Burch-Brown, J. M. (2022).

Reflection and synthesis: How moral

agents learn and moral cultures evolve. Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 55(6), 935-948. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12622

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DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12622

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Reflection and synthesis: How moral agents learn

and moral cultures evolve

Joanna Burch-Brown

Department of Philosophy, University of Abstract

Bristol, Bristol, UK
One aim of moral education is to help society progress from
Correspondence morally imperfect conventions towards more perfect ones.
Joanna Burch-Brown, Department of Philoso-
phy, University of Bristol, 45 Oak Road, Bristol
According to a popular view, reflecting judgment is the vehi-
BS7 8RZ, UK. cle of this progress. In this paper, I argue that although reflec-
Email: Jb12159@bristol.ac.uk
tion is important, it is not enough; moral development also
Funding information requires practical synthesis. Moral development takes place
UKRI Citizen Science, Grant/Award Number:
by securing new connections—conceptual, affective, volitional
BB/V013378/1
and behavioural—that bring thoughts, feelings, motivations
and actions into alignment with higher reason, to instantiate
respect for all who are ends in themselves. Constructing paral-
lels from Kant’s theoretical philosophy, I identify three kinds of
synthesis that are central to moral practice. If I am right, then a
key task for moral education is to support the development of
these capacities of practical synthesis.

KEYWORDS
creativity, culture, judgment, Kantian moral philosophy, norms, practi-
cal reason

INTRODUCTION

In the early days of what Pelé called the ‘beautiful game’, Jonathan Wilson writes that players simply chased the ball
(Wilson, 2014, p. 4). There were no structures or formations, no established rules, no tactics. As Wilson shows in mani-
fold detail, the development of form happened through invention, over time. With time, for instance, footballers devel-
oped the techniques of dribbling and passing. To dribble well requires physical skill and an understanding of the pos-
sible trajectories of the ball. It requires dexterity and judgment, ‘an eye quick at discovering a weak point, and nous to

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duction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Philosophy of Education published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Philosophy of Education Society
of Great Britain

J Philos Educ. 2021;55:935–948. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jope 935

936 BURCH-BROWN

calculate and decide the chances of a successful passage’. When dribbling was first invented, it was apparently dazzling
to observe. Thus, an early admirer of the game wrote that ‘To see some players guide and steer a ball through a circle
of opposing legs, turning and twisting as the occasion requires, is a sight not to be forgotten . . . ’ (p. 16).
The idea that a player might pass the ball to a fellow teammate came more slowly. Into the 1870s, the norm in
English football was for individual players to recover the ball from the opposing team, and then run with it towards
the goal, while other players waited for their turn (p. 17). It was not yet a part of the game to work together to arrive
at the goal; ‘combination play’ was an idea that had to be arrived at over time. In the early game, there were no spe-
cialist roles, such as goalkeepers or defenders; the establishment of a goalkeeper was an innovative development, as
were distinct ball-handling techniques—kicking with the laces, not the toes; cushioning the ball as it arrives to bring
it under control—and tactical systems. The 1920s Brazilian and Uruguayan slaloming play; the Italian catenaccio; the
high-paced, counter-attacking English game; the fluid interchanging of players between positions; and the Spanish
short-passing tiki-taka were all products of creativity. These diverse forms were not given in the idea of the game itself
but had to be made.
Evolution of technical form runs alongside evolution of values. How people think, feel, talk about and play the game
depend on how they conceptualise it; and how they conceptualise it changes as the game evolves. As agents come
up with new ways of acting (a counter-attacking game and a fluid interchanging of players), their values and sensibili-
ties change. The discovery of a short-passing form and its elaboration through particular figures (e.g. Spanish football,
Barcelona, and Messi) changed how people imagined the game’s possibilities, not just technically but also emotionally,
intellectually and aesthetically.
I have started with football as a synecdoche for human practices. In the early days of any practices, including moral
practice, there may be few structures or formations, few established rules, few tactics. In our first attempts, we may
have little sense of the possible structures that could organise our efforts. We may, metaphorically, be simply chasing
the ball. Over time, some combination of technique, fitness, circumstance, spontaneous creativity and luck leads to
breakthroughs in form, and we learn to do new things.
In saying this and relating it to moral practice, I do not mean to imply anything particularly controversial about
metaethics. I take it that readers will likely agree, for instance, that social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries
transformed people’s moral understanding, leading to important social change through emerging normative concepts
like human rights and gender equality. The formation of these normative concepts helped to clarify and give new
expression to ideals like equality, dignity and freedom. I take it that readers will also likely agree that elaborations
of moral culture—of particular values and norms and ways of instantiating them—take place over time, particular to
cultural contexts, and that plausible moral theories allow for reasonable diversity of moral cultures. Only the most
exclusionary theories will hold that there is only one right cultural expression of morality; instead, most will allow for
some (constrained) pluralism in societies’ diverse cultural expressions of moral values and capacities. Moreover, socio-
historical and cultural contexts invariably generate their own unique moral puzzles, requiring people to cultivate moral
understanding of the problems distinct to their time.
The fact that distinct puzzles arise in each place and time means that moral practice includes an ongoing process of
discovery and creativity. This has tended to be underappreciated by moral theorists and therefore undertheorised.1
The moral problems that most captivated Kant, for instance, were those of inner restraint. He was impressed that the
will could be moved by moral law alone, and that moral law could free the will from the constraints of unwanted incli-
nations. Kant did not always seem to recognise the complexity of moral practice, instead taking the view that pure
practical reason will readily yield knowledge of applied moral rules, such as prohibitions against lying. But even from
a state of attuned awareness—openness, ease, steadfastness, grace and correctness—it can be hard to discern what
morality calls for. This is true in individual moral life, but its significance seems particularly pointed given the scale and
seriousness of collective moral puzzles that we face today, from bridging political divides, to repairing historical injus-
tices, to ending poverty, to achieving sustainable development. From our most basic, individual moral development, to
our most sophisticated efforts to coordinate ourselves to meet collective responsibilities, morality often requires us
to expand our art.
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 937

In this paper, I argue that practical synthesis is key to our capacity to expand our art and develop morally. I identify
three kinds of practical synthesis that play a role in day-to-day moral practice, and that are also key to moral growth and
development. These are normative synthesis, volitional synthesis and synthesising under moral law—the kind of virtu-
ous synthesising that achieves a harmonising of final ends, instantiating respect for all who are ends in themselves. If I
am right, then a key part of what successful moral education does is help develop these capacities of practical synthesis.

DETERMINING AND REFLECTING

According to some philosophers, reflecting judgment is what enables us to progress towards more perfect conven-
tions, constructing new institutions and rules to replace inadequate ones (Makkreel, 1994; Nuzzo, 2005; O’Neill, 1996,
1998, 2007). In this section, I argue that although reflecting judgment is key, it is not enough; we also require practical
synthesis.
Judgments are practical—either immediately or at some remove—when they function to guide action.2 The purpose
of practical judgments is to determine the agent’s will, in light of her sense of the empirical and normative dimensions
of a situation. A practical judgment is determining when it guides action by applying rules, i.e. when what is required to
guide action is to recognise an object as fitting under a rule. For instance, in the context of debates over slavery and
contested heritage, a civic body might agree to a principle that removing historic statues is warranted in special cases.
Their principle might hold that statues may be removed or recontextualised in cases where the motivation for erecting
the statue was to reinforce problematic social hierarchies (as in the case of many Confederate statues raised to bolster
Jim Crow segregation) and where there are reasonable grounds to believe that they continue to send messages of
social hierarchy that we have moral obligations to oppose. There will necessarily be judgments to make in assessing
how these rules apply in a given situation, and people may reasonably arrive at different views given how the social
meanings of such objects may vary in different parts of a community. However, if these principles are well understood
and agreed, then the body’s decision-making task with regard to such memorials may largely take a determinate form,
involving examining historical and contemporary evidence, and assessing the case for removing or recontextualising a
given statue relative to agreed principles.
The claim that such decisions require determining judgment should not be taken as meaning that the application
of the rule happens mechanically or by rote. Instead, as Kant states and as Onora O’Neill has emphasised, applying
general rules in practice is an art that can never be spelled out fully in rules (O’Neill, 1996; see also Friedlander, 2007).
Rule-following requires judgment. As Wittgenstein recognised, we can never fully specify the conditions governing the
scope and application of our rules, and attempting to do so leads to an endless regress (Wittgenstein, 2009, see e.g.
§§ 201 and 198a). For that reason, judgment is always required, even in the application of so-called determinant rules.
However, the normative dimensions of practical problems are often not well understood, and when this is true, then
something more than determining judgment is required to guide action. It may be straightforward enough to imag-
ine the physical event of removing a Confederate statue, but a great deal of labour may be required to understand
the political ethics of such an act in a given cultural context (Burch-Brown, 2017, 2020; Carter, 2018; Demetriou &
Wingo, forthcoming). Clarifying the normative dimensions of such acts requires many kinds of imaginative and concep-
tual labour. It requires imaginatively exploring possible consequences and making judgments about their likelihood. It
requires imaginative perspective taking, in order to gain insight into the expressive meanings of a symbolic action from
different standpoints, world views, experiences and value systems. It requires higher-level synthesising to understand
the ways in which different social meanings of such an act sit together. It requires intellectual and emotional probing
to clarify why the presence of these statues might be harmful and to whom (for instance through reinforcing harmful
ideologies, or causing people to internalise degrading messages of social hierarchy), to articulate these understandings
and to subject these proposed reasons to scrutiny, for instance by uncovering and examining the underlying assump-
tions behind these claims.
938 BURCH-BROWN

Because these are challenging tasks and we often have to act while we still have only partial understanding of them,
our moral practice related to these sorts of questions depends on our capacities for imagination, improvisation and
creativity. Such problems require us, to some extent, to fly blind and invent as we go. Indeed, it may only be through
beginning to pursue a course of action that we start gaining insight into the action and clarifying its moral significance
(Brewer, 2011). Until initial steps are taken to remove a Confederate statue, for instance—bringing a social response
and with it more evidence—it may be difficult for the advocates of removal to imagine the emotional meanings of the
statue for people from very different parts of society, and vice versa. It is often during the course of pursuing a line
of action that our understanding deepens and we are able to gain fuller insight into its moral significance, and adjust
paths accordingly. Grappling with moral problems can sometimes reveal that we need to creatively imagine our way
to new ends, invent new norms and develop new culture. Because they are not resolvable through pathways we can
yet conceive, these problems are not best posed in terms of determinate judgments.3 To act adequately in such cases
requires something more than the mere application of familiar rules.
Some have argued that the ‘something more’ that is required in such cases is reflective judgment. Kant says that
when exercising reflective judgment, the mind starts with a particular and imagines it under the guise of different con-
cepts, seeing it first in one light and then in another. The movement between different guises is an act of reflection. For
example, when reflecting on ethics of contested heritage, one may wonder whether it is best to think of statue removal
as loss of heritage for the dominant community (Demetriou & Wingo, forthcoming); or as part of symbolic reparation
for historical wrongdoing (Burch-Brown, 2017); or as ‘colonization in reverse’ (Bennett, 1966) or as a distraction from
contemporary injustices; or instead as a proxy and a lever potentially motivating action on these same injustices (Bevan,
2017). When the mind conceives the problem first under one guise and then under another, in order to attempt to
see how best to understand the significance of possible actions, then this is what Kant would call a reflecting use of
judgment.4
Kant discusses reflecting judgment in combination with the concept of aesthetic ideas. Kant says that in contem-
plating aesthetic ideas, the mind is sent into indefinite reflecting back and forth. An aesthetic idea is a ‘representa-
tion of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought,
i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible’ (Kant, 2007,
p. 192 [5:314]). As the preceding discussion of contested heritage suggests, our practical ethical endeavours are often
characterised by a similarly restless ongoing activity of reflection. That is because it is often impossible for us to see
and hold in one view the immense diversity of meanings that our expressive actions may have for the diversity of peo-
ple affected by them.5 This makes it impossible to hold in ‘one cognition’ a full view of the manifold of ends and their
unity. If the governing idea of reason is to seek systematic unity, and it is impossible to hold a full view of the manifold
in one cognition, then the mind will seek to hold the view diachronically and dynamically, by moving across different
parts of it and establishing patterns or repertoires of activity that seem, as best as possible, to do justice to the agent’s
understanding the meanings of the situation and its moral implications, and help her bring its key features into view at
moments when they are salient.
Kant says that reflective judgment is central to processes of both artistic creativity and artistic appreciation, as well
as to our efforts to construct empirical concepts to make sense of the ‘labyrinth’ of nature. Since the mind’s activity in
art is not determined by rules, it has latitude and freedom as it hunts for associations. Thus, in art, ‘the imagination is
free to provide, beyond that concord with the concept, unsought extensive undeveloped material for the understand-
ing’ (Kant, 2007, p. 194 [5:317] ).6 Finding resonant connections requires a framework of underpinning rules, but also
depends on taste and on what Kant calls genius, which is a lucky ability to find ideas and also to find their expression.
Kant goes on, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, to suggest that reflective judgment or contemplation includes
an activity of holding different representations together, and that it is responsible for finding new empirical concepts
to explain particulars. He attributes to reflective judgment our ability to find empirical concepts from the labyrinth of
possibilities that contingent nature presents.
In my view, however, Kant’s treatment of reflective judgment merges two activities of judgment that are better
held apart: reflecting and synthesising. Moving back and forth is a natural interpretation of the term ‘reflection’, and
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 939

is a crucial activity of judgment, important in its own right. It is different from joining or connecting, which is a natural
interpretation of the term ‘synthesis’. The term ‘synthesis’ comes from the Greek suntithenai, meaning ‘place together’.
The contrasting term ‘analysis’ comes from the Greek analusis, from ana (‘up’) + luein (‘loosen’). To synthesise is to
combine elements to make a connected whole, whereas analysis takes a previously synthesised whole and separates
it into its distinct parts and relations. Kant introduces the term ‘synthesis’ in his theoretical philosophy, where he uses
the term to name the activity of joining or combining.
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that synthesis refers to a process or act that joins, gathers or combines two
or more elements that were not already ‘contained’ in one another, and connects them to form a unity or a whole. For
instance, he writes that synthesis in a general sense refers to ‘the action of putting different representations together
with each other and comprehending their manifoldness in one cognition’ (Kant, 2009, p. 210 [A77/B103]). He has also
introduced synthetic as an adjective, to describe any object formed from a composite of two or more other objects.
Kant applies the adjective ‘synthetic’ to representations (e.g. the synthetic unity of apperception) and to concepts (e.g.
the highest good, which he claims contains the ideas of happiness and virtue). Kant also speaks of specific faculties of
mind as being synthetic, if they perform their work by performing synthesis. For instance, he says that the imagination
is a synthetic faculty. Thought cannot take place without a prior imaginative synthesis; cognition requires that an intu-
ited manifold ‘be gone through, taken up, and combined in a certain way in order for a cognition to be made out of it’
(p. 210 [A77/B102]). Without synthesis, he tells us, there would be no content for concepts, since it is synthesis that
‘collects the elements for cognitions and unites them into a certain content’ (pp. 210–211 [A77/B103]).7
By contrast, Kant has characterised reflecting judgment as moving back and forth between different ideas, frames,
conceptions or guises. As I have suggested, reflection is a crucially important and distinctive activity of judgment; but
on its own it is not enough to underpin action. This is because merely seeing the problem or the action in one light and
then in another does not settle how these guises are to be harmonised. Where action is required, it is often impor-
tant to move from reflecting to synthesising—an imaginative, conceptual and/or practical step that uncovers how the
guises can be allowed to sit together or combined to create something new. Going back and forth between different
representations can generate insight and meaning; but settling on a representation and determining a direction for
one’s will is eventually necessary if we are to take action.
Distinguishing between reflection and synthesis is most important when considered in the context of practical judg-
ment, where reflecting must eventually give way to action. Practical judgment for Kant is not a matter of theoretical
understanding or contemplation, but of determining the will. Determining the will requires a kind of commitment not
captured in the activity of reflection. Reflection will often be an important step preceding synthesis, because it is an
exploratory mode of judgment, which can search out materials to be combined. But determining the will requires deci-
sion or commitment. Thus, as I interpret it, reflection and synthesis are important but distinct functions. Reflection
is the activity of seeing something first in one guise and then in another, or from one perspective and then another;
synthesis is the activity of joining, combining or recombining elements to form a unity. Synthesising is a necessary, dis-
tinct and important part of practical reason, and a key task of moral education is for learners to develop capacities of
practical synthesis.

SYNTHESISING

Here I identify three forms of synthesis that are key to moral practice and moral development, each paralleling a form
of synthesis outlined in Kant’s theoretical philosophy. In the theoretical philosophy, Kant variously identifies synthesis
as a vehicle of conceptual discovery, as a transcendental condition for the very possibility of experience and as central
to reason’s pursuit of its guiding idea of systematic unity in its cognitions. By analogy, I identify three kinds of practi-
cal synthesis, namely normative synthesis, which is a vehicle of normative discovery and cultural creativity; volitional
synthesis, which is a transcendental condition for the possibility of action; and virtuous synthesis, which instantiates
respect towards all who are ends in themselves.
940 BURCH-BROWN

Normative synthesis

Normative synthesis takes place through new combinations of morally salient thoughts, feelings and actions. For
instance, the concept of gender equality combines concepts from two domains (equality and gender), and its introduc-
tion facilitated a growing awareness that wrongful inequality can exist along dimensions of gender. New combinations
can occur in passing and without repetition, or they can become part of patterned activity. If they become part of pat-
terned activity at an individual level, then they constitute personal moral change (see e.g. Railton, 2009 and 2017). If
they become part of patterned activity at a collective level then they constitute evolution of moral culture (see e.g.
Haslanger, 2018; Mulgan, 2018). Normative analysis is also part of the picture and is involved when we pinpoint dis-
tinct elements of the normative frameworks that guide our action and refine those elements. Breaking down norms or
events into morally salient parts does not ‘add anything new’ to them, but allows us to refine and better understand
their elements, both individually and in their relationships to one another. Refining a moral norm or learning from a
past moral event requires the ability to isolate its elements, analysing or ‘up-loosening’ it, so as to clarify each of its key
moments.
Normative synthesis is a regular part of moral activity and moral learning. For instance, consider an example of a
person struggling to cope with an insult. The question of how to respond to insults is morally important since insults can
hurt individuals, and both the insult and retaliation can strain relationships. If a person feels insulted, this commonly
leads to certain mental behaviours, such as ruminating on the upsetting interaction. It may be hard to let go of these
ruminations until there is a sense of the wrongdoing having been corrected or balanced, and the threat posed by it
having been nullified.
Moral cultures develop around solutions to these problems. In the Christian Bible, in the Sermon on the Mount, it is
said that one should ‘turn the other cheek’. For some individuals, holding this phrase or image in mind when struggling
with an insult might cause other representations to become less significant and drop into the background, enabling
them to see the situation clearly while staying balanced in their values.8 For many, this might merely be an act of reflec-
tive judgment, in which they briefly see the situation under the guise of turning the other cheek, and then return to a
feeling of righteous indignation, and a reassertion of rights of self-defence.
On the other hand, an individual might become skilled at using one of these guises to bring about a settling and ori-
enting, and gain a level of settled control and facility through use of this anchoring idea. This might, then, be a morally
empowering act of synthesis and moral learning—the artful use of a representation that enables an individual to act
in keeping with their values of tolerance. For another individual, referring to the same phrase might only generate a
stronger sense of anger and indignation. It is often particular to individual psychology and background beliefs what
elements of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic imaginings ‘work’ in a given situation. Despite individual variation, there
are often enough commonalities between people that ideas about how to handle the psychology of a morally challeng-
ing situation can be passed from one person to another and become part of a moral culture.
Synthesis can also be in the form of artful sequences of actions, such as a parent who understands how to artfully
use eye contact, gentle encouragement and positive reinforcement when cuing a child to apologise. Synthesis can also
take the form of generating artistic or cultural productions that are themselves synthesising acts of moral significance.
For instance, in 2017, the Dean of Bristol Cathedral took a step towards acknowledging its connections to transat-
lantic slavery, by placing a prayer for the enslaved, beneath the stained-glass window of Edward Colston—a leading
officer in the enslaving Royal African Company, who has traditionally been honoured in Bristol as the city’s greatest
philanthropist (Burch-Brown, 2020). This act had the effect of preserving an important historical artefact, while dig-
nifying the lives of those harmed by the injustices of slavery. This expressive act involved a creative synthesis, since
it combines elements that were not previously joined (the stained-glass window and the printed prayer) in order to
change the social meaning of the space.
Cultural change over time often takes place through symbolic reconfigurations that lead to new meanings (Tay-
lor, 2016). Artists often work with symbolic reconfigurations intentionally, to change inherited cultural symbolisms
and alter and expand social imaginations. Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990) is an example of this kind of intentional
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 941

reconfiguration. He takes Homer’s Odyssey and moves it from the Greek archipelago to the Caribbean archipelago.
The opening scene is the wider story in miniature, with tree gods being felled and turned into canoes, a koan-like sym-
bol of renewal. In Bristol, artists are creating African heritage dance memorials and virtual memorials in sites of mem-
ory across the city linked to transatlantic enslavement (Hoo, 2020 and Lake, Johnson & Moody, 2021). Creative artis-
tic interventions can add new layers to people’s images of the places in which they live, and stimulate transformative
reflection and synthesis.
As these examples suggest, synthesis plays ongoing roles in the process of moral learning, by which we are educated
in a moral culture and contribute to its evolution. It may, therefore, be worth saying more about what I have in mind by
the idea of moral culture. Theorists have found many ways of defining the concept of culture, but one popular approach
treats culture as consisting of socially shared repertoires of thought, feeling and behaviour. Culture can include such
diverse phenomena as linguistic and conceptual patterns (ways of thinking), affective patterns (emotional cultures
and ways of feeling) and behavioural patterns (ways of acting). We are socialised into moral cultures, learning through
a mixture of social observation, direct instruction and individual experimentation. This socialisation takes place in our
interactions with family members, peers, teachers or other authority figures, and people in public space around us.
It also takes place through the books we read, the television shows we watch, the toys we play with, the images and
messages we see on walls of a classroom, what we read or watch online. Even our physical environments can be part of
moral socialisation, albeit in open-ended ways. For instance, well-tended spaces can express messages of respect and
care, and also of authority and control; untended environment can express messages of neglect and indifference, and
also of openness and freedom.
Observing and experimenting with behaviours, and seeing what responses they elicit, we become versed in a moral
culture, learning organising concepts, values and virtues. Various kinds of informal and formal training lead us to chan-
nel moral expression in particular ways. For instance, in one moral culture there may be greater value placed on author-
ity and tradition, while in another there may be greater value placed on freedom of thought and independence.
Although we are socialised into particular moral cultures, we do not engage with them as automata. Instead, we
have to work out what we accept in our moral cultures, and what we do not. We also have to work out what moral-
ity requires in a particular situation, with unique and evolving personal and sociohistorical circumstances.9 This takes
individual learning and experimentation. Individual learning can then contribute to generating the evolution of moral
cultures. People problem-solve within their own social environments and observe what others do, picking up ideas and
applying them in their own ways. Thus, there is a link between the actions and learning of individuals and wider pat-
terns of cultural change (Haslanger, 2018). I have shown above that synthesis plays a role in these processes, hypoth-
esising that much of this problem-solving takes place through creative recombination of repertoires we previously
learned.
There is a risk, however, that my characterisation thus far leads to an overly atomistic way of picturing the synthe-
sis in question. It is important, therefore, to emphasise that in practice our processes of moral synthesis are often not
perceptible as combinations of discrete elements. We rarely consciously think ‘I shall add x, and then y’. Instead, the
experience might be more like this. One is ruminating on a moral problem. Then (perhaps having set it aside) there is
a moment where there is a sensation of coming into alignment, atunement and correctness. Mental representations
might even clear away, so that perhaps there are no longer sights or sounds associated with the phenomenon pre-
viously forefront in the mind. Then it may seem that an answer comes essentially from the fog and one knows now
what to do, through some process impenetrable by introspection. The mind opens, and the creative unconscious finds
a solution. As I see it, this is still an act of synthesis, akin to the kind involved in artistic creativity. Kant says that artistic
creativity

. . . requires a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a
concept (which for that very reason is original and at the same time discloses a new rule, which could not
have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples) which can be communicated without
the constraint of rules. (Kant, 2007, p. 195 [5:316])
942 BURCH-BROWN

Creativity requires an ability to grasp representations in the imagination as they occur, and to find in these represen-
tations new ways of relating their materials. An artist’s creative productions can in turn serve as an exemplar from
which new artistic concepts or new elements of artistic form can be derived. The activity of an artist can result in a new
exemplar that might then be taken up by others and become part of the form of the art.10 Similarly, although creativity
in moral practice is, at least on Kant’s conception, fundamentally bounded or restricted by the moral law (a point to
which I return below), it nevertheless involves latitude, judgment and even creativity in the specifics, and is, therefore,
often artful, with new combinations generating moral learning for individuals, and in some cases new moral culture.
I shall close this section by observing that normative synthesis of the kind I have introduced above can be under-
stood through analogy with synthesis in the development of theoretical knowledge. Kant argues that philosophy,
mathematics and science all depend fundamentally upon synthetic theoretical judgment. He writes, ‘the entire final
aim of our speculative a priori cognition rests on such synthetic, i.e. ampliative principles; for the analytic ones are,
to be sure, most important and necessary, but only for attaining that distinctness of concepts which is requisite for a
secure and extended synthesis as a really new construction (acquisition)’ (Kant, 2009, p. 132 [A10/B13]). By drawing
connections between concepts, and constructing relationships between them, synthetic theoretical judgments allow
us to amplify and extend our theoretical knowledge.11 The amplification of knowledge depends on our capacity to
see relationships between concepts that are not simply contained in one another. Like rungs on a ladder, connection-
making between concepts allows the extension of thought.

Volitional synthesis

The second form of synthesis that is key to moral development is what I shall call volitional synthesis. I see this as paral-
lel to a sub-agential form of synthesis that plays a role in Kant’s account of imagination, understanding and experience.
According to Kant, the very possibility of experience itself depends on the synthesising activity of the mind. Without
some unifying activity, the mind would be a wash of unorganised sensory impressions. It is synthesis, Kant says, that
allows us to take up and connect the inputs of sensory awareness, grasping this manifold sensory input in a single view.
Synthesis names the process of ‘putting different representations together with each other and comprehending their
manifoldness in one cognition’ (Kant, 2009, p. 210 [A77/B103]). Without the mind’s capacity for synthesis, Kant says,
our perceptions ‘would be nothing but a blind play of representations, i.e. less than a dream’ (p. 235 [A112]). Organis-
ing sensory inputs through concepts, Kant thinks, is the means by which we arrive at the unified, connected content
of thought and experience.12 Thus, synthesis plays a central role in Kant’s account of the conditions necessary for
experience.
Similarly, in the practical domain, the possibility of agential action depends on volitional synthesis. An agent’s men-
tal and physical life is characterised by a dynamic play of feelings, thoughts and desires, some conscious and others
subconscious or unconscious. Action is also structured in space and time and by our ends and practical values. Acting
depends on synthesis across many dimensions of an agent’s inner activity. In the flow of action, agents have to form a
direction for action, from dynamic and sometimes conflicting layers of thoughts, feelings and desires (Pred, 2005). In
the flow of action, practical synthesis is needed to discern how the diverse ends and values at play in any given situa-
tion (such as ideals of respect for persons and of stewardship for the diversity of life) interact to give us reason to act
in one way or another.
Moreover, just as Kant particularly insists that experience is structured by an underlying awareness that our expe-
rience is ours, so human action is structured by an underlying awareness that our action is ours, and that what we are
doing at any moment fits into some larger architectures of activity structured by our evolving values and projects. In
the practical perspective, we do not perceive our action as a sequence of instantaneous choices, but instead see each
moment of activity in the context of the larger unity of action. Our sense of the larger unity of action—of our action as
our own, and of individual actions having meaning and significance through their roles in relation to the larger contours
of our activity—depends on an ongoing practical synthesis.
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 943

Virtuous synthesis

Normative synthesis and volitional synthesis, as I have introduced them above, are not necessarily moral or good.
Tyrants exercise synthetic judgment when coming up with new ways of suppressing dissent, and bureaucrats find a
direction through the welter of paperwork, not always guided by moral law. Volitional synthesis likewise need not nec-
essarily be morally good, since it is better conceived as a transcendental condition for the possibility of action. I turn,
therefore, to the third form of synthesis in the moral domain.
Moral synthesis in the full sense is synthesis that is in keeping with virtue. For the purposes of this paper, I will fol-
low Kantian terms, though my instinct is that a truer articulation would start more from virtue and be less constrained
by metaphors of law. In a Kantian framework, in any case, virtuous synthesis would include just those acts of synthe-
sis that guide an agent under the moral law, or under the moral ideas of the aspiration towards the highest good, or
towards a systematic harmony of ends. Virtuous synthesis is synthesis that achieves a harmonising of final ends.
Virtuous synthesis finds a parallel in the theoretical domain, where Kant thinks that the mind aspires towards an
ideal of a unified understanding of the principles of nature. He proposes that the mind’s activity is organised by what he
calls the faculty of reason and suggests that this faculty’s governing ‘idea’ is to guide the mind to seek systematic unity
in all of its cognitions. The mind’s ambition for systematic unity is ultimately elusive, in part because we are capable of
knowing only the appearances of things and not things in themselves, and because it is possible to pursue knowledge
of nature in ever greater detail, and in ever greater abstraction. Despite its unattainability in practice, the ambition
towards systematic unity is reason’s guiding idea, according to Kant, and in the Critique of Pure Reason he presents
synthetic or ‘ampliative’ principles as the vehicle for the mind’s pursuit of this idea.13
In parallel, it has been argued that the central ideal at work in Kant’s practical or moral philosophy is an ideal of
seeking a systematic harmony of ends (see e.g. O’Neill, 1996). Kant introduces the ideal of the ‘kingdom of ends’ as a
community in which people pursue happiness through relationships of virtuous love and respect. Our capacity to work
towards the moral ideal of a harmony of ends depends on synthetic practical judgment, because it requires us to grasp
the relationships between diverse ends, and discern ways in which diverse ends can be brought into harmony with
one another. This involves seeing the manifold in one cognition. The impetus for moral creativity arises when we are
morally required to harmonise ends that are difficult to harmonise or to pursue ends that cannot be reached through
existing social values, norms, techniques, practices, institutions, laws or other ways of organising our social world. Our
capacity to pursue a just world, and to pursue ethical relationships with one another, depends upon our ability to har-
monise diverse ends and develop new values, and this extension of practical knowledge and form depends, I propose,
upon synthetic practical judgment. Thus, a task of moral education is to help people develop their ability to use reason
and imagination to find values, concepts, norms and so on that make it possible to harmonise the diversity of ends.
The moral law can itself be seen as a principle of combination; it is a synthesising principle in the sense that what it
aspires to enable is the synthesising or harmonising of final ends in the highest good. Kant also associates the moral law
with a widening of perception, stating that the pure moral law ‘lets us discover the sublimity of our own supersensible
existence’ (Kant, 1999, p. 211 [5:88]). In the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason, he alludes to the idea of
metaphysical, physical and spiritual interconnection and the role of morality within this: ‘Two things fill the mind with
ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry
heavens above me and the moral law within me’ (p. 269 [5:161]). He says that to see these ideas is to ‘connect them
immediately with the consciousness of my existence’ (p. 269 [5:162]) . The starry heavens above ‘begins from the place
I occupy in the external world of sense and extends the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with
worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their periodic motion, their
beginning and their duration’ (ibid.). The interconnection of the moral law within, he says, ‘begins from my invisible self,
my personality, and presents me in a world which has true infinity. . . ’ (ibid.). Kant thinks that the awareness of the moral
law within connects us to a larger reality, as reflected in our experience of the moral law as sublime. Thus, synthesis
under an idea of systematic harmony takes us beyond personal self and into connection with a wider reality.
944 BURCH-BROWN

This experience of the moral law as sublime is connected to the experience of inner freedom, which Kant explores
in his discussion of the ‘doctrine of method’ of moral education.

Here the doctrine of method is understood . . . as the way in which one can provide the laws of pure
practical reason with access to the human mind and influence on its maxims, that is, the way in which
one can make objectively practical reason subjectively practical as well. (Kant, 1999, p. 261 [5:151])

In discussing moral education, Kant says that we begin by developing a habit of asking whether actions conform to
moral law (p. 267 [5:159]). In the next stage we progress towards becoming aware of our power to act from duty rather
than inclination:

the pupil’s attention is fixed on the consciousness of his freedom and, although this renunciation excites
an initial feeling of pain, nevetheless, by its withdrawing the pupil from the constraint of even true
needs, there is made known to him at the same time a deliverance from the manifold dissatisfaction
in which all those needs entangle him and his mind is made receptive to the feeling of satisfaction from
other sources (Kant, 1999, p. 268 [5:160]).

Moral education cultivates this connection to inner freedom, with lively examples leading the agent’s attention to be
‘fixed on the consciousness of his freedom’, in which ‘is revealed to the human being an inner capacity not otherwise
correctly known by himself, the inner freedom to release himself from the impetuous importunity of inclinations. . . ’
(p. 268 [5:161]). Finally, Kant says, examples are key to this attunement. Examples of moral failures help people to
see that they do indeed value morality fundamentally and in an overriding way, and lead them to concentrate their
attention on understanding this inner value; while examples of success in the face of great barriers inspire a natural
feeling of respect for moral law and give a positive feeling of one’s own capacity for virtue.

BEYOND SYNTHESIS

I have hypothesised that moral agents learn—and moral cultures grow—using both reflection and synthesis of various
kinds. If that is true, then this has at least three important implications for educational philosophy and practice. First, it
would imply that moral education takes place through reflection and synthesis, and this might have a bearing on how
we approach effective teaching. Moral education should support learners to become more adept at seeing creative
ways to harmonise diverse needs, and more comfortable holding a diversity of perspectives in one view.
For instance, consider the pedagogical methods of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, which
is a network of places using sites of memory to reaffirm values of human rights, dignity and equality. Amongst
the most important of their tools is what is known as the Four Truths Framework, which originated in South
Africa. This framework says that difficult history can be seen through the light of four truths. There are foren-
sic truths, which are descriptive facts about what happened. There is personal truth, which is what this history
means to the learner, individually. There are social truths, which are the tapestries of meanings across a soci-
ety. Finally, there are healing or reconciliatory truths, which are truthful insights that can help a community grow
and heal through this history. Many Sites of Conscience do public pedagogy through this framework, helping
visitors to consider the history in these different guises, with each step being treated as a different stage of
synthesising. Such sites often start by prompting learners to reflect on personal experience, then to reflect on
other peoples’ experiences and then synthesise these reflections into ideas for the future directions of the com-
munity. These and many other moral pedagogies seem to be well understood through concepts of reflection and
synthesis.
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 945

Second, the best educators are those who teach people how to teach themselves. Thus, my argument implies that
the best moral educators are those who do not just help learners reflect and synthesise on particular problems, but
help learners become better reflectors and better synthesisers in general. Sometimes this may take place through
practice and extrapolation. For instance, curricula using the Four Truths Framework give learners practice with a kind
of sequencing that can help them then become more complex independent thinkers and more skilled at the different
stages involved in reflection and synthesis, including normative synthesis, volitional synthesis and virtuous synthesis
(what I have also sometimes been calling alignment, atunement or correctness).
Third, if at least some moral questions call for creativity, this has important implications for moral education. As
educators work to prepare young generations to address the great challenges of our time, including climate change
and bridging political divides, they must train them to be morally sensitive, creative thinkers (Mulgan, 2018). In moral
theory, it is most common to frame moral problems as questions about prohibitions, requirements and permissions.
As important as these are, they do not capture the core work to be done in cases where ‘our concern outruns our art’,
and where creative thinking is needed. The pressing question may not be ‘Is x permitted?’, but ‘What resources can be
combined to transform this problem?’
It might be objected that functions other than synthesis are just as important in these processes. However, I do not
intend to argue that synthesis is the sole operation involved in moral growth or moral cultural creativity. I have already
discussed the role of reflection, as a pattern of thought allowing us to see under one guise and then another, and move
between views. Modification, variation, analysis, selection and elimination are also all amongst the tools of creativity.
For instance, Bach often proceeds by ‘composing against the grain’ of the sources with which he is working (Dreyfus,
2004). In the D-minor Chaconne, he stretches every aspect of this conventional dance form, eliminating the figured
base and leaving much of the harmonic structure implicit (Chung, 2016). His creativity here depends partly on elimi-
nation, not just amplification. The mechanism of elimination is aesthetically important. The result is of extraordinary
musical power in part because of the ways in which the linear extension withholds resolution, so that the listener has
to reach to find harmonic meanings that become clear only when the next moment of the music has already begun.
Likewise, Virginia Woolf can be seen as working against the grain of established prose form. For instance, she aban-
dons the convention of treating her characters’ thought as continuous (Marsh, 1998, pp. 6–7). As Nicholas Marsh puts
it, the inner thoughts of Woolf’s characters often start and stop, and Woolf’s sentence structure ‘seems to imitate the
darting, bit-by-bit, loosely connected flow of thought and emotion’, allowing her to convey a level of experience impos-
sible through conventional narrative (ibid.). In her experiments with syntax, Woolf has not simply taken an established
form and added it. Instead, she and other modernists selectively eliminate and subvert received rules of their form.
Consider likewise examples such as overcoming social injustices, which cannot be achieved by simply building on
existing social values. Instead, overcoming phenomena like racial injustice requires rejecting the symbolic and episte-
mological dimensions of the ‘racial projects’ that have historically been used to justify racialised differences in access
to society’s goods, including social standing, political power, freedom, education and material resources (Collins, 2002;
Taylor, 2013). Thus, the pursuit of social justice requires laying to rest certain received social values and social mean-
ings and developing alternatives.14
These examples show that we will miss important creative processes if we think of practical creativity as solely
amplifying and extending the frameworks of practical forms we have learned. Instead, agents exercise creativity by
selectively synthesising from the rapidly passing play of the imagination, drawing elements from cultural forms they
have learned, while eliminating and working against others. Amongst the forms of judgment involved in these creative
processes, however, synthesis plays a uniquely important role because it represents the key stage of consolidation.

CONCLUSION

To return to themes with which this paper began, an element missing from Kant’s account of moral practice is the
treatment of problems characterised by epistemic limits—where we cannot yet form a clear understanding of what
946 BURCH-BROWN

ends we should be aiming for or of how we should go about aiming towards the ends we think we are obliged to pursue.
Morally complex situations often generate conflicting judgments, thoughts, feelings, impulses and desires. The debates
over contested heritage, slavery and Confederate memorials, for instance, are symbolically complex, involving symbols
that are open to a range of interpretations (see Bennett, 2016). Removing a statue can be seen as an attempt to cre-
ate space for the history to be told more forthrightly, or it can be seen as an attempt to whitewash history by hiding
uncomfortable reminders of the past. This symbolic complexity makes it hard to identify paths of action that will do
justice to the need of each member of the community for respect, moral protection and belonging.
We do, however, make progress on difficult moral problems, developing and learning both at the individual and at
the collective levels. I have argued that our capacity to do so depends on generative capacities that have been under-
theorised by moral philosophers, and have identified three forms of synthesis that are key to our moral practice and
to moral development. First, in normative synthesis we develop new ways of thinking, feeling and acting, by creatively
recombining resources from the moral cultures around us. Second, I have identified volitional synthesis as a neces-
sary condition for the possibility of action, since acting in any moment requires us to harmonise myriad cognitions,
feelings and inclinations to yield a direction for action. To act we must harmonise the diverse inputs of sensibility,
understanding and volition to form a direction for ourselves, giving rise to what Ralph Pred has called the ‘onflow’
of action and activity (2005). Finally successful moral development cultivates capacities for virtuous synthesis, or as
Kant might put it synthesis under the moral law, with the moral law itself being a synthesising principle instantiat-
ing respect for all who are ends in themselves. Understanding these dimensions of moral practice might lead us to
reconceive priorities in moral education, helping us to frame questions in ways that better support learners’ moral
development.
Thus, various forms of practical synthesis lie at the centre of key elements of ethics and philosophy of action. Prac-
tical synthesis describes what it is that we must do to form and develop our practical values and ends. It also describes
what we must do to act at all, given our freedom. And it describes what we must do to harmonise our freedom with
that of others. The kinds of activities that are central to freedom, agency and morality would be impossible without it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to David Bakhurst and Martin Sticker for their gracious support and guidance, and to two anony-
mous referees for exceptionally generous and insightful comments. This paper has benefited from conversations with
many colleagues over a number of years, with particular thanks to Jonathan Webber, Christopher Bennett, Garrath
Williams, Jens Timmermann, Alfred Archer, Roger Crisp, Alix Cohen, Michael Stuart, Barbara Herman, Thomas Hill,
Seiriol Morgan, Jason Konek, Samir Okasha, Alexander Bird, Steve Mallinson, colleagues at University of Bristol, Frank
Burch-Brown, Carol Burch-Brown, Ann Kilkelly, Sean Baker, Katie Baker, and William Baker. Funding for this paper has
been provided by a UKRI Citizen Science grant BB/V013378/1.

ENDNOTES
1
There are exceptions to this. See e.g. Brewer (2011), Lear (2008), Mulgan (2018), and Williams (2014).
2
Kant puts this by saying that the practical use of reason ‘is concerned with the determining grounds of the will, which is a
faculty either of producing objects corresponding to representations or of determining itself to effect such objects . . . that
is, of determining its causality’ (Kant, 1999, p. 148 [5:15]).
3
Examples of morally important creative work for which this is true have been identified by people working on epistemic
injustice. An example introduced by Miranda Fricker (2015) is the coining of the phrase and concept of ‘sexual harassment’.
Constructing the concept of ‘sexual harassment’ was an important creative act. It was creative because it involved an imag-
inative leap, enabling speakers to unify under one concept a body of experiences; and it was morally creative because this
imaginative leap was morally salient, having far-reaching effects for women’s ability to articulate, legitimise and convey
the harmful effects of unwanted sexual attention. In cases where the moral dimensions of a problem and the pathways to
rectification are not well understood, figuring out how to act requires something beyond determinate practical judgment.
4
Kant’s own discussions of reflecting judgment take place in the context of aesthetics and empirical concepts, but these
examples show that reflective judgment has a key role to play in moral practice.
5
For a rich account of the nature of expressive actions, see Bennett (2016).
REFLECTION AND SYNTHESIS 947

6
This passage continues: ‘of which the latter took no regard in its concept, but which it applies, not so much objectively, for
cognition, as subjectively, for the animation of the cognitive powers, and thus also indirectly to cognitions; thus genius really
consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no diligence learn, of finding ideas for a given concept on the
one hand and on the other hitting upon the expression for these, through which the subjective disposition of the mind
that is thereby produced, as an accompaniment of a concept, can be communicated to others’ (Kant, 2007, pp. 194–195
[5:317]). As is often the case, Kant’s own examples of how this might take place are rather clunky, using cliched metaphors.
For instance, illustrating the idea that a poet might make connections between sensible experience and supersensible ideas,
he offers, ‘Thus, e.g., a certain poet says in the description of a beautiful morning: “The sun streamed forth, as tranquillity
streams from virtue”’ (p. 194 [5: 316]). However, the basic picture of creative agency has attractive features.
7
For illuminating discussion of Kantian synthesis in the theoretical domain, see Young (1992).
8
It could be fruitful to consider these ideas about the role of normative synthesis in moral practice alongside more detailed
studies of Kantian psychology. See e.g. Frierson (2005) for detailed study of Kantian psychology and the relationships
between cognition, feeling, desire and action or Deimling (2014) for an exceptionally lucid discussion of Kant’s own treat-
ment of affective states and their regulation.
9
Barbara Herman’s The Practice of Moral Judgment offers a particularly illuminating study of moral judgment from a Kantian
perspective (Herman, 1996).
10
Kant treats artistic creativity as activity of reflecting judgment, but I have explained in the preceding section why I think
such activity involves both reflection and synthesis.
11
In philosophy, Kant thinks, we make advances by forging connections between the a priori concepts that he thinks fun-
damentally structure understanding and experience. In mathematics, we make advances by exploring the implications of
concepts and principles that we ourselves have constructed and defined. In natural sciences, we take empirical concepts,
structured by a priori concepts of causation, space and time, and connect them in myriad ways to draw new inferences and
extend empirical knowledge of the world.
12
On Kant’s view of cognition, the mind’s powers include a receptive faculty of sensibility, through which the mind takes in sen-
sory input (in Kant’s terminology, intuitions), and an active faculty of understanding that organises this flow of sensory input
using concepts and categories. Kant, therefore, claims that synthesis itself is necessary for experience, since in experience
the mind must unify and connect the manifold sensory inputs and make some coherent whole from them.
13
For a valuable recent discussion of the relationship between the practical and theoretical pursuits of systematic unity, see
Mudd (2013). See also Nuzzo (2005).
14
See Taylor (2016) and Collins (2002). See also Boxill (1997), Gilroy (2006), Gordon (2000), Medina (2012), Sullivan and
Tuana (2007) and Taylor (2013).

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How to cite this article: Burch-Brown, J. (2022) Reflection and synthesis: How moral agents learn and moral
cultures evolve. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 55: 935–948. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12622