Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

Constructivists aim to account for the semantics or metaphysics of (part or all of) normativity. Against realists, and along with expressivists and subjectivists, constructivists argue that there are no relevant normative facts or truths independent of the practical standpoint of some agent(s). Constructivists hold that normative reality or truth is “constructed” by means of a specified procedure or otherwise arises from agents' deliberative activity or self-conception.For constructivism to be a genuine alternative to apparent metaethical rivals requires that its ambitions be global, encompassing all (practical) normativity. By contrast, local constructivisms restrict themselves to accounting for some subregion(s) of normativity, allowing that nonconstructed normative principles guide the construction of morality or justice, for example. One of the most fundamental questions about constructivism is whether it can be both a distinctive and plausible metaethical view. Some of the best essays in this collection argue that there are good reasons to think it cannot. I'll begin by canvasing these critiques, then discuss the defenses of (aspects of) global and local versions of constructivism before providing an overall assessment of the anthology.R. J. Wallace calls into question the ability of Korsgaard's constructivism to provide a global theory of normativity, arguing that it cannot avoid collapsing the distinction between norms and psychological facts. Wallace also regards constructivism and expressivism as mutually consistent. Constructivism, as he sees it, addresses the nature of normativity, while expressivism attempts to explain the semantic and logical properties of normative discourse. He contends that a version of either could accept what the other kind of view says about its different central concern.Several contributors argue that global constructivism leads to vicious circularity or some infinite regress or hierarchy. Focusing on Sharon Street's view that the truth of a normative judgment is determined by whether that very judgment “withstands scrutiny” from the rest of one's normative judgments, Dale Dorsey argues that if constructivism is construed as an account of normative semantics, it is viciously circular. Nadeem Hussain argues that in order to be a distinctive metaethical view, constructivism must avoid being understood as a version of reductive naturalism. The only alternative Hussain sees is to specify the constructivist procedure in normative terms. But in that case an infinite hierarchy develops, leading to Russell's Bishop Stubbs objection to coherentism about truth.Along broadly similar lines, T. M. Scanlon (who advocates local constructivism about morality) argues that global constructivism cannot be an account of the subject matter of practical reasoning. Scanlon assumes that reflective equilibrium is the only way to justify many of our normative judgments and points out that this procedure requires us to judge the soundness of first-order judgments. He then argues that global constructivism must fail because reflective equilibrium cannot be understood as a constructivist procedure since this would require us to appeal to the truth of some practical reason judgments in order to characterize the procedure by which the truth of those very judgments is determined.Michael Ridge and James Lenman argue that constructivists owe us an account of what broad kind of mental state a normative judgment is. They agree that if normative judgments have the “mind-to-world” direction of fit of beliefs, then in order for the constructivist's proposed truth-conditions to hold, it would have to be the case that the content of the belief that something is a reason is just that the purported reason withstands scrutiny from the perspective of other normative judgments. But if so, then the account is unhelpfully circular. They also consider Street's proposed account of primitive normative judgments as pure phenomenological states to be implausible on multiple grounds. Ridge argues convincingly (and Lenman agrees) that the best account will take these mental states to be attitudes with a “world-to-mind” direction of fit. Ridge argues that constructivists cannot accept this while avoiding a collapse into sophisticated subjectivism. Lenman thinks constructivism is thereby forced into a version of expressivism, or is at least not in competition with it.Michael Bratman's insightful chapter argues that the demands of Street's ambitious constructivism will likely not be able to line up with our best understanding of the agent's standpoint. Bratman's critique is that Street's account needs normative judgments as inputs to the constructive process in order to get them as outputs, but it also needs them to constitute the agential standpoint. However, this latter does not seem to square with our best understanding of that standpoint, for the dual reasons that we seem to have agential commitments that are prior to any normative judgments, and that we make judgments from which we can be alienated.Robert Stern critiques one of the arguments constructivists have made against realism, namely, that the latter can't respect our autonomy. I found his argument fairly persuasive, though I think there are better reasons for preferring constructivism to (robust) realism.A final problem arises with the possibility that primitive normative judgments refer to sui generis normative properties, a possibility Street acknowledges and agrees would deliver an error theory about primitive normative judgments. Ridge and Lenman doubt that constructivism could contain the error theory to that level. Dorsey's “solution” to his own problem also addresses this one. His proposal is to abandon constructivism's semantic ambitions and regard it as an account of the metaphysics of normativity. Then, by adopting a coherence theory of normative truth, constructivists could accept that normative judgments refer to nonexistent normative properties, but deny that they are all thereby false, since we will have severed normative meaning from its truth-conditions.This is the only attempt in the anthology to respond to any of the above critiques, and it strikes me as profoundly unhelpful. As Lenman suggests in a footnote, if we had to salvage normative truth in the way Dorsey proposes, it would at best be unclear why we should care about it. The unhelpfulness of this solution actually bolstered my confidence that constructivism should abandon its semantic ambitions and focus on addressing the nature of normativity, since doing so allows constructivists to remain neutral about error theory. Though many have been drawn to constructivism in order to avoid an error theory, Dorsey's article helpfully illustrates how unhelpful it can be to get normative claims to come out true.Street's essay addresses the normative significance of our contingent evaluative attitudes. Though packaged as addressing a “strictly intramural debate” between Humean and Kantian versions of constructivism, I think this topic is of broader and deeper significance than the question whether we should accept constructivism of any sort (I think it is the most fundamental and important topic in metaethics). Street first argues that Korsgaard's attempt to derive substantive moral obligations from the standpoint of agency as such fails to fully grasp the core constructivist insight that all practical reasons arise from the perspective of a particular agent. Street then uses a creative thought experiment about a reflective, valuing social insect to support the Humean view that our contingent attitudes are sources of normativity, and argues against any conception of morality that presupposes otherwise.Aaron James and Valerie Tiberius defend theories that construct reasons from sound practical judgment. I found Tiberius's outline of “wise-judgment constructivism” intriguing, especially insofar as her recommended focus on the nature of wise judgment is meant to shift constructivist debate away from semantic issues. James's paper had some important strengths, but his conception of constructivism as constitutively entailing commonsense ethical views seems to build far too much into constructivism, as it simply assumes the incoherence or impossibility of Humean constructivism.Yonatan Shemmer argues that constructivism requires a principle of coherence in addition to consistency, and tries to show how such a principle can be constructed noncircularly. I found his argument helpful and essentially correct, though also compatible with subjectivism and expressivism.The twelve essays in this volume are generally of high quality, and a few are exceptionally valuable. The anthology is worth owning for research or graduate teaching in metaethics. However, it would have benefited from more critical engagement among the contributors. Since Street's and Korsgaard's views are the targets of so many of the critical essays, I regretted Korsgaard's absence and found Street's excellent chapter a nevertheless disappointing choice for this volume. I would have preferred to see her address the most common and pressing skeptical questions about her interesting and ambitious metaethical constructivism, namely whether it (1) can provide a satisfactory account of global normativity, (2) should even attempt to account for normative semantics, and (3) is a version of, or could be combined with, subjectivism, expressivism, or some other ostensibly competing metaethical theory

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