Constructivism in Practical Philosophy

by James Lenman (editor), Yonatan Shemmer (Editor), Valerie Tiberius (Contributor)

This volume presents twelve original papers on constructivism--some sympathetic, others critical--by a distinguished group of moral philosophers. "Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept. Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts." So wrote John Rawls in his highly influential 1980 Dewey lectures "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory." Since then there has been much discussion of constructivist understandings, Kantian or otherwise, both of morality and of reason more generally. Such understandings typically seek to characterize the truth conditions of propositions in their target domain in maximally metaphysically unassuming ways, frequently in terms of the outcome of certain procedures or the passing of certain tests, procedures or tests that speak to the distinctively practical concerns of deliberating human agents
living together in societies. But controversy abounds over the interpretation and the scope as well as the credibility of such constructivist ideas. The essays collected here reach to the heart of this contemporary philosophical debate, and offer a range of new approaches and perspectives.

Genres: Philosophy

262 pages, Hardcover

First published August 2, 2012

Reviews

[Artemis]

Good, comprehensive, talks about Korsgaard enough to make up for not including Korsgaard (probably). Highlight essays were probably Street and Scanlon (unsurprisingly). Scanlon’s issues with ambitious global metanormative constructivism seem damning to the global project. Hard to accept epistemic and even instrumentally normative priors, seems to beg the question to at least some extent, but without them it’s impossible to have practical normative grounding in rationality - ultimately seems to be a question of what bullet were willing to bite? Wanted it to be my rescuer from error-theory but it didn’t pan out that way :’(

[Doctor Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Constructivism in "practical philosophy" tries to thread a needle -- truth without realism. It seeks to establish that questions about what to do have right answers, but without appealing to a reality independent of us in which to ground them.

Part of why the constructivist argument is hard to make is our disposition toward a correspondence theory of truth. What makes a statement true under correspondence is simply that it accurately describes a reality independent of us or of our making the statement. Realism, in the sense of a reality independent of us, and truth seem joined at the hip.

But, in contrast to other forms of constructivism, constructivism with regard to right or reasonable action may have immediate intuitive appeal -- realism just isn't very attractive in moral or value theory. Intuitionism tried to ground moral claims in some sort of non-natural "real" properties, but intuitionism has never been especially convincing. In relying upon this fairly mysterious notion of non-natural properties, it paid a high price for moral realism.

Constructivism isn’t new to moral philosophy or value theory. The papers here reference Rawls’ constructivist theory of justice, and Rawls himself cited Kant as a source of moral constructivism. More recently Christine Korsgaard has championed her own brand of Kantian constructivism. Other writers here with strong, philosophically tested formulations of constructivism include Sharon Street, whose formulation is both presented and critiqued by several papers.

Many challenges to constructivism, including those here, pose worries about either infinite regress or circularity. In simplistic form, any given action A is justified by reference to previous justifications of actions that bear some relation to A. Those previous justifications likewise depend upon previous justifications, and so on. The chain can be kept from extending to infinity only by bending it back on itself into a circle.

Of course, constructivist theory is much more sophisticated, often appealing to more holistic, coherence based theories, presented and critiqued here, in which the justification of a particular judgement rests, at least partially, in its consistency and coherence with the body of judgements made by an agent, or by an agent and his community. Or justification is grounded in adherence to a process, much like Rawls’ theory.

The challenge undertaken here is not so much to defend constructivism against its alternatives as it is to make full sense of the constructivist claim. Arguments run to the technical side, both for and against -- the debate is here contained within the world of contemporary analytic philosophy. In the end, despite my own constructivist leaning, I found the challenges still daunting.