The constitutivist-constructivist approach

One solution to Korsgaard’s problem of how certain norms can be internal to the activity of reason can be found in her own work. This is the claim that the authoritative principles are those which constitute the reflective agent as such. To have any rational authority for us, constitutive norms must not only pertain to our constitution as agents, but also to our self-constitution (Korsgaard 2019). They must not be merely norms that make us agents (this much would only establish what I call their broad normativity) but they must also be norms we self-consciously follow and thereby make ourselves into agents. Thus for Korsgaard the constitutive norms of agency are “internal” to reason because they are the standard that we ourselves choose to judge our maxims by when we come to make practical decisions. Enoch’s would-be shmagent thus already endorses the principles of agency they are considering rejecting.

This recalls Kant’s view that reason is subject to categorical obligations insofar as it is autonomous or practical “of itself” — which is to say that reason itself issues the imperatives that it is to follow and does not take its cue from any contingent desire or empirical circumstance.²⁹ Now,

29For one of Kant’s clearest accounts of the distinction between a reason that is practical of itself and a reason that is not, see Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason (Akademie edition, 6:26n). An excerpt: “For from the fact that a being has reason does not at all follow that, simply by virtue of representing its maxims as

why are we entitled to say that reason is in fact practical-of-itself and brings itself under such norms?

Or, to direct the question at Korsgaard’s view, why are we entitled to the claim that these norms of agency, characterized in such-and-such a way, are those that are internal to the operation of reason?

For Kant, it is because we are in fact aware of these rational obligations when we come to act.

We can become aware of practical laws just as we are aware of pure theoretical principles, by attending to the necessity with which reason prescribes them to us and to the setting aside of all empirical conditions to which reason directs us.³⁰

This basic consciousness of reason’s own norms is what Kant calls a “fact of reason”:

Consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason because one cannot reason it out from antecedent data of reason, for example, from consciousness of freedom (since this is not antecedently given to us) and because it instead forces itself upon us as a synthetic a priori proposition that is not based any intuition, either pure or empirical.³¹

A similar thought finds expression in the work of Sharon Street, even while she only takes us to be bound by Humean norms of instrumental rationality. Street (2010) asserts that as agents each of us occupies a practical standpoint, consisting of a certain set of values to which we are self-consciously committed. “Values” for Street is a broad category including such things as “ought”

claims, evaluations in terms of good and bad, judgements that there is reason to do something and so on. In combination with the non-normative facts, these values may entail that an agent has reason to

suited to universal legislation, this reason contains a faculty of determining the power of choice unconditionally, and hence to be “practical” on its own (für sich); at least, not so far as we can see.”

30Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Akademie edition, 5:30-31.

31Kant, ibid.

do or value various further things. This is what Street calls entailment from within a practical standpoint. Now, a particular normative principle will be a source of reasons for an agent only if it is entailed from within their practical standpoint. And finally, a principle will only be universally authoritative for rational beings if it is entailed from within any practical standpoint, that is, it follows from any set of values and non-normative facts. We find ourselves committed to such principles as soon as we deliberate about what to do, no matter our starting point.

Street is skeptical about most would-be universal principles and rejects the idea that something like the Kantian categorical imperative would be entailed from within any practical standpoint. The point which brings her in line with Korsgaard and Kant, however, is that there may be certain principles that bind us because we are already first-personally committed to them from within our own standpoint. Kant’s fact of reason may be understood as the fact that we possess certain values as rational beings that we are already committed to bringing to bear when we come to reflect on what to do.

Let us again consider how these views constitute a response to Enoch’s challenge to the strict normativity of rational or moral norms. Street considers herself a constructivist, which she takes to be the view that “the truth of a normative claim consists in that claim’s being entailed from within the practical point of view”. Since I use the term “normative” in a different way, in my language this claim would translate to “the strict normativity of a normative claim consists in that claim’s being entailed from within the practical point of view.” Agreeing with Street, Karl Schafer (2015) gives a similar formulation of the central claim of metaethical constructivism as “the norms are grounded in metaethically authoritative points of view”. In Kantian or Humean constructivism, the most authoritative point of view is that which is constitutive of agency, since is the point of view that is valid for every agent, since every agent adopts it. So, the answer to Enoch here is that the point of view that he is imagining retreating to so as to call into question the rational authority of the norms of agency is just the very same point of view that is constitutive of agency.

To expand on this, Enoch imagines an agent stepping back to a detached rational perspective to consider whether agency or shmagency is preferable, but this perspective is itself just the perspective of agency. Furthermore, by presenting it as the position from which normativity can validated or invalidated, even Enoch seems to recognize its authority. It is not so much that we cannot escape it, but that we already do spontaneously adopt it and recognize it as the source of authoritative practical judgements. Thus, whatever norms we endorse just in taking up that position can be used to resolve the “Why should I?” question. When directed at particular imperatives like “Console my distraught friend”, a particular reason can be given, e.g. “Because that would be sympathetic thing to do”. If such a principle is not to be found already within the perspective of practical reason, it may be rejected — if otherwise, it is validated. If we instead ask whether or not to be a rational agent in general, the answer is trivial, since being these things entails a commitment to all of the principles that practical reason can validate. Thus to ask these questions is to ask of one’s own practical reason whether it requires what it requires, to which the answer is going to be an enthusiastic “Yes!” With such answers provided by reason itself, the “Why should I?” question is no longer open.

Now, it still remains a matter for debate what exact norms we find present in our practical consciousness. But this does not undermine this approach to the grounding of strict normativity. All that is required is that there be some “fact of reason”, that is, some set of norms that we already bring to bear from within that consciousness. Or in Street’s terminology, from within any practical standpoint. Enoch may yet have a valid complaint if his claim is only that there are no robust norms that arise from any practical standpoint. But if it can be shown that some do, their authority is assured.

NN-Constitutivism can adopt most of these claims wholesale. The main addition to be made would be that the norms to be grasped from within the practical standpoint would have to not just be constitutive principles of agency but facts about the human life form. For a better understanding of how this is possible, we should turn to the neo-Aristotelians.