This essay attempts to provide and defend what may be the first actual argument in support of P. F. Strawson's merely stated vision of a response-dependent theory of moral responsibility. It does so by way of an extended analogy with the funny. In part 1, it makes the easier and less controversial case for response-dependence about the funny. In part 2, it shows the tight analogy between anger and amusement in developing the harder and more controversial case (...) for response-dependence about a kind of blameworthiness. It then defends the view from three serious skeptical challenges. (shrink)

According to the response-dependence view of moral responsibility, a person is morally responsible just in case, and in virtue of the fact that, she is an appropriate target for reactive attitudes. This paper raises a new puzzle regarding response-dependence: there is a mismatch between the granularity of the reactive attitudes and of responsibility facts. Whereas the reactive attitudes are comparatively coarse-grained, responsibility facts can be quite fine-grained. This poses a challenge for response-dependence, which seeks (...) to ground facts about responsibility in facts about the reactive attitudes. Specifically, reactive attitudes are not enough for grounding facts about degrees of moral responsibility. The responsedependence view thus requires significant revisions or supplementations. (shrink)

Response-dependence theories have historically been very popular in aesthetics, and aesthetic response-dependence has motivated response-dependence in ethics. This chapter closely examines the prospects for such theories. It breaks this category down into dispositional and fittingness strands of response-dependence, corresponding to descriptive and normative ideal observer theories. It argues that the latter have advantages over the former but are not themselves without issue. Special attention is paid to the relationship between hedonism and (...) class='Hi'>response-dependence. The chapter also introduces two aesthetic properties that lead to wrong kinds of reasons problems for aesthetic response-dependence: insightfulness and the capacity to change one’s perspective. These properties do not have obvious parallels in the ethical domain, and so present an obstacle for response-dependence even in aesthetics. The chapter ends by examining replies on behalf of the response-dependence theorist, ultimately suggesting that a restricted form of response-dependence is the most promising way forward for fans of such theories. (shrink)

Moral response-dependent metaethical theories characterize moral properties in terms of the reactions of certain classes of individuals. Nick Zangwill has argued that such theories are flawed: they are unable to accommodate the motive of duty. That is, they are unable to provide a suitable reason for anyone to perform morally right actions simply because they are morally right. I argue that Zangwill ignores significant differences between various approvals, and various individuals, and that moral response-dependent theories can accommodate the (...) motive of duty. (shrink)

Sentimentalist response-dependence views in metaethics hold that at least some values metaphysically or conceptually depend on affective responses. Some varieties account for values in terms of our dispositions to respond sentimentally under suitable conditions. While they offer a naturalistic account of values and associated motivation, they struggle to explain how values can set a standard for our responses and dispositions. What I label critical sentimentalism avoids this problem by understanding values in term of merited responses. The dilemma for (...) such views is making sense of an emotion being merited without appealing to correctly representing a response-independent property while simultaneously avoiding collapse into dispositionalism. As D’Arms and Jacobson (2023) argue, this means that sentimentalism assumes a non-representationalist, broadly motivational theory of emotion. Building on this proposal, I argue that ‘fit-making’ reasons for attitudes can be reduced to reasons for action of a sort determined by the nature of the emotion. For an evaluative property like being shameful to be response-dependent will then turn out to amount to the relevant reasons of action being ultimately based on our contingent sensibilities. Finally, I suggest that not all sentimental values fit this picture – some evaluative properties, like being funny, are best understood in dispositionalist terms after all. There’s room for pluralism in the metaphysics of value. (shrink)

Many response-dependence theorists equate moral truth with the generation of some affective psychological response: what makes this action wrong, as opposed to right, is that it would cause (or merit) affective response of type R (perhaps under ideal conditions). Since our affective nature is purely contingent, and not necessarily shared by all rational creatures (or even by all humans), response-dependence threatens to lead to relativism. In this paper, I will argue that emotional responses and (...) moral features do not align in the way predicted by the response-dependence theorist who wishes to tie morality to emotional affect. I further argue that since response-dependence accounts that tie morality to any sort of affect (be it an emotion, a desire, a desire to desire, or so on) cannot explain the objectivity and universality of morality; and since we do not need a psychological response to play a truth-constituting role in morality in order to explain the normativity or content of morality, we should reject such response-dependence accounts. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that response-dependence is not a metaphysically significant notion unless applied directly to properties. Therefore, a distinction between response-dependent concepts and response-dependent properties must be kept clear. While a notion of response-dependent concepts can in some cases be useful, it is quite different from a metaphysically notion of response-dependent properties. Some common accounts of response-dependence are described, and then it is shown how response-dependence (...) can be applied to concepts without implications for properties. Two arguments for the claim that response-dependence for concepts implies response-dependence for properties are then considered and rejected. (shrink)

I argue that there is a flaw in the way that response-dependence has been formulated in the literature, and this flawed formulation has been correctly attacked by Mark Johnston’s Missing Explanation Argument (1993, 1998). Moving to a better formulation, which is analogous to the move from behaviourism to functionalism, avoids the Missing Explanation Argument.

Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig correctly observe that Donald Davidson’s account of radical interpretation is in tension with his Swampman thought experiment. Nonetheless, I argue, they fail to see the extent of Davidson’s tension—and so do not handle it adequately—because they fail to appreciate that the thought experiment pits two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning against one another. I take an account of meaning to be response-dependent just in case it links the meaning of terms in an a (...) priori manner to the responses that a suitable subject under suitable conditions could or did have to those terms. That Davidson proposes two such accounts is deeply problematic for his program. After explaining the sense in which Davidson endorses two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning, I use that explanation to resolve the tension myself. (shrink)

This comment on Ásta’s Categories we live by: the construction of sex, gender, race, and other social categories discusses Ásta’s arguments that the conferralist view on social properties does better than a response-dependence view concerning gender. Her key argument is that a response-dependence does not allow for mistakes. This comment tries to show that a response-dependence view can accommodate misgendering and passing.

-/- Language utterances are meaningful because they mean something to someone. This truism motivates regarding linguistic meaning as a response-dependent property of language utterances. But the properties called ‘response-dependent’ in the literature differ substantially. This paper discusses three kinds with respect to their metaphysics, calling them by their more precise bynames ‘judgment-dependent’, ‘response-dispositional’, and (genuinely) ‘response-dependent’. Looking at what it takes for something to have such a property, we can devise a test to determine which of (...) the three kinds of property we are dealing with. This test is then used to corroborate Goldberg’s (2012) finding that Davidson’s two accounts of linguistic meaning, the Radical Interpretation (RI) account and the account from Language Learning (LL) by triangulation, while both response-dependent (in the broad sense), differ in kind. The test shows that (RI) is an account of meaning as a judgment-dependent property, (LL) as a response-dependent property. But whereas Goldberg argued for giving up (LL) and retaining (RI) in order to have a single account of linguistic meaning, this paper argues in favour of (LL) over (RI). It shows that (i) (RI) cannot exist without (LL), and (ii) (LL) covers more ground than (RI) because it can account for both speaker and listener meaning. So, while (RI) may evolve out of (LL) and has its place in some situations, (LL) is the basis we need in order to account for linguistic meaning. (shrink)

Tesis doctoral presentada en el departament de Lògica Història i Filosofia de la Ciencia de la Universitat de Barcelona per optar al títol de Doctor en Filosofia.

The dominant view about the nature of aesthetic value holds it to be response-dependent. We believe that the dominance of this view owes largely to some combination of the following prevalent beliefs: 1 The belief that challenges brought against response-dependent accounts in other areas of philosophy are less challenging when applied to response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value. 2 The belief that aesthetic value is instrumental and that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates this purported fact. (...) 3 The belief that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates the widely acknowledged anthropocentricity of aesthetic value. 4 The belief that response-dependence about aesthetic value alone accommodates aesthetic normativity. We argue that each of these beliefs is false, and that the dominance of response-dependent accounts of aesthetic value is therefore largely without foundation. (shrink)

A fully developed sophisticated response-dependent account would fill in specifications for B (the beings) and C (the conditions), would probably replace the reference to disapproval with a reference to a more complex response, and might involve a more complex scheme.[ii] For simplicity, however, I shall focus my argument on the above simple scheme of moral wrongness, since added complexities will be irrelevant to my argument.

It is popular to hold that our primary epistemic access to specific response-dependent properties like the fearsome or admirable (or so-called ‘affective properties’) is constituted by the corresponding emotion. I argue that this view is incompatible with a widely held meta-ethical view, according to which affective properties have deontic force. More specifically, I argue that this view cannot accommodate for the requirement that deontic entities provide guidance. If affective properties are to guide the formation of the corresponding emotion, our (...) primary access to them cannot be provided by that same emotion. (shrink)

Response-dependent accounts of value claim that to understand what we are saying about the objects of our value judgments, we must take into account the responses those objects provoke. Recent discussions of the proposal that value is response-dependent are obscured by dogmas about response-dependence, that (1) response-dependency must be known a priori, (2) must hold necessarily, and (3) the terms involved must designate rigidly. These “dogmas” stand in the way of formulating and assessing a clear (...) conception of value as response-dependent. I point out these dogmas and argue that there is no good reason for subscribing to them. (shrink)

There is a widespread sentiment that social objects such as nation-states, borders, and pieces of money are just figments of our collective imagination and not really ‘out there’ in the world. Call this the ‘antirealist intuition’. Eliminativist, reductive materialist, and immaterialist views of social objects can all make sense of the antirealist intuition, in one way or another. But these views face serious difficulties. A promising alternative view is nonreductive materialism. Yet it is unclear whether and how nonreductive materialists can (...) make sense of the antirealist intuition. I develop a version of nonreductive materialism that is able to meet this explanatory demand. The central idea is that social objects are materially constituted, response-dependent objects. I go on to offer an independent argument in favor of this response-dependent view of social objects. I then suggest that a proponent of this view can appeal to the response-dependent nature of social objects to explain, or explain away, the antirealist intuition. (shrink)

In the history of modern philosophy systematic connections were assumed to hold between the modal concepts of logical possibility and necessity and the concept of conceivability. However, in the eyes of many contemporary philosophers, insuperable objections face any attempt to analyze the modal concepts in terms of conceivability. It is important to keep in mind that a philosophical explanation of modality does not have to take the form of a reductive analysis. In this paper I attempt to provide a (...) class='Hi'>response-dependent account of the modal concepts in terms of conceivability along the lines of a nonreductive model of explanation. (shrink)

A response-dependent concept is a concept defined via reference to the psychological responses of suitably situated subjects. For example, something is red, according to the response-dependent account of that concept, if and only if it would look red to suitable subjects under suitable conditions; something is uncomfortable, according to the response-dependent account of that concept, if and only if it causes the discomfort of suitable subjects in suitable conditions; and so we might go on.

Writers on metaethics divide over two conceptions of what moral realism comes to. The first of these —the “Modest” conception — commits to the truth-aptness of moral judgments. The second —the “Robust” conception — commits to the mind- or stance- or response-dependence of such judgments. In this paper I take up the relationship of response-dependent (RD) moral theories to these conceptions of realism. Some proponents of RD views see themselves as opponents of realism. On the Modest conception (...) they are not, I argue. And the resources they have to respond to the challenges of the Robust conception are considerable. A capably mounted form of RD, responsive to the motivations for Robust realism, puts pressure on the resources Robust realism has for resisting response-dependence. If so, the theoretical distance between RD views and Robust realist views may be smaller than one might suppose. (shrink)

The traditional conception of response-dependence isinadequate because it cannot account for all intuitivecases of response-dependence. In particular, it is unableto account for the response-dependence of (aesthetic, moral, epistemic...) values. I therefore propose tosupplement the traditional conception with an alternativeone. My claim is that only a combination of the twoconceptions is able to account for all intuitivecases of response-dependence.

Some concepts, such as colour concepts or value concepts, seem to bear traces of the mind's own make-up. For instance, the character of perceptually-determined colour concepts seems in some sense derivative from the character of the visual system. Thus, it has seemed plausible to claim that the corresponding colour properties are dispositions to elicit certain visual experiences in normal observers under suitable conditions. Much the same has been suggested for value concepts. An extreme position would be that colours and values (...) therefore are not in the world at all, they instead are mere projections that tell us more about the users of response-dependent concepts than about the world they inhabit. But even setting aside such extreme views, a number of important philosophical and psychological questions remain open. What exactly is response-dependence, and does any concept have this feature? What is the appropriate metaphysics for properties represented by response-dependent concepts, and for these concepts themselves? What determines the extension of such properties? How are we to account for knowledge expressed in terms of response-dependent concepts? What mechanisms correctly explain the origins of response-dependent concepts, and their role in representation? This volume brings together a wide range of views on these questions. (shrink)

Response-dependence theses are usually formulated in terms of a priori true biconditionals of roughly the form 'something, x, falls under the concept 'F' ↔ x would elicit response R from subjects S under conditions C'. Such formulations are vulnerable to conditional fallacy problems; counterexamples threaten whenever the C-conditions' coming to obtain might alter the object with respect to F. Crispin Wright has suggested that such problems can be avoided by placing the C-conditions in a proviso. This ensures (...) that any changes triggered by the C-conditions' coming to obtain will be irrelevant to the truth of the biconditional. I argue that this move leaves the equations vulnerable to counterexamples of a slightly different kind: Cases where the change is triggered, not by the C-conditions' coming to obtain, but by the response. I consider two ways to resist these counterexamples, and argue that both are insufficient. The upshot is a challenge that must be met if provisoed biconditionals are to serve their purpose. (shrink)

RésuméL'argument de la dépendance à la réponse en matière de responsabilité morale soutient qu'une personne est moralement responsable si, et seulement si elle est une cible appropriée d'attitudes réactives, et en vertu du fait qu'elle l'est. Cependant, si nous pouvons être partiellement moralement responsables, et si les attitudes réactives sont trop grossières pour tenir compte de différences mineures dans les caractéristiques normativement significatives des agents, alors la dépendance à la réponse est fausse. Shawn Wang appelle cela le « défi de (...) la granularité ». Cet article rejette la deuxième prémisse du défi de la granularité. Les émotions humaines sont suffisamment fines pour enregistrer de petites différences dans les caractéristiques normativement significatives des agents. Je soutiens qu'un exemple illustratif de cela est la manière dont les enfants émergent graduellement comme agents partiellement responsables. (shrink)

David Enoch, in his paper “Why Idealize?”, argues that theories of normative reasons that hold that normative facts are subject or response-dependent and include an idealization condition might have a problem in justifying the need for idealization. I argue that at least some response-dependence conceptions of normative reasons can justify idealization. I explore two ways of responding to Enoch’s challenge. One way involves a revisionary stance on the ontological commitments of the normative discourse about reasons. To establish (...) this point, I argue by analogy with the case of color perception. To make the analogy, it suffices to show that even if colors are response-dependent properties, it does not follow that some kind of idealization cannot be introduced to specify the truth conditions of color ascriptions. The second route involves the denial of Enoch’s contention that our normative discourse is implicitly committed to a realist ontology. I adduce reasons for thinking that our normative discourse only presupposes a possibility of misrepresentation. However, this feature of the normative discourse does not favor robustly objectivist as opposed to response-dependence accounts of normative reasons. Thus, I argue that proponents of response-dependence accounts can use this feature to answer the question of why to idealize. (shrink)

Doctrinally, a precedent is a case of the same or higher court that furnishes an authoritative rule for the determination of the case at hand, either because the facts are alike, or, if the facts are different, because the principle that governed the first case is applicable to the different facts. In this article I try to free precedent form the dominant doctrinal view by offering a more intuitive conception: that to be precedent means to be treated as precedent. Put (...) differently, I attempt to see precedent not as descriptive of a previous decision or rule but as the aggregate effect of responses to one or a series of court decisions in the legal community. I illustrate this viewpoint by developing a version of a response-dependent concept that incorporates our intuitive grasp of how precedent works. In the pursuit of this task I rely on the basic philosophical premises of response-dependence theory and on one paradigmatic response-dependent concept—the quality of being funny. (shrink)

Mark Johnston claims the pragmatist theory of truth is inconsistent with the way we actually employ and talk about that concept. He is, however, sympathetic enough to attempt to rescue its respectable core using ‘response-dependence’, a revisionary form of which he advocates as a method for clarifying various philosophically significant concepts. But Johnston has misrepresented pragmatism; it does not require rescuing, and as I show here, his ‘missing explanation argument’ against pragmatism therefore fails. What Johnston and other critics (...) including Putnam have overlooked is the distinctive nature of the pragmatist strategy, specifically, that it is non-reductive, a characteristic it shares with a more promising form of response-dependence; what Johnston calls ‘Descriptive Protagoreanism’ (DP). In this paper I offer a defence of pragmatism and show how it might be re-articulated as a form of DP. (shrink)

This paper explores a distinction between two types of response- dependence (RD) account (shallow vs. deep). This distinction is inherent in much of the existing literature, however it is neither widely nor well understood, and has never been drawn explicitly. The distinction is often taken to be a metaphysical, or ‘realism-relevant’ one—i.e. deep RD accounts entail qualified realism (or perhaps anti-realism), while shallow RD accounts are metaphysically neutral. I argue that the distinction is not reliably realism-relevant. I formulate (...) a weaker version of the distinction that may help prevent some common and understandable confusion about RD biconditionals and their relationship to realism. The weaker distinction rests on the different roles assigned to RD biconditionals by the two types of account. (shrink)

The paper proposes and defends the following characterization of response dependent property: a property is response-dependent iff there is a response-dependence biconditional for a concept signifying it which holds in virtue of the nature of the property. Finding out whether a property is such is to a large extent a posteriori matter. Finally, colors are response dependent: they are essentially tied to issuing the relevant experiences, so that having those experiences does give access to their, (...) dispositional, nature. Finally, some important contrary views are critically discussed in the paper. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that colours or flavours or values are in some way less objective than shape or mass or motion. This paper explores the approach to capturing this thought that is based on the idea of ‘ response-dependence ’. First, it is argued that the conceptions of response-dependence developed by Mark Johnston, Philip Pettit and Crispin Wright fail to capture this thought adequately. Then, the rest of the paper proposes an alternative conception, based in (...) part on Kit Fine's notion of " essence ", which looks more likely to succeed in capturing the thought adequately. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the kind of virtue ethics the author attributes to Hume and Nietzsche. There are two major differences between Aristotelian eudaimonistic virtue ethics and that of Hume and Nietzsche, discussed in the chapter. First, though character plays an important, even central role in their theories, the notions of ideal character and character as a highly robust set of dispositions are not evident. Second, the chapter explicates the virtue ethics of Nietzsche and Hume in an empiricist naturalistic manner. It (...) addresses the question: What type of virtue ethics best suits Hume's and Nietzsche's views? The chapter summarizes the core features of the response dependent virtue ethics ascribed to Hume and Nietzsche. It also outlines the basic nature of the differing sensibilities which for Hume and Nietzsche bring the world of ethics as a world of normativity into being. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical appraisal of some claims recently advanced by Crispin Wright and others in support of a response-dispositional (RD) approach to issues in epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of the social sciences. These claims take a lead from Plato's discussion of the status of moral value-judgements in the Euthyphro and from Locke's account of 'secondary qualities' such as colour, texture and taste. The idea is that a suitably specified description of best opinion (or optimal (...) class='Hi'>response) for some given area of discourse will provide all that is needed in the way of objectivity while avoiding the problems raised by anti-realists like Michael Dummett with respect to the existence of truth-values that transcend our utmost powers of recognition or verification. I focus on three main areas - mathematics, morals and constitutional law - and argue that an RD approach falls short in certain crucial respects. That is to say, it works out either as a trivial (tautological) claim to the effect that 'best judgement' cannot - per definiens - diverge from truth under conditions of idealized epistemic warrant, or as an approach that leans strongly towards the anti-realist side of the argument. Thus the promised 'third way' - here as in other present-day contexts of debate - most often carries no substantive implications for our thinking about truth, moral virtue, or justice. Elsewhere, especially when applied to juridical matters, it lays chief stress on the truth-constitutive role of human judgements or responses, and hence the impossibility of appealing to standards of natural justice beyond some existing highest authority or source of constitutional warrant. This point is made with specific reference to recent events surrounding the 'election' (or leverage-into-office) of President George W. Bush. In such cases, I conclude, an RD approach would tend strongly to endorse the view that 'best opinion' - as enshrined, say, in the deliverance of US Supreme Court justices - is the furthest we can get towards an adequate assessment of the moral and political issues. Key Words: anti-realism • ethics • judgement • mathematics • political theory • realism • response-dependence. (shrink)

The question with which I shall be concerned in this paper is whether global response-dependence entails the truth of a certain noumenal form of realism: for short, a certain noumenalism. I accept that it does, at least under a plausible assumption, endorsing an argument presented by Michael Smith and Daniel Stoljar. But I try to show that, while the connection with noumenalism is undeniable, it is neither distinctive of a belief in global response-dependence nor particularly disturbing (...) for those of us who embrace that belief. (shrink)

This thesis investigates the distinction, or distinctions, between response-dependent and response-independent concepts or subject matters. I present and discuss the three most influential versions of the distinction: Crispin Wright’s, Mark Johnston’s, and Philip Pettit’s. I argue that the versions do not compete for a single job, but that they can supplement each other, and that a system of different distinctions is more useful than a single distinction. I distinguish two main paradigms of response-dependence: response-dependence (...) of subject matter, and response-dependence of concepts only. I develop Pettit’s ‘ethocentric’ story of concept acquisition into an account of concept evolution that suggests answers to a range of hard questions about language, reality, and the relation between them. I argue that while response-dependence theses of subject matter can be motivated in very different ways, the resulting theses are less different than they might seem. I suggest that the traditional ways of distinguishing response-dependent subject matters from response-independent ones – in terms of a priori biconditionals connecting facts of the disputed class with responses in subjects in favourable conditions, and fulfilling some further conditions such as non-triviality and sometimes necessity – may not be the best approach. I also discuss two general problems for response-dependence theses: the problem of ‘finkish’ counterexamples, and the problem of specifying the ‘favourable conditions’ a priori, yet in a non-trivial way. The discussion of response-dependence is informed by a framework based on the idea that some realism disputes can be viewed as location disputes: disputes over the correct location of the disputed properties among several levels of candidate properties. The approach taken in this work is a charitable one: I try to make sense of response-dependence. The conclusion is the correspondingly optimistic one that the idea of response-dependence makes sense. (shrink)

You are, I suspect, exceedingly good at knowing what you intend to do. In saying this I pay you no special compliment. Knowing what one intends is the normal state to be in. And this cries out for some explanation. How is it that we are so authoritative about our own intentions? There are two different approaches that one can take in answering this question. The first credits us with special perceptual powers which we use when we examine our own (...) minds. On this view we detect our own mental states in much the same way that we detect the state of the world around us; but the powers we direct inward are much less prone t o error than those we direct outwards. The alternative approach denies that there is such a thing as inward perception. On this view the whole idea the we detect our own mental states using some kind of internal perceptual apparatus is misguided; a wholly different account is needed. (shrink)

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong. Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral (...) properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists. (shrink)

The recent revival of interest in the notion of a secondary quality and its generalization to the notion of response-dependence has brought forward a number of interesting theories encompassing a wide variety of domains. I shall assume that the general line of approach embodied in many such theories is plausible and perhaps basically right, and address one particular epistemological issue. Most theories of response-dependence are heavily involved with notions of aprioricity, as we shall document presently. Unfortunately, (...) despite being much used they are rarely explicitly discussed by the main proponents of the relevant theories. As one of the critics, J. Edwards, has succinctly put it. (shrink)

Epistemicists claim that if it is vague whether p, it is unknowable whether p. Some contest this on epistemic grounds: vague intuitions about vague matters need not fully preclude knowledge, if those intuitions are response-dependent in some special sense of enabling vague knowledge. This paper defends the epistemicist principle that vagueness entails ignorance against such objections. I argue that not only is response-dependence an implausible characterization of actual vague matters, its mere possibility poses no threat to epistemicism (...) and is properly accounted for by the epistemicist’s own principles. (shrink)

Joshua Gert offers an original account of normative facts and properties, those which have implications for how we ought to behave. He argues that our ability to think and talk about normative notions such as reasons and benefits is dependent on how we respond to the world around us, including how we respond to the actions of other people.

Various philosophers have wanted to move from a (P. F.) “Strawsonian” understanding of the “practices of moral responsibility” to a non-skeptical result. I focus on a strategy moving from a “response-dependent” theory of responsibility. I aim to show that a key analogy associated with this strategy fails to support a compatibilist result. It seems clear that nothing could show that nothing we have been laughing at has really been funny. If “the funny” is similar to “the blameworthy”, then perhaps (...) it would follow that nothing could show that no one we have ever blamed has really been blameworthy. The comparison is interesting, but inconclusive: even if we grant that these properties are normatively similar, the latter has substantive empirical presuppositions, whereas the former does not. One important upshot: even if the standards operative in our practices cannot be mistaken, it could nevertheless be that no one has ever met these standards. (shrink)

Recently Michael Devitt [2006] has argued for how adopting a position he calls ‘worldmaking’ is dangerous to a realist position. He further suggests that response-dependence under the form ‘global response-dependence’ is aversion of ‘worldmaking’. The aim of this paper is to identify what this supposed danger may be if any and to suggest one possible direction argumentation may take to decide the supposed debate between realists and world makers.