Defeaters and practical knowledge

Abstract

This paper situates the problem of defeaters in a larger debate about the source of normative authority. It argues in favour of a constructivist account of defeasibility, which appeals to the justificatory role of normative principles. The argument builds upon the critique of two recent attempts to deal with defeasibility: first, a particularist account, which disposes of moral principles on the ground that reasons are holistic; and second, a proceduralist view, which addresses the problem of defeaters by distinguishing between provisional and strictly universal principles. The particularist view fails to establish that moral principles have no epistemological import, but it raises important questions about their role in practical reasoning. The proceduralist view fails to distinguish between reasoning by default and reasoning by principles, but it shows that normative principles have a structural justificatory role. The constructivist view recognizes that the moral valence of normative claims vary across contexts, but denies that this is because of holism about reasons. Rather, it defends defeasibility within a constructivist account of reasoning where universality serves as the matrix of judgment. The constructivist view vindicates the justificatory role of universal normative principles, and makes room for some ordinary sources of defeasibility, which are left unaccounted by competing views, and which depend on the agent’s own progress.

1 The case for defeaters

Consider a rather ordinary piece of deliberation. I owe you a book, which I have borrowed.¹ I am under obligation to return it as I promised, but I have not read it, and I ask you if I can keep it until I do. You agree to let me have the book until I finish it. In this case, I am bound by the obligation to return the book as promised, but I am permitted to keep it for the time being. Suppose, again, that you decide to give the book to me. In this case, I am released from the obligation to return the book; or, better, there is no such obligation. In fact, returning the book would be discourteous because it would amount to rejecting a present. Then, suppose I discover that the book is not yours, and I am perplexed about what to do. We may disagree about whether I have an obligation to return the book to you as I promised, since you are not the legitimate owner. In this case, we disagree about the conditions under which this obligation binds.

How to construe these deliberative scenarios and understand their philosophical import is a matter of contest. The concept of “defeater” proves useful to articulate at least some of the subtleties of these cases. In the context of normative deliberation, a defeater is a normative claim that blocks, silences, undercuts, or undermines the normative force of other normative claims in rational deliberation. However, the defeasibility of normative claims names a problem, more than a solution, and there are competing accounts of its philosophical importance.

My proposal is that we take defeasibility to be an indication that a deliberative matter lacks normative determinacy.² This interpretation is broad enough to include cases in which normative claims fail to determine what to do (i) because there are stronger normative claims that override or cancel them,³ or else (ii) because there are other kinds of normative claims that rule them out as irrelevant. In the former case, the normative failure is due to the presence of rebutting defeaters; in the latter, to undercutting defeaters.⁴ Rebutting defeaters interact with other normative claims, by overriding, undermining, cancelling, or weakening them. Undercutting defeaters, instead, do not interfere with other normative claims: They exclude them from considerations entirely so as to deny their normative status.⁵ I choose to formulate defeasibility in terms of generic normative claims, rather than in terms of reasons or obligations, because it is an open question whether defeasibility is a property of reasons or obligations.

Understood as a normative failure, defeasibility may be defended in two ways. Moderate defeasibility is the view that the same normative claims differ in normative status and moral valence according to deliberative contexts. However, this is not to say that the normative status and moral valence of such normative claims depends on the background contexts. Radical defeasibility is the view that obligations and reasons are considerations that count in favor of doing something in specific contexts, but not in others; hence they are particular.⁶ Whether and how these two sorts of defeasibility are related is a controversial matter. They both seem to imply that knowing what to do is a sort of practical knowledge that cannot be codified. However, radical defeasibility denies that normative principles may be the source of practical knowledge and play an active role in practical reasoning, while moderate defeasibility does not commit to this view. Radical defeasibility is defended on the basis of the thesis that reasons are holistic, but it is controversial whether this is a sufficient basis for denying that moral principles convey practical knowledge about what to do.⁷ Finally, holism about reasons may not be the only source of defeasibility. In fact, the moderate view accommodates important cases of defeasibility that are not due to holism: Cases in which the normative significance of some claims does not change because of a change in the background context, but because of the agent’s change in view. This is what we ordinarily call making progress.

My aim here is not to offer a complete theory of defeasibility, but to show that the problem of defeasibility hinges on a more fundamental issue about the source of authority of reasons. I will argue the legitimate source of normative authority is rationality, and that rational justification deploys universal principles. However, normative defeasibility raises important issues about the possibility of practical inferences. I will argue for a version of Kantian constructivism that provides an alternative view of practical reasoning, where principles are both structural and generative. On the basis of this account of reasoning, I defend the claim that the deontic importance of normative claims may survive the fact that they are defeated in deliberation.

2 Defeaters as a moral problem

We all routinely experience situations where a consideration that counted as a reason for doing something in one context fails to provide us with a decisive reason in another. Is this because reasons necessarily refer to particular agents in their particular circumstances? This question becomes more poignant when we reconsider the example of the borrowed book. This is not because it is an example about moral obligations, and moral obligations enjoy a special normative status or concern especially serious matters.⁸ Rather, this is because the concept “obligation” is a deontic concept that differs significantly from the concept of “reason” understood in terms of “considerations that count in favor of something.”⁹ This paper is an attempt to relocate the debate about defeaters in a larger debate about the legitimate source of authority, by bringing this distinction to the forefront.

Here is the predicament that needs to be addressed. As deontic operators, moral obligations are constraints: Their job is to limit what we do. Whether constraints are morally legitimate importantly depends on their rational justification. A strong argument about moral legitimacy establishes that moral claims should be rationally justified on the basis of principles that are universally binding for all relevant agents.¹⁰ This requirement expresses the (moral) preoccupation to avoid arbitrariness, discrimination, and is meant to block exceptions in one’s favor. Take the case of a norm regulating access to the library, which says that users who do not return books should pay a fine. Most of you would be surprised to learn that the norm is applied to everyone but Barbara; you would ask for an explanation. Most of you would object if the librarian accounts for the exception by explaining that Barbara is the daughter of a generous donor. This exception can and should be objected to as unfair and discriminatory. The requirement of universality serves the purpose of excluding such exceptions as immoral because it is arbitrary.

On the other hand, a widely shared view is that the appropriate moral recognition of distinctive and specific moral aspects of contexts requires granting exceptions.¹¹ Suppose that a regular theater ticket is $30. Anyone who wants to go to the theater ought to pay the ticket. Some, if not most, of you would judge the usher who makes an exception for Andrej because he is poor as thoughtful and considerate. Perhaps, some would object to the institutionalization of the exception, e.g. a principle establishing that all certified poor people could enter theaters without tickets, on the ground that such a principle would be ultimately self-defeating, e.g. causing theaters to close down. More importantly, the usher’s exception may resist the formulation of any more complex principle (even though inspired by equity). In fact, the case might be such that the usher intends to make an exception for Andrej, and only for Andrej, out of gratitude for Andrej’s dedication as a former director of the theater on 42nd Street. How do we account for this exception, and avoid immoral arbitrariness?

Arguably, any theory of reasons for action should take into account special circumstances, but defenders of radical defeasibility demand that deliberators pay attention to particulars in ways that make universal principles dispensable. They claim that the moral valence of reasons varies according to changes in the background circumstances. Thus, there is an interesting disagreement about how to explain cases such as Andrej’s. According to some, the explanation of the exception must be principled, or else reasons become arbitrary. According to others, instead, to search for a principled account of exceptions is to misunderstand the very problem of defeasible reasons. Notably, for Jonathan Dancy, the holistic nature of reasons counts against the epistemological role of moral principles. This is controversial.¹² Dancy acknowledges that there is a logical gap between holism about normative reasons and moral particularism (Dancy 2006, pp. 81–82); and he also acknowledges that for some normative subjects (such as mathematics) universal principles play a significant role (Dancy 2006, p. 82), but he denies that the same holds true in morality, insisting that holism about normative reasons leads to moral particularism (Dancy 2006, p. 132).¹³

Like Dancy, I think that moral claims do not behave differently than non-moral reasons. I also agree that the recognition of variability in the normative significance and moral valence of claims across contexts urges us to reconsider the alleged form of practical reasoning. And, like the particularist, I think that the phenomena of variability described above forces us to reject a classical account of practical inference. However, in contrast to Dancy and other particularists, I will argue that a radical view of defeasibility mischaracterizes and misunderstands the basic problem of the variability of normative claims, and commits to a problematic account of moral authority. This is because they equate the authority and deontic importance of normative claims with their overridingness in deliberation. In the next section, I begin by situating normative defeasibility in its proper context.

3 Normative defeasibility in context

The issue of defeasibility arises in the context of the rule of law. In a pioneering work on defeasibility, H.L.A. Hart argues that for normative concepts such as “contract” it is theoretically impossible to identify necessary and sufficient conditions of application because it is impossible to specify ex ante (viz. before the application to particular cases) all the implicit exceptions. It is always possible to discover new exceptions to the rule that we have not anticipated, and this openness precludes the final delimitation of necessary and sufficient conditions. To ignore the irreducibly defeasible character of normative concepts is to misrepresent them (Hart 1955, p. 150). This semantic claim about the open-texture nature of normative concepts and the normative claim about the defeasibility of legal claims are distinct, but they can be regarded as broadly analogous, in that they both have the effects of creating the condition for discretional judgment.¹⁴

It is noteworthy that the reference to the discretionality of the judge is internal to the rule of law, e.g. as opposed to ruling by decree. That is, legal order is afforded by a principled, law-like structure, and the spirit of the law is an important substantive criterion for determining the admissibility of defeaters. The judge is required to consider whether the newly discovered exception can be absorbed as an exception to the rule without affecting the basic meaning of the rule. Furthermore, the principled structure of law is conceptually related to legitimacy. Indeed, it is a basic condition for its legitimacy. It is a conceptual matter that legal obligations imply universal principles because they apply in a shared context of mutual accountability and answerability.

Arguably, this feature of legal defeasibility is broadly analogous to moral defeasibility, at least, as far as moral obligations are concerned.¹⁵ The purpose of this section is to establish two points, which will be further developed in the course of the argument. First, phenomena associated with defeasibility make sense within a principled structure. Second, the principled structure of normative claims is a condition of their legitimacy. These considerations suffice to show that the radical view of defeasibility, which disposes of moral principles on the grounds of variability of normative claims across contexts, mischaracterizes the moral problem of defeaters as presented in Sect. 1. As a consequence, it disregards the fundamental role of principles at the level of justification. This is a risky position to take, because it may show lack of appreciation of principled reactions against discrimination and arbitrariness.

These remarks may seem to be based on a broad similarity between ethics and law, regarding the form of justification. An objection may be made that this is exactly what is at stake. However, my case for the moderate view of defeasibility does not rest on an unqualified analogy with law. In fact, I recognize a seeming asymmetry between the moral and legal case. In the case of legal defeasibility, the problem is resolved by appealing to the judge as the institutional figure that exercises her authority ex jure.¹⁶ In the moral case, the issue of discretional judgment is complicated by the fact that there is no institutional source of moral authority, or at least claims that morality is merely an institution, hence thoroughly conventional, is controversial.¹⁷ Thus, the disagreement about the philosophical significance of moral defeaters revolves around a deeper disagreement about the status of moral claims and the source of their legitimate authority. My point will be that the source of authority of moral claims is the very same as the source of authority of normative claims, that is, reasoning.

4 Oughts and obligations

A standard strategy to account for the phenomena of variability of moral claims across contexts is to deploy the term prima facie ought, which stands for a defeasible duty. By introducing this terminology, W.D. Ross clarifies that the qualification prima facie does not mean that the duty is only apparent; instead, it is “an objective fact involved in the nature of the situation”.¹⁸ Indeed, to capture the philosophical significance of cases where moral duties conflict, it is crucial to take into account that the “ought” not acted upon does not lose its moral and deontic importance. Part of the ordinary understanding of moral duties is that they remain normative and significant even when they are occasionally defeated by other duties, as it happens in the case of moral conflict that—happily or tragically—allow for a resolution. In such cases, the issue arises about the relation between defeaters and defeated duties.¹⁹

Current debates about defeasibility build upon some diagnosed failures of ethical theories to plausibly account for the aftermath of moral conflicts. The discussion is complicated by the fact that the term “ought” is often understood in a broad sense, which includes unqualified and qualified duties, obligations, and reasons (Dancy 1993, pp. 31–37; Horty 2014; Broome 2004). There is a rationale for this choice of term, even though it is not always made explicit. The broad sense of “ought” is instrumental in any theory of practical reasoning that aims to guide ordinary agents by providing them with the means for calculation. The broad sense of ought serves as a current term for aggregating reasons for action. This is apparent in the case of the “balancing structure” model of reasoning.²⁰ On this view, the agent is supposed to select the option whose overall weight is greatest. Take, for instance, John Broome:

Each reason is associated with a metaphorical weight. This weight need not be anything so precise as a number; it may be an entity of some vaguer sort. The reasons for you to $\phi$ and those for you not to $\phi$ are aggregated or weighed together in some way. The aggregate is some function of the weights of the individual reasons. The function may not be simply additive. [...] It may be a complicated function, and the specific nature of the reasons may influence it. Finally, the aggregate comes out in favor of your $\phi$ing, and that is why you ought to $\phi$. (Broome 2004, p. 37)²¹

It is not at all obvious that the concept of moral obligation is reducible to the concept of what there is most reason to do. Obligations refer to requirements that would be wrong for the agent to violate. Suppose you have an obligation of fidelity to tell the truth to your friend, but you also have an obligation to protect her from some horrifying truths. Upon deliberation, you decide that there are stronger reasons not to be straightforward with your friend. It is predictable and commendable, not only conceivable, that you may still feel bound by the obligation of fidelity, even though you are convinced that you have done the right thing. This is to say that the deontic importance of moral obligation of fidelity survives the fact that it has been defeated in deliberation. I leave aside some complications about the nature of the remainders of correct moral deliberation. The example suffices to establish that there is something about the concept of moral obligation that is not preserved by the analysis in terms of reasons.

To vindicate this claim, there are at least two strategies. The first is to argue that the concept of moral obligation differs from other normative concepts, such as reasons. For instance, one may argue that in order to hold people answerable for complying with moral obligations, we have to assume that they can know that they are obligated, that they can regulate their conduct by this public knowledge.²² A second strategy is to argue that rational justification necessarily appeals to principles, and ultimately amounts to a public justification, in ways that render the balancing model inadequate as a form of practical reasoning. I will adopt the second strategy, and in the remaining part of the essay I will defend a constructivist account of rational justification.

5 Against applied principles

Kantian constructivism is the view that there are objective criteria for deciding what to do and that such criteria are principles of action that are both subjectively authoritative and universally binding.²³ The qualifier “Kantian” signals that the constructivist theory I defend takes reasoning to be autonomous, that is, independent of what reasoning is about, and of what reasoners happen to desire or value. The function of practical reasoning is not to track moral truths that are there prior to and independently of its activity. Thus, the criteria of correctness for practical reasoning do not conform to its object domain. An important implication of this view is that there is no definite subject domain, that is, there are no objects of reasoning prior to and independently of the very activity of reasoning.²⁴

A prominent argument in support of constructivism establishes a distinction between reasoning aimed to action, and reasoning aimed at knowledge. According to Christine Korsgaard, acting on and grasping a bit of knowledge differ, and the difference is such that it counts against the conceiving of moral principles as conveying knowledge about what to do.²⁵ She names this the application model of practical knowledge. When moral principles are taken to state some piece of knowledge, the question arises how to put that piece of knowledge into practice. According to Korsgaard, the question can be settled only by introducing a new set of principles, about which the same issue arises. The application model is thus shown to face a regress.²⁶ But the fundamental mistake of the application model of moral knowledge is that it misrepresents the relation between judgment and action, by treating moral principles as stating moral facts. The ability to apply knowledge in action presupposes the capacity for action, but this is exactly what we are trying to understand. She concludes that: “The model of applied knowledge does not correctly capture the relation between the normative standards to which action is subject and the deliberative process” (Korsgaard 2003, p. 112).

Thus far, the constructivist argument is not hostile to defeasibility. In fact, it carries some force against traditional models of practical reasoning, which identify the role of moral principles as the premises of a practical inference. In contrast to such models, constructivism denies that moral reasoning deploys subsumption or deduction. The role of moral principles must be conceived differently. Korsgaard presents the difference by taking practical reasoning to be a decision procedure. I think this is a misleading formulation of constructivism, which does not fully capture the real difference between classical and constructivist accounts of rational justification.²⁷ At this stage of the argument, however, there is another live option beside constructivism. Korsgaard’s argument about the distinction between grasping a bit of knowledge and acting does not establish that there is no room for practical knowledge. In fact, what the argument seems to show is that moral principles do not play a pivotal role in determining what to do. The matter may be decided on judgment.

This is why Mark Lebar writes: “The motivation for being constructivists should move us to be particularists as well” (Lebar 2013, p. 200). In his view the unintended result of Korsgaard’s argument is to expose the inefficacy of moral principles (Lebar 2013, p. 192). The inefficacy of moral principles shows that moral principles fail to determine what to do, because they do not contain specifications about the conditions of their applicability.²⁸ The argument in support of this radical view of defeasibility is that any given consideration can enter into deliberation with different kinds of normative force in different conditions. The authority, the practical importance, and the moral valence are all normative aspects of reasons that vary across different contexts, and inevitably elude moral principles. As anticipated in Sect. 2, there is a missing step in this argument for radical defeasibility; in short, holism does not definitely demonstrate moral particularism. But I am interested in Lebar’s diagnosis for the Kantian failure to treat defeasibility. In his view, Korsgaard’s argument against the application model shows that we must do without principles because they are too abstract to be useful in identifying moral reasons and their defeaters.

6 Provisional principles as default rules

Thus put, the problem of moral defeasibility is pressing but not new. The challenge for Kantian constructivists is to show how universal principles can effectively guide human agents, given the heterogeneous mass of considerations that are morally relevant, and which they cannot anticipate. A standard strategy to address the problem is to invoke the distinction between ideal and non-ideal conditions of rational agency. While practical laws are binding for all rational beings insofar as they are rational, they are not immediately accessible to human agents because of the embodied aspects of their agency. Human agency is subjected to practical and epistemic limitations. Because of these limitations humans cannot grasp what they ought to do. Reasoning is the activity in which they engage in order to figure out what to do, and it is an activity governed by principles.

However, there is a question about the level of universality that these principles require. Korsgaard introduces a distinction between “merely universal principles” and “provisional principles:”

There is not reason to suppose that we can think everything in advance. When we adopt a maxim as universal law, we know that there might be cases, cases we had not thought of, which would show us that it is not universal after all. In that case, we can allow for exceptions. But so long as the commitment to revise in the face of exceptions is in place, the maxim is not merely general. It is provisionally universal. (Korsgaard 2008, pp. 74–75)

Provisional universality importantly differs from generality, which offers a trivial explanation of the apparent defeasibility in ordinary deliberation because generalizations obviously admit of exceptions. Korsgaard explains the relevant difference between generality and provisional universality in terms of the agent’s commitment to revise the provisional principle whenever she encounters an exception. If the principle of action is thought to be general, the presence of exceptions is to be expected and does not force the agent to revise the principle. By contrast, if the agent is required to act on a maxim that she can regard as a practical law, and she faces what appears to be an exception to that practical law, then she is bound to revise her principle of action. That is to say, the agent who is committed to act on the basis of reasons that count as practical laws is thereby committed to either abandon or revise her subjective principles when they do not meet such a requirement. The revision is meant to make it more specific and determinate, by including the exception in its formulation (Korsgaard 2008, pp. 73–74).

This argument is motivated by the recognition of a weakness in the Kantian appeal to universal principles. Thus, Korsgaard appears to agree with her critics that ordinary moral thinking appeals to moral principles understood as “summary rules” because strictly universal principles are unavailable to human agents.²⁹ That is, Korsgaard concedes to critics that ordinary moral thinking is governed by norms that cannot attain strict universality. I think this is a mistake, which bears very high costs.

On the model that exploits two senses of universality, the genuine deliberative work appears to be done at the level of revisions. At this level, the agent is supposed to consider that the moral principle does not apply, then is supposed to identify the moral defeater, and then decide whether and how the defeater is to be incorporated into the principle. Supposedly, some exceptions can be built into the principle so as to make it more determined, focused, specific, and thus narrower in content. However, it might still be theoretically impossible to anticipate all possible defeaters and incorporate them in the formulation of moral principles. In any case, this is an extraordinary amount of work for an agent to accomplish in any deliberative context.³⁰ By modifying the content of the principles so as to accommodate relevant exceptions, we end up with entities too complex to be manageable and practical. Furthermore, it is likely that such sophisticated principles would appear to have little moral authority, since agents would find them difficult to learn and to be guided by. In sum, Korsgaard’s distinction introduces a complication that does not solve the problem of defeasibility and brings us back where we started.

A second set of considerations reveals that Korsgaard’s amendment is not congruent with a Kantian theory of rational justification. By instituting the distinction in universality, Korsgaard treats provisionally universal principles as summary rules that the agent takes as valid by default, until she encounters an exception. Here is an example: Hannah thinks that all passengers ought to pay the train ticket, but today there is a protest against the railway company, and she decides that this is an exception to take into account. Then, she revises the principle accordingly: “Passengers ought to pay the train ticket, except when they take part in a protest against the railway company.” This principle guides the agent in particular occasions in which she deliberates about paying the train ticket. In all similar cases in which Hannah rides on the train, and happens to consider whether or not to pay the ticket, she relies on this principle. But she does not rely on the principle because she knows that it is valid. In other words, she treats the principle as a default rule, which can be defeated by stronger reasons. The question to ask is on which authority the agent operates.

In support of default norms, it is often said that these norms spare the agent the worry to deliberate all over again in any new deliberative scenario. However, this is a risky position for Kantian theorists to take. First of all, this approach dispenses the agent from looking harder and may encourage a passive reliance on norms, insofar as it legitimizes principles established by habit or tradition.³¹ The appeal to moral principles that are established prior to and independently of deliberation goes against the requirement of autonomy, which is a defining feature of the Kantian theory of practical reasoning.

Indeed, the emerging picture of deliberation as governed by default norms appears to be at odds with the general Kantian view of reasoning as a constructive activity, governed by the requirement of strict universality.³² Upon detection of the exception, Korsgaard advises, “We must now go back and revise it, bringing it a little closer to the absolute universality to which provisional universality essentially aspires” (Korsgaard 2008, p. 74). Thus implemented, the universality test does not check whether the particular subjective maxim that the agent initially endorses coheres with its strict universalization. Rather, Korsgaard’s account of revision resembles a step-by-step attempt to approximate a regulative ideal. The difference in the practical import of these two tests of coherence may be illustrated as follows.

Consider the case in which a moral agent relies on a default moral principle, which proves to be reliable, in standard circumstances. For instance, Martha knows that it is a good norm to return borrowed books to their legitimate owners. Using the distinction between strict and provisional universality, allows us to say that Martha has not encountered any exception. The absence of registered exceptions does not justify Martha in thinking that the moral principle holds without exception. It might be that she happens to rely on a principle that has been successfully applied in all contexts she has tried thus far. Or, worse, it could be that Martha is not sufficiently sensitive, attentive, or competent so as to recognize an exception when she sees one. It might also be that she is so often distracted that she rarely identifies the proper scenario in which the moral principle standardly applies. As things stand, Martha might just be fortunate. How would she know? In a system regulated by default norms this question is irrelevant, if not unintelligible.

Given human constitutive, epistemic, and practical limitations, it is hard to imagine how human agents are supposed to attend at the revision of their subjective principles of action, build the exception into the provisionally universal principle, and proceed to make them strictly universal. People are not able to construct such principles on purpose; if they happen to formulate such principles they would not even know why. This is because the gap between provisional universality and strict universality may be such that humans cannot calculate it or determine it. Whether provisional principles happen to meet the criterion of strict universality and qualify as natural laws, it is by chance as far as human agents know. By contrast, the very purpose of the test of strict universality is to rule out maxims (reasons for action) that are merely fortunate. By proposing that agents modify their initial principles so as to make them increasingly complex, one is making them so rich in content that they cannot be fully known and managed. This fact does not merely show the severe limitations of our epistemic powers; rather, it also calls into question the source of authority of moral reasons. The fact that one cannot know on which principle one is acting upon is a serious moral problem. In fact, it is precisely the problem that Kantian theory is designed to identify by drawing the line between merely fortunate and morally valuable actions. Korsgaard’s proposal threatens to lose what is distinctive to the Kantian approach to principles, that is, the claim that they are the very source of normative authority.

The difference between provisionally and strictly universal principles is not marginal as Korsgaard believes. I hope to have shown that her argument confuses two distinct ways of reasoning about what to do: The first appeals to default norms, the second one appeals to universal principles. To disregard this difference makes it difficult to understand what the normative status of the subjective principle of action is: Why does the agent formulate the subjective principle to act, how does she recognize a defeater, and on which authority does she go back and revise the principle? There seem to be at least three competing answers on the table: by judgment, by default, and by principle.

7 Defeaters and exceptions

On the Kantian view, the only source of normative authority is reasoning.³³ The activity of reasoning is principled, hence governed by the requirement of universality. It follows that, strictly speaking, there can be no exceptions in a social world governed by Kantian practical reasoning. Of course, it happens all too often that particular agents reason insufficiently, commit mistakes, and thus act on the basis of maxims that are not principled. Such agents may find themselves in circumstances where their subjective principles of action lead to unwelcome results (e.g. they cannot borrow books from the public library because they have not returned many of them), and thus they are forced by the circumstances to reconsider the ground of action: This operation amounts to re-describing the candidate action. To preserve the practical significance of moral principles and their authority, the agent must think again on which grounds they act. This procedure is radically and importantly different from admitting an exception to the principle. The fact that the agent experiences the need to rethink the grounds of her action is a morally legitimate concern only insofar as her reasoning is principled. Otherwise, the agent would be at liberty to give up a moral principle, whenever she wants. It seems that the only way one can use reasoning to rethink our reasons is by considering exceptions to the principles; and this operation cannot be conceived as an external attack to the principles’ authority.

The operation of “making an exception” does not require the agent to rethink the principle all over.³⁴ In fact, it appears that the moral and practical significance of exceptions is such that it presupposes the principle of which it is an exception. Free riders make exceptions in their favor, and their action is successful exactly because all/most others act in compliance with the principle. To admit that Andrej enters the theater without paying for the ticket counts as an exception on the understanding that people normally pay. That is, the practice of granting exceptions relies on the normativity of universal principles of which they count as exceptions.³⁵

How are exceptions important? Elijah Millgram argues that making exceptions is a necessary precondition of successful agency.³⁶ This is a bold claim, which directly calls into question any principled view of rational agency. Millgram is right that making self-serving exceptions may be the only condition for an agent in particular circumstances to exercise his agency successfully (i.e. to act rather than to attempt at doing something). However, I do not see that his argument establishes what he claims, i.e. that making self-serving exceptions is a necessary precondition of successful agency. Partly, the issue revolves around what we take successful agency to be. There are ordinary cases of deliberation in which rational agents prefer their immediate end of action to be frustrated, rather than violating the norm. In some of these ordinary cases, rational agents reason on the basis of considerations about the implications of his violation, because of their feeling of being obliged, or out of attachment for the symbolic value of the norm.³⁷ These are distinct varieties of normative behavior that do not require making exceptions for themselves, and yet they represent some sort of agential success, even though they involve the frustration of the intended end. Agential success does not amount to success in bringing about particular ends, because the agent may have reasons to have her local ends frustrated and, also, to describe the case in terms of the expression or realization of more significant values, rather than in terms of frustration. Indeed, this is an implication of treating some values as more important than others. The Kantian view explains the “need” to make self-serving exceptions as cases in which agents capable of rationality have not reasoned correctly, and thus they have not properly formulated their subjective principles of action, or else as cases in which their agency is obstructed.³⁸ The latter case is a matter of luck, and finds no remedy in the Kantian theory of reasons for action. The former, instead, is a serious matter, which we have to attend to next.

8 Rethinking action and making progress

In a Kantian theory of practical reasoning, the fact that a rational agent feels the need to make an exception to her principle requires her to reconsider her proposal for action. In this picture, the key deliberative work consists of rethinking the ground of action, rather than granting exceptions or revising default norms. Deliberation starts with a normative account of the circumstances of action, which may include large varieties of details, e.g. the perception of obstacles, the desire to realize some ends, or relate to others as independent sources of legitimate claims.

An important part of the deliberative problem is to identify the relevant description of what the agent has to do in the circumstances. Describing the circumstances and defining the action is the crucial step in practical reasoning that Kantian theory identifies with the formulation of a subjective maxim. It appears that the moral valence of actions will decisively depend on their descriptions. The crux is that actions indefinitely have many descriptions.³⁹ Thus, the moral valence of actions will decisively depend on the relevant description. This is known as the problem of relevant descriptions, and it is often presented as an argument against Kantian theories of practical reasoning.⁴⁰ Indeed, this is a problem that undermines deductive accounts of practical reasoning, where the conclusion derives from fixed premises. This is the reason why philosophers impressed with the variance of moral reasons across contexts deny that moral principles play any significant epistemological role. Recall, for instance, W.D. Ross: “When I reflect on my own attitude toward particular acts, I seem to find that it is not by deduction but by direct insight that I see them to be right, or wrong. I never seem to be in the position of not seeing directly the rightness of a particular act of kindness, for instance, and of having to read this off a general principle—‘all acts of kindness are right, and therefore this must be, though I cannot see its rightness directly’.”⁴¹

One might object that the dismissal of deductivism is too quick, insofar as ordinary inferences can be supplemented with default rules. Defenders of defeasible logic pursue this line. Others argue for the possibility and moral relevance of practical inferences, where the premises must contain implicit ceteris paribus clauses (Holton 2002). These philosophers maintain that every true moral conclusion follows deductively from a finite set of premises; and even when such premises are at least implicitly conditional, they are not trivial. These theories deal with the phenomena associated with defeasibility by conceding that moral obligations are always conditional.

By contrast, Kantian constructivism purports to address the problem of the variance of normative claims without renouncing the thesis that moral obligations are unconditional requirements of reason. Its basic claim is that the appeal to principles is key to explain how moral reasons remain authoritative when defeated, and also to distinguish between arbitrary and legitimate exceptions. Furthermore, the constructivist theory agrees with the particularist that the phenomenon of variability of reasons bears disastrous consequences for deductivist accounts of practical reasoning. But it argues that this diagnosis has a different impact on practical reasoning than the one indicated by particularists. Defeasibility does not show that we can reason without principles, but that principles are not the fixed starting points of practical reasoning. The facts about defeasibility force us to rethink the role of principles in practical reasoning.

9 Universality as the matrix of judgment

Reasoning is an activity that people do, and it is deeply connected to the sort of agents these people are. The structure of rational justification reflects the profile of the subjects that engage in such an activity. This is where the role of strict universality should be sought. The Kantian idea is that universalization is the form that best coheres with the profile of the practical subjects who engage in practical reasoning.⁴² The argument in support of universalization is that this is a constitutive norm guiding the correct formation of reasons because (i) it takes practical subjects as independent and legitimate sources of valid claims, and (ii) it thereby allows finite and interdependent practical subjects to exchange reasons that they may find mutually authoritative in justifying their claims to one another. In other words, the basic argument for universality is practical: It warrants mutual intelligibility and accountability, which are crucial pre-conditions of cooperative and shared agency. Reasons function properly insofar as they are universally authoritative.

As a constitutive norm of rational agency, universality cannot possibly admit of defeaters. In the practice of rational justification, the job of the strictly universal principles is not to provide all the relevant information that one can apply in practice so as to defuse all the possible defeaters, but to test the subjective maxims so that it can conform to a practical law.⁴³ To this extent, the requirement of universality is the matrix of judgment: It guides the rational agent in designing future action, by playing a structural role. It is within this context that the issue of defeasibility arises. In a Kantian constructivist account, any substantive moral reason is in principle defeasible. Substantive moral reasons are constructions that it is the agent’s deliberative job to produce. In the paradigmatic case of rational deliberation, the agent is called to decide what to do, within the framework set by constitutive principles, but there is no guarantee that the agent always reaches a definite verdict about what to do.

Furthermore, it is conceivable that differently situated agents produce different reasons, despite the fact that they operate in relevantly similar contexts of choice. This is a common fact but it does not prove that the theory is false, nor does it show that the reasoners have failed the constitutive standard of reasoning. As a matter of fact, there is no paradox to solve here. The problem lies in the ambiguity of the remarks about the “similarity of the contexts of choice.” This phrase is often used to justify the presumption that the deliberator enters a fixed deliberative scene and is required to take account of the factual aspects of the context. This is a misleading representation of rational deliberation. The mistake is to treat the factual aspects of the context as if they were morally relevant elements prior to and independently of practical reasoning. By contrast, the constructivist view is that the circumstances of action are not factual elements that are fixed prior and independently of practical reasoning. Instead, the delicate job of rational deliberation starts with describing what is the problem of acting in such circumstances. The moral problem is how to act in the circumstances.

This is the stage of construction where the phenomena of defeasibility take place. If I am right, the crucial step in reasoning about what to do is to formulate the subjective principles describing the intended actions. The requirement of universality serves as a test to discriminate actions that, at least some under some descriptions, can be rationally intended, and actions that can not. This is perfectly compatible with recognizing that if the circumstances of actions were described differently, the agent would not have the reasons or the obligations she has.

A more general claim is that there are no objects of reason that qualify as such before the relevant subjects start reasoning. To say that x is an object of reason is itself a claim of reason. This means that only reasoning is entitled and equipped to identify its objects; to this extent, it is not determined by any pre-constituted objects, and it does not have a distinctive subject matter. There is no given, pre-fixed subject matter of reasoning that we access or represent by reasoning. Rather, the subject matter is constituted by the activity of reasoning. Indeed, this is one important sense in which reason is autonomous, hence productive and generative. The domain of reasoning is built up by the activity of reasoning. The relation of reasoning to its objects is one of construction, rather than one of recognition or representation.

The autonomy of reasoning—that is, its independence from any prefabricated subject matter—reflects the autonomy of the relevant practical subjects. When reasoning merely conforms to external objects, its authority is conditional upon the agreement with such objects. This is why practical inferences can justify only conditional conclusions. By contrast, constructivist reasoning produces reasons that are genuinely authoritative, and guiding all relevant subjects, insofar as it is governed by structural universal principles. This is because constructivist reasoning does not start from points fixed by special communities, and thus it can legitimately claim universal authority.

The defeasibility of reasons is connected to another important aspect of reasoning. Undertaking reasoning is not only productive of normative objects, but also transformative for the subjects that practice it. This is to say that on a constructivist account, reasoning is practical not only because it effectively guides the agent in addressing the question of what to do, but also because it affects the agent’s general deliberative set, including her desires, interests, and concerns. This aspect of constructive reasoning vindicates the ordinary experience of rational deliberation, which is often perceived as an attempt to make progress in understanding what the situation requires. This represents a distinctive source of defeasibility that is not due to normative holism, but to the fact that rational agents are situated: They develop and deteriorate in time. Normative claims vary across contexts not because such contexts are arranged holistically, but because the agents describe them differently.

10 Conclusion

I have argued that constructivism accommodates some relevant phenomena associated with defeasibility, and it preserves the fundamental role of universality in the process of rational justification. This constructivist argument bears some important similarity with the view that the major rationale for appealing to universal moral principles is the thought that such principles are necessary for moral obligations. This is the view of moral obligation advanced by Darwall (2013). Darwall is right that the justification of moral obligation requires a principled justification is a conceptual matter. It is also correct to connect principled justification to the issue of answerability and accountability (Darwall 2013, p. 175). However, this argument is not restricted to moral obligations.⁴⁴ Rational agents are accountable and answerable for what they do on the basis of reasons. Certainly, they are accountable and answerable for complying with moral obligations, and also for the way in which they comply. In a more basic sense, we claim responsibility for what we do by producing reasons of justification. Reasons and obligations thus require the same structure of justification. This is not to deny that the concepts of “obligation” and “reasons” differ under some other respects, but to say that the relevant difference cannot be adequately captured in terms of a distinction in the structure of their rational justification. On the basis of the constructivist argument, neither obligation nor reason can be analyzed in terms of basic favoring. A fortiori, moral obligations cannot be understood in terms of considerations that weigh most, on balance, in favor of an option. Ultimately, the concept of reason cannot be understood in terms of a basic “favoring.” Furthermore, to consider such a term as primitive in the sense that exempts it from rational justification is to deprive it of genuine authority. The Kantian argument in support of this conclusion has been that reason grants normative status only to that which withstands its free and public examination.⁴⁵