David Enoch

Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won't Come from What is Constitutive of Action

There is a fairly widespread – and very influential – hope among philosophers interested in the status of normativity that the solution to our metaethical and more generally metanormative problems will emerge from the philosophy of action. What we need, so the thought goes, is to better understand what action and agency consist in. With this understanding in hand, we will then have all that we need in order to give a philosophical account of reasons for action, or of (practical) normativity altogether.In this paper I argue that this hope is unfounded. Focusing on the work of Rosati, Velleman and Korsgaard, I argue that normativity cannot be grounded in what is constitutive of action. After presenting the objection to this strategy, I then address several – actual and possible – retorts, concluding that these thinkers have not been able to address the worry, and that it does not seem likely that they can.

Can there be a global, interesting, coherent constructivism about practical reason?

More and more people seem to think that constructivism – in political philosophy, in moral philosophy, and perhaps in practical reasoning most generally – is the way to go. And yet it is surprisingly hard to even characterize the view. In this paper, I go to some lengths trying to capture the essence of a constructivist position – mostly in the realm of practical reason – and to pinpoint its theoretical attractions. I then give some reason to suspect that there cannot be a coherent constructivist view about practical reason as a whole, at least not if it is to be interestingly constructivist, in a sense I make reasonably precise.

INTENDING, FORESEEING, AND THE STATE

For many years, moral philosophers have been debating the conceptual and moral status of the distinction between intending harm and (merely) foreseeing harm. In this paper, after surveying some of the objections to the moral significance of this distinction in general, I focus on the special case of state action, arguing that whatever reasons we have to be suspicious about the distinction’s moral significance in general, we have very good reasons to believe it lacks intrinsic moral significance when applied to state action. After arguing for this claim, I pursue in a preliminary way some of its implications.

Cognitive Biases and Moral Luck

Some of the recent philosophical literature on moral luck attempts to make headway in the moral-luck debate by employing the resources of empirical psychology, in effect arguing that some of the intuitive judgments relevant to the moral-luck debate are best explained – and so presumably explained away – as the output of well-documented cognitive biases. We argue that such attempts are empirically problematic, and furthermore that even if they were not, it is still not at all clear what philosophical significance they would have.

Wouldn't It Be Nice If p , Therefore, p (for a moral p )

Instances of the argument-schema ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if p, therefore, p’ are usually fallacious, but for a moral p they are not clearly as bad as they are elsewhere. I offer a diagnosis of this phenomenon, arguing that in some conditions – specified in terms of a logical property of the relevant normative operator – such arguments are actually valid (for a moral p).

Luck between Morality, Law, and Justice

In this Article, I elaborate on and defend the following argument: (1) There is no moral luck. (2) If there is no moral luck, there should be no legal luck. (3) Therefore, there should be no legal luck (from (1) and (2)). (4) If there is no normatively significant difference between the law (or the state) doing and allowing, or intending and foreseeing, then there is no normatively significant difference between legal luck and just plain luck that has legal implications. (5) There is no normatively significant difference between the law (or the state) doing and allowing, or intending and foreseeing. (6) Therefore, there is no normatively significant difference between legal luck and just plain luck that has legal implications (from (4) and (5)). (7) Therefore, plain luck should have no legal implications (from (3) and (6)).

Hypothetical Consent and the Value(s) of Autonomy

Hypothetical consent is puzzling. On the one hand, it seems to make a moral difference across a wide range of cases. On the other hand, there seem to be principled reasons to think that it cannot. In this article I put forward reasonably precise formulations of these general suspicions regarding hypothetical consent; I draw several distinctions regarding the ways in which hypothetical consent may make a moral difference; I distinguish between two autonomy-related concerns, nonalienation and sovereignty; and, utilizing these distinctions, I show that—and in a preliminary way, when—the objections to the moral significance of hypothetical consent fail.

The Masses and the Elites: Political Philosophy for the Age of Brexit, Trump & Netanyahu

Recent political developments leave liberal elites heartbroken. Why is it that the masses keep making poor, morally unacceptable, irrational choices? Among the many voices heard in this context, there are also those criticising those elites from the left. The elites, these voices imply, are guilty not just of past wrongs that have gotten us here, but also of patronising the masses right now, arrogantly failing to take seriously the masses and their concerns. I argue that such complaints – perhaps appearances to the contrary notwithstanding – are every bit as patronising in their attitudes towards the masses they claim to respect, and proceed to discuss the question whether the elites should reason with the masses, or manage them (spoiler alert: both). This practical discussion leads to more theoretical ones about justification and excuse in the public sphere, practical and epistemic reasons for belief, and ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy.

What do you mean “This isn’t the question”?

Abstract This is a contribution to the symposium on Tim Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons (2014). We have two aims here: First, we ask for more details about Scanlon’s meta-metaphysical view (about his notion of a domain, his criterion of existence, his ambition to remain ontologically thin, and on the role of pragmatic considerations in Scanlon’s picture), showing problems with salient clarifications. And second, we raise independent objections to the view – to its explanatory productivity, its distinctness, and the argumentative support it enjoys.

Ends, Means, Side-Effects, and Beyond: A Comment on the Justification of the Use of Force

This is a critical comment of Robert Cryer & Andrew P. Simester, Iraq and the Use of Force: Do the Side-Effects Justify the Means?I apply recently developed distinction in normative ethics - in particular, between means and side effects on one side, and conditions of action on the other - in order to shed light on the case of the international use of force which they discuss. The discussion also yields interesting results in the more general context of normative ethics, from which it starts.