Giles Howdle

The thesis combines the Humean theory of normative practical reasons with constitutivism. Humeanism claims, roughly, that an agent’s reasons are explained by his desires. Constitutivism claims that the foundations of moral normativity can be found in the constitutive features of agency. This combination, ‘Humean constitutivism’ as I call it, claims there is some desire-like mental state, the possession of which is partly constitutive of rational agency, which explains the normativity of morality. I first argue that the union of constitutivism and Humeanism makes for an attractive marriage. As with any good relationship, the two bring out the best in one another. Humeanism offers the constitutivist a compelling account of how we get from the ‘is’ of the nature of rational agency to the ‘ought’ of normative conclusions. In doing so, it permits the constitutivist to circumvent the influential ‘shmagency’ objection. The constitutivist strategy provides the Humean with the resources to accommodate moral rationalism and hence answer sceptical challenges to morality’s practical normative authority. Having established its attractiveness, I then defend the truth of Humean constitutivism. I argue that there are desire-like mental states (constitutive commitments), the possession of which is partly constitutive of agency. This is because rational agency involves distinctively linguistic forms of cognition—dwelling in something like Sellars’ ‘logical space of reasons.’ Engaging in this linguistic form of cognition, in turn, requires us to take on certain second-personal practical commitments to our (hypothetical) interlocutors. Hence, all agents necessarily have these constitutive commitments. Piggy-backing on Darwall’s derivation of contractualist moral norms from the constitutive presuppositions of the second- person standpoint, I claim that the Humean constitutivist can vindicate the intuitive existence, modal status, universality, and special weight of (many) moral reasons.

Abstract‘Dogwhistles’ and microtargeted political advertisements are objects of widespread moral and political concern. With a few notable exceptions in the case of dogwhistles (and none in the case of microtargeting) moral criticism of these speech act types generally focuses on problematic content—that a dogwhistle is, for instance, racist, or a microtargeted advertisement misleading. I argue that these practices are additionally morally wrongful on content-neutral grounds—regardless of their content. My argument proceeds from a deliberative conception of democracy according to which only a vote which follows from an adequate deliberative process confers democratic legitimacy on its results. I claim that both dogwhistles and microtargeting threaten to prevent adequate democratic deliberation from taking place, and therefore that these practices are anti-democratic and, additionally, morally impermissible. I then discuss potential objections and how my argument relates to existing work.