Kantian Structuring: an objectivist account of practical knowledge (original) (raw)

Abstract

In a neglected passage of Philosophical Explanations, Robert Nozick discusses “Kantian structuring”, which is roughly the view that “we structure the world so that the statements come out true”. As an account of practical knowledge, this view purports to explain why ethics binds us in the first person. While this is a significant explanatory advantage of the theory, Nozick doubts that any such “Kantian structuring” can adequately explain morality. First, it is unclear how structural claims about rational agency may lead to a full-fledged moral theory and deliver moral duties. The objection is indeterminacy. Second, such a moral theory grounds the legitimacy of moral claims on features of one’s self rather than on the recognition of others. The objection is not self-referentiality but self-indulgence. Third, such a theory fails to ground objective practical knowledge because it does not warrant that we are tracking genuine values. The objection is subjectivism. Nozick was ahead of Kantian philosophers in identifying constructivism (under the name of structuring) as a distinctive meta-ethical theory whose promise should be measured against competing meta-ethical theories. He was also ahead of current critics of constructivism in identifying its basic weaknesses. My aim in this paper is to address Nozick’s worries. The defining feature of KC as I defend it is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. Thus understood, Kantian constructivism is antagonist to non-cognitivist theories denying that moral judgments have cognitive contents, because they deny that there is something to be known. But it is also rival to cognitivist theories denying that knowledge can be practical “in itself”. (I hope to clarify this jargon as the argument develops). While the theory I outline differs from current agnostic or anti-realist accounts of Kantian constructivism, it is closer to its origins, since Kant treats practical reason as a cognitive capacity and takes moral judgments to be objective moral cognitions, which importantly differ from other sorts of rational cognitions because they are self-legislated. They bind us in the first person because they are self-legislated. Such practical cognitions are common knowledge because all subjects endowed with rationality can arrive at them by reasoning. Part of my argument is that Kantian constructivism carves a distinct logical space in the meta-ethical debate that other sorts of constructivism fail to identify. As Rawls writes, constructivism defines objectivity “in terms of a suitably constructed point of view that all can accept”. This “practical” conception of objectivity is defined in contrast to the realist or “ontological” conception of objectivity, understood as an accurate representation of an independent metaphysical order. Because of their objectivist but not realist commitments, Kantian constructivists such as Onora O’Neill place their theory “somewhere in the space between realist and relativist accounts of ethics”. Furthermore, they argue that their practical conception of objectivity succeeds in making sense of some features of morality, that is, its categorical authority and its relation to rational agency. For C. Korsgaard this is the feature that escapes rival theories. It may seem, then, that far from disengaging from meta-ethical issues, constructivism claims a privileged place in meta-ethics. But the legitimacy of this claim is widely challenged. Precisely because of its practical conception of objectivity, many – including constructivists such as T. Hill or T. Scanlon — regard constructivism as a first-order normative theory, rather than as a meta-ethical position, hence not on a par with realism. Unbeknownst to them, these critics revive Nozick’s critique of Kantian structuring when they object that constructivism fails to offer a distinct meta-ethics because it is structurally incomplete and tacitly relies on realism. Thus far, the debate about the prospects of constructivism as a meta-ethical theory has been driven by the conviction that the case for or against constructivism depends on its ontological commitments. In focusing on Nozick’s critique, I propose a change in perspective. My aim is to defend constructivism as an objectivist account of practical knowledge. Its defining feature is the claim that practical knowledge is knowledge by principles. Its task is to establish a constitutive relation between knowledge of oneself as a practical subject and knowledge about what one ought to do. By focusing on the issue of practical knowledge I hope to show that the difficulty in situating Kantian constructivism firmly on the meta-ethical map, along with other meta-ethical theories reflects ambiguities and oscillations about the practical significance of ethics.

Key takeaways

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  1. Kantian constructivism asserts practical knowledge is knowledge by principles, linking self-knowledge and ethical obligations.
  2. Nozick critiques Kantian structuring, questioning its ability to ground a complete moral theory and avoid indeterminacy.
  3. Korsgaard argues practical knowledge is not observational; it's fundamentally tied to intentional agency and self-legislation.
  4. Constructivism occupies a unique meta-ethical space, distinguishing it from both realism and non-cognitivism.
  5. The emotional experience of respect plays a crucial epistemic role in practical knowledge and moral obligation.

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References (53)

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  39. Darwall et al. characterize constructivism as a "family of substantive moral theories" rather than a as meta-ethical position "in the old sense" because it does not say what type of objectivity moral judgments can claim, Darwall at al. 1992: 140, 132-133. Constructivists themselves claim different positions in meta-ethics, see Bagnoli 2011, cf. Galvin 2010. Some defend a restricted form of constructivism about a specific class of moral judgments either because they are agnostic about metaphysical issues of value (Hill 2008), or because they reject constructivism as a meta-ethical claim about the nature of practical reasons (Scanlon 1998: 11-12, chapter 4, §7).
  40. Hussain and Shah 2006; Timmons 2003; Shafer-Landau 2003; Larmore 2008).
  41. "The moral realist thinks of practical philosophy as an essentially theoretical subject. Its business is to find, or anyway to argue that we can find, some sort of ethical knowledge that we can apply in action" Korsgaard 2003: 118. 8 (Korsgaard 2003b: 110) 10 (Mackie 1977: 38-40, 21-22, 24)
  42. 11 On the motivational interpretation of the practicality requirement, see Nagel 1970: 8. (Korsgaard 2003b: 111).
  43. 15 Korsgaard rehearses Kant's argument of heteronomy, GMS 4.441-443, KpV 5.35-41, 5.153, 5.157. Korsgaard is credited and, more often, criticized for her so-called "motivational analysis of obligation" of Kant's GMS I, according to which what makes a principle normative is that rational agents endorse or possess a motive of a certain kind to comply with it, or that they endorse or possess such a motive to comply with it insofar as they are rational, see Fitzpatrick 2005, Kain 2006. Kantian constructivism is not committed to the view that the normative authority of the supreme principle of morality is constituted by or depends solely upon agents' motivational states. Motivation and authority are related, but this is not an argument in support of the motivationalist interpretation of the practicality requirement.
  44. On the distinction between constructive and recognitional conceptions of practical reason, see Gaut 1997. 17 (Korsgaard 1996b: 36-37).
  45. The Kantian claim that the constraints must be formal is best understood in terms of constitutive norms of reasoning, rather than in terms of principles lacking content, see Engstrom 2009: 115-117, 122-127; Reath 2010. The argument is that practical principles many serve their practical purpose as basis for rational assessment only insofar as they are formal, see §4. 19 (Korsgaard 1983:183/1996a: 261). See also Rawls 1980: 354, Rawls 2000: 230, 241, Herman 1993: 215. 20 (Korsgaard 1996b; Korsgaard 2008: 234, 30-31, 55-57, 67-68)
  46. 21 Rawls argues that it is crucial to understand constructivism as alternative to both sentimentalism and realism, even though he holds that Kant does not present a successful case against realism; Kant GMS 4.441; cf. Rawls 1980: 343-346, Rawls 1989: 510-513, Rawls 2000: 228-230, see also Reath 2009. Stern objects that Rawls' interpretation that it builds on a broad conception of heteronomy, which is alien to Kant, Stern 2012: 18ff. According to Stern, Kant objects that sentimentalism is a heteronomous doctrine, because it represents the moral agent as driven by natural incentives and desires. As the counterpart of this narrow construal of heteronomy, autonomy coincides with the following claim: "the rational will is subject only to laws whose authority does not depend on particular inclinations and preferences" Kant, GMS 4.440. The downside of Stern's argument is that 292. This is objection misses the point since the distinctive feature of Kantian constructivism is that there are significant formal constraints on rational construction.
  47. As Rawls remarks: "It is a serious misconception to think of the CI-procedure as an algorithm intended to yield, more or less mechanically, a correct judgment. There is no such algorithm. It is equally a misconception to think of this procedure as a set of debating rules that can trap liars and cheats, scoundrels and cynics, into exposing their hand. There are no such rules", Rawls 2000: 166. See also Rawls 1989: 498-506; Rawls 2000: 166, 240-244; O'Neill 1989: 18-19, 59n, 128, 180;
  48. Herman 1993: chapter 4; Korsgaard 1996b: 36-37; Bagnoli 2002: 131-132; Reath 2006: 221-222, Reath 2009, Reath 2010; Engstrom 2009: chapter 5.
  49. Kant MdS 6.399-602, cf. Rawls 2000: 165, also 192, 196, Bagnoli 2011b. 77 The objection of subjectivism arises also about the constructivist account of self-legislation, and I have provided a reply to this objection. The dialogical construal of self-legislation does not make the authority of the moral law rest on the agent's own arbitrary decisions. It does not deny that the contents of practical principles are the same for all rational "agents as such".
  50. "We take moral value to be part of the fabric of the world; taking our experience at face value, we judge it to be the experience of the moral properties of actions and agents in the world. And we should take it in the absence of contrary considerations that actions and agents do have the sorts of moral properties we experience in them. This is an argument about the nature of moral experience, which moves from that nature to the probable nature of the world", Dancy 1986: 172. Mackie agrees that ordinary moral experience supports realism, and this is the reason why he proposes an error theory in support of his anti-realism, Mackie 1977: 30-35, 50-63. 79 (Nozick 1981: 551; Ameriks 2003; Krasnoff 2012: n12).
  51. Nozick 1981: 547)
  52. 81 This is in contrast to Korsgaard's view 1996b: 121-123, see Bagnoli 2009. My view differs also from Street's Humean constructivism, see Street 2008a, Street 2010: 371, cf. Bagnoli 2011: 37-38, Engstrom 2009: 243, see Bagnoli 2012, Engstrom 2012.
  53. I take this claim to be congruent with Nozick's own view about moral dialogue.