Non-Self and Ethics: Kantian and Buddhist Themes

After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self doctrine as a process engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self

Generosity And Mechanism In Descartes's Passions

Descartes’s mechanistic account of the passions is sometimes dismissed as one which lacks the resources toadequately explain the cognitive aspect of emotion. By some, he is taken to be “feeling theorist”, reducing thepassions to a mere awareness of the physiological state of the soul-body union. If this reading of Descartes’spassions is correct, his theory fails not only because it cannot account for the intentional nature of the passions,but also because the passions cannot play the role in Descartes’s moral theory they are meant to play. I arguethat Descartes’s account is not best read as a feeling theory. I defend a reading of the Cartesian passions whichacknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes, passions are modes of the soul withcognitive significance, they are perceptions of relational axiological properties. Thus, Descartes’s theory of thepassions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct. As a means of elaborating on thenormative nature of the passions I consider the role of generosity in Descartes’s moral theor

Self-Knowledge and the Development of Virtue

Persons interested in developing virtue will find attending to, and attempting to act on, the right reason for action a rich resource for developing virtue. In this paper I consider the role of self-knowledge in intentional moral development. I begin by making a general case that because improving one’s moral character requires intimate knowledge of its components and their relation to right reason, the aim of developing virtue typically requires the development of self-knowledge. I next turn to Kant’s ethics for an account which explains the reflexivity involved in moral reasoning generally, and the significance of self-knowledge to morality. I then take up Robert Audi’s interesting notion of the harnessing and unharnessing of reasons as a potential way of strengthening the agent’s connection to right reason, and his concerns about our limited and indirect resources for becoming virtuous. I argue that harnessing and unharnessing are not plausibly characterized as activities to be accomplished by an exertion of will, rather they involve a dynamic, cognitive, reflective attempt to gain self-knowledge and align oneself with one’s moral reasons for action

Self‐knowledge and moral stupidity

Most commonplace moral failure is not conditioned by evil intentions or the conscious desire to harm or humiliate others. It is more banal and ubiquitous – a form of moral stupidity that gives rise to rationalization, self‐deception, failures of due moral consideration, and the evasion of responsibility. A kind of crude, perception‐distorting self‐absorption, moral stupidity is the cause of many moral missteps; moral development demands the development of self‐knowledge as a way out of moral stupidity. Only once aware of the presence or absence of particular desires and beliefs can an agent have authority over them or exercise responsibility for their absence. But what is the connection between self‐knowledge and moral development? I argue that accounts which construe instances of self‐knowledge as like the verdicts of a judge cannot explain its potential role in moral development, and claim that it must be conceived of in a way that makes possible a process of self‐refinement and self‐regulation. Making use of Buddhist moral psychology, I argue that when self‐knowledge plays a role in moral development, it includes a quality of attention to one's experience best modeled as the work of the craftsperson, not as judge

Emotional work and moral agency

Bibliography: p. 116-120

Practical reason and the myth of the given

grantor: University of TorontoMy thesis argues that the debate about the nature of practical reasoning is hindered by an erroneous distinction between theoretical and practical reasoning which, when redrawn, allows for a better account of the normative force of practical reasons. Typically, reasoning about action is taken to bear explanatory burdens which reasoning about belief is not. Rational constraints are thought to be categorically binding in theoretical reasoning, but only hypothetically binding in practical reasoning. Instrumentalists, who hold that reason's role in action is limited to the generation and evaluation of means to ends, ends set by something other than reason itself cannot appeal directly to reason's authority in the explanation of how reasons rationally compel action. Instead, they focus on the question of what motivates action. This focus obscures the more fundamental question, 'how are judgements, practical and theoretical, normatively binding?' It prejudices an analysis of practical reason by supposing it to involve normative commitments which theoretical reasoning doesn't. I outline Wilfrid Sellars's analysis of the normative commitments implicit in theoretical reasoning and apply its lessons to an analysis of practical reasoning. In Sellars's terminology, attempts to justify by appeals to non-normative facts employ "mongrel concepts," which illegitimately conflate the causal and normative orders of explanation. Using this concept as a gauge for evaluating accounts of theoretical and practical reasoning, I show how views that characterize reasons simultaneously as mental particulars, merely descriptively true of agents, and as general standards authorizing conduct, fail. I argue that both instrumentalist and Kantian accounts of practical reason invoke mongrel concepts. To focus on the deeper question of how reasons are binding, I redraw the distinction between practical and theoretical reason, showing that puzzles purportedly specific to moral reasoning are instead, puzzles for rationality itself. I argue that the normative authority of reasons is explained by their public character. The practice of giving and asking for reasons, and the inferences which reasons authorize within that practice, must be understood in intersubjective terms on pain of unintelligibility. According to intersubjectivism, what we have objective reason to do is a function of what good practical discourse would vindicate.Ph.D