Nikolaus Kennelly

There is an ambition to conceive of the human being as a composite of perceptual and desiderative faculties belonging to a causal order and a rational faculty belonging to a normative order. The problem is that this conception is unstable: If we locate the perceptual/desiderative faculties in a causal order, no room is left for the rational faculty. Consequently, to conceive the human being in full, one must alternate between two different points of view. In this paper, I argue that the solution is to reevaluate how we think about causes and norms: To say something is determined by causes is not just to locate it within a causal order but is more fundamentally to exclude it from our evaluative practices. Further, to say something is constrained by norms is not just to identify a set of evaluative practices but is more fundamentally to include it in our evaluative practices.