Desire and the Rationality of Virtue

This will be an unashamedly exploratory and programmatic discussion. In what follows, I shall sketch the broad outlines of a new approach to moral theory. The basic idea of this theory associates morality with a kind of collective rationality. According to this idea, patterns of group behaviour can be evaluated as better or worse, in terms of a distinctive notion of collective rationality; and an individual agent's moral reasons for action are the reflections, back into the individual's practical reasoning, of the reasons that apply to each of the many groups to which the individual belongs.

2015

Abstract: I argue that it is actually a conceptual truth that we have reason to be moral. I defend analyses of moral concepts in terms of the fittingness of moral emotions. I argue, for instance, that we can analyze an act’s moral wrongness in terms of our having reason to feel obligated not to perform it. Moral emotions like feelings of obligation involve motivations to do certain things, so the fittingness of these emotions determines the rationality of the motivations they involve. I proceed to argue that having reason to perform an act is a matter of the act’s satisfying a rational motive, or contributing to an end that it is fitting to be motivated to pursue. Because morality is a matter of fitting motives, and fitting motives determine rational acts, morality entails reasons for action. I use this strategy to explain why we have intrinsic reason do what is moral, or reason to do so as an end in itself and quite independently of its serving other rational ends. I argue that an ...

1964

In this essay we will be looking at whether we have reasons to act morally, and at the related question of whether we can have amoral reasons for forming moral intentions. The first question is also known as Hume's 'is–ought'problem: The problem of how to get from 'is', the state of affairs, to discussing 'ought', what morally speaking should be done, in a way that can be seen as argumentatively sound. 1 If we speak to non-philosophers, the 'is–ought'problem hardly seems to be an issue.

2011

In David Plunkett & Billy Dunnaway (eds.), Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard. Ann Arbor, MI: Maize Books. pp. 125-144 (2022) , 2022

It is often assumed that the best explanation of why we should be moral must involve a substantive account of what there is reason to do and how this is related to what morality requires and recommends. In this paper I argue to the contrary that the best explanation of why we should be moral is neutral about the content of morality, and does not invoke an independent substantive account of what there is practical reason to do. I contend that an act’s deontic status as recommended or required by morality is best understood as its being fitting for us to feel obligated to perform it, which essentially involves motivation to perform it. I argue, moreover, that our having reason to do something is a matter of its being fitting for us to be motivated to do it. Since an act’s being favored by morality conceptually entails the fittingness of our being motivated to perform it, and the fittingness of this motivation conceptually entails that there is reason to perform it, it is actually a conceptual truth that there are reasons to do what morality requires and recommends, whatever that turns out to be. I contend, finally, that this kind of account best explains why, although moral considerations are not always overriding, we necessarily have conclusive reasons to do what morality requires. I argue that an act counts as morally required only if the reasons to feel obligated to perform it are conclusive, which entails that it is unfitting to fail to be most strongly motivated to perform it. This, together with my account of the connection between fitting motives and practical reasons, entails that whatever considerations are weighty enough to make the act morally required are conclusive reasons to perform it. I believe that this conceptual account of reasons to be moral is important, because it removes the explanation of why we should be moral as a desideratum on normative ethical theories, which may significantly decrease the attractions of some and increase the attractions of others.

Principia, 2019

In this paper I will analyze John McDowell's broad account of practical rationality and moral reasons, which he displays mainly in his articles "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?" (1978) and "Might There Be External Reasons?" (1995). My main aim is to argue that from a philosophical perspective, no less than from an empirical one, McDowell's account of practical rationality is not a realistic one. From a philosophical point of view, I will argue that his intellectualist account is not convincing; and if we consider his virtue-ethical ideal of practical rationality in light of the model of human cognition, we also realize that moral behavior is not immune to cognitive biases and does not always flow from robust traits of character like virtues. At the same time, this puts at stake his strong thesis of moral autonomy-the idea that with the 'onset of reason' moral beings are no longer determined by 'first nature' features.

Topics in cognitive science, 2010

What is the nature of moral behavior? According to the study of bounded rationality, it results not from character traits or rational deliberation alone, but from the interplay between mind and environment. In this view, moral behavior is based on pragmatic social heuristics rather than moral rules or maximization principles. These social heuristics are not good or bad per se, but solely in relation to the environments in which they are used. This has methodological implications for the study of morality: Behavior needs to be studied in social groups as well as in isolation, in natural environments as well as in labs. It also has implications for moral policy: Only by accepting the fact that behavior is a function of both mind and environmental structures can realistic prescriptive means of achieving moral goals be developed.

2018

A persistent problem in metaethics is the question of how to reconcile the cognitive and motivational elements of moral judgment. The lynchpin to the ‘moral problem’ is the Humean philosophy of mind, which holds that belief and desire are ‘distinct existences.’ With the help of McDowell, I try in Chapter 10 to undermine allegiance to the Humean model, arguing that moral judgment doesn’t involve sterile cognition of a realm of facts, but is a type of judgment which already embodies our concerns, attitudes, and normative commitments. Again, though, this doesn’t mean we are cognizing ‘queer’ facts, because moral judgment isn’t in the first instance (for Sellars) a type of belief, and normative utterances aren’t descriptive—even though they are very much in the space of reasons.

2011

Morality is commonly thought to be normative in a robust and important way. This is commonly cashed out in terms of normative reasons. It is also commonly thought that morality is necessarily and universally normative, i.e., that moral reasons are reasons for any possible moral agent. Taking these commonplaces for granted, I argue for a novel view of moral normativity. I challenge the standard view that moral reasons are reasons to act. I suggest that moral reasons are reasons for having sentiments—in particular, compassion and respect—and I argue that this view has important advantages over the standard view of moral normativity.