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Andreas Muller
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Constructing Practical Reasons
Some things are reasons for us to perform certain actions. That it will spare you
great pain in the future, for example, is a reason for you to go to the dentist now,
and that you are already late for work is a reason for you not to read the next
article in the morning paper. Why are such considerations reasons for or against
certain actions? Constructivism offers an intriguing answer to this question. Its
basic idea is often encapsulated in the slogan that reasons are not discovered but
made by us. Andreas Müller elaborates this idea into a fully fledged account of
practical reasons, makes its theoretical commitments explicit, and defends it
against some well-known objections.
Constructing Practical Reasons begins with an examination of the distinctive
role that reason judgements play in the process of practical reasoning. This
provides the resources for an anti-representationalist conception of the nature of
those judgements, according to which they are true, if they are true, not because
they accurately represent certain normative facts, but because of their role in
sound reasoning. On the resulting view, a consideration owes its status as a
reason to the truth of the corresponding reason judgement and thus, ultimately,
to the soundness of a certain episode of reasoning. Consequently, our practical
reasons exhibit a kind of mind-dependence, but this does not force us to deny
their objectivity.
Constructing Practical
Reasons
ANDREAS MÜLLER
1
3
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
1. What is constructivism? 6
1.1 The basic idea 6
1.2 Constructivism and representation 7
1.3 Constructivism and truth 13
1.4 Constructivism and mind-dependence 17
1.5 Constructivism, explanation, and the grounding relation 20
1.6 Putting constructivism on the map 26
1.7 Plan of the book 31
2. Reasoning and reason judgements 33
2.1 Preliminaries 33
2.2 Conditions of adequacy 41
2.3 The normative guidance account 44
2.4 The inadequacy of alternative accounts 52
2.5 Reasoning and conceptual sophistication 65
2.6 Regress worries 72
2.7 Metareasoning 77
3. The nature of reason judgements 82
3.1 Preliminaries 82
3.2 Guidance and representation 89
3.3 Constructivism and expressivism 100
3.4 Extending the account 107
4. The truth about reasons 110
4.1 Constructivism, correspondence, and deflationism 111
4.2 Towards a compatible theory of truth 114
4.3 Wright on truth 116
4.4 Alethic pluralism 120
4.5 Truth and sound reasoning 128
4.6 Constructing reasons 137
vi 
5. Correct reasoning 141

5.1 Correct and incorrect reasoning 142
5.2 Correctness and reasons 145
5.3 Correctness without reasons 156
5.4 The constitutive rules account of correct reasoning 159
5.5 Developing the account 163
5.6 How to determine the rules of reasoning 172
5.7 The status of the rules of reasoning 185
6. Mind-dependence and objectivity 189
6.1 The varieties of mind-dependence 190
6.2 Siding with Euthyphro 197
6.3 Fallibility and universality 200
6.4 Modal robustness 206
Concluding remarks 219
References 223
Index 233
Acknowledgements
This book grew out of my doctoral dissertation, which I submitted to

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in August 2013. A lot of time has passed
since then, and while the position I develop in this book has not changed,
some of the arguments and a lot of the text that presents them have.
Writing this book and the dissertation on which it is based would not
have been possible without the support of a number of persons and
institutions. First and foremost, I am greatly indebted to my PhD
supervisor at Humboldt, Thomas Schmidt, who has supported and
encouraged me not only throughout the time I worked on the disserta-
tion, but also a long time before I had even thought about pursuing a
doctorate in philosophy. His insightful comments and suggestions were
immensely helpful in shaping my thinking about the topic of this book.
During a research visit spent at the Philosophy Department of Princeton
University in the spring term of 2012, Michael Smith was very generous
with his time and his comments, for which I am very grateful. Our
conversations, in Princeton and on various later occasions, helped me
to develop a clearer perspective on many of the issues that I discuss in
what follows.
Many people helped me to improve the material that found
its way into this book. I have greatly benefited from conversations
with and comments from Maike Albertzart, Hannah Altehenger, Max
Barkhausen, Philipp Brüllmann, Anne Burkard, Andreas Cassee,
Christopher Cowie, Sinan Dogramaci, Gerhard Ernst, Daan Evers,
Christoph Fehige, Simon Gaus, Jan Gertken, Stefan Gosepath, Logi
Gunnarsson, Tim Henning, Ulf Hlobil, Rebekka Hufendiek, Benjamin
Kiesewetter, Christian Kietzmann, Felix Koch, Errol Lord, David
Löwenstein, Barry Maguire, Susanne Mantel, Leo Menges, Cory
Nichols, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Peter Schaber, Oliver Schott, Moritz
Schröder, Sharon Street, Christine Tiefensee, Barbara Vetter, Jay
Wallace, Ralph Wedgwood, and Jack Woods, as well as two anonymous
viii 
readers for OUP. I would like to express my gratitude to all of these

people, and to those I have forgotten to mention. I am also much obliged
to Timo Junger, who was a great help in preparing the final manuscript.
For valuable discussions and comments, I would like to thank various
audiences in Berlin, Essen, Frankfurt, Munich, Münster, Konstanz,
Leipzig, Saarbrücken, Tübingen, and Vienna, where I had the opportun-
ity to present earlier versions of some of the material included here. I am
also grateful to Dominik Perler and his Leibnitz-Preis-Projekt, to the
Graduate School of Princeton University, to Humboldt-Universität zu
Berlin and the Sonderforschungsbereich 644, to the Studienstiftung des
deutschen Volkes, and to the Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics in
Münster for supporting me and my work, as well as to the University of
Bern and my colleagues here, for providing me with the opportunity to
continue doing philosophy in such an ideal environment. Finally, I owe a
special debt of gratitude to my parents, whose unconditional support has
helped me on every step of the way, and to Moritz Schröder, who has
listened to my thoughts about this book and its contents with unfailing
patience and encouragement.
Chapter 2 contains material previously published in A. Müller (2019).
Reasoning and normative beliefs: not too sophisticated. Philosophical
Explorations 22(1), 2–15, which is reprinted here by permission of the
publisher (Taylor & Francis Ltd).
Introduction
Agents have reasons: some things are reasons for them to perform or
refrain from certain actions. That it will spare her great pain in the
future, for example, is a reason for an agent to go to the dentist now,
that she promised her friend to help him move is a reason for her to do
so, and that she is already late for work is a reason for her not to read the
next article in the morning paper. What makes either of these consider-
ations a reason for or against the respective action? Why do we have such
reasons? In some cases, an answer is easy to come by. You might have a
reason to buy a train ticket simply because you have a reason to get from
Berlin to Hamburg. Here, your reason to buy the ticket can be explained
in terms of another reason from which it derives. But not all reasons can
be derivative reasons, so this kind of answer will not always be available.
Can we give a more general explanation why something is a reason for an
agent (not) to perform a certain action, one that applies to all such
reasons?
Some philosophers, including Thomas Scanlon (1998, ch. 1; 2014) and
Derek Parfit (2011a; 2011b), are sceptical about the feasibility of this
explanatory project. They deny that such a general account of our
practical reasons—that is, our reasons for or against performing certain
actions—can be provided. We might be able to explain, in each case, why
the reason-giving fact holds, such as the fact that going to the dentist now
will spare someone great pain in the future. But the reason fact itself, the
fact that this fact about the consequences of going to the dentist is a
reason for the agent to go, cannot always be explained in an informative
way: at least some reason facts are primitive, fundamental facts, facts at
which our explanations come to an end. Others, like Michael Smith
(1994; 2013) and Mark Schroeder (2007), are more optimistic about
the prospects of giving a general account of practical reasons. They
emphasize that what there is reason to do for an agent is closely related
Constructing Practical Reasons. Andreas Müller, Oxford University Press (2020). © Andreas Müller.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198754329.001.0001
2 
to what that agent is motivated to do, or what she would be motivated to

do if certain conditions were met. This relation, they claim, suggests that
facts about what is a reason for doing what can be explained in terms of
facts about the relevant agent’s actual or hypothetical motivational states,
such as her desires.
This book explores another attempt to provide a general explanation
of practical reasons, one that is offered by a constructivist account of
those reasons. Constructivism shares the optimism of the second kind of
view mentioned; it, too, purports to give a general and informative
answer to the question why certain reason facts obtain. But it suggests
a different approach to developing such an account: to understand why
some things are reasons for certain actions, we have to start by thinking
about the relation between those reason facts and an agent who acknow-
ledges them by forming the corresponding reason judgements. The basic
idea of constructivism is that reasons are not discovered, but made. That
is, the relation between a reason fact and the agent’s corresponding
judgement is not one of discovery; instead, those facts must be con-
sidered the result of some activity in which agents are engaged. To
explain why something is a reason for an agent to perform a certain
action, we have to explain how they are made, what activity they result
from, and what role reason judgements play in that activity.
As a view that is closely associated with the work of John Rawls and
Christine Korsgaard, constructivism has attracted considerable attention
over the last few decades. Much of that attention, however, has been
critical. The idea that constructivism about practical reasons might offer
an interesting and plausible alternative to the more established views in
the meta-ethical debate is often met with scepticism (see, e.g., Shafer-
Landau 2003, ch. 2; Hussain and Shah 2006; Enoch 2009; Wallace 2004;
2012; and Ridge 2012). On the other hand, there is little agreement as to
what exactly a constructivist account of practical reasons consists in and
what its central claims are, over and above the basic idea sketched in the
previous paragraph. Hence, before we can properly assess its merits, we
need a better understanding of what constructivism actually amounts to
as an account of practical reasons.
My main aim in this book is thus to elaborate the basic constructivist
idea into a fully fledged account of practical reasons, to make its
 3
theoretical commitments explicit, and to defend it against some well-

known objections. Doing so will require me to address a variety of
different topics.¹ Given the limited space available, it would be impos-
sible to discuss all of these topics as extensively as they deserve, and to
address the many positions that one could take with respect to each of
them. I have thus chosen to focus on those aspects that are most relevant
for elaborating the details of the constructivist position and to address
only those problems and opposing views that pose an immediate threat
to the overall coherence of that position. As a consequence, my overall
argument is primarily constructive: what I hope to establish is not that
constructivism must be adopted or that it offers a better account of
practical reasons than its competitors, but that it can be adopted and
that it offers a coherent and prima facie attractive account that avoids
many of the problems and concerns with which it is confronted and
hence deserves further discussion. Above all, this book is meant to
facilitate such a discussion.
Before we begin, there are a few clarificatory remarks that I would like
to make in advance so as to avoid potential misunderstandings. Firstly,
constructivism about practical reasons is a meta-ethical view that must
be distinguished from views in moral or political philosophy that also go
by the name ‘constructivism’, such as John Rawls’s (1971) position on
the fundamental principles of justice or Thomas Scanlon’s (1998, part II)
position on moral wrongness. The difference between constructivism as
a meta-ethical position and constructivism as a first-order normative
position lies in the questions each position is supposed to answer. First-
order normative views answer questions like these: when is the distribu-
tion of a scarce amount of goods just? Is it sometimes permissible to
break a promise? Is happiness an intrinsic value? Why is it wrong to lie to
someone? Is there a reason to develop one’s talents?
Meta-ethical positions, on the other hand, are concerned with the
metaphysical status of normative facts, such as facts about what is a
reason for what, and they might offer an explanation for why the things
that a first-order normative theory identifies as reasons for a certain kind
¹ I present the main tenets of a constructivist account of practical reasons and give an
overview of how this book proceeds with elaborating that account in Chapter 1 below.
4 
of action are reasons for that action. They are also concerned with the
nature of normative judgements, with whether and in what sense they
can be said to be true or false, with the meaning of terms like ‘just’,
‘wrong’, or ‘reason’, etc. So what distinguishes a form of meta-ethical
constructivism from, say, Scanlon’s moral constructivism is not that the
latter is ‘merely’ about moral wrongness, whereas the former is con-
cerned with practical reasons in general, for a first-order normative
position might share this wider scope. The difference lies in what ques-
tions they address about wrongness or reasons and our judgements
about either.
That is not to say, however, that meta-ethical and first-order norma-
tive positions are entirely independent of each other, or that one can
remain entirely neutral on any substantive normative issues while
defending a fully specified meta-ethical view. Giving certain answers to
some of the questions with which meta-ethical views are concerned will
commit you to accepting or denying certain answers to first-order
normative questions. A meta-ethical view that explains an agent’s
reasons entirely in terms of her actual desires, for example, will face
significant difficulties in accommodating the substantive normative
claim that some reasons are shared by all agents regardless of any
differences in their motivational dispositions. Hence, that meta-ethical
and first-order normative positions must be distinguished because they
answer different kinds of questions does not mean that one can be
defended without an eye to the other.
Secondly, the constructivist position that I am concerned with here is
an account of practical reasons. More precisely, it is an account of facts
about what is a reason for whom to do what (and not of the ordinary
first-order facts that give the agent a reason). It thus has a wider scope
than an account of, for example, moral facts, but it does not purport to
cover all normative phenomena. How best to understand the term
‘normative’ here is itself a controversial matter. Some use it only for
facts and judgements that are about—or closely connected to facts and
judgements about—reasons, while others use it more broadly so as to
include, for example, facts and judgements about correctness, rationality,
virtue, etc., even if those are not to be understood in terms of reasons
(cf. Thomson 2008). But even if ‘normative’ is used narrowly to apply
 5
only to the realm of reasons, the constructivist position under consider-

ation targets only a subset of all normative facts, because it only offers an
account of practical reasons, putting other kinds of reasons, such as
epistemic reasons—reasons for belief—to one side. There is no general
reason to suspect that the constructivist account of practical reasons that
will emerge in the following chapters could not be extended, with some
adaptions, to the case of epistemic reasons. Still, I think that it is not a
trivial question whether epistemic and practical reasons should receive
the same theoretical treatment—at least the mere fact that we talk about
‘reasons’ in both cases does not suffice to show that we are dealing with a
homogeneous phenomenon that requires a unified account. Hence, the
plausibility of a constructivist account of epistemic reasons must be
assessed separately and on another occasion.
1
What is constructivism?
1.1 The basic idea
Constructivism, as I understand it here, is first and foremost a view about

the relation between thought and its object. To be a constructivist about a
certain domain is to take the facts of that domain to be an upshot, rather
than the measure, of correct judgement in that domain. A constructivist
about practical reasons thus denies that, when an agent comes to realize
that something is a reason for a certain action, she does so in response to
the corresponding normative fact, that is, a fact about what is a reason for
doing what. Instead, such facts are somehow explicable in terms of our
reason judgements. That does not mean that the facts are whatever we
think they are. Constructivists do not deny that we can be mistaken
about what is a reason and what is not. But they do suggest that normative
facts are ultimately grounded in our mental states or activities. In particu-
lar, according to the constructivist account of practical reasons that I will
present in this book, facts about what is a reason for doing what obtain in
virtue of the activity of practical reasoning and the role that the corres-
ponding reason judgements play in it. More specifically, such a fact obtains
because the corresponding reason judgement is true, and the judgement is
true because the episode of reasoning that it is apt to guide is sound.
In this first chapter, I want to start by presenting the main aspects of
the constructivist account I have just sketched in a bit more detail. I do
this, firstly, in order to give you an overview and to motivate the
remaining chapters of this book, where these aspects and the questions
to which they give rise will be discussed at much greater length. But I also
do this because the term ‘constructivism’ has been used to pick out a
variety of rather different positions in meta-ethics, both by advocates and
by opponents of the views so labelled. Hence, I want to be as clear as
possible about how and why I use that term, to avoid adding to the
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198754329.001.0001
   7
confusion. Let me be clear, though, that I do not claim that my proposed

understanding of constructivism somehow synthesizes or subsumes all
of the various conceptions of constructivism that can be found in the
literature.¹ The view that I put forward adopts many important insights
from those other conceptions (as I will point out along the way). In fact,
little of what I have to say in what follows has never been suggested
before. But my aim here is not to identify a common denominator; I am
sceptical that one could be found. The basic idea of constructivism is
essentially a metaphor: some things are constructed from certain other
things; they are made, rather than discovered, as the well-known slogan
has it. Such metaphors can be spelled out in different ways, none of
which is, as such, the right one. Nevertheless, some ways might be more
useful or more interesting than others. The position that I present in this
book is meant to be true to the idea encapsulated in that metaphor, and it
takes up some important thoughts of paradigmatic constructivists like
John Rawls and Christine Korsgaard, as we will see in the following
sections.² But most importantly, it is meant to offer a distinct and prima
facie attractive account of practical reasons.
1.2 Constructivism and representation
Let me now elaborate on the main aspects of the constructivist position

that I sketched in section 1.1. I will start with its account of the nature of
reason judgements in this section, and then address its understanding of
truth as well as the mind-dependent status it assigns to reason facts in
sections 1.3 and 1.4.
Constructivism rejects a familiar conception of the kind of attitude
that is involved in thinking about reasons. Consider the following
¹ Advocates of constructivist views in meta-ethics include John Rawls (1980; 1993), Christine
Korsgaard (1996; 2003; 2009a; 2009b), Carla Bagnoli (2002; 2012; 2013), Aaron James (2007;
2012), and Sharon Street (2008; 2010; 2012). For a comprehensive overview, see Bagnoli (2017).
² Constructivism is often considered to have a Kantian pedigree, and both Rawls and
Korsgaard’s views are certainly inspired by Kant. However, whether Kant is best interpreted
as a constructivist is controversial among Kant scholars, and I will not address this issue here.
For a helpful discussion of meta-ethical constructivism that pays special attention to its roots in
Kant’s philosophy, see Schafer (2015a; 2015b).
8   ?
example. Lara and her friends are out for dinner. They are about to order
from the menu, which, this being a very small restaurant, offers only two
options for the main course: a stuffed squash and duck breast marinated
in hoisin sauce. Lara is unsure which to choose, so she confers with her
friends, who have been here before. They tell her that the squash’s
stuffing is vegetarian, and that the duck breast comes with rice. Lara
also learns that hoisin sauce contains soya beans, and this she takes to be
a reason against having the duck breast (she is allergic to soya beans).
This reason judgement settles her choice, and she proceeds to order the
squash. What role did Lara’s judgement that the fact that hoisin sauce
contains soya beans is a reason against ordering the duck breast play in
the process that lead to her decision? What kind of attitude do we
describe an agent as having when we attribute such a reason judgement
to her?
The familiar conception answers those questions like this: to believe
that the duck breast comes with rice and that hoisin sauce contains soya
beans is to represent certain facts as obtaining, and when those facts
really do obtain, as we shall assume, then those representations are
accurate. Hence, by forming those beliefs, Lara acquires new information
about the options in a choice problem she currently faces, information
that she can apply in making a decision. The familiar conception extends
this account of the cognitive role of ordinary beliefs to the case of reason
judgements. Her reason judgement,³ if true, also provides Lara with
information about the options in her choice problem, information that
will help her to come to a decision. Of course, the beliefs and the reason
judgements differ in the kind of information they provide. The former
provide non-normative information, that is, they accurately represent
certain non-normative facts about the options in question, such as the
fact that the duck breast comes with rice, or that hoisin sauce contains
soya beans. To form a reason judgement, on the other hand, is to acquire
³ I refer to these attitudes as ‘reason judgements’ rather than, e.g., ‘beliefs about reasons’,
because the latter is often associated with a representationalist account of the function of the
attitudes in question. As will become clear shortly, constructivism rejects such an account of the
attitudes’ cognitive function. So, in order to avoid prejudging the issue, I am using what I take to
be a less committing term. ‘Judgement’ is thus meant to pick out a certain kind of mental state,
not the event of forming such a state.
   9
normative information about the choice situation and to represent some

normative fact, some fact about what is a reason for what, as obtaining.
But underlying such differences in content—in what kinds of facts they
are about—is a fundamental similarity in the role those two attitudes
play in the cognitive economy of an agent who faces a choice. Just like
ordinary beliefs about non-normative matters, reason judgements are
representational states which, if accurate, provide the subject with infor-
mation that she can apply in making a decision.
The details of this conception can be filled in in numerous different
ways, particularly when it comes to characterizing the facts that reason
judgements purport to represent. Are they sui generis normative facts, or
can they somehow be reduced to other, non-normative facts? Are they
causally efficacious? How can we gain knowledge of them? These are just
some of the questions on which different version of this conception can
disagree, and they are certainly important questions. Nevertheless, we
can put them to one side for the moment, because the fundamental
aspects of the conception, the ones that will be most relevant in what
follows, are not affected by how these questions are answered. These
aspects concern the relation between those reason facts on the one hand
and our reason judgements on the other, as well as the role reason
judgements play in the cognitive processes of agents like Lara.
According to the familiar conception, judgements about what is a reason
for what relate to certain facts in the same way that the belief that hoisin
sauce contains soya beans relates to the fact that hoisin sauce contains soya
beans: they purport to represent those facts. Hence, they provide an agent
with information that is relevant to her choice, if they represent accurately.
This conception of the nature of reason judgements is quite popular in
contemporary meta-ethics. The idea that reason judgements purport to
represent certain facts and, if accurate, provide agents with information
about the normative aspects of her situation seems to underlie, in one of
its guises, the positions developed by David Enoch (2007; 2011a), Derek
Parfit (2011b), Thomas Scanlon (2003; 2014), Mark Schroeder (2007),
Michael Smith (1994), and many others. It is often not so much articu-
lated explicitly as hidden in the assumption that reason judgements and
ordinary beliefs about non-normative matters are the same kind of
attitude towards different contents. If you take the main difference
10   ?
between the two to consist in the facts they represent, it is understand-

able why you will focus on giving an account of the facts our reason
judgements are about, while saying little about the kind of attitude you
take those judgements to be—there is no need to, if it is the same as our
ordinary beliefs.
Constructivism offers an alternative to this familiar conception. It
suggests that the cognitive function of reason judgements differs funda-
mentally from the cognitive function of ordinary beliefs about non-
normative matters. According to the constructivist, reason judgements
play a distinct role in the psychology of a deliberating agent: the point of
those judgements is not to provide an agent with additional information
that she can apply in making her decision. Instead, reason judgements
guide her in making a decision on the basis of the information she has.
To use a computational analogy: while ordinary beliefs can provide the
input for decision-making processes, reason judgements provide the
instructions that such processes follow in translating those inputs into
outputs, that is, into decisions. Thus, when Lara forms the belief that the
hoisin sauce contains soya beans, she acquires new information about
one of her options, but when she forms the judgement that this is a
reason not to order the duck breast, she does not acquire more infor-
mation. Instead, this judgement will allow her to apply the information
she already has to the choice she faces. Information is not enough to
come to a decision; we also need to have an idea of how to bring any such
information to bear on the problem of choosing one of the available
options. This is the distinct contribution reason judgements make to the
process of reasoned decision-making.
To be more specific about the main point of disagreement between
constructivism and the familiar conception of the nature of reason
judgements outlined above, let me introduce the following thesis about
what kind of attitude reason judgements are:
Representationalism
Reason judgements are representational states. Their cognitive
function is to represent certain facts, and if they do so accurately,
they provide the agent with normative information by indicating
that a certain fact concerning what is a reason for what obtains.
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Proponents of the familiar conception accept Representationalism, or

one particular version of it, while constructivists reject it altogether and
take reason judgements to play a fundamentally different cognitive role
from, for example, beliefs about the composition of some condiment.
Constructivism is thus a form of anti-representationalism about the
nature of reason judgements.⁴
Constructivists are not the only ones who reject Representationalism.
They share this negative part of their view with expressivists such as
Simon Blackburn (1998) and Allan Gibbard (1990; 2003). The two views
differ, however, in their positive accounts of the kind of mental states
they take normative judgements to be. Expressivists typically conceive of
them as motivational or desire-like states, that is, states that are charac-
terized in terms of their role in the explanation of an agent’s actions.
Constructivists, on the other hand, think that reason judgements are a
distinct kind of mental state, the nature of which can only be understood
by attending to its role in guiding the agent’s practical reasoning. In other
words, whereas expressivism characterizes reason judgements as a kind
of pro-attitude, constructivism identifies them in terms of their role in a
process that leads to the formation of such attitudes. The two views thus
disagree substantially on the cognitive role of the attitudes in question.⁵
Representationalism is also rejected by global expressivists such as
Robert Brandom (1994) and Huw Price (2011; 2013). Moreover,
Brandom’s claim that the function of normative vocabulary is to make
explicit ‘an attitude that otherwise could be implicit only in what is
done—namely, the endorsement of a pattern of practical reasoning’
(1994, 271) seems to attribute to reason judgements a cognitive role
similar to the one described in Chapter 2 below. The constructivist
theory presented in this book indeed bears important similarities to the
views of Brandom and Price. But there are also significant differences.
For one, constructivism about practical reasons is a local theory that
⁴ Carla Bagnoli (2002, 125) agrees that constructivists do not consider moral judgement to
involve the ‘aspiration to correctly represent a moral reality’.
⁵ Sharon Street (2008; 2010; 2012) also argues that the attitudes that provide the basis for her
constructivist account of practical reasons must be distinguished from ordinary desires. But she
nevertheless characterizes them as attitudes that are ‘by their nature motivating’ (2008, 230),
which seems to make her account of normative judgements more difficult to distinguish from
the expressivist’s than the reasoning-based account that I propose in this book.
12   ?
contrasts the cognitive function of reason judgements with that of, e.g.,
beliefs about one’s environment—it does not reject Representationalism
across the board. Constructivists also do not share Brandom’s and Price’s
commitment to deflationism (cf. Chapter 4).
John Rawls, probably the most influential proponent of constructiv-
ism in the twentieth century and the author responsible for introducing
that label into the meta-ethical debate,⁶ agrees that constructivists reject
the idea that normative judgements resemble ordinary beliefs in playing
a representational role in an agent’s psychology. He contrasts construct-
ivism with a view he calls ‘rational intuitionism’.⁷ This view holds that
‘moral first principles and judgements, when correct, are true statements
about an independent order of moral values’ and they are ‘known by
theoretical reason’, which means that their epistemology is structurally
similar to that of empirical judgements: ‘moral knowledge is gained in
part by a kind of perception and intuition’ (1993, 91–92). The rational
intuitionist’s conception of the relation between moral judgements and
moral facts is thus very similar to Representationalism. According to
Rawls, constructivism rejects this conception, along with the ‘sparse
conception of the person as . . . a knower’ (1993, 92) that goes with it.
Rawls’s characterization of constructivism thus puts the view in funda-
mental opposition to Representationalism.
Christine Korsgaard is the second major proponent of constructivism
in the last decades. Especially in her more recent writings, she puts the
contrast between constructivism and realism, which she considers to be
its main competitor, in terms of the function or purpose of moral and
other normative concepts:
[T]he difference between a realist and a constructivist theory rests in

the way the two views understand the function of concepts . . . . A realist
⁶ It is important to note that Rawls’s views on constructivism have changed over time, or at
least shifted in focus. Whereas his Dewey lectures (1980) are simply concerned with ‘Kantian
constructvisim’, he later distinguishes between ‘political constructivism’ and ‘Kant’s moral
constructivism’ (1993, 89–129). Only the latter of these two is what he calls a ‘comprehensive
moral doctrine’, that is, a view that also addresses metaphysical and epistemological questions
and thus qualifies as a meta-ethical view. Hence, I will focus on Rawls’s characterization of
constructivism as such a comprehensive doctrine.
⁷ Cf. Rawls (1980, 557–64; 1993, 91–101). He identifies Samuel Clarke, Richard Price, Henry
Sidgwick, G. E. Moore, and David Ross as paradigmatic advocates of rational intuitionism.
   13
believes that the function of concepts is to describe the world, to mark

out the entities we find there, while a constructivist believes that the
function of (at least some) concepts is to mark out, in a schematic way,
the solution to some problem that we face. (Korsgaard 2008, 22)
Constructivism thus rejects the idea that the cognitive function of nor-
mative judgements is to represent reality. That is not what normative
concepts are for; their ‘cognitive job’ is not a descriptive one (2003, 105).
Korsgaard thus clearly rejects a representationalist account of normative
thought. Like Rawls, she understands constructivism as a view that is
meant to offer an alternative to Representationalism.⁸
1.3 Constructivism and truth
Constructivism offers an explanation why some things are reasons for

certain actions. It explains such reason facts, in the first instance, in terms
of the truth of the corresponding reason judgement: they obtain because
that judgement is true.⁹ Constructivists thus do not deny that there are
facts about what is a reason for doing what. Nor do they deny that those
facts correspond to true reason judgements, as long as that claim is
understood as a simple biconditional:
Correspondence
The judgement that p is true if and only if it is a fact that p.
⁸ Her alternative proposal for the function of normative concepts is admittedly less clear. On
her preferred way of formulating that alternative, those concepts denote, in a ‘formal’ or
‘schematic’ way, the solution to some problem we face in so far as we are agents (1996, 113).
While this does not strike me as being in conflict with the view that I develop in this book, I am
not confident enough in my understanding of her proposal to make the case for any substantive
agreement.
⁹ Note that what explains a reason fact according to this proposal is the truth of the
corresponding reason judgement, not the true judgement. That is, no actual judgement—
understood as some specific psychological reality—is necessary for a reason fact to obtain.
What is required, rather, is that the conditions that ground the truth of that judgement are
actually met.
14   ?
This claim is symmetrical and thus leaves open the question of explana-
tory priority between its left- and right-hand sides. It is on this latter
issue that constructivists disagree with their opponents. They maintain
that the order of determination in Correspondence goes from left to
right: they treat reason facts as the explanandum rather than the explan-
ans.¹⁰ What motivates this reversal is the constructivist’s rejection of
Representationalism as an account of the cognitive function of reason
judgements. Truth, it seems, is closely connected to successful function-
ing. So, if the cognitive function of reason judgements is not to represent
certain facts, then their truth will not be grounded in the accurate
representation of such facts either. Denying that reason judgements are
true, if they are true, because they accurately represent certain reason
facts, allows constructivists to employ Correspondence as part of an
explanation of its right-hand side, rather than its left-hand side. For
them, a reason fact is not the ground of a reason judgement’s truth,
but rather its ontological shadow.¹¹
For their explanatory project to succeed, constructivists must offer an
alternative account of what it is for reason judgements to be true. Here,
the threat of circularity looms. To avoid it, the constructivists’ account of
the truth of reason judgements must not presuppose the prior existence
of any reason facts. Moreover, their account must understand truth in
terms that are substantive enough to bear the explanatory weight that the
¹⁰ Compare Bagnoli (2013, 167–8), who writes that constructivists reject the claim ‘that
moral judgments are truth-evaluable because they correspond to or represent some portion of
reality’ and that, rather than holding ‘that [moral] facts are truth-makers’, they hold ‘that such a
domain [of facts; A. M.] is the result of the activity of practical reasoning’.
¹¹ This way of drawing the contrast between constructivism and its alternatives takes cues
from Kit Fine’s distinction between ‘antifactualist’ and ‘factualist’ accounts of a certain practice:
The factualist’s account must in this sense be representational: it must link up the practice
with the underlying facts or subject matter, while the antifactualist’s account will be
nonrepresentational. In the one case, the practice must be seen as engaging with the
possible facts and it must be understood—at least, in part—in terms of how it engages
with those facts. In the other case, the practice is taken to be disengaged from the facts;
and rather than understanding the practice in terms of how it represents the possible
facts, the facts themselves should be understood in terms of how they are ‘projected’ by
the practice. (Fine 2001, 24)
Note, however, that despite the similarities between ‘shadows’ and ‘projections’, constructivism
differs importantly from Simon Blackburn’s expressivist projectivism, which has projected facts
correspond to whatever normative judgement an agent actually endorses; see Blackburn (1988b)
and the introduction to Blackburn (1993).
   15
constructivists’ use of Correspondence puts on them. Providing such an

account is one of the main challenges that advocates of constructivism
have to meet in order to deliver on the promise that their theory of
practical reasons holds. As I will argue in Chapters 4 and 5, the best way
to meet this challenge is for constructivists to build on their account of
the nature of reason judgements as an attitude that guides practical
reasoning and propose that the truth of those judgements is to be
understood in terms of the soundness of the episodes of reasoning that
they are apt to guide.¹²
Offering a constructivist account of some domain thus has conse-
quences for understanding what the truth of judgements in that domain
amounts to. Here, too, I am in agreement with how both Rawls and
Korsgaard characterize constructivism. Rawls acknowledges that because
they reject the rational intuitionists’ account of moral judgements, con-
structivists cannot ‘conceiv[e] of truth in a traditional way by viewing
moral judgements as true when they are both about and accurate to the
independent order of moral values’ (1993, 92). In other words, construct-
ivists cannot understand truth in terms of accurate representation. Rawls
seems unsure what to make of this consequence. Sometimes he recom-
mends that constructivists should not think of moral judgements or
principles as being true but rather as being the most reasonable ones,
highlighting that this allows us to avoid any commitments to a theory of
truth that deviates from the standard representationalist account that is
most plausible in the case of ordinary empirical judgements (1980, 554).
At other times, however, Rawls seems to suggest that constructivism puts
forward an alternative conception of the truth of moral principles and
judgements, one that understands their truth in terms of the notion of
reasonableness and which allows constructivists to affirm the genuine
truth-aptness of those judgements, despite their rejection of the intu-
itionist’s representationalist account of them (1980, 569; 1993, 126 n. 34).
¹² Showing how a constructivist account of practical reasons can avoid circularity is also a
major concern in James (2007). James argues that this commits constructivists to showing that
the norms of practical reasoning do not derive their authority from the fact that they lead to
reason judgements that are true on independent grounds (2007, 308). The account of correct
practical reasoning presented in Chapter 5 allows constructivists to discharge that commitment.
16   ?
Korsgaard is less ambivalent when it comes to the constructivist’s

commitments in the theory of truth. Her constructivism and what she
calls substantive realism do not disagree on whether or not moral
judgements can be true, but on what makes them true, if they are.¹³
The substantive realist claims that there are correct answers to moral
questions ‘because there are moral facts . . . that those questions ask
about’ (1996, 35; her italics).¹⁴ In other words, an answer to a moral
question is correct because it gets the moral facts right. Korsgaard’s
constructivism, by contrast, is meant to give an account of what makes
answers to moral questions correct that does not refer to any antecedent
moral facts. She rejects the idea that the procedures which lead us to
correct answers to moral questions are procedures that ‘track’ certain
‘facts which exist independently of those procedures’ and thereby pro-
vide ‘ways of finding out about a certain part of the world, the normative
part’ (1996, 36–37).¹⁵ This does not prompt her to be sceptical about the
truth-aptness of moral judgements, though. All that is required for truth,
Korsgaard claims, is that there is a standard for the correct use of the
relevant concepts: ‘when a concept is applied correctly, what we get is
truth’ (2003, 117). Such a standard is provided by what she calls ‘the
correct conception’ of the concept in question. But what makes a con-
ception correct, in the case of moral and other normative concepts, is
‘that it solves the problem,¹⁶ not that it describes some piece of external
reality’ (2003, 117).
¹³ Hence, they are both versions of realism in a broader sense, which includes anyone who
believes that there are correct answers to moral (and other normative) questions and thus thinks
that ‘ethics isn’t hopeless’ (1996, 34–5). Korsgaard calls this broad version ‘procedural realism’,
presumably because she thinks that the availability of procedures that will lead us to correct
answers to moral questions is a necessary condition, if not for there being such answers, then at
least for the pursuit of those answers to not be a hopeless endeavour.
¹⁴ Korsgaard counts Samuel Clarke, Richard Price, G. E. Moore, David Ross, H. A. Pritchard,
Peter Railton, David Brink, Thomas Nagel, and Derek Parfit, among others, as proponents of
substantive realism (1996, 19; 2003, 101). Note the similarity between this list and the list of
philosophers Rawls identifies as ‘rational intuitionists’ (see n. 7 above).
¹⁵ See also Korsgaard (2003; 2008, 22–3).
¹⁶ That is, the practical problem schematically denoted by the concept in question; see also
n. 8 above.
  - 17
1.4 Constructivism and mind-dependence
According to constructivism, that some things are reasons for certain

actions can be explained, initially, in terms of the truth of certain reason
judgements and, ultimately, in terms of the soundness of certain episodes
of practical reasoning. Constructivists thus deny that reason facts are
entirely independent of our mental states and activities. They are com-
mitted to the following claim:
Mind-Dependence
Facts about our mental states or activities figure ineliminably in an
account of why some consideration is a reason for an agent to do
something.
Note that this is a rather weak understanding of mind-dependence. It

does not entail, for example, that an agent’s reasons co-vary with her
mental states or with how she engages in the relevant mental activities.
Hence, constructivists do not suggest that practical reasons are subjective
in any such straightforward sense. But they are committed to denying
that reason judgements are objectively true in the sense that the measure
of their truth is provided by some realm of independent objects. In so far
as they want to allow for objectivity in matters of practical reasons,
constructivists thus need to offer a different understanding of what
that objectivity consists in, one that is compatible with their commitment
to mind-dependence.¹⁷
Some authors, including both sympathizers and critics of constructivist
views, have characterized them solely in terms of their commitment to the
mind-dependence of the relevant facts. Russ Shafer-Landau (2003, 13),
for example, introduces moral constructivism as a view which, like the
realism he prefers, ‘endorse[s] the idea that there is a moral reality that
people are trying to represent when they issue judgements about what is
¹⁷ Aaron James (2012) calls this kind of objectivity ‘protagorean objectivity’. Carla Bagnoli
(2002, 131), too, notes that constructivists are committed to an alternative understanding of
objectivity that does not presuppose the accurate representation of ‘a (special) sector of reality’.
18   ?
right and wrong’. What distinguishes constructivism, he continues, is

how it conceives of this reality which moral judgements are trying to
represent: it explains this reality as the ‘output’ of a ‘constructive func-
tion’ that takes ‘attitudes, actions, responses, or outlooks of persons,
possibly under idealized conditions’ as its inputs, whereas realists
endorse the mind- or ‘stance-independence of moral reality’ (2003,
14–15). Shafer-Landau thus portrays constructivists as accepting
Representationalism and taking the facts represented by moral judge-
ments to be mind-dependent in some sense. Sharon Street, an advocate
of constructivism, also focuses on the issue of mind-dependence in
characterizing her position, drawing upon Shafer-Landau’s notion of
‘stance independence’ (Street 2006, 110–11).
Characterizing constructivism exclusively in terms of its commitment
to mind-dependence results in a much broader understanding of the
position than the one I have suggested.¹⁸ In fact, the position which
Shafer-Landau and those who adopt his characterization of constructiv-
ism seem to pick out with that label is a version of Representationalism.
More specifically it is a version of Representationalism that endorses a
certain conception of the kind of facts represented by our judgements:
what we are ‘trying to represent’ is a certain mind-dependent part of
reality. It is thus a position that conflicts with the constructivist position
presented in the present book, which rejects Representationalism
altogether.
Now, as I mentioned before, everyone is free to define and use such
labels as they like. The positions characterized by Shafer-Landau and
myself can be understood as two alternative ways of spelling out the
constructivist metaphor that reasons are not discovered but made. They
emphasize different aspects of that metaphor, focusing either on the
suggestion that reasons are some sort of artefact or product that is the
output of a process that takes mental states or activities as an input or on
the metaphor’s implications for the relation between those reasons and
our judgements about them, which is claimed not to be one of
¹⁸ On Shafer-Landau’s characterization, dispositionalist views of value like the ones devel-

oped by David Lewis (1989) and Michael Smith (1994), as well as Mark Schroeder’s (2007)
Humean reductivism about reasons, seem to qualify as forms of constructivism.
  - 19
‘discovery’. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to deny that both ways of

characterizing constructivism are legitimate attempts to translate the
constructivist metaphor into a set of more precise meta-ethical theses.
Still, I submit that characterizing constructivism as a position that
accepts mind-dependence and rejects Representationalism carves out a
more promising position that offers a genuine and fundamental alterna-
tive to the more established meta-ethical positions. Moreover, as we saw
in the previous sections, this way of understanding constructivism takes
up core elements of the views developed by Rawls and Korsgaard and is
thus hardly revisionist.
Nevertheless, Rawls and Korsgaard also agree that adopting a con-
structivist account for a certain domain entails that the facts of that
domain are mind-dependent in some sense, and that this has conse-
quences for how we must understand the idea that truth in that domain
is nevertheless an objective matter. In the case of Rawls, this can be
illustrated with the following passage from his Dewey lectures:
Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood

in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can
accept. Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of
justice, there are no moral facts. Whether certain facts are to be
recognised as reasons of right and justice, or how much they are to
count, can be ascertained only from within the constructive procedure,
that is, from the undertakings of rational agents of construction when
suitably represented as free and equal moral persons.
(Rawls 1980, 519)
This passage is often referred to when characterizing how Rawls under-

stands constructivism,¹⁹ and it makes clear that he takes moral facts to
depend on our mental states. Rawls also emphasizes that constructivism
¹⁹ See, e.g., Darwall et al. (1992, 138) and Street (2010, 365). Note, though, that while this
passage provides a pithy statement of some important aspects of Rawls’ constructivism, it leaves
others entirely unmentioned, in particular the rejection of the rational intuitionist’s represen-
tationalist account of moral judgements. Focusing solely on this passage thus runs the risk of
ignoring that constructivism—understood as a comprehensive moral doctrine—is committed
not only to the mind-dependence of moral facts but also, and primarily, to an anti-
representationalist account of moral judgements.
20   ?
and rational intuitionism come with different conceptions of objectivity.

Constructivism, he stresses, is not a form of subjectivism; it allows for
fallibility by providing a standard of correctness to which individual
judgements can be held and which they can fail to meet. But it denies
that this standard of correctness is provided by a prior and ‘independent
order of moral values’ (1993, 112; cf. 2000, 243–7). Instead, constructiv-
ism takes a moral judgement to be correct if it ‘meets all the relevant
criteria of reasonableness and rationality’ which are incorporated into a
constructivist procedure (1993, 114).
Korsgaard, too, acknowledges her view’s commitment to the mind-
dependence of normative facts. As we saw earlier, she denies that a
normative judgement is true because it accurately describes any norma-
tive facts that are part of some external reality. But she does not deny that
there are normative facts, or that these facts correspond to our true
normative judgements. She takes them to form a ‘constructed reality’, a
reality constructed by the correct use of normative concepts (2003, 117).
Hence, normative facts are not discovered in practical thinking, that is,
thinking that is trying to solve the problems associated with those
concepts. Here, Korsgaard reverses the order of explanation. According
to her, normative facts can be explained in terms of practical thinking
that is done correctly, that is, in accordance with the principles provided
by the correct conception of practical reasons: ‘When those principles are
applied to facts and cases, they pick out the substantive considerations
that we then regard as reasons’ (2008, 3). That is why, on her account,
reasons are ‘mind-dependent’, where this means that ‘the body of facts in
question would not exist were it not necessary for human beings to
conceptualize the world in a certain way, where the aim of that mode
of conceptualization is not simply one of describing the way things are’
(2009a, 28).
1.5 Constructivism, explanation, and the

grounding relation
Constructivists, I have said repeatedly, want to explain reasons in terms

of true reason judgements, rather than vice versa; they claim that reason
, ,     21
facts ultimately obtain because of or in virtue of the soundness of certain

episodes of practical reasoning. To be able to fully understand the
constructivist position and compare it to the various other accounts of
practical reasons on offer, more needs to be said about what these
phrases are meant to convey. What kind of explanation does the con-
structivist seek to provide? Reason facts are not a causal consequence of
any of our judgements, so the kind of explanation at issue is not the one
provided by saying that a bridge collapsed because it was hit by a lorry,
for example.
Instead, constructivists aim to give a metaphysical explanation of
reason facts. This is the kind of explanation we might be offering when
we say that the ball is red because it is scarlet, or that Peter is in pain
because his c-fibres are firing, or that the vase is fragile because it is made
of thin glass. We often use the phrase ‘in virtue of ’ to refer to the relation
that underwrites such explanatory claims: the ball is red in virtue of being
scarlet; he is in pain in virtue of his c-fibre activity; the vase is fragile in
virtue of being made of thin glass. This phrase, when it is used in this
way, refers to a particular ontological relation between facts: the ground-
ing relation. Facts can be grounded in other facts, and if they are, we can
give a special kind of explanation of the former in terms of the latter. The
grounding relation underlies this metaphysical explanation in the same
way that the relation between cause and effect underlies causal explan-
ations. It is necessary for the corresponding explanation to be available,
but it is not sufficient. As Peter Lipton points out, ‘[t]he big bang is part
of the causal history of every event, but explains only a few’ (1990, 249).
In general, whether or not a cause makes for a good explanation is highly
sensitive to our interests and our background knowledge. Similarly, the
grounding relation is necessary for the availability of a distinctive non-
causal kind of explanation, but whether or not giving the ground of a fact
makes for a good explanation might depend on additional factors.
The grounding relation is studied and discussed extensively in con-
temporary metaphysics.²⁰ What motivates a large part of this attention is
a shift in our conception of ontology, away from the traditional Quinean
²⁰ See e.g. Fine (2001), Rosen (2010), Schaffer (2009), and the contributions in Correia and
Schnieder (2012). For an overview, see Bliss and Trogdon (2016).
22   ?
view, according to which ontology is solely concerned with what there is

and aims at drawing up a large list of everything that exists, an inventory
of the world, as it were. As Jonathan Schaffer puts it, Quinean ontology
conceives of its object as flat, asking only whether or not it includes a
particular entity, whereas his alternative ‘neo-Aristotelian’ conception of
ontology takes reality to be structured by a relation that orders things
from more to less fundamental (Schaffer 2009, 345–56). This structuring
relation is the grounding relation. In addition to answering Quine’s
‘What is there?’ ontologists thus have to answer the question ‘What
grounds what?’
Like ‘existence’, the notion of grounding is a primitive metaphysical
notion, one that cannot be defined in any other terms. To give an
informative account of the grounding relation, we can, however, give
illustrative examples, characterize its formal features, and compare it to
other philosophically important relations. I have already mentioned
some examples of what appears to be claims about what grounds what
earlier in this section. Further examples of grounding claims include
‘This is a triangle because it has three sides,’ ‘Anne is married to Claire
because they were pronounced spouses by a suitably authorized person,’
and ‘There is a table in the room because there are particles arranged
tablewise in the room.’ In general, the relation is often taken to hold
between facts concerning dispositional and categorical properties (the
vase is fragile because it is made of thin glass), determinable and deter-
minate properties (the ball is red because it is scarlet), macro- and
microphysical objects (there is a table in the room because there are
particles arranged tablewise in the room), sets and their members (there
is a football team on the field because there are several players on the
field), etc.²¹
In all of these cases, there is an intuitive ‘directedness’ in the relation
between the facts in question, which makes it asymmetric—if Peter is in
pain because his c-fibres are firing, then it is not the case that his c-fibres
are firing because he is in pain (unless we equivocate on ‘because’ and
²¹ I do not claim that the grounding relation actually holds in all of these cases, but merely
that these are typically understood as instances of that relation. Of course, some of them might
turn out to be false examples. As long as they help to make clear what they are supposed to be
examples for, they have done their job here.
, ,     23
interpret it as indicating a grounding relation on the first occurrence and

an evidential relation on the second). This is true no matter which phrase
we use to indicate grounding: if the ball is red in virtue of being scarlet,
then it cannot be scarlet in virtue of being red, and, to use another such
phrase, if being scarlet makes the ball red, then being red does not make
the ball scarlet. Hence, the most salient formal feature of the grounding
relation is its asymmetry. Moreover, the relation is irreflexive (it makes
no sense to claim that the ball is red because it is red) and transitive
(if the ball is coloured because it is red, and it is red because it is scarlet,
then the ball is coloured because it is scarlet).²²
How does this grounding relation compare to other philosophically
important relations? One such relation is reducibility. A stated goal of
many theories in all areas of philosophy, including, of course, meta-
ethics, is to reduce certain facts to certain other facts. Is asking what
grounds what just a different way of asking what is reducible to what?
That depends on how exactly we understand the reductive project.
Firstly, establishing the reducibility of, say, pain to c-fibre activity should
be distinguished from providing a conceptual analysis in the narrow
sense of defining ‘pain’ in terms c-fibre activity and claiming that this
conceptual relation is accessible a priori to all competent speakers.
Reductivists are ultimately interested in the relations between facts or
properties, not those between words or concepts (even though, of course,
the latter can be a guide to the former—if ‘pain’ can be defined as ‘c-fibre
activity’, then pain is also reducible to c-fibre activity). The classic
example of reducibility in this sense is the relation between (facts
about) water and (facts about) H₂O. Note, though, that such reduction
claims are often understood as establishing the identity of the properties
or facts picked out by different concepts: water just is H₂O, so ‘this glass
is filled with water’ and ‘this glass is filled with H₂O’ correspond to the
same fact.
If the aim of a reductivist project is to establish an identity claim, then
grounding differs significantly from reducibility, since the grounding
²² Many metaphysicians also introduce the notion of partial grounding: a partial ground is a
proper part of a set of facts that (fully) grounds a fact, and while the full ground of a fact
necessitates it, a partial ground does not (Audi 2012, 698). Here and in what follows, I am
concerned with full grounding.
24   ?
relation is asymmetric, irreflexive, and holds between distinct facts,

neither of which is true of identity. I suspect, though, that very often
and despite assertions to the contrary, reductivists are not actually
interested in establishing identities. After all, they are usually trying to
reduce some facts or properties to some ‘more basic’ or ‘more funda-
mental’ facts or properties.²³ Note also that just like ‘because’ and ‘in
virtue of ’, ‘is reducible to’ has a clear connotation of directedness, which
suggests that what is meant by reducibility is an asymmetric relation
between facts or properties that differ in their fundamentality.
Grounding is just such a relation. Thus, talk of reduction is at best
ambiguous and at worst misleading. To reduce A to B might simply
amount to establishing a symmetric identity claim, as (perhaps) in the
case of H₂O and water. But it might also turn out to mean that A-facts
are grounded in B-facts, in which case we might as well say so.
Another important relation that might bear some similarity to the
grounding relation is supervenience. First and foremost, supervenience is
a modal relation between two sets or kinds of properties: to say that the
A-properties supervene on the B-properties is to say, roughly, that two
things that do not differ in their B-properties cannot differ in their
A-properties either. There are several more precise specifications of
this relation in the literature (see McLaughlin 1995 and McLaughlin
and Bennett 2011, secs. 3.5; 4.1). But they all characterize supervenience
as a reflexive²⁴ and non-symmetric²⁵ relation. Thus, the fact that certain
A-properties supervene on certain B-properties does not suffice to estab-
lish the sort of directedness that is distinctive of the grounding relation,
and hence does not entail that the former are grounded in the latter. But
if, as is plausible, the grounding relation holds with (metaphysical)
²³ Sometimes, that might mean only that the same facts are better understood under another
description that is in some sense more basic. In other cases, however, reduction claims are
clearly intended to assert an asymmetric relation between properties or facts picked out using
different concepts—this will be the case whenever someone who purports to have reduced A to
B denies that B is reducible to A as well.
²⁴ Trivially, no two things can differ in their A-properties without differing in their
A-properties.
²⁵ A binary relation is non-symmetric if and only if it is neither symmetric nor asymmetric.
That is, if R is a non-symmetric relation, then aRb entails neither bRa nor its negation, but is
consistent with either. To see that two kinds of properties can be mutually supervenient,
consider for example the radius and the surface of perfect spheres.
, ,     25
necessity,²⁶ then that relation might, conversely, offer a good explanation

for why a supervenience claim holds for certain properties.
After all, supervenience claims merely describe a certain pattern
among properties; they tell us nothing about why those properties
exhibit that pattern. Hence, supervenience claims are usually in need of
an explanation (see McLaughlin and Bennett 2011, sec. 3.7 and Horgan
1993). One possible explanation is that the two kinds of properties are
actually identical. Yet many philosophically interesting supervenience
claims are made while insisting that the two kinds of properties and
hence the facts about their instantiation are numerically distinct. An
account of the A-properties that takes them to supervene on but be
nevertheless distinct from the B-properties is often labelled a ‘non-
reductive’ account of A-properties in terms of B-properties (here ‘reduc-
tion’ is understood as establishing identity). But it seems that establishing
such a modal connection between distinct properties does not itself
explain anything or solve any problems; it rather states a phenomenon
that it is the task of a genuinely informative account of the properties in
question to make sense of (see Kim 1993, 165–9). The grounding relation
offers a way to do so.²⁷
The preceding paragraphs, I hope, provide an understanding of the
grounding relation and the sort of metaphysical explanation it affords
that is sufficient for the use they will be put to in what follows. Like
‘existence’, ‘grounding’ is a primitive metaphysical notion; it denotes a
relation that we are familiar with from a number of contexts and
examples and that we often refer to by using ‘because’ or ‘in virtue of ’,
a relation that is asymmetric, irreflexive, transitive, and holds between
distinct facts. Thus, claims about what grounds what must be distin-
guished from identity claims as well as claims about what supervenes on
what, but they might provide an explanation for the latter. Moreover,
grounding allows us to talk less ambiguously about the asymmetric,
explanatorily potent dependence relation we often appear to have in
mind when we think about reducibility. This notion of grounding allows
²⁶ For arguments to the effect that it does, see Fine (2012, 38) and Rosen (2010, 118).
²⁷ See Väyrynen (2017) for a helpful overview of the difficulties that the challenge to explain
supervenience raises for various other meta-ethical views.
26   ?
us to formulate constructivism more clearly as a metaphysical view about

the place of reason facts in an ontology that is structured by the ground-
ing relation. Constructivism is a view about what grounds reason facts.
1.6 Putting constructivism on the map
Let me summarize the view as it has been outlined so far. Constructivism

about practical reasons rejects a representationalist account of the nature
of reason judgements. Their cognitive function is not to provide an agent
with normative information by representing facts about what is a reason
for doing what. Instead, they play the distinctive role of guiding the
agent’s practical reasoning. Accordingly, reason judgements are not true
in virtue of accurately representing any reason facts. That does not mean
that they cannot be true at all. But according to the constructivist, what it
is for a reason judgement to be true should rather be understood in terms
of the soundness of the episode of reasoning that it is apt to guide.
Constructivists thus deny that true reason judgements are true because
certain reason facts obtain. But they do not deny that those judgements
correspond to such facts, that is, they do not deny that a reason fact
obtains whenever a reason judgement is true. What is crucial about
constructivism, however, is that it explains the former in terms of the
latter: some considerations are reasons for certain actions because the
corresponding reason judgement is true, and thus, ultimately, because a
particular episode of practical reasoning is sound. The constructivist’s
picture thus includes reason facts, but their existence is not independent
of us. Instead, they are mind-dependent: facts about our mental states or
activities figure ineliminably in the explanation of why they obtain.
How does this view relate to other, more established meta-ethical
theories? It has been argued that constructivism does not constitute a
meta-ethical theory at all (Darwall et al. 1992; Hussain and Shah 2006). It
should be clear, however, that this scepticism is unfounded when it
comes to the view presented here. It might be difficult to say exactly
what conditions have to be met in order for a theory to qualify as meta-
ethical. But I take a sufficient criterion to be that the theory answers
(some of) the same questions that more paradigmatic meta-ethical
     27
theories (i.e. those whose credentials as meta-ethical are not called into
question) are characteristically concerned with. Surely questions on the
nature of reason judgements, on whether they can be true and what their
truth consists in, and on what grounds reason facts are among those
characteristically meta-ethical questions.
But what kind of meta-ethical theory is constructivism? In particular, is
it a form of realism or anti-realism? I am not sure how useful this
distinction is any more, because it can mean so many things. If being a
realist about practical reasons just means to acknowledge that we can be
correct or mistaken in our judgements about them and that, if we are,
these judgements are true or false in a substantive sense, then construct-
ivists are realists. They also agree with realists that our reason judgements
sometimes are true and hence that there really are practical reasons.
Typically, however, realism is meant to be more demanding: reason
facts do not only have to exist, but they have to be especially ontologically
robust, which is often spelled out in terms of mind- or stance-dependence
(cf. Shafer-Landau 2003). A related way of drawing the distinction takes
inspiration from Plato’s Euthyphro and characterizes realism and anti-
realism as disagreeing about whether there are reasons ultimately because
we think there are, or vice versa. Understood in this way, constructivism
is a version of anti-realism, it embraces mind-dependence, and sides with
Euthyphro (cf. James 2007; 2012 and Street 2010).
However, many people—particularly in contemporary metaphysics—
seem to think that the question whether some particular kind of fact
exists (i.e. is part of our ontological inventory) is not the only interesting,
and perhaps not even the most interesting ontological question to ask.
We should also be concerned with ontological structure and the ground-
ing relation, that is, we should ask not only ‘What is there?’ but also
‘What grounds what?’ (Schaffer 2009). If you agree, as I do, then the
classical contrast between realism and anti-realism becomes less import-
ant, and the contrast between views that do and views that do not take
reason facts to be grounded in certain other facts becomes more relevant.
We can distinguish three positions on this issue. Firstly, one might
take reason facts to be fundamental and not grounded in any other kind
of facts; they are facts sui generis and make up a distinct part of reality.
Furthermore, our reason judgements purport to represent those facts,
28   ?
and they are true, if they are true, because the relevant facts exist and they
hence represent accurately. Thus, nothing grounds reason facts, and
reason facts ground the truth of our reason judgements. This seems to
best describe the position taken by reason fundamentalists like Derek
Parfit (2011b) and Thomas Scanlon (2014).²⁸ Secondly, one might deny
that reason facts are fundamental and take them to be grounded in some
other kind of facts, e.g. facts about our desires, but retain the fundamen-
talist’s claim about the relation between those facts and our reason
judgements. That is, reason facts are themselves grounded in certain
other facts, but they ground the truth of our reason judgements when
they are accurately represented by them. This position is taken, for
instance, by Humeans like Mark Schroeder (2007), and I will call it
reason reductivism.²⁹ Finally, one might take reason facts to be grounded
in our true reason judgements, so that the fact that some consideration is
a reason for an agent to do something can be explained by the fact that
the corresponding reason judgement is true, rather than vice versa.
Of course, to avoid circularity, such a position must take the truth of
our reason judgements to be grounded in something other than the
obtaining of certain reason facts, and thus to consist in something
other than their accurate representation. This is the constructivist view
as I have introduced it.
Note that Humean and other versions of reductivism that take reason
facts to be grounded in psychological facts, for instance about the agent’s
desires, also entail that reasons depend in some way on our mental states
or activities. Focusing solely on a position’s stance on mind-dependence
will thus lead you to assimilate constructivism to reductivism and to
ignore the important difference that distinguishes constructivism from
²⁸ Note that reason fundamentalism—the claim that reason facts are neither grounded in nor
identical to any other facts—must be distinguished from primitivism about the concept of a
reason, which claims that this concept cannot be analysed in terms of any other concepts.
Scanlon and Parfit are reason primitivists in this sense too, but, in general, those two theses can
come apart. That is, one might deny the analysability of the concept of a reason while proposing
a metaphysical ‘reduction’ of reason facts (Schroeder 2007 is an example of such a position).
²⁹ I choose this term despite the ambiguity noted in section 1.5 because it is so widely
established in the debate. As I said above, I suspect that many of those who are considered—or
consider themselves—reductivists about reasons actually intend to argue for a grounding claim.
For the sake of completeness, however, I will classify anyone who argues for the strict identity
between facts about reasons and certain other facts as a reductivist as well.
     29
both fundamentalism and reductivism: constructivists reject the idea that

the truth of a reason judgement is grounded in the existence of a fact that
it represents as obtaining. This is why Representationalism is at the heart
of the issue between constructivism and its alternatives.
This brings us to a worry about constructivism that has been raised
repeatedly in the literature: is constructivism really a distinct meta-
ethical view, or does it, upon closer inspection, collapse into one of the
more familiar views?³⁰ Those who think of constructivism primarily as a
view that rejects Representationalism often question whether it offers a
genuine alternative to expressivism. As I have outlined in section 1.2,
however, while constructivism and expressivism share a commitment to
rejecting Representationalism, they differ substantially in how they con-
ceive of the role that reason judgements play in an agent’s psychology
and, consequently, in their positive accounts of the nature of those
judgements. Those who think of constructivism primarily as a view
that embraces mind-dependence, on the other hand, tend to question
whether it offers a genuine alternative to familiar reductive accounts.
David Enoch (2009, 328–9), for example, notes that dispositionalist
views like David Lewis’ (1989) qualify as a version of constructivism as
he characterizes it. But as we just saw, if we understand constructivism
along the lines suggested here, it differs significantly from those reductive
accounts, because it reverses the order of explanation between the truth
of reason judgements and the obtaining of the facts to which they
correspond.
In addition to this ‘someone already said that’-version of the distinct-
ness worry, Enoch also presents a more general version of the worry:
It seems to be possible to divide up the logical space of metaethical

positions rather neatly, using a series of yes-no questions. . . . In such a
way, we seem to get an exhaustive classification of all logically possible
metaethical positions. But when the details of this little exercise are
filled in . . . , no room remains for a distinctively constructivist position.
(Enoch 2009, 329)
³⁰ Versions of this worry are raised, e.g., by David Enoch (2009), James Lenman (2012), and
Michael Ridge (2012).
30   ?
His idea is that by asking constructivists to answer a series of yes-or-no

questions, one can usher them along the forking paths of a taxonomic
tree, all of which eventually lead to boxes that already have different and
familiar names on them (such as ‘Dispositionalism’). We can call this the
argument from taxonomic exhaustion. Does it establish that construct-
ivism is not a distinct meta-ethical view?
It does not. Firstly, the most we can and should say about meta-ethical
views that end up in the same box of such a taxonomy is that their
disagreement on one or more of the many issues discussed in meta-ethics
is sufficiently small to allow them to answer certain questions in the same
forcedly non-nuanced way. Whether or not this should prompt us to
classify them as versions of the same position rather than as distinct
alternatives, it seems to me, is not a particularly sensible question to ask,
as long as there is some substantive element of disagreement. Moreover,
as we saw in the case of ‘realism’ earlier in this section, such classifica-
tions are always prone to lead to merely verbal disputes. They derive the
little importance they have from the much more important goal of
finding out which answers to the underlying questions are correct, and
their adequacy is highly sensitive to the context and the background
assumptions of the discussions in which they are used. This is not to
deny that taxonomies can be very useful, say, for giving an overview of an
area or for making certain dialectical situations explicit. But we should
keep in mind that what questions we use in generating them will depend
not only on abstract systematic considerations, but on what questions we
deem important enough to give different names to different answers,
which in turn depends on what problems we deem worth solving and
what general concerns we take meta-ethical theories to be in the business
of addressing.
Secondly, even if we put these general concerns aside, Enoch’s argu-
ment still fails to establish that there is ‘no room . . . for a distinctively
constructivist position’ in meta-ethics (2009, 329). This is because the
taxonomy he offers is not exhaustive; it conflates important distinctions
in the meta-ethical realm. In particular, it moves from answering ‘yes’ to
the question ‘Are any moral sentences strictly speaking true?’ directly to
the question ‘Are moral properties (or facts) naturalistically reducible?’
(2009, 329) Thereby, it ignores precisely those questions concerning the
    31
proper understanding of truth and the relation between facts and true
judgements on which constructivists and their opponents disagree.
Moreover, it does not include any questions on the nature of the nor-
mative judgements in question. Rather than demonstrating that there is
no room for constructivism in meta-ethics, Enoch’s argument thus
illustrates how a one-sided conception of the issues that meta-ethicists
should be concerned with can make us blind to the very possibility of a
distinctively constructivist account of practical reasons.
1.7 Plan of the book
In the remainder of this book, I will develop the constructivist account of

practical reasons that I outlined in the preceding sections into a fully
fledged meta-ethical view, make its theoretical commitments explicit,
and respond to the most pressing worries to which it gives rise. My aim
in doing so is not to convince you that constructivism is the best meta-
ethical view, or that it is superior to any of its alternatives. In fact, I will
have little to say about those alternatives, except where I need to distin-
guish constructivism from them. My aim is a more modest one: I want to
show that constructivism offers a distinct, coherent, and prima facie
attractive account of practical reasons, and to make as clear as possible
what accepting that account would involve. This, I hope, will facilitate a
more focused and in-depth debate about its merits.
To that end, the following chapters will elaborate the aspects of the
constructivist view that I outlined in sections 1.2–1.4 and address the two
worries that have already been mentioned—concerning the view’s dis-
tinctness and circularity—in much greater detail.
Chapters 2 and 3 will develop the constructivist’s alternative to
Representationalism. Chapter 2 argues that reason judgements play an
important and essential role in practical reasoning: they guide the
reasoning process. Chapter 3 then shows how this role can be used to
formulate an anti-representationalist account of the nature of reason
judgements. It also discusses how that account differs from how the
expressivists, who also reject Representationalism, understand of the
nature of such judgements.
32   ?
Chapter 4 presents an account of the truth of reason judgements that

does not presuppose the prior existence of reason facts but nevertheless
understands truth to be a substantive property that can bear the explana-
tory weight that the constructivist account of practical reasons puts on it.
In particular, it suggests that constructivists can formulate such an
account by adopting a theory of truth that has been developed most
prominently by Crispin Wright (1992) and Michael Lynch (2009).
According to the account of truth presented in Chapter 4, the truth of
a reason judgement is ultimately grounded in the soundness of the
episode of practical reasoning that it is apt to guide. Most importantly,
such an episode is sound only if it is an instance of correct reasoning.
That is why Chapter 5 addresses the question of what it is for practical
reasoning to be correct. To avoid circularity, constructivists must answer
this question without presupposing any truths about practical reasons.
I show that this can be accomplished by taking the standard of correct-
ness for practical reasoning to be provided by the constitutive rules of
that activity. Like the rules of chess, these rules necessarily govern the
activity even though there need not be any reason to comply with them.
Finally, Chapter 6 distinguishes the particular version of mind-
dependence that constructivists endorse from the version to which
reductivists like Mark Schroeder (2007) are committed. These versions
differ in the resources they offer for accommodating the idea that
practical reasons are objective in some sense. I thus discuss how con-
structivism and its alternatives fare in accommodating the fallibility of
our reason judgements, the fact that some reasons are universally shared,
as well as the modal robustness of our reasons, which are three rather
different issues associated with the ambiguous notion of objectivity.
2
Reasoning and reason judgements
This chapter takes the first step in developing a constructivist theory of

practical reasons. It does so by giving an account of the cognitive role
that judgements about those reasons play in an agent’s psychology. In
particular, it presents an account of practical reasoning according to
which such reasoning always involves a reason judgement that guides
it. The thesis that reason judgements guide episodes of practical reason-
ing will be taken up in Chapter 3, where I will argue that constructivists
can formulate an anti-representationalist account of the nature of reason
judgements by characterizing their cognitive function in terms of this
guiding role.
2.1 Preliminaries
2.1.1 The reasoning process
Let me start by clarifying the concepts that will be central to this chapter.
Practical reasoning, the kind of reasoning on which I will focus here, is
thinking about what to do in a situation in which one has more than one
option and hence faces a choice between different courses of action. That
is not to say that agents encounter situations in which their options are
already carved out for them and then begin to reason about which to
choose. Framing one’s situation—determining the available options as
well as specifying and distinguishing them at a suitable level of
generality—is often part of the deliberative process. Another part of
this process is bringing to mind potentially relevant considerations:
inquiring into the details of the options and one’s circumstances, imagin-
ing the potential consequences of one’s actions, searching one’s memory
for relevant information, goals, or previous encounters with similar
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198754329.001.0001
34    
situations, etc. If the reasoning is successful, it will eventually lead to a

decision, that is, the formation of an intention to follow one of the
available courses of action.¹
Not all reasoning is successful. The process of thinking about what to
do in a certain situation can be interrupted by an occurrence that
requires the agent’s immediate attention, or the agent might be distracted
by an unrelated thought that keeps bumping back into the forefront of
her mind. Sometimes we also ‘get stuck’ in reasoning, thinking about
how all the aspects of the different choices bear on our decision until the
opportunity to make a choice has passed. Such cases of deliberative
failure in which we ponder our options without making any decision
should be distinguished from reasoning that leads to the result that no
decision is necessary (yet), where no intention to perform any of the
initially considered options is formed either. The latter kind of reasoning
is, nevertheless, successful, because it concludes with a (higher-order)
decision not to decide among the available options, in which case this
(higher-order) option—not to decide between the other options—is
simply added to the range of options the agent takes to be available in
the situation at hand.
Of course, not everything we do, not all of our choices are the result of
reasoning on our part. Very often, we perform actions without first
spending any time thinking about or consciously deciding to perform
them—we switch on the light when we enter our dark living room, we
pick up the pen we have just dropped, we raise our hand to greet a friend
we have just seen on the other side of the road. Reasoning, as
I understand it in this chapter, is a conscious mental process by which
a subject forms a new attitude on the basis of some of the attitudes she
already holds.² Reasoning in this narrow sense must be distinguished
from other, unconscious and automatic processes, which are also some-
times called ‘reasoning’. This distinction is widely accepted in the litera-
¹ In speaking of intentions as a distinctive mental state, I follow Michael Bratman’s (1987,

20) influential account of intentions and intentional actions, whose characterization of those
states as ‘conduct-controlling pro-attitudes’ I assume to be by and large correct in what follows.
² Reasoning can also result in dropping an attitude (cf. Harman 1986, ch. 1). However, like
Broome (2013, 221), Boghossian (2014, 3), and many others I will focus on reasoning that
results in the formation of a new attitude.
 35
ture. John Broome calls the former ‘active’ and contrasts it with ‘passive’
reasoning (2013, 221). Paul Boghossian (2014) picks out the kind of
reasoning he is interested in by characterizing it as a cognitive process
that involves the activity of what cognitive psychologists call ‘System 2’.
Daniel Kahneman, a leading proponent of the underlying ‘dual process
theory’ of thinking, describes System 2 as the one that ‘allocates attention
to the effortful mental activities that demand it’ and that is ‘often
associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concen-
tration’ (2011, 21). Boghossian calls such reasoning ‘person-level, con-
scious and voluntary’, and distinguishes it from ‘sub-personal, sub-
conscious and automatic’ processes (2014, 3). Like Broome and
Boghossian, I am concerned only with conscious, active reasoning.
Here is a quite ordinary example of such reasoning: suppose that in
the morning, you are about to finish your coffee and head out to go to
work. You know that you could take either the train or your car, and you
plan to be at work by 9 a.m. because there is an important meeting. You
also remember that there is going to be extensive construction work on
the road you would have to take into the city today, which is sure to cause
a traffic jam that would significantly prolong your commute time.
Realizing that the train is your only option to get to work in time, you
decide to take the train and get on your way to the station.
For any particular episode of reasoning, we can identify a set of
attitudes—e.g. beliefs and intentions—from which the process of reason-
ing starts and on which its results are based. We can call these the
premise-attitudes of that reasoning. If it is reasoning that leads to the
formation of a new attitude, we can call this newly formed attitude the
conclusion-attitude of that episode of reasoning.³ Being a premise-
attitude or a conclusion-attitude are thus two different roles an attitude
can play in the process of reasoning.
Reasoning from a certain set of premise-attitudes to a particular
conclusion-attitude can be classified as correct or incorrect. Whether
or not a particular episode of reasoning is correct depends on the content
of the premise- and conclusion-attitudes. Reasoning should thus be
understood to operate on the content of these attitudes, where this
³ I adopt the terminology of premise- and conclusion-attitudes from Broome (2013, 221).
36    
means that the semantic features of those attitudes play an essential role
in the reasoning process (cf. Broome 2013, 231–2).⁴ But the relevant
notion of content here is not simply that of propositional content.
Different kinds of attitudes can share the same propositional content,
but the kind of attitude they are is still relevant for whether an episode of
reasoning in which they are involved is correct. The belief that it is
raining and the hope that it is raining share the same propositional
content, but while reasoning from the belief that it is raining and the
belief that if it is raining, then the streets are wet, to the belief that the
streets are wet is correct, reasoning from the hope that it is raining
together with the belief that if it is raining, then the streets are wet, to
the belief that the streets are wet is not.⁵ Hence, if we want to characterize
the role our attitudes play in the process of reasoning in terms of their
content, we need a richer notion of content that adds a marker for the
kind of attitude to the bare propositional content.⁶
Importantly, though, to say that an episode of reasoning starts from
certain premise-attitudes does not mean that it involves thinking about
these attitudes. In our example, you are thinking about the meeting at
work and the traffic jam on the way there, not about your beliefs
concerning these issues. So, when an episode of reasoning starts from
a certain attitude, your attention is directed at what this attitude is
⁴ Some philosophers argue that there is an important difference between reasoning that
concludes with beliefs and reasoning that concludes with an intention, as I assume practical
reasoning does: while the former kind of reasoning is inferential, the latter, they insist, is not (see
e.g. Dancy 2004, 101–8). Whether or not this is true depends on how we understand the
contrast between inferential and non-inferential reasoning, a distinction that has proven to be
quite difficult to explicate (see Streumer 2007a for an overview and a suggestion). One
suggestion that Dancy and others seem to have in mind is that reasoning is inferential if it
presupposes an evidential relation between the contents of the premise- and conclusion-
attitudes. If we understand their claim in this sense, the thesis that all reasoning operates on
the contents of these attitudes is perfectly compatible with the thesis that not all reasoning is
inferential. The claim that the reasoning process is sensitive to the content of the attitudes is
significantly weaker than the claim that it is sensitive only to the evidential relations between
those contents.
⁵ The fact that an attitude’s propositional content is insufficient to determine its significance
for the process of reasoning has also been highlighted by David Velleman (1992, 9) and John
Broome (2013, 251).
⁶ Broome (2013, ch. 14.1) addresses this issue by outlining a theory of such ‘marked contents’
and our means of expressing them in ordinary language. For the purposes of this chapter, I will
simply adopt Broome’s proposal, assuming that it is on the right track.
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5. Stylus, et Stigma, lente aucta.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Heath, whose tips are bearded, and just within the blossom; the leaves grow
by fours, the flowers mostly by threes, and are smooth, cylindrically club-
shaped, an inch long, and of a deep blood colour.
DESCRIPTION.
Stem shrubby, grows two feet high, and upright; the branches grow
upright, having many smaller branches, which are thick set, and very short.
The Leaves grow by fours, are linear, smooth, shining, and of a deep
green, having very short foot-stalks, pressed to the stem.
The Flowers terminate the shorter branches near the summit of the
stem, forming as it were a long bunch; the foot-stalks are long, having three
floral leaves at their base.
Empalement. Cup four-leaved, which are lance-shaped, sawed, and
pressed to the blossom.
The Blossom is cylindrically club-shaped, smooth, blood colour, and an
inch long; the segments of the mouth are obtuse, and straight.
Chives. Eight hair-like threads, fixed into the receptacle; the tips are
bearded, and just within the blossom.
Pointal. Seed-vessel nearly egg-shaped, furrowed, and downy; Shaft
without the blossom; Summit four-cornered.
Native of the Cape of Good Hope.
Flowers from August, till December.
REFERENCE.
1. Empalement, and Blossom.

2. The Empalement magnified.
3. The Chives, and Pointal.
4. The Chives detached from the Pointal; one tip magnified.
5. The Shaft, and its Summit magnified.
ERICA cubica.
CHARACTER SPECIFICUS.
Erica, antheris basi bicornibus, sub-inclusis; stylus longissimus; corollis

sub-campanulatis, purureis, oris laciniis patulis, maximis, ovatis; foliis sub-
quaternis, obtusis.
DESCRIPTIO.
Caulis erectus, teres, ramosus, fruticosus, pedalis; rami et ramuli

filiformes, laxi, erecti.
Folia quaterna, sæpe quina, obtusa, reflexa, apice incurvata, glabra,
nitida, subtus sulcata; petiolis rubris, adpressis.
Flores sub-terminales, umbellati, cernui; pedunculi longissimi, angulati,
purpurei, foliolis binis, coloratis instructi.
Calyx. Perianthium tetraphyllum, foliolis ovatis, acuminatis, adpressis,
apicibus viridis.
Corolla globoso-campanulata, purpurea, limbo maximo, expanso;
laciniis ovatis, concavis.
Stamina. Filamenta octo capillaria, longitudine tubi, receptaculo inserta.
Antheræ bifidæ, ad basin bicornutæ.
Pistillum. Germen sub-globosum. Stylus filiformis, exsertus, corolla
duplo longior, purpureus. Stigma concavum, marginatum.
Habitat ad Caput Bonæ Spei.
Floret a mensi Aprili, in Julium.
REFERENTIA.
1. Calyx, et Corolla.
2. Calyx lente auctus.
3. Stamina, et Pistillum.
4. Stamina a Pistillo diducta; anthera una lente aucta.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Heath, with tips two-horned at the base, nearly within the blossoms; shaft
very long; blossoms almost bell-shaped, and purple, having the segments of
the mouth spreading, very large, and egg-shaped; leaves growing mostly by
fours, and blunt ended.
DESCRIPTION.
Stem upright, cylindrical, branching, shrubby, growing a foot high; the

larger and smaller branches are thread-shaped, weak, and upright.
Leaves grow by fours, often by fives, blunt ended, bent back, and turned
inward at the point; smooth, shining, and channelled beneath; foot-stalks
red, and pressed to the stem.
The Flowers grow near the summits of the branches, in bunches,
hanging down; having very long foot-stalks, angled, purple, and two small,
coloured leaves on them.
Empalement. Cup four-leaved, which are egg-shaped, tapered, and
pressed to the blossom, the points green.
Blossom globularly bell-shaped and purple, the border very large and
spreading; the segments egg-shaped and concave.
Chives. Eight hair-like threads, the length of the tube, fixed into the
receptacle. Tips two-cleft, and two-horned at the base.
Pointal. Seed-bud nearly globular. Shaft thread-shaped, without the
blossom, twice its length, and purple. Summit concave, and bordered.
Flowers from April, till July.
REFERENCE.
1. The Empalement, and Blossom.
5. The Shaft, and Summit, magnified.
ERICA curviflora.
Erica, antheris muticis, sub-exsertis; corollis curvatis, clavato cylindricis,

pubescentibus, terminalibus, luteo-aurantiis; foliis quaternis, linearibus,
glabris.
DESCRIPTIO.
Caulis fruticosus, bipedalis; laxus, superne villosus; rami laxi, ramulosi,

ramulis brevissimis, frequentissimis, sparsis.
Folia quaterna, linearia, obtusa, glabra, subtus sulcata.
Flores terminales in ramulis, patenti, racemum longum formantes;
pedunculi brevissimi, foliolis tribus, adpressis.
Calyx. Perianthium tetraphyllum, foliolis subulatis, acuminatis, glabris,
adpressis.
Corolla curvata, clavata, pollicaris, pubescentia, luteo-aurantia; oris
laciniis expansis.
Stamina. Filamenta octo capillaria, curvata, longitudine tubi. Antheræ
muticæ.
Pistillum. Germen clavatum, sulcatum. Stylus filiformis, curvatus,
exsertus. Stigma tetragonum.
Floret a mensi Julii, in Novembrem.
REFERENTIA.
2. Calyx, lente auctus.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Heath, with beardless tips, just without the blossoms, which are curved,
cylindrically club-shaped, downy, terminating the branches, and of a yellow
gold colour; the leaves grow by fours, are linear, and smooth.
DESCRIPTION.
Stem shrubby, grows two feet high, weak, and hairy at the top; branches
weak and numerous; the smaller branches are very short, numerous, and
scattered.
Leaves grow by fours, are linear, blunt, smooth, and furrowed
underneath.
Flowers terminate the smaller branches, spreading out, and forming a
long spike; foot-stalks very short, with three small leaves pressed to the cup.
Empalement. Cup four-leaved, which are awl-shaped, tapering, smooth,
and pressed to the blossom.
Blossom curved, club-shaped, an inch long, downy, and of a yellow gold
colour; the segments of the mouth spread outward.
Chives. Eight hair-like threads, which are curved, and the length of the
blossom. Tips beardless.
Pointal. Seed-bud club-shaped, and furrowed. Shaft thread-shaped,
curved, and without the blossom. Summit four-cornered.
Flowers from July, till November.
REFERENCE.
1. The Empalement, and Blossom.

2. The Empalement, magnified.
5. The Shaft, and its Summit, magnified.
ERICA discolor.
Erica, antheris aristatis, inclusis; stylo exserto; corollis tubulosis,

subcylindraceis; foliis ternis.
DESCRIPTIO.
Caulis fruticosus, tripedalis, teres, erectus, gracilis, superne pubescens,

ramulis subsimplicibus.
Folia terna, linearia, erecto-patentia, supra plana, subtus revoluta, nitida,
saturate viridia.
Flores plerumque tres, subcernui, ramei, terminales, prope caulis
summitatem.
Calyx. Perianthium duplex, interius tetraphyllum, foliolis ovatis, erectis,
luteo-virentibus: exterius triphyllum, foliolis brevioribus priori
incumbentibus.
Corolla tubulosa, subcylindracea, ima parte, carnea, pallida, summa,
flavo-virescente, limbo quadrilobo, æquali erectiusculo.
Stamina. Filamenta octo capillaria, receptaculo inserta. Antheræ
oblongiusculæ, bipartitæ, inclusæ, aristatæ.
Pistillum. Germen oblongum. Stylus filiformis, corolla longior, apice
inflexo. Stigma subtetragonum, virescens.
Floret a Novembri in Aprilem.
REFERENTIA.
5. Stylus, et Stigma lente aucta.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Heath, with bearded tips within the blossom; the pointal standing out; the
blossom tubular, nearly cylindrical; leaves growing by threes.
DESCRIPTION.
Stem shrubby, grows to three feet high, cylindrical, upright, slender,

downy at the top, the branches seldom divided.
Leaves growing by threes, linear, between upright and spreading, smooth
on the upper, and rolled back on the under, surface, shining and dark green.
Flowers are commonly three together, bending a little downward,
terminating the branches near the upper part of the stem.
Empalement. Cup double, the inner four-leaved, ovate, erect, and of a
greenish yellow: the outer three-leaved, the leaves shorter than the former,
and lying on them.
Blossom tubular, nearly cylindrical, of a light flesh colour at the base,
and yellowish green at the mouth, which is divided into four equal nearly
erect segments.
Chives. Eight hair-like threads, fixed into the receptacle. Tips nearly
oblong, divided, bearded, and within the blossom.
Pointal. Seed-vessel oblong. Shaft thread-shaped, longer than the
blossom, the point bending. The Summit nearly four-cornered, and greenish.
Time of flowering from November till April.
REFERENCE.
1. The Empalement with the Blossom.

3. The Chives and Pointal.
4. The Chives detached from the Pointal, one tip magnified.
5. The Shaft, and its Summit magnified.
ERICA droseroides.
Erica, antheris cristatis, inclusis; corolla ventricosa, ore obliqua, purpurea;

pedunculis coloratis, longissimis; foliis alternis, sparsis, obtusis, pilis
glandulosis micantibus hirtis.
DESCRIPTIO.
Caulis erectus, spithameus; rami et ramuli filiformes, sparsi, erecto-

patentes, virgati.
Folia alterna, sparsa, linearia, obtusa, apice reflexa, pilis glandulosis
hirta.
Flores terminales, sub-umbellati, sub-erecti; pedunculi filiformes, foliis
duplo longiores; bracteæ minutæ, coloratæ.
Calyx. Perianthium tetraphyllum; foliolis sub-ovatis, viscosis,
acuminatis, coloratis, apicibus reflexis.
Corolla ventricosa, purpurea, costata, pubescens, ore obliqua, arctata,
profunde sanguinea; laciniis cordatis, expansis.
Stamina. Filamenta octo capillaria, torta, receptaculo inserta; antheræ
cristatæ, inclusæ.
Pistillum. Germen clavatum, sulcatum. Stylus filiformis, purpureus.
Stigma tetragonum.
Floret a mense Julii ad Octobrem.
REFERENTIA.
1. Calyx et Corolla.
3. Stamina et Pistillum.
4. Stamina a Pistillo diducta; antherâ unâ lente auctâ.
5. Stylus et Stigma lente aucta.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
Heath, with crested tips, within the blossom, which is big-bellied, oblique-
mouthed, and purple; the foot-stalks are coloured, and very long; leaves
grow alternate, scattered, blunt, and thick with shining glandular hairs.
DESCRIPTION.
Stem upright, about a span high; the larger and smaller branches are
thread-shaped, scattered, upright, spreading, and twiggy.
Leaves grow alternate, scattered, linear, blunt, the end bent back, and
thick with glandular hairs.
Flowers are terminal, nearly in bunches, almost upright; the foot-stalks
are thread-shaped, and twice as long as the leaves; the floral leaves are
small, and coloured.
Empalement. Cup four-leaved; leaves nearly egg-shaped, clammy,
pointed, coloured, and bent outward at the top.
Blossom big-bellied, purple, ribbed, and downy, with the mouth oblique,
narrowed, and of a deep blood colour; the segments are heart-shaped, and
spreading.
Chives. Eight hair-like threads, which are twisted, and fixed into the
receptacle; the tips are crested, and within the blossom.
Pointal. Seed-vessel club-shaped, and furrowed. Shaft thread-shaped,
and purple. Summit four-cornered.
Flowers from the month of July till October.
REFERENCE.
1. The Empalement and Blossom.
3. The Chives and Pointal.
5. The Shaft and its Summit magnified.
ERICA exsurgens.
Erica, antheris muticis, exsertis; foliis quaternis, mucronatis, apicibus

reflexis; corollis clavato-cylindraceis, verticillatis, aurantiis.
DESCRIPTIO.
Caulis fruticosus, pedalis et ultra, erectus, basi simplicissimus; rami

verticillati, simplices, erecti.
Folia quaterna, linearia, glabra, apice reflexa, mucronata, supra plana,
subtus sulcata, unguicularia, petiolis adpressis.
Flores in medio ramorum verticillati, recti; verticilli alter alteri
exsurgentes; pedunculi longi, bracteis tribus instructi.
Calyx. Perianthium tetraphyllum, foliolis lanceolatis, acuminatis,
carinatis, viscosis, adpressis.
Corolla clavato-cylindrica, pollicaria, aurantia; ore limbo quadrilobo
revoluto, laciniis superioribus longioribus.
Stamina. Filamenta octo capillaria, receptaculo inserta. Antheræ muticæ,
magnæ, exsertæ.
Pistillum. Germen clavatum, sulcatum. Stylus filiformis, staminibus
longior. Stigma tetragonum.
Floret a mense Septembris, in Martium.
REFERENTIA.
3. Stamina et Pistillum.

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Constructing Practical Reasons

Constructing Practical Reasons

5. Correct reasoning 141

This book grew out of my doctoral dissertation, which I submitted to

readers for OUP. I would like to express my gratitude to all of these

to what that agent is motivated to do, or what she would be motivated to

theoretical commitments explicit, and to defend it against some well-

only to the realm of reasons, the constructivist position under consider-

1.1 The basic idea

Constructivism, as I understand it here, is ﬁrst and foremost a view about

   7

confusion. Let me be clear, though, that I do not claim that my proposed

1.2 Constructivism and representation

Let me now elaborate on the main aspects of the constructivist position

   9

normative information about the choice situation and to represent some

between the two to consist in the facts they represent, it is understand-

   11

Proponents of the familiar conception accept Representationalism, or

[T]he difference between a realist and a constructivist theory rests in

   13

believes that the function of concepts is to describe the world, to mark

1.3 Constructivism and truth

Constructivism offers an explanation why some things are reasons for

   15

constructivists’ use of Correspondence puts on them. Providing such an

Korsgaard is less ambivalent when it comes to the constructivist’s

  - 17

1.4 Constructivism and mind-dependence

According to constructivism, that some things are reasons for certain

Note that this is a rather weak understanding of mind-dependence. It

right and wrong’. What distinguishes constructivism, he continues, is

¹⁸ On Shafer-Landau’s characterization, dispositionalist views of value like the ones devel-

  - 19

‘discovery’. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to deny that both ways of

Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood

This passage is often referred to when characterizing how Rawls under-

and rational intuitionism come with different conceptions of objectivity.

1.5 Constructivism, explanation, and the

Constructivists, I have said repeatedly, want to explain reasons in terms

, ,     21

facts ultimately obtain because of or in virtue of the soundness of certain

view, according to which ontology is solely concerned with what there is

, ,     23

interpret it as indicating a grounding relation on the ﬁrst occurrence and

relation is asymmetric, irreﬂexive, and holds between distinct facts,

, ,     25

necessity,²⁶ then that relation might, conversely, offer a good explanation

us to formulate constructivism more clearly as a metaphysical view about

1.6 Putting constructivism on the map

Let me summarize the view as it has been outlined so far. Constructivism

     27

     29

both fundamentalism and reductivism: constructivists reject the idea that

It seems to be possible to divide up the logical space of metaethical

His idea is that by asking constructivists to answer a series of yes-or-no

    31

1.7 Plan of the book

In the remainder of this book, I will develop the constructivist account of

Chapter 4 presents an account of the truth of reason judgements that

This chapter takes the ﬁrst step in developing a constructivist theory of

2.1.1 The reasoning process

34    