Norm-Guided Formation of Cares Without Volitional Necessity – A Response to Frankfurt

Abstract

This essay defends leeway-libertarian source-conditions for autonomous cares against arguments by Harry Frankfurt that our decisions would be arbitrary and our will too empty to be autonomous unless we each discover personal limits to what we can care about that derive from our volitionally necessary cares for some ideals, persons, goals or projects. While this argument is related to the general "luck problem" for libertarians, Frankfurt’s contentions depend on more specific psychological claims that some kinds of leeway-liberty are autonomy-undermining. I respond that liberty concerning one's most basic cares or identity-defining commitments appears problematic to Frankfurt because he lacks an adequate conception of how cares are formed. His conclusions can be avoided if (a) values and norms can be apprehended by agents and rationally guide the setting of new final ends, or the formation of new cares (b) without already motivating the agent by connection to natural desires or standing commitments (as Humean versions of reasons-internalism require). Put positively, as Kant and Kierkegaard held, human beings form “selves” or practical identities by way of “projective motivation” – a volitional process, distinct from instant decision, in which we generate new motivation in response to apparently justifying considerations. While rational commitment to some norms may be inherent in the constitutive conditions of personhood, this must not be conflated with volitional commitment to the same norms. The possibility of this model shows that Frankfurt's arguments for volitionally necessities fail; the projective account also offers a better way of explaining the volitional identification involved in cares, and the factors involved in the accessibility of options to an agent's capacity for choice.