Robert Stern at the Transcendental Arguments Workshop

Bob gave a paper entitled The Value of Humanity: Reflections on Korsgaard's Transcendental Argument. In it he argued that a particular reading of 'phase two' of Korsgaard's transcendental argument for the value of humanity formulation of the categorical imperative is successful (Bob stressed that he was not defending the success of phases one and three, nor another version of phase two based on a 'regress of identities argument').

The argument Bob defended had the following first three premises, which were what discussion focussed on.

1. To rationally choose to do X, you must take it that you have some reason to do X
2. You cannot think that X is the rational thing to do in itself, but only given your practical identity
3. You cannot regard your practical identity as making X the rational thing to do unless you can see some value in that practical identity

It seems premise 1 is unproblematic. Given anti-realism about the normative source of reasons, premise 2 is fairly unproblematic also - for if actiona are not in themselves possessed of normative properties, then a particular rational action will only make sense if the agent conceives of it as the instantiation of what she finds worthwhile, i.e. as an instantiation of a practical identity.

Bob suggested Korsgaard's transcendental argument be read as a modest one - that is, not as 'world directed', attempting to establish the truth of the value of humanity, but rather operating under the auspices of an anti-realism about value which means the argument is only attempting to establish what an agent must believe from within her perspective on the world.

Most discussion was of the move from premise 2 to 3. One objection was that we can have anti-realism about values without going through a self-reflexive stance where the agent values her practical identity - think of Humean projectivism. Bob replied that it is hard to understand an agent valuing what she projects without valuing the practical identity that frames the projection, unless we see the object of a rational action as itself normative (precisely what we can't do given anti-realism about norms). Another objection was that acting under a practical identity just is to find certain reasons compelling - that is, it is to operate according to the practical identity rather than to explicitly endorse that identity in an evaluative step. Bob replied that the evaluative step is necessary to answer our how possible question about rational action given anti-realism. A third objection was that reasons are usually identified with roles in reasoning, which yields a sort of anti-realism in that occupying the role makes things so (that I conceive myself as a holder of office makes it so that fulfilling that role is a reason to act, nothing more is needed to make the reason compelling). But if this is right, the move from premise 2 to 3 is invalid, for finding certain reasons compelling is constitutive of having a practical identity, which means one can see X as the rational thing to do without valuing the practical identity that frames it. Bob responded that we need the evaluative step to get reasons into the picture in the first place in an anti-realist setting.

Generally then, the scepticism about Bob's reading of the argument, such as there was, centred on the idea that acting under a practical identity implies valuing that identity. It wasn't clear to me whether the valuating step is just built in to rational action as such, or whether an agent has to actually engage in self-reflexive evaluation (which seems false), or whether the latter is more a requirement of philosophical theory that wants to explain the possibility of rational action in an anti-realist setting.