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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
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Introduction
- Jean E. Hampton
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- The Authority of Reason
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- 28 February 1998, pp 1-16
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Summary
Theology and Absolute Ethics are two famous subjects which we have realized have no real objects.
– Frank RamseyTHE PROJECT
For many years now, an interesting conflict has raged within contemporary philosophy. On one side of the conflict are “objectivist” moral and political philosophers, who believe in and accept the existence of distinctive (and irreducible) moral “values” – words that in this conflict have been used to cover a variety of normative notions fundamental to moral and political theories – for example, rights, duties, goods, and reasons for action. These philosophers maintain that moral judgments that involve values can be true or false, and that these moral facts cannot be reduced to the sort of facts recognized by scientific theories. In that sense, they believe there are value-laden, nonreducible moral judgments that are objective. On the other side of this debate are the “naturalists,” who insist that the world, as our best scientific theories portray it, does not and cannot contain values. Since values are the stuff of the theorizing of the moral objectivists, it follows from the naturalists' position that there can be no uniquely moral facts. Hence they deny the possibility that there are value-laden, nonreducible moral judgments that are objective.
7 - Expected Utility Theory and Instrumental Reasoning
- Jean E. Hampton
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- The Authority of Reason
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- 02 December 2009
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- 28 February 1998, pp 217-250
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Summary
Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.
– Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), A Study in ScarletIn the preceding chapters, I have argued that a theory of instrumental reason of the sort that science requires must be informed by norms that have objective authority, at least some of which concern the structure and content of human good. If these arguments are right, however, they still do not in and of themselves vindicate any objectivist moral theory. The moral skeptic can fall back on the following argument: Alright, I will accept that I have objectively authoritative norms lurking in my theory of rationality, but I do not believe that there are objectively authoritative moral norms. Norms of rationality are real; norms of morality are not.
This response raises an important question: how does one go about showing that any given norm is “real” – that is, a norm that genuinely has objective authority? Moral theorists have worried about this question in a variety of ways, but few outside of moral theory have done so, because, I suspect, they haven't believed that they had to do so.
Contents
- Jean E. Hampton
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PART II - INSTRUMENTAL REASON
- Jean E. Hampton
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Index
- Jean E. Hampton
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1 - Naturalism and Moral Reasons
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Back off, man – I'm a scientist.
– Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), GhostbustersAlthough this book seeks to show that the naturalists are wrong to criticize the normativity in moral theory, nonetheless in Part I, I shall be taking the naturalists' side, identifying what it is about the moral objectivists' norms that cannot, in the naturalists' view, pass “scientific muster.” This involves explaining what “scientific muster” is supposed to be and why a theory is commonly thought to be disreputable unless it passes it.
Surprisingly, however, this is a difficult project. In this chapter, I will review a variety of ways that naturalists have tried to show the unscientific nature of objective moral norms, none of which I shall argue is successful. It is remarkable that objectivist moral theorists have been so much on the defensive in recent years, given that the naturalists' arguments against their theories have been incomplete, or imprecise, or have, in various ways, begged the question at issue.
I will then spend the next two chapters developing a more successful argument on behalf of the naturalists. Once we are clear about the unnatural component within objectivist moral theories, we will be in a position to look for it in the theories of the naturalists in Part II.
2 - The Anatomy of a Reason
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Reason lies between the spur and the bridle.
– Old English ProverbIf there is justification in the naturalists' dismissal of objective moral theories, it is something we still must search for. The goal of the next two chapters is to locate the nonnatural element in such theories. Ultimately I will argue that it is a certain thesis about norms and reasons for action to which naturalists object, but to which moral objectivists are committed.
To identify this thesis, however, I will need to do a lot of philosophical spadework. In Chapter 2, I will show that moral objectivism is characterized by a commitment to the idea that there are moral norms. I will then analyze the concept of a norm, showing how norms give us reasons of all sorts – to act, believe, feel, and decide, among others. Finally, I will discuss the nature of reasons and the various philosophical issues that can be, and often have been, raised to understand, identify, and defend them. I will argue that the most important identifying characteristic of a reason is its “authority” – where this is something quite different from whatever motivational efficacy the reason might have.
Chapter 3 builds on this analysis by developing two theses about the nature of this authority, one of which moral objectivists accept with respect to moral reasons, and which is inconsistent with the commitments of naturalism, the other of which is acceptable to the naturalist, but incompatible with moral objectivism.
9 - Toward a “Postnaturalist” Theory of Reasons
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Thesis of this book: Naturalist moral skepticism, based on a naturalist theory of reasons, fails. Naturalizing the reasons that the naturalist requires for his own conception of practical reason and scientific methodology fails. The same nonnatural “authority” of moral reasons attends the naturalist's instrumental reasons; the same reflection on the nature of human good that is required in order to live a moral life is also required to live an instrumentally rational life. The naturalist-friendly conception of instrumental reasoning as consequentialist turns out to be inadequate. And if instrumental reasoning must be construed along nonconsequentialist lines in order to understand what we do, the claims by moral theorists that moral reasoning is nonconsequentialist become yet more plausible.
What do we do now? The death of one conception of reasons clears the way for the birth of another. The naturalist conception seemed simple, elegant, and commonsensical, but since it turned out to be none of these things, how do we construct a theory of reasons that is more successful? What are the criteria that we should use? What vestiges of the naturalist program, if any, should we remain wedded to?
There is, in my view, considerable virtue in the naturalist insistence on developing a theory that resists nonsense and flights of metaphysical fancy.
Preface and Acknowledgments
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Israel Scheffler once told me that every time he wrote a book, he would swear it would be his last. Any author knows the feeling – books take too long to write, the arguments and the prose never seem good enough, and when one is all done, the enormity of all that is still wrong with the final product hits home. Still, authors are ever hopeful that their contributions will be of some use, and I am no exception. I have aimed to write a book that does not so much attempt to persuade, as to dissuade – I wish to shake readers loose from the grip of a conception of the world that threatens our ability to act both rationally and reasonably.
In the process of constructing a work that attempts to rattle those who read it, I have been the recipient of much help, often from people who are quite opposed to this project. I am very grateful for their generous support and probing criticisms. In particular, I would like to thank Julia Annas, John Broome, Tom Christiano, David Copp, Ron Milo, Ken O'Day, John Pollock, Joseph Raz, John Roemer, Robert Sugden, and Bruno Verbeek. I also owe much to the graduate students attending my seminars at the University of California at Davis and the University of Arizona, in which portions of this book were presented.
4 - Instrumental Reasons
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Many philosophers and social scientists argue that the only acceptable theory of the nature of practical reason is what is called the “instrumental” theory, which says, roughly, that reason's only practical role is working out and recommending action that best achieves the end of the agent. Such theorists dismiss the idea that reason could ever play a noninstrumental role by dictating or determining ends themselves.
There are two general reasons why philosophers have been troubled by the noninstrumental view. First, it is a conception of reason that seems unacceptable from the standpoint of science. What special “sight” or access to normative reality can we realistically ascribe to human reason, such that it can tell us our ends in life? And how does a scientific worldview permit us to believe that there are unmotivated ends that we are rationally compelled to pursue? Science, after all, does not recognize such objects or properties with inherent prescriptive power. As we noted in Chapter 1, J. L. Mackie calls such objects and properties “queer” – indeed, too queer, given the strictures of science, for us to believe that they obtain. Moreover, no scientific description of human beings has identified a rational capacity within us that can discover these objects.
8 - Expected Utility Theory and Consequentialism
- Jean E. Hampton
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In the last chapter, I developed a strategy defending EU theory as a representation of a global instrumental theory of reason, which tells us how we ought to satisfy a preference in a situation where we have multiple preferences. Does that strategy succeed? Relevant to this question are counterexamples and experimental evidence purportedly showing that human beings consistently violate the EU axioms. That evidence appears to show that at the very least, EU theory fails as a descriptive account of our global instrumental reasoning. And the violations of some of the EU axioms seem so intuitively reasonable that EU theory also seems to fail as a normative account of our (global) instrumental reasoning. But not only does this evidence indicate that EU theory fails as a theory of instrumental reasoning, more importantly from the standpoint of moral philosophy, I will argue that this evidence shows EU theory fails because it is “too consequentialist” in structure.
The term ‘consequentialism’ was developed in moral philosophy. Indeed, moral philosophy has long been split between those who advocate a consequentialist portrayal of moral justification and those who advocate a nonconsequentialist, or deontological, approach to moral justification. There are a number of different kinds of consequentialist and deontological positions, and a variety of points of disagreement, but one of the most important concerns the nature of moral reasoning.
Frontmatter
- Jean E. Hampton
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5 - Why Instrumental Reasoning Isn't Instrumental
- Jean E. Hampton
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In Chapter 4, I aimed to show that instrumental rationality, as we standardly conceive of it, is informed by a notion of normativity that includes the idea of objective authority – just the idea that moral skeptics have claimed objective moral theories include, such that they are not acceptable from a naturalist point of view. The aim of that chapter was to begin the “companions in guilt” strategy for defending objectivist moral theory. That strategy is meant to disarm morality's skeptical critics, for if these skeptics presuppose in their conception of rationality the same occult element that they criticize in objectivist moral theories, then their criticisms indirectly defeat their own position.
This chapter continues the “companions in guilt” strategy by examining in more detail the nature of instrumental reasoning. Most theorists have taken it for granted that defining the nature of instrumental reason does not in any way involve developing a conception of the good, because figuring out the nature of instrumental reason is quite separate from the task of figuring out what the good is. This point of view is particularly critical for what I will call the “instrumentalists,” who believe that the only role that reason plays in practical deliberation is an instrumental role.
Bibliography
- Jean E. Hampton
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- 28 February 1998, pp 293-300
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PART I - SCIENCE AND OBJECTIVE NORMS
- Jean E. Hampton
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3 - Reasons' Authority
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out.
– William Shakespeare, HamletThus far we have still not located precisely what it is about ethics that appears to make it scientifically problematic. In this chapter, I shall argue, using the analyses of the last chapter, that it is a certain thesis held by moral objectivists about moral norms and the reasons they generate that fails to pass scientific muster. According to this thesis, there are norms that generate reasons whose authority over us is objective, and moral objectivists accept this thesis with respect to moral norms and reasons. However, moral objectivism is merely a version of normative objectivism, which is a general position that assumes this thesis with respect to one or more types of norms (which can be epistemic, political, and so on). One can be a normative objectivist but not a moral objectivist, and one can be a normative objectivist about morality but refuse to accept the thesis for any other type of norm. I shall argue that the consistent naturalist must oppose all forms of normative objectivism, where moral objectivism is just a particularly popular version of this more general view.
The first task is to develop a minimalist and metaphysically neutral theory of the normativity of reasons, since all parties accept that there are such things as reasons that oblige us.
PART III - REASONS AND REASONING
- Jean E. Hampton
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6 - Instrumental Reasoning and the Methodology of Science
- Jean E. Hampton
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- 28 February 1998, pp 207-214
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Summary
Given that only the Gibbardian account is congenial to naturalism, shouldn't that be the account to prefer, even if, as I've discussed, it is an account that fails to accord with our intuitions and implies an error theory of our judgments of practical reason? In this section, I want to argue that this is not so, on the grounds that the naturalists' conception of science, as well as their argument against objective moral theory, actually assumes a Kantian conception of the authority of the imperatives of reason constitutive of its methods. If this conclusion is right, it will establish that any science-based argument against the idea of objective normative authority is self-refuting. For if we conclude on scientific grounds that such authority doesn't exist, we do so on the basis of the rational methods of science that turn out to assume this same authority. This refutation only works if it illicitly assumes what it claims to refute.
To begin, consider why naturalists are so convinced that we ought to believe what scientists tell us, rather than what, say, astrologers or magic-users or mystics tell us. What makes only the scientists authorities about the world, and these other people (at best) merely colorful and amusing cultural phenomena?
Is the only possible answer to this question one that makes reference merely to the way in which our culture has made us (and taught us) that scientists are “authorities”? Such an answer is Gibbardian in the sense that it explains our sense that “we ought to believe what scientists say” as deriving from a norm whose content is a cultural creation, and whose authority over us is (merely) a psycho-social phenomenon.
Editor's Preface
- Jean E. Hampton
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Summary
Jean Hampton died on April 2, 1996, three days after going into a coma induced by a massive brain hemorrhage. The main intellectual project she was actively engaged on just before her death was the completion and revision of a draft of a book with the working title A Theory of Reasons. The draft she was working from contained nine chapters and a preface, introduction, and preliminary material. She had significantly revised the first three chapters in the weeks prior to her unexpected and premature death, which prevented her from completing her work on the rest of the manuscript.
Jean thought of this as her most important work, and had asked me to ensure its publication in the event she was unable to do so herself. With the encouragement of Terry Moore of Cambridge University Press, I have undertaken to honor her request. The book is closely based on computer files of the most recent versions of the preface, introduction, and preliminary material, and nine chapters of A Theory of Reasons as they were left at Jean's death.
The material has been lightly edited to remove obvious typographical and other minor errors. More substantial editorial interventions are noted explicitly, mainly in footnotes and appendices – the words of the editor in the text are enclosed in brackets.