What is the function of morality—what is it all about? What is the basis of morality—what explains our moral agency and patiency? This essay defends a unique Kantian answer to these questions. Morality is about securing our independence from each other by giving each other equal discretion over whether and how we interact. The basis of our moral agency and patiency is practical reason. The first half addresses objections that this account cannot explain the moral patiency of beings who are (...) not also moral agents such as infantile, elderly, and infirm human beings and the other animals. The second half argues that this account is preferable, on grounds of consistency with the basic Kantian account of the function and content of morality, to the familiar account of our moral patiency, popular especially though not exclusively with contemporary Kantians, in terms of the value of humanity. (shrink)

What explains why we are subjects for whom objects can have value, and what explains which objects have value for us? Axiologicians say that the value of humanity is the answer. I argue that our value, no matter what it is like, cannot perform this task. We are animals among others. An explanation of the value of objects for us must fit into an explanation of the value of objects for animals generally. Different objects have value for different animals. Those (...) differences depend on differences in animal natures and, in particular, on the diverse characteristic capacities of different animals. Once we invoke animal natures, there is nothing for the value of animality, including the value of humanity, to explain. (shrink)

What is it to think a generic normative thought of the form ‘Human beings should exercise regularly’ or ‘Human beings must keep promises’? I argue that although such thoughts resemble, in different respects, intentions and evaluative beliefs, they are not, first and foremost, either of those types of states. They instead have a different temporal profile of a settled disposition of the will which grounds specific intentions to acts and specific evaluative beliefs when the subject is in the relevant circumstances (...) for either. Such states provide for a distinct type of practical irrationality, which explains the resemblance to intentions. We also can form evaluative beliefs through reflection on those settled dispositions, which explains how they are the basis for types of a distinct type of evaluative belief. (shrink)

Is the exemplar of modern ethical theory estranged from their intimates because the motive of duty dominates their motivational psychology? While this challenge against modern ethical theory is familiar, I argue that with respect to a certain strand of Kantian ethical theory, it does not so much as make sense. I explain the content and functional role of the motive of duty in the psychology of the moral exemplar, stressing in particular how that motive shapes and informs the content of (...) others, including those characteristic of intimacy. I argue that to the extent that a subject does not integrate their motive of duty with their other motives, their moral and intimate relationships are compromised, and on the same grounds, because intimate relationships are interpersonal relationships and the motive of duty just is the motive to respect another person as a separate person. (shrink)

I offer an account of how a constitutivist metaphysics of capacities grounds a unique interpretation of propositions about the nature of our action, focusing specifically on propositions about acting under the guise of the good and acting from practical knowledge. I then show that these interpretations can explain not only the possibility of cases often taken as counterexamples to these propositions but also can explain why those cases are odd or not paradigmatic exercises of the relevant capacity.