Papers by Joanna Klimczyk
Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 2019
Joanna klIMczyk 'oUgHt', ownersHip and agentiVe oUgHt: reMarKs on tHe seMantic Meaning of 'indexe... more Joanna klIMczyk 'oUgHt', ownersHip and agentiVe oUgHt: reMarKs on tHe seMantic Meaning of 'indexed oUgHt' Abstract. Bernard Williams in his essay Ought and moral obligation (OMO) takes a stand on the proper logical interpretation of 'ought' sentences. He claims that ought being central to ethical reflection, that is, ought issuing personal requirements to agents, is to be interpreted like any ordinary 'ought'-as a propositional operator that is not indexed to a person. The driving idea behind Williams's logical point about 'ought' seems to be that logical interpretation of 'ought' sentences with moral content in terms of indexed ought lacks semantic significance. John Broome disagrees. In a series of his recent writings devoted to an analysis of the notion of normative ought, he defends the view opposite to the one fostered by Williams. According to Broome, indexation of 'ought' to agent matters for extra-logical reasons; it is a way of exhibiting that ought has its normative owner, which in turn is important for determining the holder of responsibility for the ought in question. In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of 'ought' sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome's positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of 'indexed ought' that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome's substantive semantics of 'indexed ought' , and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.
Law and Philosophy Library, 2014
The paper is divided into four sections. The first one examines the hypothesis about whether the ... more The paper is divided into four sections. The first one examines the hypothesis about whether the sharp distinction between two kinds of the normative requirements of rationality: the substantive and the non-substantive is a plausible view, given we can show that at least one particular non-substantive requirement of local attitudinal coherence is inscribed into the very idea of genuine normative requirement of whatever source. The second considers a particular version of a popular argument in favor of the substantive construal of the normativity of rationality that builds on the putative analogy between the normativity of rationality and the normativity of morality. The conclusion is that the argument remains unsuccesful because the analogy shows to be apparent. Section 8.3 explores the First-Personal Authority Account as an argument for the non-substantive normativity of rationality, and rejects it on the ground of its irrelevance. It is argued that the main problem with the the First-Personal Authority Account is that instead of establishing that attitudinal coherence is a normative claim of rationality, it provides support for the psychological interpretation of the normativity of rationality. Finally, granted that the arguments in the above sections are roughly correct, and the idea of the intrinsic normativity of rationality remains a muddle, a radical solution is advocated for. Instead of working hard on vindicating the normativity of rationality, we should rather rest content with the view that the only normativity of rationality for which we have support has external source in what we care about.
Work on the monograph was funded by the National Science grant OPUS 12 for the project "Substanti... more Work on the monograph was funded by the National Science grant OPUS 12 for the project "Substantive semantics for normative language (on the basis of the analysis of 'ought' sentences)". Decision no. DEC-2016/23/B/HS1/02921. The monograph "Ownership that matt ers. On the meaning of practical 'ought' sentences" by Joanna Klimczyk was reviewed by professor Robert Piłat Cover design: Alina Wiszenko-Zabrowarny Cover image: based on lexical defi nition of the word 'ought to' taken from 7 th edition of Oxford Advanced Learners's Dictionary
According to the paradigm view in linguistics and philosophical semantics, it is lexical semantic... more According to the paradigm view in linguistics and philosophical semantics, it is lexical semantics (LS) plus the principle of compositionality (PC) that allows us to compute the meaning of an arbitrary sentence. The job of LS is to assign meaning to individual expressions, whereas PC says how to combine these individual meanings into larger ones. In this paper I argue that the pair LS + PC fails to account for the discourse-relevant meaning of normative ‘ought’. If my hypothesis is tenable, then the failure of LS + CS extends to normative language in general. The reason I offer that this is so is that semantics for normative language is, in an important respect, a substantive semantics (SS). The ‘substantive’ in question means that the meaning of normative vocabulary in use is driven by metanormative views associated with a particular normative concept. SS rejects the model LS + CS and replaces it with a discourse-relevant semantics built around an interactional principle that ascri...
Etyka
RECENZJE stosowanej do toczących się współcześnie debat terminologii. Filozofia z pewnością nie s... more RECENZJE stosowanej do toczących się współcześnie debat terminologii. Filozofia z pewnością nie skończyła się na Kancie, tym niemniej jego myśl z całą pewnością będzie stanowić źródło inspiracji, a zarazem wskazywać kierunek poszukiwań jeszcze wielu kolejnym pokoleniom myślicieli.
Etyka
Kantowska teoria polityczna bywa zaliczana w poczet tzw. tradycyjnych teorii umowy społecznej. Ce... more Kantowska teoria polityczna bywa zaliczana w poczet tzw. tradycyjnych teorii umowy społecznej. Celem artykułu jest wykazanie, że Kant jest kontraktualistą nietypowym, tj. umowa społeczna nie pełni w jego teorii funkcji uzasadniania porządku politycznego, lecz jest narzędziem sądzenia służącym do filozoficznej translacji warunków zawartych w abstrakcyjnym Imperatywie Kategorycznym na specyfikę sfery politycznej. Nietypowość kontraktualizmu Kanta polega na tym, że formułuje on warunki, pod jakimi myślenie w kategorii możliwej zgody staje się teoretycznie uzasadnione i zarazem filozoficznie doniosłe.
Etyka
S ą książki, które trafiają w swój czas. Pojawiają się dokładnie wtedy, gdy zapotrzebowanie na ni... more S ą książki, które trafiają w swój czas. Pojawiają się dokładnie wtedy, gdy zapotrzebowanie na nie dopiero boleśnie wyżyna się w ludzkiej świadomości. Piszę: boleśnie, bowiem pozycje te traktują zazwyczaj o rzeczach mało przyjemnych, przypominają fakty, o których dawno chcielibyśmy zapomnieć (ale jeszcze nie możemy, gdyż trudność sprawia nam sklasyfikowanie problemu, którego nie rozgryźliśmy do końca), uparcie drążą, przywołują pojęcia, które wyszły z naszego obiegu. Proponują nam analizy, podczas gdy wiedzą, że żyjemy w świecie bły skawicznych syntez. Składamy jeden klocek do drugiego, nie dbając o to, czy pasują do układanki, skoro i tak wiemy, że nikt nas z tego nie będzie odpytywany, a jutro i tak pojawią się nowe klocki, a stare podzielą los konia na biegunach. Nam chodzi o załatwienie sprawy, one chcą wydobyć z nas refleksję. Co więcej : straszą, że ucieczka od niewysłowionych strachów jest tylko quasi-ucieczką i że wcześniej czy później sami wpadniemy we własne sidła. Jeśli więc są takie książki, to za jedną z nich można uznać pracę Mariana Grabowskiego Krajobraz winy. Książka ta ukazała się w momencie, gdy sprawa winy na powrót zakłóciła nasz spokój. Debaty na temat Jedwabnego i winy polskich "sąsiadów", którzy jak celnie, acz drastycznie ujął to jeden z naszych publicystów "gorąco pożegnali się z Żydami". Kiedy na publiczną wokandę wróciły pytania o odpowiedzialność i jej granice, kiedy przedstawiciele różnych obozów zaczęli traktować winę jako piłeczkę pingpongową, którą można dowolnie, w miarę trwania meczu, odbijać i przerzucać z jednej drużyny na inną. W zależności od barwy grającego winnymi byli po kolei: społeczeństwo, państwo, naród, poszczególne jednostki, które feralnego dnia zagoniły swoich sąsiadów do stodoły, winni byli Niemcy, komuniści, wreszcie sami Żydzi, którzy swoją cierpiętniczą naturą doprowadzili do pogromu, wreszcie w wersji skrajnej-zawinił sam Pan Bóg, który przyzwolił na holokaust i jego jedwabieńskie ogniwo. Zamiast prawdziwej
Studia Philosophiae Christianae, 2018
Bernard Williams in his essay Ought and moral obligation (OMO) takes a stand on the proper logica... more Bernard Williams in his essay Ought and moral obligation (OMO) takes a stand on the proper logical interpretation of ‘ought’ sentences. He claims that ought being central to ethical reflection, that is, ought issuing personal requirements to agents, is to be interpreted like any ordinary ‘ought’ – as a propositional operator that is not indexed to a person. The driving idea behind Williams’s logical point about ‘ought’ seems to be that logical interpretation of ‘ought’ sentences with moral content in terms of indexed ought lacks semantic significance. John Broome disagrees. In a series of his recent writings devoted to an analysis of the notion of normative ought, he defends the view opposite to the one fostered by Williams. According to Broome, indexation of ‘ought’ to agent matters for extra-logical reasons; it is a way of exhibiting that ought has its normative owner, which in turn is important for determining the holder of responsibility for the ought in question.
In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of ‘ought’ sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome’s positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’ that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome’s substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’, and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.
The paper discusses Mark Schroeder's famous objection to the interpretation of agentive ought in ... more The paper discusses Mark Schroeder's famous objection to the interpretation of agentive ought in terms of propositional ought. The objection in question is called the Basic Problem, and it amounts to the observation that systematic, uniform logical treatment of 'ought' sentences that express deliberative content and those that do not gives rise to a semantic anomaly. The anomaly in question is that we are forced to accept as meaningful sentences that obviously lack meaningfulness. If Schroeder's argument is a good one, then the challenge is truly fatal. However, I argue, this is not so. The charge looks very serious, I argue, once we accept two assumptions. One is the assumption that makes the Basic Problem a problem, namely that some normative thoughts are unthinkable. The other is the assumption that gives the Basic Problem the appearance of being devastating and irrefutable, and amounts to the idea that there is a tight conceptual relationship between a triple of concepts 'indexed ought', 'normatively owned ought', and 'obligation'. I shall show that both assumptions do not withstand criticism. If my arguments are correct, the Basic Problem turns out to be toothless.
Principia, 2017
In his article “Is Meaning Fraught with Ought?” (2009), Daniel Whiting advanced quite a battery o... more In his article “Is Meaning Fraught with Ought?” (2009), Daniel Whiting advanced quite a battery of refurbished arguments for the claim that linguistic meaning is intrinsically normative. He ended the paper with the conclusion that he had managed to achieve two of his stated aims: to defend normativism and to show how the normativist can turn the innocent platitude that meaningful expressions possess conditions of correct use into an argument in favour of normativism. In the present article, I show that Whiting failed on both counts, although his failure reveals an important issue which has been overlooked by both parties to the debate. The issue in question is one of methodology: the plausibility of semantic normativism turns on the theory of practical normativity to which a particular philosopher tacitly or explicitly subscribes. To put my main criticism in a nutshell: semantic normativism cannot be defended without a plausible account of the nature of semantic reasons.
According to a well-homed view in linguistic semantics, deontic logic and logic of agency, some ‘... more According to a well-homed view in linguistic semantics, deontic logic and logic of agency, some ‘ought’ sentences, like ‘Kate ought to write the report’, are ambiguous between the so-called agentive sense as when Kate is the agent of writing the report, and the non-agentive, or evaluative sense as when, in the light of some norm or things being ideal, the proposition that Kate writes the report would come out true. Within this approach to the se- mantics of ‘ought’, the ambiguity in question is not due to any semantic am- biguity of the word ‘ought’, but the ambiguity traced to Kate writes the report. We may call the view in question, after Schroeder, the agency-in-the-prejacent theory, or APT for short. APT’s explanation of ambiguity has been put under heavy criticism by Mark Schroeder’s 2011 influential paper. Schroeder tried to undermine APT by exposing its central theoretical drawbacks, their being: (i) that APT badly overgeneralizes because if ambiguity is in Kate writes the re- port, then it should equally well be preserved under the non-agentive inter- pretation of ‘Kate ought to write the report’, but it is not, and (ii) that APT also undergeneralizes, since it ‘inscribes’ the same ambiguity as observed in ‘Kate ought to write the report’ to a sentence that lacks it, e.g. ‘Bill ought to
kiss Lucy’. I argue that both the ‘overgeneralization problem’ and the ‘under- generalization problem’ are harmless for the criticized view, since Schroeder’s two central arguments against the respective problems are seriously defective. Also, the third problem identified by Schroeder, that APT cannot accommo- date the deliberative sense of ‘ought’, is mistargeted. I argue that identifying the salient property of the deliberative ought is crucial for assessing whether APT is able to accommodate it or not, and that Schroeder failed to recognise this properly.
This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon's account of a normative r... more This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon's account of a normative reason, which is purported to kill two birds with one stone: to raise doubts about the plausibility of Scanlon's account of a normative reason and, next, to dismiss Scanlon's conception of what a normative reason is in the role of an argument for semantic normativism. Following Whiting I take semantic normativism to be the view, according to which linguistic meaning is intrinsi-cally normative. The key argument for semantic normativism is that a word or expression has conditions for its correct use which count, or speak in favour of using it in certain ways and not in others. Specifically, it has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. I shall argue that if the favouring format of the analysis of a normative reason is not a particularly happy proposal in itself, then it supplies a superficial support for semantic normativism.
Drafts by Joanna Klimczyk
The paper discusses Mark Schroeder’s famous objection to the interpretation of agentive ought in ... more The paper discusses Mark Schroeder’s famous objection to the interpretation of agentive ought in terms of propositional ought. The objection in question is called the Basic Problem, and it amounts to the observation that systematic, uniform logical treatment of ‘ought’ sentences that express deliberative content and those that do not gives rise to a semantic anomaly. The anomaly in question is that we are forced to accept as meaningful sentences that obviously lack meaningfulness. If Schroeder’s argument is a good one, then the challenge is truly fatal. However, I argue, this is not so. The charge looks very serious, I argue, once we accept two assumptions. One is the assumption that makes the Basic Problem a problem, namely that some normative thoughts are unthinkable. The other is the assumption that gives the Basic Problem the appearance of being devastating and irrefutable, and amounts to the idea that there is a tight conceptual relationship between a triple of concepts ‘indexed ought’, ‘normatively owned ought’, and ‘obligation’. I shall show that both assumptions do not withstand criticism. If my arguments are correct, the Basic Problem turns out to be toothless.
In his 2011 paper, Mark Schroeder launched a powerful attack on the view that ambiguity observed ... more In his 2011 paper, Mark Schroeder launched a powerful attack on the view that ambiguity observed in some agential ‘ought’ sentences can be satisfactorily explained in terms of sentential ambiguity. His main objection concerned the unfeasibility of capturing the deliberative character of ‘ought’ within the propositionalist framework. He is led to that sceptical conclusion by considering two allegedly devastating challenges labelled ‘the overgeneration problem’ and ‘the undergeneration problem’, respectively. I argue that both objections are harmless. I also argue that Schroeder misinterprets the key hallmark of the deliberative ‘ought’ that emerges from his own portrait of the sort of ‘ought’ in question. The overlooked hallmark is authorship. I argue that the ambiguity that matters is the ambiguity between authored and fuzzy authored interpretation, and that the stipulated ambiguity is a global phenomenon observable in any agential ‘ought’ sentence. If I am right Schroeder’s criticism collapses.
Contents of the prepared book manuscript "Normativity that matters"
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Papers by Joanna Klimczyk
In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of ‘ought’ sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome’s positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’ that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome’s substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’, and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.
kiss Lucy’. I argue that both the ‘overgeneralization problem’ and the ‘under- generalization problem’ are harmless for the criticized view, since Schroeder’s two central arguments against the respective problems are seriously defective. Also, the third problem identified by Schroeder, that APT cannot accommo- date the deliberative sense of ‘ought’, is mistargeted. I argue that identifying the salient property of the deliberative ought is crucial for assessing whether APT is able to accommodate it or not, and that Schroeder failed to recognise this properly.
Drafts by Joanna Klimczyk
In the paper I argue that Broome may be right, but his arguments do not show that fact. In particular, I claim that he is wrong in thinking that indexation in terms of ownership is useful in the analysis of ‘ought’ sentences with agentive content, and thus nicely applies to moral ought being a paradigmatic example of such sentences. According to my diagnosis, Broome’s positive view about the semantic and ethical significance of interpreting agentive ought as indexed ought, suffers from one central problem. It alludes to an unsuccessful substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’ that fails to give an accurate explanation of the meaning of the ought in question. I conclude the paper by offering an alternative to Broome’s substantive semantics of ‘indexed ought’, and explain why I think that it fares better in capturing the nature of the agentive ought.
kiss Lucy’. I argue that both the ‘overgeneralization problem’ and the ‘under- generalization problem’ are harmless for the criticized view, since Schroeder’s two central arguments against the respective problems are seriously defective. Also, the third problem identified by Schroeder, that APT cannot accommo- date the deliberative sense of ‘ought’, is mistargeted. I argue that identifying the salient property of the deliberative ought is crucial for assessing whether APT is able to accommodate it or not, and that Schroeder failed to recognise this properly.