Constructivism about Reasons

Abstract

Abstract Do valuable things possess their value independently of our valuing them? Or does their value always depend, at least ultimately, on our taking them to be valuable? I have argued elsewhere that Darwinian considerations settle this debate in favor of the latter, antirealist view.¹ Things are valuable ultimately because we take them to be. But the ultimately in this statement is important. While there are, ultimately, no normative truths that hold independently of our evaluative attitudes— while normative realism is false, in other words— it does not follow that it’s impossible to go wrong with one’s normative judgments. On the contrary, there is still a robust sense in which normative judgments can be, and often are, in error. This is the important core of truth in realism. The truth in antirealism, however— and what makes antirealism the right view in the end— is that the standards of correctness that determine what counts as an error are ultimately set by our own normative judgments. To put the point another way: A person does not have a normative reason merely in virtue of taking herself to have it; it’s easy to go wrong about one’s reasons, and we do so all the time.