Gloria Mähringer

Although autism is a complex condition, sensory integration challenges are discussed as a common root. Autistic autobiographies revolve around a core problem with moving in the world and thereby achieving and maintaining a unified, integrated mind. In this paper, I formulate a paradox of existence, based on my own first-person experience with autism, the basic structure of which can also be found in other first-person accounts. Then, I develop a philosophical model for conceptualizing this paradoxical experience. I suggest that we can speak of the autistic mind as striving for an extreme form of autonomy, which can be understood by reference to the metaphysics of Spinoza: mind becomes autonomous by representing the world as internal to itself, instead of external interference. This strife can be pursued in both hypnotic states and ambitious mastery, but none of these strategies can be sustainable for long, and each has existential risks. By comparing Spinoza with his historical predecessor Maimonides, we can distinguish two different ethical attitudes toward this mental strife, which in the past has been conceptualized as a strife for knowing God. This philosophical model, based on an autoethnographic analysis, can be a resource for self-reflection of autistic subjects, who can craft a coherent self-image in light of paradoxical experiences, establish a positive framework for conceptualizing their condition and gain existential freedom by finding their own path in navigating their extreme strife beyond a narrow medical picture of autism.

Freedom of occupational choice represents people as choosing their occupations according to their personal values and preferences, of which pro-social preferences are one possible type among many. I argue that this mischaracterizes the choice of many strongly pro-social workers. There is a crucial difference between realizing one’s personal values and preferences and responding to social necessity. That difference is linked to the ontological distinction between I-mode and we-mode reasoning. Empirical evidence suggests that this difference shapes occupational choice in ways that are strongly related to class differences in many societies. By ignoring the difference, liberal societies fail to accord pro-social workers recognitional respect and thus commit a distinctive wrong toward them. To prevent this wrong, the state must actively cultivate a social ethos that occupational choice should be about using one’s abilities to best serve the common good. Some philosophers putting forth proposals along those lines take them to be compatible with freedom of occupational choice. I show, however, that the comprehensive guiding ethos required for fully rationalizing we-mode occupational choice is in tension with liberal commitments that occupational choice be less constrained.

Although autism is a complex condition, sensory integration challenges are discussed as a common root. Autistic autobiographies revolve around a core problem with moving in the world and thereby achieving and maintaining a unified, integrated mind. In this paper, I formulate a paradox of existence, based on my own first-person experience with autism, the basic structure of which can also be found in other first-person accounts. Then, I develop a philosophical model for conceptualizing this paradoxical experience. I suggest that we can speak of the autistic mind as striving for an extreme form of autonomy, which can be understood by reference to the metaphysics of Spinoza: mind becomes autonomous by representing the world as internal to itself, instead of external interference. This strife can be pursued in both hypnotic states and ambitious mastery, but none of these strategies can be sustainable for long, and each has existential risks. By comparing Spinoza with his historical predecessor Maimonides, we can distinguish two different ethical attitudes toward this mental strife, which in the past has been conceptualized as a strife for knowing God. This philosophical model, based on an autoethnographic analysis, can be a resource for self-reflection of autistic subjects, who can craft a coherent self-image in light of paradoxical experiences, establish a positive framework for conceptualizing their condition and gain existential freedom by finding their own path in navigating their extreme strife beyond a narrow medical picture of autism.

Street formulated a Darwinian Dilemma for realist theories of value. Much criticism of her formulation of the dilemma targets the second horn, posed by the scientifically implausible assumption of a tracking relation between our attitudes and evaluative truth. This paper shows how a recent wave of metaethical realism, most prominently defended by Scanlon, succeeds without a tracking relation and thus avoids the Darwinian Dilemma in Street's formulation. However, Scanlon's approach, which builds on the concept of a reason relation and defends a metaphysically pluralist, domain‐specific conception of truth, runs into another version of the Darwinian Dilemma. The problem is not that Scanlon's realism assumes a tracking relation but that it assumes what I call reason monolithism – the idea that there is one possible expression of the faculty of reason and that this cognitive faculty could not be otherwise, which is scientifically implausible on similar grounds.

This article enriches discussions about the metaphysics of normative facts with conceptual resources from social ontology that metaethics has neglected so far: the resources of Haslanger’s critical realism as social constructionism. By pointing out the viability of understanding reasons as socially constructed facts, the article shows how normative facts can be understood as features of mind-independent reality that are, however, not features of the universe independently of social practices. The move into social ontology allows us to understand normative facts as mind-independent in a more substantial sense than deflationists do, by stressing individual mind-independence, while denying collective mind-independence – the subsistence independently of established human cultures. The new position can fruitfully mediate between realism, error theory and constructivism. Finally, the metaphysical nuances provided by social ontology pave the way for novel approaches to normative change and progress – thereby indicating pathways to normative theorising that many traditional metaethical positions lack.

This monograph discusses the question of what it is to be a reason – mainly in practical ethics – and proposes an original contribution to metaethics.It critically examines theories of metaethical realism, constructivism and error theory and identifies several misunderstandings or unclarities in contemporary debates. Based on this examination, the book suggests a distinction between a conceptual question, that can be answered by pure first-personal thinking, and a material question, that targets responses to reasons as a natural phenomenon in space and time and that can be answered by help of the sciences. While this book defends a sharp distinction between these approaches, it also argues that the insights gained by the distinct approaches can be fruitfully integrated into a comprehensive picture.The comprehensive picture promoted in this book, based on both philosophical analysis and resources from psychology and cognitive science, is a picture of reasons as items in a collective archive of mind – reconfiguring the “domain of reasons” as a collectively established and socially cultivated fund of considerations with normative weight. The developed Collective Archive View combines Reasons Fundamentalism as an answer to the conceptual question, with a social ontological proposal, similar to Haslanger’s critical realism, as an answer to the material question.Thereby, it introduces central ideas from the field of social metaphysics into metaethics. At the same time, it offers a way of settling some controversies within metaethics, going on between proponents of Reasons Fundamentalism and Constitutivism, realism and constructivism, as well as proponents of mind-dependence and mind-independence of normative facts. Finally, the proposal enables us to envision and conceptualize genuine normative change within a metaethical theory.