutivism - compare defective* with Katsafanas’s own outline of a
‘constitutive aim’:
(Constitutive Aim) Let A be a type of attitude or event. Let G be a goal. A
constitutively aims at G iff
(iii)
each token of A aims at G, and
(iv)
aiming at G is part of what constitutes an attitude or event as a token of A.
(AFE, Pg. 39)
If Aristotle would hold defective* then it follows that he can accept both (i) and (ii) –
where, then, lies the disagreement? I’m sure Katsafanas is not disagreeing with himself.
4
‘Reasoning’ takes on a technical meaning in Aristotle, a discussion of which will not be
embarked upon here.
Thus, the dispute between Katsafanas (at this stage of his argument) and the virtue ethic
‘position’ 5 is illusory, or, at least, ‘dissolvable’, and it is unclear why Katsafanas would
want to alienate such a, potentially powerful (useful), set of allies.
While Katsafanas provides a very insightful analysis of why Non-reductive realism,
Humeanism and Kantianism do not satisfy the conditions necessary to be a fully
functioning ethical theory, I think I have shown that he fails to show that Aristotelian
accounts are also to be discounted, and certainly not discounted for the reasons he has
offered. However, I believe only that I have shown this to be the case in virtue (if you’ll
pardon the pun) of the fact that Aristotle is more closely aligned with Katsafanas’s
position than he considered. Aristotle offers a success condition (all actions aim at
eudaimonia), from this success condition norms can be generated (if one is faced with
doing either Φ or ψ, but Φ attains success to a higher degree than ψ, then Φ is
something I should to do). Aristotle can even give an account of how we might fail to Φ
and act ‘defectively’ (the problem of Akrasia).
This account seems to be highly
constitutivist.
Section Two: Problems for (Aristotelian) Constitutivism
While the constitutivist project has been well outlined and well defended by those who
have held it, it seems to be true that there remains a significant amount of scepticism.
The most vocal critic (so far) has been David Enoch. In this section I will examine
Enoch’s concerns and show that they are based on a misunderstanding of the
constitutivist position. In so doing, I also hope to bring out some of the more desirable
features of constitutivism.
Criticism One: ‘Bindingness’
David Enoch’s papers Agency Shmagency and Shmagency Revisited (2006, 2011) argue that
normativity cannot be derived from facts about agency and states that the chess analogy
breaks down when we accept (which we have to) that the rules of chess apply to an agent
5
I do not mean to suggest that virtue ethicists all converge in opinion. I just mean to say
that there is a ‘family resemblance’ in terms of the overall project embarked upon.
iff they are playing a game of chess – is it not entirely within the scope of the player to
simply stand up and say ‘I’ve had it with this game!’ and walk away? The norms
generated by participation would evaporate as soon as the game finished. We do not
want to say, surely, that the bonds of morality evaporate as soon as an agent decides to
not participate in the ‘morality game’ anymore. To reduce the force of this criticism
Katsafanas distinguishes two ways in which constitutivism is reason providing:
(1) Constitutive Aims as Originative of Reasons: If you participate in an activity A,
then the constitutive aim of A is reason-providing.
(2) Constitutive Aims as Transferring Reasons: If you have reason to participate in A,
then the constitutive aim of A is reason-providing.
(AFE, Pgs.48-49)
Enoch is assuming that the constitutivist is making recourse to the second, ‘transferring
reasons’, position.
Clearly this version is a ‘bad fit’ for the constitutivist – the
constitutivist is not claiming that norms are binding iff you have a reason to be an agent;
being an agent is something you are not something you have a reason to be. This relates
us back to Korsgaard’s point above regarding the inescapability of action. You simply do
participate in activity.
So the constitutivist has to hold, contra Enoch’s
mischaracterization, position one – Constitutive Aims as Originative of Reasons. The
rest of Enoch’s paper, in which he discusses variations of chess (called ‘schmess’), simply
does not get off the ground as there is no such thing as a variation of action that would
not amount to action itself:
One can decide to play schmess instead of chess, but one cannot decide to
perform a schmaction instead of an action. For the very process of deciding or trying
to produce a schmaction would itself be an action, and would therefore manifest
action’s constitutive aim. After all, as I noted above, by “action” the constitutivist
just means intentional activity. Any intentional activity that the agent performs will
count as an action.
Thus, the idea that there could be a schmaction – an
intentional activity that is not an action – is self-contradictory.
(AFE, Pg. 54)
Criticism Two: Deriving ‘Ought’ from ‘Is’
The constitutivist aims to provide a naturalistic, descriptive, account of agency and the
nature of action then moves to provide a model for evaluating each action in light of
some success condition (derived from the descriptive account). Isn’t this a blatant
violation of the ‘Is/Ought’ fallacy? In many cases, such a move from description, e.g.
‘gay matrimony changes the definition of marriage’, to evaluation ‘therefore, gays should
not be allowed to wed’, is nothing short of (in this case, vindictive) nonsense. Is the
constitutivist guilty of nonsense-peddling? I don’t think it is. Firstly, it is not obvious
that the constitutivist is making any sort of value claim by describing aims. Consider the
following (bad) argument:
1. Action aims at flourishing
2. Flourishing is valuable
The second position is, for the constitutivist, simply irrelevant – at most, coincidental.
Flourishing is the measure of success for an action, if it is also of value to the person
then that’s all well and good, but this does not matter for the constitutivist. That
flourishing, for the sake of argument, is pursued is all that is required for the
constitutivist.
All, however, is not well for the constitutivist – if all actions aim at, and attain (to widely
varying degrees), success, can the constitutivist give an account of why some actions are
bad actions? The constitutivist has to have a further claim that good actions are those
that attain, or come close to attaining (depending on one’s version of constitutivism) the
success condition to the maximal degree. Doesn’t the ‘Is/Ought’ problem slip back in?
Let’s revisit our chess example. If moving our knight to c4 (Nc4) is conducive to my
achieving checkmate (say, checkmate will be attained in four moves), then moving NC4
is something I ought to do, unless moving my knight to b5 (Nb5) is even more conducive
to my achieving checkmate (for example, if checkmate will be achieved in three moves).
If it is the case that I aim to satisfy my success condition to the maximum degree 6, and Φ
and ψ both attain success well, but Φ attains success to a higher degree than ψ, then Φ is
something I should (that is, ‘ought’) to do. It seems two options are open to the
6
This ‘maximum degree’ condition will/should be provided by whatever the
constitutivist substitutes in (success) for ‘G’. Korsgaard’s variety of constitutivism, the
‘self-constitution’ model, does not provide a good account of this.
constitutivist. Firstly, the constitutivist can deny that deriving ‘is’ from ‘ought’ is a fallacy
in relation to hypothetical imperatives - isn’t this simply the form of every goal directed
behaviour? If running a marathon in under three hours is something (after deliberation)
you want to do, then going to the gym, eating healthily, investing in a decent set of
trainers (&c.) is something you ought to do. Secondly, while this is simply a description
of hypothetical imperatives it seems that categorical imperatives also mightn’t succumb
to the ‘Is/Ought’ concern; Searle claims (Searle, 1964) that there are cases in which
deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’ is unproblematic, and offers the following example as evidence:
1. Jones uttered the words “I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars.”
2. Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars.
3. Jones placed himself under (undertook) an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
4. Jones is under an obligation to pay Smith five dollars.
5. Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars.
(Searle, Pg. 44)
I think the cases Searle discusses share the same category as the constitutivist cases of
deriving ‘ought’ from ‘is’. While it is obviously wrong to derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’ in many
cases (the sky is blue, therefore I ought to eat cake demonstrates no obvious connection),
it is far from obvious, given Searle’s example, that ‘ought’ can never be derived from ‘is’.
Understanding the nature of what you are as an agent, and understanding your
commitments (which really amounts to the same thing for constitutivists) will necessarily
place you under obligations and direct your behaviour.
This ‘necessity’ also helps with the problem of moral scepticism.
This problem
synthesizes concern one and concern two. Consider a person who utters the following
claim:
Morality is a consequence of evolution. The norms we accept as ‘moral law’ are a
product of natural selection. Those behaviours/actions that were/are helpful for
our survival (as a species) were called ‘morally good’, those that prevented or
hampered our survival were/are called ‘morally bad’. I can accept that this is the
case, but I have no reason to participate in the ‘evolution game’ anymore (I’m not
going to evolve further, I don’t plan on having children and I don’t care two hoots
for what happens to other people) so morality has no claim on me.
This is sometimes raised as the ‘psychopath’ challenge (in one variant of this story or
another) – what do we say to someone who recognizes that the ‘good’ thing to do is x,
but they see no reason to, or are not compelled to, x. Trying to tie our evaluative
statements to some other ‘natural’ fact (e.g. evolution/social cohesion/economic
flourishing &c.) has traditionally been seen as a potentially fruitful way to answer the
psychopath – however, each ‘natural grounding’ (so-called ‘non-moral’ grounding) we
supply to motivate the psychopath runs into inevitable problems (‘sure, I accept that E is
based on N, but I don’t care about N either’ – the problem stated above). By trying to
ground ethics (E) on the nature of agency/action (N), isn’t the constitutivist doomed to
fail in the same way? Not if we remember that the project is supposed to provide
grounds for the necessary inescapability of agency (and, therefore, the necessary
inescapability of moral norms). This necessity, or inescapability, of agency still (at first
glance) takes the form E is grounded on N, but it is far from obvious that the
psychopath can remove the bonds of morality in the same way. It is not within her scope
to say, ‘sure, I accept that norms are based on agency, but I’m not an agent so I’m not
bound by the norms that follow’. Removing the ‘Transferring Reasons’ (above) account
of norms reduces the force of the psychopath challenge. It does so, not by finding nonmoral grounds for our moral theory7, but by claiming that the distinction between nonmoral and moral is, in this sense at least, illusory. The above claim, that E is grounded
on N, can be (must be) altered by the Aristotelian constitutivist – there is no difference
between some descriptive and evaluative claims.
To see a certain event is to
automatically see what we ought to do. Agency and action are both descriptive and (at
the same time) evaluative. The latter is the former, not merely derived from the former.
Agency is a sort of ‘moral fact’. Such sentiments have been held by the neo-Aristotelians
generally, perhaps most forcefully by Elizabeth Anscombe: ‘So far, in spite of their
7
Robert Stern in his paper Moral Scepticism and Agency, argues that Korsgaard (and
constituvists generally) are guilty of trying to find non-moral grounds to base morals on.
While this strategy would obviously fail (for the reasons discussed), I think I have shown
that the distinction this rests on (and especially the claim that agency is non-moral)
means Stern’s criticism is a non-starter.
strong associations, I conceive ‘bilking’, ‘injustice’, and dishonesty’ in a merely ‘factual’
way.’ More recently John McDowell has defended a similar thesis8
Some may hear a language and fail to understand what is being said (this is the case if I
am in a room exclusively populated with people speaking Russian), others may hear the
same conversation and be able to make sense of the sounds.
My fellow (active)
conversant and I have access to the exact same ‘facts’ (sounds), but she is a superior
‘listener’ (agent) to me in virtue of having the relevant/correct engagement with what is
going on. Two people may observe an elderly gentleman struggle to find a seat on a bus
–one who is not compelled to offer their seat has, like the person ignorant of Russian,
simply failed to understand the facts.
While this line may open the paper up to cries of elitism – I’m not convinced this is a
problem as such. To say that some agents do not have a sufficient sensitivity relative to
the facts is not to claim that they could not develop this sensitivity. It is simply a sad truth
that many do not. Some people just fail as agents.
Conclusion
To conclude, I have shown that Aristotle, and the neo-Aristotelians, can be brought
under the umbrella of the constitutivist project. Further, I have offered reasons that it
may be desirable to do so. The first set of reasons I offered a negative account and was
concerned how the Aristotelian constitutivism manages to avoid impalement upon one
of the criticisms (usually) offered. The second set of reasons offered concerned offering
a positive account and was concerned with how the constitutivist can helpfully deal with
concerns that have plagued ethics hitherto. Specifically, I focused on the psychopath
objection and the fact/value distinction. Hopefully, this discussion will show how these
objections can be dealt with – it is important to notice that the psychopath objection
does not require us to participate with the objector on his level (that is, we do not need
to ground our moral theory on non-moral grounds) and so we avoid incurring even more
problems.
8
See ‘Autonomy and its Burdens’, and ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical
Imperatives’.
William Sharkey
Southampton