Metaethics - Kantian Constructivism

This videos outlines Kantian constructivism in metaethics, as defended by Christine Korsgaard in "The Sources of Normativity". Korsgaard attempts to show that there are universal moral truths, and that these moral truths hold not in virtue of a mind-independent realm of moral facts, but follow simply from what is required in order to engage in rational action.

Further reading on Kantian constructivism:
Gert, "Korsgaard's private-reasons argument"
Kerstein, "Korsgaard's Kantian arguments for the value of humanity"
Street, "What is constructivism in ethics and metaethics?"
Wallace, "The publicity of reasons"

0:00 - What is constructivism?
8:47 - Kantian constructivism
9:59 - Reflective consciousness
16:40 - Practical identities
22:54 - The value of humanity
28:42 - Objections
36:38 - Against private reasons
47:35 - Objections

[matheusdabnei]

Man, you're an excellent person! Thanks for posting contents like that and helping people like us! Looking foward to Streets constructivism as well

[TheGlenn]

Ok Youtube. This is something you can just casually put in my recommended knowing I'll probably watch. Thanks.

[truediltom]

Thank you for this! I would love it if you covered the ideas of big philosophers like Kant more often.

[mariozehren]

As a fellow Whovian, I really enjoy your occasional use of Sidney and Verity as names for agents.

[ahmedbellankas]

1- A practical identity with which an individual goes is just his prefered want ( e.g: I want preferedly to be a respectable psychaitrist ( one who doesn't reveal patients secrets));
2- individuals are rational (individual i is rational iff individual i acts according to his prefered want );
3- individual;
4- reasons- internalism: (an individual has a reason to act only if that individual wants preferedly to act );
C- an individual will act according to his prefered want.
So, the individual will act on an obligation only if he wants preferedly to stick to the obligation, so it seems that kantian constructivism collapses into humean constructivism.
- also, if john is rational and rationality necessarily implies thinking when one considers p then john will think when he considers p,
Here even if john doesn't value being rational he will act as rational individuals do.

[liammwasha]

Anything on Humean constructivism?
Incase you don't plan on doing any videos on Humean constructivism, can you recommend some books?

[Alex.G.Harper]

When i woke up this morning, i was responding to reasons to desire, to grab a cup of coffee before i went to work. I wasn’t really reflecting, or thinking, “should I really drink that cup of cofee”.

It was reason-responsiveness, the ability to respond to reasons. To degrees, humans often have the highest capacity, with most of that capacity making a more gradient lessening when we look at other animals, from the most capacity under humans, to the least.

This ability is practiced by any human who hasn’t had some massive, serious brain injury, or who hasn’t started with a seriously, and sadly, lack capacity to respond to reasons to desire, care or act, although that is rare. In order to act, one must desire to act in that way, and to desire to act or to have, one must see that desire as outweighing any other reason to desire something else. No reflection required.

Reflection, i Presume, is deliberation. Deliberation is, as i might say, weighing reasons, accessing any other reasons, an attempting, ultimately, to draw i conclusion of what is the most sufficient or decisive reason to desire, act, or to something else. It’s usually used in areas, at least for me, like managing insurance or deciding which food is to be on my grocery list. These also applies to our solving some difficult mathematical equation, we deliberate in the sense of accessing, at least trying to, the strongest reason to believe some part of this equation follows some number in the next part of the calculation.


“There aren’t any private reasons”, that’s a whole load of bullshit. I believe there are impartial reasons, like to not inflict cancer on a future woman that’s barely like me now, by not smoking, since she her agony matters. Or by, if it were to happen, see a young, unable child drowning, I’ll save this child, even if the consequences for me would be worse. Pain can be detached from the fact that it is mine without losing any of its dreadfulness. And the reason i desire to avoid pain is it’s dreadful features, not that it is mine.

But something like love cannot be detached from the fact that it is mine without losing its loveliness. Only i have access to these partial, ‘private’ reasons to love my older sister, or my stupid brother who wont stop embarrassing me. I also believe in these these partial reasons.


Also, just a bit of a side note, Verity is strange. One moment she’s homesick and just wants a glass of milk, and the next moment she’s making poor Sydney slowly bleed to death in her basement.

[nicolasavilalucero]

In the objetion to the Korsgaard view on publicity of reasons i think that we have to distinguish between motivating reasons (motives that explain why people do what they do) and normative reasons (reasons that explain why people should do certain things, the distinction is in Huemer (2005)). Of course we can understand what are the motivating reasons of a killer or a thief, for example, but when publicity is applied to normative reasons we get this: the normative reasons ought to be public in the sense that everyone have to justify their action to other people not merely saying why they did something, but saying why they should do something.

[DeadEndFrog]

fantastic video!
It seems to me like the only way forward is to give us a desire everyone should value, and then hope everyone does.. what else is there in axiology? and it saves us all some extra steps..

[beatleswithaz]

When I see two trees outside, that presents a moral reason to me to build a hammock!

[jemandoondame]

Forst, R: Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice (New Directions in Critical Theory, Band 46)

[jacklessa]

What is the difference between Humean Constructivist and individualistic subjetisvism?

[Impaled_Onion-thatsmine]

Synthetic protocal moral relativism they don't help - intentional. That created the 4 point Dsm-1 of autistic behavior reflected through schizophrenic.

[mateomendez]

Is constructivism just subjectivism? Sorry, I don't know the precise terms.

[unknownknownsphilosophy]

We can stop mentally reflecting, Korsgaard never learned to meditate so doesn't know reflection can be totally halted and this lack of reflection can become one's normal everyday mode. This is shown over and over in studies related to the default mode network of the brain which if deactivated entirely halts the appearance or any sense of "reflecting"

[philosopo]

Was this topic inspired by the conversation between Richard Brown and Lance Bush?

[InventiveHarvest]

Verity just needs to adequately compensate Sidney, and then they both would benefit.

[dionysianapollomarx]

Korsgaard's Kantian constructivism is interesting and seems persuasive, but it doesn't seem to me to be a convincing reason for moral realism, but rather a realism about the normativity of social facts (if Korsgaard is really believing there are no private reasons, which is BS), some of which could have moral properties. That's the part that is uncontroversial. On the other hand, to me, the fact that something of a moral nature is grounded on something else cannot be any reason to assert that there are moral facts. Rather there are facts which allow people to say and reason that something is moral. Doesn't make morality real, given how variegated that can get. Totally different. She's conflating the value of practical identity with its ostensibly moral properties, it seems. To be human does not have to entail respecting other humans, in fact being human entails both respect and disrespect of other humans, if Nietzsche's Human All Too Human is correct (which I think it is).

Valuing one's own humanity does not have to mean valuing others, even if said humanity is fundamentally the same, barring any skin-deep differences. The scientific evidence that IQ differences between individuals vary more than between groups, which would be useful information against racist policymaking on the basis of IQ, is irrelevant to the assertion that one ought to be good to other people of some other practical identity. It does not mean that I should or should not be ethical (in this case, racially prejudiced) either because morals are not real, it could just mean my ethics is not based on any moral facts at all. Personally, it would be due to a personal desire to create equality on the basis of my (always changing) readings of the scientific facts. There could be a consensus in that regard, but that cannot be a satisfactory reason to say that there is a moral consensus, just a practical one.

[michaelc.]

One other reason why the third step is bothersome is because it implies that someone isolated from others has essentially no moral characteristics to their decisions whatsoever when just on a pragmatic basis we feel that it must certainly be the case that we make moral deliberations independent of others all the time.

[lendrestapas]

isn't a more Kantian way of solving the problem of public and private reasons rather the following? when we act, we do not only in fact affirm and value ourselves as rational beings, but we value the transcendental noumenal subject that all human beings share, because the noumenal subject is in fact the transcendental condition for acting in the first place. We value the noumenal self full stop and this noumenal self is inhering in all rational beings. Therefore, we value humanity as such.