What it takes to successfully ground rationality norms in a constitutive account of agency

Abstract

Abstract: Current accounts of normativity struggle to explain the source of the normative grip of rationality norms. They fail to explain, that is, why one should be committed to adhering to rationality norms rather than to violating them, or why one should be guided by rationality norms at all. A popular fix is to appeal to a constitutive account of agency: the normative grip of rationality norms can be found in constitutive features of agency, such as beliefs, desires or drives. If accepting rationality norms is constitutive of this feature of agency, then, in virtue of being an agent, we are guided by rationality norms. This is one promising way to pin down the source of the normative grip of rationality norms. The problem, I argue in the first half of this dissertation, is that existing accounts do not actually achieve this. This failure can be attributed to one core issue: none of the accounts can explain why we should care to be agents. The purpose of my project is to provide a new account of agency which can successfully answer this core concern, and thus ground rationality norms. In the second half of the dissertation, I propose a new constitutive account of agency which has two main tenets. First, it is plausible to think of agency as something we have chosen and continue to choose. I call this elective agency. It places us in a unique position to answer the question of why we should care to be agents rather than non-agents. Second, the distinguishing mark of elective agency is something I call the worth-drive. By embracing the worth-drive, we seek to establish the value of being agents, and of constantly re-electing agency. I argue that accepting rationality norms is constitutive of the worth-drive, and that the worth-drive is partially constitutive of agency. Being able to choose agency means that we choose to accept the rationality norms that come along with it. Because we have this constitutive drive to establish value, we care to be agents and we care to follow rationality norms. I argue that this constitutive account is the most promising for grounding the normative grip of rationality norms.D.Phil. (Philosophy