Normativity, agency, and life

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Abstract

There is an immense philosophical literature dealing with the notions of normativity and agency, as well as a sizeable and rapidly growing scientific literature on the topic of autonomous agents. However, there has been very little cross-fertilization between these two literatures. As a result, the philosophical literature tends to assume a somewhat outdated mechanistic image of living things, resulting in a quasi-dualistic picture in which only human beings, or the higher animals, can be normative agents properly speaking. From this perspective, the project of ‘naturalizing normativity’ becomes almost a contradiction in terms. At the same time, the scientific literature tends to misuse ‘normativity,’ ‘agency,’ and related terms, assuming that it is meaningful to ascribe these concepts to ‘autonomous agents’ conceived of as physical systems whose behavior is to be explained in terms of ordinary physical law. From this perspective, the true depth of the difficulty involved in understanding what makes living systems distinctive qua physical systems becomes occluded. In this essay, I begin the attempt to remedy this situation. After some preliminary discussion of terminology and situating of my project within the contemporary philosophical landscape, I make a distinction between two different aspects of the project of naturalizing normativity: (1) the ‘Scope Problem,’ which consists in saying how widely in nature our concept of normative agency may properly be applied; and (2) the ‘Ground Problem,’ which consists in rationalizing the phenomenon of normative agency in terms of the rest of our knowledge of nature. Then, in the remainder of this paper, I argue that the Scope Problem ought to be resolved in favor of attributing normative agency, in the proper sense of those words, to living things as such. The Ground Problem will be discussed in a companion paper at a later time.

Highlights

► Ground Argument. ► Contemporary autonomous agency theories. ► Orthogonality Condition.

Introduction

In this paper, I will explore the possibility of giving a realistic account of normative agency, properly so called, as an essential property of life. Needless to say, this is a highly ambitious and contentious thesis. I will not be able even to touch upon all of the many questions raised by my thesis here, much less provide anything like a proof. What I will do, however, is discuss two specific issues, which—together with a third issue I hope to discuss on a future occasion—I trust will constitute a prima facie case for at least according my thesis serious consideration.

First, in Section 2, below, I will deal with some key definitional issues. What exactly do we mean by the concepts of ‘normativity’ and ‘agency’? How are the two concepts related? And what might it mean to ‘naturalize’ normativity and/or agency? In reply to this last question, I will distinguish eliminativist and epiphenomenalist versions of ‘naturalized normativity’ from the realistic project of giving an account of the place in nature of normativity, considered as an objectively existing phenomenon. Furthermore, I will argue that if we take the realistic project of naturalizing normativity seriously, then we must distinguish between what I will call the ‘Scope Problem’—namely, the problem of determining the proper scope of application of our concept of normative agency—and the ‘Ground Problem’—the problem of characterizing the physical ground of normativity in nature.

Then, in Section 3, I will investigate the Scope Problem, arguing that the proper scope of application of our concept of natural agency is to life—that is, to living systems, or organisms—as such. A similar investigation of the Ground Problem will be undertaken elsewhere.

Section snippets

What do we mean by ‘normative agency’ and what would it mean to ‘naturalize’ it?

The paradigm case of ‘normativity’ is undoubtedly moral prescription and proscription, expressed through the terms ‘ought,’ ‘should,’ ‘must,’ and related locutions. For example: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Nevertheless, it is not difficult to see that the moral ‘ought’ is only a species of a wider genus of normativity that applies to human actions generally. For example: ‘You ought to use a hammer (to pound nails)’; ‘You should not smoke (to avoid coming down with lung disease)’; ‘You must practice,

What is the proper scope of our concept of normative agency?

I begin with an informal argument for taking the proper scope of our concept of normative agency to be life itself, i.e., living systems, or organisms, as such. To simplify the presentation of the argument, however, I would like first to stipulate a definition of one of the concepts employed in it. The reason is that some of the concepts that might naturally be assumed to fall under the concept of normativity in the broad or umbrella sense (like the moral right; courage, justice, honesty,

Conclusion

On the basis of commonsense linguistic usage and conceptual analysis, as well as the Scope Argument, I conclude that there is no principled reason for maintaining that normativity and agency are properties of human beings alone, or even that they are properties of the higher animals only. If that is the case, then we are faced with a decision (assuming we do not wish to be outright dualists) between accepting eliminativism and seeing ourselves as mere machines devoid of any genuine normativity,

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Lenny Moss and Phillip R. Sloan for their unwavering loyalty and support over the years.

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